by Debbie Burke
Tawny spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Are you doing this alone?”
“No. I have colleagues who do the mechanical engineering, advanced programming, and so on. I oversee what you might term the human engineering.”
“Have you set off a plan before?”
“On a smaller scale. You have probably heard in the news of widespread power outages for the past decade. Many of those have been the work of my colleagues and me. When obsolete infrastructure is already teetering, it is quite simple to push it over the brink. Many of our projects have even been classified as ‘accidents’ rather than deliberate destruction. People accept ‘accidents’ readily.”
“Do you want recognition for…” She wanted to say for your vicious terrorism, but chose different words. “…for bringing down the grid?”
“Oh, I do not want credit. Only people with petty egos need name recognition. In fact, I much prefer anonymity. One accomplishes far more when one remains invisible.”
Kahlil continued to stroke her arm and massage her hand as it rested in his lap. She forced herself to allow it, not jerk away from him. Touching her seemed to reassure him. About what, she didn’t know.
He sighed deeply. “I do regret my wife is not here to see the plan come to fruition.” He shifted in his seat. “She did not understand and preferred direct overt action. I tried to explain to her that, yes, bombs make a dramatic emotional statement but the damage doesn’t last. My plan more accurately parallels the effect of an earthquake that wreaks widespread long-term damage.”
A thudding sound drew Tawny’s attention. Kahlil’s knee jittered back and forth, bumping the center console.
He went on, “Maryam died believing I would never be more than a dull plodder in front of a computer, while she courageously faced death each time she detonated a bomb. But cyber-sabotage is far-reaching, difficult to detect, and so elegant. Keystrokes on your phone will send commands to the other phones around the northwest. Simultaneously all will begin the upload to infect computers that control electrical plants. The generators and turbines will run faster and faster until motors overheat and they thrash themselves to bits. The malfunction will not be recognized until the machines explode from the inside.”
His knee jittered even faster. Never before had he shown such agitation. His kneading of her hand now bordered on painful.
“Maryam never appreciated the subtlety.” He gave Tawny a strange smile. “But you recognized it.” The rubbing stopped and he pressed her hand hard to his mouth.
For an instant, the warm pressure of his lips, the tickle of his mustache reminded her of the electricity she’d felt when she first met him, the false hope of a new relationship, now turned so bitter. Then he lowered her hand again to his lap.
“What really happened to your wife?” she asked.
His chest swelled with a deep inhalation before speaking. “We were to be at a meeting with an affiliated group. As I do so often, I became lost in my work and was late. Maryam had gone ahead. I arrived three minutes after your government’s drone hit the building.” He swiped the back of his gun hand across his eyes. “Three minutes, a mere blink.”
Amid so many lies, Tawny sensed his genuine grief, perhaps the one true thing he’d shared with her. Now, though, she wondered how much stemmed from his wife’s death. Or was the greater anguish that he could never prove his worth to her?
His shaking knee gradually slowed to stillness. Tawny’s hand rested loose in his grip, as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. She slid free and held the steering wheel with both hands.
Miles droned on in silence, headlights piercing black emptiness as they made the long mountain climb outside East Glacier. She had to blink hard to ward off the hypnotic effect of the yellow-striped center lane and the white fog line on the right shoulder. The lines seemed to point toward the relentless route to disaster.
“This is only the pilot project.”
After the extended quiet, Kahlil’s voice startled her. She looked sideways at him. He too appeared mesmerized by yellow lines striping the road.
He went on, “Once the northwest quadrant has been disabled, bigger missions must follow. Within a year, I estimate my plan will result in catastrophic failure of the grid across the entire country. It will affect more people, cripple more industry, and promote more anarchy than the mightiest bomb Maryam could have ever conceived. The economy will never recover from the trillions it will cost to rebuild infrastructure. Your country will fall to its knees.”
Tawny wanted to scream No!
Kahlil was brilliant and monstrous. Was there any way to disrupt his horrifying plot?
“You want revenge on three hundred million people because a drone killed your wife?”
Kahlil chuckled, a reaction that shocked her.
“What’s funny?” she demanded.
“You are, my dearest one. Everything is so simple and straightforward to you. Right, wrong, black, white.”
Did he mean to insult her or compliment her? She couldn’t tell.
“No,” he said, “to answer your question, my plan long pre-dated Maryam’s death.”
The woman moaned for the first time in an hour. Kahlil reached between the seats and adjusted the blankets over her.
“If she doesn’t get to a hospital,” Tawny said, “she’s going to die.”
“She understood the risks.” His jaw clenched. “As did my wife.”
The question Tawny had held back moved forward in her mind. If she was ever to find out, now would be the time. “Why did you choose me?”
He smiled, resting his heavy-lidded gaze on her. “Why would I not choose you? You are beautiful, intelligent, charming, lovely in every way. I have been a fortunate man these past few weeks.”
“You speak as if you care about me but, from the very beginning, you planned to destroy me. I don’t understand. If I cared for someone, I could never intentionally hurt them, cause them to suffer.”
“That, my treasure, is your most charming quality. Your innocence. You will never know how much being with you has lightened my heart. But I have a mission that I am driven to accomplish. You are a part of that mission.”
“A cog in the wheel.”
“Exactly.”
She glared at him. “When the wheel turns and crushes me under it…”
“Then I will remember the precious time we had together as I go forward to my next mission.” He reached over and brushed her hair. “Sometimes death is a reward.”
She wanted to yank her head away but resisted. Keep him talking. Keep listening. “What a strange thing to say.”
“I did not understand that for many years.” His voice took on a faraway quality, as if he spoke from another time. “My father tried to teach me that lesson when I was a little boy but I did not realize his wisdom then. I only cared for the selfishness of living.”
Tawny wondered at the meaning of his odd words. “To live isn’t selfish.”
“Oh, but it is. Death is the ultimate sacrifice of one’s love. To give the gift of death to save someone you love from suffering.”
A haunting image of Dwight floated in her memory, ravaged, emaciated, in agony despite massive doses of morphine. She remembered thinking at the time, Why doesn’t he ask me to end his suffering? She would have done anything to relieve his pain, even if it meant arrest.
She stared directly at Kahlil. “You mean, mercy killing?”
“The way you put the injured deer out of its misery?” He shook his head. “No, my treasure. Not quite the same.”
“Then what?”
He caressed her shoulder. “So innocent.”
Why did he keep touching her? She forced herself to remain still, fight the repulsion.
He went on, “Your country has not been kind to my family. My father was an esteemed scientist. Many years ago, he offered your government a great gift that would have improved the lives of millions. But they scorned him. And scorn was not insult enough. They discredited, di
sgraced, and destroyed him.”
While his left hand massaged her shoulder, the pistol in his right pointed at her. She could no longer stand to look at him, hear his voice, or listen to his rationalizations. She fixed her gaze on the road ahead.
He released her shoulder. “You would have liked my father. You are both trusting innocents, too gentle for this world.”
“What happened to him?”
Kahlil did not answer. Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Finally, as they reached the summit of Marias Pass, Tawny sneaked a sideways glimpse.
His jaw worked, grinding his teeth. His Adam’s apple moved up and down. At last, he whispered, “I killed him.”
She jerked in shock. New fear coiled inside her. A plan to destroy millions of lives was almost too abstract and unreal to comprehend. But to murder his own father, a man he seemed to revere? That horror struck too close. Afraid to keep driving, she pulled to the shoulder, stopped the Jeep, and faced him. Unable to breathe.
In the dimness of the dash lights, his expression startled her, almost as if his eyes wandered independently of each other. “I was eleven years old. I came home from school and found my mother lying on her bed, cradling my three little sisters in her arms. They were all dead. My father sat in a chair beside the bed, weeping. He said, ‘I waited for you, Kahlil. I want all of us to leave together.’ I screamed at him, ‘What have you done, Father?’ He reached out to me, to kill me also. I ran from the room but he caught me in the kitchen. He was sobbing, trembling. I grabbed a knife from the sink and stabbed him in the heart.”
Tawny’s insides lurched.
Kahlil’s face had visibly aged during the telling. Again, she noticed his eyes wandering, unconnected to each other.
Before she could stop herself, she touched his rough, lined cheek. “You don’t have to go through with this. Please.”
He took her hand from his face, held it for a long second, then placed it on the steering wheel. “Yes, I must. We still have far to go.” He nodded for her to pull onto the highway, descending the mountain.
Chapter 16 – Final Sunrise
The blacktop ribbon stretched before them. Tawny estimated at least another hour to reach the dam. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, her throat ached with dryness. Now she really did need to go to the bathroom but Kahlil would never allow her another chance. Her discomfort increased mile after mile, through the peaceful, sleeping settlements of Essex and Nyack. Muscles in her back seized from being in one position too long. Her hands went numb on the steering wheel.
Minutes before dawn, Kahlil directed her to the dam turnoff. They drove across the curving monolith, wind whipping whitecaps in the angry gray water of the reservoir. The sheer concrete face dropped more than fifty stories. Water passed through turbines to generate electricity for hundreds of thousands of people down the line, electricity Kahlil intended to destroy here, and in many other locations.
In a gravel cutout a short distance from the dam, a silver Subaru sat near a trailhead where people often left their vehicles while hiking. It appeared empty.
“Park next to that car, please,” he said.
Tawny pulled beside it and shut off the engine. She tried to peer inside, looking for an indication of campers who might return soon. Kahlil dashed that hope immediately when he pulled out a fob, thumbed it, and the Subaru’s lights flashed.
His getaway vehicle.
“We will move now.” He leveled the pistol at her as they exited the Jeep.
The temperature felt below freezing and a blustering wind buffeted the canyon walls. Despite the wind chill, Tawny stretched for a few seconds, trying to release the knots in her back and hips from the long drive. He watched her but said nothing. When her teeth began to chatter, he opened the Subaru passenger door for her. She huddled inside, away from the gusting wind, shivering without her jacket. He closed the door, went around to the driver’s side, and got in.
Exhaustion weighed her down. Her arms felt leaden from gripping the steering wheel without a break. Thirst parched her throat.
Kahlil slipped the pistol into his windbreaker pocket, pulled out her smartphone, and began to swipe and tap the screen. He must be doing the final programming.
Tawny could not prevent him from destroying the power grid. She’d tried—and failed—to talk him out of it. The plan surged forward, no matter what. He’d made that clear.
Shame again overcame her. How foolish and gullible she’d been. She’d been betrayed and used like an empty-headed puppet to commit evil that would affect millions of people. Was there any point in going on?
Her children no longer needed her. Her husband was gone.
Dwight once told her the most dangerous human being was one who had nothing to lose.
She had nothing to lose.
Kahlil finished programming the phone then wiped it clean with a cloth. Still holding it with the cloth, he offered it to her. “Please take this.”
Fingerprints, she thought. He wants my fingerprints on the triggering device. She folded her arms and stared at him.
Green eyes gazed deep into hers. Surprisingly, she didn’t see anger in them but rather sadness. “As you wish.” His voice sounded strangely resigned. He laid the phone, wrapped in the cloth, on the dash. “Would you like some water?”
Although she wanted to resist him, her mouth begged for moisture. Her head throbbed from dehydration. She gave in and nodded.
He reached in the back seat and brought forward two bottles of water. She unscrewed the lid and swigged down the best part of the pint. Her grateful throat ached from swallowing.
In her peripheral vision, she saw him sipping from his bottle, watching her.
When she paused for a breath, she noticed a bitter aftertaste. Kahlil regarded her even more intently, a laser focus. Flecks of residue settled at the bottom of the bottle. The water had already hit her stomach, making it gurgle.
Poison!
Kahlil gently took the bottle from her and put it in the back. “I am sorry. I had hoped to spare your life. If things had worked out as I originally planned, you would have been arrested and almost inevitably been convicted because of ample evidence against you that I provided. Your attorney would have worked diligently to save you but he would fail. You would be sent to prison. But you would have lived.”
Poison coursed through her body. How long did she have left? Minutes? Seconds?
A sliver of sun edged over the mountains. Rays sliced through dark clouds and sparkled on the whitecaps of the reservoir. How beautiful. Her last sunrise.
Kahlil reached to cup her cheek. Frozen in shock, she did not move. His warm palm rested against her face, caressing it slowly as if savoring the last opportunity.
“It will be painless, my treasure. I truly never wanted to cause you hurt. You will drift off and it will be over. I will return you to your Jeep with a suicide note and press your fingerprints on the phone. My colleague and I will be gone in the Subaru before anyone finds you.”
Buzzing grew loud in her ears. Dusky blurs floated across her vision. She tried to keep her eyes open, to focus, to stare at his face. Stay awake. Her surroundings drifted away, as if she was in a boat passing a vague foggy shore. Heaviness deadened her limbs. Her neck wobbled, weakening under the weight of her head. She allowed her face to rest in his hand because that took less effort than to hold her head up.
He gathered her in his arms. No strength to resist.
His lips brushed hers, tenderly, sweetly. “I will go now because I cannot bear to watch the life flow out of you, just as I could not bear to shoot you at the rest stop.” He laid her back against the seat. “I will be close.”
Her head lolled sideways. She felt herself sinking, melting into the seat.
He murmured, “Everyone I have ever loved dies.” Then he got out of the car and closed the door.
Tawny forced her eyes open. She watched him walk away from the car then break into a run, arms and legs pumping hard, the back of his black jacket ba
llooning in the wind, dark hair whipping.
Coward!
Anger galvanized into a solid, unyielding pillar inside her. Stay awake!
Kahlil ran across the road toward the parapet overlooking the dam. About a hundred yards away, he slowed. Stepped up on the sidewalk. Stopped. Leaned on the parapet, looked down to the river below.
Anger cleared Tawny’s mind. Don’t claim you love me, you monster.
The wind howled. Or was the roaring inside her head?
Images drifted in her brain. Emma. Neal. She’d never see them again, never tell them how much she loved them.
Dwight. Would he be waiting for her?
A brief sparkle of memory flashed. Teenaged Emma stumbling home, after drinking too much at a party. Neal, the experienced older brother, pulled her by the arm into the bathroom, bent her over the toilet, and shoved his finger down her throat to make her vomit. “You’ll thank me in the morning,” he’d said. “The less alcohol absorbed, the easier the hangover.”
Would that work with the drug Kahlil had put in her water bottle? Another memory flickered of her first aid training when the children were little, In case of poison, induce vomiting.
She leaned over the driver’s seat, rammed her finger down her throat. Water and bile came up quickly. She retched sour bile until her stomach was empty. Cramps gripped her but maybe she’d gotten rid of at least part of the poison before it entered her system.
Her mind felt a little clearer. If nothing else, she thought with grim humor, she’d ruined the place where Kahlil had to sit. Small revenge.
