Monday Night Jihad (21 page)

Riley started to speak, then stopped. Finally he said, “Meg, I . . . well . . . Meg, Sal’s gone.”

“He’s already on his way home? Why wouldn’t he have called me back? That’s so—”

“Meg, that’s not what I—”

“—typical of—”

“Meg, stop!”

The silence on Meg’s end of the phone was broken only by a barely audible “Oh no.”

Please don’t say it, Riley, Meg silently pleaded. Please don’t say it!

“Meg . . . Sal’s dead. I . . . he . . . It was the last of the bombs. He didn’t even feel it coming. Oh, Meg, I’m so sorry.”

Meg dropped to her knees. The phone fell on the floor, knocking the batteries out of the back. Her sobs started long and soft and gradually increased in speed and intensity.

Jill, who was carrying Alessandra down the stairs, saw Meg, saw the phone, and ran to her friend. She put the baby on the floor nearby and enveloped Meg in her arms.

Alessandra crawled to the disabled phone and picked up one of the batteries. She examined it, then noticed her mama and Jill crying. She watched them for a few moments, and then she began to cry too.

Riley tried calling Meg back, but she didn’t answer. He left a message saying that he would call again in a few hours and would like to stop by.

As he stood leaning on the taping bench, the darkness that he had been descending into got deeper. And as that darkness led him further and further down, he willingly followed.

Tuesday, December 30

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver Field Office

Denver, Colorado

The failed bomber sat in the chair and stared at his reflection with his one eye that was not quite swollen shut.

The entire left side of the man’s face was disfigured by multiple fractures from when the off-duty Denver policeman had slammed his face into the metal railing. The cotton wadding in his nose forced him to breathe through his mouth, which he noisily did. His hands and feet were firmly cuffed to the chair on which he sat.

On the other side of the two-way mirror stood Jim Hicks, Scott Ross, and Division Chief Stanley Porter. The DC was in his usual foul mood and had already chewed Scott out for wearing Birkenstock sandals on the job—especially in the middle of winter. They were waiting for the arrival of the interpreter, and with each minute that passed, Porter’s mood grew visibly darker.

Finally the door swung open and a woman walked in.

Scott waited for Porter to launch into her, but Hicks beat him to the punch.

“Khadi! How you doing? I haven’t seen you since . . . when?”

“Two years ago in Nicosia. You were going in, and I was coming out.”

“You’re exactly right! Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” Khadi replied, turning her attention to the other men.

Hicks made the introductions. “Khadijah Faroughi, this is Midwest Division Chief Stanley Porter.”

“We’ve met,” Porter said, ignoring Khadi’s outstretched hand.

“Charmed,” Khadi said, pulling her hand back and turning toward Scott.

“And this is Scott Ross,” Hicks continued, “best analyst I’ve ever come across and not too bad on the ops side either.”

Scott couldn’t immediately place the woman’s name, but he was sure he’d heard it before. In any case, he had not been able to take his eyes off Khadi from the moment she’d walked through the door. A classic Persian beauty, her brown eyes and jet-black hair richly offset her light olive skin.

Scott quickly determined that this was a woman he wanted to get to know better. “Faroughi. That’s Iranian, isn’t it?” Scott held out his hand and gave her his biggest smile.

Khadi apparently was used to getting this reaction from guys. She gave Scott’s hand a quick, formal shake, then looked at Hicks. “Wow, Jim, you said this one was quick,” she said sarcastically. Then, looking at Scott’s feet, she said, “Cute sandals. The wool socks are a particularly nice touch.”

Scott felt his face redden, and for one of the first times in his life he had nothing to say.

Suddenly Khadi’s name clicked into place in Scott’s mind, and a mischevious grin spread across his face. “Wait a second . . . Khadi . . . You’re ‘Khadi with a D’! I’ve heard about you. Don’t worry; I’ll be super-extra sure not to call you Katie—like, with a t. Rumor is a guy once lost a limb making that mistake!”

This time it was Khadi’s turn to redden. She started to say something, then turned instead to Hicks.

“Well,” Hicks said, “since we’re all through spreading the love, let me get you caught up on the situation. We’ve got exactly one suspect. He was taken down by a kid with a tray of hot chocolate just before he could detonate his bomb. We’ve got the kid in another room.”

“Must have been a pretty full tray by the looks of him,” Khadi said.

“Most of what you see there was done by an enthusiastic off-duty member of the DPD. Our meds stitched up his head and lip, but I don’t think they were overly concerned about future scarring.”

“Has he talked yet?”

“No, we’ll be the first professionals to speak to him.”

“Well, let’s do it,” Khadi said, moving toward the door.

“Hold it!” Porter’s voice came booming across the room. “We’re going to set some ground rules before you take a step in there.”

“Ground rules?” Hicks shot back. “You are going to give me ground rules? Tell you what—I’ve got some ground rules for you. How about you keep your little rules to yourself and let me do my job?”

“Listen, bruiser, I saw how you ‘did your job’ with Kurshumi. Thanks to you, we’re going to have to bury him so deep inside of Gitmo that he’ll only see the light of day every other Ramadan!”

“So he got a little cut. It’ll make it easier for him to sip his cider through a straw. We got the information, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we sure did. But this ain’t ’Nam, and this boy ain’t Charlie. The rules are different now, and I’m the one who’s making them. And my rule number one is this: you are not going into that room with that knife strapped to your leg.”

Hicks advanced on Porter until they were nose-to-nose. “Are you going to take it from me?”

“Back off, Hicks, or I’ll bust you down so far you’ll be shining Ross’s shoes—if he’d ever wear them.”

Hicks held Porter’s eyes long enough to make his point; then he took a step back.

Porter held out his hand. “No knifey, no talkey.”

Hicks slowly bent over and pulled the MKIII from its sheath. As he straightened up, he locked eyes with Porter again. Then, in a swift movement, he brought the blade rushing down toward Porter’s hand. At the last second, he rotated the knife and slammed the grip into the waiting flesh.

Porter never even flinched.

Hicks moved toward the door. “Let’s go, Khadi.”

“One more thing,” Porter called out.

Hicks wheeled around. “What now? You want my belt? my keys?”

“No, I want you to take Ross in with you. Consider him my little monitor. Ross, if anything gets out of hand, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

Scott saw Hicks decide it was senseless to argue anymore.

Hicks sighed. “Fine. C’mon, Weatherman. Looks like you’re going to learn the fine art of persuasion.”

Tuesday, December 30

I-25, Southern Colorado

Oneness. Wholeness. Completeness. With the first explosion that had rocked Platte River Stadium, Hakeem’s doppelgänger had died. Now he was free to live as a single, united person. The elation he felt was almost more than he could stand.

He rolled down the car window and let the 75 mph arctic blast hit him full in the face. He yelled out into the darkness, “I am Hakeem Qasim, from the honorable family of Qasim! Fear me! Fear my family! Fear my people!”

Quickly the rushing air became too much for him, and he rolled the window back up, switched on the heated seats, and cranked the heater to full blast. He laughed at his impetuousness. More emotions than he knew what to do with.

He felt the brass coin hanging from his neck, now icy to the touch. Uncle, I have done it! Thank you for giving me the strength to take revenge.

The late-model Lexus RX 350 hummed southward along I-25. The SUV was the last luxury he had allowed himself from his old life. His only disappointment was that the man who had kept it for him the three weeks since he had bought it had been a smoker. But Hakeem had a hard time feeling any anger. Five hours ago, the man had become shahid—the third of the seven martyrs at Platte River Stadium.

But there weren’t seven martyrs, were there? Hakeem cursed the second man, whose bomb had failed to go off. If he had been a coward or had been killed before completing his mission, Hakeem hoped Allah would deal with him terribly. If he had been caught, then it could mean trouble. Either way, Hakeem knew he had better keep watching his back.

He saw another mile marker and calculated the time till he arrived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, at just under four hours. There he would look for the Holiday Inn Express on South Valley Drive. After parking, some “friends” would approach him, give him a forged American passport, and then usher him across the border into Mexico. This was the only part of the plan that made him nervous—mainly because it was the only part of the plan that was out of his control.

Once in Mexico, Hakeem would be taken south to Mexico City. There he would use another forged passport—this one from the Estados Unidos Mexicanos—to board a flight across the ocean to where he would receive a hero’s welcome. He couldn’t wait to get home and reexperience his youth—the taste of the food his mother had cooked, the smell of the men after a long day’s work, the feel of a prayer rug under his knees.

Hakeem knew the celebration would be short-lived. His goal was not to go back and live a hero’s life. He was only going back to reconnect and regroup. Soon it would be time to return to America; there was still work to be done here.

Hicks, Scott, and Khadi stood in the hall outside the door to the interrogation room.

“Remind me to scratch Porter off my Christmas list,” Hicks grumbled.

“Yeah; like I warned you, he’s a class-A horse’s . . . uh . . . patoot,” Scott said, changing course midsentence on Khadi’s behalf.

For her part, Khadi did nothing to acknowledge Scott’s act of gallantry.

Scott continued. “Obviously, Porter and the higher-ups want no new marks on this guy. Probably so they can splash his picture across the media outlets like a prize trout on the cover of Field & Stream. So, since I’m obviously new to this, is this a situation where you would consider something like waterboarding?”

“Could be,” Hick replied. “But I’m not in the mood for the mess. I’ve got something else in mind. It’s a little process I learned from Amos Tsarfati, a friend of mine in the Mossad. I spent a few weeks with him not long ago on a sort of technique exchange program. You ever heard of ‘shaking’?”

“Shaking?” Khadi jumped in. “Isn’t that dangerous? I remember some Palestinian guy getting killed during a shaking. As a result, the Israeli Supreme Court banned it. It’s been out of their playbook since ’99.”

“Has it? Guess Amos didn’t get the memo.”

“I’ve heard of shaking, but I guess I’m not sure exactly what it means,” Scott said. He wasn’t thrilled about the direction things seemed to be heading.

“What does it sound like?” Hicks asked.

“Like grabbing hold of someone and shaking him,” Scott answered.

“Bingo!”

“But can just shaking a person really get him to talk?”

“Trust me, when I’m done this guy won’t be talking—he’ll be singing. Khadi, I want you right next to me, so you don’t miss a word he might mutter. Weatherman, you find a corner and enjoy the show.”

As they walked through the door, Khadi gave an inquisitive look to Scott. “Weatherman?”

“It’s a long story.”

Hicks strode across the room, sat on the corner of the table, and pushed the prisoner’s chair back with his foot. He stared at the would-be martyr for more than a minute. The man defiantly stared back. Then Hicks uttered one word: “Al-Hazz?”

Scott recognized the Arabic term for “shaking,” and he saw a brief flash of fear in the prisoner’s eyes. Almost immediately, the man regained his composure.

Hicks leaned closer until he was less than a foot away from the man’s face. “Al-Hazz?”

This time the man tried to spit his defiance into Hicks’s face, but his mouth was so swollen that it mostly dropped on his chin.

Hicks merely smiled and nodded. “Al-Hazz it is.” He stood and grabbed the man’s collar. He called back to Scott while Khadi gave a simultaneous interpretation to the prisoner, “Mr. Ross, the goal of al-Hazz is to shake long enough that it causes severe pain but not so long that it causes lethal intracranial bleeding. It’s a fine line that admittedly I’ve never quite gotten the hang of.”

Hicks began violently shaking the man backward and forward. The man’s head flopped like a rag doll’s. Hicks continued to shake him for fifteen seconds, and then abruptly stopped. The man’s brain, however, continued its movement for another moment. That, combined with the damage already done to his face and head, caused the man to scream out in pain.

“Who is your contact?” Hicks yelled in the man’s face as Khadi translated the words in his ear.

The man gradually got control of himself, but his head continued lolling up and down. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet Hicks’s. Again he futilely tried to spit in Hicks’s face.

Hicks grabbed the man’s collar and began shaking him again. This time the man’s screams began early on and continued far beyond the twenty seconds of violence.

“Who is your contact?” Hicks repeated.

Now when he tried spitting, the terrorist could only weakly puff out air.

Hicks grabbed the man’s face in his right hand, making sure that his thumb pressed hard into the man’s shattered left cheek. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know. It’s simply a question of how much you’re going to make me work.”

Scott shifted from one foot to the other as he watched this from his little corner of the room. He wasn’t squeamish. Less than two weeks ago he had pinned a man’s hand to a bench with his knife. He knew there were things that needed to be done to get this all-important information. But that didn’t mean he needed to stand here and watch it. Just because he was going to eat a burger didn’t mean he needed to watch them slaughter the cow. He slipped out the door and began walking down the hallway.