by Gary Ponzo
Nick took a deep breath and shouted. “Hey, Rashid. How’s that ear of yours doing?”
It was the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a snorting bull. And it worked. An instant later the door toppled straight down with a thud and the assassin stood frozen in the doorway. He was leaning backward and off-balance. It was human nature to recoil from the unexpected. But Rashid Baser was more animal than human, so when Matt came out of the dark with the table leg, he was a step too late. Rashid caught the dowel with his forearm and deflected the blow.
Rashid and Matt were clutched in a fierce embrace. Matt had done the smart thing and wrapped himself around Rashid before the assassin could fire either gun.
Nick needed to get to Rashid, but his legs were lead weights. He lurched forward and focused on the only thing his eyes could see—Rashid’s silencer. It was loosely aimed at Nick, but Rashid was too busy dancing the violent shuffle with Matt. Both of them were up against the wall, head-butting each other back and forth.
Just as Nick was about to reach out for the gun, Rashid found him and aimed at his head. Nick was no more than three feet away, but he might as well have been on the moon. He wasn’t going to reach the gun in time.
Rashid’s lip curled upward and his face glowed with anticipation. His arm was fully extended now and marksman straight.
Nick sucked a quick breath.
Rashid pulled the trigger.
Nick’s legs faltered as his entire body seemed to spasm.
Rashid pulled the trigger again and again.
The lipstick kiss flashed across Nick’s mind as he waited to collapse. Only he couldn’t feel the shot. Was this how it happened? Was his body protecting him from the pain and sending him into shock?
When he looked up, he realized that Rashid’s silencer wasn’t spitting out bullets. There was just the small click of the hammer behind an empty chamber. Rashid had committed the killer’s mortal sin. He’d lost count of his rounds. Maybe he thought he didn’t need to know. He’d had two guns and plenty of time to reload. Maybe Nick had infuriated him enough to hasten his entry into the room.
Either way, Nick was still breathing. While he murmured words of gratitude, his partner kneed Rashid in the groin. The terrorist grunted like a prizefighter and hunched over. Matt used his height advantage to stay on top of him. They seemed to merge into one entity as they took short, quick steps to support their upright wrestling match. Neither could afford to be the one who fell first.
Nick saw Matt’s gun on the floor behind Rashid. The assassin must have dropped it in the struggle. Nick was about to scramble for it when he heard a wild shriek.
It was Matt.
Rashid had clenched Matt’s ear between his teeth. He twisted and pulled on the cartilage until Matt’s ear looked like tan silly putty. Rashid was about to pull it completely off when Nick reached down and picked up the wooden table leg. He had a clear shot at Rashid’s head and he swung hard. The thick wooden dowel reverberated back in Nick’s hands as he connected across the back of Rashid’s head.
Rashid dropped to the floor. Nick grabbed the gun and placed his foot on Rashid’s neck. He heard Matt behind him gasping and muttering curses.
Nick pointed the 9mm at Rashid’s nose, only a couple of feet below him. “Just give me a reason,” he said. “I misinterpret one of your blinks and it’s goodnight, Rashid.”
Matt came around Nick with a pair of handcuffs. He rolled Rashid on his side and yanked the handcuffs onto the assassin’s wrists until Rashid’s face couldn’t hide the pain.
“You fight like a fucking girl,” Matt huffed, bringing his blood-spotted hand down from his ear.
Rashid glared up at Nick with rattlesnake eyes. “You think this is it? You think this is the end?”
Nick didn’t speak. He felt an anxiety attack tightening his chest. Shit, not another episode. Not now. He didn’t dare give away his condition, though. He handed Matt his gun back and said, “Here, I’m afraid I’ll shoot the bastard.”
“You think he won’t come after you?” Rashid spat, saliva spewing from tight lips.
“I don’t know,” Nick said, trying to appear nonchalant even though his entire body trembled. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
In a deliberately soft tone, Rashid said, “There is no one bigger than Kemel Kharrazi. And that is who you just brought upon yourself. You are now the target, Nicholas. No one else, just you. Are you prepared for that?”
But Nick barely heard him. He stepped around the shell casings and headed outside to slip away on his own. Maybe weather the panic attack before the place was swarming with FBI agents. Nick already knew the questions that would be asked and he was already tired of answering them.
As he approached the open doorway, Nick saw Truth’s body flat on his back, eyes shocked open. There were three bullet holes in his chest directly over his heart. Nick was relieved to know he went fast. He knelt down and touched Truth’s face with his fingertips. There was nothing to say. He could not have felt any more helpless than he did at that moment.
Sirens closed fast from two separate directions. The press would have a great time portraying America as a safer place because of Rashid’s capture. But Nick knew better. There was something much more malicious going on. Rashid Baser didn’t go through all the trouble to sneak into the United States to exact revenge on a single FBI agent. It wouldn’t stop the press though. At least in the short term. They’ll raise the freedom flag high and swagger with delight. In the world of terrorism there was no one bigger than Rashid Baser. No one.
Except Kemel Kharrazi.
Chapter 3
Nick left Dr. Alan Morgan’s office on Pratt Street just after noon. It was three days since the shootout and regulation mandated a session with a professional counselor whenever bullets left a chamber. The affected had seventy-two hours to complete the session. Matt went first, then waited in the car for his partner. Nick’s session took longer than Matt’s. There was too much psychological damage to go over in just one visit, so Nick agreed to return when the time was right. Which meant never.
Nick got in the car and started the engine. He drove a gray Ford sedan with soot clinging so masterfully to its exterior it appeared to create a designer pattern. This was not born out of neglect as much as an attempt to blend in.
He drove west on Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Baltimore field office. Matt sat in the passenger seat with an open lunch box on his lap. He held up an apple and inspected it like he was about to dust it for prints.
“What kind of apple is this?” Matt asked.
“How am I supposed to know?” Nick said.
“You do talk to your wife at night don’t you?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, don’t you tell her what I like and don’t like?”
“Listen, do you know why she makes you lunch whenever I have any kind of doctors appointment?”
“Why?”
“Because, she thinks you’ll sit in that waiting area eating lunch, while I’m getting my teeth cleaned and you’ll protect me from terrorists that might barge in and try to kill me.”
“Are you serious?” Matt chuckled.
Nick nodded. “However, what she doesn’t know is that you sit in the car and read Playboy, so if a terrorist ever did come in you’d have a hard-on so big you’d probably sit there with a smirk on your face and point directly to the office I was in.”
Matt took a bite from the apple and chewed slowly. “Playboy has excellent interviews.”
Nick rolled his eyes. He stopped the car at a light and hung his elbow out the window.
“What’s this meeting about?” Nick asked.
“All I know is, it’s a Red Ball special, and nothing good ever comes out of a Red Ball.”
A young black kid wearing a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap approached the car holding a stack of newspapers. “Wanna paper, Mister?”
Nick reached for his wallet, pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the kid. “Are you
an Orioles fan?”
The kid handed him a copy of the Baltimore Sun, “You bet.” He dug his hands into his pocket for change.
“That’s okay, keep it,” Nick said.
“Thanks, Officer,” the kid smiled, then wandered toward the next car in line.
Matt laughed. “We may as well have a siren on the roof.”
Nick glanced at the front page. A soldier poked his head out from a U.S. tank surrounded by a mob of angry Turkish civilians. Their faces were twisted into sinister shapes. Their mouths open, assaulting the soldier with venomous emissions, while a U.S. flag burned in the background. Nick dropped the newspaper onto Matt’s lap and accelerated through the intersection. “Looks like the boys are getting a warm welcome in Turkey.”
Matt gripped the paper and shook his head. “They don’t belong there in the first place.”
“You know that and I know that, but try telling that to the President’s pollsters.”
“The Kurds have every right to fight back. Just because Turkey is part of NATO, doesn’t mean we should always side with them.”
“It’s all politics,” Nick said. “The Turks slaughter thousands of innocent Kurds and when the Kurds retaliate, we show up and claim that innocent Turks are being killed. Shit, everyone’s innocent.” He turned to Matt, “Except you.”
Matt gave him an aw-shucks grin. It reminded Nick of the night they’d met nine years earlier when Matt was still a sharpshooter with the FBI’s SWAT team. Matt chose to purchase a 10-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with his own funds and had an opportunity to use it that night while leaving a bar in West Baltimore. He saw a man in a blue FBI windbreaker crouched behind a Volkswagen dodging shots from another man crouched three cars ahead of him. The man in the FBI windbreaker was Nick. It was his first year with the Bureau and he found himself chasing down a wily gun smuggler by himself.
Across the street Matt had acquired a perfect angle. From thirty yards away he blew out the right kneecap of the assailant, sending him to the ground immobile and wailing with pain. Nick swiftly took advantage of his good fortune and cuffed his prisoner. When Matt approached, Nick asked him for identification. “They never asked Superman for any ID when he saved the day,” Matt quipped, holding up his credentials. It was Nick’s introduction to the aw-shucks grin.
A few months later Nick’s partner retired and he needed a replacement. Matt was the first phone call he made.
Now, Nick glanced over at Matt who was slowly working his way through the newspaper. “Anything about Rashid, yet?”
“That’s what I’m looking for.”
“If it was there it would be on the front page.”
“You would think,” Matt said. He folded the paper and reached back to drop it on the back seat. “How does Walt keep that stuff locked up so well?”
“He’s the best I’ve ever seen at controlling the flow of information.”
Matt pulled a baggie of assorted cheese cubes from the lunch pail and held up a cube to Nick.
“No. Thanks.”
Matt popped a cube in his mouth and began a slow chew. “So, what did Dr. Morgan have to say?”
“He said I don’t see the birds and the trees.”
“What?”
“He says I don’t spend enough time noticing the world of nature around me.” Nick shrugged. “Go figure.”
“Did you tell him that staring at sparrows while doing our line of work could get you killed?”
“He wouldn’t understand.”
Matt ate another cheese cube. “Did you go into your dysfunctional family?”
Nick glanced at his partner. “What dysfunctional family?”
“Oh, come on. Your cousin is connected to the Capelli’s and your brother is a compulsive gambler out in Vegas.”
Nick frowned. “Phil’s not a compulsive gambler. He’s just on a prolonged losing streak.”
“Yeah, a twelve year losing streak.”
Nick smiled. “That’s about right. He’ll spin out of it eventually.”
Matt examined the contents of a power bar he took from the lunch box. He appeared dissatisfied and returned it to the box. “Too many carbs,” he said.
“I’ll mention it to Julie.”
“So if you didn’t talk about your family, what else did you discuss?”
“Well, he says I should avoid stress.”
“Uh, huh. Did he tell you anything of practical value?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes even common sense needs to come from a different voice before you recognize it. Besides, I was thinking about taking some time off anyway. Julie deserves a vacation. We haven’t been anywhere that wasn’t job related in . . . shit, probably five years.”
“How long have I been telling you the same thing? You’re burning out. Take some time and recharge your batteries. What else did the good doctor have to say? Maybe I can offer some insight.”
Nick sighed. “I’m going to get advice from you?”
“Hey, we’re coming up on our ten year anniversary together. Why wouldn’t you listen to me?”
“Pardon me, sir, aren’t you the guy who parked his car in the fast lane of the interstate at three in the morning to have sex with a stripper?"
“Yeah, so?”
“A stripper you’d met that night at a bachelor party?”
“Okay, so I’m a little impulsive. That doesn’t mean I’m not trustworthy.”
“It was your bachelor party.”
“All right, so I realized I was too young to be married and I subconsciously sabotaged my engagement. I was just a kid. That was before I even met you. Besides, I only told you that story so you could see how far I’ve come.”
Nick laughed. But when he looked back at Matt he knew he’d exposed an old wound. Matt’s fiancée was a fellow FBI agent he’d met at Quantico. They were both young, but beneath the smug veneer, Matt always lamented the loss of Jennifer Steele.
“How long did you guys date?”
“Three and a half years. She hated the city. Any city. She was a country girl at heart.”
“Where did she end up?” Nick asked.
“Somewhere out west. New Mexico, something like that.”
“All that time you were together she never mentioned the fact that she wanted to live in the country?”
Matt shrugged.
“I see,” Nick said. “You didn’t think she’d be able to resist your charm. You thought she’d be a city girl for the great Matt McColm.”
When Matt didn’t respond, Nick decided to let it go. They drove with the windows open, just the noise of the busy streets passing between them. After a while Matt took a bite of his apple and pointed to a cruddy white spot on Nick’s windshield. “You may not see the birds, partner, but they sure see you.”
Chapter 4
Just outside the Beltway, amidst the undistinguished block structures of an industrial park, a lone brick building sat quietly behind an American flag and the shade of a royal oak. The Baltimore field office afforded the FBI quick access to the highway, yet was unobtrusive enough to be mistaken for a post office. Nick parked in the lot behind the building. It wasn’t a coincidence that the building itself prevented a clear view of the agents’ cars. Very few things the FBI did were by chance.
Matt gripped the doorknob to the employee entrance and waited for Nick to swipe a security pass through the receptor. A small black box blinked green and Matt yanked open the steel door to the administrative wing. They entered the building and nodded to secretaries who were busy talking into headsets and tapping keyboards. They made their way down a corridor with illuminated portraits of past FBI directors surrounded by ridged wallpaper with somber geometric patterns. The corridor emptied into the center of the building; an open space whose perimeter was comprised of mismatched fabric chairs. The bullpen. A waiting area for visitors who were summoned to the office by one or more of the agents. In the center of the bullpen sat a wooden table with magazines sprawled across the top.
When Nic
k and Matt saw who sat in the worn-out chairs, they both stopped. Ed Tolliver, Carl Rutherford, Mel Downing and Dave Tanner sat at the far end of the bullpen in deep conversation. They were known simply as “The Team.” The four of them with Nick and Matt made up an elite counterterrorism squad of agents who specialized in significant foreign threats to the United States. The three two-man teams circled the globe in pursuit of foiling terrorist activity with American targets. The best of the best.
J. Edgar himself began the specialist trend in 1934 when he authorized a special squad of agents to capture John Dillinger. It was this philosophy that produced the group of specialists now gathered in the bullpen of the Baltimore field office. It also meant that each team was rarely on the same continent, never mind the same building. You didn’t have to be a seasoned veteran to know that something was amiss.
As Nick and Matt approached, Dave Tanner stood and extended his arm. He tapped fists with Nick, then Matt. A tacit congratulation for capturing someone on the top-ten list. Then he got a close look at Matt’s left ear.
“What happened, Deadeye?” Tanner smiled. “You finally hook a woman with too much spunk for you?”
Matt gingerly touched his taped earlobe. “Gee, Dave, that’s uncanny. I’m beginning to think you’re some kind of investigator or something.”
Tanner didn’t seem to hear him. He reexamined Matt’s ear. “Rashid didn’t go down without a fight, did he?”
“Would you expect him to?” Matt said, not answering the question directly, but close enough for two spies who understood the language.
“Probably not,” Tanner said. “Let’s just hope it sticks.”
Nick picked up on Tanner’s tone. Next to Nick, Tanner was the Team’s senior agent and he always had his ear to the ground whenever a big prisoner was being interrogated.
