Double Down

by Gabra Zackman

  After another minute the Boss looked at Susannah. Jackson was moaning on the floor, Lisa Bee was next to him, and Tyka’s face was getting redder and redder as she struggled to breathe. “We need to drop our weapons,” the Boss said. “Now.”

  “Dammit,” Susannah replied, and tossed her gun in the center of the room. The Boss followed.

  Patrick let go and Tyka dropped to the floor, where she retched and coughed, her hand around her throat. “Now, was that so hard?” he said with a smile.

  15

  “. . . and everyone thought they were such good parents, but they weren’t. My father was an alcoholic who would come home in a stupor and beat me. My mother watched it happen and only feebly tried to stop it. When he tried to hurt my brother—and my mother did nothing—I vowed to kill them both. I dosed their drinks with a deadly poison that I had made myself, researched in the local library. . . . How was I to know they’d share it with my brother? With an eight-year-old? How was I to know? But now that Gabriella has also been killed, now there’s really nothing more for me to—oh, fuck it. This is what I’ll do now, I’ll do what I always planned, blow it all up, burn the whole fucking world down, I’ve got everything in place and nothing to live for. And then I’ll be known to all humanity as the greatest terror the earth has ever seen. If there’s any humanity left, that is. This is my inheritance from my family. My legacy. The destruction of all I have ever known.”

  It had been two long hours, and the Boss, Susannah, Lisa Bee, Jackson, and Tyka all felt like it had been twenty years. They were sitting on the floor of Patrick O’Brien’s apartment being given a treatise on his plan for world domination. He was, in turns, clinical, passionate, even-tempered, and filled with rage. He was unpredictable in his mood swings, proudly narcissistic, then megalomaniacal, then sharply controlled. He was certain of only one thing: He was going to burn them all, in this basement apartment in Woodside. He had decided long ago to demolish the place, to blow up his past. . . . He’d rigged the house with explosives and had it all connected to an app he’d created for his iPhone. As the head of Buzz’s code-breaking unit at the CIA, he’d had years of practice in the creation of spy equipment and the cracking of other people’s inventions. And he’d put that to good use plotting his own personal reign of terror. At this point he’d planned for years to take out every member of the Bod Squad. . . . They knew too much and they were the only ones who had come close to unearthing his true identity. Now, it seemed, fate was on his side. . . . He could destroy them all, and every record of his previous existence, with one swipe of his screen.

  Tyka had asked him several times about Gabriella, but he wouldn’t respond. Upon hearing her name, he went into a fevered silence that put them all on edge. Tyka tried using the information she’d found in the box—Gabriella’s pleas to him—to get him to see some kind of reason. But every time she brought Gabriella up he seemed to fragment. After a few tries she kept quiet in case she might be compromising them all further. Not that she’d have anything to live for. She hadn’t wanted the others to know about Mahmoud, but Robert—Patrick—had boasted of the murder . . . had said how easy it had been to kill Mahmoud’s family, then Amal, then him, and how easy it would be to kill the rest of them. When Jackson heard this information his moans of pain had turned to tears of sorrow. The rest of the team had hung their heads in despair. As for Tyka, her emotions had completely shut down. She didn’t care about anything now, least of all her own life.

  Patrick had stopped talking and a thick silence descended. They could almost hear the relief in the air at the cessation of Patrick’s words, mixed with the fear of what he might do next. A soft moan came from Jackson’s lips, quieter than the last one. The Boss had put a makeshift tourniquet around his leg but it was only marginally helping. They all knew that he wouldn’t last much longer as he was in danger of bleeding out. But then, she thought, neither would any of them.

  “Well,” Patrick said, “I’m off. Time to make true power a reality. But it has been so very lovely getting to know you. I wish I could watch you all as you burn. I can see the headline now: Bod Squad Goes Down in Flames. Has a lovely ring, doesn’t it? And well deserved by a company that is a joke, that feels like one of those awful sitcoms from the 1980s. I’m only sorry that The A-Team, Cagney and Lacey, and Magnum, P.I. aren’t here to save the day. Arrivederci, comrades! May you enjoy the baptism by fire. May you see with true eyes your complete and utter failure on this earth. May you—” He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Grabbing a gun, he went to look through the peephole, and as he did so, the door was blown off its hinges. There, framed by dust and flanked by Fritz, Rafael, Chas, and several armed guards, stood Mahmoud.

  There was a silent moment while everyone took a breath. Tyka gasped and put her hand to her chest. Was she seeing things? Had she died, or was this all a dream? If this is a dream, let me never wake up! Then Mahmoud looked at her and winked, and all her emotions flooded into her without cover. Her belief that yet another person she loved had been killed had been so strong that now the relief burst out of her like a tidal wave, an unstoppable ocean of tears that racked her chest with sobs.

  Taking advantage of the emotion of the moment, Patrick dashed up the staircase and into the top part of the house. Without missing a beat, Chas said, “I got this.” Then he tossed his second gun to Susannah and cocked his head. “Come with me, Legs. You want to end this thing once and for all?”

  “Hell yes!” she said, getting to her feet. Then they were gone.

  There was a moment’s pause as they all caught their breath, then the Boss jumped in, his authority and power clearly restored. “Someone take care of Jackson. We don’t have much time. We need an ambulance stat.”

  “We’ve got it, John,” Fritz said, ordering some of her men to follow Chas and Susannah and others to tend to Jackson. “We’ll get him taken care of.”

  Jackson lifted his head up weakly and said, “I’ll live, Bossman. I need to stay alive to make the Bee miserable for all time.”

  Lisa Bee burst into the tears she’d been barely keeping at bay for the entire evening. “Yes, yes, Jackie; yes, you will!”

  “Besides which,” he said, wincing, “now that Mahmoud isn’t dead, I’ve still got to prove I can take him down.”

  Mahmoud laughed. “My grandfather always used to say it takes a brave man to challenge from the ground,” he said, kneeling by Jackson’s side and laying a hand on his shoulder. “I think you are one of the bravest, old friend. Besides which, I have you to thank for my life. I used ‘the Shuffle.’ ” As Jackson laughed, Rafael and some of Fritz’s team came over to lift Jackson up to take him outside, Lisa Bee hard on their heels. Mahmoud stayed behind, his gaze trained on Tyka.

  “We’d better make our way out,” the Boss said. “The place is rigged to blow. And Patrick is controlling it all from his iPhone.”

  “Yes,” Fritz said, “let’s get out and get him behind bars. We’ll talk more later. I’m going to need a tremendous amount of time for that apology I owe you. For now, let me say this: John, I nearly failed you. Forgive me.”

  “I forgive you,” he said with a smile. “But I look forward to you making it up to me. Now let’s get the Sam Hill out of here.”

  “We’ll be right behind you, John,” Mahmoud said, moving to Tyka, who was just getting control over her emotions. “I have some business I must take care of immediately.”

  ‡‡‡

  Tyka held on to Mahmoud’s hand as he led her out of the basement and a safe distance away, apart from the others and the chaos outside. When he had made sure they were clear, he took her in his arms and held her fiercely, Tyka feeling all the love he had for her flowing through his strong embrace. She let him hold her, wishing he would never let go, holding him close in return. She let out more sobs, feeling the grief of years past, grief she had pushed so far down into herself, come up and out in wave after wave of emotion. How coul
d she have almost lost him? And how could she not have known he was fated to be hers? She took all the time she needed, then pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “I told you not to try to die on me again,” she said shakily. “And now I will show you why.” At that, she kissed him with the sweet relief of his being in one piece, with the fierce expression of all her pent-up passions, with the deep engagement of her newly opened heart. She kissed him like she had never allowed herself to kiss anyone before, with all her love pouring into him without boundary. When they separated, he too had tears in his eyes.

  “Wow,” he said softly. “It was worth almost dying for that.”

  “Well,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument, “there’ll be a lot more where that came from. Because now that I have you back, Mahmoud, I will never, ever, ever let you go.”

  ‡‡‡

  Mahmoud smiled. His heart was so full. He’d never felt this way before: scared, awed, delighted, and challenged all at once. “Well now,” he said, “that was easy.”

  “What was?”

  “Winning you. I thought for sure it would be difficult. But all it took was two near-death experiences for me, one for you and your team, and the takedown of Baba Samka. Like I said: easy.”

  He relished seeing the grin on her face, but it soon turned again to a look of concern. “Mahmoud, what happened, though, for real? He said he had killed you. And he was certain that he had. How could this be? Are you hurt?”

  “Well, I would have been,” he said wryly, “if it hadn’t been for Jackson.”

  “Explain,” she said sternly, and even the roughness in her tone made his heart sing.

  “Robert Smith—or whoever he is—attacked me from behind. Got me in a choke hold. I didn’t even hear him approach. Thankfully, I knew enough to fake my way to death. Jackson does something he calls the Tangier Shuffle . . . it’s a last resort when someone’s got you. You pretend to die and hope they’re not smart enough to check their work. So I let him take me down—I know enough to make it look convincing—and I waited a couple of minutes until he had gone. Sloppy work on his part, and on mine. Really, I just got lucky. But then, I did have something to live for, so sheer force of will was on my side. By the time I went to meet you, you were nowhere to be found, so I alerted Fritz, who flew up with Rafael and some backup in one of Quantico’s surveillance planes to meet me. I just wish I could have found you sooner.”

  ‡‡‡

  Tyka couldn’t stop the smile that spread from ear to ear and almost engulfed her whole face. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “You found me at just the right time,” she said, grabbing his face in her hands. She was aware of every meaning of that sentence, and for the first time in her life, her heart was at peace. And for that, she thought, everything up till now had been worth it. She smiled up at him with all the love she felt in her heart, and knew, in the safe embrace of his strong arms, that it would all be okay. The world would be safer, deaths would be avenged, peace would reign. And as for her? Perhaps she would finally be content. She’d lived a restless life, filled with running away, with loneliness, and with rage. Suddenly now she felt the deepest parts of her soul begin to settle . . . a gentleness she had always hidden away beginning to emerge. She sighed and rested her head on Mahmoud’s chest. Yes, she thought. It is all, finally, going to be all right.

  ‡‡‡

  The street was being cordoned off by police; local residents, including the Kipiniaks, were routed into the safe zone; the SWAT team was inside backing up Chas and Susannah; the bomb squad was en route; and the place was surrounded. AJ was in a surveillance van, having been instrumental in finding their location, and was still trying to get eyes inside the house. But for the moment they were all safe and waiting, in a tense holding pattern, hoping to hear word of Patrick’s capture before any part of the house was detonated. The Boss was standing next to Fritz when her team radioed in. “Fritz!” someone on the SWAT team shouted. “He’s locked himself in an upstairs room and is threatening to blow the place up. What do we do?”

  “Pull back!” she ordered him. “Now! I will not lose anyone else in pursuit of this madman!” There were some tense moments waiting as the SWAT team made their way out and over to where Fritz and the Boss stood.

  “Where are Susannah and Chas?” the Boss demanded, looking them over and seeing only Fritz’s team.

  “They wouldn’t leave without taking him down,” the chief of the squad reported. “We didn’t want to, either, but an order is an order.”

  “Shit!” the Boss exclaimed, already heading toward the house. “If they’re going down, I’m going down with them.” Fritz implored him to wait, but he was already out of her reach.

  ‡‡‡

  Susannah and Chas were in the hallway outside one of the upstairs rooms, their weapons drawn. The SWAT team had just left and they knew they had precious few minutes left. “You ready for this, Legs?” Chas asked with a smile.

  “Let’s do it,” she said. “If the place blows . . . at least we’re in this together.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Together they shot the door nearly off its hinges. Entering a dimly lit bedroom, they could see Patrick sitting alone on a dingy twin bed, holding his cell phone in his hand.

  “This was my brother’s room,” he said calmly, looking up at them with a blank expression on his face. “Only right that I should die here.”

  “Come with us,” Chas said, his and Susannah’s guns trained on Patrick’s chest. “We just want you off the streets.”

  Patrick laughed long and hard. “Not a chance, Chas. For me or for you.” He looked to his cell for confirmation. “You’ve got two minutes and fifty-six seconds until the whole place blows.”

  “Well, I guess this is it, then,” Chas said.

  “You know,” Patrick said, “I did it all for Gabriella. All of it. I just wanted to give her the world. I wanted us to rule together, and I’d planned to burn it all down when the time was right . . . baptism by fire . . . to burn alongside the woman I loved, wreaking havoc upon the planet. But when she began to catch on . . . when she began to unearth my plans . . . I could tell she was turning against me . . . and I had to have her killed . . .” He broke down in tears and wept.

  ‡‡‡

  The world slowed for Patrick O’Brien, and in the next few seconds he saw a montage of his life. His painful upbringing, his brother’s death, the unceasing loneliness he carried, the colossal crashing sound of his broken heart made manifest as violence. He had to kill to make it better, destroy lives to ease the pain, inflict mass terror in order not to feel the crushing weight of his own. Then, in the midst of his memories, he saw Gabriella’s face, heard her laugh, her low, accented voice . . . and he began to shake with sobs. When Gabriella had come into his life a light had shone upon him. It could have been so different . . . he could have lived a normal life with her . . . if she’d only stopped looking into his past . . . “Gabriella, my love, forgive me!” he exclaimed. He threw his phone down next to him, and took a picture of Gabriella out of his shirt pocket. Then he pulled a gun out from behind his back and pointed it at his own head.

  ‡‡‡

  “Not so fast, Baba Samka,” Susannah said. “You can’t rob us of this.” With that, she fired a bullet straight through his heart. Patrick collapsed on the bed, the picture of Gabriella falling out of his hand. Chas echoed with shots of his own. There, on the small twin bed in a pool of blood, lay the archvillain they’d all pursued for years, looking not like a criminal mastermind but like a very ordinary man. And it looked like he had come to a fitting end. When they were certain their antagonist had gasped his last breath, Susannah grabbed Chas and said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here, Tex. I’m not dying before you marry me.”

  “Damn right, Legs. Let’s blow the joint before it blows us.”

  They ran down the stairs, out the front door, an
d into the chaos of the cordoned-off street mere seconds before the whole place was detonated in a series of back-to-back explosions.

  ‡‡‡

  The Boss was nearly at the door when Chas and Susannah emerged. They all ran back to Fritz together, narrowly avoiding debris as the explosions began. “Well?” asked the Boss, shouting above the noise of the building and the chaos in the street. “Is it over?”

  “Yes, Bossman, it’s all done,” Chas said, pulling Susannah to him. “Legs got him straight through the heart.”

  She gave Chas a quick kiss, then turned back to the Boss. “He locked himself in his brother’s old room and told us the place was about to blow. We broke in and I took him down. We only had a couple of minutes, but he didn’t put up much of a fight. I think his heart was too broken. We didn’t have the time to get much intel except for this: It looks like he was the one who ordered Gabriella’s death.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fritz said. “He was the one who called the hit? But wasn’t he involved with her?”

  “Appears that way,” Susannah replied.

  “So she knew who he was,” the Boss said. “But for a while—or so Tyka said when we were all being held in the basement—Gabriella merely thought he worked for the CIA.”

  “Right,” Susannah replied, “but she did figure out who he was at some point—and he had to kill her for it. Regardless, it sounds like he really loved her—like he was tortured by his choice. We’ll have to ask Tyka more about what she found by the Unisphere. But one thing is sure, Bossman: Gabriella was the love of his life.”

  “And he of hers,” Tyka said. She and Mahmoud had just joined them, and the Boss noted the tears in their eyes and their clasped hands. “She was torn, Bossman,” Tyka went on, “between her love for him and her growing knowledge of who he was. And in the end, though he loved her, he killed her for it. I can’t comprehend it all.”