Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

One was the driver of the Hummer. He darted behind another chestnut about twenty feet away, making him no longer a viable target.

  Elkins didn’t see the biker with the chewed-up hand. He was targeting her from the behind a big lilac bush.

  • • •

  “Look out!” Vinko yelled at his screen. Not out of any concern for Elkins.

  A man from the house, whose big front window had been blown out by the grenade, was aiming a hunting rifle out the opening at the biker who’d just taken cover behind a lush lilac. Hard to see clearly, though: the picture was turned on its side because that was the position of the wounded colonel lying on the street not far from the man Elkins had shot in the first seconds of the attack.

  Vinko twisted his screen to straighten the view just as the rifleman fired at the surviving biker. No armor was likely to stop a high-caliber bullet designed to take down a buck from five hundred yards. Vinko sat stunned as blood burst from the exit wound in the biker’s chest.

  The colonel’s camera switched perspective again, jittery, bouncing, apparently moving backward. Vinko could only conclude that the driver of the Hummer was retreating, dragging the colonel with him back to the vehicle. Close shooting continued; the man laying down covering fire at Elkins or the homeowner who’d just killed his cohort.

  The camera juddered again, the colonel now clearly half-sitting half-lying in the Hummer’s spacious back seat. The stout driver piled into the vehicle behind the wheel.

  The windshield shattered, chunks raining into the front seat area. The colonel’s camera caught his own arm and hand as he pointed out something to the ducking driver. Vinko couldn’t make out what either of them shouted over the din of the continuing gunfire.

  Now the Hummer was backing up fast, the sound of gunshots fading; but the plinking of lead into steel remained audible as the colonel and his man continued their furious retreat.

  Vinko collapsed back in his chair, swiping Biko aside with his boot. He had been sure the video would show the slaughter of Lana Elkins, but the planned coup de grace had turned into a coup de disgrace. Soon to be replayed hundreds of millions of times on the small screen—but not by his followers.

  • • •

  The pain in Lana’s leg was excruciating. She forced herself to focus first on the Hummer to make sure it wasn’t getting ready for a drive-by. The driver was backing wildly onto a lawn five houses away, then peeling out in the opposite direction.

  Now she started toward Jojo. So was the man who’d fired his rifle from inside the house. If she’d counted correctly, she had one bullet left in the gun to put the dog out of his misery. She felt responsible for his injuries, and they were horrible: the dog’s fur was soaked with blood in four places on his back and shoulder. He looked like he might have been stabbed in the spine.

  Jojo was panting, tongue hanging out, flews slick with foam. His eyes were open wide, wild.

  “I don’t have a vet,” Lana said to the man who might well have saved her life. “I just got him.”

  “I do,” he said. “I’m on the line to her right now.” He turned from Lana. “This is Harry Riggs. I’m bringing in a Malinois guard dog that’s been knifed by a madman. This is trauma work.”

  “You’ll get my dog to a vet?” Lana said after Harry hung up and called 911 for the two men sprawled on the ground.

  “Of course I will. And I know who you are. It’s an honor to meet you.” Then he noticed Lana’s bloody leg and immediately dialed back 911. “We have an injured woman.” He stated the address again. “Lower leg wound. Do you hear me? A casualty who needs treatment ASAP.”

  Lana felt tears running down her face. Not from the pain, but for Jojo. And for the man who’d stepped forward to help her when she’d needed it most. The country was riven, to be sure, but there were plenty of brave people out there who’d had all they could take of crazies of any stripe.

  “Who are you, Harry?”

  He told her.

  Bethesda, it turned out, home to spooks and spies and retired military, also had one hell of a retired park ranger.

  “Who are they?” Harry asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Lana said.

  “But you have your suspicions and would rather not say?”

  Lana nodded, then looked him in the eye. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  The first ambulance raced up as she and Harry were loading Jojo onto a dark plastic tarp. As gently as they could, they lifted the dog into the back of Harry’s small SUV.

  “I’m going to grab my granddaughter from her crib, and then I’ll get Jojo here to my vet. Here’s my card. You call me when you can.”

  “Do whatever you can to save him,” Lana said. “I don’t care what it costs.”

  “No worries about that. I’ve spent my whole life saving animals whenever I could. He’s going to the best vet in the region.”

  For the first time in hours, Lana’s thoughts returned to another of the day’s casualties: Bob Holmes. She took one last look at Jojo, who was staring at her. Then she glanced at her watch. Barely two o’clock.

  Lana pulled out her phone, staggered, and felt herself blacking out. Waves of pain were overwhelming her. Two paramedics caught her before she fell.

  VINKO STARED AT HIS screen, stunned by the setback. All he could see was the view from the camera strapped to the head of the colonel, who remained still slumped in the back seat. The driver was racing away from the debacle toward an intersection, leaning forward and peering through a bullet-shattered windshield. Vinko could just make out a black man on the far side of the intersection leveling a handgun at the Hummer.

  Vinko had another urge to shout a warning but no one would hear him, so he remained silent as bullets ripped into the hulking vehicle. The fourth one took off half the driver’s face, leaving him screaming and slumping against the door, hands no longer gripping the wheel but what had to be a gruesome wound.

  All of it caught by the colonel’s head-mounted camera, as the SUV barreled past the shooter.

  Not for long.

  The Hummer smashed into three parked cars before rolling up over a curb and crashing into a tree.

  The colonel lurched forward, then fell back. The camera reflected those wild movements, then settled on the driver as his hands fell away from his bloody face and his head lolled left, smacking the driver’s-side window. A moment later he spilled forward, chest, shoulders, and head collapsing against the steering wheel.

  Vinko heard groaning, realizing it hailed from the colonel when he saw the man’s head-mounted camera pointing toward a semi-automatic pistol on the floor. As the colonel grabbed it, a man with an unusual accent yelled, “Put it down!”

  “You are so dead,” Vinko growled, furious with the colonel for the mess he’d made of what should have been a simple assassination. Those motorcyclists should have shot Elkins 1-2-3, not the fucking tires in some Hollywood attempt to take her alive.

  But Vinko knew he had to take some of the blame for that lame maneuver. He’d posted at various times that POWs in the war on American traitors should be subject to online trials. “Show trials,” Vinko had called them, “and then we’ll execute the people who betray their race.” Of course they’d want to seize Lana. Seize her and try her on video.

  So the colonel had swung for the fences and failed.

  And now he’s about to die.

  Or was he? The colonel was scrambling gamely despite his leg wounds to grab the 9 millimeter.

  “Good. Yes!” Vinko whispered to the screen, as though he were in the Hummer’s back seat beside the wounded man.

  The colonel had the gun in hand, but as he pulled himself upright the weapon was blasted out of his grip, bloodying and mangling his fingers. Someone wanted him alive.

  But the identity of that person remained a mystery because a black hand ripped the camera off the colonel’s head. After a quick repositioning, the device must have been strapped to the African American’s brow, for it now revealed a horrifie
d expression on the colonel’s face.

  “No,” the colonel begged. “Not that.”

  Not what?

  The answer came quickly: Vinko watched a serrated blade plunged into the colonel’s throat. With the man still very much alive—with his eyes bulging in horror—the sawing of his neck began.

  A black hand grabbed the colonel’s head and yanked it backward for the final deep cuts.

  With the colonel’s eyes still open—the head was placed upright on the console between the two front seats.

  The camera was in motion again, this time returning to the colonel’s head where the lens peered up at the decapitated, blood-drenched torso.

  Vinko heard footfalls recede, but not quickly. He detected no sense of panic. The killer who’d beheaded the colonel might have been cruising stalls at a Saturday market. He’s killed like this before. He’ll do it again. Which scared Vinko most of all.

  He stared at the colonel’s blood-soaked shirt and, for the first time, had no doubt: This was ISIS. They’re really here.

  • • •

  Lana woke in the ambulance, finding herself strapped to a gurney with her wounded calf packed in gauze.

  “How are you feeling?” asked a female paramedic sitting by her side.

  “Better,” Lana lied. She felt on the verge of delirium but wanted straight communication with the people around her. The shrapnel in her calf burned like a torch.

  “Police and federal agents want to talk to you when we get to emergency. Do you think you can handle that? You don’t have to. We’ll be arriving in a few minutes.”

  “Yes. What happened to me?”

  “You passed out,” the woman replied. “It looks like you caught some fragments from an explosion and they severed an artery down there.” She nodded at Lana’s lower right leg. “Not a major one,” she added quickly. “We’ve got you hooked up.” Lana saw what appeared to be a plasma line feeding into her arm.

  The ambulance braked, turned, and slowed even more. Next, the rear doors flew open and she was wheeled into the emergency entrance.

  A woman in a Bethesda Police Department uniform rushed up, trailed by Agent Robin Maray in jacket and tie. Lana managed a smile. The two law enforcement officers hurried alongside the gurney as the paramedics wheeled her into the hospital. Lana noticed that Agent Maray was looking her over carefully, then caught her eye and nodded, she assumed in reassurance.

  The gurney came to a stop in an area that was quickly curtained off. A doctor entered as Maray leaned over Lana, she assumed to ask him questions. But the doctor waved him away. “Not now. Step aside.”

  A nurse hooked her up to a blood pressure cuff and heart rate monitor, then started cutting off Lana’s pants leg.

  “You’ll have to leave,” the doctor said to Agent Maray and the officer. “I need to examine her in privacy.”

  Robin nodded and followed the officer through a gap in the floor-length curtains.

  “I’m Dr. Rivera,” he said, filling a syringe. “I’m going to give you something for the pain, then I’ll be examining for shrapnel wounds. You caught some in your calf so you might have caught others.”

  He injected the painkiller while the nurse methodically removed or cut off the rest of Lana’s clothes. Just as systematically, Rivera examined every inch of her, turning Lana over to complete the task.

  “Just your leg,” he pronounced minutes later.

  The nursed draped Lana with a sheet. “Do you want the FBI and Bethesda Police back in here? Can you handle that?”

  “That’s fine,” Lana replied.

  Robin swept to her side first, asking if she’d seen an African American male anywhere near the attack.

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  Dr. Rivera turned back to them. “I wouldn’t go into that now.”

  “I can handle it,” Lana snapped. “Why?” she asked Robin again.

  “There was a beheading down the block from the scene. A black male cut off the head of the man who appeared to have been in charge of the assassination attempt on you.”

  “I don’t think it was an assassination attempt,” Lana said. “They could have killed me right at the start, if that’s what they wanted. I think they wanted to take me alive.”

  “How many did you see?”

  “Four men. Never their faces. But I saw their hands. They were white. A beheading? Really?”

  Robin nodded. Dr. Rivera tugged on the agent’s jacket sleeve. “Do you have enough for now?”

  “How long will she be under?” Robin replied.

  “I don’t think we’ll put her under. I’ll use a local anesthetic. But I want her focused on the procedure. If she feels any serious discomfort, I’ll need to know right away.”

  Robin backed out of the curtained cubicle for a second time, already on his phone. The Bethesda police officer followed him.

  Dr. Rivera might have wanted Lana thinking about the procedure but all she could do was wonder why Tahir—she figured that was a solid guess—had cut off the man’s head. Did he want to leave the impression that ISIS had advanced into the District’s toniest suburbs? Wasn’t he worried he’d show up on video? Or did his convoluted relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies grant him a special form of immunity? But even if that were the case, why would he want to generate the widespread fear that a beheading would bring?

  Or maybe he wants to fight fire with fire?

  “Ouch,” Lana squealed as Dr. Rivera probed her wound.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m putting you under,” he said a moment later, nodding at an anesthesiologist. “I’ve got to go deeper than I expected,” he said, turning back to Lana. “Just so you know, you’ll have some scarring down here.”

  Lana smiled. That was the least of her …

  She hadn’t finished the thought before the drugs took over.

  • • •

  Vinko brought up YouTube, hoping against hope that the failed abduction had not been posted.

  1,257,546 views in the first hour and a half.

  He groaned.

  “Cyber Spy and Park Ranger Heroes” was the website’s headline. All four of the dead attackers were on vivid display. But they didn’t show the colonel’s severed head, though Vinko had no doubt that that grisly sight would show up somewhere, probably sooner rather than later.

  He didn’t know how he’d get to Lana Elkins now. And then he told himself to return to basics.

  Get her kid. That’s what you were thinking before the colonel fucked things up. Emma’s the bait.

  He murmured her name to himself, as if invoking those two smooth syllables would grant him mantra-like powers. Then he got to the point: “I’m coming to get you, Emma. And then I’m taking down your mom.”

  It was personal for Vinko now. He’d make sure it would be no different for Lana Elkins.

  LANA SAT WITH HER injured leg propped on a hassock in the living room. She had two wounds from the fragments that had ripped into her calf, which were now closed with twelve stitches. The surgeon said the cuts were deep, down to the bone in one case, and insisted that she keep her leg elevated for four days.

  She worked effectively enough from the couch, where she glanced up periodically to see if the breeder and dog trainer, Ed Holmes, had arrived yet.

  Bob Holmes’s son had been aghast to learn about Jojo, but relieved that the young Malinois would survive, the latest report from the veterinarian’s office. Ed Holmes had phoned Lana last night to say he’d be bringing her a replacement.

  “Which one?” Emma had asked when Lana got off the phone.

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “He had two other younger dogs, I’m pretty sure.”

  There was Ed now. Lana saw Robin greeting him in the driveway, where the FBI agent had just completed another circuit around the house. The dog by Ed’s side looked heftier than Jojo. Actually, he looked … older.

  Robin escorted Ed and the hound into the living room.

  Better
than a butler, Lana thought of Robin, smiling to herself.

  Ed introduced himself as Don walked in from the kitchen. He’d been anxious, too, about Jojo’s successor.

  “You’re kidding,” Don said, staring at the hound. “That old guy?”

  Lana thought Don sounded insulting, but before she could come up with some meliorating words for Ed, Don turned to her and said, “Do you know who this is?” He gestured at the dog.

  “No.”

  “This is Cairo, the dog that helped take down bin Laden.”

  “Seriously?” Lana was now staring at Cairo, too.

  “He’s the best I’ve got right now,” Ed jumped in. “The demand is very high. The navy took my two younger ones,” he added with a knowing nod to Don. “Cairo’s not as fast as he once was, but he’s smart, experienced, and has a better sense of people than any creature, including humans, that I’ve ever met. Thing is, he’s not a family dog. He’s all business. Think of him as a battle-hardened grandfather who can’t suffer fools, and you’ll pretty much know what Cairo’s all about. And nobody cuddles up with Cairo. Just feed him, air him, and he’ll secure the premises.”

  “So we have a celebrity guard dog?” Lana said.

  “Lower case c,” Ed replied. “Don’t go dining out on stories about him, though. There’s a price on his head, and I understand there’s a pretty hefty one on yours, too, so you don’t want some enterprising jihadist aiming for a twofer with both of you in this place.”

  Ed did introduce Cairo to her. Lana petted him. He appeared to tolerate her touch, but that was about it. And he barely glanced at Lana, eyes on his new digs. Emma got a reintroduction, and asked if Cairo still high-fived.

  “Sure,” Ed replied.

  She and Cairo slapped palm and pad.

  While Don, Emma, and Ed gave Cairo the tour of the house and grounds, Robin remained in the living room long enough to ask Lana how she was doing.