by Alan Gratz
I felt like that now, images, movements, voices washing over me, drowning me like seawater.
Emily Reed interviewing football players on the sidelines. The Black Widow standing in the doorway, her gun still pointed at Dane’s dead body. Emily Reed sharing a joke with another announcer in the studio. The Black Widow laughing at Darius for being such a dupe. Emily Reed talking about the Super Bowl on the TV in the motel room. Bashira Ansari’s name in the report on Aaliyah’s computer in the motel room.
The wave passed over me, leaving me dazed and breathless, and I suddenly knew where I’d heard Bashira Ansari’s voice before.
Emily Reed was the Black Widow.
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW OR WHY BASHIRA ANSARI would be working for ESPN, but I was dead sure it was her.
Emily Reed was the Black Widow, and I was the only person who knew it.
My first thought was to call Mickey Hagan and tell him. But Darius had the phone with him, trying to disable the explosives in the float.
I stared at Emily Reed as the truck churned slowly toward the center of the field. She had her back to me now, talking to the camera. Reporting on the sudden, alarming interruption to the most-watched sporting event in America. The interruption she herself had planned.
I had to do something. Tell someone. Stop her. The Black Widow was right there, in the lower section of the stadium, not a hundred feet from me!
I leaped out of the truck and ran for the stands. The float shuddered to a stop behind me, with Darius and all those explosives still inside. He would disarm the bomb in time, I was sure. He had to. I glanced at the scoreboard. Two minutes.
Two-minute warning, I thought. No time-outs left. Six points down. Forty yards to the end zone.
No distractions. No doubts. No second guesses.
I put my head down like I was running the hundred-yard dash. I hurdled over the abandoned benches and equipment on the sidelines. I jumped the wall into the stands. One minute, fifty seconds. I raced up the concrete steps toward Emily Reed. The cameraman finally saw me coming behind her and pulled his head away from the camera, trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing. Emily Reed noticed, and she turned. I practically ran into her, trying to stop.
“Emily Reed … isn’t Emily Reed,” I said to the camera, panting from my sprint. “Her real name’s … Bashira Ansari. She’s the widow of … terrorist Haydar Ansari. And she’s a terrorist herself. She put plastic explosives on that halftime float!”
The cameraman looked over his viewfinder at me like I was crazy.
Emily Reed—Bashira Ansari—looked startled, but only momentarily. Then she regained her calm. We must have been live.
She laughed humorlessly. “I’m sorry, Bill,” she said to whoever was back in the studio. “There’s a young man here with a crazy story about explosives—”
“She put them there,” I told the camera, talking quickly. “Her name is Bashira Ansari, not Emily Reed. Her husband was an al-Qaeda terrorist killed in a drone strike. She planned to blow up the Super Bowl halftime show as revenge.”
I must have looked as crazy as I sounded. The cameraman shook his head, and Emily Reed gave me a pitying look.
“I’m sorry, Bill,” Emily said to the camera. “We’ll have to get back to you with more on this situation once we have less interruption. Security obviously has greater concerns right now.”
“I’m telling you,” I said, moving between Emily Reed and the camera, “she’s a terrorist! She put a bomb on—”
The stage behind us exploded, knocking us all to the ground.
PIECES OF TORN, TWISTED METAL AND CHUNKS OF sod rained down all around me, and I curled up into a ball. My brain was pounding and my ears rang with a constant hum, like a house security system warning you to put in your code before the alarm goes off. I shook my head, trying to remember who I was, where I was, and what I was doing. I pulled myself up on one of the red stadium chairs beside me.
And then I saw the hole.
The middle of the football field, from one forty-yard line to the other, was one giant, gaping hole. But it wasn’t just a big dirt crater. I had forgotten: the University of Phoenix Stadium was unique in all the world for having a retractable field. It was too hot in Arizona to play outside, and natural grass wouldn’t grow in a dome. The architects who designed the stadium made it so the natural grass field slid out on a huge two-acre tray. On game days it slid back in. So underneath that retractable green grass field inside the stadium wasn’t more dirt—underneath were 546 steel wheels, sixteen metal rails, an irrigation system and drainage ditch, and seventy-six motors to move the whole thing back and forth.
All of which had been blown up when the float exploded.
The float—the float with Darius inside it!
“Darius!” I yelled. “Darius! No!”
I hauled myself to my feet and almost went tumbling down the concrete steps. I was still dizzy from the blast, and I could feel blood trickling down my forehead. I stumbled downhill and had to catch myself on one of the stadium seats. The seat was loose, wobbly, and I almost fell down again. I frowned at the seat, and then I saw it was almost ripped in half. A piece of metal shrapnel from the exploded machinery underneath the field had split it almost in two. It was the same all over the lower stands, too. Metal debris was everywhere, and dozens, hundreds, of those hard, seemingly indestructible plastic stadium seats were torn to shreds throughout the lower sections. The Black Widow hadn’t needed enough plastic explosives to take down the stadium. With all that gear under the field, and all the equipment that was supposed to be on top of it during the halftime show, the explosion would have killed thousands of people.
Instead it had killed only one.
“Darius!” I screamed, staggering down the steps toward the smoking crater. “Darius!”
Behind me, over the ringing sound still in my ears, I heard a security guard yelling out as he ran down the steps. I turned to see the guard checking on the cameraman, who lay on his back, his face bloody.
Emily Reed lifted herself up on hands and knees behind the security guard, still wobbly, and pulled the pistol from his holster. Before he could turn around, she shot him in the back, and he fell across the wounded cameraman.
I took a step up toward her, but she wheeled on me. I was a few rows away from her now, but close enough to be staring down the barrel of that pistol. I put my hands up to show her I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. I was so upset and disoriented that anything I did at this point would be stupid.
“I should have killed you and your brother before I put you inside that float,” Bashira Ansari said. She was Bashira Ansari, the Black Widow. Emily Reed had just been her cover. “I worked for years to avenge the murder of my husband. Years! And you and your brother ruined it all.”
“Your husband was a terrorist!” I told her.
“Haydar Ansari was a hero!” she yelled. She raised the gun and shot at me. I flinched, ducking again like that would do any good. But she was obviously still shaken up from the blast, and had missed. When I looked up again, she was running up the steps, her back bloody and her blouse shredded from the explosion. It was stupid, but I ran after her. She had killed Darius and I wasn’t going to let her get away.
The cameraman was still pinned under the dead security guard, but he was conscious, and I realized he had been pointing his camera at us the whole time. He looked at me differently now as I ran toward him, shocked but no longer skeptical. I didn’t care. I had to stop the Black Widow. I leaped over him, taking the stairs two at a time. Ansari heard me coming and turned to shoot at me over her shoulder, but I was ready this time. I tackled her from behind like I was blindsiding a quarterback, slamming us both down onto the concrete steps. Her gun went flying, clattering down through the shredded stadium seats.
I was stunned by the fall, and the Black Widow was too fast for me. She kicked me in the head, dazing me, and scrambled to her feet.
I tried to pull myself up, but I was too slow. She w
as going to get away! Then suddenly, there was someone standing in her way, waiting to intercept her.
Darius!
DARIUS WAS ALIVE!
I didn’t have time to ask how. He and the Black Widow began to fight. Darius was good, but Bashira Ansari was better. She fought with a fury born of rage and desperation. She got a punch in to Darius’s stomach, and when he bent double she kneed him in the head. He staggered back, almost tripping over the stair behind him, and just managed to right himself before a half-blocked punch sent him down on his butt.
“Kamran! Lex Luthor on the Hoover Dam!” Darius cried.
The story from one of our childhood games in the backyard came flashing back to me, and I remembered how we’d dealt with the evil genius Lex Luthor. I crawled up behind Bashira Ansari on my hands and knees, and Darius kicked at her with both legs. She stumbled back, tripped over me, and went tumbling backward down the stairs.
Darius helped me up. “Lex Luthor always was a pushover,” he said.
“Darius! How are you alive? The stage—”
“I couldn’t defuse it,” he said. “Too complicated. Too many fail-safes. She really was an evil genius. Come on.”
I looked down, to where Bashira Ansari lay on the concrete. She wasn’t moving, but we had to make sure she didn’t get away.
“But when did you get out?” I asked, hurrying behind him down the stairs.
“When it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to disarm it, Mickey told me to get out. I had already felt the stage moving, so I knew you had driven it out onto the field, where it wouldn’t do as much damage.” He looked around at the busted stadium seats. “Or so I thought. Anyway, the stage had just stopped moving when I climbed out. I was going to grab you and run, but you were already running for the stands, so I just took off in the other direction. It took me forever to get back over here and help you out. I’m sorry. I had no idea she was here.”
We stood over the body of Bashira Ansari, aka Emily Reed, aka the Black Widow. One of her arms was badly twisted, and she had a painful-looking broken leg, but her chest was still moving up and down. She was unconscious, but alive.
Police—actual police, not just stadium security guards—rushed down toward us, guns pointed at us.
“Hold it! Darius and Kamran Smith, you’re under arrest! Hands in the air!” one of them cried.
I’d forgotten. We were both still wanted terrorists, and there was a bomb hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the floor of the stadium behind us. No call from Mickey Hagan was going to get us out of this one, not until we’d been able to tell our side of the story. And maybe not even then, for Darius.
We put our hands up, and the officers moved in to handcuff us.
“Be the strongest of the strong,” I said.
Darius managed a smile. “Be the bravest of the brave,” he replied.
“Help the helpless.”
“Always tell the truth.”
“Be loyal,” I said.
“Never give up,” he said.
“And kill all monsters,” we said together as we stepped over the unconscious Bashira Ansari and were taken away.
We were in this together, me and Darius. Just like always. The Smith brothers against the world. And we’d lived by the Code, both of us. All the way until the end.
I TOLD MY STORY TO THE CIA, THE FBI, AND THE DHS. And then I told it again. And again. And again. They poked and prodded and questioned every little detail, but in the end, they were satisfied. They might not have been happy about the means, but they were happy about the ends. But I didn’t know if everything I said would help Darius. Or Mickey. And nothing I said could ever help Dane again.
In return for my story, I got Bashira Ansari’s. The CIA had quickly put the pieces together. When her husband died in an American drone strike, she swore to get revenge. She left her children with a sister in Syria, came to America on a forged passport, and started a new life for herself. A very different one from her life as a Muslim extremist. She shed her veil for Western clothes and went to school to become a sports reporter, all with the idea of bringing America to its knees with a vicious, unexpected terrorist attack on a major sporting event. She worked patiently for years, establishing her credibility and waiting for the perfect opportunity to do the utmost damage. She was playing the long game, one she’d learned from her husband, a game of intricate plots, false clues, and misdirection. The Super Bowl had been her magnum opus. But we had taken the poison out of the Black Widow’s bite.
They called in a doctor to examine me. I was fine, except for some cuts from flying shrapnel and mild dehydration. They gave me water and bandaged my forehead. Then I was free to go. Free. To go. My parents were, too. They were waiting for me in the lobby of the government building in Arizona I’d been brought to.
“Kamran joon,” my mother said with relief, wrapping me in her arms. I hugged her and Dad like I would never let them go. They both looked haggard, and older somehow. But also relieved. At least they knew now I was okay. And that Darius was alive and innocent.
My parents had been detained by the Department of Homeland Security the entire time, each in their own cells while I was in mine. When I escaped, they’d been put under even stricter security. The DHS hadn’t told them anything more than that I’d run away, and I had to tell them the whole story all over again as we were driven home. Telling the story to federal agents in a debriefing room was one thing. Telling my parents, who gasped and interjected and looked terrified the whole time, was another experience altogether. It made me realize just how surreal the whole thing had been. It was like I had lived a spy thriller movie.
And now what? Would I really just go back to being Kamran Smith, high school senior? That seemed even more surreal.
And what about Darius? His absence felt so profound as I sat between my parents in the backseat of the government car, their arms still around me. He was still being detained and questioned, and no one would tell us when he was going to be released. If he was going to be released. No matter what, I hoped we’d be able to see him soon.
We reached our street, where TV vans and camera crews waited for us, just like before. I sagged in my seat. This again? Still the media attention? Still the accusations, the doubt, the insinuations? After everything Darius and I had done?
The mob of TV reporters parted for the government car to pull into our driveway, filming everything. My parents and I sat in the car for a long moment, staring at the house we hadn’t been back to in months. The word TERRORISTS was still spray-painted on the front.
“Are we ready to do this?” Dad asked. He reached out and squeezed my hand. Mom took my other hand. Slowly, the three of us stepped outside.
The questions hit us instantly.
“Kamran, what’s it like to be vindicated?”
“Are you bringing legal action against the government for your wrongful incarceration?”
“Will Darius be released soon? Have you spoken to him?”
“How did you know Darius wasn’t a traitor?”
“What’s it like to be a hero, Kamran?”
I stumbled on the walkway to our front door and stopped to look back at the camera crews. They weren’t calling me and Darius terrorists anymore—they were on our side! But how did they know? The federal agents had grilled me like Darius was public enemy number one and I was public enemy number two, like they didn’t believe a word I’d said.
“Kamran,” Dad called. He’d unlocked the front door, and I followed him inside.
The phone was ringing again, but Dad went straight to it and unhooked it. Mom stood in the middle of the living room, looking around at the house like it was some place she’d never been before. Dad went to her and hugged her.
I thought about going to my room, or maybe taking a long-overdue shower, but I turned the TV on instead. It was all me and Darius and the Super Bowl all the time. The ESPN cameraman had caught the whole thing—me confronting Bashira Ansari, the explosion, her shooting the securit
y guard, her ranting about her husband’s murder and shooting at me. So that was how they knew. How everyone knew. The feds had made me tell them the story again and again, even though they’d had video evidence.
It was bizarre, watching myself, seeing the whole thing from the outside. Mom and Dad watched with me, my mom putting a hand on my arm in concern every time there was danger, as if this time I might actually get shot or killed.
All anybody on TV could talk about was the terrorist attack on the Super Bowl.
The terrorist attack foiled by the brothers Smith.
Another station had interviews with kids from my school. They never doubted me, they said. They knew I wasn’t a terrorist the whole time. I was so humble. So friendly. Julia Gary called me her boyfriend. Adam Collier explained how I was supposed to have been in the audience at the Super Bowl with him. It was a different song and dance now that I was a national hero.
I decided to go have that shower after all.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I SAT ALONE IN MY ROOM, STARING at the stack of textbooks on my desk. I was supposed to go back to school tomorrow. Life goes on, and all that. The pep squad had probably already hung a banner over the front door, welcoming me back. The principal would call a special assembly to honor the senior who saved everybody from a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl. Adam would be waiting to clap me on the back, and Julia would be waiting to parade me around on her arm. They would all treat me differently than they had the last time I’d seen them.
That was the problem.
Mom knocked on my door and opened it. “Kamran? You have a visitor,” she said.
“If it’s Adam, tell him I don’t want to talk to him,” I said without turning around. Adam had called the house at least once every day, and I always told my mom to tell him I wasn’t home.
“Well, I don’t know if you’ll know me from Adam,” said Mickey Hagan, “but I’d like to say hello nonetheless.”