But he had Hala pinned on her right side, and she was screaming in Arabic. Jasper had bitten deep into her left biceps and was shaking her as if trying to tear her arm loose from its socket.
CHAPTER 80
Omar Nazad found antibiotic cream and bandages in the freight train’s first-aid kit. And he’d eaten a few of those pills Hala had insisted they all carry, so his face and blinded eye throbbed less.
In fact, the Tunisian felt like he was on top of things once more, doing Allah’s work, as he sat astride the train engineer, pinning the man’s back and shoulders to the floor of the cab. Aman was on the floor as well, bracing Tony’s head between his knees and pressing his gun to the engineer’s temple.
From the floor, the Tunisian picked up a cup of coffee. It was fresh and scalding hot; he’d just taken it out of the microwave at the back of the cab. He held it with his right hand, feeling warm and fuzzy as he reached toward the engineer’s horrified face.
“No! What are you doing?” Tony yelled.
Nazad smiled. “What’s that saying from your Old Testament? An eye for an eye?”
“No! Please!” Tony screamed as the Tunisian pried up his right eyelid.
“It’s either this or death, infidel,” Nazad said, and he poured the boiling-hot coffee onto the engineer’s eye, saw it turn gray and then milky as Tony went insane, bucking and screeching out pleas to God and his mother.
Now the Tunisian felt better about losing his sight in one eye, and he got up off the engineer. Tony rolled around, hands covering the wounded eye.
“He needs a hospital,” said Pete, the other engineer, who’d watched in shock. “And so do you.”
“I need only God’s blessing,” Nazad snarled. “You take him to the hospital when you finish your trip.”
“What?” Pete said.
“What is your destination?” the Tunisian asked.
“New Jersey. Freight yard on the west side of the Hudson.”
“When you get there, you may take your friend to the hospital,” Nazad said, and then he looked at Aman.
In Arabic, he said, “This is your destiny, brother. You will stay on the train until you reach New Jersey, and then make your escape. Go to the Syracuse house.”
Upset, the Turk said, “But that’s not the plan. I won’t be there to see the blow struck.”
“And I lose an eye to see the blow struck,” Nazad snapped. “These things are the will of God, brother. The will of God.”
Book Three
CHAPTER 81
They rushed both officer Carstensen and Jasper out on stretchers from the Union Station terminal. They took Hala Al Dossari to Captain Johnson’s office on a stretcher too that Christmas night. Plastic ties bound her wrists and ankles. Straps pinned her flat to the board. She’d be kept in Johnson’s office until the roads were clear enough for the Feds to transfer her.
As the EMTs worked to clean up my cuts, I called home. Bree answered.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s done. I’m good. Couple nicks, but good. Well, a lot of nicks, but still good.”
I heard my wife exhale gently. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day, Alex. When will you be home?”
“Before midnight,” I promised. “Just a few things to take care of now.”
“You gonna tell me what happened?”
“Full disclosure,” I said. “After I open that present you were telling me about at dinner.”
“Hmm,” she said, a bit skeptically. “Unless you’re a superman, I don’t think you’ll be ready or able to unwrap something like that tonight.”
“There’s always tomorrow.”
“We’re celebrating Boxing Day now?”
“That too. Christmas has twelve days, you know.”
She laughed, said, “I love you.”
“I love you too. Before you know it, I’ll be snoring in bed next to you.”
“Perfect,” she said, and she hung up.
Eventually, the EMTs finished cleaning and bandaging my cuts. They said I needed to go to a hospital to have the wounds checked by a doctor. Instead, I headed to Captain Johnson’s office. Hala was probably still there, but soon the roads would be good enough for her to be transferred; she’d be taken to the Alexandria detention center, where she’d be held until her arraignment in federal court.
The office door opened before I got to the FBI agent guarding it. Mahoney came out of the room, his face flushed. “She won’t say a damn thing in English, Alex, and seems to find the entire situation laughable. That’s not right. Someone like that’s just not right in the head.”
“I think there’s not a doubt about that,” I said.
“Yeah?” Mahoney said. “Well, I’ve got an idea that just might get her thinking right. I’ve got to go wake up some important people.”
“Mind if I try talking to her in the meantime?”
“They’re starting the transfer in five minutes,” Mahoney said, distracted. “But sure, go ahead, knock yourself out, Alex.”
CHAPTER 82
“Northbound CSX freight, we need to get that tunnel cleared, so you’ll be first out,” said the Union Station radio dispatcher, his voice coming over the speaker built into the dash of the locomotive. “You’re good to go in five.”
Aman pressed the muzzle of his pistol to Pete the engineer’s temple. With a shaky hand, Pete triggered the hand mike, said, “Appreciate it. Everyone safe up there?”
“They set the dogs on her; got the bitch.”
“Thank God,” Pete said.
Omar Nazad wanted to pour scalding coffee into Pete’s eye too, but he restrained himself. There was nothing he could do for Hala now but execute the plan, make the great blow himself.
“I leave, then,” he said, clapping Aman on the back. “Go with God, brother.”
“And you, brother,” Aman said.
The Tunisian never bothered to turn his weeping eye toward the other engineer, who sat in the corner moaning with pain.
The cold wind coming up the tunnel was like new fire against the burns on Nazad’s cheek, but the bandage blocked it from hitting his eye. Nazad climbed down from the cab as the diesel engines coughed up black smoke through the exhaust stacks. The locomotive began to rumble.
Nazad reached the ground, ate another pain pill, flipped on the Maglite. As the freight train groaned and began to move, the Tunisian started to jog in the opposite direction, toward the tunnel mouth, thinking pleasantly about the present he and his men would soon give to all Americans on Hala Al Dossari’s behalf.
CHAPTER 83
I went into Captain Johnson’s office, saw two FBI agents I didn’t recognize standing on either side of Dr. Al Dossari’s stretcher, near a window that overlooked the terminal and the tracks. Hala gazed at me, seeming to feel a mixture of contempt and interest. Facing this woman who lived beyond the pale, whose beliefs and actions were virtually incomprehensible to me, I felt pretty much the same way about her.
“I need a doctor, Cross,” she said.
“You are a doctor,” I replied.
“Have you not heard? One cannot heal oneself.”
“I have heard that. What I don’t get is how a doctor becomes a terrorist.”
“But you would understand how a doctor becomes a soldier?”
Before I could figure out how to respond to that, I heard the now familiar sound of train wheels on tracks and watched a freight train emerge from a tunnel at the station’s east end and chug toward the Ivy City Yard and points north. Despite the fact that I was talking to a ruthless terrorist, I couldn’t help thinking that some degree of normalcy had returned to Union Station.
“What was this all about?” I asked, gesturing out the window. “I mean, was it a spur-of-the-moment thing? Or part of something bigger?”
She studied me, and I noticed her eyes were glassy and her pupils pinpoint. She said, “Spur-of-the-moment. I was in the area, bored on a holiday I don’t believe in, and decided to go out and play in the snow.”