McCabe didn’t say anything.
After a moment, the sheikh spoke again. His words were clearly audible, because a tense hush had fallen over the entire store.
“You asked what I wanted. My desire is quite simple. I want you and all your godless, infidel horde to die. I want the new Caliphate to rise until it rules not only the Middle East but also the entire world. I want Allah to reign supreme. If the price for that is my death, I will pay it gladly.”
He held the detonator out at arm’s length, his thumb ready to come off the detonator.
Like the end of the world, a huge explosion filled the store.
CHAPTER 60
McCabe felt the vibration under his feet, and watched in amazement as the wall behind Sheikh al-Mukhari bulged and then flew apart in a thundergust of brick, mortar, twisted steel, and dust. The front end of a giant truck rampaged through the destroyed wall like a stampeding dinosaur. McCabe saw Mukhari’s mouth open in a startled yell as he staggered forward, but McCabe couldn’t hear anything over the grinding crash of the truck plowing through the wall.
He lunged forward at Mukhari, but someone else reached the sheikh first. The young blond woman who had been helping Ronnie with the wounded man flashed past McCabe and grabbed Mukhari’s right hand with both of hers. She clamped down on his thumb, holding it secure on the dead man’s switch.
McCabe knew how close they had all just come to dying. Another fraction of a second and Mukhari would have released the switch and detonated the nuke. That young woman had given them all a second chance at life.
McCabe wasn’t going to waste that chance. He dropped the machine pistol and grabbed the leather case, wrestling it out of the sheikh’s hands.
Meanwhile, heavily armed men wearing helmets and body armor had begun to pour through the jagged opening made in the front wall of the store when the eighteen-wheeler crashed through it. Their progress was impeded by the hostages, who saw a chance for freedom and were grabbing it for all it was worth. They tried to pour through the gaps around the wrecked truck, but those bottlenecks were soon stuffed with madly struggling people.
McCabe knew the bomb was probably harmless as long as the sheikh’s thumb didn’t come off the dead man’s switch. How long could the young woman hold it in place, though?
McCabe didn’t want to find out. He set the case on the floor, gave it a shove with his foot that sent it sliding into the bathroom, and turned back to the struggling duo. Mukhari slammed his fist into the young woman’s face, trying to knock her loose, but she held on as if her life depended on it—as, of course, it did.
McCabe’s right arm went around the sheikh’s neck from behind. “Hang on!” he shouted at the young blonde as Mukhari began to writhe frantically. McCabe’s left hand gripped his right wrist as his right arm clamped across Mukhari’s throat like a bar of iron. He bent backward from the waist as he began to apply pressure.
In a movie, this was the moment when the hero would either utter a wisecrack or try to rub the villain’s nose in defeat. McCabe didn’t think of himself as a hero. He was just a tired, scared man who didn’t have time for any foolishness.
So with a heave of his arms and shoulders, he just broke the terrorist bastard’s neck instead.
Mukhari went limp. Panting, McCabe told the young woman, “Hang on, hang on! Don’t let go of his thumb, whatever you do!”
She was white as a sheet and her eyes were so big around she looked like a character in a Japanese comic book. But she managed to nod and say, “I’ve got it. Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”
“I’m going to put him on the floor,” McCabe said. “Come down with us. Easy, easy now…”
He wound up on his knees next to the sheikh’s corpse, which stared sightlessly at the ceiling. The young woman sat on the other side of the body, maintaining her double-handed grip on Mukhari’s hand and the dead man’s switch.
“Now what do we do?” she asked raggedly.
Terry was up, having recovered from the brief moment when she had almost passed out. She sat down beside the young woman and put an arm around her shoulders.
“You’re going to keep on saving the lives of everyone in this store, Allison,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve met my husband. This is Jack McCabe.”
He smiled at the young woman. “Nice meeting you. Now hold on for just a little while longer.”
He got to his feet and looked around. One of the armed men who had followed the truck into the store came over to him and said, “Jackknife?”
The man was tall and broad-shouldered, and a handsome black face peered out through the clear plastic shield attached to the helmet. “You SpecOps?” McCabe asked. “Or Company?”
The man shook his head. “Neither. FBI. Name’s Walt Graham. You are Jack McCabe?”
“Yeah,” McCabe said as sudden weariness threatened to overwhelm him. “There’s a pocket nuke in the bathroom and a detonator with a dead man’s switch in the hand of that guy over there on the floor.”
“Just another day at the office, eh?” Graham said.
“Yeah. You think you can do something about it?”
“You bet I can.” Graham turned his head and yelled, “Somebody go back to hardware and get me a hacksaw, damn it!”
Allison turned her face away so she didn’t have to watch as the big FBI agent sawed Mukhari’s right hand off at the wrist. Then several of the men who looked like a cross between regular soldiers and Imperial stormtroopers from the Star Wars movies lifted her to her feet.
“Get her into the command center,” Graham barked. The huge RV filled with equipment had enough jamming, deadening, and shielding technology so that no electrical signals could get out of it once everything was working like it was supposed to. All Allison had to do was hang on to Mukhari’s hand and keep the switch in place until then.
The Special Forces troopers had finally gotten control of the situation enough so that they were evacuating the former hostages in an almost orderly fashion. A couple of bulldozers had been brought in to widen the gaps around the wrecked MegaMart truck. McCabe looked over at the massive vehicle and grinned as he realized it was the one he had brought down here from Alliance Airport earlier that morning. Only a few hours had passed since then, but it felt like a month.
“Whose idea was it to ram that eighteen-wheeler through the wall?” he asked Graham as he stood near the truck with one arm around Terry and the other around Ronnie.
“Mine,” Graham replied with a note of pride in his voice. “I was in the cab while I got it rolling, too. Jumped out just before it hit.”
“Kind of a risky plan considering that you didn’t know what was gonna be on the other side of that wall,” McCabe commented.
“Not as risky as waiting to see what those bastards were going to do. If we’d let them write the ending to this little drama, it wouldn’t have been a good one.”
“You’ve got that right,” McCabe admitted.
Graham looked around the store. Most of the merchandise had been ruined by the sprinklers, and when the truck was pulled back out there would be a gaping hole in the wall. “It’s going to take a while to put this place right again,” he said.
“Ain’t gonna be put back right,” a voice said from behind them.
McCabe turned and saw Hiram Stackhouse standing there. The billionaire went on. “I’m gonna raze this store. Take it right down to the ground and start over. Not gonna build another one, though. There’s gonna be a damn nice park here instead, dedicated to the memory of every American who was killed here today, as well as to the ones who lived through it.”
“That’ll cost you some money,” McCabe predicted.
Stackhouse snorted. “Shoot, I can build a park like that ever’ day for the rest o’ my life and still have a few billion dollars left over. I reckon I’ll survive, and so will MegaMart.” A sly grin spread over his face. “Besides, I already got another location in mind for the next UltraMegaMart. Question now is, what am I gonna call this place?
How does Whoop-ass Park sound to you folks?”
McCabe didn’t bother answering. Instead, he took his wife and daughter and went home.
They would finish their Christmas shopping some other day.
“The death toll from the hostage situation at the UltraMegaMart in Texas now stands at fifty-seven, including twenty terrorists who were killed in the fighting that broke out inside the store. The government is downplaying reports that civilians led by a former member of the U.S. Special Forces launched a counterattack against the terrorists and overcame them. Instead, a Justice Department spokesman attributed the relatively low loss of life to the actions of FBI Special Agent in Charge Walter Graham, as well as to other dedicated professionals who negotiated with the terrorists and tried to achieve a peaceful solution.
“Likewise, the White House Press Secretary and the Secretary of Homeland Security have both said that there is no credible evidence at this time that the terrorists ever had in their possession a low-yield nuclear device. The White House statement said in part, ‘There is no need for scare tactics based on partisan politics to make this terrible tragedy any worse than it already is. The United States is as safe and secure tonight as it has always been.’ A spokesman for the opposition party agreed, saying, ‘That’s true—and it’s exactly the problem, too.’
“In related news, Hiram Stackhouse, founder and CEO of MegaMart, who was on hand for the incident today, has announced that the store will be torn down and replaced by a park dedicated to the Americans who lost their lives there today, as well as to those who survived the hostage ordeal. Stackhouse also vowed to build an even larger store in an undisclosed location.
“Meanwhile, the death toll from the bombings carried out by the same group of extremists earlier in the day continues to climb, and now stands at nearly four hundred, making this the deadliest day for terrorist violence in the United States since 9/11.
“Overseas, while representatives of foreign governments have expressed relief that the hostage situation was resolved and sorrow at the loss of life, speculation is growing, especially in Arab countries, that the whole incident has been overblown and in fact may not have even happened. Interviews with people on the street in Egypt and Saudi Arabia revealed the belief that this was, as one man put it, ‘just another American trick to make Arabs look bad.’
“And while the incident in Texas may have put a damper on holiday shopping there, that didn’t prove to be the case in the rest of the country. Retailers are still predicting a record year for sales…”
EPILOGUE
“We dodged a bullet,” the President’s husband said. He shook his head. “As bad as it is, if that damned nuke had gone off…”
“There wasn’t any nuclear device,” the President snapped. “You heard the statement we issued.”
He just looked at her.
“Damn it, every news report for the next week will insist that there wasn’t really any nuke,” she said, her voice rising angrily. “Who do you think the American people will believe?”
“You’d better hope they believe you,” he said softly. “If they decide you’re lyin’ to them about this, you can kiss any chances for reelection good-bye.”
She sank down on the sofa in the White House’s second-floor living quarters and covered her face with her hands. “I know,” she said, her voice muffled. When she raised her head and spoke again, it was like the cry of a wounded animal.
“What am I going to do if I can’t be President anymore?”
Ellis Burke leaned back against the pillows propped behind him in the hospital bed. His side hurt like blazes where the terrorist’s bullet had gouged a deep furrow in it. He’d lost quite a bit of blood, the doctors said, and he would be hospitalized for at least a couple of nights, maybe longer.
Burke intended to keep an eagle eye on all the doctors, nurses, and the rest of the hospital staff. Medical malpractice ran rampant these days, and if he witnessed any, he knew a lawyer who would be very happy to file suit against the hospital and everyone involved.
Some things never changed, he thought with a painful grin.
But some did, and he knew he would never think about the world situation quite the same way again. It hurt to admit it—maybe not as much as that bullet in his side, but still—it hurt to admit that he had been wrong about some things. Evil did exist in the world, and some people just couldn’t be reasoned with. Never again would he feel any sympathy for terrorists. He knew them now for what they really were—despicable monsters.
Burke shoved that thought out of his mind. There would be time enough later for pondering political philosophies.
Right now, he preferred to think about Allison Sawyer and how she had stopped by the hospital to see him on her way home. She had put a hand on his, resting it there for a moment as his hand lay on the crisp hospital sheets, and her touch had been warm and soft.
“What the hell,” he told himself softly, speaking aloud since he was in a private room, “she’s too young for you, old buddy-roo. You’re just dreaming.”
But that was part of life, wasn’t it? You had to have a dream or two, even if you were a cynical, ambulance-chasing shyster in a state full of redneck yahoos.
Some of whom, Burke had to admit to himself as he started to feel sleepy, weren’t really so bad…
Nate looked up when she came into the room, ran to her, and threw his arms around her. Allison lifted him and cuddled him against her, even though he was really too big for her to be doing that.
At this moment, she wasn’t the woman who had saved the lives of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions in the long run. She was just a young single mother who was glad to be home and reunited with her son. She hugged Nate so fiercely that after a minute he started to squirm and said, “Hey, I can’t breathe!”
“Sorry, ace,” she said as she set him on his feet again in the living room of her neighbors’ apartment, wondering how in the world Mrs. Sanchez had kept him from finding out what was going on today. It was obvious from the way Nate was acting, though, that he didn’t know how close his mother had come to dying. “What did you do today?”
“Oh, watched DVDs and played video games. The usual. Was the store crowded?”
“Yeah,” Allison said. “Really crowded. You wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
“I guess not.” He frowned a little. “What happened to your face? It looks like it’s bruised.”
“Oh, I…ran into something.”
Sheikh al-Mukhari’s fist, to be precise, had run into her face, as he was pounding on her trying to get her to let go of that switch so he could blow up the whole place. But she didn’t feel much like explaining that to Nate right now.
And he didn’t seem all that interested anyway. All he said was “Oh.” Then he looked up at her, eyes wide, and got down to the business at hand.
“What’d you bring me, Mom?”
“Nothing today, silly,” she said with a laugh. “You’ll have to wait until Christmas for your presents, like everybody else.”
The new house Hiram Stackhouse was building for them ought to be ready to move into by then.
McCabe had just sat back in his recliner and put his feet up when the cell phone in his pocket vibrated.
He thought about not answering it. It had been a long day. Getting home had been a lot lengthier and more complicated process than he’d envisioned. He and his wife and daughter had spent hours answering questions from Walt Graham, his second in command Eileen Bastrop, and countless other government officials.
But now he was in his own house at last, in his own chair, with his eyes closed and the pleasant sounds of Terry and Ronnie moving around in one of the other rooms drifting to his ears. He was home, damn it! Couldn’t they stop bothering him?
Evidently not, and he wasn’t the sort of man who could easily ignore a ringing phone. So he slipped it out of his pocket, opened it, and held it to his ear.
“Yeah? This had better be good.”
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“Hey, Jackknife. I hear you saved the day.” The voice belonged to Lawrence “Fargo” Ford.
“A lot of people saved the day,” McCabe said, “including half-a-dozen MegaMart employees who were killed fighting those crazy sons of bitches.”
“Word is that you got a few prisoners.”
“I don’t expect the government to admit it any time soon, but four of the terrorists were captured.”
“Oh, they’ll admit it,” Ford said. “Everything’s got to be open and aboveboard now, remember? No more of this illegally detaining prisoners like we used to. No more doing whatever it took to get information out of them we needed to save innocent lives either.”
McCabe grunted. “Yeah, I forgot. Anyway, it’s over. Nothing blew up real good…this time.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinkin’ about that,” Ford drawled. “You know what these guys are like, Jackknife. They’re like cockroaches. You stomp one of ’em, there are always a dozen more running around, hiding from the light and fouling everything up for everybody.”
“And your point is?”
“How’d you like to come back to work for the Company?”
“I can’t do that,” McCabe answered without hesitation. “I never worked for the Company to start with.”
“You know what I mean,” Ford protested. “You’re too good at this sort of work to just sit around, McCabe. Don’t you miss it?”
Again, McCabe didn’t hesitate. “Not a damned bit. In fact, I already turned down one job today.”
“FBI?”
“Hiram Stackhouse. He wanted to make me his new head of security. Seems he’s not too happy with the old one. Can’t say as I blame him.”
“But you told him no.”
“I told him no,” McCabe said. “I’m a truck driver these days. That’s plenty of excitement for me.”
“I don’t believe that,” Ford said.
“Believe whatever you want, I don’t care. Was there anything else you wanted?”
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