Shadow Maker (3 page)

A
s Nick pointed out the National Air and Space Museum to his dad, he heard his wife quietly giggling to herself.

He never got the chance to ask her why.

Katy's laughter became a shriek as an immense blast rocked the Jeep up onto two wheels. The driver-side windows blew completely inward, showering the interior with glass. As the vehicle came crashing down onto four wheels again, it veered left into oncoming traffic. Nick fought the wheel to regain control, swerving back across his own lane and skidding into the curb with his foot jammed on the brakes.

The bomb had exploded ahead and to his left, next to Health and Human Services. The fireball that first flashed in his vision had become a black cloud. Debris rained down around them. Something landed on the roof with a heavy thump.

“Are you okay?” he asked Katy, but she was busy reaching for her son.

“Luke!” she cried.

Nick turned with her and found that the toddler had escaped unscathed. Nick's dad had acted as a shield, taking the brunt of the flying glass.

“Dad, you're bleeding.”

“I'm fine.”

“Good, then take the wheel.”

Kurt Baron furrowed his brow. “What? Where're you going?”

Nick didn't answer. He looked to his wife. She had several small cuts on the left side of her face, but nothing serious. Katy met his gaze and nodded sharply. “I'll be all right. Go.”

He popped the rear hatch and climbed out of the Jeep, noting as he stepped around to his father's door that the object that had landed on his Jeep was a severed hand. He brushed it off the roof and into the gray-brown slush beneath the curb. “Dad, get up there and take the wheel. Get them to the hospital in Chapel Point. The closer facilities will be too busy.”

“
You
get back in the car and get us out of here yourself.”

Nick didn't have time for father-son competition. The Mall was about to fill with first responders and rubberneckers, and soon there would be no exit. Even more pressing, the reaper's relentless clock had started ticking the minute the bomb went off. As the ringing in his ears diminished, Nick was beginning to hear the wails of the dying.

“I can't, Dad. I have a duty to stay and help.” He pulled the professor out of the car. “No more argument. Get up there and take the wheel.”

Nick continued to the back and uncovered his Beretta Nano micro-compact. He shoved a clip home and slid the weapon into his waistband. Then he grabbed his first aid kit and some blankets. By the time he slammed the hatch closed, his father was in the driver's seat. Nick pounded the side of the jeep with the flat of his hand. “Go!”

As he raced toward the epicenter, the smoke began to clear, revealing a grim scene. In nearly twelve years of special operations, he had seen plenty of blood, but no amount of experience could ever compensate for the shock of a mass-casualty attack. He could swear that he had seen the source, just one man standing atop the puzzle steps outside Health and Human Services, but the casualties looked too widespread for a single suicide vest. It was hard to tell. Maybe the blood stood out more because of the newly fallen snow.

As he reached the outer ring of the carnage, Nick faced the most excruciating question of a first responder: who to treat first? All the wounded were suffering. Some were too far gone to save. He would have to listen to the pleas of the dying while he dedicated himself to saving those who had a chance.

The first of the walking wounded he encountered was a man about his age, dressed in a business suit and still clinging to a briefcase. His other hand covered one of his eyes. Blood seeped through his fingers. He saw Nick and his first aid kit and stumbled toward him.

“Help me! My eye!”

A woman lay mumbling in the snow a few meters beyond the businessman, her abdomen a bloody mess. Nick kept moving toward her, pointing the man toward a nearby bench as he passed. “Sit down over there. Cover both eyes with your scarf and wait for a paramedic to assist you.”

The businessman ignored the command. Instead, he dropped his briefcase and turned to follow. He grabbed Nick's arm and jerked him back. “You have to help me!”

“Sir, let go. I need to help this woman.”

The wounded man grew more desperate and committed both hands to yanking Nick's first aid kit away. In the instant he let go of his eye, Nick saw that it could not be saved, but he would suffer no other damage either, if only he would be still.

Nick gave into the man's pull for a split second, multiplying his force. Then he struck him full in the chest with an open palm and the businessman fell back on his rear, stunned. Nick quickly turned and continued to the dying woman's side. Amid the dark blood at her midsection, he could see the white of her intestines.

“Jerry,” she mumbled, staring with unfocused pupils at the blank sky. “Help Jerry, my husband.”

A few feet away, Nick saw a man lying motionless in the street, his head tilted to one side, his eyes open, lifeless. “Someone else is taking care of Jerry,” he said. “I'm going to take care of you.”

As he opened the first aid kit, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Nick jerked his head around, expecting to see the frenzied businessman. Instead, he found a young man with dark, penetrating eyes. The face was youthful but the expression grave.

“Do you need help?” the young man asked in a commanding tone.

The newcomer had a green duffel marked with a white cross slung under his arm. Despite his obvious youth, he showed no signs of shock or dismay. Nick had to assume from his calm that he had seen combat, or at least worked in a trauma center.

“No,” Nick replied. “I've got this one.” He pointed toward the epicenter, deeper into the carnage. “Keep moving that way, there are more, lots more.”

—

An hour later, Nick sat on the tailgate of an FBI Emergency Response Vehicle, cold, exhausted, and covered in blood. His first aid kit was spent, the bag lying somewhere in the snow. He had laid all of his blankets over victims or folded them under their heads, along with his leather jacket and sweatshirt. Now he wore nothing to guard against the deepening cold but his undershirt and blue jeans.

Washington's army of professional responders had taken over. The severely wounded had been evacuated, and the rest of the living were being treated on site. The dead lay where they had fallen, surrounded by agents poking them with gloved hands and taking pictures. Dignity always took a backseat to investigation. The businessman who had tried to take Nick's first aid kit sat on the back bumper of a police car, berating the paramedic who was trying to wrap his head.

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.
TheEmissary has initiated a game. Do you want to play?

N
ick 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.”

“Anybody claim the hit yet?”

“Nothing credible. Right now, the evidence points to a lone nutcase, another loyal reader of
Inspire
.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Unless there's something more you're not sharing. Was there a reason you happened to be at the scene?”

Nick hesitated, considering the oddly timed chess invitation. His subconscious told him that it could not be separated from the attack, but he refused to accept the resulting conclusion. If the chess invitation and the suicide bombing were connected, then the attack was personal. The implication, the responsibility for all that carnage, was too terrible to acknowledge. “No. I was off duty, just coming from the train station on a personal errand.”

CJ nodded. “Then go home. Kiss that beautiful wife of yours and tuck the baby into bed.” She looked him up and down, wrinkling her brow. “I'm sure your family is worried sick about you. Call me in a few days when things settle down and we'll do lunch. Until then, I don't want to see you, hear from you, or even hear
about
you.” She guided him toward the edge of her platform. “You're not the only game in town, Nick. Let the rest of us do our part.”

—

Nick did not make it home in time to tuck Luke into bed as CJ suggested. The sun had set long before he reached his house in Chapel Point, Maryland, south of DC. Katy understood. She was not happy with his long absence or his refugee appearance, but she understood. After suffering through a home invasion and a subsequent kidnapping by Chinese operatives the year before, she had been
read-in
to Nick's unique line of work. She knew why he stayed at the scene of the bombing.

Nick's father did not.

“What makes you so important that you had to abandon your family in the middle of a terrorist attack?”

“I didn't abandon them. I left them in your care.”

“I was wounded.” Nick's father raised a hand to touch a wide bandage on the side of his face.

There were also bandages on his neck and his forearm. Nick shuddered to think what all that flying glass would have done to his son if his dad hadn't been there. He was grateful, but he was too busy defending himself to say it. “That's funny,” he argued, “because I distinctly remember you telling me that you were fine. You just got a few scratches, Dad. People closer to the blast were dying.”

“I have training too, you know. Or did you forget that I spent thirty years in the reserves? I was flying jets before you could spell the word. You could have left me there and focused on your wife and child. At least I would have known when to quit and come home.”

Nick clenched his fists and took a breath. “Dad, I . . .” But he couldn't frame the words.

“You what? You had to putter around the aftermath like an amateur detective, bothering the FBI? You don't have the right to do that just because you're military, Nick. A good officer knows to stick to his own job. You're a technical adviser, a pilot flying a desk, not a supersleuth.”

Nick did not dare glance over at Katy, who was likely becoming dizzy with the awkwardness of the confrontation. His wife did not know every classified detail, but she knew enough. When his boss finally let him confide in her, she had become his lifeline. Over the last year she had kept him from drowning in the memory of a friend bleeding out in his arms.

Katy was dragged into her clearance by circumstance; she was not made for it. She had no poker face. If Nick met her eyes now, her expression would spill it all. His dad would suspect that they were hiding something and start to dig. The retired colonel would emerge from beneath the archaeology professor and interrogate them both until he got to the truth, the same way he used to get to the truth when Nick came home late after curfew. Nick could withstand drugs and torture, but he couldn't withstand the man who used to change his diapers.

Nick shut down the argument the only way he could. “You're right, Dad. Of course. I'm sorry.” All their arguments ended like that, no matter the topic. It was the natural order of things—father over son. They shared a tepid hug. The professor retired to the guest room.

Katy moved into the kitchen and Nick closed himself in his office to check in with his boss, an Army colonel. The old man was at work as he suspected, monitoring the aftermath of the attack. To Nick's frustration, the colonel sounded just like his dad. “Stick to your own job and let the FBI handle it. Let this one go. This is a simple case of wrong place, wrong time.”

“Yes, sir,” Nick replied, but an insistent voice in the back of his head told him that the colonel was wrong.