“Hey!” she shouted.
Yasmin didn’t expect anyone to answer, but she thought the sound of her voice might tell her something about the size or composition of the room.
Her voice sounded unusually flat.
Sound-absorbent material, she thought. Her captors didn’t want her to be heard outside the room.
She looked around as far as she could see to both sides, raised her head to gaze between her feet. There was no light, anywhere. Maybe the soundproofing was black curtains. For all she knew, they could be hanging just a few feet away. She didn’t feel a breeze, any kind of stirring, heard no exterior sounds, even though she was in Manhattan. She was definitely closed off within a room.
She flopped back and folded her thumbs in, squeezing her hands into narrow wedges. She tried to draw them through the restraints. The leather was too tight. Like the shouting, that, too, had been anticipated. She noticed then that even her nails had been trimmed. It was tougher to dig into someone’s eyes this way.
Over the years, Yasmin had evolved a three-tiered approach to captivity. Until she was apprehended at Heathrow, it had been theoretical. First, try to escape. Failing that, play on their compassion. Failing that, pretend to cooperate. Escape had failed. She sucked air through her open mouth several times to tighten her throat.
“Please!” she cried. “Anyone? I thirst.”
No one came. She repeated the plea. She did not even hear the shuffling of feet, the click of a light switch, the beep of a cell phone or a computer, the chug of a water pipe, the hum of an elevator, the passing of an airplane. She might just as well be locked in a coffin buried in six feet of frozen earth.
Her thoughts about captivity had always been about what she would do to get free, not about what someone would do to her. Women were sexually abused by jailers, and she was mentally prepared for that. It wasn’t about a man taking her; it was about a man putting himself close to her so she could hurt him. She had learned that from studying kung fu during an extended mission in Hong Kong. When someone presented his body in an aggressive way, any part of it, you let him in. And by locks and strikes you kept him from getting away. Even bound as she was, she had teeth, fingers, her head, affected submission, the vanity of the male lover who wanted to win legitimately what he had taken.
She had not contemplated isolation. Were the men from the plane waiting for someone to arrive or trying to unnerve her? She considered both with increasing anxiety. Though she realized that weakening her was probably the goal, she couldn’t help herself. Either one accepted a situation and thought about something else or one tried to accumulate information, understand motivation, replay what had been seen and heard in search of clues.
She did the latter, for what seemed like an hour or more, long enough for her headache to subside somewhat.
And then the world went suddenly, painfully white.
CHAPTER 15
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
“He’s breathing!”
The words shot through the FBI radio system like a bullet. While four agents secured room 306 in the Hilton Hotel, two others performed crude field triage on the agent who lay in front of the broken door. His partner on the advance team was dead, with a bullet wound to the head, but this man was alive, with three holes in his left side.
Medics arrived in less than a minute, pulling off the bulletproof vest, which was putting pressure on the chest and increasing blood flow to the injuries. While one prepared an IV to replace the blood that was dripping onto the carpet, the other turned a pocket flashlight on the wounds.
“Point of entry-no serrations,” he said.
The other man nodded and said into his shoulder radio, “Debrief on-site.”
There was a crackled acknowledgment. The medic continued with his work. The clean wounds suggested not just a point-blank assault but a high-velocity penetrating intra-abdominal injury. In addition to the damage caused by the bullets themselves, the kinetic energy each one had generated would have caused severe trauma to adjoining organs. One of them had entered under the armpit and could not have avoided passing near the heart. The organ was probably already swelling. That injury alone was likely fatal.
The medics refused to think about anything beyond each passing second. The goal was to keep the victim alive as long as possible. His life was important, of course. So was information. Epinephrine would be part of the cocktail being administered.
The victim’s breathing was shallow. There was a bubbling sound deep in his throat. Blood. There was no point to surgical management. Adhesive bandages were placed on the wounds. A second medical unit arrived with a stretcher, along with a senior agent, an intelligence specialist.
The dead agent had been covered with a sheet from the hotel room. The IS knelt beside him, leaning close to his partner.
“Did you zap him?” he asked the medics.
“Just now,” said the agent with the IV. “Heavy dose. Give him a few seconds.”
A terrible quiet lay upon the hallway. The gurgling in the agent’s throat gave way to a sudden, vacuum-like inhalation. Then he gagged, coughed, lay still, wheezed, and opened his eyes.
He was not looking at anyone in particular. Perhaps he was peering into the near future or into the past. They would never know. He said just one thing before he died, spoken clearly and without equivocation.
“One… of… us.”
CHAPTER 16
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Located in the heart of Washington, D.C., the century-old George Washington University Hospital was fully renovated in 2002, transforming it into one of the finest multi-care medical facilities in the nation. With a medical staff of over fifteen hundred doctors and nurses and nearly ninety thousand outpatients a year, the hospital boasted of many successes. Julie Harper, whose surname was then Deas, had previously been one of those success stories.
After she met Jon unpredictably at the notorious 1983 Peace Now rally in Jerusalem, where support of Israeli-Palestinian peace ended with a protester’s grenade killing peace advocate Emil Grunzweig, the political pair had agreed to reunite when they returned to “home field,” as they lightheartedly referred to anywhere peaceful.
The following month Julie finally received the promised phone call, and with it, Jon’s formal invitation to dinner. Julie, however, had another proposal, and Jon arrived at her home for a casual, no-fuss, intimate evening together. Pouring him a glass of 1978 Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne while she finished preparing her simplified version of an off-season Thanksgiving dinner, Julie had the misfortune of slicing into her left hand’s pointer finger, leaving the soft tip amid the turkey and other trimmings. She swore, but nothing more, as Jon swallowed what would be his last sip of champagne before rushing her off to the ER at the George Washington University Hospital.
Several stitches and a healthy injection of lidocaine later, Julie was released into Jon’s loyal care, and the pair returned to “home field,” where they nibbled on the uncontaminated side dishes, finished their bottle of lukewarm champagne, and watched the stunning D.C. sunrise. It would be the last one they’d share as strangers.
The meeting with the president ended around 8:00 p.m.-at least Ryan Kealey’s part in it did-and he cabbed over to the hospital. He had been offered a staff car but preferred to make his own way. For one thing, he didn’t like accepting gifts from these guys, not even a lift from one of their meetings. It was a matter of expressing your independence. That was important in Washington. Otherwise, people assumed they owned you. For another, he needed to be around real people, starting with a short walk across Lafayette Park to the Hay-Adams Hotel, which was where he got his ride.