by Gary Ponzo
Derka shook his head. The idiot actually expected an answer. He was looking at the man, but in the corner of his eye he measured the distance to the gun. It was even closer to him than the man was. He decided he wouldn’t need it. He leapt toward the stranger and sprung his foot into the man’s chest, sending him backward against the wall. The man caught Derka’s ankle with his hand and pulled him down on his back.
The man jumped on Derka and squeezed one hand around his neck, the other smacked jabs into his face. Derka was impressed with the man’s abilities. Unlike most Americans, who were used to fighting with high tech equipment, this one seemed to be familiar with hand-to-hand combat. Still, he was no match for Derka.
Derka jammed his thumb into the man’s eye and applied the necessary pressure to force the man’s hand from his throat. For a moment the man rolled to his side and tended to the pained eye. Mustafa looked over his shoulder and realized that the gun was now within arms reach. He grabbed the gun and straddled the man’s chest, digging the barrel into the loose skin under his chin.
“Who are you?” Derka demanded.
The man choked on the pressure the gun caused on his larynx. “Please,” the man said, looking up with his one good eye. “I was supposed to find out how you were going to blow up the White House, then get the information back to the FBI,” the man gasped while Derka enjoyed cramming the pistol deeper into the man’s throat, trying to prevent him from talking any further. “Before you shoot . . . at least tell me how you were going to do that.”
A sly grin spread across Derka’s face. Why not, he thought, the secret’s going to die on the floor of this bathroom. He leaned over the man and whispered, “With a missile, from underwater. It cannot be stopped and it cannot be found. Kemmel Kharrazi himself is on his way to our headquarters thousands of miles from here, where he will detonate the device himself.”
“Where’s that?” the man urged.
“You are very curious for a dead man,” Derka sneered. He spat down on the man’s face. Slowly, and with great satisfaction, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled it again. Nothing, just a faint snap. He removed the magazine and saw that the gun wasn’t loaded. Sitting on the man’s chest he cocked his head, “You threatened me with an unloaded weapon?”
The man looked up at him, the fear in his face replaced by a broad smile. One that Derka had remembered seeing on his cousin Ledlee’s face after he had just fooled Derka with a card trick.
The man reached down and pulled a small colt revolver from his ankle holster. Derka felt the muzzle of the gun tickling his temple. The stranger, who went from drunk to sober, from weaponless to armed, looked up at Derka with a dirty grin. “You fucked with the wrong people, Mustafa.”
Derka never had the time to consider the comment.
Chapter 22
Dave Tanner explained what he knew about Julie Bracco’s capture, then narrow escape from a KSF soldier. There were plenty of witnesses to fill in the blanks for the team of FBI investigators who rushed to the scene. Nick sat stiff in the front seat while he listened to the fate of FBI Agent William Ford, found dead on the side of the road. Nick stared into the night as the car’s headlights cut through the darkness that surrounded him. He closed his eyes. The combination of stress and weariness forced his mind to wander. He saw his wife’s face, smiling, encouraging him to come closer, see what she had for him. His heart pounded fiercely as he approached. She’s holding something in her cupped hands, but he can’t see it. He moves closer. She holds it up to his face and he realizes that it’s a human heart. It’s bloody and dripping from her hands, but it’s beating. He returns his gaze to her face and he blinks. It’s not Julie. It’s Kemel Kharrazi and he’s squeezing the heart, squashing the organ like a ball of clay. “You know it’s personal, Nick.” Kharrazi says.
Nick sees Kharrazi in front of him as clear as day. The voice next to him says, “I said it’s personal.”
Nick turned and saw Dave Tanner. He narrowed his eyes at Nick. “You look washed out.”
Nick sat back and realized his heart was pounding in his chest. A trickle of sweat snaked down the side of his face. “Just hang with me, Dave. I’ll fight through it.”
“That’s all right,” Tanner said. “I’m on your side, remember?”
Nick slumped his head against the window. “I know.”
Dave Tanner was driving too fast when he skidded to a stop in the half-circle drive that fronted the Emergency room. Nick jumped from the car and ran inside. Breathlessly, he scanned the waiting room for a familiar face. Between the fatigue and the short, quick breaths, he was forced to see through a maze of floating spots across his field of view. Without knowing where he was going for certain, he leaned his head forward and his body followed. Nick almost knocked himself out when his momentum drove him into a closed steel door.
“You can’t go back there, Sir,” a women’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see a heavyset woman sitting behind a stark white desk.
Nick yanked his credentials from his pocket and shoved them to an inch in front of the women’s nose. “FBI. Where’s Julie Bracco?”
The woman was startled for a moment, then searched her computer screen. “She’s in OR number three. She’s being operated on right now.” The woman looked at Nick as if she wasn’t sure how far she had to go to appease him.
Nick shook his credentials, which were still accosting her face. “Let’s go.”
“Sir, I . . . uh—”
“If you want to see my gun I’ll be glad to show it to you.”
That got her picking up the phone. “OR nurse to reception desk please,” she said, her eyes never leaving Nick’s face. “Stat!”
The steel door swung open and Nick rushed past a girl in blue scrubs, who was pulling down her mask. “Sir,” she started, but Nick’s mind was too occupied for her trivial objections. He was going to find his wife and make certain she lived, even if he had to hold his 9mm to a surgeon’s head to get his best effort.
Nick frantically scanned the labels above each door as he scurried down the long corridor: storage, scrub room, OR #1, OR #2—there it was, OR #3. Nick thrust open the heavy door and rushed inside.
The room was vacant. There wasn’t even a table sitting under the enormous round light that hung from the ceiling. Nick stepped outside the room and quickly double-checked the number. When he returned, he heard water running. A man dressed in green from head to toe was scrubbing his hands in a metal sink, his back to Nick. Nick was so frenzied, he’d missed him the first time around. He quickly glanced under the surgery light again to see if the table had returned. It hadn’t.
The man seemed to sense Nick’s presence and looked over his shoulder. “Can I help you?” he said, pulling off his green surgeon’s cap.
“Julie Bracco?” Nick stammered.
The man hastily worked his hands between a couple of paper towels. He stepped on a lever at the bottom of a white waste receptacle and discarded the towels when the lid opened. He strode toward Nick with and open hand. “I’m Doctor Williams,” he said, shaking Nick’s hand. “Are you Julie’s husband?”
“She was here?” Nick breathed, pointing to the empty spot where a table belonged.
Dr. Williams didn’t bother to look. He appeared to understand what Nick was suggesting. “She’s alive.”
Nick felt the color return to his face. “She is?”
Dr. Williams coaxed Nick to an empty stool that sat next to a dormant ECG monitor. “Sit down,” he said. “You are Julie’s husband, right?”
Nick nodded.
The doctor removed a cone-shaped cup from a dispenser and filled it with cold water from a water cooler. He handed the cup to Nick. “Here, drink this.”
Nick poured the water down his throat in a gulp and crushed the cup into a tiny ball. “Tell me, Doctor. I want to know everything.”
Dr. Williams pulled a rolling stool in front of Nick and sat facing him. “Mr. Bracco, your wife was shot in the back of the h
ead at pretty close range.” He pointed to the back of his own head with an index finger. “The bullet entered her scalp here, in the occipital, at such an angle that it deflected off of her skull, remained inside of her scalp, then traveled around the exterior of her skull—” He traced a line from the back of his head around to the middle of his forehead. “Then it exited here, at the frontal hairline, never entering her skull, and never compromising the integrity of her cranium.” He smiled, exposing a mouthful of perfectly straight teeth. “Mr. Bracco, your wife is a very lucky woman.”
Nick’s jaw trembled. “She’s not going to die?”
The doctor shook his head. “She has a few contusions from her head hitting the ground and a clean gunshot wound in her shoulder, but that’s all.” Dr. Williams slapped the side of Nick’s thigh. “She’s going to be fine, Mr. Bracco. Now you on the other hand?”
Nick felt a smile crease his face.
“She’s down in recovery,” the doctor said. “Go ahead and grab a seat in the waiting room, and a nurse will take you back to her when the anesthesia wears off. Should be another hour or so.”
He must have seen a suspicious look on Nick’s face, because he held up his right hand as if being sworn in to testify in court. “I promise, Mr. Bracco, she’s in the best of hands here. Let her rest up and you’ll be able to see her.”
Nick slowly traced his steps back to the waiting room. He ignored the stares from the few employees that milled around the reception desk and found a hard plastic seat at the far end of the room.
Dave Tanner appeared in the seat next to him. “How is she?”
“She’s going to be all right,” he said. “Apparently, she’s got a hard head.”
Dave didn’t ask any more questions and Nick leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and dreamed of open fields of grass, swaying in the breeze. A mountain full of trees loomed over a valley with a cool stillness. Somewhere in the distance a child giggled.
Walt Jackson and Louis Dutton were never the closest of associates. Dutton always tolerated Jackson’s defense of his Baltimore Field Agents and Jackson merely endured Dutton’s arrogance as FBI Director. But ever since the KSF began their bombing spree, the two men seemed to unite in an unspoken bond.
In a gesture of great deference, Dutton declared the Baltimore FBI field office as the command center for the KSF operation. This gave Jackson the show of confidence that not only FBI agents took notice of, but the White House as well. Louis Dutton was throwing his support behind Walt Jackson and if there were going to be any political scapegoats, they were going to have to indict the entire agency, not just Walt.
Inside of the War Room, Jackson paced in front of the computer-generated images projected onto the white walls. There were twelve separate images of varying sizes. Some showed a constant satellite image of suspected KSF safe houses, while others displayed radar screens. At the end of the wall, sentences scrolled downward in a continuous display of real time Associated Press releases. The image getting most of the attention was the illustration of North America.
Jackson wore a sophisticated headset with a wireless transmission that contained seventy-five separate frequencies. In his left hand was a tiny control panel that he used to direct the traffic of information that he was constantly receiving. Feeding him the data were ten FBI analysts, twenty-two FBI terrorist specialists, three CIA operatives, and two NSA analysts who were furiously feeding information into the multi-million dollar computer link-up between all three agencies’ database. A merging of information the intelligence agencies had never seen before.
The analysts wore headsets of their own and sat in cubicles set up in the War Room, each one with his or her own assignment. Once their information became significant, they buzzed Jackson and updated him on any modifications.
Jackson strolled across the front of the room, a maestro conducting a symphony of data. Dutton caught up to Jackson, both of them with unbuttoned collars and loosened ties. Dutton scanned a printout of the latest KSF arrests while Jackson stared at the immense visual of the United States.
“According to our best estimates,” Dutton said, peering down at his information, “we’ve been able to capture sixty percent of their force.”
Jackson nodded. “That leaves three hundred or so still on the loose.”
“And the names that aren’t on this list include the top twenty soldiers in their arsenal. So we’ve gotten their pawns, but their upper echelon remains intact.”
Jackson pushed a button on his remote. “Janice, exactly how many KSF remain unaccounted for?”
He turned to Dutton, “Two hundred and ninety four to be precise.”
Dutton’s focus remained on the data sheet. “You know, Walt, this kid in Colorado was talking way too much to—” he looked up at Jackson and saw him holding up his finger, requesting silence while he listened intently to an analyst talking in his earpiece.
“Okay,” Jackson said, nodding, agreeing with the analyst who sat in front of a computer screen less than twenty feet away. “I understand.”
Jackson clicked a button on his control panel, then slid half of his headset down so he converse with his boss. “The Navy has five subs scouring the shoreline. The Army is scoping every lake, stream and pond within fifty miles of the White House.”
“This KSF guy could’ve been blowing smoke.”
“I think it’s the best juice we have to go on. He had no reason to fabricate a story like that. Especially when he believed the man he’s talking to was going to be dead in a few seconds. If he wanted the guy to leave this world with a dire outlook for the future, he could’ve said they were going to detonate a nuclear weapon and destroy the eastern seaboard. But no, he specifically said a missile would hit the White House from underwater. That’s too precise to be made up.”
A young analyst handed Jackson a sheet of paper. “The computer confirms our hypothesis.”
Jackson scanned the sheet, then examined the map with narrowed eyes. Dutton looked over his shoulder. “Makes sense,” he said.
Jackson took a swig of cold coffee. “I believe the info our friend ascertained in the restroom was genuine. I think Kharrazi probably is thousands of miles from here, and if you figure how much scrutiny the borders are receiving, well . . . it’s only logical.”
Jackson placed his mug down. “Tolliver, Downing,” he barked.
A moment later, two disheveled men with droopy eyelids lumbered up to their boss.
“You guys look like crap,” Jackson said. He got a perfunctory shrug from Tolliver while Downing just stared back.
Looking past them, over their shoulders, Jackson said, “I want you to take Farnworth, Curtin and Chambers with you to Las Vegas.”
“Vegas? Where they kidnapped Nick’s brother?”
“That’s right. We suspect that’s where their headquarters is stationed. We’ll get the National Guard and local authorities to assist you.”
“Las Vegas is a big town, Walt. You want us to go door to door?”
Dutton stuck his nose in the circle. “You’re right,” he sneered. “Let’s just call it a day and grab some donuts.”
Jackson regarded his men with raised eyebrows, the Director of the FBI next to him with his hands on his hips. Power like that money couldn’t buy.
“Yeah, yeah, we got the message,” Tolliver responded wearily. Both men shuffled off like they were being sent to the gas chamber.
A light flashed on Jackson’s remote designating an incoming call. He pushed the appropriate button and said, “Jackson.”
“I just read the paper,” Samuel Fisk’s voice was somber.
Jackson looked at his watch. Was it almost 6 AM already? “You’re working early this morning, Mr. Secretary.”
“Actually, I’m working late. I took a break to read the Post and found an interesting story about a homicide in a nightclub down on Thames. Supposedly the victim was Kurdish. Anything I should know?”
“Nothing you should know, Sir.”
&nb
sp; “Is this for my own good?”
“Nothing you should know, Sir,” Jackson repeated.
A pause. “I see. Well I hope this nothing afforded us some valuable information.”
“You’re an insightful man, Mr. Secretary.”
“Walt?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“The President refuses to vacate the White House. We’re going to stash him down in the bunker. He’ll be safe there unless there’s reason to suspect this thing could be nuclear.”
“There is not a shred of evidence that suggests that. However, I would still do everything I could to get him out of there.”
A frustrated voice came back, “Shit, Walt, is the White House going to be ground zero tonight, or not?”
Jackson hesitated. If he waffled about his ability to prevent the White House bombing, he may as well hand in his resignation right then. “Not on my watch, Mr. Secretary.”
There was silence. When Fisk finally spoke, his voice seemed to contain a smile. “Exactly what I wanted to hear. How’d you know that?”
“Because it’s the truth,” Jackson said. “And I know you always want the truth.”
Chapter 23
“Nick.”
Nick woke up startled. Matt stood in front of him, holding a Styrofoam cup with steam escaping from the lid. The waiting room was bright with sunlight and beginning to buzz with activity.
Nick wiped his mouth dry. He was slumped back in an uncomfortable position for how long? He looked at his watch. Almost 8 AM.
“There’s a woman who’d like to speak with you.” Matt said, slipping Nick’s cup of coffee into the beverage holder at the end of the armrest.
“How long have you been here?” Nick said, rubbing his eyes.
“A couple of hours. Julie’s been sleeping, so I told the nurse to let you snore for a while. But she’s up now and for some strange reason she wants to see your ugly mug.”
Nick massaged a cramp from his neck. “Where is she?”
