"I had a camera that gave me future photos." He searched for skepticism in the other man's expression, expecting to find at least a trace, but instead, Dan merely nodded. Encouraged, Mark said, "I take it you've heard of it."
"More than that, I saw pictures of you from when you were in prison. Of course, that doesn't prove anything, but combined with your sudden release, and Jim Sheridan hanging out with you, I figured there must be something you have that's important. Something that the government had a special interest in. I might not be the smartest rat in the maze, but I can usually find the cheese."
Mark almost smiled at the phrasing but sobered as he said, "A few times, the camera gave me warning of terrorist acts."
"September 11th?"
"Yeah. I couldn't...I mean I tried, but, obviously, I wasn't able to prevent it." His failure still caused a stab of pain in his gut. It festered like a wound that wouldn't heal, a deep, raw pain that lingered. He mentally slapped another Band-Aid over it and added, "I helped stop another terrorist attack though. Remember the Wrigley Field incident last year?"
"Sure, but it wasn't much of an incident, that I recall."
"You're right, it wasn't, but that's because we prevented it. Hundreds would have died, and I had pictures to prove it." Mark stared at the smooth surface of the desk, his gaze focused inward as he recalled the proof of the carnage that thankfully never materialized. Superimposed upon the images were the new scenes that had played out in his dream last night. If only he had the photos to prove his story. This story—it would make it so much easier. Damn Mohommad to hell. He struggled to tamp down his anger to a manageable level so he would sound sane and calm when he told Dan about the dream.
He looked Dan in the eye. "There's a bomb planted on an 'L' train. I don't know exactly which one or when it goes off, only that it happens at the Merchandise Mart station sometime this afternoon."
"Okay, I got that from Jessie, but here's the thing." He flipped his note-pad shut. "A dream isn't something I can take to my lieutenant. Do you have some of those pictures?"
"No. I wish I did, but the camera was stolen a few weeks ago."
Dan leaned back in his chair, tapping his pencil against the pad of paper as he scrutinized Mark. After a long moment, he shook his head and tossed the pad on the desk. "What the hell am I supposed to do with that information? Jeez, Mark. Throw me a bone here. Don't you have anything? A name? Time? Train number?" He slapped his hand on top of the pad with a loud thump. "I need something I can take to my boss and say, 'Look, we have to act before it's too late.' Even a photo of something that hasn't taken place yet, as crazy as it sounds, is something."
Mark shoved out of the chair, arms spread. "Damn it! What do you want me to do? Manufacture evidence?" He gestured toward his computer. “Create some images with my graphics program? Or should I just say I planted the bomb so that somebody will go investigate?" He turned away in disgust and vented his anger by slamming shut an open drawer of the filing cabinet.
"Did you?"
Mark glared over his shoulder. "Forget it. Just get the hell out."
Dan stood and shrugged. "Look at it from my angle. I can't go to the transit authority with some half-assed claim that a guy dreamed a train would blow up this afternoon. Naturally they're going to want details. What train? What time? How do you know? How credible is the informant? And to tell the truth, Mark, your history is going to come back to bite you in the ass when someone looks it up."
"Yeah. I get it. I have no credibility. Sorry I wasted your time." The apology tasted bitter on his tongue.
Dan sighed. "Call me when you get some evidence." He tossed his card onto the desk and left the studio.
Mark sagged against the cabinet as he admitted to himself that Dan had raised valid points. With a sigh, he returned to the desk and slouched onto his chair. If only he had the photos. His gaze roamed the studio, landing on one of his cameras. The dream played in his mind like it was on a loop. Loop. An idea sprouted. He jumped up, sending the chair crashing against the back wall. If they wanted pictures, he'd give them pictures. He glanced at the clock. It was only eleven a.m. There was still time.
Chapter 12
All Mohommad had to do was have the whole device ready to go. Yesterday, he had scouted the site and used Mark's camera to take pictures. The resulting images of a destroyed track and a train smashed onto the road below gave him a moment of relief, but he wasn't going to trust it completely. Not with something this important.
The test shots had shown accidents that had later shown up on the news to have actually occurred. Mohommad was reasonably sure the camera was showing the future.
He knew he shouldn't feel pride, but it had been his idea to use a bird's nest to hide the explosives. Instead of pride, he should be giving thanks for receiving the idea. Mohommad bowed his head in remorse at his sin. His idea hadn't come without problems. A real bird's nest wasn't strong or stable enough to use, but fake ones were easily had at craft stores and were designed to last longer than a season.
The hardest part had been attaching it to the girders, but he had once again felt pride at how well he had designed it. The explosives, with the timer embedded, had been packed into the nest. One side of the nest had been cut away to leave it flat, and he'd cut a portion of a net from a fishing net to hold the nest and form a cradle. He even put some old leaves and grass inside the net, letting it hang out to give a raggedy appearance of an old nest and to camouflage the netting. Then, he fed the fishing line through the netting at the top and spooled out about twenty feet of line before cutting it. The cut end he tied to large weighted washers.
The only thing left to do was find the girder and toss the washers over a girder, use double-sided clear tape against the flat edge of the nest to keep it from moving, and hoist it up to the girder. The hard part was pushing it securely against the wall, but he'd come prepared with a telescoping flagpole, the end wrapped so it wouldn't puncture the nest, and used it to push the nest firmly against the girder.
Between the tape, he tossed the washer around the beam several more times before using gray duct tape to secure it to the base of the girder. He disguised the tape with dirt and black grease.
He'd accomplished the whole feat in less than five minutes, and at three in the morning, traffic was non-existent. That had been his biggest worry.
This morning, he'd strolled under the track to see how it looked in daylight and even snapped a couple of quick pictures as proof of his accomplishment.
* * *
Nobody paid Mohommad the slightest attention as he crossed at the four-way stop. The neighborhood was older with lots of trees and large homes that if rehabbed, would have been beautiful, but instead, paint peeled and weeds jutted from cracks in the driveways. It wasn't a slum, but a majority of the houses were sub-divided into apartments. He'd chosen the area because it was a great place to hide. Nobody knew their neighbors.
He carried the pizza across the street and up to his second floor apartment over a laundromat. The tantalizing scent of pizza escaped the paper wrapper and his mouth watered. He'd missed good pizza, among other dishes, and while he was back in the States, he was indulging in his favorites.
He set his dinner on the rickety kitchen table, peeling back the now greasy paper and taking a slice. It had just come from the oven, and cheese stretched a foot before snapping to curl around his hand. The heat stung for a moment, but Mo didn't care. Pulling the cheese off, he popped it in his mouth, then blew on the square in his hand. The aroma was killing him, but he resolutely set the slice on a paper plate, added a couple more slices, and snagged a bottle of water from the fridge, carrying it all to the couch.
Balancing the plate on his lap while he ate, he wedged the water bottle between the cushion and the side of the couch. He didn't want to chance getting grease or water on the photos from Mark's camera. The envelope containing them lay on the coffee table. He had gone through them over a dozen times already, still marveling at the magic of seeing
a print of a scene that hadn't yet occurred.
He polished off the slices and washed them down with several gulps of water. It was the first meal he'd eaten all day because he'd been too keyed up waiting for the news of the explosion to eat anything.
After developing the film last night, he had slept well. Better than he had in months and better than he'd expected. The camera had afforded him a measure of assurance that his plan worked. Or would work. He grinned and took a bite of pizza. The whole timeline still confused him, but one thing he was sure of, there had been no train lying on the street when he'd taken the photos.
Mohommad grasped the edges of the envelope and let the photos slide out, careful not to smudge any with his greasy fingers. His heart jolted. The photos had changed. Hands shaking, unmindful of smears, he spread them across the table. Last night, the photos had shown a train car lying on its side, a second car dangling off the destroyed tracks. Smoke and debris had hidden the bodies from the camera lens, but they had been there. He was sure of it. He sifted through all six photos, then shoved the coffee table on its side. Slumped on the edge of the sofa, he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his head on his hands. What had happened? He had already proclaimed the mission a success based on the photos. Why wouldn't he? He'd had proof. The test shots had shown accidents that had occurred, and he'd confirmed them with news reports.
Mohommad shook his head, already hearing the scorn in his uncle's voice. His uncle expected victims. Lots of them. For him, every death was a blow against the U.S., but Mohommad preferred to count the terror as the true victory. One person or a thousand, it was all the same as far as Americans were concerned. It was the fact that terrorists could succeed that frightened them. It was the not knowing the when or where. If Uncle's associates only knew how Americans thought, they would spend more time disrupting their daily routines with small hits, rather than large, showy ones. The photos showed the tracks and the street beneath swarming with law enforcement personnel instead of littered with bodies. Obviously, the bomb had been discovered, but how? And by whom?
Mohommad tried to convince himself it was still a victory of sorts. He'd disrupted the daily routine of thousands of people, and no doubt, instilled some fear. He'd been Americanized by the time he was ten and remained so for twenty years. The best way to terrorize Americans was to keep them off-balance, to keep them always wondering if this would be the day, or that would be the train.
His uncle and his group back in Afghanistan wouldn't see it that way though. No deaths equaled failure.
The pizza churned in his stomach. How could he explain his failure? This morning, the photos had still shown the carnage his bomb had wrought.
He'd been so sure of success, he'd already begun working on phase two of his plan—a quick second hit. While security would be increased in the days after the train bombing, it would be unorganized. It had been Mohommad's idea, and he remembered the pride that had swelled within him at the praise he'd received at the suggestion. A second hit so quickly would have Americans on edge. No one would be able to sleep at night.
Plans for the second phase were well underway, and Mohommad hoped he'd be able to pull it off now. Would his uncle even trust him to continue? A year of planning had gone into this two-phase operation. Just finding enough material to make a bomb had been challenging. The main ingredients were common, but the amount needed couldn’t be bought all at once without raising red flags. It had taken months to create a network of suppliers, and every time he had to contact someone about a shipment, it created another weak link in the plan. One shipment had been disrupted, and it was only a matter of time before the feds untangled the web of connections and trace it back to him. He couldn't let all that time and money go to waste. For the first time, he had played a major role in an operation. It would have been his success, but now, it was his colossal failure.
Standing, he hunted for the remote that had been flung across the room when he'd overturned the table. Aiming it at the TV, he stabbed the power button and found a news channel.
It was the story of the day, and the news anchors displayed appropriate concern, but there was no fear and no hysteria, only that a bomb had been found and safely disarmed.
The scene being shown had a reporter in front of a barrier at least a block from the L station. Police swarmed the area behind her, but the video offered no clues as to what had happened. How had the bomb been found? He'd been sure the fake nest would be the perfect camouflage. His main concern had been that it might go off at the wrong time or that the detonator would fail. If he watched long enough, details would emerge, but he wanted them now. He clicked over to another channel. The one thing he could count on with American news was the fierce competition to break an exclusive story. If there was a hero out there, one of them would find him or her.
The bomb had to have been discovered this morning sometime after he had looked at the photos. At least, he thought that was how it worked. He should have pressed Mark for more information on the camera.
A bitter laugh bubbled up as he wondered how Mark would react if he called him and asked for pointers. Mohommad tried to recall everything the interrogator had said a few years ago when he'd ridiculed Mark and his 'magical' camera.
In his head, he saw it all clearly. He'd been chained to a chair and the man, his interrogator, had strolled around the chair, forcing Mohommad to crane his neck to keep an eye on him. The officer had casually recounted Mark's claims. He had even chuckled at some point, trying to draw Mohommad in as though they shared an amusing secret. It stood out because the interrogator had been so stern during the whole session, it had come as a shock when he had cracked a smile. The amusement stemmed from a mention of dreams. Something about Mark claiming to dream about the images and how he'd then try to change them if bad things happened to the subjects of the dreams.
Mohommad remembered that part because only a prophet would dream of future events and Mark was not a prophet. He was an infidel and incapable of prophetic dreams.
Flicking through more channels, all he could discern was that a pedestrian had spotted something not quite right about a bird's nest and had contacted authorities. The police detective investigating had immediately seen the risk and called in the bomb squad resulting in a block radius being evacuated.
Mohommad scoffed at the self-congratulatory attitude displayed by the Chicago chief of police when he gave the reporter a few sound bites about how his officers had been so observant and vigilant. Yeah, right. He shook his head. It had been pure luck. That's all. Pure. Dumb. Luck.
He sank onto the edge of the couch as the reporter shoved a microphone into a tall man's face.
"Detective, we understand that you made the first call. How did you discover the bomb?"
At first the detective tried to evade the reporter but finally, he gave a sly smile at the camera and said, "I dreamed it. While I was sleeping a little birdie came and showed me the bomb."
The reporter laughed, but Mohommad could tell she wasn't happy with the flip response. Like a flashbulb in his head, it hit him. Dreams. The detective hadn't dreamed it—Mark had. Mohommad, if he were a betting man, would have staked his life on it. It fit in with everything he recalled. It didn't make Mark a prophet, it meant that Satan had sent the dream to him in an attempt to thwart Allah's plan.
He grabbed the camera, ready to smash it to smithereens, but stopped. Instead, he glanced at his watch. There was still one more train into the city if he hurried. He dug into the back of his closet for his handgun, checked to make sure it was loaded, and slipped it into his coat pocket. Let’s see if the camera can provide a future photo of its former owner.
Chapter 13
The second beer and the profound relief that the disaster had been averted, combined with his exhaustion, left Mark dozing on the couch by eight p.m. He awoke suddenly. Disoriented and unsure what had awakened him, he glanced at his watch. He'd been sleeping at least an hour but it felt like longer. Dragging his hand down his f
ace, he rubbed his eyes and tried to smother a yawn. The phone rang, and he dimly realized that it was what had woken him up in the first place.
Standing, he stumbled over one of his shoes, cursing under his breath as he ambled to the kitchen counter where he had dumped his keys and phone. The thought that it might be Jessie perked him up. She'd probably be off work about now, especially since the bomb had been defused. He didn't recognize the number but flipped the phone open.
"Hello?"
"What's up, Mark?"
Mark stilled. "Mo?" The way Mo had addressed him sounded exactly as he would have four years ago when they had still been friends—as if he was calling to see if Mark wanted to go have a beer. He shook off the nostalgia. This was a different man now. "How the hell did you get my cell phone number?"
"It was easy. You left your cell phone bill on your kitchen counter. I saw it when Hazim and I took a little tour of your loft. By the way, your girlfriend is stunning. At least, I assume she’s your girlfriend, from the pose and all. Anyway, I simply wrote it down. I knew it could come in handy someday."
"You're real clever, Mo." A car horn blasted outside, creating a stereo effect when it sounded through the phone a millisecond later. Mark rushed to the window. Orange hued street-lights cast garish shadows on the street below, but if Mo was down there, he wasn't in plain sight. "Where are you?"
Mo chuckled. "I expect you heard that. Blasted driver. I imagine you've guessed I'm just outside your studio, but I won't be for long, so don't bother calling the police. All I want is to return the camera to you. It's no good to me. Not if you're going to dream what happens and change it anyway."
Mark took a deep breath and tried to play it cool, ignoring the comment about the dreams. "Yeah? You had a stab of conscience or something?" He cupped a hand against the window. Shit. Nothing. If he had the encrypted phone, he could have called Jim while keeping Mo on the line. Even if Jim was out of town, he'd have notified someone. Mark had accepted that he wasn't important, but Mohommad was a different story. He was a wanted man, and if they caught him, chances are they'd be able to connect him to the attempted bombing of the ‘L’ track.
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