“Melody Ba-ba-na,” she answered.
Officer Sales laughed. “Ba-ba-na?”
“That’s Boyington,” the lady explained. “She has a little trouble with such a long name. She should have a name like Sales and then she could say it!”
Officer Sales laughed and patted Melody on the arm. “Your mommy will get you some ice cream, honey; you just have to go over there by that big red castle.”
“Thank you, officer,” the lady said. She smiled, wandered away, and set Melody down — who soon went to look at some small yellow flowers next to the walkway.
Al-Bedawi raised his hands in a gesture of futility. “I cannot find permit,” he blurted as he glanced at his watch.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Officer Sales responded as he motioned to a second police officer who had remained on the walkway rather than get involved in this seemingly minor situation.
“What’s the problem, Officer?” asked Sergeant Jim Kennedy in his usual businesslike manner. He approached stiffly and professionally, almost as if marching in a parade. Tom Sales laughed to himself. Working with Jim Kennedy was always a gas. The guy was so overly professional it was almost like watching a spoof! You had to hand it to him, though; he was very thorough and very good.
“Sergeant Kennedy, I believe we have a doubly, no, make that a triply challenged ice-cream vendor. No permit, no manners, and no ice cream. Rudeness isn’t a crime — just kinda dumb if you’re a salesman. But since he doesn’t have any ice cream, I don’t know if we can cite him for not having a permit. We haven’t seen him selling anything.”
“Well, don’t you think pushing a cart around that advertises ice cream is enough evidence?”
“I don’t know. You’re senior — what do you think?”
Kennedy scrutinized al-Bedawi and his cart, assessing whether the vendor posed any danger. “Kind of a large cart for ice cream, isn’t it? That thing must be nine or ten feet long.”
“I–I just push cart they give me,” al-Bedawi answered nervously, trying to remain calm.
Kennedy walked to the back of the cart and gave the handle a shove. The cart didn’t budge. “Jeez, heavy too!” He put his full weight behind it and managed to roll the cart a few inches. “Wow! I guess that’s why you’re sweating so much, huh?”
“It hot day.”
“Yeah, but why would an ice-cream cart weigh so much if it’s empty? Let’s see in the cart, please.”
Always the consummate gentleman, thought Officer Sales.
Al-Bedawi froze. His worst fears were coming true. He had to stall them. He moved to stand between the officers and the cart.
“N-No!” he stammered. “Where is search warrant?”
The two officers laughed spontaneously. Considering that al-Bedawi was a foreigner, Sergeant Kennedy regained his composure and provided a long and professional explanation that search warrants were applicable to personal residences, but not to commercial vending carts. Therefore, he concluded, al-Bedawi would have to allow them to look in the cart. As Officer Sales reached for the lid, al-Bedawi grabbed his arm and pushed him away.
“No!” he yelled. “This my cart. You stay away!”
“Sir, don’t touch the officer,” ordered Sergeant Kennedy. “Now stand aside, please.”
Sales again reached for the lid and, once more, al-Bedawi stepped forward and shoved him away.
“All right, I’ve had enough of this. Cuff this guy, we’re taking him in!” ordered Sergeant Kennedy.
The two policemen handcuffed al-Bedawi’s hands behind his back and sat him down on the grass several feet away from the ice-cream cart. Officer Sales opened the lid and looked inside.
“What the—?”
The interior of the cart was only about a third as deep as it appeared from the outside. The stainless steel bottom was covered in paper ice-cream wrappers. Sales reached in and brushed them around with his hand. “This thing is really shallow, and it’s not even refrigerated in here. There’s nothing but paper wrappers.”
“Let me see.” Sergeant Kennedy looked into the cart. “Hmm.” He reached into the cart and pushed on the bottom around the edges. After several tries, there was a scraping sound as one side went down and the other side rose up. He looked at Sales. “False bottom. Let’s see what’s under it.”
They lifted the false bottom out of the cart. Underneath, a large metallic cylinder filled most of the space. Red numbers in a small glass window were flashing and counting down through 15 minutes and 37 seconds, 36 seconds, 35 seconds,…
“What the hell is this?”
“Alahu Akbar! Praise Allah! Allah the Greatest! Allah the Most Powerful! Long live jihad!”
The two officers stared at each other in shock.
Sergeant Kennedy recovered first. “It’s a bomb! Run! Clear the mall! No, wait — call it in! It looks like we have fifteen minutes to disarm this thing.”
“Dispatch!” Officer Sales yelled into the radio microphone in his shirt’s lapel.
“This is dispatch,” the radio on his belt sounded.
“We have a bomb on the National Mall. If the timer is correct, we have about… uh… less than fifteen minutes left to disarm it!”
“Roger, copy that. State your location.”
“We’re about a hundred yards west of the Washington Monument… near the Reflecting Pool.”
“How big is it? Is it in a vehicle?”
“No, it’s in an ice-cream cart.”
“All right, clear the area. We’ll alert the bomb squad, and they should be there in about ten minutes.”
“That’s cutting it pretty close!”
“It’s the best we can do. We’re dispatching them now, but there’s heavy traffic this time of day. We’re putting other patrolmen on the mall to assist in clearing the area and keeping the civilians back.”
Sales turned to Kennedy. “Five minutes, Sergeant. That’s all the time the bomb squad will have. Do you think they can disarm this thing in five minutes?”
“These guys are the best. That’s why we have them here in DC. If anybody can do it, these guys can.”
Sergeant Kennedy poked al-Bedawi with his nightstick. “Hey! Hey, Ali Baba!”
“What?”
“You can turn this thing off now.”
“I cannot.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“I cannot. Nobody can. Even if I could, I would not. Now Washington will pay for sins of your government. There is nothing you or anybody can do. Allah be praised!”
Kennedy motioned toward a nearby stand of trees and said, “Officer Sales, move this suspect away and handcuff him to one of those trees. Search him thoroughly for any kind of weapons or remote controls. I don’t want him doing anything stupid to set this thing off early. Let’s start getting everybody away from here.”
Sales pulled al-Bedawi up from the ground and led him over to a tree about twenty feet away. He cuffed al-Bedawi’s arms around the tree and began patting him down. As he did so, al-Bedawi muttered, “It will not matter.”
“What won’t matter, Ali?”
“It will not matter if people move back from cart.”
“Why not?”
“Everybody still dies. Do you understand what nuclear device is?”
“What, this is a dirty bomb?”
“No.” Al-Bedawi smiled a crooked little smile that caused his face to appear sad and gloating at the same time. “This is twenty-kiloton bomb, and it will detonate in about thirteen minutes. And, it will explode instantly if anybody tries to disarm it.”