My greatest fear becomes my sacrifice? My deliverance?
“Hala Al Dossari.” A voice that echoed through the terminal came from the public address system high overhead. “This is Alex Cross with Metro DC Police. You are surrounded. You have no chance of escape. And we have your jacket and boots from the ventilation duct. You have one minute to lay down your weapons and reveal yourself.” A long pause. “Or we’ll release the dogs.”
Cornered, up against the wall, she considered giving up, surrendering herself so Nazad and the others could complete their mission and put Al Ayla, the Family, at the front of the fight against the great Satan. She might not share in the blessed experience, but she would live to hear about these great things. She would live to rejoice at God’s will on earth.
Or she could buy Nazad even more time. He had not yet called her or texted her to say the transfer had been completed. And it was still snowing, was it not? It was. Her duty, her obligation, was to the overall mission.
Hala made herself slide down off the axle, forced herself to go back once more to that day when she was four and the dogs had tried to kill her. In her mind, she rewound the tape of the attack, finding her little-girl self watching the baby goat die, and feeling an injustice and a rage like no other begin to boil.
If they send dogs, she thought, then dogs will die.
CHAPTER 75
“Robby? you by the channel?”
Frantically, Nazad dug in the snow around the rail worker.
“Robby?”
“Brother?”
The Tunisian looked back and saw the three other Family men, eyes wide at the sight of the body. “Not now,” he barked, feeling something in the snow.
An antenna!
The Tunisian jerked it up, brought the radio to his lips, triggered Transmit, coughed, went nasal, and said, “Dropped the goddamned radio in the snow and I think I’m coming down with a frickin’ cold. Come back.”
“We got Nyquil and other stuff in the locomotive cab up here. Ice building on them rails?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Nazad said.
“You better start heading this way, then,” Tony said. “Union Station’s saying we might be able to move along here at some point.”
“They say what’s going on?”
“Some nut’s loose in the station, but they’re bringing in dogs after her.”
Dogs? Nazad flashed on Hala, begged Allah to have mercy on her, and then responded, “Be right along. Fast as I can get through this snow.”
The Tunisian stuck the radio in his coat, looked at the three men. One said, “Everything is in the van, brother. We are good?”
Nazad thought about that, shook his head, pointed at the other two men and then the dead body. “Bury this one in the snow on the other side of the tracks, where he won’t be seen from the freeway when it melts.”
He looked back to the third man. “You come with me, Aman.”
“Where are we going, brother?” Aman asked, confused.
Nazad said, “To see this Tony who drives the train before he comes looking for his friend.”
CHAPTER 76
The second hand on my watch swept past twelve. A minute had elapsed.
“Her call,” I said, and then I nodded to Mahoney, who spoke into his radio and ordered the dog team at the far west end to pick up her scent.
From my position midterminal on the rear platform, facing the locomotive for the Crescent train, I saw a rottweiler, as dark as Jasper was white, leap off the postal loading dock on a leash. His handler let him sniff the jacket and boots Hala had left in the ventilator duct.
Flanked by FBI HRT personnel, three to a side, the dog started to arc northwest and quickly disappeared from my view. I looked to Officer Carstensen, who was stroking Jasper’s head.
“Will we know when he’s got the scent?” I asked.
Before she had time to answer, an excited howl rose and then broke into baying.
“That Pablo’s a good dog,” Carstensen said.
I picked up the microphone that connected me to the terminal’s public address system and said, “Can you hear him, Hala? His name is Pablo. He smells you. You can’t see him yet, but that dog’s salivating, wild with the idea of tracking you down. So are the others. There’s an absolute monster dog named Jasper here next to me. He’s dying to meet you too.”
Mahoney looked at me, amused. “You’re kind of enjoying that, Alex.”
I shrugged. “You always say, if you’re gonna do something, do it right.”
“Now?” Carstensen said.
“We’re following your lead from here on out,” I replied.
The K-9 officer listened for the barking of the tracking dog and then gave her animal partner an order I did not understand. But Jasper certainly did. If the dog had been a football player, he’d have been a safety, up on his toes, alert, excited, ready to cut in any direction. Jasper’s ears stood straight up, swiveled like mini satellite dishes. He raised and lowered his head, halted, quivered, and then surged against the leash and barked.
“He hears something,” Carstensen said.
“You gonna let him go?”
“Didn’t you say there could be booby traps?”
I nodded.
“Then I’ll be holding him until I get a visual,” she said, gripping Jasper’s leash with both hands. You could tell the dog wanted to run. You could also tell Carstensen loved the dog too much to let him. We followed her lead, heading out onto platform F, the Crescent to our left. Amtrak had opened all doors on all trains in the terminal so the dogs could scent-check each car.
Four or five cars along, Jasper paused, listening to the sound of the other two dogs barking in the terminal. Then he nosed around the exit to the sixth car and began progressing at a brisker pace, as if he were ignoring things he knew to be ignorable, moving to his own music.
I don’t know if this makes sense, but Jasper seemed so sure of himself that I was confident that Hala Al Dossari was as good as subdued, cuffed, and on her way to the federal lockup across the river in Alexandria.
What the hell was I thinking?
CHAPTER 77
Omar Nazad moved easily in the space between the freight cars and the tunnel wall, listening to the dry crunch of the coarse gravel under his boots, such a change from the snow. The soft echoes of Aman’s footfalls came to him from the other side of the train. Aman wore a headlamp that glowed a soft red, just enough for him to see the way ahead, not quite strong enough to attract attention.
The Tunisian, however, carried Robby’s flashlight and wore the dead rail worker’s hat and coat. He wanted to attract attention. He wanted Tony, who he figured was the engineer in the locomotive cab, to be focused on him and how at ease he seemed.
Nazad had no choice in the matter. The original plan had called for leaving the train intact and letting it chug north with the engineers having no idea that the load had been hijacked and substituted. But the dead railroad worker had changed everything. They needed to improvise, make sure that the freight train continued north.
He and Aman kept pace in the tunnel, adjusting to each other when they passed between cars. At last Nazad saw the halo of light thrown from the cab. He did not hesitate but went straight to the ladder and began noisily climbing up the side of the locomotive to the narrow steel platform by the door. A soft light in a metal protective housing glowed above and to the left of the door.
The dead rail worker had had a key card in his pocket, and Nazad had given it to Aman. He prayed the fool of a Turk was climbing quietly. Keeping below the window, he got to the left of the cab door. Nazad reached up, twisted the bulb dark, and then knocked.
“Use your key, for Christ’s sake, Robby,” a voice yelled back. “I’m pouring us some holiday grog here.”