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101
FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF, I SLEPT WITH NO DREAMS OF ANYTHING. BUT THEN, from the inky depths of my brain, images began to roll. I saw Hala lobbing the grenade at me. I saw Henry Fowler holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head and kicking at his children, who became Hala’s kids strapped to the torture chairs.
The Saudi secret policemen in their hoods were there as well, one carrying the battery, the other holding the ends of the jumper cables. The one with the battery pulled off his hood, revealing himself as Mahoney. The second hooded man tried to get away, but Mahoney grinned grimly and tore the hood off his head.
It was me. I was the one who held the jumper-cable clamps. Mahoney and I were laughing, enjoying ourselves the way we’d done dozens of times at backyard barbecues and other family get-togethers.
My dream self opened the red clamp’s jaw wide, looked at the children, and seemed fascinated by the terror they displayed. I clamped the cable to Aamina’s chair, expecting the arch and trembling I’d seen her exhibit during her torture before.
Instead, I heard a rhythmic buzzing noise that broke the spell and roused me from sleep. I was drenched with sweat. Bree rolled over and slept on. I looked at the clock groggily: 3:40 a.m. I needed at least ten, fourteen more hours, but my bladder felt full. And what was the noise that woke me?
I slid out of bed as carefully as I could, stood, felt wobbly, and then noticed the message light blinking on my mobile. I picked it up, staggered to the bathroom, and sat down on the toilet because I did not think standing was such a good idea. Before I could check the message, the phone began buzzing in my hand, the sound that had wrenched me from sleep.
It was Mahoney.
I accepted the call, peed, and grumbled, “You a vampire or something? Never need sleep.”
“Yeah, I’m a new character in that Twilight series my kid’s always reading,” he replied, and I could hear wind blowing hard.
“Get the nerve gas?”
“We got in a firefight with one of Hala’s coconspirators,” Mahoney said. “He’d been holding engineers at gunpoint. Sniper got him, and we freed the rail workers. One had been mutilated, his eyeball boiled.”
That got me more awake. “What? An engineer’s eye?”
“In revenge, because the engineer had done the same thing to the dead guy’s partner, with hot coffee. It’s a long story for another time. But they, the engineers, said the partner left the train in the First Street tunnel and went back toward the entrance, where the third man in the rail crew, a Robby Simon, had disappeared.”
“You find the organophosphates and the triggering device in car twenty-nine?”
“There were three blue barrels with Pinkler Industries labels in car twenty-nine,” Mahoney replied. “But when we opened them, we found sand and gravel.”
I remembered the enthusiasm Hala had shown when she’d described the plot.
“She fed us half-truths mixed with what we wanted to hear,” I said, furious at myself for wanting to believe her confession so much that I’d set aside my suspicions.
“My instincts were right,” Mahoney said. “She stopped the train so other Al Ayla members could steal the chemicals.”
My hand shot to my temple. “And they’re here. In DC.”
“Last known whereabouts: two miles from Congress.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“We’re going back to Hala,” Mahoney said.
I flashed with dread on the image of her kids being tortured.
“You’re going, Ned,” I said. “I’m done with that.”
I ended the call and shut the ringer off. I intended to return to bed. But then I realized that I was no more than fifteen blocks from where Hala’s accomplices had stolen the organophosphates.
So was my family.
My first reaction was to wake them all, move them from the area until the three barrels were found and neutralized.
But then old habits reasserted themselves. Snow on the ground, I thought. They had to have left evidence around there somewhere.
I picked up the phone and called the man I trusted more than anyone in my life.
