McGarvey reached the head of the stairs as a fireman came out of a doorway at the end of the corridor.
His wounds and loss of blood had sapped his strength more than he realized, and he was winded from just coming up the stairs. There was a great deal of activity outside on the street. Todd and Otto were out there, watching for someone to come out of the building. Him or Khalil.
But he had not counted on a fireman still being here. He concealed the pistol behind his leg. “Is there anyone else up here on this floor?”
“No,” the fireman said, advancing down the corridor. “And you don’t belong here. Get out.” His voice was oddly strangled.
Something was wrong. Out of place. But it seemed as if a fog was starting to engulf McGarvey’s brain. He shook his head. The approaching fireman seemed to waver out of focus.
“You’re hurt,” the man said. His voice was distant. Yet it was somehow familiar.
“Someone might still be in the building,” McGarvey argued. The words were thick in his mouth. “The third floor. Has anyone checked up there?”
The fireman spotted the pistol in McGarvey’s hand. He stopped a couple of yards away. “Who is it that you think you’re going to shoot?”
“Is there anyone on the third floor?” McGarvey demanded. Every second spent here was a second longer for Khalil to make his escape. But it wasn’t going to happen this time. Not like in Alaska. Not after what he’d done to Katy. The terrorist had laid his hands on her. He had hurt her. Inflicted pain on her. Frightened her.
Khalil would pay for his crimes on this day.
The fireman glanced down at the empty stair hall. His radio came to life. “Donnelly, Lee, where are you guys?” He turned back to McGarvey and hesitated for a long moment.
There was something about the man that McGarvey couldn’t put a finger on. A familiarity that was just out of his grasp in the fog. Something else. There was something wrong. He should know what it was.
The fireman put his right hand in his coat pocket, but then hesitated. He shook his head. “I’m not going to deal with an armed man,” he said. “Stay and search the whole building if you must.” He brushed past and started down the stairs.
McGarvey turned to watch the retreating figure. The name stenciled on the back of the fireman’s coat was Donnelly. But he hadn’t answered the radio call. He wasn’t wearing gloves. And although he was wearing a breathing mask, he was not carrying an air tank, and the hose dangled over his shoulder.
The fireman stopped halfway down the stairs, and looked back up.
McGarvey started to raise his pistol, his arm impossibly heavy. “Khalil,” he said.
Khalil pulled a bloody stiletto out of his pocket, and in one smooth powerful motion threw it underhanded.
The razor-sharp blade sliced into McGarvey’s right shoulder just below his collarbone, the pain immediate and intense. His entire right side went numb, and as he fell back, a tremendous wave of nausea overcoming him, he dropped his pistol.
Not like this, the single thought crystallized in his brain.
Khalil reached in the same pocket and was pulling out a pistol, when McGarvey yanked the stiletto out of his shoulder and launched himself down on top of the terrorist.
He hit Khalil in the chest, and together they crashed down the stairs into the hall, the terrorist’s gun going off with a huge boom next to McGarvey’s ear.
A great many people were right outside. Someone was shouting something, and McGarvey thought it might be Liz’s voice, but he was focused on Khalil, who had lost his air mask.
McGarvey was looking directly into the killer’s black eyes, bottomless, cold, indifferent, completely without emotion even now.
Blood pumped from the wound in his shoulder, and McGarvey knew that he would not remain conscious much longer.
There was something wrong with Khalil’s left arm, but he grabbed McGarvey by the throat with his right hand, and his powerful fingers began to clamp down.
“Bastard!” The single thought crossed McGarvey’s brain as his world started to go dim. With the last of his strength he raised the bloody stiletto to Khalil’s face, and before the terrorist could deflect the blade, he drove it to the hilt into the man’s right eye.
The terrorist’s body convulsed once, and then lay still, the light going out of his other eye.
A great tiredness overcame McGarvey, and he let himself go with it, only vaguely aware that his daughter and wife were at his side, calling his name, until his world went dark.
THE JIHAD
The morning was chilly, with thick dew on the grass as Muhamed Abdallah got out of the dark blue Toyota SUV two blocks from Rocky Mountain High School. Workday traffic was normal for this hour. No one was armed, none of the storefronts in the city were boarded up, there were no bars on windows, nor were there police or soldiers stationed at the intersections.
The laxity was nothing sort of amazing to him. But after today no one would ever ignore the fatwahs of Osama bin Laden again.
Ever since he’d gotten word, a gentle peace had come over him, descending like the veils of Muhammad’s wives. It was a blasphemous thought, one that he did not share with his hosts Seyoum and Mustafa, but it was comforting.
Paradise will soon be mine. Even now my black-eyed wife awaits me.
“Are you okay?” Seyoum asked, respectfully, through the open passenger window.
Muhamed opened his eyes to him and to Mustafa sitting behind the wheel, and his heart suddenly filled with love for them. Rejoice, 0 my brothers, for I go first to heaven to prepare the way. He nodded, but he could not trust himself to speak. All his spit had dried up.
“Then you know the way? It is only two blocks—”
Muhamed turned and walked off. He would never see his two brothers on earth again, but that did not matter. He smiled. He was finally on his jihad, and no power on earth could stay his hand.
Insha’allah.
I profess that there is no God but the One God, and that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Rising before dawn this morning, Muhamed had bathed and had taken great care with his shaving. Like many young Muslim men, he preferred to maintain a four- or five-day growth; it was a matter of style. But not here. High school students in the U.S. were generally clean-shaven.
He began taping the twenty kilos of plastic explosives to his naked body at 5 A.M., molding the puttylike material first to his legs, then around his abdomen and his chest, even his back, though that had been extremely awkward to do. Finally he’d taped long slender strips of the Semtex to his arms from a few centimeters above his wrists to his shoulders.
He left his feet, his knees, and his elbows free so he would be able to walk and gesture normally, but Semtex was taped to every other square centimeter of his body that would be covered by his jeans and LA Lakers sweatshirt.
In the mirror he looked like some otherworldly monster whose hide seemed to be made of large gray scales.
Finished by 7 A.M., he took great care to connect the electrical wires that would send a current to the firing pins in each block of Semtex. When he got dressed, the wires would lead from a hole in his jeans pocket to the detonator that had been fashioned from a cell phone.
At the right moment, after he was inside the school, perhaps in the cafeteria or in the central corridor between class periods, he would reach in his pocket and press any key.
He would wait then, long enough for a brief prayer, and then press any second key, which would send the current.