Mystery: Satan's Road - Suspense Thriller Mystery (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  Then just as he was about to suck in a lung full of the diesel nitrate mixture, the woman who had attacked him, stood up. He could feel her paddling through the deadly slurry, searching for the damn detonator. He should have grabbed her then, but he was afraid she might fall on him again. Even a few seconds of exertion might be enough to send him into unconsciousness or by reflex, suck the reeking mixture into his lungs. He waited for what seemed like an eternity, his lungs hitching painfully in his chest. Then just as he was about to surrender, he felt her crawl out of the tank. He waited another few heartbeats then pushed his head up. Broke the surface. Breathed the poisoned air gratefully.

  Gideon dragged his way to the edge of the tank, threw his arms over the edge, grunted, and threw himself over the rim. He hit the concrete with a sickening crunch, his clothes pulling at him. His knee took all of his weight and a bolt of pain shot through his thigh. Why was God punishing him? Then he saw the door open, the light pouring in for a brief moment. He needed to catch her. Bash her brains out and reset the timer on the detonator. He had set it for five minutes. How much time had passed since she pushed him down into the slurry? Sixty seconds? Ninety? He wasn’t going to let one bony old woman destroy his plans for the glorious final battle he had planned for his whole life. The destruction of the woman’s quarters had been part of the original blueprint. He had drawn those first plans over ten years ago, supervised the excavation of the storage area himself.

  He plodded towards the diminishing light across the concrete floor, the door closing slowly on its noisy metal hinges, his leg dragging behind. He wiped diesel fuel from his face, gagging and coughing at the caustic gruel he had ingested. It was in his nose and his lungs now.

  Outside, the bright sunlight caught him by surprise. He struggled up the rise from the cave to the entry. Where was she? How was she moving so fast? He couldn’t wait for his eyes to adjust. He had to keep moving.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The driver of the dark green Ford passenger van tried again to reach HQ on his mobile radio. Nothing. He imagined the worst. Parkhurst must be under siege by the U.S. army, or even worse, bombed into rubble by a fleet of drones. He looked in his rearview mirror. The skyline behind him looked clear and unblemished. No smoke plumes or mushroom clouds. He was almost disappointed – after all, this was supposed to be the battle of the millennium.

  The team of fifty sacrificial killers that Gideon had built and trained and molded, was destined to be the prophet’s ultimate weapon. Fifty young men – essentially fifty children, with their entire lives ahead of them, were prepared to give it all up for a single ideology. And what was the reward? Not heaven, or the pleasure of some uncounted number of female virgins, or even riches for surviving relatives. The answer was simple – duty to family. The driver smiled, thinking how every son lived to make his father proud – to show his family that he wasn't the failure or disappointment they believed he was.

  Like a stage hypnotist, Gideon had selected the perfect boys from the community; people who had something to prove, had low self-esteem, or who were hiding from failure and overly harsh parents.

  Gideon’s 'fifty' were so alike in character, they could be brothers, even genetic duplicates; brought together for one last glorious family reunion.

  Weeks before J-Day, Gideon has supervised the leaking of information into the general media and the Internet. A Jihadist organization from Pakistan was plotting to send suicide bombers into prominent U.S. cities. A day later, Homeland Security notched up their threat warning. Gideon had laughed. How predictable they were, he said. How easy to create fear in Americans, when the government is such a willing accomplice.

  On J -Day, Gideon predicted, government forces would surround the Parkhurst front gates in preparation for their counter-attack. Gideon hadn't made his groups intentions a secret. Short of mailing a personal engraved invitation to the President, he had done everything in his powers to make the media aware that a world-shattering event was planned for Monday at noon. Gideon told his acolytes that the FBI was in denial. They were so afraid of repeating the failure of Waco and Ruby Ridge, they had cut funding to their anti-militia division. That meant every effort had to be made to wake them up. The FBI was as critical to Monday’s events as were the Soldiers of Patmos – they were like brothers in arms. The Feds were the church’s equivalent of Pontius Pilate.

  No matter what – the prospect of terrorist suicide bombers converging on Washington, guaranteed the world's attention.

  The unit commander had worked his way up to the front of the van and broke the driver’s reverie. He clapped him on the back.

  "Any word?" he asked.

  The driver just shook his head.

  They had agreed on no radio traffic between the five vans, but the driver was tempted. His cousin was piloting one of the other units that had exited from the front gate. He was dying to know what kind of response they had met. It must have been significant to mean the loss of communication with the farmhouse. He couldn't imagine Gideon dead or even taken into custody. He was a true prophet. God would surely spare him.

  The green van had already entered the city limits and was traveling down the Curtis Memorial Parkway. Traffic was especially heavy on the lanes leaving downtown. The driver was troubled. They had never discussed any scenario other than a successful deployment of the chosen fifty. The authorities were supposed to be in a state of shock, according to Gideon, struggling with mangled lines of communication and technology that was unusable – fighting amongst themselves for control. Gideon had never allow discussion of any other outcome – such as a coordinated effort by both the police and military to prevent members of their church from reaching their destinations. And that’s what seemed to be happening now.

  The police were in evidence everywhere. They may be out of touch with their command center, but it looked like they were deployed to all corners of the city. That left the driver no options. All he could do was pray and carryout his orders.

  They had been the first unit to deploy – the mystery team in the green van with the Department of Fisheries logo on the back and sides. They had exited through an escape tunnel that emerged a mile from Parkhurst, then driven over a freshly plowed field, and finally bounced onto a feeder road onto Route 66. Their targets were key to Gideon’s plan. He wanted Americans to fear terrorists again, to hate Muslim fanaticism, and to feel that terror as close to home as possible. He needed to get people’s attention.

  The green van was now less than twenty minutes away – twenty minutes to destiny. The pilot smiled. We will show them, he thought. We will finally show them.

  :

  Hyde jumped. His stomach was still rebelling, but he was getting used to the movement of the big helicopter as it zigzagged its way to Washington. Another anonymous voice on his headset, likely from Homeland Security, announced to everyone that this system called Zeus had reported a dark green van just entering D.C. proper. The license plate had been traced to a company connected with Parkhurst.

  The pilot reacted to another set of instructions that Hyde couldn’t hear, and banked hard, heading west, the big turbines whining. Hyde promptly vomited into the space by his feet. The FBI agent next to him grimaced and looked away. Hyde wiped his mouth with his sleeve, angry for his weak stomach and poor timing.

  "The suspect vehicle just crossed the beltway. We should have a visual in two minutes," said the pilot.

  Hyde put his head back and groaned. The van was found somewhere on Curtis Memorial Parkway. Depending on traffic, the terrorists could be downtown in five minutes. Hyde was imagining the doors of the van opening, somewhere on a crowded city street, and disgorging suicide bombers into the population like a deadly contagion gone wild. And then what would they do?

  "If the van reaches the downtown and the bombers spread out, what's the plan?" he asked everyone on the COM. No one answered at first.

  "Detective! There's a protocol for dealing with suicide bombers," said a voice.

  "
Which is?" asked Hyde, recognizing Arlington Boulevard below them.

  "We've got an expert at Quantico. She's on her way to the location by helicopter. She's very good at what she does."

  "Do we know if these terrorists are using dead-man switches yet?"

  "Yes. That's confirmed."

  "What's the blast radius?" asked Hyde.

  "Why do you need that information?"

  "Just humor me.”

  “Five to ten pounds of C4 is typical of these bomb vests. That would make the primary blast radius about thirty to sixty feet; the secondary, sixty to one hundred and twenty.”

  “Secondary?”

  “The primary radius relates to overpressure injuries. Injuries that are mortal, but you can’t see them. Secondary refers to fragmentation injuries caused by flying pieces of steel, brick, wood, whatever. Anything that can cause surface damage. It’s SOP to embed nails or ball bearings in the C4, to increase fatalities.”

  Hyde did a quick calculation in his head; trying to get a feel for how far away he would need to be to safely take aim at a suicide bomber. A hundred and twenty feet was forty yards, about eight to ten car lengths. Standard range practice for cops with handguns was seven yards. Forty yards away might as well be on the moon.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Hyde stared down through the open side door of the Black Hawk, his stomach still spasming, familiar streets and buildings lurching past his viewpoint: the Smithsonian, Capitol Hill, the ugly Edgar Hoover building. The streets looked strangely deserted at mid-day, police cruisers with flashing light bars at every corner.

  Then he caught a glimpse of the green van that they had zeroed in on, based on the GPS co-ordinates supplied by the Zeus technology. The van was traveling fast, taking advantage of the unusually light traffic. It turned off Route 66, the highway the van was first discovered on, and then took a left onto 296 – which crossed the Potomac at Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. Ahead lay a minefield of police barriers.

  Hyde could see a police roadblock about three blocks ahead, on the outskirts of Foggy Bottom. The pilot banked steeply, lining up the helicopter’s trajectory with New Hampshire Avenue, and the speeding van.

  Hyde couldn't hear them, but he knew shots were being fired from the roadblock. The van was still racing, taking a sharp turn at the Washington Circle. Then he saw the van slump down on tires destroyed by police gunfire; the side door flying open almost immediately, and men starting to pile out.

  The Black Hawk’s heavy H240 machine gun began to fire into the center of the mass of bombers. Several spun and were tossed like ragdolls by the onslaught. Hyde saw one man torn in half by the large caliber shells. He saw a head vanish in a spray of red. The driver, who was dressed in a T-shirt, never made it out of his seat. One bomber, who escaped the first barrage, had found shelter behind the side of the vehicle, facing away from the helicopters position.

  The pilot pivoted, and the gunner laid down a line of fire from the front of the van, along the roof and into the rear doors. Then the pilot pulled back and rose, hovering above the vehicle looking for movement. Hyde could see gas pouring out onto the street from the ruptured gas tank, but no activity Then, as they turned, the bomber hiding behind the van turned to run. At that moment, the van burst into flames. The pilot pulled back to avoid being caught in an explosion. Hyde watched the lone bomber running down Pennsylvania Street, people moving out of his way.

  "He's heading for the White House," someone shouted into his microphone.

  "No, he's not," Hyde said. "I know exactly where he’s going. To the only building in the area that hasn't been evacuated. The Daly Building. Washington Police headquarters."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The Washington police headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue was named after a Homicide detective who was killed by a gunman in 1994. The shooter took the elevator from the main level, got off onto the third floor, entered the Cold Case division, and opened fire with an AK-47. The first victim to die was a Homicide Sergeant with 28 years on the force, Henry J. Daly.

  The suicide bomber was running down the public walkway that passed by the front of the Daly building. He was easily jogging around civilians on the sidewalk, who were looking up in awe at the sight of a Black Hawk helicopter hovering above their heads. Hyde yelled into his microphone.

  "Get me down. You can't shoot."

  "Detective, the police are on their ..."

  "Get me down, now. Or I'll fucking jump."

  The Black Hawk dropped and settled hard on the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, the giant spinning blades so long, Hyde was surprised they weren't taking chunks out of the buildings on both sides of the street. He threw off his headset and leapt out onto the pavement. The bomber was at least a thousand feet ahead of him by now, almost at the front steps of the police headquarters entrance. Hyde had his gun out of his holster, but he knew shooting a bomber with a dead-man switch was as certain as pressing the detonator button. And there were at least a dozen people within range of the bomb.

  As he ran, Hyde tried to calculate the possibilities. He had never shot at a suicide bomber before. Do they release the switch at death or would they trigger the explosion as soon as they’re hit? He figured it depended on the person. Hyde’s quarry was young, but he had shown resolve when he escaped behind the van and waited for a diversion. Hyde figured he would release the switch for maximum effect, regardless. The problem was, the Detective was running out of time. Within minutes, the bomber would be inside the building, multiplying by several times the number of potential victims. Based on pure logic, he should take down the bomber now. Several innocent bystanders on the street would die, but dozens would be saved - people working at their desks right now, in the Daly building, with no idea what was coming their way.

  Hyde stopped to take aim, a difficult shot at the best of times. A young woman stepped in front of the bomber. Hyde blinked, a drop of sweat running into his eye. He knew the bomber was doing this intentionally, using people on the street as temporary shields.

  Hyde heard the sound of running feet behind him. When he turned, he saw several police officers that had participated in the roadblock, heading in his direction. But they were a quarter mile away. Too late to the party he thought. Then he saw the bomber reach the top of the steps and enter the front doors of the headquarters building.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Kam caught a glimpse of Tamara as soon as she entered the path to the common area. A group of women had surrounded her, some crying, some laughing, all of them taking turns to embrace her.

  He broke through the crowd, swept her up and squeezed her far too tight – the diesel oil soaking into his clothes. But he didn’t care. Yesterday he was convinced he would never see her or touch her again. He refused to let go.

  “I think Gideon is dead,” she said, sounding out of breath. Kam assumed she had heard this from the other residents.

  “What happened to you? Were they hiding you in a fuel tank?” Kam asked, his face buried in her neck.

  “No. I’ll explain everything. But what do I do with this?” she finally said, pushing him back and opening the folds of her dress.

  In the crease of the flower-patterned cloth lay an elongated box, about the length of his hand, grey metal, with a simple four digit LED read-out and a square flashing red light. Kam looked at it with disbelief.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “We need to dispose of it, Kam. Gideon was planting this in the diesel mix in the cave. I think it’s some kind of detonator. He was going to blow up the woman’s residence. It was part of his insane plan.”

  Kam wiped the muck off the face of the display with his thumb. The number 60 turned into 59 then 58.

  “We don’t have much time.” He looked behind them. The residents were mostly clustered around the common area a few hundred yards away to the east. To the west, the path to the storage bunkers was empty. Parallel to the path ran a small ditch. If he threw it in that direction, no one would
be endangered. The device wasn’t that big. The explosion couldn’t hurt anyone unless they were close by. Kam picked it up.

  54.

  He stepped back from Tamara.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He gauged the weight. A little heavier than a baseball.

  50.

  “Go join the others up the path,” he said and walked away from her. “I’ll be fine.”

  47.

  Just as he was about to toss the device, he saw a man lumber up into view from the passageway where Tamara had emerged. He looked odd – his body was covered in something. Paste? Manure? He was struggling to run, but his pants were covered in some soggy material that was slowing him down. And one leg appeared injured. Then it struck Kam – that was the same paste covering Tamara’s dress. He looked back at her where she was standing about fifty feet away. What had gone on down in the caves?

  Kam looked back at the device.

  40.

  He yelled to the man. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

  Now he had a problem. The man had started moving again, clumsily but steadily towards him. Right into the path where he planned to throw the detonator. Kam hesitated. From behind he heard a shocked intake of breath. It was Tamara.

  “It’s Gideon,” she said, her voice sounding unlike anything Kam had heard before. Awe and surprise mixed, maybe a pinch of fear.

  Kam held the device up over his head. The great Gideon. He had been down in the caves with his wife. What had he done to her? Why were they both covered in explosive paste?

  35.

  “Gideon. Is this what you want?” He waved the detonator above his head. Kam felt anger slam into him like a wave. This is the man who almost took her away from him. He wanted the explosive? Then he could have it.