by Jason Kasper
The whistling howl reached a deathly wail a split second before impact, and then her body was jolted by a deafening explosion that rocked the ground with such violence that she thought she was dead.
A searing flash of heat roared over her backside, and amidst the flare she felt a tiny razor shard of debris slice into her left shoulder. The fragment came to rest at the front of her deltoid, radiating a smoldering burn that spread through her entire body as she held tight over Langley, anticipating another explosion.
But the sound of the blast echoed across the monuments, leaving in its wake a horrible chorus of agonized cries from the wounded.
Sitting up, she took Langley’s face in her hands and asked, “Are you okay?”
Her daughter nodded, eyes wide. “Are you?”
Laila didn’t answer, looking instead to the sight around her—panicked masses of civilians, screaming and trampling one another to get away from a fresh crater in the earth. The site was ringed by motionless bodies, and an outer circumference of writhing people covered in blood.
“Come on, sweetie,” Laila said, taking her daughter’s hand and heading for the impact sight.
She saw that she was not alone—other figures emerged through the fleeing crowd, racing toward the casualties to help.
Arriving at the outer ring of bodies, Laila recognized the scope of carnage that awaited not only her but her daughter—half-charred people who were quite clearly dead, their sides and skulls torn open in an explosion whose source she couldn’t attribute to an errant firework.
The damage was simply too severe, too all-encompassing to be the result of a random mishap, and Laila realized in one savage second that she’d been unwittingly thrust to the front lines of a terrorist attack. It could have been a suicide vest, or a grenade, or some bomb whose origin she didn’t have the background to identify—but as a medical professional, she knew at once that the shrapnel wounds that had decimated the dead and survivors alike were no accident.
Groans from the wounded permeated the high-pitched wails of panic, and Laila looked across those obviously dead, horrific as the sight was, to focus on the grievously injured, looking for someone who was in danger of imminent death within the minutes it would take the first medics to arrive.
She didn’t have to look far.
65
The hospital room was as stark as those she worked at on a daily basis, though instead of administering to her child subjects, Laila was currently the patient.
Langley was curled up beside her on the hospital bed, half-watching the television screen as it flashed between on-the-scene reporters and newsroom hosts discussing the tragedy of an errant firework that had detonated amid the crowd of spectators on the National Mall, killing twenty-three and injuring fifty-seven.
Laila felt her head shaking without conscious intent, knowing that the official reports were, to put it lightly, complete and total bullshit. A doctor had removed a tiny, twisted metal shard from her left deltoid. She felt the gauze dressing now covering the wound, thinking that no firework could have possibly flung such a swath of destruction during a carefully planned national display. There was no explanation of an accident that would account for what she and her child had seen in the aftermath—least of all the casualty they treated.
The teenage girl had been splayed out, unconscious, bleeding from a shrapnel wound at the top of her thigh. Laila had seen at once this was an arterial bleed, the dark fluid spurting with each beat of the girl’s heart, and she knew the wound was too high on her leg for a belt tourniquet.
Scanning the debris around her, Laila had seen an insulated water bottle—which, at her word, Langley quickly retrieved. Pressing the cylinder into her casualty’s pelvic V-line, Laila used her knee to hold the bottle and apply pressure to stem the flow of blood from a severed iliac artery. After unbuttoning the shirt she wore over a tank top, Laila slid it off and routed one sleeve beneath the small of the girl’s back. But she couldn’t reach far enough to pull it out the opposite side, and before she could so much as adjust her position, Langley had reached her slender arm under the patient, pulling out the other end of the shirt.
Together, the two shimmied it beneath the girl’s buttocks, retrieving the cloth from between her legs and tying a knot over the bottle. Even with Laila’s knee applying her full bodyweight, the flow of blood had reduced but not stopped entirely. She needed more pressure and swept her eyes across the debris, trying to locate a stick of some kind before Langley asked what she needed.
And once Laila told her, Langley had darted off the way they’d come, returning moments later with a half-charred American flag attached to a three-foot-long metal pole.
Then Laila slid the pole through the shirtsleeve knot, using both hands to twist it in a circle as the tension drove the bottle further into the teenager’s thigh. When the pole began to bend under the effort, Laila used one hand to hold it in place while sliding the other beneath the girl’s knee to feel for a popliteal pulse but finding none.
There was precious little celebration at the time; the first wave of EMTs arrived moments later, one of them assuming control of the hasty tourniquet. Laila had tried to find another casualty she could help, but it was impossible. Instead she’d nearly been bowled over by EMTs racing to the scene from medical checkpoints scattered across the National Mall, and DC Metro cops cleared the scene of all bystanders still capable of walking.
And now she was in the hospital along with everyone else who’d been in close proximity to the blast, the least injured currently awaiting release.
Pulling Langley closer to her side, Laila said, “You saved that girl’s life, you know.”
Langley shook her head against Laila’s shoulder.
“We.”
“What?”
“You said I saved that girl, but it was us. We saved her life.”
A female doctor entered a moment later, holding a clipboard for her hourly checkup of the many patients who had been admitted in the past two hours.
Laila nodded to the television screen. “They’re wrong. I don’t know how I know, but I’m telling you—they’re wrong.”
The doctor replied patiently in a response that, Laila was sure, she’d delivered many times over the course of that evening.
“You’re in shock, Mrs. Rivers. A firework fell into the crowd and exploded.”
Laila shook her head resolutely. “I know this doesn't mean anything, but I’m an MD, and that was no firework. It was a bomb, or a missile, or—I don’t know.” She sighed, exasperated. “But it wasn’t a firework.”
The doctor gave a sad smile as she checked her and Langley’s pupils for dilation. “From one MD to another, you’re in shock, sweetie. And if your next two check-ups don’t show signs of a concussion, you’ll be cleared for release. Until then, try and get some rest.”
But as she departed the hospital room, Laila realized that rest wasn’t on the agenda for tonight.
The three men who entered the room could be best described as suits—an African American, a Hispanic, and a white man—and they were quickly intercepted by a male RN telling them that the patient was being monitored for a concussion and not yet cleared for release.
A single flash of a badge from the Hispanic man served to quiet the nurse’s objections at once and in full. Then he turned to Laila and said, “You need to come with us, ma’am.”
She pulled Langley tight beside her on the hospital bed. “I’m not going anywhere without my daughter.”
The man nodded as if that much was obvious.
“That’s not a problem. Langley has to come with us, too.”
Laila struggled to understand her situation, the night’s events growing more surreal by the minute as the SUV she rode in whisked her further into the depths of DC and, ultimately, into the brightly lit tunnel of an underground parking garage.
The driver’s response to her inquiries was little more than the doctor’s had been: she was in shock, he said, and everything would be expl
ained in short order.
The man beside him in the passenger seat had little more to say, transmitting indecipherable short code into his lapel as the vehicle made its way to a parking spot amid a swarm of other cars.
And for the second time that night, Laila noted with increasing concern that her daughter Langley seemed strangely more composed than she herself did.
Squeezing Laila’s hand in her own, Langley actually said the words, “It’s okay, Mom,” as if she had any clue what was going on. Laila found herself wondering about the exact nature of her relationship with David, despite the official story of their meeting at the hands of a failed wedding engagement to an alcoholic mother.
But these thoughts were soon swept from her mind as the SUV braked to a halt, the suits in the driver and passenger seats dismounting to escort Laila and Langley through the throngs of people clustered under bright ultraviolet lights. Laila didn’t know who they were or what she was looking at, save the fact that she knew what wasn’t present: there were no media cameras or reporters amid the business-suited men and women clustered in the underground garage, alternately speaking to one another and texting into Blackberry devices.
Instead she followed without objection, clutching Langley’s hand, until she reached the center of the storm.
And at the midpoint of that maelstrom of people, she saw a few individuals who stood out by virtue of their incongruity to the scene around her: a silver-haired man with medical dressings on his thigh, a hulking bodybuilder-type with one arm in a sling, and a short, squat man with a distinguished air who watched her with reserved detachment.
A slight African American woman in her fifties stood beside the final man, ending her sentence abruptly to appraise Laila and Langley with an expression of curiosity and, unless Laila was reading the situation wrong, a flashing smile that quickly faded.
They all surrounded a single figure seated in a foldout chair, his clothes bloodied, face flushed, looking on the brink of total exhaustion.
David.
Without thinking, Laila plunged through the crowd toward him.
He saw her and smiled, struggling to rise from the chair as she collided with him in an embrace that was joined by their daughter.
Laila heard David grunt, and she looked up to see his face turn ghostly white with pain. He clutched at his stomach, and Laila saw the bulge of a medical dressing beneath his shirt.
“Oh, I’m—I’m sorry, David.”
But he forced a smile and kissed her cheek, pulling her in again and reaching for Langley with his other arm.
“It’s okay,” he said.
Then, with his breath hot against the side of her face, he whispered, “I think it’s time I tell you what I actually do for a living.”
Laila felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks, and she began to sob.
66
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
I finished pouring my second cup of coffee and returned to the dining table where Laila and Langley were finishing breakfast.
Easing myself into the chair across from them, I felt the nagging abdominal pain that had been getting less prominent with each passing day. I’d almost completed my final round of antibiotics, and the wounds were healing nicely with puffy white scar tissue, a reminder of a terrorist attack that could have been much worse. A two-digit death toll among civilians at the National Mall was no small matter, but it just as easily could have reached five figures or worse—and very nearly had.
“How’s it feeling today?” Laila asked, sensing my discomfort no matter how much I tried to conceal it. That’s what made her a good doctor, I supposed—she saw right through the stubborn assholes like myself who tried to hide all signs of weakness.
“It’s good,” I replied. “I’ve never felt better.”
The statement wasn’t an exaggeration. Ever since returning to Charlottesville two weeks earlier, I regarded both my family and my home with a deep and abiding sense of gratitude more profound than anything I’d ever felt. I’d entered that house thousands of times, but ever since the attack it bore a strange newness, seemed to breathe with a life of its own that was endowed in part by my recognition that I’d nearly lost it forever, along with my wife and daughter.
Langley set down her fork and asked, “Can I go play?”
“Sure,” I said, checking my watch. “We don’t have to leave for another hour.”
Sliding back her chair, she took off for the living room and its attendant smattering of toys.
Today was reserved for our Saturday rituals: a stroll down Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall—which felt considerably safer than the National Mall at present—complete with ice cream for Langley, beers for Dad, and shopping for Mom. Just a normal American family out for the day. The following weekend, we’d be heading to a campsite in the Shenandoah National Park for a couple days of hiking, continuing Langley’s quest to see a wild black bear.
Laila looked calm, at peace for the first time in months. She’d finished her pediatric residency, and that had certainly helped. But we both knew it wasn’t the main source of her stress, a distinction which belonged solely to me.
And while our day-to-day routines remained largely the same, things had forever changed between us.
I no longer lied to her about what my job had entailed, and like me she bore a physical reminder of the attack: a thin scar across her shoulder from a shard of rocket shrapnel. And like my own scars, it seemed to bear witness to the importance of my team’s work for the Agency.
That was, if we still had jobs with the Agency—that much remained for Duchess to determine, though as long as my team remained free citizens, I had no cause for complaint either way.
The important thing was that Laila was happy, still in love with me and Langley. She just needed a scrap of truth, and I’d finally given it to her—and now, having restored her trust, I would never lie to her again.
“So,” Laila asked, “want to see what our daughter is up to?”
I nodded, rising from the table and bringing my mug.
We’d been keeping a close eye on Langley since the attack, watching for any signs of trauma.
But Langley had been remarkably composed about the entire ordeal, as if nearly dying in a terrorist attack were just a small hitch in her summer break.
At first Laila and I had thought she was in an extended state of shock and denial. Laila had told me how our daughter had seen dead bodies at the blast site and aided her in treating the teenage casualty. So, we took her to three rounds of therapy with a child psychiatrist to determine her state of mind—only to have the doctor admit she was remarkably well adjusted about the whole thing. I considered that this could have been a result of her life experience before I met her, and possibly as a result of her lineage.
I stopped at the entrance to our living room. Laila approached behind me, sliding her hands around my waist as I draped an arm over her shoulder.
Together we sipped coffee and watched our daughter directing her Barbies in an elaborate plan to rescue a prince held captive on the top floor of a dollhouse serving as a castle. The role of dragon had been assigned to the gift I brought home after my first return from Syria, the stuffed pink rabbit currently positioned ominously before the castle-slash-dollhouse.
As we watched her play, Laila asked, “What do you think she’s going to be when she grows up?”
I shook my head softly.
“I was wondering the same thing.”
Laila and Langley went upstairs to get dressed as I restored the kitchen to order following breakfast.
I’d barely finished cleaning the bacon grease from the pan—the ultimate act of domestic servitude—when my phone rang.
The ringtone was a quiet chirp, one I hadn’t heard in some time.
I answered it quickly.
“Wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again.”
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to call you again. Don’t make me regret it.”
Duchess had been understandab
ly busy as of late, least of all with the small matter of cleaning up after my team. After the FBI seized all relevant evidence of my team’s activities leading up to our final raid on the boat, all that remained was negotiating an unconditional pardon—and that turned out to be the easy part.
The president and his family had occupied a fireworks viewing stand on the Capitol Building steps, and if his armored glass could survive a rocket strike, it wouldn’t have lasted for two. He still refused to meet us, of course, which annoyed Reilly to no end. But I regarded it as a minor inconvenience when weighed against the prospect of lifelong incarceration.
I asked, “Any word on Wei Zhao?”
“Still at large, and probably the richest subject to ever evade an INTERPOL manhunt. Given his resources and the fact he planned on hiding in advance, I’d be surprised if we find him anytime soon.”
Frowning, I said, “I couldn’t help but notice a certain coverup of this event in the news.”
“And for good reason.”
“Really?” I asked. “I seem to remember some democratic ideals speaking out against the suppression of information. As I recall, that kind of government action and worse are what drove Bari Khan to do what he did.”
Duchess sighed.
“As usual, David, you’re both right and wrong. That ship your team raided bore a multitude of evidence pointing to Chinese state sponsorship of the attack.”
“And that information isn’t reaching the public why, exactly?”
“Because after somewhat exhaustive analysis, we found it all to be fabricated.”
I found myself nodding. “So he wanted to start a war between the US and China.”
“He did,” she said. “And in his defense, it was the smartest play Bari Khan made. No amount of damage he could have inflicted on China would compare with what the United States is capable of in the wake of a terrorist attack. But that’s not the least of it.”
“What else is there—and what about the words he spoke in Chinese? Did they make sense?”