by Jack Hardin
The American soldiers behind them scanned their surroundings in vain for the shooter, then moved in to cover Assam.
“Do you have eyes?” Ellie yelled angrily into her mic.
“Negative.”
Assam swiveled toward Ellie and shifted his daughter into her arms. He turned and ran back to the bodies of his wife and his son lying lifeless on the concrete, dark blood pooling underneath them. “Vida!” Assam yelled again, squatting over her and shaking her shoulder. He turned to his son as a full round of bullets hit the building, spraying pieces of concrete into his face. He ducked and turned a face filled with horror toward Ellie. “Go!” he choked out. “Take Khalida. Go!”
“Assam, you have to━”
“Go!” he yelled. “Go now! Save her, Ellie!”
Ellie’s earpiece was squawking with furious commands. Instinctively, Ellie knew the proper decision. Take the girl and go. Now. But the smallest of moments kept her staring into Assam’s eyes, wanting to scream at him one last time to come, to get in the escort.
A soft hiss quickly grew loud and filled the air.
No, she thought. No.
She didn’t need to turn to know what was coming toward them. Assam’s eyes grew wider as they found the rocket flying through the air behind Ellie and the Humvee. He shifted his vision to his youngest child clutched in the embrace of his American friend. His eyes met Ellie's. They were not angry. Only darkened with sadness, confusion, and questions that would never be answered.
A man’s voice was screaming through her earpiece. She held Khalida tighter, turned, and darted toward the vehicle just as the missile struck behind her. The blast twisted Ellie’s body around and tore the young girl from her arms. Ellie landed with the small of her back pressed against the passenger seat cushion of the Humvee.
A soldier darted toward her, the butt of his gun still wedged into his shoulder, his eyes frantically scanning the area. “Ellie!” he screamed. She felt a strong hand reach around her upper arm and forcefully pull her onto the seat and into a sitting position. She leaned back, and the door slammed shut. Ellie shook her head, clearing her mind, and flung the door open. “No!” she yelled. Her head was spinning. Ellie watched the soldier pick the girl up off the pavement. “Give her to me,” she said and reached out. He quickly but gently slid her into Ellie’s arms and shut the door. Her driver was too professional for her to need to scream at him to go. No sooner had Ellie’s door shut than he floored the pedal, and they darted off just as the sound of another missile hissed through the air above them. The atmosphere rocked around them as a second explosion found its mark where they had just been sitting.
Ellie’s mind was clearing by the second, but her ears were still ringing. The world sounded muted. Like she was underwater in a calm serenity while chaos ensued above.
She looked down at Khalida who was limp in her arms. “Khalida?” she said. “Honey?” The girl’s hijab had been torn off in the blast, and her small face was peppered with dirt and small bits of concrete. Ellie sat her up on her lap and let the girl’s head rest back on her shoulder as she assessed her condition.
She looked down and saw it. Her small white shirt had bloomed red. Ellie tore against the buttons, and the fabric moved away from Khalida’s body. Ellie’s breath stopped. A long piece of twisted shrapnel three inches wide was lodged just below her navel.
“What happened? Report!” her earpiece squawked. She reached up and yanked it out. Her driver looked at the fifty-pound body lying across Ellie, and the vehicle lurched forward as he accelerated. With her left hand, Ellie unzipped her backpack and grabbed an embroidered scarf. It was to be a gift for the girl’s mother. She had packed something for all of them for the fifteen-minute drive back to base, the gifts intended to distract their troubled minds until they were safe inside the American compound.
Ellie carefully laid the girl across her lap to slow the drain of blood, then gently wrapped the scarf around the metal and pressed on the outside of the wound to mitigate the flow of blood. The girl's face was pale and clammy.
“Hurry, Ron.”
Half an hour later, Ellie had stood idly by as the base surgeon glanced at the clock on the wall, peeled off his gloves, and recited Khalida’s time of death. Distraught and disillusioned, Ellie had marched straight into her boss’s office and submitted her verbal resignation. The Murad family had certainly been attacked—murdered—because some stuffy bureaucrat thousands of miles away had given them up for political equity. Additionally, U.S. military personnel were put in harm’s way; three soldiers were also killed in the assault.
So Ellie opted out of functioning as a political pawn in some self-serving geopolitical game and left behind the only life she had known as an adult: the shrouded world of intelligence, espionage, and shadow soldiers. She returned home to Pine Island, where the salty and shallow waters of the Sound, the tangy island breeze, and the presence of family worked in symphony to relieve her scars and disenchantments.
But the Murad family did not easily escape her, and over the last two years, the thin layer of dust that had settled over their memories did not serve to clear her soul of the guilt and remorse that rested heavy upon her. She lay down each night with the knowledge that, had she never worked to win over Assam’s trust, he and his wife and his children would still be alive. Now, as she sat a short distance off from yet another explosion that had claimed innocent lives, she whispered quietly to her Afghan friends, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Ellie?”
She hadn’t heard Hailey approach. Ellie stood up, took a deep breath, and turned toward her partner. “Hey…sorry.”
“Oh my god. Are you okay?”
“Yes—fine. Just a lot to take in.”
“Yeah.”
Ellie blinked hard, suddenly glad she had a small makeup kit in her truck. She gave her partner a reassuring smile. “Come on. Let’s get to the office.”
Chapter Four
The FBI’s Tampa field office was a four-story building situated two miles west of downtown, less than a hundred yards from the bay. After passing through security and checking in, Ellie and Hailey waited in the marble lobby for ten minutes, watching civilians come and go through security and tense agents scurry past.
There were currently over a hundred and twenty people in the FBI’s database on schedule for an interview, all of them uninjured but witnesses to the explosion in some form or another. The list would probably double over the next couple of days as more and more people came forward with what they had seen, or thought they had seen. Most of it would be insignificant, yielding little or nothing substantial for an investigation, offered up by people wanting to feel like they were doing something important and worthwhile by reaching out and relaying their experience to the authorities.
A middle-aged man of average height stepped from an elevator and approached the two visiting agents. He introduced himself as Assistant Special Agent in Charge Scott Greaney and thanked them for coming. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “It would be an understatement to say that it’s chaos around here right now. Please, follow me.”
He escorted them across the lobby and down a broad hallway, then opened a door on their left and led them into a room awash with a sea of cubicles. The entire area was abuzz with activity. “All the agents who office down here removed all of their things last night,” Greaney said. “As you can see, we’ve turned it into a temporary crisis room.” A makeshift waiting area had been created along the far wall, where bored and impatient civilians were waiting to be called for an interview.
Last night, the agency had put out a bulletin to anyone who may have witnessed anything relating to the explosion. They issued an 800 number where callers were questioned and screened. Those who witnessed the actual blast or had turned their attention directly to it were asked to come in and provide their statements. Almost everyone had taken some form of video footage or picture of the aftermath. They were asked for their phones so the agency could
retrieve the information, providing investigators with dozens of angles from which to view the event.
Greaney brought the two visiting agents over to a double-wide cubicle, where a laptop, an iPad, and a voice recorder were set up. Besides the desk chair, three folding chairs with fabric padding were set out. Looking at Hailey, he said, “Since you’re FBI, just use your credentials to log onto the laptop. You’ll need to use that recorder for each conversation. When you’re done, hit stop, and the interview will be wirelessly uploaded to SIOC.” The Strategic Information and Operations Center was the FBI’s global command and communications center that supported crisis management and ensured the proper flow of information to FBI Headquarters and other supporting agencies. “Each person,” Greaney continued, “who is currently waiting has been issued an interview number. You’ll use that as the interview ID when you log your conversation into the computer. Right now, the average interview is taking twenty-seven minutes.” He lowered his voice. “As you can imagine, a lot of these people are very emotional. But try and cut through it to any information relevant to the investigation. You’re not here to be their shrink.”
“Got it,” Ellie said.
“Agent Frank Coben is running this section of the floor. You’ll find him in the corner office behind you. If you need anything or have any questions, connect with him.”
Greaney nodded a goodbye and then hurried back down the aisle and out of the room. A lady’s muffled sobs came over the wall of the cubicle beside them. Hailey looked around the sparsely furnished cubicle and blew a long puff of air from her cheeks. “I guess we should get this party started.” She sat down and logged into the computer while Ellie examined the recorder and readied it for use. Looking at her screen, Hailey relayed the number to their first interview. “Forty-four. Ricky Sipes.”
Ellie set the recorder down, picked up the iPad, and located Ricky’s file. She reviewed the highlights of his phone interview before she stood back up and turned out of the cubicle. She returned to the staging area, where almost everyone was keeping busy with their eyes glued to their phones. The rest sat nervously, their arms crossed hard against their chest or their fingers worrying in their laps.
“Ricky,” Ellie called out. “Ricky Sipes.”
A tired-looking young man stood up. His blond hair was matted in the back, and a day’s worth of stubble lined his jaw. He wore a nondescript T-shirt and black jeans. Ellie stuck out her hand as he approached. “Ellie O’Conner.”
“Ricky,” he said sheepishly and shook her hand.
“Thank you for coming in. You can follow me.” She turned and led him back to the cubicle, where she introduced him to Hailey and waited for him to take a seat before she started the recorder and glanced down at the iPad. “We’ll try not to take much of your time. It looks like they asked you to come in and speak with us because you were a passenger on the bus just before it exploded. You told the hotline that you saw an unattended bag?”
The young man tried to stifle a yawn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t get any sleep last night. My girlfriend was on her way to meet me for coffee at a coffee shop on Twiggs Street when the bomb went off. A piece of glass from the explosion hit her in the chest. We’ve been in the ER all night and...” Ricky frowned and trailed off. Hailey glanced at Ellie, who leaned forward and spoke softly.
“Ricky.”
He blinked and shook his head like he was coming out of a stupor. “Sorry...what was I saying?”
“Is your girlfriend all right?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, she’ll be okay. The glass missed her heart by an inch, the doctors said.” He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and sat up straighter. “So I called your hotline last night because I rode that bus not five minutes before it went off. I took it over the river from the university after I got out of my English class. I don’t know if this will help, but I remember seeing a canvas bag on the front seat—the one right behind the driver.”
“How large was it?” Ellie asked.
“Maybe so big.” Ricky held his hands out in front of him and boxed in an area less than two square feet. “About the size of a large pillow but a couple of them stacked. It was wider than it was high. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, just figured one of the passengers placed it there so they didn’t have to lug it back to their seat.” He shrugged. “But it caught my eye initially because it had one of those thick plastic tags hanging off one of the handles. The tag had the Miami Dolphins logo on it. I thought, ‘right on,’ because my grandfather was a lifelong Dolphins fan.” Ricky paused and patted his pockets for what Ellie assumed was a pack of cigarettes when he remembered where he was and commenced to rub his hands over the tops of his thighs. “I wish I would have said something when I noticed the bag. Maybe all those people would still be—”
“You can’t do that to yourself, Ricky.”
He huffed. “Why not? I saw it there. No one was sitting by it. The driver was this friendly old man. I could have just mentioned it to him.”
“Whoever put it there meant for it to look like it belonged. What color was it?”
“Army green.”
Hailey had her back to Ricky, and her fingers scrambled over the keys as she entered the conversation’s highlights into the system. “Did it look new or did it bear some wear?” she asked.
“Uh, maybe some wear. I don’t think I saw any stains or anything on it. But maybe it had been washed before?”
“What stop did you get on at?” Ellie asked.
“The Straz Hall stop, the four-oh-eight bus. I took it over the river and got off at the Ashley and Washington stop.”
“And the bag was there on the front seat when you got on?”
“Yeah. And I don’t remember anyone getting off at Straz Hall. So whoever put it on there, I don’t guess I would have seen them.”
They kept Ricky for another ten minutes and, after verifying his phone number and address, told him he was free to leave.
“I hope your girlfriend's recovery goes well,” Hailey said.
“Thanks.” Ricky patted his pockets again. “I need a smoke. Please, catch whatever bastards did this.”
“We will,” Ellie said. “I promise, we will.”
They spent the next six hours interviewing fourteen additional people from every walk of life: witnesses who had collectively seen the explosion from every possible angle; business executives who officed nearby and saw it from their windows; students who, like Ricky, had been commuting to and from the University of Tampa; tourists who had picked the wrong city and wrong day to visit. Everyone was scared, most of them angry. The interviews were difficult and draining, and by the time the waiting area was emptied out, Ellie could see a tall glass of wine in her future.
The most fatiguing conversation was with a wizened old lady who had lost her teenage granddaughter in the explosion. “We were going to meet at International Plaza,” she said. “We were going to shop together for a gift for one of her teachers.” The granddaughter had been driving right beside the bus when it exploded, and she was killed instantly. The grandmother had been down the street and witnessed it in real-time. She sat in the cubicle and cried in hushed sobs for five full minutes, unable to speak. All Ellie could do was place an arm around her and hold her until she recovered enough to continue. “She was all I had left.”
It was after four o’clock when Hailey finally slapped the laptop shut, stretched, and stood up. “I drank way too much coffee,” she said. “I have got to find the restroom.”
It was then that Scott Greaney reappeared, looking disheveled and tired. The top button of his shirt was unfastened, his blue tie loosened beneath it. “How did it go today?”
Hailey shrugged. “A lot of fluff, but good people who want to be helpful. I’m sure we got a few things that could be useful once your team assembles everything into a larger picture.”
Greaney extended a business card to her. “One of the victims was taken to Tampa General. She’s pre
tty bad off. Frankly, I can’t believe she wasn’t killed; she was a passenger on the bus when the bomb detonated. She just woke up from surgery. Head over there and have a preliminary conversation with her.”
Hailey took the card. “Certainly. Will you need us tomorrow?”
“No. You can head back to Fort Myers once you’re done at the hospital. Call me directly if she gives you anything substantial and make sure to log it into the system.”
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll email you what little we have on the victim before you get over there,” he said. Someone called out to Greaney from the other end of the room. He thanked the two visiting agents again and then walked away.
Ellie set the iPad and recorder on the desk. “I think if I don’t eat something soon, I’m not going to be nice anymore.”
“Yeah,” Hailey said. “Me too. I say we grab something on the way to the hospital.”
Chapter Five
They took their time decompressing over sub sandwiches and sweet tea before heading to the hospital. Ellie slid her truck into a space in the parking garage, and they made their way to the ICU on the fourth floor. As it turned out, the patient’s nurse was more Spartan than nurse. She was an imposing woman, with a muscular girth and attic-like shoulders that made you think she would have done just fine as a lumberjack. And, as it also turned out, she was both adamant and animated that no one but qualified hospital staff should enter her patient's room. Her stance was understandable, perhaps even admirable, but the first forty-eight hours of any investigation were critical, and it took the agents a full three minutes to convince her that they were all on the same team. Ellie was about to assert the authority behind her badge, prepared to make the switch from honey to vinegar, when the nurse finally conceded defeat and popped her fists onto her hips. “Both her eardrums are perforated. She can hear slightly out of her right, nothing out of her left. So you’ll need to speak loudly. Five minutes. No more.”