by Alex Kava
Within the last year he had changed majors and with it his entire future. Not a good idea your senior year of college. It was an expensive undertaking for a guy working and scraping for every credit hour dollar. What started as a vocation and change of major had actually turned into a passion. All thanks to a father he’d never met. But Patrick knew it wasn’t the extra classes in Fire Science that now made him race toward smoke. It probably wasn’t even all those volunteer hours at the fire department that kicked him into full-throttle instinct, although firefighters were trained to push their way into burning buildings when everyone is clamoring to get out.
But this drive, this urgency, this gut instinct that had taken control of him and propelled him toward the explosions, had little to do with his new training and everything to do with Rebecca. He had left her back on the third floor at the food court, back where it sounded like the explosions had come from. He couldn’t leave without her. Had to make sure she was okay. How many times had she checked on him? Made sure he was okay? All those nights working at Champs.
“You don’t look so good,” she’d say in between orders and refills. Then at the end of the evening after they were finished cleaning up, both tired, dead on their feet and needing to get back to study, she’d hop up onto a bar stool in front of him and say to him, “So tell me what’s going on.” And she’d sit quietly and listen, really listen, eyes intent and sympathetic. She’d listen like no one else ever had.
Patrick started to feel the spray from the sprinklers above and yet the smoke still stung his eyes. He pulled out his sunglasses then he yanked the hem of his T-shirt up over his nose. He stayed close to the wall. Let a rush of hysterical shoppers race by. Then he pressed forward again, slowly, taking in everything through the gray haze of his sunglasses. He tried not to trip over the debris, some from the explosion, other stuff that people had dropped or left behind: half-eaten food and spilled shopping bags. That’s when Patrick thought about the backpacks.
He couldn’t forget the bad feeling he had listening to Dixon Lee talk about their innocent prank. The whole time Dixon explained their scheme to send wireless static, some sort of interference that would play havoc with the retail shops’ computer systems, Patrick kept thinking something didn’t sound right. He should have listened to his gut instinct.
Why would anyone put a padlock on a backpack just to carry it around the mall and mess up a few computers?
CHAPTER
5
Rebecca stumbled and quickly reminded herself to not look down. She didn’t want to see what she had bumped into this time. She continued to wipe at her face, each glance at her fingers found blood, some not her own. She tried raking her fingers through her long hair, but kept cutting her fingertips on pieces of glass and metal.
She was cold and shaking, her vision blurred, her heart hammering so hard it hurt to breathe. Her throat felt clogged, her tongue swollen. She must have bitten it. And when she did suck in gasps of air, the sting of acid, mixed with the sickly scent of sulfur and cinnamon, gagged her.
A small gray-haired man slammed into Rebecca, almost toppling her. She looked back to see him holding a hand up to a bloody pulp where his ear once was. Other shoppers pushed and shoved. Some of them also injured and bleeding. All of them in a hurry to flee even if their shock tangled their legs and confused their sense of direction. They dropped everything they didn’t need. Rebecca stepped in a puddle she hoped was soda or coffee but knew it could be blood. She tried to sidestep another and instead, skidded on a slice of pizza.
Slow down, she told herself. Not an easy task with all the chaos racing by and bouncing off her.
Toddlers were crying. Mothers scooped them up, leaving behind carriers, strollers, diaper bags and stuffed animals. There were screams of panic, some of pain. Smoke streamed from the blast areas where small fires licked at storefronts despite the sprinkler system misting down from the high ceiling.
The PA system announced a lockdown. Something about “an incident in the mall.” And through all the noise and chaos Rebecca could still hear the holiday music.
Was it just in her head?
She found it macabre yet comforting to have Bing Crosby telling her he’d be home for Christmas. It was the only piece of normalcy that she had to hang on to as she stumbled over discarded food, shards of glass, broken tables and puddles of blood. There were bodies, too, some injured and unable to get up. Some not moving at all.
She didn’t know what to do, where to go. Shock was taking over. The shivers that overtook her entire body came in uncontrollable waves. Rebecca knew enough from her pre-vet studies to recognize the signs of shock. The symptoms were similar for dogs and human beings—rapid heartbeat, confusion, weak pulse, sudden cold and eventual collapse.
She wrapped her arms around her body. That’s when she discovered it. The pain shot up her left arm. How could she not have noticed it before this? A three-to-four-inch piece of glass stuck out of her coat. Without seeing the entry she knew it had pierced into her arm. The sight of it made her nauseated. Her legs threatened to collapse and she caught herself against a handrail so that she didn’t tumble to the floor. Still, she slid to her knees.
Don’t look at it. Don’t panic. Breathe.
She saw a policeman and felt a wave of relief until she recognized the man was mall security. No gun.
Yes, that’s right. She knew that.
She’d worked for a pet shop in a local mall her senior year of high school.
He was close enough now that Rebecca could hear his frantic sputters into his handheld walkie-talkie.
“It’s bad. It’s really bad,” he said. He looked young. Probably not much older than Rebecca. “I don’t see anyone else with red backpacks.”
Even through the shock, it sent a chill through Rebecca.
The backpacks.
She tried to stand, tried to twist around and look toward the direction where she had last seen Chad.
No Chad. Not even a wounded Chad stumbling around like her.
All Rebecca could see was a scorched wall. Smoke. Bits and pieces. A pile that looked like a heap of smoldering black garbage.
Chad?
She felt dizzy. Her throat tightened. The nausea threatened to gag her.
No, she wouldn’t think about it. She couldn’t think about it.
Rebecca looked in the other direction. Standing now, gripping the handrail with white knuckles and wobbling to her feet. She could see a black hole where the women’s restroom used to be. The restroom where she had left Dixon’s backpack, hanging on the door of the first stall. The backpack that she was supposed to be carrying.
Oh God. That’s what exploded. The backpacks.
She slid back to her knees, the realization hitting her hard as she eased herself onto the floor. There was something sticky underneath her. She didn’t even care. How close had she come to becoming a smoldering pile of garbage?
Somewhere from inside her coat she could hear the theme to Batman, and amidst the stampeding feet and the moans surrounding her, the music seemed not at all surprising. In this bizarre version of reality the theme to Batman seemed to fit in perfectly.
CHAPTER
6
Newburgh Heights, Virginia
This wasn’t at all the day Maggie O’Dell had planned.
R.J. Tully turned on the TV in Maggie’s great room but instead of listening to ESPN’s pregame predictions Maggie could hear bits of news as her partner flipped from one cable news channel to another.
“There’s nothing yet,” Tully reported to the others all gathered around the counter that separated the kitchen from the great room.
“A.D. Kunze said it just happened,” Maggie told them. “Local police haven’t arrived at the scene yet.”
“Then how does he already know it was a terrorist attack?” Benjamin Platt asked.
“He doesn’t, but the governor’s a personal friend.” Maggie tried to relay what her new boss had just told her—which wasn’t much—
while she jotted down a list of what she needed to pack.
“So he calls in the FBI?” Julia Racine joined in. Maggie shrugged. The nice thing about having friends who were colleagues was they understood better than anyone else what the job entailed. The bad thing about having friends who were colleagues was that they couldn’t shut off being colleagues.
“They think there were at least two explosions inside the mall,” Maggie said. “Possibly three. They believe there may be more targets.”
“But why send you?” Gwen didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “You’re a profiler, for God’s sake, not a bomb specialist.”
“They’ll need to draw up a profile immediately, so they know who to start looking for,” Tully said, remote in his hand, still pointing it at the TV from across the room. Still flipping channels though he had the TV on MUTE now. “They’ve got to put pieces together as soon as possible before any eyewitnesses start second-guessing what they saw or heard.”
Maggie glanced at Tully, looking for signs that he might be disappointed he wouldn’t be going along. They had been a team before budget cuts and before his suspension. Paid suspension. It was protocol anytime an agent used deadly force. Less than two months ago Tully had shot dead a man he had once considered a friend. The agency would find it justified. Maggie knew Tully would, too…eventually. Just not yet.
“Okay, so Kunze needs a profiler on the scene. That doesn’t answer why it has to be Maggie.” Gwen fidgeted with the knife that had recently been chopping vegetables. Maggie watched her friend stab the knife’s tip into the wooden cutting board, then pull it out and stab it again like a person tapping a pen out of nervous energy. “Are you sure you should even be flying?”
This made Maggie smile. There was a fifteen-year age difference between the two women and sometimes Gwen found it difficult to hide her maternal instinct. Although it made Maggie smile, all the others were looking at her now with concern. The same case that had garnered Tully a suspension had landed Maggie in an isolation ward at USAMRIID (the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) under the care of Colonel Benjamin Platt.
“I’m fine,” Maggie said. “Ask my doctor if you don’t believe me,” and she pointed at Ben who remained serious, not ready to agree just yet.
“Kunze could send someone else,” Gwen insisted.
“You know why he’s sending you.”
Maggie could hear the anger edging around the concern in her friend’s voice. Evidently so could everyone else. Harvey even looked up from his corner, dog bone gripped between big paws. The silence was made more awkward by the oven timer that reminded them of what the day had started out to be.
Maggie reached over and tapped several of the oven’s digital buttons, shutting off heat and sound.
More silence.
“Okay,” Racine finally broke in. “I give up. I seem to be the only one who hasn’t gotten the latest news alert. Why is the new assistant director—”
“Interim director,” Gwen interrupted to correct. “Yeah right. Whatever. Why’s he sending O’Dell? You make it sound like it’s something personal. What have I missed?”
Maggie held Gwen’s eyes. She wanted her to see the impatience. This was bordering on embarrassing. People in Minnesota may have lost their lives and Gwen was worried about department politics and imagined grudges.
Tully was the one who finally answered Racine. “Assistant Director Ray Kunze told Maggie and me that we were both negligent on the George Sloane case.”
“Negligent?”
“He blames them,” Gwen blurted out.
“He didn’t say that,” Maggie insisted although she remembered the sting of the words he did use.
“He insinuated,” Gwen corrected herself. “He insinuated that Maggie and Tully, quote, ‘contributed to Cunningham’s death.’”
“He told us we have some proving to do,” Tully added.
Maggie couldn’t believe how calm he was, explaining it over his shoulder as he kept an eye on the TV, as if he was simply updating the scores of the day. The subject did not have the same effect on Maggie and Gwen knew that. Perhaps Gwen had even picked up Maggie’s initial anger and carried it for her when Maggie had become weary of the burden. It wouldn’t have been so bad had Kunze not triggered a guilt Maggie had already saddled herself with. Some days she still blamed herself for Cunningham’s death even without Kunze’s accusations of contributable negligence.
Her psychology background should have reassured her that she was experiencing a simple case of survivor’s guilt. But sometimes, usually late at night, alone and staring up at her bedroom ceiling, she’d think about Cunningham getting infected, both of them exposed to the same virus. Just the image of his deteriorating body and how quickly he had gone from strong and vital to helpless, caused a sinking hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, an ache accompanied by nausea. That feeling was very real, physically real. Cunningham was dead. She was alive. How was that possible?
“So he sends you off to Minnesota to appease his friend the governor,” Gwen said. “You. When there’s probably someone there in the Minneapolis field office.”
“Gwen.” Maggie bit her lower lip. She wanted to tell her to stop. This wasn’t something to discuss with or in front of Ben and Julia, or even Tully.
“It’s just not right.”
The sudden volume of the TV drew all their attention as Tully pointed and punched until it was loud enough to hear the FOX news alert:
“There have been reports of a possible explosion from inside Mall of America,” an unseen voice announced while on the screen a bird’s-eye view appeared of the expansive mall. It was, perhaps, stock film since the parking lot was not full and the trees had green leaves.
“911 operators have experienced a flood of calls,” the disembodied voice continued. “Emergency personnel, as well as our news helicopter, are on their way so we have no details as of this moment.
“We can tell you that Mall of America is the largest mall in America. More than 150,000 shoppers were expected to visit the mall today, traditionally called Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.”
Inside Maggie’s great room there was silence. No more accusations. No more questions. No more arguments.
Ben crossed his arms as he stood beside her, shifting his weight only slightly so that his shoulder brushed against Maggie.
“Forget the politics,” he said calmly, quietly, an obvious attempt to reassure her. “Just go do what you do best.”
Before Maggie could respond or ask what he meant, he added, “Go get these bastards.”
CHAPTER
7
Mall of America
“We’ve got a problem,” Asante growled into his wireless headset. He avoided people in the parking lot, some standing in the frigid cold just staring while others ran to their vehicles.
“What’s the problem?”
Asante could barely hear the response.
“We’ve got one carrier still on the move.”
There was silence and Asante thought perhaps the connection had faded out.
“How is that possible?” came the reply.
“You tell me.”
“There were three blasts. No one could survive that.”
“You watched them?” Asante asked with careful accusation.
“Of course.” But the conviction wavered against the hint of Asante’s irritation.
“You saw each one?”
“Yes. I saw all three arrive in the food court area.” Hesitation, then the admission. “Carrier #3 brought two friends along. I didn’t think it was a problem.”
Asante stayed silent when he wanted to remind his point man that he didn’t get paid to think. No matter how willing, no matter how capable they appeared to be, Asante had learned to trust no one but himself. It was a tough lesson he had learned long before Oklahoma City, one that had taught him to always, always have cutaways like McVeigh and Nichols for each and every project no ma
tter how small or large.
“I’m headed back in.”
More silence. Asante knew exactly what the man was thinking. You must be insane. But of course, he wouldn’t dare question the Project Manager.
“What do you want me to do?” The question came quietly, hesitantly and probably with the hope that Asante would not request that he accompany him.
“Find out who those other two are.” He could almost hear the other man’s relief.
Asante continued, making his way through the cold and the snow to the back of the mall, toward the same exit he had used earlier to flee. Before he’d left the sanctuary of his getaway car, he’d exchanged his Carolina Panthers baseball cap for a navy blue cap with PARAMEDIC embroidered on the front. He’d also changed his jogging shoes for a pair of hiking boots. On purpose the boots were three sizes too large for him. A shoeprint could be as incriminating as a fingerprint and in the snow the print might be well preserved. He had already prepared the boots with socks in the toes, making them a comfortable enough fit that he could run in them if necessary.
The jogging shoes he’d kept and thrown into a duffel bag with everything else he would need including a syringe filled with a toxic cocktail he always carried for himself. It was one more detail, a safeguard for a project manager who insisted on controlling even the details of his own death if it came to that. Today he’d need to use it on the surviving carrier instead of on himself.