by By Jon Land
Ben fought the rush of students stampeding for the exits, intercepting two with belts strapped to their waists before they could flee the gym through one set of now open doors.
Removing the devices wasn’t difficult, just a matter of unhinging a hidden clasp at the belt’s real that was impossible for the subject to reach without triggering the explosives. Ben spun the boy he had caught around so he was facing the clasp.
“Stand very still,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “I’ll get this off you.”
He traced the length of the hard-wired triggering mechanism and pulled gently on the clasp. The belt came free.
“Go!” Ben told the student, easing it from his waist and moving to the trembling boy on his right.
Danielle lunged headlong into Tariq’s knees, spilling him to the floor. He went down hard and cracked his head on a table leg.
The detonator skittered across the shiny tile.
Tariq swept a hand for a pistol tucked in his belt, but Danielle’s hand got there first and locked against it, wedging it in place. The terrorist twisted, using his superior strength to force her off him. He groped for the detonator and had almost grasped it when Danielle closed her free hand on the contents of a broken bag of powdered fertilizer and flung it into Tariq’s eyes.
The terrorist wailed in agony, automatically drew his hand up to comfort his eyes. Danielle seized the moment to attack and was greeted with a blow to the head that stunned her badly. The fertilizer still stinging his eyes, Tariq swept the floor blindly for his pistol. His fingers scraped across it just as a black horde of fire ants swallowed the gun briefly and forced Tariq to jerk his hand away, knocking the pistol across the floor.
It skittered to a halt just five feet from her and Danielle lurched for it as Tariq lunged for the detonator.
Only after shoving himself under the long computer desk on which his was perched did Jake realize he had forgotten to put the machine into sleep mode. Now, with its monitor glowing instead of dimmed, any terrorist walking through the lab would spot the live screen easily.
Jake breathed a sigh of relief when the man passed the lab without entering. He waited a few more seconds just to be sure, then popped back up into his chair.
Just one task left to go and his plan would be ready to put into effect. All he had to do was hack into one of the most secure systems known to man:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He’d done it before, after all. Simply a matter of recalling the process.
If only I had a joint, Jake thought.
Students rushed from the building in droves through glass doors broken open by state policemen reaching the scene. A few of the officers fought through the surging crowd to reach the gym where Ben Kamal had now piled a dozen suicide belts in the middle of the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the cops muttered, unsure whether or not to holster his pistol.
Ben unclasped a thirteenth belt and added it to the pile. A trio of teachers had managed to gather all the students wearing the belts together, easing another forward each time Ben discarded the explosives that had been strapped to the previous one.
“Who the hell are you?” one of the cops demanded.
“Someone who knows what he’s doing,” Ben replied, not missing a beat as he unfastened the next belt strapped around a boy’s waist. “Now, come over here and give us a hand.”
Danielle realised too late that Tariq was closer to the detonator than she was to the pistol. At the last instant, she altered her path and threw herself at him. Tariq lashed an elbow into her face, loosening her teeth as he whirled from the detonator and slammed her head backward into the rim of a black lab counter. The counter heaved upward, toppling contents to the floor including a welding striker that rattled to a halt near her left hand.
Tariq closed a massive hand around Danielle’s throat. She could feel the muscles in his forearm contracting as he squeezed, compressing cartilage and shutting off her air. She forced her head upward, only to have it jerked brutally back down. Danielle felt the back of her skull slam into the floor, trying futilely to strip Tariq’s grip free as clouds spread over the world before her.
In that moment she remembered that his pistol had rattled across the floor. She groped for it desperately, scraping across shards of glass from the shattered terrarium roof and smashed display cases.
The gun is somewhere over here. I’m sure of it. . . .
More glass gouged her palm. She continued to stretch her fingers outward, scratching at the floor in search of the gun when they closed on something hard and rubbery.
A hose, running up through the floor. But what. . .
Danielle realized what the hose must be and fastened her hand around it, yanking with all her strength. The hose came free in her right hand, while her left snatched the welding striker up from the floor.
She could hear the hiss of escaping natural gas, the acrid stench just reaching her when she touched the welding striker to the hose’s end directly in front of Hassan Tariq’s face.
Ben had fallen into an eerie rhythm, all the time knowing that the slightest misplacement of a hand or finger would lead to the deaths of everyone still in the gym.
Only three boys with suicide belts draped around their waists remained. The rest had already joined the others outside, their discarded belts piled in the far corner of the locker room where the overall effects of any blast would be kept to a minimum.
“Oh, man,” one of the cops uttered, as Ben stripped another suicide belt free and moved on to the final two boys.
He unclasped the second-to-last belt, then quickly reached for the final boy’s. Felt for the clasp catch and tugged.
Nothing. It wouldn’t give.
“Get out of here!” Ben ordered the cop.
“What about—”
“Just do it!”
He could feel the boy trembling, hear his ragged breathing, as he retraced his fingers for the clasp. It had been bent somehow, his fingers coming precariously close to the detonating wire as he tried to twist the clasp back into shape.
“Stay as still as you can,” he said softly into the boy’s ear. “I’m going to get this off of you.”
The clasp still wouldn’t give.
The burst of gas-fueled flame enveloped Tariq’s face in an orange shroud. He seemed not to feel it for the briefest of instants after which his eyes bulged as he screamed in agony, flesh and hair suddenly ablaze.
The stench of burning skin reached Danielle and she recoiled as Tariq lurched to his feet, flailing desperately at the flames spreading across his torso and arms. Danielle watched Tariq slam into the wall, bounce off it, and collapse to his knees, the last of his screams dying in his throat as he keeled over.
Danielle started to breathe easier, until she saw the detonator resting directly beneath him, its trigger button about to be depressed under his weight.
Ben managed at last to straighten the clasp enough to pry it free of its catch. He let the final suicide belt drop to the floor, scooped up the boy in his arms, and bolted for the gym exit where a pair of state policemen were urging him on.
Danielle lunged, half-diving, half-pushing herself across the floor. She thrust a hand under Tariq’s collapsing frame, felt the blistering heat off his still-flaming body as her hand came up just short.
The last thing she saw was the red light above the detonator’s button before it disappeared beneath him.
Ben had just pulled himself and the last boy through the door when the jet of heat found him. More of an aftershock really, carrying none of the deadly nails and shrapnel that had showered the gym in all directions, digging divots from the polished floor, pockmarking the walls, and shattering all of the lightbulbs dangling overhead.
He left the boy on the floor between the pair of cops who’d dropped down covering their heads, and rushed toward the front of the building and Danielle.
The blast shook all the walls of the building. Danielle climbed back to
her feet, shaking and fighting the despair surging through her as she stepped over the now smoldering body of Hassan Tariq. The percussion of the blast from the other end of the building rattled in her ears, heartache dragged with it.
Ben and I have failed. The plot’s activation is now inevitable.
Danielle felt her insides knotted, trying not to consider the congestion of students caught in the blast. Had Ben been inside the gym when the explosion came? If so, was there any chance . . .
She imagined his voice in her head, calling her name. Then she realized it wasn’t in her head at all, but coming from the walkie-talkie clipped to her belt.
“Ben?” she asked, squeezing the plastic against her lips.
“We did it,” he told her. “Everyone got out safely.”
“But the blast, the trigger, the other forty-nine cells . . .”
“I know,” Ben said.
Outside the building, the chaos of parents struggling to be reunited with their children made it easy for Ben and Danielle to slip away. Never looking back, they walked straight for the street and headed west in the direction of the nearest main road.
“What about Jake?” Ben asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Danielle said.
They had reached the first traffic light when the car they had rented in Boston pulled over to the side of the road alongside them.
“Need a lift?” Jake Fleming greeted from behind the wheel.
“You did what!” Danielle asked him.
“Hacked into the F.B.I.’s server,” Jake repeated. “Not the ultrasecure network, just the routing lines, enough to make it look like the new message I sent to all the terrorist cells from the school originated there.”
Ben nodded, understanding. “So the Iraqis would think they’d been talking to the F.B.I, the whole time.”
“In which case,” Danielle picked up, “they’d figure they were set up. No choice but to abandon their targets. Go on the run.”
“That’s the plan,” Jake told her.
“You really that good?”
“I’m a walking commercial for ganja’s mind-enhancing capabilities.”
“In that case,” Danielle said, exchanging a glance with Ben, “I think there’s one more thing you can do for us.”
* * * *
* * * *
Chapter 99
F
ranklin Winters ushered Mary into the house and then closed the door behind her. She shuffled off into the kitchen, mumbling under her breath. It was the aide’s day off which left all responsibility for the care of his wife on him, a task he neither relished nor loathed but simply accepted even as he dreaded the day when no amount of care would be able to help her.
He hung his jacket in the front hall closet and moved to follow Mary into the kitchen.
“Ambassador Winters?”
The unfamiliar voice coming from the study startled him and Winters turned slowly, noticing a man and woman standing in front of the couch.
“Who are you?” Winters demanded, moving to the room’s entrance as he judged the distance to the nearest telephone. There was a cordless in the hall, but the handset had long since vanished during one of Mary’s episodes.
“We’re from the United Nations, sir,” said the woman. “I’m Inspector Danielle Barnea. This is Inspector Ben Kamal.”
“And did the U.N. give you permission to break into my house?”
“We thought it would be easier this way,” said Ben Kamal.
“I’m calling the police.”
“We considered doing the same thing,” Danielle Barnea told him. Her mouth was still swollen, the residue of her battle with Hassan Tariq, making it painful to speak. “Decided against it.”
“Pardon me?”
“Prometheus is finished, Ambassador Winters,” Barnea continued.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We traced you through your e-mail address,” Ben said, thinking of the magical work performed by Jake Fleming after they had given him the information provided by Alexis Arguayo. “We know you ran the operation. We want to know where we can find the rest of the people behind this.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And if you don’t leave now, I’ll have no choice but—”
Winters stopped when his wife shuffled past him holding a tray packed with open cookie packages and empty glasses.
“You didn’t tell me we were having company,” she announced, setting the tray down on the coffee table. “Would anyone like tea?”
“Mary,” Winters started.
“I have the fancy kind that come in the pretty colored wrappers. I have them somewhere.” She started fishing through the pockets of the overcoat she was still wearing.
Winters grasped her at the elbow, started to steer her from the room. “You get the tea started, dear. Call me when it’s—”
Mary twisted from him, the suddenness of her motion surprising him. But surprise turned quickly to shock when he saw the pistol clutched in her hand.
“Mary, what are you—”
“Stay out of this, you idiot,” she seethed in Russian, her voice strong and vibrant, the empty gaze replaced by a resolute stare.
“Mary?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Mary hissed, pointing the nine-millimeter directly for Ben Kamal.
Winters held his ground, unsure how to respond, what to feel, stunned by what he was witnessing.
“I know who you are,” Mary said to Ben and Danielle. “I’ve seen your pictures, read your files. Congratulations.”
“We know who you are too. You’re finished,” Danielle continued in Russian. “This is over.”
“Only for now,” Mary Winters told her, reverting to English but no longer bothering to hide her Russian accent. “There are more of us. Everywhere. We failed yesterday. We won’t next time.”
“We’ll find you all.”
“Not before I walk out of here,” Mary Winters said, rotating her intense gaze between the two of them. “If you try to stop me, I’ll shoot you both.”
“Why don’t you tell your husband the truth about your son, Mrs. Winters?” Ben suggested.
“What’s he talking about?” Winters demanded. Then, to Ben, “What are you talking about?”
“Your wife raised Jason in her image, Ambassador. He betrayed his Special Forces team’s mission in Iraq when they stumbled on a hiding place for artillery shells filled with bioweapons, shells with Russian markings,” Ben explained, repeating what he had learned that morning from Ibrahim al-Kursami. “Your son executed each member himself once they were captured.”
“You were right all along, Mr. Winters,” Danielle picked up. “Your son is still alive. Hiding out in Iraq. Sooner or later he’ll be found. And punished.”
“Oh my God,” Franklin Winters muttered, recalling the tale told him by Major Jamal Jefferson just a few days earlier.
“Shut up, you ass!” Mary snapped at him, then trained her gun on Danielle.
Just as her finger started to close around the trigger, Franklin Winters wrapped his arms around his wife and twisted her to the side. The pistol roared. The bullet dug into the ceiling and sent a light shower of plaster floating downward.
Mary Winters lashed out, screaming. Her husband tried to wrestle her to the floor, and Mary flailed to break free of his grasp. She scratched at her husband’s face with the nails of both hands as he kicked her legs out, leaving her nothing to break her fall.
Mary Winters’s head crashed into the coffee table and snapped forward. Ben and Danielle heard the thud, followed by the sound of something cracking. Winters pushed himself off his wife’s inert body.
“Mary,” Winters said. “Mary?”
Ben and Danielle came forward together and gazed down at her unblinking eyes.
“Oh, my God,” Winters muttered.
* * * *
EPILOGUE
S
