Fentanyl, the other compound in the mix, worked more slowly than propofol but had a wider safety margin. Three agency scientists, all Ph.D.s in toxicology, had experimented with different combinations of the two drugs, seeking a safe mix that would work in less than five seconds. At first they’d tested the gas on dogs and monkeys. But eventually they needed to find out if the gas was safe for human use. Outsiders weren’t an option, since trying it on humans, even if they were volunteers and informed of the risks, would be unethical. The scientists organized a do-it-yourself study in their lab in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building, testing it on themselves a dozen or so times, with an agency doctor standing by. Aside from one minor incident — a three-hour coma — the stuff had worked. They’d declared it ready for battle.
As Armstrong had pointed out to Maggs, the idea of knockout gases wasn’t new. In 2002, Chechen terrorists took eight hundred fifty hostages in an opera house in Moscow, promising to blow up the building if they were attacked. After negotiations failed, Russian special forces poured fentanyl and halothane, an older anesthetic, into the building’s ventilation system. The good news was that the soldiers retook the building without having to fire a shot. The bad news was that the gas killed at least 129 of the hostages.
To reduce the risk of overdoses, Maggs and Armstrong had agreed to use the lowest possible dose, just enough to knock the family out for fifteen minutes. After that the people in the house would have to be, in the dry language of the mission, “mechanically restrained.” Bound and gagged.
THE CANISTER HISSED SOFTLY as Snyder pressed the top panel. The engineers at the Directorate of Science and Technology had built it to work without mechanical parts, on the assumption that it would be used in places where silence was essential. The compressed nitrogen mixed with the fentanyl and propofol in a cylinder about the size of a small spark plug. Then the gas poured through the tube and into the needle, which was another marvel of engineering, designed to disperse the gas as widely and quickly as possible. After consulting with aerospace engineers from Boeing, the Langley engineers had designed a series of superfine titanium mesh sheets at the tip of the needle. The propofol and fentanyl molecules bounced wildly off the mesh, careening in every direction as they entered the open air. They filled a one-hundred-cubic-foot room — twelve feet by ten feet by eight feet three inches — in less than a minute.
The hiss faded. A thumbnail-sized LCD on the side of the canister flashed yellow and then turned green, indicating that the gas was flowing freely, no blockages inside the canister or at the tip. Snyder peeked in the window, but nothing inside had changed. He was faintly surprised. He realized that he had expected to see or smell the gas, though he knew it was both odorless and invisible. Then the man in the bed kicked his legs convulsively. Seconds later his breathing changed, slowing and settling, and Snyder knew that the gas had hit him.
He scuttled along the wall to the next window. He peeked inside, saw three pairs of skinny legs. Based on their size, two were children, one was a teenager. And at least one was awake.
“Faisal? Faisal?” a boy said in Pashto, his voice small, querulous. “Do you hear it? Faisal?”
An older boy answered grumpily. “Hush, Wadel. It’s thunder only. Don’t be a woman.”
Snyder couldn’t find a crack in the wall. He pulled the second canister from the bag. He flicked a switch on the canister to set the pressure at high and pressed the panel and tossed the tube in the window.
The tube slapped against the cement floor and the gas leaked out with a loud hiss. Inside, one of the kids rolled to his feet. “See it, Wadel?”Steps came toward the window. “There. The snake.”
The tube went taut. Snyder imagined the boy must have grabbed it. He held tight, hoping the tube wouldn’t tear. The tube stretched—
And then went slack as the boy collapsed, banging against the concrete as lifelessly as a sack of potatoes.
“Faisal?” the second boy, Wadel, said. He stepped toward the window. “Faisal?” He wasn’t yelling, not yet, but his voice was rising. “Fath—”
His voice ended. It didn’t trail off. It fell dead as suddenly as a radio being unplugged. A fraction of a second later, Snyder heard Wadel’s body thump against the floor beside his brother’s.
“Guess it works,” Snyder whispered. He backed away from the house to be sure he wouldn’t get more than a whiff of the gas. He pressed the send button on his transmitter.
“Echo One,” he said into his microphone. “This is Echo Five. Target is secure.”
“Roger that,” Armstrong said.
THREE MINUTES LATER, the Nissan and Mitsubishi rolled up. The Deltas stepped out, popped the trunk of the Nissan, pulled two bags of gear. Two operatives hid themselves inside the Mitsubishi, their silenced Glocks at the ready. If a Talib patrol happened down the cart track and decided to investigate, they had orders to shoot on sight. The other three Deltas and Maggs ran around the house and joined Snyder.
“Nice job, Chris,” Armstrong said.
Snyder nodded. Nothing more needed to be said. The five of them pulled on specially made gas masks that had penlights embedded in the rubber above their eyes — enabling them to see without having to carry flashlights — and stepped through the window into the corner bedroom. It was unadorned, not even a rug, just a couple of faded blankets on the mattress. Neither husband nor wife stirred. They were breathing, but slowly, irregularly. Snyder was sure he could smell the gas, though he knew it was odorless. He was glad for his mask. Do androids dream of electric sheep?
“Let’s get them out before they OD,” he said.
They cuffed the man’s hands and feet together and taped his mouth shut and his eyes closed and carried him to the room that ran along the front of the house. They repeated the procedure with the woman and then moved into the boys’ room.
“Damn it,” Snyder said.
Faisal, the smallest boy and the one who’d gotten the biggest hit of gas, seemed to have overdosed. His lips were faintly blue and his chest wasn’t moving. Snyder pushed back the boy’s eyelids and saw only white. He felt for a pulse and couldn’t find one. Finally he picked up a slow thump, barely thirty beats a minute.
He picked up the boy and carried him out of the bedroom and set him next to his parents on a threadbare rug in front of a poster of the hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca, and began CPR, five chest pumps and three quick breaths, five and three, five and three, harder and harder. A rib cracked under him, but he didn’t stop. Come on, come on. He hadn’t killed this kid. He couldn’t have.
Then Faisal coughed. His chest rose an inch, two inches, higher, his heart awakening even as his brain slept. His mouth opened and air leaked out, not a last breath but a first. Snyder pulled away and watched the boy breathe. Armstrong walked in.
“He okay?” Armstrong said.
“I broke his rib, but yeah.”