He got off. It was 11 a.m.
Seventeen minutes later, Mickey re-boarded the Circulator at the ninth stop, Lincoln Memorial. Taking his usual position by the rear exit, Mickey felt lighter, freed, as if he’d left things in his past, on the verge of a brighter future.
He waited to get off until the fourteenth stop, National Air and Space Museum. While tourists poured out the door after him, he dug in his pants pocket and came up with a burner phone. He walked away from the knot of people trying to get into the museum and thumbed speed dial.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Chief Stone?” Mickey said, trying to make his voice soft and low. “It’s your worst nightmare again.”
CHAPTER 12
BREE SLAPPED THE bubble on the roof, hit the sirens, and said, “Hold on, Alex.”
I braced my feet on the passenger side. She glanced in her side view and stomped on the gas.
We squealed out of 5th Street, ran the red light at Pennsylvania, and headed toward the Mall with Chief Stone calling the shots over a handheld radio.
“He says it’s at the Korean War Memorial, but clear the MLK and Lincoln Memorials, too,” she said. “Close Ohio Drive and Independence Avenue Southwest. I want to know the second those five are clear. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Chief,” the dispatcher said.
“Call IT,” she said. “Find out if they got a trace on the call that just—”
Her cell phone started ringing. She glanced down, said, “Forget it, they’re calling me.”
Cradling the radio mike, she snatched up her cell, said, “Chief Stone. Did you get it?”
Bree listened and said, “How much damn time do they need?”
A pause, then, “You’d think in this day and age, it would be a hell of a lot less, but okay. If there’s a next time I’ll try to keep him talking.”
Hanging up and letting her phone plop in her lap, she let out a sigh of exasperation. “A minute ten at a minimum to hone in on an on-going cell signal. He spoke to me for twenty-one seconds.”
“They have no idea where he is?”
“Somewhere in DC but they can’t pinpoint the call. And even if they could, he has to be using a burner.”
“You’d think,” I said.
Six minutes later, Bree threw the car in park near the Ash Woods on Independence Avenue.
“You should stay here until you’ve got Mahoney at your side.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Be safe.”
She kissed me and said, “I’ll let the pros take care of the dangerous stuff.”
I watched her get out and walk toward the traffic barrier closing off the west end of the National Mall. She couldn’t be seen bringing me into a Metro investigation while I was on suspension.
Mahoney, however, could bring me in as a consultant. I left the car a few minutes later when he arrived with the FBI’s bomb squad and a dog team of three.
The wind was out of the southeast, so Mahoney sent the dogs between the Lincoln Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial, a dramatic, triangular space with nineteen steel statues of larger than life soldiers on patrol, some emerging from a loose grove of trees and others in the open, walking across strips of granite and low-growing juniper.
The FBI dog handlers spread out and released the bomb sniffers. Muzzles up, panting for scent, they cast into the wind toward the statues. Back and forth they ran, coursing through the trees and the steel patrol soldiers. I stood beside Bree, looking around to spot my favorite part of the memorial: three statues crouched around a campfire, set on a granite slab inscribed with THE FORGOTTEN WAR.
“C’mon,” Bree said in a low voice. “Find it.”
At the northeast end of the memorial, two of the dogs circled a low, dark wall that read FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. They returned to their handlers waiting on the walkway. The third shepherd took a longer loop downwind of the MLK Memorial before trotting back to his handler and the others.
“Rio and Ben are not picking up anything here,” a handler said on the radio. “And Kelsey wasn’t smelling anything at MLK. We can run the Lincoln if you want us to.”
“Yes,” Bree said. “Better safe than sorry.”
Mahoney said, “This the boy who cried wolf?”
“An effective tactic,” I said. “Gets us all worked up, calls us to action. He probably gets a kick out of—”
The bomb exploded behind us.
CHAPTER 13
WE DOVE TO the ground and covered our heads. Bits of gravel rained down on my back. When it stopped, I lifted my head to see a thin plume of charcoal-gray smoke rising to the right of a walkway that led toward King’s Memorial.
“Jesus,” Mahoney said, getting up and dusting his suit off. “How’d we miss that?”
Bree, rattled but fine, said, “The dogs were just through there.”
The lead dog handler shook his head in bewilderment. “If there was a bomb they would have smelled it.”
“Well, they didn’t,” Mahoney snapped, before calling for a forensics team to gather the bomb debris for analysis.
We all put on blue hospital booties and moved toward the explosion site, everyone seeming jittery and uncertain. Yesterday he’d put two bombs on the National Mall. If the dogs didn’t smell the first one, couldn’t there be another?
No more than a foot across and five inches deep, the smoking crater was two feet off the pedestrian walkway, on the other side of a slack black chain fence. The bomb had been hidden under a low juniper, now charred and broken.
A mangled, burnt metal casing lay on the ground several feet away.
“Looks like a camera body,” Bree said. “Or what used to be one.”
That spooked me. How many tourists in DC carry a camera? It would never be noticed, at least not while the bomber was carrying it. He was smart. He was creative. But something about the explosion bothered me.
“It didn’t do a lot of damage,” I said. “I mean, it could have been bigger, made more of a statement.”
“He wounded two agents yesterday,” Bree said.
“I’m not discounting that. It just seems like this should have been an escalation.”
“Or at least two bombs,” Mahoney said.
“Exactly.”
Before Bree could reply, one of the dog handlers yelled. He’d found something on the north side of the memorial.
“Is your dog on scent?” Mahoney shouted as we hurried toward them.
“No,” the handler said when we got close. “I saw it in that clear trash bag there, a black fanny pack.”
Bree triggered her radio and said, “Bring the bomb team up.”
Within five minutes, FBI bomb squad commander Peggy Denton had arrived. We watched her iPad screen, showing the Andros robot’s camera feed and monitoring several electronic sensors. She shook her head. “We’re not picking up on a radio or cell phone. No timer, either. We can X-ray it.”
Mahoney nodded. Another tense three minutes passed while they moved a portable X-ray into position and looked inside the fanny pack. Aside from a water bottle and a shirt, there was an irregular rectangular item roughly three inches long, two inches wide, and two thick.
“Too wide for a Snickers bar,” I said. “Brownie?”
“Too dense for either of them,” Denton said. “Can’t see any triggering device, no blasting caps, or booby trap lines.”
“Your call,” Mahoney said.
The commander put on her hooded visor, walked the thirty yards to the garbage and retrieved the fanny pack. She unzipped it, reached in and pulled out the object, which was loosely wrapped in dull-green wax paper.
“Shit,” Denton said through her radio headset. “I need a blast can here, ASAP.”
Another of the bomb squad agents hurried toward Denton with a heavy steel box.
“What’s going on?” Bree asked.
“It’s C-4 type plastic explosive,” Denton radioed back as her partner opened the box’s lid. She set the bomb material inside and screwed the lid shut. “
Yugoslavian Semtex by the markings on the wrapper.”
“Why didn’t the dogs smell it?” I asked. “Isn’t there something added to plastic explosives so they can be detected?”
“They’re called taggants,” Denton said, taking off her hood and visor, and coming back over. “I suspect this C-4 is old. Pre-1980, before taggants were required under international law.”
Bree shook her head. “Yesterday, the dogs smelled the bombs. Why make just one bomb out of it, but not four? And why leave the uncharged C-4 at all?”
“My guess is he left it as a warning,” I said. “He used plastic explosives with taggant the first time, but that game’s over. He’s saying we can’t sniff him out now. He’s saying he can bomb us at will.”
CHAPTER 14
TENSE DAYS PASSED without a phone call from the bomber. Bree was under pressure from Chief Michaels. Mahoney was dealing with the FBI director.
The only break came from the FBI crime lab confirming that the explosive used in the third bomb was pre-1980 Yugoslavian C-4, and that the triggering devices—all timers—were sophisticated. The work of an experienced hand.
I did what I could to help Mahoney between seeing patients, including Kate Williams, who showed up five minutes early for a mid-morning appointment. I took it as a good sign. But if I thought Kate was ready to grab hold of the life preserver, and I certainly hoped she was, I was mistaken.
“Let’s talk about life after you ran away,” I said, sitting down with my chair positioned at a non-confrontational angle.
“Let’s not,” Kate said. “None of that matters. We both know why we’re here.”
“Fair enough,” I said, pausing to consider how best to proceed.
In situations like this, I would ordinarily ask a lot of questions about documents in her files, watching her body language for clues to her deeper story. Indicators of stress and tension—the inability to maintain eye contact, say, or the habitual flexing of a hand—are often sure signals of deeper troubles.
But I’d had difficulty reading Kate’s body language, which shouted so loud of defeat that very little else was getting through. I decided to change things up.
“Okay, no questions about the past today. Let’s talk about the future.”
Kate sighed. “What future?”
“The future comes every second.”
“With every shallow breath.”
I read defiance and despair in her body language, but continued, “If none of this had happened to you, what would your future look like? Your ideal future, I mean?”
She didn’t dismiss the question, but pondered it. She said, “I think I’d still be in, rising through the ranks.”
“You liked the Army.”
“I loved the Army.”
“Why?”
“Until the end it was a good place for me. I do better with rules.”
“Sergeant,” I said, glancing at her file. “Two tours. Impressive.”
“I was good. And then I wasn’t.”
“When you were good, where did you see yourself going in the Army?”
I thought I’d gotten through a crack, but she shut it down. She said, “They discharged me, Dr. Cross. Dreaming about something that can never happen is not healthy.”
She watched me like a chess player looking for an indication of my next move.
Should I ask her to imagine a future for someone else? Or prompt her to take the conversation in a new direction? Before I could decide, Kate decided for me.
“Are you investigating the IEDs?” she asked. “On the Mall? I saw a news story the other night. Your wife was there, and I thought I saw you in the background.”
“I was there, but I can’t talk about it beyond what you’ve heard,” I said. “Why?”
She stiffened. “Familiar ground, I guess.”
I grasped some of the implication, but her body said there was more.
“Care to explain?”
Struggling, she finally said, “I know them. They’re like rats. Digging in the dirt. Hoping you’ll happen by.”
“The bombers?”
Kate took on a far-off look. It seemed she was seeing terrible things, her face twitching with repressed emotion.
“Stinking sand rats,” she said softly. “They only come out at night, Doc. That’s a good thing to remember, the sand rats and the camel spiders only come out at night.”
The alarm on my phone buzzed, and I almost swore because our hour was nearly up. I felt like we were just getting somewhere. By the time I silenced the alarm, Kate had come back from her dark place and saw my frustration.
“Don’t worry about it, Doc,” she said, smiling sadly as she stood. “You tried your best to crack the nut.”
“You’re not a nut.”
She laughed sadly. “Oh, yes I am, Dr. Cross.”
CHAPTER 15
WIPING AT TEARS, Mickey left the VA Medical Center and ran to catch the D8 Metro bus heading south. He barely made it, and wasn’t surprised to find the bus virtually empty at this late hour.
Breathing hard, Mickey went to his favorite seat, barely glancing at the only two other passengers, an elderly woman with a cane and a heavyset man wearing blue work coveralls.
As the bus sighed into motion, Mickey felt tired, more tired than he’d been in weeks, months maybe. Rather than fight it all the way to Union Station, he pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes and drifted. Feeling the bus sway, hearing the rumble of the tires, he fell away to another time, in a place of war.
In his dreams, the sun was scorching. Mickey had buried himself in a foxhole as the Taliban mortared an advanced outpost in the mountains of Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Each blast came closer and closer. Rock and dirt fell and pinged off his helmet, smacked the back of his Kevlar battle vest, made him cringe and wince, wondering at each noise if his time was finally up.
“Where the Christ is that mother?” he heard a voice shout.
“Upper south hillside, two o’clock,” another voice called back. “Three hundred vertical meters below the ridge.”
“Can’t find him,” a gruffer voice yelled. “Gimme range!”
A third man yelled, “Sixteen hundred ninety-two meters.”
“That ledge with the two bushes on the right?”
“Affirmative!”
“I got it. Just has to show himself.”
A fourth voice shouted, “Smoke him, Hawkes! Turn the sumbitch inside out!”
The mortar attack had slowed to a stop. Mickey got up, the debris falling off his uniform as he spat out dust and poked his head out of his foxhole.
To his right about twenty yards, Hawkes was settled in behind the high-power scope of a .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. Muscular and bare-chested under his body armor, Hawkes had the stub of a cheap unlit cigar dangling from the corner of his lips.
“Take him out, Hawkes,” Mickey yelled. “We got better places to be.”
“We do not move until that good son of Allah shows his head,” Hawkes shouted back, his head never leaving the scope.
“I wanna go home,” Mickey said. “I want you to go home, too.”
“We all wanna go home, kid,” Hawkes said.
“I’m going surfing someday, Hawkes,” Mickey said. “Learn to ride big waves.”
“North Shore, baby,” Hawkes said as if it were a daydream of his, too. “Banzai Pipeline. Sunset Beach and … Hey, there you are, Mr. Haji. Couldn’t stand the suspense, could you? Had to see just how close you came with those last three mortars to blowing the infidels past paradise.”
Hawkes flipped off the safety on the Barrett, and said, “Sending, boys.”
Before anyone could reply, the .50-caliber rifle boomed and belched fire out the ported muzzle. In the shimmering heat Mickey swore he could see the contrail left by the bullet, ripping across space, sixteen hundred and ninety-two meters up the face of the mountain before it struck with deadly impact.
The other men started cheering. Hawkes came off the rifle finall
y, and looked over at Mickey with a big, shit-eating grin. “Now we can go home, kid.”
Mickey felt someone shaking him, and he startled awake.
“Union Station,” the bus driver said. “End of the line.”
Mickey yawned, said, “Sorry, sir. Long day.”
The driver said, “For all of us. You got somewhere to be?”
Mickey felt embarrassed to answer, but said, “My mom’s. It’s not far.”
The driver stood aside for Mickey to go out the door. He went inside the bus terminal, following the signage toward the passenger trains and the Metro. Most of the shops inside Union Station were closed and dark, though there were still a fair number of passengers waiting for Amtrak rides.
Mickey acted cold, pulled his hoodie up to cover his face from the security cameras, and went to short-term lockers, where he used a key to retrieve a small book bag. He reached into the book bag to retrieve a greasy box of cold fried chicken from Popeye’s. The last drumstick and wing tasted nice and spicy.
Mickey dropped the bones back in the box just as an overhead speaker blared: “Amtrak announces the Northeast Corridor Train to Boston, departing 10:10 on Track Four. All aboard!”
With the cardboard box in his hand, he fished in his pocket for the ticket, fell in with the crowd and moved toward the door to Track 4. He showed his ticket to the conductor, who scanned it with disinterest, waved him through, and reached for the ticket of the passenger behind him.
Going with the knot of passengers, Mickey walked through a short tunnel that led out onto the platform. He passed the dining car and several others before spotting a trash can affixed to a post two cars back from the engines.
He walked past it, never slowing as he dumped the greasy, fried chicken take-out box that held the bomb.
Then Mickey boarded the train and settled into a seat. His ticket said Baltimore, but he would get out at the first stop—New Carrollton—and catch the Metro back into the city, where he’d try to get a little sleep before making a call to Chief Stone.
CHAPTER 16
BREE’S PHONE JANGLED at five minutes to three in the morning.
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