I kicked off my shoes, climbed the stairs, listened at the doors of my children and my grandmother, and felt drowsy at the rhythm of their breathing. Not even Nana’s gentle snoring could keep me awake.
I slipped into my room, dropped my pants, and slid into bed, feeling the heat of Bree’s body. Her smell was there too, all around me. She rolled over, laid her head on my chest, murmured, “You okay, baby?”
“I’m good now,” I said, and closed my eyes, telling myself to compartmentalize, to take refuge in my own bed with my wife holding me, and rest.
But as I hugged Bree, my mind slipped back and forth between images of the Al Dossari children under torture and the details of the story Hala told us.
Just before I plunged into sleep, I remembered something I’d said to Mahoney the evening before: Confessions made under torture can’t be taken seriously. They’re half-truths mixed with what the tortured person thinks the torturer wants to hear.
CHAPTER 101
For an hour and a half, i slept with no dreams of anything. but then, from the inky depths of my brain, images began to roll. I saw Hala lobbing the grenade at me. I saw Henry Fowler holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head and kicking at his children, who became Hala’s kids strapped to the torture chairs.
The Saudi secret policemen in their hoods were there as well, one carrying the battery, the other holding the ends of the jumper cables. The one with the battery pulled off his hood, revealing himself as Mahoney. The second hooded man tried to get away, but Mahoney grinned grimly and tore the hood off his head.
It was me. I was the one who held the jumper-cable clamps. Mahoney and I were laughing, enjoying ourselves the way we’d done dozens of times at backyard barbecues and other family get-togethers.
My dream self opened the red clamp’s jaw wide, looked at the children, and seemed fascinated by the terror they displayed. I clamped the cable to Aamina’s chair, expecting the arch and trembling I’d seen her exhibit during her torture before.
Instead, I heard a rhythmic buzzing noise that broke the spell and roused me from sleep. I was drenched with sweat. Bree rolled over and slept on. I looked at the clock groggily: 3:40 a.m. I needed at least ten, fourteen more hours, but my bladder felt full. And what was the noise that woke me?
I slid out of bed as carefully as I could, stood, felt wobbly, and then noticed the message light blinking on my mobile. I picked it up, staggered to the bathroom, and sat down on the toilet because I did not think standing was such a good idea. Before I could check the message, the phone began buzzing in my hand, the sound that had wrenched me from sleep.
It was Mahoney.
I accepted the call, peed, and grumbled, “You a vampire or something? Never need sleep.”
“Yeah, I’m a new character in that Twilight series my kid’s always reading,” he replied, and I could hear wind blowing hard.
“Get the nerve gas?”
“We got in a firefight with one of Hala’s coconspirators,” Mahoney said. “He’d been holding engineers at gunpoint. Sniper got him, and we freed the rail workers. One had been mutilated, his eyeball boiled.”
That got me more awake. “What? An engineer’s eye?”
“In revenge, because the engineer had done the same thing to the dead guy’s partner, with hot coffee. It’s a long story for another time. But they, the engineers, said the partner left the train in the First Street tunnel and went back toward the entrance, where the third man in the rail crew, a Robby Simon, had disappeared.”
“You find the organophosphates and the triggering device in car twenty-nine?”
“There were three blue barrels with Pinkler Industries labels in car twenty-nine,” Mahoney replied. “But when we opened them, we found sand and gravel.”
I remembered the enthusiasm Hala had shown when she’d described the plot.
“She fed us half-truths mixed with what we wanted to hear,” I said, furious at myself for wanting to believe her confession so much that I’d set aside my suspicions.
“My instincts were right,” Mahoney said. “She stopped the train so other Al Ayla members could steal the chemicals.”
My hand shot to my temple. “And they’re here. In DC.”
“Last known whereabouts: two miles from Congress.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“We’re going back to Hala,” Mahoney said.
I flashed with dread on the image of her kids being tortured.
“You’re going, Ned,” I said. “I’m done with that.”
I ended the call and shut the ringer off. I intended to return to bed. But then I realized that I was no more than fifteen blocks from where Hala’s accomplices had stolen the organophosphates.
So was my family.
My first reaction was to wake them all, move them from the area until the three barrels were found and neutralized.
But then old habits reasserted themselves. Snow on the ground, I thought. They had to have left evidence around there somewhere.
I picked up the phone and called the man I trusted more than anyone in my life.
CHAPTER 102
Omar Nazad sat in the cab of the van, feeling his stinging hands and feet begin to thaw, and stared through the windshield at the one hundred and twenty cubic yards of snow and ice that still lay between him and M Street.
He and the Algerians had broken up and removed at least that amount in the past three hours. They were still only halfway to the road. They hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. And they hadn’t had anything to drink for six. The snow they put in their mouths seemed to make them even thirstier.
“Inshallah,” the Tunisian kept muttering to himself. The will of Allah. It is God’s will that we must suffer and sacrifice and suffer again in order to defeat His enemies. This is a gift, somehow. A blessing.
“We should leave, brother,” Mustapha said from the passenger seat.
“I agree,” Saamad said. “Leave while we still can.”
Nazad looked at them like they were mad. “Leave the best weapon the Family’s ever had? No. That is not what God wants.”
“But what if Allah wants us to get caught and sent to prison?” Saamad demanded.
“Shut up,” Nazad said. He was sick of the Algerians, how quick they were to cut and run. It had to be the French influence.
“I have to eat something, drink something,” Mustapha complained.
“I can’t help you.”
“Maybe there was food in that shed,” Saamad said. “Water too.”
Nazad looked at him again. “You didn’t search the entire place?”
Mustapha shrugged. “The shovels and picks were right by the door.”
Moments later they were all following the path the Algerians had taken to the toolshed earlier. The door hung open on its hinges, flapped in the wind. They went inside, flashed their lights, and saw a portable generator, half a dozen power tools, a jackhammer, three sledgehammers, more picks, a row of hard hats, a surveyor’s transom, and a cooler. Mustapha and Saamad went straight to the cooler, yanked it open, and cried out in delight.
Saamad grabbed a granola bar and a frozen bottle of Gatorade, shook them at Nazad. “Allah be praised! Food and drink, brother.”
“And a jackhammer!” Mustapha cried.
But the Tunisian paid them no mind. He was staring at a metal box attached to the wall and sealed with a Master Lock. On instinct, he retrieved one of the sledgehammers and tried to break the lock, but he couldn’t. He looked closely at the other tools now at his disposal and smiled.
Nazad started the generator. Then he plugged in a Benner-Nawman rebar cutter. He fit the hasp of the lock into the jaws of the cutter and flipped it on. The jaws bit and snapped it in less than a second.