Lucy jumped when Grale touched her leg. "Just your friendly local madman," he said with a smile. "They still below?"
She nodded and moved aside to let him look. He peeked through. Almost directly below him was one of the terrorists, and behind that one were three more, one of whom was holding Zak by the arm.
Grale carefully slid the rest of the cover back, revealing a three-foot-square hole. "What are you doing?" Lucy whispered.
Grale looked at her and put a finger to his lips. "Going to make like Batman, my little Robin."
"What…?" Lucy began to ask but there wasn't time to finish her question as Grale looked down once more, then leaped through the hole.
Lucy scooted back to the hole just in time to see Grale stand and lift the man he'd landed on to his feet. The other surprised terrorists had jumped back and looked on in terror as Grale spun the man around and, with a vicious slash of his long, curved knife, decapitated the hapless man, who stumbled forward before collapsing into a puddle of water.
The remaining terrorists-including the one leading the way, who pulled Zak-retreated. She could hear them beseeching Allah for protection.
Lucy scrambled up and crawled as fast as she could to the next viewing spot. She looked down as a terrorist turned and tried to shoot Grale, screaming, "Shaitan!" But he panicked and his shots went wide. He had no time to shoot again.
In a fury Grale closed, his knife arced through the area, and the man's head rolled from his body. "Hurry, he's coming," shouted the leader to the last man behind him.
However, the third man stumbled and fell against an opening in the tunnel that gave way to a dark space. Suddenly, thin white arms reached out and grabbed him. "Help me, the rajim have me!" Then the man was pulled back into the dark space where he screamed again. There was the sound of scurrying and a whispering, excited voice; then the screaming stopped.
The man with Zak retreated back to the end of the tunnel and turned to face Grale. "Stay were you are, Iblis," the man shouted.
Lucy could see the muscles of the man's pitted face twitching with fear; his eyes, as wide and luminous as twin full moons, were almost insane with hatred and terror. He pulled Zak's head back with one hand and with the other pulled a knife from his belt.
Lucy screamed. "Zak!" But no one heard her.
Grale advanced toward the man, his knife held loosely in his hand. He tensed to pounce, but a shot rang out and instead he fell to his knees.
To Lucy's horror, several more terrorists ran up and surrounded Grale.
Down on the tunnel floor, Al-Sistani smiled and shoved the boy down to the ground. "Good work, men," he said, recovering from his own fear of the dark-robed man. He walked up to Grale and kicked him in the head, sending him sprawling, unconscious.
"What news from the tunnel entrance?" he asked the men surrounding the wounded man.
"Allah be praised, only two still lived when we left," one man said with a grin. "They are warriors, and fighting fiercely, but our men were preparing to rush their position. We heard firing just before we arrived. They must be dead by now."
"Excellent. Now see how the enemies of Allah die," he shouted and turned to shoot Zak, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. Then he looked over to where the basketball player knelt facing him. Al-Sistani could see the boy hiding behind him.
"Murderer," Khalif spat. "You shouted for Iblis. Well, he waits for you in the eternal fires."
Al-Sistani laughed and raised his gun. But suddenly there was the sound of a dozen angry bees and his men crumpled to the ground. Al-Sistani looked up and immediately knew that his chances of escaping had evaporated.
Advancing in short runs up the tunnel, black-clothed men wearing bulletproof vests came toward him. "Hands up," shouted their leader, a middle-aged man with short gray hair. "Get your fucking hands where I can see them."
Al-Sistani whirled toward the man with the fuse. I hope it's true there are seventy-two virgins in paradise for every martyr, he thought, then shouted, "Light the fuse!"
Then to his shock, the man beneath the scaffolding pulled the mask off his face. "Sorry, pendejo," the man said, "no can do." He held up a man's head. "You looking for this guy, maybe?"
Another, younger man walked out from behind the scaffolding. Al-Sistani couldn't believe what he was seeing. The young man wore his handgun slung low like a stupid American cowboy.
"My friend John just called you an asshole, you asshole," the cowboy said.
"Yep, looks like it's over…asshole," a tall man said, coming out from behind the line of federal agents.
A wild cheering and the sound of explosions came from above the tunnel. Karp looked up and smiled. "Sounds like the ball just dropped."
A short woman with dark hair also pushed through the federal agents. "Hey, Butch, how about my New Year's Eve kiss," she said and embraced the tall man. "Even if you lied."
"Only a little," Karp said. "I waited a good half hour before I called Jaxon."
"Good thing you did," Jaxon said. "Marlene and her pal were just about toast, not to mention the rest of the city. By the way, where is the Vietnamese guy? Man, he could teach us a few things about guerilla warfare."
"He's gone," Marlene said. "And you're right, he could. Now, don't you think someone should disarm that creep?"
Al-Sistani still stood with the gun at his side. He considered, for a moment, surrendering; then he thought of a lifetime spent in a federal penitentiary. Kill the Karp boy. Make his Jew parents suffer, he decided and quick as a snake turned to where Khalif was shielding the boy and lifted his gun.
A shot rang out, but it wasn't from Al-Sistani's weapon. So fast that the federal agents and others who saw it later said there was no discernible moment between when Ned Blanchet's gun was in its holster and when it blew a hole the size of an orange in the terrorist's head.
"Holy shit, nice shooting, cowboy," Jaxon said.
A small voice came down from the ceiling. "My hero." The group looked up and began to laugh at the adoring face of Lucy Karp as she looked down on the group like one of the angels in the Sistine Chapel.
29
Monday, January 24
By the time Karp saw Stupenagel moving toward him through the lobby of the U.S. District Court building, it was too late to give her the slip.
"Good morning, Butch," she said cheerfully, clip-clopping quickly across the granite floors in her high heels to get a pace in front of him. "Want to tell me what you and Special Agent in Charge Jaxon were talking about yesterday? Along with the two other suits who smelled like more feds, only different?"
Karp knew better than to issue a flat denial. Stupenagel's sources were too good. So he dissembled. "You can smell the difference between feds?" he said, making a feint to one side, then dodging to the other to get ahead as he moved toward the elevator.
Stupenagel recognized the ploy as she cursed herself for wearing too tight a skirt this day for good maneuvering and had to fall in behind. "Yeah, they use different kinds of soap," she replied sarcastically. "I once slept with Jaxon way back when he was just a junior agent, though still pretty damn special, if I remember right-and don't you ever tell Murrow I said that or I'll rip your balls off. He was a Lifebuoy type; those other two, I don't know, maybe Dial, which makes them…you tell me…spooks?"
Although their relationship had improved over the past year or so, Karp knew not to trust the reporter entirely, especially when there was a big story she wanted. Still, he was always impressed by her deductive reasoning, which ranked right up there with the best detectives he knew.
"So you going to tell me what's up?" she asked.
Karp shrugged. "Just a post-New Year's Eve briefing about the heightened alert status. But it turned into a pretty quiet night, so just a courtesy call…that's all."