Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “Guys,” Hartwick said, tapping the monitor in front of him. “He’s moving.”

  Silk slid open the panel door and looked at Nick.

  “Careful,” Nick said.

  Silk flashed a thumbs up, then looked back at Sal with a glint in his eye. “This one’s for Tommy.”

  They sat there wordless, just the hum of the computers breaking the midnight stillness. Nick looked out the front window and recognized a figure approaching the van. There was a soft knock on the passenger window and Nick opened it. Agent Dave Tanner stood in the night air with a concerned expression.

  “What’s up, Dave? Why are you out of position?”

  “Walt called,” he said, staring at Nick with such a mournful expression that Nick could only think of one thing that could cause such a look.

  “Julie?” Nick breathed.

  Tanner nodded. “You’d better come with—”

  Nick was out of the van before Tanner could finish the sentence.

  * * *

  Mustafa Derka sat at a small round table against the brick wall. Besides the candles flickering on the tabletops, the only light in the bar came from the stage twenty feet away. Four young men with messed-up hair and ripped blue jeans swayed rhythmically to the grinding wail of a Muddy Waters song. The guitarist hunched over and slid his fingers up and down the neck of his guitar until he reached a high note, where he bent the bottom string with precise timing to the beat of the drums. Derka sipped vodka from a short, ice-cubed glass and smiled. Being the boss had its privileges. While his crew was gearing up for tonight’s bombing, he was enjoying the final moments of a set of American blues.

  He’d been in America for six months and the one redeeming value he saw with the place was their music. Back in Kurdistan, in his youth, Derka’s ambition to play a musical instrument was ignored. After all, there were so many hardships. Derka’s parents were killed in Saddam Hussein’s mustard gas raid of 1988. In the streets and alleys of his village, Halabja, corpses piled up while Derka played in the hills with his friends. They were fortunate in their ignorance. They remained playing as Iraqi helicopters dropped the chemical bombs on his village. While his Kurdish relatives scrambled into their cellars for protection from another routine round of artillery from the air, Hussein surprised them with the deadly poison. The invisible gas settled down to the lowest point on the ground. The basement.

  No, Derka wouldn’t get the chance to play any guitars or drums, but it didn’t lessen his enthusiasm for the sounds they could make. Especially when they stirred the emotions that the blues seemed to bring.

  He chewed on an ice cube and sat back in his seat with a gratifying smile. The singer, sweat dripping from his chin, poured his heart out to the dwindling crowd.

  Derka became aware of a presence near him and it sent him into attack mode. His hand stretched for his knife. It wasn’t there.

  “You looking for this?” A dark-haired man with a purple toothpick dangling from his lip sat next to him. The man was playing drums on the tabletop with Derka’s knife. A drunken smile etched on his face.

  Derka assessed the room. Besides the stranger, there were only twenty or so people left. Every one of them was there when he sat down and gave no appearance of association with the stranger. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The man was using his free hand to tap the table opposite the knife-beat to resemble drumsticks. He ignored Derka, lowering his head and moving it to the beat, his eyes closed. He bumped into Derka’s shoulder when he swayed too far left. Derka was pretty sure the man was intoxicated; he knew he was crazy.

  “Why are you sitting here?” Derka asked.

  “Just enjoying the blues, man.”

  Derka glanced at his wrist. It was almost time for him to get back to the safe house. There wasn’t time to deal with the drunk just now. He needed to do the smart thing and leave. But he wanted to be certain this nut sat next to him by chance. He didn’t believe much in coincidences.

  Derka turned in his seat and faced the man. He was forceful now, letting the man know he was in charge. “Why did you choose this seat?”

  The man leaned into Derka and whispered, “I know who you are.”

  Derka cursed to himself. He was going to have to kill this man and it didn’t matter how much attention he drew. He could straight-hand the man’s throat, then work his eyes until they became useless. Permanently. This could be done in less than five seconds. Derka understood his abilities and he knew that Kemel Kharrazi himself wasn’t quick enough to stop Derka’s attack from such a close distance. This man was already dead, but he didn’t know it yet.

  “Who am I?” Derka seethed.

  The stranger stood up and dropped the knife on the wooden table. “I’ve gotta go to the men’s. Be here when I get back.”

  Derka found himself with his mouth open. He watched the stranger strut in between empty tables, snapping his fingers to the bass line of an old Willie Dixon tune. He was beginning to wonder who the man could be. A drunkard pickpocket maybe. He certainly wasn’t a police officer. And what in the world was ‘the men’s’?

  Derka picked up his knife, discreetly pulled up his pant leg and slid it back into his leg strap. He watched the man enter a hallway that he knew only contained the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The men’s, he thought.

  When Derka entered the men’s room, the stranger was swaying in front of a urinal, his head resting forward against the cold tiled wall, his free hand grasping the flushing device for leverage. Derka felt that without the metal handle, the man would be making an awful mess.

  The bathroom was larger than expected for such a small bar. Double sinks hung below a single stretch of mirror that ran across both basins. It had two urinals and two stalls. Derka crouched to check the stalls and confirm their solitude. The drunk seemed oblivious. He was murmuring the lyrics to the song that could be heard bleeding through the thin walls.

  Derka twisted the deadbolt lock to the room. He bent over to withdraw his knife and decided to make it quick. He’d taken two steps toward the man, when he heard, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The drunk had his head turned slightly in Derka’s direction. At first Derka thought the man was standing in an awkward position because he’d lost his balance. After a moment he realized that the man had his arm across his body in front of him. His hand peeked out under his armpit holding a gun. The man pointed the weapon at Derka as if it were part of his body. Something told Derka that the man wasn’t just a pickpocket.

  The stranger flushed and zipped without taking his eye from Derka. “Surprised, Mustafa?” he said, dangling an open wallet from between his thumb and index finger.

  It took a second, then Derka felt his back pocket and found it empty.

  “What kind of name is Mustafa, anyway?” The man appeared sober now, and Derka wondered if he would have acted differently had the man appeared sober from the start.

  Derka was still going to kill the man, he only needed one small lapse, a hesitation. “What is it you want?” Derka asked.

  The man gestured with his hand. “First, gimee the knife.”

  Derka considered doing just that, but the gun deterred him. He bent over and slid the knife across the tiled floor to the man.

  “Good boy.” The man took the knife and tossed it into a stall. Derka heard it splash into a toilet.

  “What did you mean when you said you knew who I was?”

  The man switched hands with the gun while removing his jacket. He draped the jacket over the partition of the stall and unbuttoned the top button of his collared shirt. “You guys killed some friends of mine and I’m here to settle the score.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.” Derka couldn’t help himself, the man was removing his clothes. If he were going to shoot him, he would have done it already. “Why are you removing your coat?”

  “Because as much as I want to nail you, I’m going to do it with my bare
hands. I want you to have hope and I want to see that hope evaporate as I beat the ever living crap out of you.”

  Derka watched as the man crouched and placed his gun on the floor under the sink, then sidestep back to the middle of the floor. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was the opening he needed.

  While rolling up his sleeves, the man seemed to examine Derka. “I understand you guys are going to bomb the White House tomorrow night. How do you go about doing something like that?”

  Derka shook his head. The idiot actually expected an answer. He was looking at the man, but in the corner of his eye he measured the distance to the gun. It was even closer to him than the man was. He decided he wouldn’t need it. He leapt toward the stranger and sprung his foot into the man’s chest, sending him backward against the wall. The man caught Derka’s ankle with his hand and pulled him down on his back.

  The man jumped on Derka and squeezed one hand around his neck, the other smacked jabs into his face. Derka was impressed with the man’s abilities. Unlike most Americans, who were used to fighting with high-tech equipment, this one seemed to be familiar with hand-to-hand combat. Still, he was no match for Derka.

  Derka jammed his thumb into the man’s eye and applied the necessary pressure to force the man’s hand from his throat. For a moment the man rolled to his side and tended to the pained eye. Mustafa looked over his shoulder and realized that the gun was now within arm’s reach. He grabbed the gun and straddled the man’s chest, digging the barrel into the loose skin under his chin.

  “Who are you?” Derka demanded.

  The man choked on the pressure the gun caused on his larynx. “Please,” the man said, looking up with his one good eye. “I was supposed to find out how you were going to blow up the White House, then get the information back to the FBI,” the man gasped while Derka enjoyed cramming the pistol deeper into the man’s throat, trying to prevent him from talking any further. “Before you shoot . . . at least tell me how you were going to do that.”

  A sly grin spread across Derka’s face. Why not, he thought, the secret’s going to die on the floor of this bathroom. He leaned over the man and whispered, “With a missile, from underwater. It cannot be stopped and it cannot be found. Kemmel Kharrazi himself is on his way to our headquarters thousands of miles from here, where he will detonate the device himself.”

  “Where’s that?” the man urged.

  “You are very curious for a dead man,” Derka sneered. He spat down on the man’s face. Slowly, and with great satisfaction, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled it again. Nothing, just a faint snap. He removed the magazine and saw that the gun wasn’t loaded. Sitting on the man’s chest, he cocked his head, “You threatened me with an unloaded weapon?”

  The man looked up at him, the fear in his face replaced by a broad smile. One that Derka had remembered seeing on his cousin Ledlee’s face after he had just fooled Derka with a card trick.

  The man reached down and pulled a small Colt revolver from his ankle holster. Derka felt the muzzle of the gun tickling his temple. The stranger, who went from drunk to sober, from weaponless to armed, looked up at Derka with a dirty grin. “You fucked with the wrong people, Mustafa.”

  Derka never had the time to consider the comment.

  Chapter 22

  Dave Tanner explained what he knew about Julie Bracco’s capture, then narrow escape from a KSF soldier. There were plenty of witnesses to fill in the blanks for the team of FBI investigators who rushed to the scene. Nick sat stiff in the front seat while he listened to the fate of FBI Agent William Ford, found dead on the side of the road. Nick stared into the night as the car’s headlights cut through the darkness that surrounded him. He closed his eyes. The combination of stress and weariness forced his mind to wander. He saw his wife’s face, smiling, encouraging him to come closer, see what she had for him. His heart pounded fiercely as he approached. She’s holding something in her cupped hands, but he can’t see it. He moves closer. She holds it up to his face and he realizes that it’s a human heart. It’s bloody and dripping from her hands, but it’s beating. He returns his gaze to her face and he blinks. It’s not Julie. It’s Kemel Kharrazi and he’s squeezing the heart, squashing the organ like a ball of clay. “You know it’s personal, Nick.” Kharrazi says.

  Nick sees Kharrazi in front of him as clear as day. The voice next to him says, “I said it’s personal.”

  Nick turned and saw Dave Tanner. He narrowed his eyes at Nick. “You look washed out.”

  Nick sat back and realized his heart was pounding in his chest. A trickle of sweat snaked down the side of his face. “Just hang with me, Dave. I’ll fight through it.”

  “That’s all right,” Tanner said. “I’m on your side, remember?”

  Nick slumped his head against the car window. “I know.”

  Dave Tanner was driving too fast when he skidded to a stop in the half-circle drive that fronted the Emergency room. Nick jumped from the car and ran inside. Breathlessly, he scanned the waiting room for a familiar face. Between the fatigue and the short, quick breaths, he was forced to see through a maze of floating spots across his field of view. Without knowing where he was going for certain, he leaned his head forward and his body followed. Nick almost knocked himself out when his momentum drove him into a closed steel door.

  “You can’t go back there, Sir,” a women’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see a heavyset woman sitting behind a stark white desk.

  Nick yanked his credentials from his pocket and shoved them to an inch in front of the women’s nose. “FBI. Where’s Julie Bracco?”

  The woman was startled for a moment, then searched her computer screen. “She’s in OR number three. She’s being operated on right now.” The woman looked at Nick as if she wasn’t sure how far she had to go to appease him.

  Nick shook his credentials, which were still accosting her face. “Let’s go.”

  “Sir, I . . . uh—”

  “If you want to see my gun, I’ll be glad to show it to you.”

  That got her picking up the phone. “OR nurse to reception desk please,” she said, her eyes never leaving Nick’s face. “Stat!”

  The steel door swung open and Nick rushed past a girl in blue scrubs, who was pulling down her mask. “Sir,” she started, but Nick’s mind was too occupied for her trivial objections. He was going to find his wife and make certain she lived, even if he had to hold his 9mm to a surgeon’s head to get his best effort.

  Nick frantically scanned the labels above each door as he scurried down the long corridor: storage, scrub room, OR #1, OR #2—there it was, OR #3. Nick thrust open the heavy door and rushed inside.

  The room was vacant. There wasn’t even a table sitting under the enormous round light that hung from the ceiling. Nick stepped outside the room and quickly double-checked the number. When he returned, he heard water running. A man dressed in green from head to toe was scrubbing his hands in a metal sink, his back to Nick. Nick was so frenzied, he’d missed him the first time around. He quickly glanced under the surgery light again to see if the table had returned. It hadn’t.

  The man seemed to sense Nick’s presence and looked over his shoulder. “Can I help you?” he said, pulling off his green surgeon’s cap.

  “Julie Bracco?” Nick stammered.

  The man hastily worked his hands between a couple of paper towels. He stepped on a lever at the bottom of a white waste receptacle and discarded the towels when the lid opened. He strode toward Nick with an open hand. “I’m Doctor Williams,” he said, shaking Nick’s hand. “Are you Julie’s husband?”

  “She was here?” Nick breathed, pointing to the empty spot where a table belonged.

  Dr. Williams didn’t bother to look. He appeared to understand what Nick was suggesting. “She’s alive.”

  Nick felt the color return to his face. “She is?”

  Dr. Williams coaxed Nick to an empty stool that sat next to a dormant ECG monitor. “Sit down,” he said. “You ar
e Julie’s husband, right?”

  Nick nodded.

  The doctor removed a cone-shaped cup from a dispenser and filled it with cold water from a water cooler. He handed the cup to Nick. “Here, drink this.”

  Nick poured the water down his throat in a gulp and crushed the cup into a tiny ball. “Tell me, Doctor. I want to know everything.”

  Dr. Williams pulled a rolling stool in front of Nick and sat facing him. “Mr. Bracco, your wife was shot in the back of the head at pretty close range.” He pointed to the back of his own head with an index finger. “The bullet entered her scalp here, in the occipital, at such an angle that it deflected off of her skull, remained inside her scalp, then traveled around the exterior of her skull—” He traced a line from the back of his head around to the middle of his forehead. “Then it exited here, at the frontal hairline, never entering her skull, and never compromising the integrity of her cranium.” He smiled, exposing a mouthful of perfectly straight teeth. “Mr. Bracco, your wife is a very lucky woman.”

  Nick’s jaw trembled. “She’s not going to die?”

  The doctor shook his head. “She has a few contusions from her head hitting the ground and a clean gunshot wound in her shoulder, but that’s all.” Dr. Williams slapped the side of Nick’s thigh. “She’s going to be fine, Mr. Bracco. Now you on the other hand?”

  Nick felt a smile crease his face.

  “She’s down in recovery,” the doctor said. “Go ahead and grab a seat in the waiting room, and a nurse will take you back to her when the anesthesia wears off. Should be another hour or so.”

  He must have seen a suspicious look on Nick’s face, because he held up his right hand as if being sworn in to testify in court. “I promise, Mr. Bracco, she’s in the best of hands here. Let her rest up and you’ll be able to see her.”

  Nick slowly traced his steps back to the waiting room. He ignored the stares from the few employees that milled around the reception desk and found a hard plastic seat at the far end of the room.

  Dave Tanner appeared in the seat next to him. “How is she?”