Credible Threat

by Ken Fite

  It came right off. Although it was small, the metal cover was very heavy.

  I walked to the entranceway and stood over it. I knew I’d be taking a chance by making noise, but I had no other options. I needed to get underground. I raised the metal cover over my head and brought it down hard six inches from the edge of the grate. I only had to do this once. The edge bent up and I lifted it open.

  FORTY-TWO

  CLAUDIA NAZIR PACED around the command center that her husband had created. Aasaal was busy working on something. Exactly what, Claudia wasn’t sure.

  He kept looking at the computer screens and cycling through video feeds from cameras scattered across DC. He also seemed to be communicating with someone through his computer, typing a message and then returning to the screen seconds later to read a response before typing and sending another message.

  “Claudia, our work here is done – no reason to stay in DC. We leave in fifteen minutes. Where is the car?”

  “Where you asked me to leave it, Aasaal. It’s on 19th Street, just outside the entrance. Do you think I’m incapable of following simple instructions? What have I done to make you question my abilities?”

  Nazir stood and approached his wife. He grabbed her by the neck and pushed her up against the graffiti-covered wall. “Keep your voice down, Claudia,” he whispered, so his men would not hear and looked into the dark passageway where one of them stood guard. “Are you going to be a problem like Donovan?”

  “No,” Claudia replied as her husband squeezed harder and she felt herself starting to become lightheaded.

  Nazir held onto his wife’s neck for a second longer before letting go. “Good,” he said as he walked back to his computer, while keeping an eye on his wife.

  As soon as Nazir sat down and returned to his work, Claudia stepped away. “I need a few minutes, Aasaal,” she said. Claudia expected him to come after her. Or tell her to stay. But he did neither.

  She kept walking and looked over her shoulder to see if Aasaal was following her. After confirming she was alone, Claudia continued to walk around the circle that curved toward the left. She saw a flashlight and knew it was one of her husband’s men. He stood outside an alcove and nodded as she approached.

  Claudia looked inside and saw Max Donovan on the floor. She couldn’t see his face, but could tell that he was moving. “Let me talk with him,” she said and the guard walked further down the passageway.

  When she was sure the man guarding Donovan had stepped far enough away, she turned to Max. “Please let me go,” he said as Claudia’s eyes started to adjust to the dark. She could start to see his face more clearly. Blood had soaked his hair and was dripping down his face onto his shirt. “He’s going to kill me.”

  “The directive came from your boss – not my husband. Why would he want you harmed?”

  Max Donovan shook his head. “I thought you were in charge. Does your husband tell you what to do?”

  “Neither of us seem to be in charge.”

  “If that’s true, then both of us are in danger,” said Donovan as he continued to writhe in pain on the floor.

  Claudia thought about Donovan’s words. She had never seen her husband so filled with rage. But she had noticed that his demeanor changed a week ago before they left their safe house in south Chicago. He had become distant. Short-tempered. She had caught him twice taking calls when he thought she was asleep.

  Claudia realized that Donovan was right.

  If the man he reported to thought that Donovan was expendable, maybe he thought she was, too. Maybe Aasaal knew this. Maybe this was why he was treating her the way he was. He was trying to deal with it.

  Would her husband actually kill Donovan before leaving the underground? Would he kill her, too?

  She realized that her husband was capable of doing both. Claudia knew that if she was going to escape, if she wanted to live, she was going to have to do something.

  Claudia heard a radio squeak down the corridor. The guard, who Claudia assumed had been instructed to incapacitate and kill Donovan after Aasaal left the underground, put a hand up to his ear. “Repeat that?” she heard him say.

  With another squeak of the radio, a voice on the other end said he heard a loud noise in the southern end of the circle and needed help to go check it out. The guard grabbed his gun and walked quickly to Claudia. Another one of Aasaal’s men arrived and shined a flashlight at both Claudia and Donovan.

  “Will you watch him for me?” the guard who had been watching over Max asked Claudia.

  “I will make sure he does not move.”

  The man nodded, handed Claudia his flashlight, and ran down the corridor with the other guard.

  Claudia shined the light on Max. For the first time, she could see how badly he was hurt. She wondered if the blow to his head had been hard enough to cause a mild concussion.

  He’s too badly hurt. He’s not going anywhere, she thought.

  After looking behind her toward where she had left Aasaal to make sure he wasn’t coming, Claudia cautiously started moving in the direction where she had seen the other men run.

  “Where are you going?” Donovan groaned. She ignored the question. “Claudia!” he yelled.

  “Keep your voice down,” she said, returning and crouching down to talk with him. “If you’re right – if we’re really in danger – then this is our only opportunity to do something about it.”

  Claudia stood. She knew that if she left, there would be no turning back. Aasaal would come after her and, if he did, he’d kill her. But she knew that something had changed with her husband, that he was keeping something from her. And she knew if she stayed, she and Donovan would never make it out alive.

  She started walking and heard Donovan call for her.

  “What about me?” he said.

  “Mr. Donovan, I suggest you find a way out of here while you still can.”

  Claudia picked up speed as she left Max far behind. When she heard voices coming from further down the corridor, she stopped to hide inside another alcove toward the right.

  She illuminated the words P STREET along the tiled exit and climbed up the stairs.

  FORTY-THREE

  I LIFTED THE grate from the edge that I bent and managed to remove it completely. I set it to the side.

  Grabbing my Maglite, I shined the light down into the opening while I grabbed my Glock and held the flashlight steady underneath my weapon. A guardrail accompanied by a dozen steps was all I could see.

  Beyond that, total darkness.

  “I’m in,” I advised Morgan, as I started descending into the old trolley station. After the initial set of steps, I saw that there was a small platform of about five feet, followed by another set of stairs.

  I shined my Maglite on the walls. Sprays of fading red, blue, and black graffiti covered both sides of the stairs. Moving the light back to the steps in front of me, I continued moving down to the ground floor. The space resembled the subway in Chicago with tiles covering the walls and stretching all the way to the curved ceiling. Trash littered the ground and, for a moment, it reminded me of 1517 Good Hope Road and Chris Reed. I thought about him again and wondered if he had made it out of surgery. And if he was alive.

  “Morgan, can you make sure I’m headed in the right direction?” I decided to turn left and started to follow the path directly underneath what I believed to be the traffic circle on the street above me. “Morgan? Do you copy?” There was no response. I reached for my cell and realized that there wasn’t a signal.

  I should have known that there would be no way to continue the call once I went underground.

  It’s a strange feeling when you’re completely alone and you realize that nobody in the world can help you. Your senses become heightened. Your adrenaline starts to rush through your veins. You focus.

  I thought about what I needed to do – get to Aasaal and Claudia Nazir and figure out what they were planning to do at the inauguration in just a few short hours.

  A
nd stop them.

  As I walked, my hands started to sweat and my heart stirred inside my chest. In a way, the Nazirs were responsible for Maria’s death. The woman I loved and married, killed by Marco Lopez. “We know everything about you,” the last words spoken to me by Aasaal Nazir, the man I was now hunting down.

  When I had covered what felt like at least twenty, maybe thirty yards, I heard footsteps. A group of men were headed in my direction, fast. They heard me, I thought and searched for a place to take cover.

  I shined the Maglite up ahead and saw that to the left was another set of stairs leading to the street. Above the steps, it read MASSACHUSETTS AVE. I ran into the alcove and stood between the first and second steps to give me cover to use the wall as protection, but still let me fire at the men who were approaching.

  I turned off my Maglite and waited.

  If the sentries approaching me knew something was wrong, the Nazirs did, too. I thought about how much noise my Glock would make. I didn’t want to scare off the Nazirs if they were still underground. But I didn’t think I had much of a choice, since they’d be here any second now.

  I had passed the entrance to P STREET earlier. I hadn’t checked this entrance when I was above ground, moving from the Massachusetts entrance to New Hampshire. I wondered if the grate was open.

  The footsteps coming from my left, in the northwestern part of the underground, grew louder.

  I stood with my back against the cold tile and listened as I started to see their flashlights illuminating the passageway. When they were close, I turned the corner, aimed, and started firing.

  One man went down immediately. I hit another in the shoulder and he fell to a knee but kept firing at me.

  I retreated behind the wall, released the mag, and inserted a fresh one. I turned the corner again and finished off the man who was kneeling on the floor. Another group of men appeared and fired at me. A bullet grazed me. Several more went into the tile across from the alcove where I was hiding.

  Then the sentries turned their flashlights off. It was completely dark. I heard one of the men approach.

  Realizing that the sentry knew exactly where I was, I walked as quietly as I could to the interior side of the corridor underneath the traffic circle and waited. As I heard him approaching the alcove, I kept my Glock trained on the location where I heard the footsteps.

  As soon as he was close, the man began firing at the bottom of the stairs where I had been hiding.

  With his gun firing, I could see exactly where he was. I shot him in the back and he dropped.

  I turned my Maglite on just long enough to see where the other men were. I stepped over the bodies, cut the light, and continued to follow the circle as I tried to find the northwest corridor.

  I thought about P Street as I continued to walk. I hadn’t checked it as thoroughly as I should have when I passed it, wanting to make my way to the Nazirs as soon as I could. That was a bad decision.

  Because as soon as I got to the northwest corridor, the one that Morgan said jetted out from the circle, I heard the sound of one of the large, metal grates slamming shut. I turned around and aimed my Glock at the sound before realizing what it was that I had heard. It was the exit to P Street.

  “Damn it,” I said under my breath, realizing that someone – maybe one of the Nazirs – was escaping.

  I thought about running after them but told myself that it was too late. They were gone and there was no way I could catch up to them now. And I had come too far to turn back. I told myself that it was just one of Nazir’s men and they had come from the opposite side of the circle. I couldn’t be sure.

  I decided to let them go. I turned around and pressed on, determined to find the Nazirs.

  As I entered the northwest corridor, I could see a faint glow coming from the far end of the passageway and I could hear the sound of a generator in the distance. The light grew in intensity as I approached. Holding onto my Glock and approaching in a crouched stance, my eyes searched for the Nazirs.

  There was no sign of them.

  I kept moving and came upon what looked like a command center. A computer and a series of monitors covered the area. The lamps sitting on the desks produced an ominous dark, yellow glow.

  This was the end of the passageway, there was nowhere else to go. It also meant that I was a sitting duck. I was searching through everything, trying to find a clue – any clue – to tell me what kind of attack was being planned. A shot was fired at me from the end of the corridor and I ducked. It was Aasaal Nazir.

  FORTY-FOUR

  I RECOGNIZED HIM immediately. Nazir fired at me again and I stayed low behind the old, dusty desks that looked like they had been underground in one of the trolley’s offices for decades. One of the bullets blew through the monitor sitting above my head and it sent a surge of sparks falling on top of me.

  I returned fire and, after several shots, ducked back underneath to change out the magazine.

  Nazir was approaching me quickly and I realized that I needed to do something to buy some time and level the playing field. I found the cord to the lamps running to the generator that had been set up behind me and I yanked them out of their sockets. The entire room went dark. The noise from the generator behind me was loud, and without being able to see or hear anything, I had no idea where Nazir was.

  The mag I grabbed from my back pocket slipped out of my hand and fell onto the floor. I grabbed it and inserted the mag into the Glock, but as I did, Nazir shined a bright light in my face, blinding me.

  It must have been a military grade light. Flamethrowers, we called them. Five hundred lumens bright, the light blinded me and as I lifted my gun, Nazir fired a shot to the left of me. “Drop it, Jordan,” he yelled.

  I lowered the Glock as my eyes tried to adjust. I blinked several times, staring at the wall to my right, but I couldn’t see anything. Nazir had not only pointed the Flamethrower directly at my face, he had timed it right, too. I heard him start to laugh – he was enjoying this. “Where’s Claudia?” I yelled over the noise coming from the generator and trying to get Nazir engaged in conversation to give my eyes time to adjust.

  “Shut up,” he yelled and shot at me again, this time to my right. I flinched.

  Based on his reaction, I was sure that the person I heard running away from me had been Claudia. I decided to push Nazir a little more. “Was she running from me?” I asked. “Or was she running from you?”

  “You’re too late, Mr. Jordan. Your government has been in need of a reset for a long time. Today, it gets one.”

  “Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work,” I said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong – it already has.”

  Keeping my eyes where I could see Nazir but not be blinded by the light, I slowly reached down and rested my hand on the Glock. Nazir had the advantage. I knew that the moment I raised the firearm, he’d take me out. My fingers gripped the gun and I waited for the right moment – any moment – to take action.

  “What are you planning, Nazir? Are you going to detonate a bomb at the National Mall? Do you really think that killing a couple hundred Americans is going to weaken our resolve against terrorism?”

  He laughed again. “We don’t need to kill hundreds of Americans. Just their leaders will do.”

  “You can’t get to them, Nazir. You know that. We have the best security in the world. If you think–”

  “Mr. Jordan, by sundown tonight, not only will your new president be dead, so will his entire cabinet. The vice president, secretary of state, chief justice – all dead. I hope you’re seeing where I’m going.”

  I was. And I was also seeing something else – a dark figure slowly approaching Nazir from behind.

  I gripped my gun even tighter. I saw the metal pipe swing just as Nazir turned around. The pipe hit him in the ribs and I lifted my Glock and fired a shot. Nazir fell to the floor and so did his high-powered light, hitting the concrete and sending a beam of light in the direction of Nazir
’s assailant.

  “Donovan, stand down,” I yelled and pointed my Glock at him. “Drop it now!”

  Max set the metal pipe down on the concrete. I looked at Nazir. His gun was to his right and I kicked it behind me and positioned myself so that Nazir was directly in front of me with Max Donovan behind him.

  “Tell me where the bomb is,” I said. Nazir laughed. “Where’s the bomb!” He was plotting his next move.

  Nazir looked at Max, then turned back to me. “If you want to stop the bomb, I need to be on a plane now.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “The bomb is hidden where nobody will ever find it, Jordan. I have a chartered flight I need to get to at Reagan National – get me on that plane and I’ll tell you where you’ll find the bomb when we get there.”

  I paused before responding, keeping the gun trained on him. “What’s stopping me from calling Keller and having him cancel the inauguration?” I asked.

  “One, Keller’s resolve to not appear weak. And two, I have people to keep you from getting to Keller.”

  I looked at Donovan and immediately thought of his boss. “Is Mike Billings involved in this?” Donovan didn’t answer. He just looked at me, then turned back to Nazir who started laughing again.

  “You’re running out of time, Jordan. The same terror you felt when your wife was murdered is what millions of Americans will be feeling soon.” I noticed a small pool of blood beginning to form where I had shot him. “Claudia was there, you know,” he added. “She and Marco approached Maria asking for help.”

  “Shut up.”

  Nazir smiled. “Marco and Claudia teamed up. Said their car broke down and asked Maria if they could use her phone to call for help. It was Claudia that shoved the knife inside Maria,” he said and smiled.

  “It’s in the podium,” said Donovan.

  Nazir turned to him. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “What did you just say?” I asked, still trying to understand why he attacked Nazir and why he was talking.