“When we are done, every American will be dead; your country will be as much a wasteland as your unforgiven souls.”
People yelled defiant curses at the crescent moon and star once more blazing on the billboard. Then the screen went black, as if heeding their fate, but the voice carried on:
“We have warned you repeatedly. We warn you no more.”
A mushroom cloud burst into brilliant blooming reds and oranges on the giant screen, casting shades of the promised flames on the street and buildings.
“This is good,” Holmes said.
McGivern agreed.
There was no need to spell it out. They all understood: The bus hijackers were still determined — or under orders — to get their bomb to Times Square. The ominous display, the wretched words, meant that rescue teams still had a few hours left to try to stop those children and millions of others from dying.
But the message also meant that the terrorists’ claim of a nuclear bomb on the bus was unlikely to be a bluff.
Ruhi woke up from his nap in the back row of the SUV and saw Sana in the morning’s earliest hours. It loomed before him as they drove across the desert, a pauper’s city with so few lights in the bleak darkness that it might have been abandoned by all who could flee. And perhaps they had, but more than two million people remained, living amid frequent and often long-lasting power outages.
The country was on its knees, running out of oil and water, the two substances that made life in a desert land bearable. Yemen was the mendicant of the Middle East. Little wonder that Al Qaeda drew young men so easily from the ranks of the nation’s disaffected. Yemen had become the chief focus of American antiterrorism efforts, which only served to enflame so many Yemeni: Three different bomb plots against the U.S. had been hatched there, including the infamous — and painfully ineffective—“underwear” bomber. It was as if in the midst of so little, at least some had achieved a desired notoriety by becoming the bête noire of the world’s mightiest nation.
Ruhi would have wagered that out there more plots were unfolding, for how could they not in a country that could manufacture so little else? It was certainly the consensus of two intelligence agencies that the biggest plot in world history had come to life in those desert sands and mountain redoubts. And who was he to question the men who had so ruthlessly taken over his life?
In little more than a week he had gone from director of research for the Natural Resources Defense Council to bait for the CIA, thanks to his supposed computer skills, which had withstood the test of the Mabahith.
“How do you even know that they’ve heard of my so-called skills?” he asked Lennon, seated once more in the front-row passenger seat.
And what was he supposed to do when they abducted him and demanded that he display the power of his knowledge? Die, that’s what. Or worse, not die, he thought immediately. Become, instead, the object of their undying hate.
“We are riddled with Al Qaeda supporters,” Lennon answered him. “We are sure they know you are on a mission for your country, and what other mission would it be at this point? What other mission matters?”
“So your secret organization is banking on your inability to actually keep secrets?” The irony astounded Ruhi.
“Yes, in a word,” Lennon said.
They entered the center of the squalid city, driving through a labyrinth of streets where he imagined men hiding in the darkness, staring at the big SUV with eyes dark as demitasse. They certainly could not roll down these streets unnoticed, even at this hour. Neighborhood Watch had nothing on the surveillance skills of people desperate for life’s necessities — and able to earn them only by diligent observation.
“We’re here,” Lennon announced as the SUV rolled to a stop.
The officers in the middle seat, who had flanked Ruhi for the first part of the journey, climbed out.
Ruhi sensed their reluctance, saw their wary eyes scanning darkness so thick that it might have hidden the sun.
“Now you, let’s go,” Lennon said to him.
Ruhi crawled over the seat and stepped out into the cool air, the desert having exhaled the last of its vast heat.
He saw that the officers, including Lennon, had their guns out but held to their sides discreetly, black barrels against black slacks, no more visible than white shells on blinding beaches. But no one would surprise and take them as easily as Candace had been claimed.
Lennon drew Ruhi into an old building with a dimly lit outer arcade with arabesques carved into the columns he passed. They walked past an elevator that looked eerily like a cage. Five flights of stairs later, Ruhi wondered what had become of his fitness. Had he succumbed to terminal fatigue? He barely kept up with Lennon.
Down a narrow hallway he toiled, catching his breath as he passed under a single bulb, yellow as the mountains they had passed, the ones that had looked so completely lifeless.
Lennon knocked twice on a door. Raising his gun, he turned a brass handle and stepped into a candlelit room. Three men sat on a sofa. One was hooded, but Ruhi would have known his cousin Ahmed anywhere.
The stealth helicopter flew without lights. This time Lana was belted in, not held by Gabe or serenaded by a Springsteen song.
The SEALs were quiet. No joking around. No hard-ass humor. Mission bound. For Lana, that would soon mean sitting in a room linked to a satellite and working on her computer. And if she were extremely lucky — or the shattered intelligence services of the U.S. extraordinarily adept at adjusting to the most extenuating circumstances — she would be in touch with Ruhi Mancur, aka the “bait.” His future looked no brighter than her daughter’s, whose likely fate she could not put aside for more than seconds.
After the blow of learning about Emma, Lana had received her computer from Travis. Shockingly, she had lost track of it during the frantic escape from Riyadh. Even more startling, she’d fallen asleep in the hangar without realizing her loss. But a separate team of SEALs had been assigned to the computer’s rescue. Those three men had traced an electronic locator deep inside the device’s densely constructed core to find the laptop in the hands of a young woman in a head scarf.
“Give it to me,” said a bearded man who resembled the hundreds of other Saudi males taking control of the corridors and offices that been in American hands only minutes before.
Tearfully, the young woman had handed it over.
Lana knew nothing of this, just that her computer was back in her possession, while her only child’s life depended on other men like the SEALs almost seven thousand miles away.
Not only men.
Kalisa Harris drove the tanker truck off I-295. She wore faded Carhartt jeans, Red Wing boots as scuffed as a bootblack’s hands, and a plaid flannel shirt that had been purchased originally at an Eddie Bauer’s in Chicago, then picked up in a Goodwill by the FBI in Atlantic City three months ago. She’d chopped off the sleeves, exposing arms that were toned and tattooed.
A Geiger counter had been installed under her seat. The FBI special agent in charge, the SAC, had instructed her to leave her door open and pull as close to the bus as possible.
“And if they hear the damn thing?” she’d asked, already in character with a female trucker’s seductive CB drawl.
“Appeal to their manhood,” said the SAC in his $2,000 Armani suit. “If they’ve got a nuclear bomb, they should be happy to have it confirmed. Tell them that now we know they’re not bluffing.”
“That’s assuming I get a word in edgewise before they shoot me. How many am I going to be dealing with?” Kalisa had asked, wanting to cut to the chase.
“Four. They’re all in head scarfs playing the macho jihadist, from what we’ve seen and heard. The leader’s been on the radio speaking perfect English, so we’re almost certain he grew up here. Then there’s the guy with the backpack bomb. He’s on the rear seat. Two other gunmen are on board too.”