“They always seem to evaluate your personality and then give you a vehicle that is the complete opposite,” Ben observed.
“You picked up on that, too?” asked Nora. “I thought I was the only one.”
“Federal conspiracy number nine-thousand-and-twelve,” Chid quipped. “They actually gave me a pickup truck.”
Ford said, “I thought you said it was only six blocks. We could just walk.”
Nora nodded, pleased to hear someone else suggest walking for once. “I did. But in case we need to head out somewhere straight from there.” She pulled the driver’s door open and climbed in. She, like Ben, slid her laptop under the seat; then she started the car.
They showed their badges to be allowed admittance with their firearms into the hospital. Chid and Ford’s laptops were allowed to pass through without being scanned once they’d established their credentials. The woman at the information desk of the ER looked harried. Her gray curls framed features that seemed to have solidified into a frown. It had been a very busy two days at Hamot Hospital indeed. She gave the be-suited foursome a gaze that said, Now what?
They all pulled out their badges again. Ford said, “You have a Jane Doe in intensive care, brought in yesterday.…”
She narrowed her eyes.
Nora volunteered, “Motorcycle crash, came in in a coma. She’ll have had some broken bones.… Late thirties maybe, early forties?”
The woman flared her nostrils at them, then looked down at the keyboard. She tapped slowly, deliberately, unmoved by the agents’ apparent urgency. She then took each badge in turn and entered information into the computer.
Nora fought for calm.
“Room 216-B,” said the woman, handing them “Visitor” stickers.
They all took off walking, Ben and Derek Ford in the lead. Nora sighed as she peeled the sticker and pressed it against her chest, falling into step next to Chid.
“It would be so much better if they left room for creativity,” Chid sniped. “Visitor. It doesn’t leave room for the multitude of possibilities.”
“I think the category of people coming to borrow a mostly-dead woman’s thumb isn’t going to come up.”
“It will when I rule the world,” Chid said. “Just you wait, Nora Khalil.”
“I can wait,” she said.
“Yes.” His eyes twinkled. Then he said, “You Egyptians have that…” he brought together the tips of all the fingers of his right hand, then shook it up and down in the traditional gesture, “that patience. ‘Patience is beautiful.’”
She shook her head. “You don’t quit,” she said.
“So. Be honest. How is it being an Arab in the Bureau at a time like this? It has to be pretty satisfying, right, watching all these white terrorists running amok for a change?”
Nora stopped dead. “How dare you?” she demanded loudly, pulling herself to her full height and advancing on him.
She realized that Ben and Derek had stopped and turned to see what was going on.
Chid looked particularly small as he took a couple of steps backwards. “Hey, I didn’t mean—”
“How dare you?” she said again, more softly this time, but no less contemptuously. The words crowding her mouth were so many and each was so dangerously anger-swollen that she couldn’t speak at all. She walked away, brushing by Ben and Derek and taking as quick a pace as she could without breaking into a run.
Room 216-B mercifully appeared, a glass-walled intensive care room, filled to the brim with pulsing machinery. She stopped and stared at the prone woman. Her light brown hair was fanned out on the pillow. A rainbow of bruises decorated the right side of her face. She looked to be around forty. Rays of fine lines emanated out from her eyes. Nora took several deep breaths, determined to focus.
Seconds later, Ben and Derek entered, with Chid not far behind.
Derek was still carrying the plastic baggies containing the three iPhones.
“You think she’s a righty or a lefty?” he asked.
“Whichever hand’s got slightly thicker fingers, thicker wrist, right?” said Ben.
Nora palpated each of the woman’s hands. She expected to feel revulsion, touching her so intimately. But the comatose woman’s flesh felt benign, warm. Grasping her hands in turn, Nora stared distractedly at the ribbons of veins.
“I feel like she’s a lefty, but I’m not sure…” Nora said.
“Is she old enough to have one of those pencil calluses?” Ford asked.
Nora found it on the middle finger of the left hand. She held up the hand and waved it at them. “Let’s do this.”
Ford fanned out the phones. “Camo, Old Stars and Bars, or Girly Glitter?”
They all peered at their choices and then at Jane Doe’s face.
“Girly Glitter,” Chid declared.
Ford pulled out the phone and clicked it to life. “The charge is low, but there.”
“If it’s the right one we’ll find a charger,” Ben assured him.
“Nora? You wanna do the honors?” Ford handed her the phone.
Nora looked at the screen. The lock screen photo was of a toddler in a bubble-filled bathtub—no possible indication as to the identity of the phone’s owner.
Nora picked up the woman’s hand and pressed the thumb on the small circular pad of the home button.
Nothing happened. Try again, mocked the phone. She looked up, meeting each of her colleagues’ eyes in turn.
“Try it one more time, for good measure?” suggested Ben.
“Okay, but it’s going to lock me out,” Nora said.
“Just try.”
She wasn’t breathing, she realized, and she took a deep breath. Pressing Jane Doe’s thumb once more against the thumb pad immediately called up the keypad. She shook her head. “No luck,” she murmured, handing the phone back to Ford.
Ford tucked the phone back into the baggie and handed it to Chid.
“Next candidate?” Derek asked.
“Camo,” Nora said firmly.
This time there was no mistaking it. The lock screen image was of the woman herself, happy, laughing, a tall man outlining her body with his own, draping a heavy arm around her shoulders. Each wore camouflage pants and white T-shirt. Matching rifles were propped next to them.
Nora shook her head as she gazed at them, then seized the woman’s thumb and pressed it on the home button. The lock screen photo faded instantly away.
Nora’s sharp intake of breath was all the confirmation they needed. All three men took a step forward to peer at what had been revealed.
The Telegram app had been left open.
“She’d been taking pictures of the massacre at the refugee center,” whispered Nora, feeling as though something within her had withered. “And posting them for the group to see it as it was going down.”
“Okay, be very careful,” Ford was saying. “We don’t want anything to shut that app.”
“Can you hit Never Lock in Settings?” asked Ben.
Ford nodded. “Yes. Good.”
Nora handed the phone carefully to him, and he and Chid bent over it, talking quickly. It wasn’t possible for all four of them to take in the requisite information from the small screen, so Ben and Nora sat back to let them work.
It was at this point that one of the Intensive Care nurses entered the room, her ponytail swinging, the V-neck top of her lavender scrubs stretched tightly across her ample chest. “Two visitors at a time, maximum,” she said. Then she looked at them curiously, particularly at Nora who was still sitting on the edge of Jane Doe’s bed. “What’s going on in here?” she asked, attempting to sound authoritative. Her nametag read, “Lauren.”
Ben stood, showing his badge. “Lauren, hi, we’re with the FBI and we are helping this patient cooperate with a terror investigation.” He pulled a card-holder from his pocket and handed her one of Schacht’s. “If you have any issues with how we are running this investigation you may feel free to phone my supervisor at this number.” He gave her a
charming smile, then tapped Schacht’s business card.
Lauren took the card and gave them each a stern frown. “I need to take her vitals.”
“If you could come back in half an hour, that would be ideal,” said Ben, kindly but leaving no doubt as to how serious he was.
“I’m going to speak to the resident about this,” she threatened, turning to leave.
“Do that, Lauren. And please bring us back an iPhone 6 charger immediately.”
Nora smiled at Ben. “We do need to preserve Jane Doe’s life at this point, right? So there’s no harm in the nurse doing her nursey stuff.”
He shrugged, gesturing to Ford and Chid. “These two need to focus.”
Chid was bent intently over the screen, eyebrows knit together in concentration, raking his fingers through his hair every few seconds. He flipped open his laptop and began tapping furiously, then went back to peering at Jane Doe’s screen. Ford swiped carefully through the app, pausing when Chid said to pause, tapping on links that appeared.
“There’s about a hundred and fifty in the app’s private group,” Ford supplied.
“That’s not many,” Nora said, looking around. Chid still did not look up. “That’s not many, right?”
Ford shook his head vigorously. “But the public site it’s linking to, the site where Gabriel Baker has been posting his webcasts, now has fifty thousand members and counting.”
“Can you trace the IP address?”
“I can try, but it’s dynamic, too. I want to see if I email the link to myself from this phone if it will show up differently. I need my laptop and for one of you to hold this.”
He had been cradling the phone in his palm like some delicate preemie. Ben came and sat close to him. Chid kept pouncing furiously on his laptop, fingers flying, becoming visibly more agitated but refusing to speak to them.
“Check on the charger, will you Nora?” asked Ford, a note of concern in his voice.
“Right,” she said. She entered the hall and spied the nurse’s station.
“We desperately need an iPhone 6 charger, does anyone have one?” she asked, holding up her badge.
It was a nurse’s station full of carbon copies of Lauren; each looked at Nora as though she had requested a kidney.
“iPhone charger?” Nora said again, miming plugging a cord into the heel of her hand. She finally reached into her pocket, pulling out a crisp bill. “Ten bucks? I will pay to borrow your cord.”
The nurses exchanged quizzical looks.
Nora said, “Look, we’re just here in room 216-B. Federal agents. Working for the public good.”
One of the young women finally reached over and pulled her charger out of the wall and handed it to Nora.
“Thank you,” said Nora, proffering the ten bucks.
“Keep it,” she said, peering back at Nora from out of heavily lined cat-eyes and clumpy black lashes. “You have enough to deal with.”
“Thank you. I think.” Nora walked away, unsure whether she had meant she had enough to deal with because she was a federal agent or because she was not Lauren-esque in features and skin tone.
She returned to room 216-B and stuck the charger in the wall, then proffered its head to Ben who plunged it into Jane Doe’s phone without a word of thanks.
Nora looked at Ben, then at the two men. She sank into the chair next to Ben.
“These guys gonna deliver?” she asked him in a stage whisper.
“They’re good, Nora. Philly’s finest,” he said in the same fashion. He held her eyes and she could tell he wanted to ask her what had happened with Chid, but now was not the time.
She checked her watch and found it was after seven thirty. Fear for Pete was threatening to choke her. “Guys, we need to know their next move. What are you seeing?”
“One second,” said Chid, without looking up. “I think I’ve almost sorted it out.”
Nora rubbed her hands over her eyes.
Suddenly both Ford and Chid uttered the words, “Oh, no.”
“What?” demanded Ben and Nora as one, both rising.
“We have to go right now,” whispered Chid, his eyes wide, showing them the screen. “Right. Now.”
* * *
Nora fought for breath, unable to tear her eyes from the screen, paralyzed as the Patriots’ intended goal sunk in. Her memory paused in the hallway of the barn, where the drone of the television sounded, surreal, repetitive.
Together we can make America great again.…
And then all four agents were running through the hallway of the Intensive Care Unit. Ben was shouting into his phone as he ran, requesting every possible squad car, state trooper, border patrol, and emergency services vehicle, and shouting over and over the address he’d spied on the small screen.
Chid was calling Schacht, and Derek Ford was speaking rapid-fire with the director of the CIRG.
Nora cursed her car. “You have to drive,” she called to Ben.
“Come on, Nora—seriously?”
She shook her head fiercely. “You come on, man. Assume I’m still injured or something!”
She pressed the key into his hand and beelined for the passenger seat, yanking out the siren and plunking it down onto the roof as she swung herself into the car.
“We’re going to have a long talk about your driving skills,” he said, swearing under his breath as he started the engine.
As they turned onto the Bayfront Parkway, Ford said, still holding Jane Doe’s phone in his hand, “We’re on an intercept path? In a Chevy Malibu?”
Nora ignored him and glanced over at Ben. “We’ll be able to intercept them, maybe even beat them there,” she insisted. “There are only three roads that travel west to east.”
All four agents tilted their heads, listening for the sound of police sirens. Chid said, “There?”
Nora listened. “Yes—yes. They’re heading out.” She allowed herself to exhale a little, then called Maggie to get open lines for the officers answering the call.
Ben’s eyes darted from rearview mirror to road to side mirrors as he pushed harder on the accelerator.
“Turn left at the light then right on Twelfth,” Nora said.
It was rush hour; the east-west streets were dense with morning commuters heading into Erie from its sleepy suburbs.
Ford settled deeper into his seat, his index finger sliding along the phone’s screen. Ford held the phone carefully. The nurse’s charger dangled like an umbilical cord running to the car’s USB port. “Here’s the thing. I think he’s set it up like a game. Like a … like a scavenger hunt or something.”
Nora whipped around in her seat, eyeing him.
He met her eyes, looking grim. “You can’t unlock the next activity until the one before it is finished. There’s like a countdown clock. It says, Eleven minutes until Act One.”
“Well, it’s good entertainment, right? It’ll keep the members glued to the screen,” Chid said.
“It’ll take us a solid fifteen minutes to get to Fairview from here.”
Ben shook his head. “Nah, the Malibu will deliver.” For emphasis, he pressed his foot against the pedal and Nora watched the needle creep higher on the speedometer’s dial.
A call came in from a number Nora didn’t recognize. “Hello?”
“Mike Szymanowski,” a voice said. “Your office said we could find out from you why we are speeding across the county on an intercept mission to Porter Farms in Fairview.”
Nora said, “We have reason to believe that this Patriot group intends to harm a group of migrant laborers there. They posted that they’re going to round them up and burn down the barn. It’s going to be a statement against giving work to illegal aliens.”
Mike Szymanowski was silent on the other end of the line.
“Mike?” she asked.
“What the fuck?” he said, finally.
“I know. The post said there will be five Patriots. So, unless they’ve changed tactics overnight, we’re looking for motorcycles—b
ikers carrying semiautomatic rifles and/or big saddle bags. Big enough for rifles and probably portable gasoline tanks—maybe another fertilizer bomb.”
Derek Ford leaned forward. “Maybe a sidecar kinda deal.”
Nora repeated this into the phone.
She heard Mike Szymanowski say, “We can shoot them on sight?”
She could tell he wasn’t joking, and, after yesterday, shooting them on sight was her most ardent desire. She took a jagged breath. “Let’s just make sure they don’t get to Porter Farms, and then hopefully they’ll resist arrest.”
Nora ended the call, hearing the distant sirens echoing the one on her car.
“Maybe the sirens will scare them off,” Ben said.
Nora shook her head. “I think they have to finish their mission, whatever the cost.”
“That’s really stupid.”
“It’s a production,” Chid said, not looking up. “Show must go on. They have viewers. Getting martyred or arrested will just stoke the flames.”
Ford said, “The whole app here is designed so that we can’t figure out what comes next until the last minute. Well, it looks like, from the previous ones, that it was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes prior.…”
Chid gave a bitter laugh. “It’s intermission. Thirty minutes. Maximum forty, so you can stretch your legs and then get some champagne.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Nora said, feeling queasy.
“But someone has to know, right?” Ben said. “Some elite group, some inner circle will have the whole plan.”
Ford was nodding. “If we assume that Jane Doe was one of the insiders, let’s see her last few calls.”
Ford carefully placed the phone on the seat, and Nora watched as each man brought one of his knees closer in order to hold the phone in place between them. Ford began tapping on his laptop’s keyboard, plugging in the numbers for the recent calls into the database. None of the numbers had been labeled with names.
Ford looked at Chid. “Call them or just look them up?”
“Ummm, no, you want to find who’s being billed. Follow the money,” Chid said.
At the risk of distracting them, Nora found herself asking, “Chid, you found something when you were at the hospital. You were concentrating hard as you looked through the app.” They all braced themselves as Ben swerved to avoid an oncoming car that had not been deterred by Nora’s siren.
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