But she didn’t know which apartment he was in. If she called the agency, the JTTF would surround the building, start kicking down doors. The al Qaeda operatives would know they were caught and kill Wells immediately. No. She would go in, find the apartment for herself. Then she would decide what to do.
She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the.45 and the silencer that Wells had given her. She held the gun in both hands. This was insane. She didn’t even know how many men were with him. What would her kids do if she got herself killed? Walking into an apartment full of terrorists? Insane.
Yet she began to screw the silencer onto the barrel of the.45. Insane or not, she couldn’t let him die in there. She would find out where he was. And then? said the nasty little voice in her head, the one she hated. Then what?
She ignored the voice and finished attaching the silencer. She would leave a message on Shafer’s voice mail at work, explaining what had happened, where she was. He always checked that mailbox when he woke up. Worst-case, the JTTF would only lose three hours. Anyway, al Qaeda wouldn’t attack now, with the streets empty. Whatever they had planned wouldn’t happen before morning.
She tried to tuck the pistol into her pants. It wouldn’t fit. She unscrewed the silencer and tried again. Still too big. A sure sign that she belonged behind a desk, not out here. But the frustration only made her more determined to prove them all wrong. Duto. Khadri. Shafer. Even Wells. These men who thought their war was too important for her to fight.
She dumped out her purse, everything, the detritus of her life, lipstick, wallet, cellphone, Luna bar, makeup mirror, a wadded-up pack of Kleenex, all of it falling onto the seat and the Caravan’s dirty carpets. Luckily she’d brought an oversized bag, a black leather purse. She screwed the silencer back on. She racked the pistol’s slide. She dropped it and the keys to the van into her purse, sweeping everything else under the seat. If these guys captured her she’d be better off without any identification, especially her CIA badge. She called Shafer’s voice mail and left her message.
Then, before she could reconsider, before her better judgment could take over, she stepped out of the minivan and onto the empty black street.
WELLS COULD ALMOST feel the germs multiplying inside him. He was husbanding his strength, and he still believed he could survive if he got the right antibiotics. His fever was under control. He wasn’t coughing blood. But in a few hours he would pass the point of no return. If Exley or the police didn’t show up before then, he would go for his knife and kill as many of the men in this room as he could. In the commotion the neighbors would surely call the cops, and if he survived until they arrived he would tell them what was happening.
Exley. He hoped she would be prudent and call in the professionals. Be smarter than he had been. He couldn’t blame any higher power for putting him in this place, only his stiff-necked hubris. Pride before the fall. If only Duto hadn’t pushed him so hard back in April. If only he had killed Khadri in Atlanta. If only…
None of the hypotheticals mattered now. He was dying in this dirty apartment, the bacteria in his blood proof that he and the agency had misunderstood each other as badly as they misunderstood their common foe. He had never earned Khadri’s trust, and he never would. With his parting question, Khadri had showed that he suspected — or at least wondered if — Wells was still working for the agency. He had used Wells as a courier at least in part as an ironic gesture, a final twist of the knife. You can die for us but you’ll never be one of us. Wells had always hated irony, the favored drink of wannabe intellectuals. He hated it more now.
No matter. He still had his knife. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, the marines always said. But he thought he would be okay. He was quicker than these amateurs, and now his hands were free. As he had expected, Ghazi hadn’t bothered to cuff him again after Khadri left. And Exley was out there too. Everything depends which side of the shotgun you’re on. His mother and his father, lying in their graves in Hamilton. He missed them, but he wasn’t ready to join them just yet. Wells rubbed his wrists. He wanted nothing more than to reach for his stiletto, but he restrained himself. He glanced at his watch. Almost five A.M., the night nearly over. He would give Exley until the sun rose. Then he would start some unironic knife twisting of his own.
EXLEY STEPPED INSIDE the tenement and looked around the dim first-floor hallway. Her purse hung unzipped on her left arm, close to her body, so she could reach quickly for the pistol inside. Still, she wouldn’t be as quick as somebody with a holster. She remembered what Wells had said in Kenilworth, a world away now. Shoot first. You’ll know.
Her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness and she saw a roach skittering down the corridor. She followed it, ignoring the stairs for now. She walked slowly, resisting the temptation to turn and see if anyone had slid in noiselessly behind her. She was predator, not prey.
At the end of the hall she could hear music playing quietly from behind apartment 1F, a gospel hymn seeping under the door. She hesitated, then tapped lightly. Inside the apartment heavy steps shuffled toward the door, then stopped. Exley tapped again.
“Howard?” an old woman’s voice whispered from behind the door. “That you?”
“No ma’am,” Exley said as quietly as she could.
“Howard?”
“Wrong address, ma’am. Sorry to bother you.”
The door creaked open, a chain holding it in place. An old black woman in a housedress peeked out, her eyes glazed with cataracts behind thick plastic glasses. “Where’s Howard?”
“Ma’am, please go back to sleep,” Exley whispered, thinking, Please don’t raise your voice.
“Why’d you knock on my door?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Howard?”
“No ma’am. Someone else. A man.”
“Join the club.” The woman smiled, a big toothless grin.
“A man in this building. Upstairs.” Exley pointed up. “Maybe you heard him come in tonight. Not too long ago.”
The smile turned into a scowl. “They was banging up and down before.”
“Can you think what floor?”
“The third. Maybe the second.”
“Goodnight, ma’am. Thank you.”
“If you see Howard—”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The door closed, and Exley was alone again.
SHE WALKED UP the stairs noiselessly. Until now, she had never been grateful for the ballet lessons that her mother had forced on her in grade school. She would have to thank Mom properly tomorrow. If she got the chance. At the top of the stairs she stopped. Up here both overheads were working, throwing their harsh light on the dirty yellow walls of the hallway. A dozen cigarette butts lay in a pile at her feet. Someone had been sitting here tonight, smoking. Waiting.
The floor was silent, the apartments dark. Outside a car rumbled by, its speakers pumping bass. Exley found herself shrinking against a wall. Then the noise faded, and the tenement was still.
She looked down at the cigarette butts again. Of course. Cigarettes meant smoke. She sniffed for a moment. There. The faint odor of smoke grown stale after hours in this hallway. She moved forward slowly, following the scent, as obvious to her now as a trail of bread crumbs.
When she turned up the stairs to the third floor, the smell grew stronger. She slipped her hand inside her purse and found the.45. Without taking the pistol out of the purse, she slid down the safety. Slowly, silently, she climbed the stairs.
“JER-RY! JER-RY!”
A woman. In the hall. She knocked once, paused, then hammered furiously on the door of the apartment as if her fists could break the door off its hinges. “Jerry, you come out right now! Jerry!”
Wells recognized her voice immediately. How had she found him? No matter. He leaned forward, moving his hands closer to his knife. He could feel the adrenaline rising in his blood, overcoming the germs. Ghazi pulled out h
is pistol and leaned over Wells. Too close, Wells thought. He doesn’t know he’s too close.
“What do you know about this?” Ghazi said in Arabic.
“Nothing.”
Ghazi smashed his Makarov into Wells’s skull, just above the ear. A starlit pain flashed through his head. He grunted and leaned back but kept his arms forward.
“Is she with you?”
“I swear I know nothing.”
“It’s just one woman,” Abu Rashid said, his eye at the peephole. “There’s no one else out there.”
“Jer-ry!” Exley screamed outside. “Leave that whore and come out RIGHT NOW or I’m calling the cops!”
The knocking began again, then a crash.
“She’s drunk,” Abu Rashid said. “She dropped her bag.”
“Fuck,” Ghazi said. “Crazy American woman. Get rid of her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Just get rid of her.”
A BEARDED ARAB man opened the door. A second man stood just behind him, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
“You’re not Jerry,” Exley said. Shoot first. She leaned over her bag and reached inside, feeling the pistol.
“This isn’t the apartment you’re looking for,” the man said. He began to close the door.
NOW. WELLS COUGHED, leaned over, reached down with his right hand for his knife. As he came up he flicked open the knife. With his other hand, he grabbed Ghazi’s arm, pushing the gun away.
“Exley!”
Ghazi fired. Too late. The bullet missed Wells, blew through the couch, lodged in the wall. Wells forced the stiletto into Ghazi’s belly, feeling the fat and muscles tear underneath the blade, then ripped the knife upward, tearing viciously through Ghazi’s stomach. When the knife had gone as far as it could go, Wells reversed downward, widening the wound into the intestines. Ghazi screamed, dropped his gun, pressed his hands to his stomach, the blood already pouring out, black in the dim light.
WHEN WELLS SHOUTED Exley’s name, the man at the door looked back for a moment. She heard an unsilenced shot from the apartment. Without hesitation she lifted her purse and squeezed the trigger of the.45. The pistol fired through the bag, its echo muffled by the silencer and the leather. The round tore into the man’s hip, pushing him into the door.
The man tried to close the door, but Exley raised the gun inside the purse and pulled the trigger again. This time the shot caught him in the center of the chest. He stumbled backward, his bearded mouth forming a silent furry O as he fell. Exley wrenched the.45 out of the bag to get a clear shot at the second man, the man with the cigarette in his mouth. But now he was reaching into his waistband for a gun of his own.
She fired again, hearing another shot from the apartment as she did. This time the gun kicked high on her and her shot caught him in the neck as he pulled the gun out of his pants. He began to fall, his cigarette dropping from his mouth
— and Exley heard him shoot and felt the agony in her left leg all at once. The bullet seemed to have caught her just above the knee. She could no longer hold herself up. She screamed and fell forward, toward the apartment. She grabbed for the door with her left hand as the man collapsed, blood spurting from his neck
— and now a third man came forward, a fat shoeless Arab, stepping toward the two in the doorway, reaching for the gun on the ground. Exley forgot the pain in her leg and focused on the fat man. She pulled the trigger of the.45 as he bent over, groping for the gun. But the heavy gray pistol kicked up on her, and her shot flew over his head.
The recoil pushed her backward and she lost her balance and fell, dropping the.45. It kicked away from her, down the hallway. She crawled for it. Her leg seemed to be on fire and she screamed. The fat man in the doorway picked up the pistol. A small smile formed on his face as he turned toward her and raised the gun. Exley turned toward him and began to raise her hands, hating herself for her useless, pointless surrender even as she did
— and the top of the fat man’s head exploded and he collapsed, falling obscenely upon the first two men she’d killed.
Then Wells shouted. He seemed to be a long way away.
“Exley! Stay out there!” Like she had a choice. The hallway spun, faster, faster, and the blackness filled her eyes and she passed out.
AS GHAZI SCREAMED and fell, Wells dove for the Makarov Ghazi had dropped beside the couch. Wells grabbed the pistol and twisted around to see two men almost on him. With his right hand he fired, the shot catching one of the men in the chest, puncturing his heart, sending blood spurting through his shirt. The man groaned and rolled over, his legs twitching as he died.
The other man, a skinny Pakistani who hadn’t spoken all night, reached Wells and jumped toward him, close enough for Wells to see the tiny veins in his eyes and feel his hot desperate breath. The Pakistani grabbed for the Makarov with both hands. With his left arm Wells hit the Pakistani with a forearm shiver, snapping back his chin. Wells grabbed the man’s scrawny neck and the Pakistani forgot the gun. He gasped for air, his hands pulling hopelessly at Wells’s wrist as his mouth opened and he begged for breath. And now Wells’s right hand was free. The hand that held Ghazi’s gun. Wells shoved the pistol into the Pakistani’s mouth, watching his eyes widen in the moment before Wells blew out his brains.
Wells looked toward the door, where two more men lay in a heap — and a third had just grabbed Abu Rashid’s gun. He would have time for only one shot. He aimed across his body as the fat man stood. He squeezed the trigger.
The man went down. One shot, one kill.
“Exley!” he yelled. “Stay out there!”
AS QUICK AS that, they were done. The room was quiet, its rough wood floor slick with blood and brains. Ghazi was still moaning, but weakly now. Wells was certain he would be dead in minutes. The other five were already gone. Wells didn’t see the seventh jihadi, a Saudi college student who had bragged earlier in the night about reading Mein Kampf. But he could hear the kid inside the tiny bedroom, begging in Arabic, “Please.”
“Get in here,” Wells said. He could feel his adrenaline fading, the plague rushing back. The Saudi appeared in the doorway, his hands up.
“Lie down.” Wells pointed to the corner. “Hands on the back of your head.”
“Please.” The Saudi was crying now.
“Lie down.”
The Saudi lay on his stomach, his arms on his head. Wells hoisted himself to his feet and walked toward the man. His trigger finger ached. This one surely deserved to die. He raised the Makarov and took aim.
Don’t, he thought. Keep this much of yourself at least. He had killed men in cold blood. But never this way. Never when they had already given themselves up. He lowered the gun, pulled himself back from the abyss.
He heard Exley sighing softly in the hallway, the neighbors beginning to rustle. Time to move. He grabbed the handcuffs and cuffed the Saudi to the steel radiator in the corner of the room.
WELLS STEPPED OVER the bodies in the door and walked into the hall. He felt as though he had recrossed the River Styx. Exley lay pale and quiet, her eyes closed, the left leg of her pants dark with her blood. Wells tore off his shirt and tied a crude tourniquet around her leg to stanch the bleeding. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Jennifer. Jenny.” She moaned softly. He leaned down to hug her. She was cold. “You’ll be okay.” He hoped he was right. A cough racked him and he turned away. Though she was surely already infected, thanks to their kiss in Kenilworth. “We did it, Jenny.”
“Nobody but you calls me Jenny,” she whispered. “Why is that?”
“They don’t know you like I do.” He smoothed her hair. “I have to go.”
“Khadri?”
“Promise me you’ll hold on.”
She nodded, weakly.
“Promise,” he said.
“I promise.” He kissed her on the cheek as she closed her eyes.
WELLS CHECKED THE clip on Ghazi’s pistol to see how many bullets were left. Six. Should be plenty. He had just
one man left to kill. He popped the clip into the pistol and tucked the gun into his jacket.
If he told the neighbors about the plague, they would panic. There would be time to get them antibiotics. He would call the police from the Ranger. He could already hear distant sirens through the walls of the tenement. As quickly as his poisoned lungs would allow he ran down the stairs.
18
THE STREET WAS empty, the sky above just beginning to break. The sirens were at least a half mile off; at this hour even the New York police department, with its thirty-five thousand cops, was spread thin. Wells shivered in the night air and trotted for his Ranger.
In the truck he reached into his bag and with a shaking hand grabbed a clean shirt and his medicine kit. He pulled the shirt over his head. Then he found his Cipro bottle and tipped four, five, six of the big white pills into his mouth. He swallowed them dry and sat up straight. Cipro was a potent, broad-spectrum antibiotic; Wells couldn’t be sure that it would work against the plague, but he hoped that he had just bought himself a few hours. Still, he would need to get to a hospital soon.
He remembered seeing The Price Is Right as a kid, watching Bob Barker tell the contestants they had to guess the price of the prize as best they could without going too high. “Whoever is closest without going over,” Barker always said. Wells figured he was playing that game with the plague now. As close as he could without going over.
Wells twisted his key in the ignition and the Ranger kicked into life. He pulled into the street. At the first light he turned right — south — then right again. West. Toward Manhattan. He was sure that Khadri would try to blow up the Yellow dirty bomb, whatever it was, as soon as he learned what had happened to his men. Which would be very soon. The media would be all over the bloodbath in apartment 3C.
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