“He has a gun to my head.” The pastor’s words were shaky, but then he spoke quickly and decisively: “Don’t worry about me. Just do whatever you have to save these—”
Silenced by a gunshot.
Emma watched the pastor’s body slump to the ground.
Hamza jumped up the steps of the bus, as if fearful now that he had lost his human shield. He unclipped his mouthpiece.
“Did you hear? Did you?” he shouted. “The pastor is dead. We killed your first ‘hero.’ We’ll kill them all if you don’t listen.”
No answer came from the walkie-talkie.
Hamza’s eyes roved over every one of the choir members. Emma knew what he was doing — picking out his next victim. And then she was sure of it when his eyes landed on hers, and he nodded.
He came closer to her. “They know I am not kidding,” he said to her. “You and your friend”—he glared fiercely at Tanesa—“started this journey together, and if they don’t bring the diesel soon, you will end it together, too. Sit next to her,” he told Emma.
When she stood, shaking visibly, Hamza grabbed her arm and dragged her up to the next row. He jerked the girl sitting next to Tanesa from her seat and pushed her toward the one Emma had just vacated.
Emma sat with her shoulders curled forward, cowering. But when she looked over, Tanesa wasn’t slumping at all. She sat erect and kept her eyes staring straight ahead, not once glancing at Hamza, who still hovered over them in the aisle.
Then he moved toward the front of the bus.
Emma felt Tanesa’s hand rub against her back, and then she heard her caregiver’s faint whisper: “He’s not getting away with this.”
Tanesa nodded, so subtly that Emma scarcely noticed. But she did, and then Emma nodded in return.
Not getting away with it. No way.
Candace’s mouth had never felt so dry. Three hours without water. What are they waiting for?
To make me even weaker, she said to herself. What else?
Two of them walked out from the tent and started toward her. She stood and backed up, quickly hitting the limits of the small metal cage.
Each of their steps buried their boots in the fine soft sand. They moved only a few feet from their tent when the first rocket flew down from the sky. In a blazing flash, it incinerated them and their portable torture chamber, sending a storm of sand and debris over Candace and her cage.
A second rocket obliterated the other tent.
I’m next.
That was Candace’s fully justified fear. With her eyes on the sky, she screamed above the roaring flames and a man’s agonized cries.
But help did not descend from above. It rolled up in a battered old Jeep. Three men who looked more like office workers than operatives climbed out with an acetylene torch and wire cutters, freeing her in minutes.
“Who are you?”
“Can’t say exactly,” said the one with the torch.
“Just tell me this much: Are you Americans?”
He nodded.
Good enough for her.
CHAPTER 20
When Lana awoke, she was so groggy that it took several anxious seconds for her to remember where she was: a hangar in the desert. With them. She blinked the blurriness from her eyes and saw the SEALs gathered around a computer screen.
One of them walked over to her. The New Yorker. What was his name? “Gabe” came to her as he asked if she’d like coffee.
“Yes, thanks.”
Always affirmative on that score. She needed to wipe the sleep from her entire system.
He returned with a travel mug. Black. That would do just fine.
She stood, no more steady than a weather vane in a storm, wondering how long she’d slept. A glance at her watch told her almost three hours. More than enough to bring her around for quite a while.
Travis, the commander, threw her a quick smile, then pulled a jacket off a folding chair and told her to have a seat.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking at what appeared to be satellite video of a large crowd surging against a tall cyclone fence. Not the greatest resolution, but she made out heavily armed troops standing by on the other side.
That’s America, she realized before anyone answered. She wondered how she knew so instinctively.
You recognize your own tribe, she told herself. Sometimes as easily as you recognize your own face.
Travis was saying something to her.
“Sorry, I missed that.”
“That’s O’Hare in Chicago,” he repeated. “All flights are canceled, but something like twenty thousand people are down at the airport trying to get out.”
Veepox, she remembered. Deadly. Agonizing. Fiercely contagious. The plague that had been carefully engineered by both the Soviets and her own government must have made it down to Chicago from Minneapolis. The Mall of America had been ground zero for the contagion. What was it about terrorists with all their symbolic targets: World Trade Center? Mall of America?
“They can’t contain that,” she said, thinking it might make it down to Maryland in days. To Emma. She thought better of her words: “Can they?”
“If they hold firm in Chicago, they might be able to stop it,” Travis replied. “They’re saying they can, and that they’ll shoot anyone who breaks through that fence. They actually shot out the tires of an old prop plane that was trying to sneak away. It was rolling down the runway, seconds from liftoff. They’ve got to hold the line there, Lana. Hold the line,” Travis said once again, as if for the benefit of the soldiers on screen.
“How bad is it in Chicago?” she asked him.
“Spreading like crazy. The only thing they can do right now to stop it, so there’s a huge military presence. Army, Marines, National Guard, Coast Guard, and Navy have Lake Michigan. The Air Force has pulled more old fighters from the mothballs and has orders to shoot down anything that flies. They actually took out a hot-air balloon twenty minutes ago.”
Hot-air balloons? About as low-tech as flight got. But about par for the course now.
She thought of her friends in the Windy City. Good times on Rush Street long ago. She wondered if any of them were part of the mob raging at the fence. If her Emma’s life were at stake, she would have been trying to get the hell out of Dodge, too.
Travis clicked on the touch pad, shifting to another satellite view. She wondered what country’s links the SEALs were poaching from. Not the U.S.’s, that was for sure.
The new video was sharper. It showed a truck stop. Empty lot except for a couple of semis and a bus she recognized at once. She’d seen the choir bus only on the day of the first cyberattack, but its rounded shape and blue paint were unmistakable.
“What’s happening to them? Why are you showing me this?”
Travis took her arm. “Holmes says you should know.”
“Know what?” she exploded. “Emma?”
When he didn’t answer immediately, she knew the answer. “What’s she doing there?”
“She joined the choir. She’s okay, Lana.”
“Don’t tell me that. There’s a satellite staring at it for a reason. What is it?”
He explained what had happened. Highlights only.
Oh, God. “Why the hell didn’t someone tell me right away?”
“When, Lana? During the siege at the embassy? Your rescue? Flying out of Riyadh with you hanging out of the chopper? We wanted to make sure you got some sleep. We need you thinking clearly. Now you know everything we know.”
Not everything. He hadn’t told her what kind of bomb was on the bus. She took a breath, and then asked.
“We’re not sure,” Travis replied.