When the wounded were taken care of, Nick had turned his attention to the FBI’s on-scene commander. He had offered to help with the initial investigation, but the FBI man had tersely directed him to the sidelines. “Get out of the way. You’re obstructing our work here.”
As he sat there, shivering but too numb to do anything about it, Nick’s phone chimed. He checked the screen. He expected to see a text from Katy, asking if he was all right. Instead, he found a black text box with ivory lettering, framed in walnut brown. It came from a chess program that he hardly ever used, one of those game apps that found a random opponent for you if you asked it to. Nick had not. The message in the box sent a chill down his already frozen spine. The Emissary has initiated a game. Do you want to play?
CHAPTER 4
“Nick Baron.”
A tall black woman with short bobbed hair, dressed in a formfitting gray suit, offered a cold smile and a curt wave from the center of the FBI’s crowded Intelligence Coordination Center. Agent Celine Jameson, CJ to Nick, was the head of DC’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. She signaled her confused subordinate to back off and allow their bedraggled visitor into the room.
The flustered young agent at Nick’s side had given him a lift from the attack site over to the FBI’s DC Field Office. Nick did not ask for the lift — he was offered a narrow choice by the on-scene commander: hitch a ride to the field office with the rookie and get a cab home from there, or be shoved into the back of a patrol car and be driven six hundred yards to the nearest Metropolitan Police holding cell. Either way, his time at ground zero was over.
Nick had willingly ducked into the back of the black SUV, but that was the extent of his compliance. Instead of catching a cab from the field office as ordered, he had followed the rookie into the building.
The young man had paused halfway through the glass double doors. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t come through here.”
Nick had pushed past him without a word, striding up to the lobby security desk and pressing his Defense Intelligence Agency badge up against the bulletproof glass. Then, at the guard’s nod, he drew the Beretta from his waistband.
At the sight of the weapon, the young agent lurched backward, fumbling for his own gun and shouting, “Drop it! Now!”
Again, Nick ignored him. He calmly slid the barrel of his Beretta into a small black cylinder protruding from the security desk. “Oh,” he said as he removed the clip and cleared the chamber, “you didn’t know I was packing?” He glanced over his shoulder and gave the kid a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. I probably should have advised you that I was armed before I got into your vehicle.” He paused long enough to tuck the weapon away again, his thin smile dropping into a stern frown as he turned to face the kid. “Or maybe you should have asked.” A loud buzzer punctuated the jibe and the Lexan door to the elevators clicked open.
The kid moved to follow Nick through, but the door slammed closed before he reached it. He rattled it angrily, glaring at the security guard.
The guard glared right back at him. “Identification, please.” He glanced down at the gun still in the rookie’s hand. “And you’d better clear that weapon, mister.”
The rookie had reappeared a few minutes later, panting at the top of the stairs as Nick stepped off the elevator. From there he clung to Nick’s heels all the way to the ICC, protesting loudly, but CJ’s dismissive signal served as a final blow. He gave an exasperated shrug and shrank back into the hall as Nick stepped into the room.
On most days, the ICC was a big, eerily empty space with several rows of unoccupied desks. Today it was packed. Scores of people hustled about, representing the FBI, the Secret Service, and a myriad of other agencies and subagencies that never worked well together. Nick stutter-stepped through the crowd, squeezing between desk chairs and forcing the occupants to scoot forward. He earned a number of frustrated scowls. He also earned a few concerned looks. In a brief fit of pity, the on-scene commander had given him an FBI sweatshirt, but the collar of his bloody undershirt still showed at the neck.
CJ stood slightly elevated above the rest of the ICC on a command platform at the center of the room. Behind her were two freestanding boards. One was a touch-screen smartboard with a pair of digital windows showing an aerial photo of the blast site and a live news feed with the sound muted. The other board was clear acrylic with handwritten lists of evidence and a spidery diagram of the agencies that were running down each piece.
“I didn’t know the DIA was doing domestic response and cleanup these days,” said CJ, glancing pointedly at the badge clipped to the collar of Nick’s sweatshirt as he stepped up onto the platform. She smiled as she said it. CJ knew full well that despite his badge, Nick did not work for the Defense Intelligence Agency. She was one of the few outsiders with the clearance to work with Nick’s Triple Seven Chase squadron — the last Tier One special mission unit still unspoiled by Wikipedia.
“I was on-site when it happened, CJ,” said Nick, ignoring her joke and shaking her outstretched hand.
“So I’ve heard. The on-scene commander called to complain about a Captain America type hanging around ground zero, barking orders at our people. I figured it was you, so I told him to send you here with the next returning gopher. I also told him to make sure the gopher got you a cab”—she raised her eyebrows—“but I think you know that.” She gave him a sly smile. “The OSC told me you offered him a helping hand.”
Nick didn’t laugh at her joke. “I told him where to find one, anyway. A severed hand landed on my Jeep.” He frowned at the agent. “It was the bomber’s hand, CJ. Your OSC was looking for remains of a vehicle-borne IED, but the source was just one guy with a vest. I saw him standing up there. I saw him raise his hands to Allah just before the explosion tossed my car and ripped the face off Health and Human Services.”
He turned to the aerial photograph on the smartboard. “I understand his confusion,” he said, using his finger to draw a white arc on the picture where the debris and the bloodstains began to thin out. “This radius is too big for your average vest made from homemade explosives and tenpenny nails.” He drew a line from the epicenter to the arc and tapped it. A distance readout appeared. “Forty meters. That’s your fifty-percent kill zone. I’ve seen car bombs that didn’t have half that reach.”
“You’re saying our bomber used commercial-grade explosives,” said CJ. “You’re saying he was connected.”
“I am. And another thing, the casualties were mostly blast injuries. I don’t think there was any shrapnel in the vest itself. It looks like the bomber left it out to make room for more explosives.”
CJ shrugged. “Maybe he wanted a bigger boom. You know, Iraq-style shock and awe.”
“No way. Even the amateurs know to use shrapnel for the gore effect. That’s how insurgents do shock and awe. They don’t trade shrapnel for explosives unless they want to bring down a building or blow through a wall.”
“So to sum up,” said CJ, folding her arms, “you barged into my command center all beat up and bloody just to tell me that this was a suicide vest, that the bomber used the good stuff, and that he made some unconventional choices when it came to shrapnel?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah.”
CJ’s frown darkened and she turned toward her board. “We already know all of that.” Despite the rebuke, she circled Nick’s drawing with her finger, double-tapping the screen to take a snapshot that automatically dropped into a folder marked EVIDENCE. “My OSC might not be your biggest fan,” she said as she worked, “but he did confirm that the source was a vest instead of a vehicle. His team also tested some residue from the hand you found.” She turned back to face him. “You’re right about the explosives. The bomber used commercial Semtex. Easy enough to get ahold of. Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s part of a cell.”