The light nearly blinded him.
“What the hell’s going on in here?” a man’s voice demanded in English. “And who the hell are you?”
CHAPTER 72
“Can you get him to speak when we get in there?” I asked Jennifer Carstensen, the officer who handled Jasper, a huge white German shepherd. Jasper was one of three police dogs who, along with their human partners, had responded to my call, the officers leaving their homes and families on Christmas to help us track down a terrorist.
We were on the stairs that led down to the terminal. Above us, people who an hour before had been standing in line frantic to get tickets were now standing in line frantic to be released from the station.
“We can absolutely get Jasper to speak,” Officer Carstensen replied. “He’s been taught to vocalize an alert bark, an attack bark, and a gathering howl. Which one do you want?”
Jasper panted with excitement. He could tell a hunt was about to begin. With every breath the dog took, his powerful shoulder and neck muscles rippled. It almost felt unfair to turn a beast like Jasper loose on someone who was deathly afraid of dogs.
But Hala Al Dossari had killed seven people, two of them FBI HRT specialists. Unfair did not even begin to describe the lengths we’d take to apprehend her and make her face justice. We had the terminal surrounded. We had also sealed off the opening into the Ivy City Yard and the First Street tunnel. We had two bomb teams on hand as well, one Metro DC Police, the other FBI. And we had Jasper and his two eager pals.
“I want him howling,” I told Officer Carstensen. “I want all three of them howling like a pack of wolves when it’s time.”
“Ready and waiting, Alex,” she said, and she slipped Jasper a treat.
“Al Dossari really that scared of pooches?” Mahoney asked.
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
An ironic smirk appeared on his face. “You know, Alex, what you’re about to do could be construed as psychological coercion.”
“Torture?” I replied skeptically. “No. This is just a way to flush her out quicker and prevent further bloodshed.”
“Exactly,” Mahoney said.
I was too damn tired to argue the point. “We ready, Ned?”
“Five minutes,” Mahoney said. “Bomb squads are moving into final position at the east and west ends of the terminal.”
I glanced at my watch. Half past eight. With luck, this would all go smoothly, and I’d get home in time to kiss my wife good night before Bree put on her kerchief and I put on my cap and both of us settled down for a long winter’s nap.
CHAPTER 73
For a second, with the brilliant light shining in his eyes, and the commanding voice of a stranger he could not see ringing in his ears, Omar Nazad felt bewildered, foiled, perhaps a martyr for nothing.
Where had the man come from? Who was he? Police?
Then training took over. He and Hala had gamed almost every scenario, including being spotted in or around the train.
“CSX Nashville asked us to check on this shipment,” Nazad said, holding his hand up to block the light, seeing the silhouette of a burly man standing in the doorway. “Could you put that down?”
The light was directed down, and the Tunisian saw a bearded male in his late forties wearing a snowy CSX coat not that dissimilar from his own. The rail worker held a flashlight in one hand, a radio in the other.
“We didn’t get no call about a shipment check,” the man said, scowling.
“The storm,” Nazad said, walking casually toward him. “It has affected everyone. Everything. Can you believe they make us work in this shit?”
The man seemed to relax, asked, “Where you out of?”
“Benning Yard,” Nazad said, referring to the local CSX rail maintenance facility. He glanced at footprints behind the man and saw that he’d come down the opposite side of the train, from the direction of the tunnel.
The real CSX employee scrunched up his nose. “They sent a mechanic to do a cargo check?”
The Tunisian smiled like they were allies. “In times of crisis, my friend, each man must do his part. Is that not true?”
The CSX man scratched at his beard, said, “Guess so. Hell, what’s in there they got you out in the middle of a blizzard?”
“A potentially unstable chemical,” Nazad said. “But I have checked the shipment. Everything is fine. Quite stable.”
The man’s eyes shifted from the Tunisian, drifted across the floor of the container, focused on the cut plastic strapping that had held the three drums together on the wooden pallet. He said, “No problem. Lemme just check on this. What’s your name?”
“Herb,” Nazad said. “Herb Montenegro.”
The man nodded, raised his radio, clicked Transmit, and managed to say, “Tony, you by the channel?” before the steel toe of Nazad’s boot viciously connected with his windpipe, crushing it.
The rail worker choked. Eyes bugging out, he dropped the radio and the flashlight, reached for his throat, and then crumpled to his hands and knees, fighting for air. Nazad jumped out of the container, landed square on the man’s back, and drove him face-first into the deep snow, making sure he would never be by the channel again.
From somewhere in the snow next to the suffocating man, the Tunisian heard a voice with a Boston accent say, “This is Tony. How the hell’s it looking back there?”
CHAPTER 74
Hala still straddled the axle of the railcar. The dripping from the underside of the train had all but stopped, but she shivered in the north breeze coming into the terminal from the Ivy City Yard and against the greasy steel that had gone cold beneath her. Though her fingers and toes stung, she was somewhat grateful for the cold; it had penetrated her pelvis and calmed her hip as much as the drugs.
But would she be able to run if she had to? Fight if she had to?
Despite the narcotics, Hala knew, she was still mentally able to fight, and she still had three grenades and twenty-five more rounds for the pistol. But would she be able to move the way she needed to if-
The howls rose from behind her, at the station, somewhere on the terminal’s rear dock: one, two, and then three; left, right, and center. The baying triggered an involuntary shudder that rolled through Hala head to toe and instantly hurled her back in time.
She saw herself at four, at her grandfather’s place in the desert, petrified by a pack of wild dogs that were tearing into a young goat that had gotten out beyond the fence. Horrified and angry, Hala had gone to help the goat. The dogs turned on her, mauled her legs and arms, tried to kill her.
Twenty-nine years later, hiding beneath the train and listening to the police dogs howling, Hala was enveloped by the same terror she’d felt when the pack in Saudi Arabia had tried to tear her limb from limb. Shaking now, sweating, she had to use everything in her power to keep herself from collapsing and curling into the fetal position.
A voice in Hala’s mind, her late husband’s voice, told her she had to fight. She could kill the first dog, and maybe the first dog’s handler. But the police that followed them? And the second dog? And the third?
Despite Tariq’s voice commanding Hala to focus and figure out a way to escape the dogs and join Nazad, she kept thinking about that baby goat from her childhood, how it had bleated in fear as the pack circled and snapped at its legs. She kept seeing the dogs turn on her, feeling their teeth ripping at her skin.
Hala fought off the urge to puke and shook her head, willing herself to conquer a fear that felt primitive and instinctual.
The howling stopped. She gasped, feeling smashed up inside and somewhat embittered at the method Allah had fashioned for her martyrdom.