Nomad

by James Swallow

  “Then we’ll need to bluff our way through.” She reached into her pocket for the fake ID. “Let me do the talking.”

  Marc gave her a sideways look. “Hey, I can fake the accent,” he said, in something fairly mid-Atlantic.

  “What is that supposed to be, Canadian?” He didn’t get to reply as the deputy was at the window.

  “Hey, folks,” said the policeman. He made a stirring motion with his finger. “Gonna have to ask you to go around and head back to the off-ramp. We got ourselves a situation here, nothing to worry about, but we’re gonna need you to move out of the immediate area.”

  Lucy’s whole body language changed as if a switch had been flipped. She was suddenly stiff and purposeful, and the FBI badge came out on the end of her raised arm. “Deputy, I’m Special Agent Reese with the Bureau. This is Sergeant Major … Day … He’s with the RCMP.”

  The police officer’s eyes widened. “The Feds are into this already? Holy Smokes, you guys are fast.”

  Lucy gave a nod, doing nothing to correct the assumptions the deputy had made. “Has anyone been hurt?”

  He returned her nod. “One of our guys, Deke, a patrolman. Some drugged-up gang kid got Deke’s weapon and now he’s holed up in the diner with hostages. A shot was fired. SWAT’s on the way, but the roads are washed out … No idea when they’re gonna arrive.”

  “Okay.” Lucy put the badge away, and Marc could guess what she was thinking. They couldn’t afford to get caught up in some local trouble. With every minute that passed, Omar Khadir was a mile further away.

  But the next words out of the cop’s mouth changed all that. “Saw the perp myself when we tried to roll up in there. Arab-looking kid waving that gun around like anything. We backed off…” He swallowed. “I mean, folks around here remember what happened in Boston and all—”

  “Arab?” Marc said, remembering to feign the accent again. “Was there a school bus that came through here?”

  “Michigan plates,” added Lucy.

  The cop gave a slow nod. “Yeah. One of the Staties mentioned it. Stopped for gas, then drove off, I think. What’s that gotta do with anything?”

  Marc pulled out the smartphone Kara had given him and paged to one of the still images from the dockside security cameras, holding it up.

  The cop peered at the screen. “Hey, that’s him. That’s the kid!”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded again. “Oh yeah.”

  “I need to speak to the senior officer on the scene, right now,” Lucy insisted. The deputy’s head bobbed and he jogged away into the drizzle. She glared at Marc. “Didn’t I just tell you not to talk?” she snapped, and gestured for him to guide the car over to the shoulder. “Ah, shit…”

  “You told him I was a Mountie.”

  She shrugged. “First thing I could think of.”

  “I don’t have any ID for Sergeant Major Day…”

  “I’ll get Henri to make something up for you. But in the meantime, less talk is better.”

  He swung about, parking the Mustang, and turned to face her. “So you’re thinking what I’m thinking, right?”

  She peered out at the diner. “That maybe Khadir has left a little something-something behind at Gina’s Place? Yeah.” Lucy hands tightened into fists. “This complicates things…”

  “You reckon?” His thoughts raced. “We’ve got to get in there. I mean, if this lad is … I dunno, live, we got no idea how long he’s going to stay that way.” Marc remembered pictures of the rubble that was all that remained of the Nou de la Rambla police station, and wondered what kind of devastation a similar bomb blast would wreak out here on Interstate 95.

  Lucy laid her hands on the dash. “Let’s you and me be clear on this. We’re talking about the difference between blowing through this roadblock and following a lead on the bus, a lead we know is rock solid, or getting tangled up in something that just dropped into our lap on the chance it’s one of Khadir’s soldiers in there.”

  “And if it is?” Marc insisted. “If there’s some mule with a belly full of military-grade explosives just waiting to be martyred?” He pointed toward the local cops gathered around one of the newly-arrived paramedics. “Those blokes have no idea what they’re dealing with.” He shook his head, opening the car door. Part of him knew she had a point, but he couldn’t be cold-blooded about it. “You want to drive on? Go ahead, keys are in the ignition. But I know what I’m doing.” Marc climbed out of the Mustang and walked away toward the ambulance.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The soporific effect of the injection was wearing off. Everything in the diner was becoming definite and solid. The lights were too bright, and the low, anguished muttering of the man in the trucker’s cap was grating on him.

  Halil slouched forward in the booth, careful to keep himself out of the sight of the men gathering in the parking lot. He aimed the heavy gun at the man and glared. “Be quiet,” he said thickly, and the trucker fell silent.

  The cook was crouching next to the collapsed body of the black policeman. He looked up at Halil with kind eyes. “Son,” he began, “This man needs a doctor. You understand?”

  “He’s gonna die,” said the woman sat across in another booth. “We’re all gonna die.”

  She is right. Halil flinched as an eddy of pain crackled through his flesh. With the drug fading, the pulse of needle-sharp agony returned.

  What have you done? The voice in his head sounded like his father’s. You know this is wrong. Stop it now. But Halil couldn’t be sure, because he couldn’t remember exactly how his father sounded. It was too distant in his memory. Halil screwed his eyes shut and tried to remember the faces of his parents, but they were hazy shadows. Tears burned on his cheeks.

  There was a rattle of metal. Halil’s eyes snapped open and he raised the patrolman’s handgun as three figures appeared at the diner’s door. A white man with fair hair and tired eyes came in first, a dark-skinned woman close behind. Both of them had guns, but they were keeping them low. The third person was an Asian man in a high-visibility jacket, cradling a heavy pack in his hands.

  “Go away!” Halil shouted, and the effort made him wince.

  “We’re here to help,” said the woman. “Just let these people go.”

  Halil’s thumb found the cocking hammer of the gun and pulled it back. “You can’t help,” he breathed.

  * * *

  Lucy’s FBI badge cut through any questions the local cops had, and Marc surmised from the expressions of the senior deputy on site that he was only too happy to step back and let a federal agent shoulder the situation. He heard the men outside talking, rumors already blooming as to the origins of the hostage-taker. It was a sad fact that one look at the youth’s face immediately sent people running toward the idea that he could be a terrorist. That would be proven right unless Marc and Lucy could get in the middle of this and stop things from escalating.

  He pulled one of the paramedics away from the ambulance, a serious-looking guy with the name Chang on his jacket. Lucy had him gather up his medical kit, and with the local cops covering them, guns drawn across the hoods of their patrol cruisers, they warily entered Gina’s Place.

  The first thing Marc saw was the youth and the injured cop on the floor. The policeman’s chest fluttered in shallow breaths, and blood streaked the tiles where he lay. The cop’s gun was big in the fist of the skinny teenager, and the youth’s eyes were wide and watery. Marc tried to guess his age—eighteen, nineteen at the most?—and gauged the fear and panic in his expression.

  He was the same young man Marc had seen on the dockyard video, the one who had failed to make a break for it. There were bruises on his neck and face from where Omar Khadir had knocked him down.

  Marc glanced at Lucy and she gave him a nod of agreement. She saw it too. He stepped forward and halted at the far end of the counter. He turned the Glock in his hand and put it down on the bar. “No gun,” he said. “We only want to talk.” Marc maintained steady eye contact
with the youth, keeping his posture neutral. He worked to maintain an even tone of voice. “We know all about you. We want to help. Nobody else has to get hurt.”

  He saw the questions in the young man’s expression, saw the sweat beading across his brow. “Too late,” he replied, sniffing.

  “Hope not.” A dozen different approaches had passed through Marc’s thoughts before they stepped through the door. It would have been simple enough for Lucy to commandeer a rifle and take out the kid from range, or even now put him down from ten meters away with a single shot from her pistol. She was capable of it; Marc knew that. He had considered using a taser to bring the youth down alive, but they had no idea of what kind of trigger mechanism the body bomb used. Was it internal or external? Remote or timer? Too many questions, he told himself, not enough time.

  Marc took another couple of steps, ignoring the trembling muzzle of the big Smith & Wesson revolver in the youth’s hand. He pointed at the police officer. “We’re going to take this man away and in return, I’m going to stay here with you.”

  He got a weak, defeated nod in return, and Marc knew then that the teenager’s heart wasn’t in this.

  “Go!” Lucy gave the paramedic a shove and he came forward, shooting looks at the youth and then at the cop.

  “I need help to move him,” said Chang.

  The man in the trucker cap vaulted off his chair in his eagerness to assist, sensing the opportunity for escape. “I got it!”

  Between them, the trucker and the paramedic gathered up the patrolman and carried him out. Marc watched them go, pausing to give the old cook and the waitress a reassuring nod.

  Lucy holstered her gun and held out a hand. She said something in Arabic, all soft and liquid tones, and the youth replied in kind, kneading the grip of the gun.

  “Well, damn,” muttered the waitress. “He ain’t Mexican.”

  Marc only recognized one word in the young man’s response, but it was enough. A name; Khadir.

  “He wants to know if you-know-who sent us,” said Lucy quietly.

  “They left him here,” Marc said, thinking out loud.

  “I…” The youth swallowed hard and licked his lips. “I am being punished.” He was going to say more, but then Marc saw the color drain from his cheeks and the youth twitched in pain, doubling over across the table before him. The gun thudded down, momentarily forgotten in his agony.

  Lucy saw the opportunity and shot a look at the other hostages. “You two, get to safety.”

  “Amen to that,” said the waitress, and she pulled on the cook’s arm to lead him away.

  “He gonna be okay?” said the older man, his brows knitting.

  “Just go!” Lucy snapped, and propelled both of them toward the exit.

  Marc came as close as he dared. He saw the young man’s hands pulling at the thin material of his top, revealing a t-shirt beneath that was mottled brown with dried bloodstains. Rosy, distended flesh poked out over the belt loop of his jeans, and the purple-black lines of thick, fresh scars were clearly visible. Ignoring the gun, the youth clutched at a water glass and drained it.

  A chill ran through Marc’s veins. The repulsive consequence of what they had found in the Santa Cruz’s makeshift operating theater had only been a possibility until this moment. Here was real evidence of it, sitting across from him. Waiting to die.

  Now it was just the three of them, Lucy spoke again in Arabic, and again Marc picked out another word: Shahiden.

  The youth shook his head. “No. I don’t want to die.” He rubbed tears from his eyes. “Please.” He looked at Marc and Lucy, imploring them. “Make it stop.”

  Marc slipped his Rubicon-issue smartphone from his pocket and tabbed through the function tabs. Kara had not exaggerated when she talked about the device’s capabilities. He quickly found what he was looking for, and activated the phone’s signal sniffer. A scanning antenna sampled the invisible wavelengths around them, looking for active wireless transmissions.

  Lucy studied the young man’s face. “Tell me your name.”

  “Halil,” he managed.

  “Huh.” Lucy glanced at Marc. “Same name as the tag scrawled on the wall in the orphanage.” She pointed. “This is him? What are the odds?”

  Marc blinked. He had forgotten all about the bit of graffiti in the abandoned building. “We were there,” he told Halil. “At Yeni Gün. We saw it. The barracks where they kept you, the tent…”

  The youth nodded. “Hate that place.”

  “It’s gone now. Destroyed.”

  Halil managed a brittle, defiant smile. “Good.” In the next second, he moaned as pain lanced through him.

  Marc’s attention was pulled back to the device in his hand. A radar-screen illuminated with pings from the cellular phones and police band radios clustered outside, the diner’s card reader and a single encrypted ghost indicator that he assumed was Lucy’s handset. The only other wireless node within range was close—a signal with the designation “Seven.” His mouth went dry. He gestured at the youth. “Halil, I need you to empty your pockets.”

  He did as was asked, piling up coins and paper tissues on the table next to the revolver.

  “Do you have one of these?” Marc showed him the phone. He got a shake of the head in return, and Marc looked away to find Lucy staring right at him. She didn’t need to ask him the question. “It’s in him. It’s live,” he said.

  * * *

  Lucy couldn’t look away from Marc, because she knew that if she did, she would see the raw terror on the face of the teenager in the booth. She would see it and then she would be forced to make one of the choices that her life often demanded of her. A question of balancing life for life, of ending one so that others could go on.

  The difference here was that Lucy Keyes had never once laid her crosshairs on someone innocent, and she knew instinctively that Halil was not just some murderous teen jihadi who had got cold feet at the last moment. She knew a victim when she saw one, and in that moment she hated Omar Khadir more than anyone in the world.

  Would it be a mercy just to shoot Halil now, put him out of his misery and evacuate the diner? Pull back and wait for the inevitable detonation? She shook off the question with a jerk of her head.

  An icy calm settled on her. “Okay,” she began. “This is what we are going to do. I’m going to find that medic, and we’re going to get that fucked-up shit out of the kid.”

  Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Is that even possible? He needs to be taken to a hospital, we have to get an air ambulance or—” He trailed off, and she saw that his thoughts were already catching up with his words. If the device Halil carried went off inside a moving vehicle on the highway, aboard a helicopter or even inside a hospital, the results would be unthinkable. “Oh man.”

  “We can spend time talking about it, or spend time doing it,” she told him. Lucy thought about what he had said as he climbed out of the car. Like it or not, they were committed here, and they had to follow it to the end.

  “Okay,” he agreed, but Lucy didn’t wait around to hear Marc say it.

  She pushed out of the door and sprinted across the parking lot, the assembled police officers raising their guns with wary expressions on their faces. She scanned around and found Chang at the ambulance’s tailgate. Inside, Deke the patrolman was being treated by another paramedic.

  He saw her coming and nodded at the cop. “He’ll be fine. Minor concussion. We’ll take him to County General just to be sure, and—”

  “Don’t care,” she broke in. “Question. Can you open people up as well as close them?”

  Chang’s expression became one of confusion. “I’m … not a doctor.”

  Lucy grabbed his arm. “You know what? Doesn’t matter, you’re close enough. Grab your gear and come with me, double-time.”

  “Agent Reese?” The senior deputy was approaching. “Ma’am, what the heck is going on in there? Y’know, I contacted dispatch and they don’t know anything about any federal—”

&nb
sp; “We’re containing it.” She gave him a sharp look, cutting off the sentence before he had time to voice it. “And I need you to move the perimeter back one hundred yards, like right fucking now!” Lucy barked the last words with such force that the cops were still reeling from them when she set off back toward Gina’s, the paramedic jogging to keep up with her.

  * * *

  When it was just the two of them alone in the diner, Halil sagged back into the booth and took panting breaths. Marc realized he had been trying not to show weakness in front of the others, but now the youth had reached the end of his ability to pretend. “I am going to die?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Marc reached over and picked up the discarded revolver. Halil made no attempt to stop him, so Marc put it aside on the bar and settled directly across from the younger man. “I need you to trust me, Halil,” he went on. “Do you know what they did to you?”

  “They told me I would be a warrior,” he gasped. “The commander said we would take revenge on the people who made us orphans.”

  “That what you want?” Marc stole a glance at his watch, and clamped his hands together. His palms were sweating.

  Halil shook his head and winced. “My father … A teacher. My mother … They were both kind. They would be sad to see me now.”

  “You tried to run.” Halil’s head snapped up as Marc said the words. “It’s okay, mate. I saw it. You wanted to get away, but Khadir wouldn’t let you.” He tapped the side of his face, in the place where Halil had a bruise. “Is that why you’re here?”

  A nod. “He said we would be abandoned if we did not show courage.” Halil’s eyes glistened with tears. “I … have no courage.” He looked up at Marc, pleading. “I want this to be over.”

  “You seem strong enough to me. What can you tell me about the…?” Marc indicated his belly.

  Halil looked away. “I don’t know what they did to us. It is making me sicken.”

  “We can help,” Marc told him. “But it won’t be easy. It will hurt. A lot.”