Critical Mass (40 page)

He drew his American Express card out of his wallet and pressed it into the doorjamb, an act that he had practiced many times in camp but never again, certainly not at home, where he had left the locks alone. Nabila’s department had installed the locks, the alarm system, and her safe room, and he did nothing but use what he was cleared to use.

He slid the card but encountered no resistance. Odd. As he was sliding it again, he heard a distinct sound, very faint. He froze, listening. Was this a jet engine, perhaps, very high? A fighter, perhaps an E-4B . . . or no, a drone.

But it was none of these things, and he knew instantly that a car was drawing near, was not a block away, was moving slowly along the street. Had he been spotted by an infrared system?

Again, he slid the card. Again, no resistance.

The engine noise became distinct. He slid the card—same result. Then he had a thought—perhaps the door was unlocked. He pushed at it . . . and it opened. Not a good sign.

The blackness inside was so absolute that he could see only the faint sparks generated behind his eyes by his own nervous system. With this blindness came the unsettling feeling that somebody might be standing in front of him. He stepped forward, feeling with his hands. How might the house be laid out? The garage, he had seen as he came in, was to his right. That would be where the plane would be kept, presumably also the bomb. He felt in that direction but kept swiping air. Finally, he turned that way. There was no wall; therefore there must be a large room.

He stepped once, twice—and his foot hit the leg of something. Glass shattered, and there were blue sparks. He had knocked over a floor lamp. From somewhere there came a sighing sound, as if somebody who had been holding their breath had tried to cover a sharp inhalation under the noise and not quite succeeded. For some time, Rashid stood motionless, listening
to the house. Faintly, water ran in a toilet, the steady gurgle of a bad valve. There was an odor of cumin-seasoned food, old and stale. He took a step into what he knew now was the living room. Behind it would be the dining room and, somewhere on the far wall, a door into the kitchen. There, he hoped, he would be able to find a flashlight, which he would use to enter the garage. He knew how the plane would work, and he thought he might be able to extend the wings on his own. If not, he would detonate the bomb right here. Despite the fact that it would not be an airburst and it was ten miles from Washington, the destruction would be gigantic. Certainly the Pentagon would be completely destroyed. The Capitol’s dome would be smashed, the Washington Monument knocked down, the White House set ablaze. Alexandria and Arlington would be devastated and Georgetown set alight. Radiation would be everywhere, and the American government—what of it remained intact—would be forced to permanently relocate. The shame of it would haunt America for generations to come. The ruins of Washington would become a permanent symbol of America the powerless.

Forcing himself to move slowly, to use his hands like eyes rather than flailing them, he found the far wall, which was bare. In fact, except for the one lamp he’d had the bad luck to hit, the room itself was almost empty. This was a mistake. A safe house should look in every respect like a home; that was what they had been taught, and it was good teaching.

He found that he could see the outlines of windows faintly, and was soon able to guide himself into the kitchen. Then the door was under his hands. He took the knob and opened it.

At once, there was a smell, and he knew that it was blood, raw blood, and not yet decayed. What was here? What was he finding? He fumbled down into the garage itself, into a complicated mass of protruding obstacles. Tools clattered on a workbench as he drifted his hands along it. And then he felt something else, a softness, wet and dense, like a soaked sponge, but large. Gingerly he felt its rough edges, its damper center, then along the smoothness of it, feeling farther and faster, the cold, elastic quality under his fingers.

Frantic now, afraid of what this was, he felt for some sort of light, found a string, and pulled it, but uselessly. All the power in the region must be turned off.

But then he had something in his hand—a metal tube. Yes—he found the button; he pressed it, and found himself shining the flashlight beam on a man’s severed leg.

Gasping, forcing back his cries, he stumbled away from the workbench. Flashing the light around, he saw that there was blood everywhere, most especially on a green chain saw that had obviously been used to do this horrific thing.

But why? Who?

And then he understood. To be certain, he swung the light toward the bulky shape of the plane. It stood complete, the wings folded back. They had only to be drawn straight, he saw, and hooked down.

In the cockpit was exactly what he expected to find, the slumped body of Balil Aboud. He had cut off his own leg to make himself light enough to get the plane off the ground. His brother, therefore, had either run away or died. Balil’s hands clutched the stick, his fingers skeletal claws. His face was twisted with concentration, his teeth bared in a grimace of rawest agony.

Somehow, this man had sawed his own leg off, had dragged himself to the plane, had gotten in. But how? And why bother, given that he couldn’t hope to get it out onto the street, let alone open the wings? Then Rashid saw the prints of shoes in the blood on the floor, and they made what had happened here quite clear. Hani had faltered in his courage, and Balil had tried to replace him. The plan had been for Hani to push the plane out and lock the wings opened. But it had not happened that way, obviously.

Had Balil died here and then Hani run away? Or had Hani been a traitor from the beginning, in the pay of the Americans, perhaps, or the Saudi king, who paid bribes to jihadists all the time, the filthy dog? In any case, what Rashid saw here was the reason that Washington still stood.

“I have a gun.”

He turned, shining the light in the direction of the voice. In the doorway stood what was almost a human skeleton, a hollow-eyed, sunken shadow of a human being. Held in both clenched fists, his arms shaking so much it seemed as if he would drop it at any moment, was a .38-caliber revolver, a Police Special. The man was so weak that he could barely lift the small weapon. With its short barrel, it was not particularly accurate, but Rashid would not take that chance.

“Hani, Allah forgives. Allah is merciful.”

“There is no Allah! Allah is a lie!”

“Now, you know that isn’t true. You know that Allah is in your heart.”

The pistol began to shake more. He was trying to fire it, to pull back the
trigger, but he was very weak. To make him light enough to fly, his brother must have starved him.

Rashid leaped at him, throwing him back into the kitchen. He hit hard, his head thudding against the floor. Rashid straddled him, no longer knowing where the gun was. He lifted Hani’s shoulders and slammed his head against to the floor. There was a grunt, and he lay still. When Rashid shone the flashlight on him, he cringed away from it.

Rashid smiled at Hani. “It’s nothing. I understand. There’s no shame in this.”

“There is shame.”

“You still have a chance.”

“I cannot fly the plane.”

“But I can, Hani. I’m within the weight range.”

Hani gave him a careful look. “I thought you would kill me.”

Rashid wished dearly that he could. But never mind, Hani would get his justice along with the rest of the devils in this evil place. “No, no, there’s no shame. There’s no blame, Hani. You must do for me what your brother was going to do for you, and help me run the plane out.”

“Who are you? How did you come here?”

“I’m nobody from nowhere. Now come.”

As he returned to the garage, Hani followed. Shining the light into the plane, Rashid saw, for the first time in his life, one of the legendary bombs. It was stowed in a carrier just behind Balil’s ruined body, a steel darkness. Rashid couldn’t make out the exact shape, except that it was a rough ball covered with what looked like blasting caps. There were many wires, which appeared disturbingly delicate.

He followed the wire harness around beside the pilot’s seat to where it ended in a covered switch. He opened the switch cover. In tiny Arabic script were written below the silver toggle the words “Courage for the heart” and above “God is great.”

He touched the switch. That was all that was necessary, simply to flip that toggle a quarter of an inch. That would forever change the world. Forever. “How great you are, O God,” he whispered, fingering it.

“I thought of triggering it here. Right here.”

“But you couldn’t even do that?”

“I’ve never seen anything. I have never made love. I have no children.”

“Help me now,” Rashid said.

Balil’s body had stiffened, and as they forced it out of the plane, the garage was filled with the sound of cracking bones.

“At midnight,” Rashid said, “I will fly.”

“And will it . . . wreck this house?”

For an instant, Rashid was going to tell him the truth. Just in time, though, he caught himself. “Oh no. The house will shake. Be damaged. But the explosion will not carry this far.” He gave Hani what he hoped was a believably reassuring smile. “It’s safe here for you. Safe enough.”

As Rashid embraced Hani, he continued smiling, but to himself.
May this devil burn in the firestorm that will be triggered by the bomb. May he burn slow.

A NIGHT-BLOOMING

FLOWER

“You’ve never done operational work, Nabby,” Jim Deutsch said to his wife. “Stay
cool. Things can happen fast. Just rely on me; this is my office.”

“Jim, I’m cool.”

“No, you aren’t.”

They were sitting together in the tightly confined space of an FBI surveillance van, which had been modified for radiation detection. The space was packed with technology, maybe useful, maybe not.

“We could see action and I want you to
not
get involved. You cannot handle a gun.”

“I can, and I’ve got one.”

She showed him her little Backup.

“That’s for close-in work. It feels like protection in a firefight, but it’s not protection. Too inaccurate.”

“Should I not use it?”

“Keep it close to hand, but don’t get ambitious.”

They had now been working Alexandria for four extraordinarily tense hours, moving slowly down each street, watching their screens and drinking endless cups of coffee. So far, they had detected eleven medical X-ray facilities and one dental office with what turned out to be a damaged X-ray machine. Now they were methodically covering every residence that was close
to a medical X-ray facility, on the theory that the bomb had been hidden inside the radiation signature of such a facility.

It was now eleven forty. Fitz had capitulated in order to buy time, but the Mahdi’s latest message had been quite clear: all of his demands had to be met or Washington would die tonight.

Few of his demands had actually been met, though. Certainly, no bankers were being rounded up, and the worldwide
hijab
rebellion continued.

At least there had been a certain mercy, in that the time gained so far had enabled more orderly evacuation of the region. The president had personally asked the demonstrators to leave, and many of them had, including all of those with children. Still, though, a certain number remained around the White House, singing and praying, their voices echoing through the darkness that had descended with sunset. There was not a single light, not a cigarette, not a penlight, in all that crowd.

The White House, the Capitol, all of the monuments were darkened as well. Only deep inside the most secret places was there light and activity, such as the White House bunker where Marge and Mark and the others were making progress only by agonizing inches.

Despite the security issues, the original disk had now been flown to the United States. It was at a classified NSA facility, with another team working on it there.

As they passed down a long street, an indicator spiked. “Stop, please,” Nabila said. The driver braked. “What have you got?”

“Go, now,” she murmured.

The van moved off, bouncing a little as it accelerated, the equipment bays rattling.

“We have it,” she said simply. “Back there, the third house. The bomb is there.”

“You’re certain?”

“Oh yes. Western X-ray is across the alley, right behind the house, but their signature would not extend this far. And yet we have a good signal. It’s there.”

“Invisible from above, though.”

“Completely hidden, yes, thanks to Western X-ray. The only place to find it is from the street. But we have found it.”

He got on the horn. “We have a hit. It is a full positive. Please set the deployment well back, and deliver a blueprint of the property pronto.”

As Nabby listened, her eyes grew moist. Jim understood that he could not know her emotions. Her family had been extremely close. Rashid was like an extension of her own soul. She loved him that deeply.

“Nabby, when it’s somebody you love, it does things to your judgment. Be careful.”

She shook away her tears. “I can do this.”

“It might come to him dying.”

“Jim, Rashid is not my brother. My brother has died already. The man in there is the Dajjal, as are they all, all the ones who do this. It has stolen their bodies and killed their souls.”

The Dajjal was the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist. Ideas like that didn’t resonate with Jim, but if they gave her the courage she needed, then fine. If Rashid was here, she was going to face some terrible moments. To Jim, people who could kill for ideas were always the same—narcissists unable to empathize with others, their hearts killed by their ideas. As far as he was concerned, a person who was willing to murder another because they disbelieved some story was not a fully developed human being, and that included all religious fundamentalists, all political ideologues, all fanatics.

“You sigh,” Nabby said.

“Remember this: even if this bomb is detonated right here, inside that house, it’s going to cause incredible damage. We have only one mission: prevent that bomb from detonating, no matter who dies.” He reached out to her, drinking in her wide, soul-rich eyes in the amber glow that filled the tiny space. Both of her small hands took one of his great paws. “I’ll go in first,” he said. “If he’s there and I need you, I’ll call you.”