Emma glimpsed the length of the file in Hamza’s mouth, which dripped blood onto her shirt. His teeth pinkened as they chomped down on the metal, like a pirate with a knife, but this blade had plunged into his mouth through his face.
He turned to the young girl, raised his pistol from Emma’s belly, and shot the child in the neck. Blood pulsed out like a garden hose rapidly kinked and unkinked. The girl grabbed her mortal wound and reeled into the arms of her seatmate.
They all froze: Emma, dazed from the pounding of her head; Tanesa, mouth agape at her friend’s imminent death, the victim’s eyes still open as her life closed down; and Hamza, who still had the nail file sticking out of his cheek.
But he recovered first, yanking it out. He raised the bloody length, and in a rage tried to plunge it into Emma’s chest. She rolled furiously to the side, catching the file in her upper arm, where it stuck like a dagger.
She shrieked with pain as Tanesa tried to rip Hamza’s eyes out. He delivered a powerful elbow into Tanesa’s side. Even in her own agony, Emma heard her friend’s rib crack and saw tears race down Tanesa’s face.
Hamza dragged Emma to her feet, breathing deeply, as if to get a grip on his fury. The file stuck out of her arm just below her shoulder. She thought to pull it out, as he had from his face, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
He thrust his gun to Tanesa’s head, ordering her to stand, then grabbed the backpack bomb and demanded the two girls move to the front of the bus with him.
Staying low, he forced them onto the front seat and yelled at the bus driver to go.
The older man cranked the ignition, put the bus in gear, but the watered-down diesel fouled the engine immediately.
Hamza told him to get off the bus. He obeyed, moving around the dead woman who had pumped the fuel, whose body lay below the vehicle’s steps. Hamza then shot the driver twice in the back. The man staggered several feet toward the fuel truck’s headlights and fell, showing no further signs of life.
Crouching, keeping his gun on the girls, Hamza pulled keys from the slain woman’s pocket. Emma watched his eyes land on the backpack bomb, which he’d left by the driver’s seat. She thought to throw herself on it, as she’d once seen a soldier hurl himself on a hand grenade in a war movie. But there would be no absorbing the impact of the weapon hiding inside that pack.
Hamza jumped back onto the bus and grabbed the pack, then stared at them and said, “They’re not stopping Hamza the Lion.” He sounded solemn, like he was repeating a vow.
He yelled at Tanesa and Emma to move to the rear and open the emergency exit. Still crouching, he tailed them. The two injured girls struggled mightily to dislodge the lever holding the door in place. With the exit open, Hamza grabbed the bomb trigger.
“We’re going out to the truck. You two stay right with me the whole time. If you run, I’ll set off the bomb. Millions will die. It will be your fault.”
Emma knew whose fault it would be — the person who pulled the trigger. But she also knew she would not run off, and doubted Tanesa would, either. There was no hope for them or anyone else if he set off the bomb.
“You in front of me,” he said to Tanesa. “And you stay behind me,” he ordered Emma. “Stay very close. If they hit me, I’ll pull the trigger.”
Emma thought all three of them would be shot the second they stepped out. But he crouched and kept them bunched up in front and behind him.
An unearthly silence greeted them, so still Emma heard the odd shuffle of their shoes as they moved, a six-legged cluster. Still, she wondered who would be killed first.
In the next instant, two sniper shots rang out. One hit Tanesa in the leg with such force it spun her around and spilled her onto the parking lot. She rolled over, screaming, clutching her thigh. The other shot sailed over Hamza’s shoulder. Emma wondered if he even noticed.
He rushed her toward the truck as another bullet sailed right over their heads. The door was open, the dome light on. He threw his upper body across the driver’s seat, pushing the backpack bomb ahead of him with one hand, and dragging Emma up behind him with the other.
She saw the filleting knife in its sheath as another shot hit the outside of the cab just inches from her head. She slipped the blade from its sheath as Hamza frantically forced the backpack onto the passenger seat.
Emma drove the long thin blade into his lower back, guessing she stabbed a kidney.
Hamza groaned horrifically, and tried to pull himself all the way into the cab. Emma threw herself onto his back, slowing him down. But she also prevented the snipers from having a clear shot at their target.
Then Hamza tried to turn toward her with his gun. She felt the knife handle against her belly and squeezed herself against him. A low howl arose from him.
He gave up trying to shoot her, putting all his effort into trying to pull himself onto the driver’s seat. Maybe he recognized that the surest way to end his agony and complete his diminished mission was to reach the bomb trigger.
She heard his howl turn into a rhythmic gasp that sounded like a prayer in another language. He was but a hand’s length from the trigger, bellowing now, still fierce in trying to claw his way forward.
Emma braced her feet against the truck’s big wheel, using her legs to pull on him as hard as she could. A horrible pain rose from her shoulder, and she saw the nail file brushing against the open door, jabbing it deeper into her flesh. Grinding her teeth, she jerked the file out and — in a spasm of fury — sank it into the middle of his back. It struck bone and lodged deeply in his flesh. She regained her grip with both hands, pulling with all the strength left in her arms and legs — weeping, screaming, holding on to him for all the world.
CHAPTER 24
Ruhi entered the thickening shadows of the community center, wary of the first few steps that drew him into the darkness. He expected a knifing — violence teeming with vendetta — so he was not surprised when hands reached from the engulfing blackness and seized him so hard that he thought his bones were being crushed.
“Quiet, Mancur,” murmured a man as he pressed a heavy hand over Ruhi’s mouth. “We are on your side. If you yell, we die.”
“It’s true, Ruhi,” he heard Candace whisper, offering so many reassurances in so few words that his joy and gratitude might have lifted monuments.
Ruhi nodded. The man’s hand dropped away. Ruhi stared at Candace.
“You’re here — how?” he murmured.
“Later. No time now,” she replied.
Candace guided Ruhi against an interior wall. Her touch felt magically restoring, all the more so for the bloodshed that he spied as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The slain bodies of nine mujahideen sprawled across the floor told the story of a successful ambush, while the armed men he now saw crouching on both sides of the doorway — Mabahith, he guessed — spoke of the imminence of another surprise attack.
He sensed increasing tension in the shadows as Ahmed neared the entrance. His cousin held Lana’s arm with one hand, her computer in the other. Fighters moved alongside them. The armed escorts didn’t appear on guard, and why should they have been? The community center belonged to them; their brothers-in-arms should have been waiting inside, hidden from the prying eyes of Predator drones.
Without warning, the Saudi agents crouching in the shadows opened fire on the jihadists, a disciplined and muffled fusillade that lasted no more than two or three seconds. Their targets never had a chance to fire their weapons.
Only Ahmed and Lana were spared. Ruhi’s cousin huddled close to the ground, still gripping his prisoner’s arm. That Ahmed survived seemed like the greatest crime of all to Ruhi.
Why?
Because he held Lana and her computer. They were his shield. That was the only fathomable reason. Ruhi vowed to kill Ahmed quickly, now that all of his cousin’s protectors were dead.