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“And that’s why we’re here,” Smith said. “I think a lot of people in this town are going to jump to the conclusion that the guy in the morgue was working for you. I seem to remember something in the paper about this the other day.”
Rapp played dumb and offered, “Maybe he was working for Mossad. Maybe one of my contacts over there called me and asked me to check in on him.”
Ciresi nodded. “I like the way you think.”
“You see,” Smith said, “we’re not here to bust your balls or take away your thunder. But we have a problem. At least two of the guys you have are American citizens, and while I personally couldn’t give a shit if you dangled them off the roof by their ankles and threatened to drop them on their heads, as an officer of the court I cannot condone such behavior.”
“If we were to witness such behavior,” Ciresi added, “we would be duty-bound to report it.”
Rapp was liking these guys more and more. “So how would you guys like to proceed?”
“Where are you in your interview phase?”
“One of them is starting to talk. It took a little prodding.”
Both men shook their heads, and Smith said, “Too much information, Mr. Rapp.”
“I could use a little more time with him. To make sure he isn’t lying to me.”
“Which one is it?” Ciresi asked.
“Aabad bin Baaz.”
“He has dual citizenship.” Ciresi frowned
“How much more time?” Smith asked.
“An hour would be nice.”
The two men shot each other an uncomfortable look. Smith said, “We can’t give you an hour.”
Rapp was about to find out how much time they would give him when one of the female analysts in the bullpen let loose a scream. A rumble of shock spread across the big gymnasium-sized space, and analysts began to stand and point at the big screen. Rapp looked up at the big board but couldn’t figure out what was going on. All he saw were the three TV feeds and casualty tally.
He raced over to the Operations Officer’s perch and said, “Dave, what the hell just happened?”
Paulson was feverishly working one of his keyboards. The big screen went from four separate shots to one complete picture. As Paulson reached for his mouse, he said to Rapp, “I think we just had a latent explosion.”
“Which location?”
“The Monocle. Hold on a second, I’m rewinding it.”
The cloud of dust on the big screen began to retreat as if a giant vacuum cleaner was sucking it out of the air, except when the tape was rewound far enough, there was a blue sedan at the epicenter. The tape now began to play forward in super-slow motion, frame by painful frame.
Rapp looked at all the emergency workers in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. There were dozens, plus he knew the original bombs had used ball bearings to increase kill ratio. Any civilian within a half mile stood the risk of getting hit. The ones that were lined up at the barricades would drop like Confederate soldiers making the final charge at Gettysburg. Rapp could taste the bile in his throat. He’d seen the same thing done in Beirut, Tel Aviv, Baghdad, and Kandahar. Of all the tricks of the terrorist trade, he considered this to be lowest. To set up a bomb designed to intentionally target those who rush to the aid of others showed just how little these people cared for innocent life.
“What just happened?” Smith asked.
With barely contained rage, Rapp said, “Another bomb just went off.”
“Where?”
Rapp told them and then put his hand on Paulson’s shoulder and said, “Pull everybody out at the other two scenes, ASAP! Get on the horn and alert all levels, and get the bomb units in there to make sure these areas are cleared! That was supposed to have been taken care of right away.” Rapp stared up at the chaos on the big board. They had practiced all this before. He had warned the people at Homeland that the terrorists would try something like this.
“There might be more?” Smith asked.
“We don’t know. That’s the problem.” Almost as an afterthought, Rapp looked up toward the conference room and said, “But I think I know where I could find out.”
Smith and Ciresi looked at each other and came to an agreement without exchanging words.
