Even before the confrontation with Zachariah, Farid could see Karim was beginning to worry about certain people’s devotion. They had practiced the assault for months on end, and Farid was always at the vanguard. He was to lead them into the building, up the staircase, and into the Operations Center. They were to stop for nothing. If targets presented themselves, that was fine, but they were not to pause to engage a threat. The prize lay on the sixth floor. So, Karim ordered that once they reached the stairwell, Farid would cover their entry, and then take up the position at the rear of the attack.
Farid sensed there was a deeper purpose to the move, but he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure until just today. After all the men had their vests on, Karim pulled him aside and handed him a master detonator. Each vest had a digital timer that was to be started when they rolled through the gate. Those timers could be shut off or restarted, should they need more time to get to their target. They had five minutes to kill as many people as possible; moving through the room laying down a 360-degree cone of fire. Thirty seconds before detonation, the men were to spread out so as to maximize the blasts that would hopefully tear the roof off the building, kill any remaining survivors, and render the entire space useless. If any of the men had second thoughts about completing their mission, or they were somehow met with stronger force than they had anticipated, Farid was to hit the master detonator.
As he lay on his back trying to piece together what had just happened, this thought was floating on the periphery of his mind. He did not understand what had gone wrong. The SWAT uniforms had worked perfectly. Every security guard and agent they had encountered froze. Just as Karim had said they would. Everyone except this man standing above him. Farid remembered the bolt on his rifle locking in the back position. His thumb hit the magazine release, expelling the empty box, while he reached for a fresh one. It occurred to him that the rifle fire had suddenly gone silent. He sensed movement behind him, and then there was the stabbing hot pain in his back. He had dropped his rifle and fallen to his left, hitting the ground and then rolling onto his back.
Now lying there, Farid realized he couldn’t feel his legs. He tried to move them, but it was as if some great unseen weight had smothered them. Farid raised his head and looked at his lower body. Everything appeared to be fine. He tried desperately to move his legs again and then the harsh reality struck him that he was paralyzed. That hot pain that he had felt earlier was no doubt bullets slicing through his spinal column. Low enough, however that his arms still worked. Farid imagined himself in a wheelchair for a second, and then realized it was an extremely foolish thought. They were all wearing their vests.
Farid turned his head to the right to see what had happened to the others. All he saw was a jumble of black boots, vests, gloves, and helmets. They were all dead. The man standing above him started yelling at others, and that was when Farid remembered Karim’s order. He had told him if it appeared that they would be overwhelmed, he should not take any chances. He should hit the master switch and blow all the vests. He wondered how much time had passed since they’d come through the gate. Farid tried to remember where he had placed the detonator. Everything else had been rehearsed, but this had been a last-minute addition to the plan. He reached for his vest and then realized he’d put it in the cargo pocket on his left thigh. His hand began groping for the device, when there was a loud noise and a flash followed by searing hot pain in his elbow.
CHAPTER 74
RAPP stood over the last man and surveyed the damage, his weapon trained on the blown-out main door, fearing that more men would come through at any moment. Moans and cries of pain were coming from every direction. To his right, Art Harris emerged from his office with a bloodstained shirt. He was stepping unsteadily over broken glass, but otherwise appeared fine. Rapp had one round in the breach and eight more in the grip. He popped out the half spent magazine, put it in his pocket, and grabbed a full one.
More people were up and moving now. Rapp could see a few of them had guns in their hands. “Art!” Rapp screamed. “Get some people over on that door and secure it!”
Harris started yelling orders to his fellow agents.
Rapp caught some movement beneath him. He looked down and saw the man on the floor reaching for something in his pocket. The image of a grenade popped into Rapp’s mind. His 9mm swung down and he sent a round into the man’s elbow socket. The arm jumped a few inches in the air and then lay flat at a slightly odd angle. The fingers twitched as the man strained to make his hand respond.
After stepping on his other arm, Rapp bent down and patted the pocket that the man had been reaching for. There was something square inside. Rapp reached in the pocket and pulled out an electronic detonator roughly the size of a pack of cards. He studied the device for a second and then looked down at the man. “Too bad you’re not going to be able to use this.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the man said in near perfect English. With a smile he added, “It would have only sped up the inevitable.”
Rapp moved his gun to the man’s face and tore off his goggles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I am not afraid to die. I have already martyred myself. I have killed many Americans today. Allah will be very pleased with me.”
Rapp hated that word—martyr. He’d learned long ago that guys who liked to throw it around had a particularly crazy religious bent. The fact that this guy had just had his spinal column blown out and his left elbow shattered, and was looking up at him as if he was experiencing some kind of religious nirvana, was extremely unsettling. Rapp began looking him over from head to toe. His tactical vest was packed with extra magazines for his rifle, but not much else. At the neckline, though, he saw the seam of what appeared to be a second vest under the first. Rapp stuffed the detonator in his shirt pocket and yanked at the Velcro and zipper on the man’s tactical vest. The vest fell open to reveal a sight that caused Rapp’s entire body to tense for a second. There was a second vest under the first, and the pockets that were designed to hold ammunition were instead filled with blocks of pasty gray C-4 plastic explosives. Like the bombs that had been set off earlier in the day, these too had ball bearings pressed into the C-4.
In the pocket just above the man’s heart, near the neck of the vest, he found the detonator. Rapp carefully slid it out and looked down at the small digital readout as it ticked from forty-three to forty-two seconds. He resisted the urge to pull the wires from the device, knowing that it could very well trigger the explosion. Rapp looked around the room that was now swimming with the walking wounded and people crying for help. There was no way in hell he could get all of these people out of here in just over half a minute. His eyes fell on the windows that looked to the northeast. At the base of it, six floors down, was the ramp that went down into the underground parking garage.
Rapp couldn’t be certain that the glass was blastproof, but it was a pretty good possibility. Then again, blastproof glass was designed to keep the blast wave of an explosion out. It wasn’t designed to keep things in. Rapp quickly looked over the other five bodies. He had to assume they were all wearing vests.
Just as Nash came up, Rapp swung his pistol around, aimed it at the window, and squeezed off four quick rounds that punctured and spidered the glass but did not shatter it. Rapp started shooting again, the rounds popping off in rapid succession. In less than four seconds he emptied the rest of the seventeen-round magazine into a two-by-two-foot section of the window that was starting to give way.
The entire room had stopped to watch this one man shooting at an inanimate object as if he’d lost his mind.
As Rapp reached for his last full magazine, he screamed, “They have suicide vests! Art,” Rapp yelled as he hit the slide release on his gun. “I need help with these bodies! We have less than thirty seconds before these vests start…” Rapp’s words were muffled by his and Nash’s gunshots as they emptied their magazines into the window.
A jagged hole had now appeared; roughly big enough to
fit a garbage can through. Rapp holstered his gun and yelled to Nash, “Grab the other side.”
They bent down and grabbed the paralyzed man by the legs and the side of his vest. They lifted him and started running across the room toward the partially punched-out window. Rapp began yelling at others who were standing by, watching. “Grab a body! Hurry up!”
As they neared the window, Rapp shouted, “Don’t slow down.”
He and Nash continued at near full speed and chucked the man headfirst into the uneven opening. The glass bent and then gave way as the body sailed past and down to the concrete ramp below. Rapp and Nash did not wait to see the impact. They turned and ran back to the floor. More men and women were jumping in to help now, some of them wounded. Rapp and Nash grabbed the last of the six men and started back across the room. Up ahead, they could see others throwing the terrorists out in the same fashion they had.
Three more bodies quickly went out the window. Rapp was beginning to think it was going to work when the people in front of him and Nash lost their grip and dropped the body. Nash started to slow and Rapp yelled, “My side,” and kept moving.
They ran around the two agents, one of whom was now collapsed on the floor with blood dripping from his right arm. The hole was now much larger, so Rapp and Nash tossed their body out the window from a couple of steps away and then raced back to help the agents who had stumbled. Others were stepping in to help at the same time. Four of them ended up each grabbing a limb as they hoisted the body toward the opening, and then threw it clear into the open blue sky.
Rapp was about to stick his head through the opening to verify that the men had in fact ended up in the concrete-walled drive that led down into the parking garage, when he realized how stupid that would be. Nash grabbed him by the shoulder and began pulling him away from the window. They pushed everybody back as they went, and then the blast echoed from below, rolling up toward the shredded window.
Rapp turned to Nash, elated that they had pulled it off. He saw his friend looking down at the ground in semi-shock and followed his gaze. There on the ground with a bullet hole in her forehead was their assistant, Jessica.
CHAPTER 75
IT was almost midnight when Nash pulled into his driveway. He wedged the minivan into the garage, put it in park, and just sat there for a minute, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, his forehead resting on his knuckles. He hadn’t wanted to leave the office. It had nothing to do with not wanting to see his wife and children; he just didn’t want to leave while there was still work to be done. The death toll at NCTC had reached thirty-eight, with another seventeen injured, three of them critically. The only consolation was that it could have been so much worse.
That was the mantra that had been picked up by virtually everyone as a way to offer comfort to those who had gone through it. Men like Rapp and Nash, who had seen death up close were more equipped to deal with the situation, but for quite a few of the analysts who had witnessed close colleagues and friends blown away in the place they worked every day, it was too much. A few got back to work, because subconsciously they knew it was the only way they could take their mind off what had happened, but a surprising number either became hysterical with grief or went into shock.
As Nash helped move the mentally wounded to the cafeteria, the realization hit home that these people were civilians. They were not trained for combat like his marines. Langley sent over people to help, as did the FBI and other agencies. There had been a hell of an argument early on between Art Harris and another bigwig from the bureau who wanted to quarantine the entire Operations Center and treat it as a crime scene. Harris was adamant that they get the Ops Center up and running again as soon as possible. The other agent wouldn’t budge, however, and ordered everyone to stop the cleanup. He wanted the bodies left exactly where they were until forensic teams showed up. The two men began screaming at each other, and then Rapp decided to settle the issue. He walked over, coldcocked the agent, and ordered everyone back to work.
Nash had talked to his wife just once. He’d called her to let her know that she might start to hear some things from the press. He couldn’t talk about it, but he was fine and he would call as soon as he had a chance. Nash couldn’t even remember how long ago he’d made the call. He guessed it was probably around dinnertime. Maggie would be worried sick.
He pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out. After shutting the garage door, he walked up to the house. The light over the kitchen sink was on, as was a lamp in the study. Otherwise, the house was completely black. Nash slid his key into the back door and entered the mudroom. He turned off the alarm, closed and locked the door, and turned the alarm back on. He put his gun and holster in the gun safe and made a mental note to fill the magazines for the .40-cal in the morning.
Nash took off his suit coat and set it on the back of a chair in the kitchen. He quietly walked down the hallway and looked in the study. Maggie was sitting in the big chair next to the fireplace with a blanket and a book on her lap. She must have sensed his presence, as her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at him with a warm smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Her eyes traveled from her husband’s face to his shirt.
Nash had forgotten that his shirt was stained with blood.
“What happened?” Maggie asked with concern.
Nash didn’t know how much he could say, and he really didn’t want to relive what had happened. “I’m fine, honey. This isn’t mine.”
“When you called, you said you were fine,” she said as she tossed the book and blanket off her lap. “You never said you’d been in danger.”
“I wasn’t, honey. This is from helping with the wounded.”
“That building in McLean…the one that they showed on TV with all the emergency vehicles racing in and out—is that where you were?”
Nash was hit suddenly by the bizarre requirements of his job. His own wife didn’t even know exactly where he worked. She knew only that he had an office at CIA headquarters. She knew nothing about his role at the National Counterterrorism Center. She probably didn’t even know the organization existed.
“I was there,” he admitted, “but I can’t tell you much more than that.”
She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a tight squeeze. “The kids were really worried.”
“I know. I wish I could have gotten home sooner but…” Nash’s voice trailed off.
“You can’t talk about it,” she finished for him.
It was the company line. It represented the strange nonbalance of their marriage. She talked about her job whenever she wanted and as often as she wanted. He didn’t speak of his even at times like this, when it would have made his life a lot easier. “How did things go with the dean and the De Graffs after I left?”
Maggie took a half step back and looked up at her husband with a proud smile. “Let’s just say Dean Barnum Smith and I got the De Graffs to drop the entire matter.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and Rory and I sat down and had a good talk this afternoon. I asked him if he was happy at Sidwell.”
“And?”
“His answer was less than enthusiastic. So, I told him, if he stayed out of trouble for the rest of the semester, I’d let him go to Georgetown Prep next year.”
“What about lacrosse camp this summer?”
“I told him that was between you and him.”
Nash drew her in close and kissed the top of her head. Knowing how stubborn she was, Nash knew it couldn’t have been easy for her. “Thank you, honey.” He squeezed her tight and rubbed her back.
She tilted her head back and offered him her lips. “You were right. I allowed myself to get too caught up in all of it.”
“I’m not exactly the easiest person to deal with,” Nash said as he stepped away and looked down at his dirty shirt. “You put up with a lot of shit, honey.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m sorry,” Nash said in a tired but sincere voice.
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br /> “Don’t be,” she said as she pushed him toward the stairs. “Go upstairs and take a shower. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Nash started walking up the stairs.
“Michael,” his wife said softly, “I know you can’t talk about it, but I’m sorry about what happened today.” Maggie placed her hand on the railing. “I’m sure you knew some of those people who were killed.”
With a blank stare Nash looked past his wife into the near dead embers in the study’s fireplace. He didn’t have it in him right now to tell her that Jessica was dead. For some reason he couldn’t picture any of the faces of those who had died. In a detached voice, Nash said, “It wasn’t a good day for us.”
She rubbed his hand. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Nash looked down at her beautiful, perfect face and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine.”
He climbed the stairs and was about to check on each of the kids, when he decided he’d better shower first. They did not need to see their father in the dead of night in a bloody shirt. Nash peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. As the hot water cascaded down his shoulders, he took a deep breath, and as the tension began to release, the faces came to him. Chris Johnson was first. He imagined what his final hours must have been like, and shuddered to think of the pain they’d put him through. Then the images of the people he worked with at the NCTC. He thought of Jessica lying there with a bullet hole in her head. He thought of her little boys. They were only nine and six. Their mother gone forever.