Checkmate

by Steven James

“The paramedics are on their way.” I put my hand gently on his forearm. “Hang in there.”

  It felt like a lie disguised as encouragement and I hated that I’d said it, since it implied he would be able to hold on until the EMTs arrived, that they were going to be able to do something to save him when they got here.

  He winced in pain with every labored breath.

  I’m no expert on talking to God, but I gave it my best shot, praying urgently that Stu would pull through.

  As I did, I tried to believe that it would make a difference, that I would see a miracle unfold before me here today, but I couldn’t seem to gather up that much faith.

  Stu’s eyes rolled back.

  “Hey!” I slapped his face to keep him conscious. “Stay with me!”

  It worked for the moment, bought me a little time. I wanted to assure him that he was going to be okay, that he was going to make it, that the paramedics were going to take care of him, but I knew it was too late for any of that.

  I knew it, and I think he did too.

  There comes a time when deception does no good—I realized that now as I gently positioned him on his back and used one hand to support his head.

  Stu was married; I’d met his wife at a barbecue over at Ralph’s house a couple of weeks ago.

  No kids. Married less than a year.

  I knew that if I asked him the question I had in mind it would be a way of telling him that it was too late, but it was all I could think to do for him at this point.

  I didn’t have much time to waste debating things, so I just went ahead and said it: “Is there anything you want me to tell Sherry?”

  The look on his face made it clear that he knew what I was saying, that my question was an acknowledgment of the inevitable.

  His voice was strained as he answered. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay, you don’t have to—”

  “No.” From the grimace on his face it was evident that it took a lot of effort for him to reply. “Tell her. I’m sorry. About Iris.”

  I had no idea who Iris was, but I couldn’t keep myself from speculating that Sherry might not be too thrilled to hear her name.

  “I will.”

  Stu didn’t respond.

  Would never respond.

  Over the years I’ve had four people die in my arms, and each time it’s happened there has been a terrible moment when their eyes stopped focusing on me and their gaze just drifted off toward a vacant place in the distance that doesn’t exist.

  It was a frightening, terrible shift.

  Life to death.

  That quickly.

  One woman in Wisconsin whom I tried to save after a serial killer had attacked her—had cut her in ways no one could have survived from—closed her eyes in the end, and that was better because I got the impression that she’d found some sort of peace.

  But that’s not what happened now.

  Stu’s eyes simply glazed over.

  And stayed open.

  He went limp as the ambulance sirens drew closer, but not quickly enough, almost as if they were mocking the moment of his death.

  Ha! See? We’re not there yet.

  We’re not going to get there in time.

  And what are you going to do about that?

  Though I had a hard time believing that it was going to make any difference at this point, I started chest compressions to keep the blood that Stu hadn’t already lost circulating through his system.

  And that’s what I was still doing when the paramedics arrived and took over for me.

  3

  I stood there beside the EMTs and silently watched as they worked on Stu.

  His eyes were still staring blankly at the ceiling and beyond it, beyond everything. The paramedics transferred him to a gurney to get him to the hospital as quickly as possible, but by their demeanor, they didn’t appear to hold out much hope for him either.

  As they rolled him toward the ambulance, I studied the scene.

  Habit.

  I couldn’t tell immediately how many people had been killed by the explosion, but glancing around the loading bay I reviewed where everyone had been standing when the blast went off. I let the map of the area unfold in my mind.

  Time. Space.

  Geospatial orientation.

  What I do best.

  But right now, right here, it seemed like a rather macabre way to put my expertise to use.

  There’d been nine of us present in the immediate area. I mentally reviewed everyone’s name, pictured where they’d been in relation to the epicenter of the blast, and figured that at least three people were in the immediate vicinity of the lawnmower that blew.

  So, status:

  Ralph was alright.

  Pamela appeared to be okay.

  Wendy had been injured by the ceiling beam, but her wounds didn’t look catastrophic.

  Stu hadn’t made it.

  And, from what I could discern, neither had Rebekah, Norrie, Justin, or Wade.

  A few others who must have been in the adjacent hallway were being treated by the paramedics and appeared to have only minor injuries. Debra Guirret, who looked like she’d been crying, was talking urgently with one of the injured men. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to console him or if he was trying to console her.

  EMTs from the numerous ambulances that had driven up were scrambling to help the injured and attend to the survivors. Another ambulance was turning into the parking lot.

  Dust.

  Rain.

  Rubble.

  Charred bodies.

  Yes, the medics were inadvertently disturbing evidence to get to the people who were injured, but there’s a time to preserve a crime scene and there’s a time to help the injured. A pristine scene or a human life? There’s no question these guys had their priorities straight.

  A paramedic who’d apparently seen the metal in my side was hurrying my way, carrying an orange tackle box–type kit of first-aid supplies.

  My phone rang and my wife’s face came up on the screen, her soft smile and Asian beauty standing out in stark contrast to the brutal carnage around me.

  I answered. “Lien-hua.”

  “Oh, thank God, Pat.”

  “You heard?”

  “I was afraid you . . .” She let her voice taper off into a silence that spoke volumes. “So you’re alright?”

  “Yeah. So’s Ralph.” I signaled to the paramedic to give me a moment. He was staring at the metal shards sticking through my vest.

  Lien-hua would have been here this morning too if she hadn’t had a physical therapy appointment for a tib-fib fracture in her right leg from being hit by a car a couple of months ago. Someone had canceled and she’d set it up Friday afternoon.

  Just the thought that she might have been in the loading bay too, that she might have been among the dead, chilled me so much that I felt my hand tremble.

  The paramedic set down his first-aid box and popped it open.

  “Listen, I have to go,” I told Lien-hua. “I’ll call you back in a little while.” My daughter had spent the night at a friend’s house. “Let Tessa know I’m alright.”

  “Okay.”

  A pause.

  “Talk to you soon,” I said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  As we said those parting words and ended the call, I thought back to what Stu had told me to share with his wife, that he was sorry about Iris.

  Not that he loved Sherry.

  He’d been more concerned with her knowing that he was sorry than with her knowing that he cared about her.

  Maybe that was his way of saying he loved her—maybe his apology was him telling Sherry how much he cared.

  But how will she respond when she hears that?

 
Stop worrying about it. That’s none of your business. Just give her the message. That’s what he wanted.

  I turned my wounded side to the paramedic, whose name tag read T. FOSTER.

  “What’s the T for?”

  He saw that I was looking at the name badge. “Todd.”

  “What can you do for me here, Todd?”

  The adrenaline was draining from my system and the more it did, the more I began to notice the pain caused by the shards of metal sticking out of me.

  As Todd inspected my side, his expression told me the shrapnel was probably more serious than I’d thought. “We need to get you to a doctor, sir. If we remove your vest it’s going to pull those loose. They’re secured pretty well right now and I don’t want to take them out here in the field. They’re going to bleed pretty . . .”

  “Yeah. I hear you.”

  “You’re going to need stitches.”

  Stitches meant needles.

  Needles meant pain.

  Did not like needles.

  Metal shards—no problem. I could cope with that. Needles, on the other hand—not my thing.

  “Dispatch is saying everyone here is a federal agent.” He sounded somewhat impressed.

  The word was going to get out to the public soon enough. “That’s true.”

  “I want to make sure these don’t move around during transport.” As he gently placed some bulky four-by-four dressings around the pieces of metal and wrapped my torso to keep them in place, a phone in the pocket of one of the bodies only five or six meters from me began to ring.

  I didn’t recognize the tune of the ringtone, but it was lively, cheery.

  Someone who knows the victim well is calling. Someone special.

  In a tweeting, microblogging, texting, instant-messaging world, the news about the explosion at the NCAVC had no doubt hit cyberspace within minutes of the attack. Family members and friends of those who worked here would undoubtedly be calling more phones momentarily.

  Concerned texts, voicemails, left for those who were already dead.

  These days it happened all too often in morgues and at crime scenes—phones ringing or vibrating in the pockets of corpses. The living contacting the dead and leaving innocent, oblivious messages.

  “Can you pick up some milk on the way home?”

  Call me when you get a chance. Luv u!

  Hey, girl! How was the date with Jake? Huh? Txt me.

  I’ve gone through more than my share of those messages while following up on clues after a homicide. It’s gut-wrenching.

  The ringing stopped.

  I hoped the Bureau could get word out to the victims’ families and friends before those people tried contacting their loved ones, but I doubted it. The wheels almost never turned that fast.

  I was about to tell Todd that he should take care of someone else, that I was fine, but when I looked around I realized that everyone who was injured was being treated already.

  Right now, there wasn’t really anything else for me to do here on-site. Evidence recovery wasn’t my job and there were people better trained to do it than I was.

  The Bureau’s Evidence Response Team, or ERT, was certainly en route by now.

  Todd finished gently wrapping the bandages around my torso, but before heading to the ambulance I excused myself. “Give me just a sec.”

  Using my phone, I took video of the scene and photographed the site from different angles, trying to record as much of the undisturbed parts of the room as I could. When the ERT got here they would do the same thing, but the sooner you can get photos of a crime scene, the better.

  After touching base with Ralph and finding out that we still didn’t have any word on the location of the semi, I joined Todd in the ambulance. His partner took the wheel and we left for Tanner Medical Center, a twenty-minute drive, give or take, depending on traffic.

  These days it just about takes an act of Congress to get my daughter to answer the phone, but she typically replies to texts within seconds, so rather than call, I texted that I was fine and asked her to give me a shout. Then I reviewed the photos of the scene and tried my best to recall if I’d ever seen that semi driver’s face before.

  + + +

  Less than fifteen minutes ago the man responsible for the explosion, the man who liked to think of himself as a storyteller, as a bard for the ages, had abandoned the semi in the parking area of the Exxon station near the Marine Corps Base Quantico, crossed through the strip of woods to the car he’d left on the road bordering the trees, and started driving south.

  Now he was on I-95, with a seven-hour drive in front of him: five and a half to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he would take the photos, then on to Columbia, South Carolina, where he would be spending the night.

  Right before the explosion he had seen Special Agent Patrick Bowers outside the loading bay. Bowers should have been in the lobby on the other side of the building.

  That’s how it was supposed to work.

  The others were supposed to be in the bay, he wasn’t.

  The bard doubted that Bowers had recognized him, not after the surgery, not after seeing him only briefly and only in the reflection of the truck’s side-view mirror.

  But still, Bowers might have been killed by the blast.

  He turned on the radio, found a news station that was covering the breaking story of the explosion, and, although it was still probably too early, he listened to see if they would list the names of the deceased.

  If Bowers was dead, things would still move forward and there would be a sad irony at the scene when they discovered Jerome Cole’s body. But if Bowers had survived, he would find himself caught up as the major player in the most elaborate story the bard had ever penned.

  4

  “Where are you?”

  My daughter hadn’t even given me time to address her when I answered my phone.

  “Actually, I’m . . .” I didn’t really want her to worry about me, so I wasn’t too excited about explaining that I was in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. “I’m in Springfield,” I said truthfully.

  “They’re saying five people were killed.”

  I wasn’t certain about the number of fatalities. In situations like this, when everything is in flux, misinformation can spread rapidly through the media, but, including Stu, five did sound right.

  Five of your coworkers.

  Five of your friends.

  “It was bad.” My voice was hushed.

  “But a terrorist attack? At the NCAVC?”

  “Yes, listen—”

  “And you’re okay? How’s Ralph?”

  “He’s good. I got a couple little cuts, but I’m alright.”

  “What? Cuts?”

  “A couple. Little ones.”

  “Are they spurting?”

  “Spurting? No, they’re not spurting.” Despite myself I gazed at the bandages holding the shards of metal in place. “Like I said, they’re little cuts.”

  “Should I meet you at the hospital?”

  “Who said I was going to the hospital?”

  “I’ve known you for, like, four years, Patrick. Whenever you get hurt you underexaggerate how bad it is. You nearly get buried alive, you say it’s no big deal. You get shot, you tell me not to worry. You wouldn’t have even mentioned these so-called little cuts unless they were bad enough to send you to an emergency room. So which one are we talking about? St. Mary’s or Tanner Medical Center?”

  “Tanner.” I hated it when she did that. “Are you still at Melody’s?”

  “Yeah. Her mom’s on her way back home—I wish I’d driven over here. Anyway, when she gets here we’re gonna swing by our house so I can pick up my car. I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be there.”

 
“Text me when your ambulance arrives.”

  “I’m . . . hang on. I didn’t tell you I was in an ambulance.”

  “You just said you weren’t sure how long you’d be there, not how long you’d be here. So I’m taking it you’re still en route. Are you?”

  “Yes, but I could be driving myself,” I countered.

  “Ralph picked you up this morning and he wouldn’t chance you getting blood all over his car. Lien-hua wasn’t there so you’re not using hers. You’re in an ambulance.”

  Logic.

  A girl after my own heart.

  “I’ll text you,” I said.

  “I’ll see you at the hospital.”

  As I was lowering the phone, I paused and scrolled back to the text I’d gotten from Jerome Cole’s number just a few minutes before the explosion.

  I tried calling him, but it went directly to voicemail.

  Jerome hadn’t been in the loading bay, hadn’t been driving the semi.

  I phoned Ralph, asked if they’d located him yet.

  “No one’s answering his cell or his landline. But all those texts that told us to meet in the loading bay came from his phone. I sent a team to his house. The HRT guys are there right now.”

  The Hostage Rescue Team is the Bureau’s most elite tactical-response unit. They’re far better trained than any SWAT team—more on par with Navy SEALs—and they’re called in for any terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

  He went on, “They’re concerned the place might be booby-trapped. They’re checking for explosives before going in.”

  Those text messages came from Jerome’s number.

  “Are we tracing his cell?”

  “Angela and Lacey are on it.”

  If anyone could locate Cole’s cell phone—whether it was turned on or not—it was Angela Knight at our Cyber Division. She’d named her computer Lacey, and at first we’d humored her by going along, but over time all of us had gotten used to referring to Lacey as if she were a real agent.

  It always took a bit of explaining when new agents joined the team.

  “Great,” I said. “Call me if you hear anything.”

  We hung up.

  I took a moment to process what had just happened: the explosion, the corpses, Stu dying in front of me while I tried helplessly to save him.