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Hala was gone.
Officer Carstensen lay in her own blood, shot through the right shoulder. She looked at me, dazed, released her hold on Jasper, and gestured weakly with her left hand as she tried to speak. I couldn’t hear, but I understood. Hala had rolled backward off the platform the same way she’d rolled on.
Jasper sniffed at the blood on his handler’s shirt, got to his feet with his hackles rising, and lunged away from Carstensen. The wounded dog took two bounds and then leaped off the loading platform.
Sound began to return to me, a dull roar, and then ringing, and then the thud of another gunshot, terribly close. The sound of Jasper yipping in pain was followed by the most terrified screams I have ever heard.
These things all brought me to my feet. I jumped from the end of the loading platform, gun drawn, spotting the tracking dog and the HRT operators moving swiftly toward us.
I went down on my knees and aimed the Maglite beam under the railcar, searching for the source of the screaming. Jasper had been shot again, this time in the back leg. I could see broken bone and torn sinew.
But he had Hala pinned on her right side, and she was screaming in Arabic. Jasper had bitten deep into her left biceps and was shaking her as if trying to tear her arm loose from its socket.
CHAPTER
80
OMAR NAZAD FOUND ANTIBIOTIC CREAM AND BANDAGES IN THE FREIGHT train’s first-aid kit. And he’d eaten a few of those pills Hala had insisted they all carry, so his face and blinded eye throbbed less.
In fact, the Tunisian felt like he was on top of things once more, doing Allah’s work, as he sat astride the train engineer, pinning the man’s back and shoulders to the floor of the cab. Aman was on the floor as well, bracing Tony’s head between his knees and pressing his gun to the engineer’s temple.
From the floor, the Tunisian picked up a cup of coffee. It was fresh and scalding hot; he’d just taken it out of the microwave at the back of the cab. He held it with his right hand, feeling warm and fuzzy as he reached toward the engineer’s horrified face.
“No! What are you doing?” Tony yelled.
Nazad smiled. “What’s that saying from your Old Testament? An eye for an eye?”
“No! Please!” Tony screamed as the Tunisian pried up his right eyelid.
“It’s either this or death, infidel,” Nazad said, and he poured the boiling-hot coffee onto the engineer’s eye, saw it turn gray and then milky as Tony went insane, bucking and screeching out pleas to God and his mother.
Now the Tunisian felt better about losing his sight in one eye, and he got up off the eng
ineer. Tony rolled around, hands covering the wounded eye.
“He needs a hospital,” said Pete, the other engineer, who’d watched in shock. “And so do you.”
“I need only God’s blessing,” Nazad snarled. “You take him to the hospital when you finish your trip.”
“What?” Pete said.
“What is your destination?” the Tunisian asked.
“New Jersey. Freight yard on the west side of the Hudson.”
“When you get there, you may take your friend to the hospital,” Nazad said, and then he looked at Aman.
In Arabic, he said, “This is your destiny, brother. You will stay on the train until you reach New Jersey, and then make your escape. Go to the Syracuse house.”
Upset, the Turk said, “But that’s not the plan. I won’t be there to see the blow struck.”
“And I lose an eye to see the blow struck,” Nazad snapped. “These things are the will of God, brother. The will of God.”
Book Three
LEAVING ON A FAST TRAIN
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