by Tal Bauer
[ 0745. MMU. Heading to AMB. ETA 0810 ]
Dawood. If it was him texting, or if it was someone with him, the partner Dawood had said Dan was providing, Kris didn’t know. But these texts had to be from them, location and time stamps on their way to their final destination.
MMU. He closed his eyes, tried to think. MMU. A landmark, a hotel… A museum? Nothing fit, nothing was the right acronym—
Marymount University.
In northern Virginia, near Arlington. Which meant—
AMB.
Arlington Memorial Bridge.
ETA 0810.
He checked the time. 0749 hours.
He had twenty-one minutes.
But he had no idea where he was.
Kris grabbed Dan’s gun and started running, heading down the gully as he pulled up the phone’s GPS mapping software. The screen flickered, and the program loaded as slow as a glacier. It was a shitty burner phone, and it had shitty burner phone GPS. “Come on, come on.”
Finally, a splotchy map of Washington DC appeared, blocks appearing at random, fuzzy and distorted. A pin appeared deep inside Rock Creek Park, in a gully beneath one of the horse trails that went up to the low cliffs overlooking DC.
Had Dan wanted a high vantage point, when whatever was about to happen went down? Some view over DC? What could be seen from the cliffs they’d been driving on? Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, the landmarks on the National Mall—
The Nine Eleven Memorial service, the Patriot Day gathering, which began every year at 8:46 AM with the ringing of the bells and a moment of silence, and then the recitation of the names of those murdered in the attacks.
Victims’ families, their loved ones, the president, members of congress, the cabinet, military officials, and thousands and thousands of civilians were there every year. Crowding the National Mall.
That must be what Dan planned. Magnifying a tragedy, squaring the worst attack on US soil in the history of the nation, trying to incite the end of days with a spike of pure rage to the heart of the nation’s mourning.
Kris tasted ash on the back of his tongue.
He was seven miles from Arlington Memorial Bridge, through Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, and the West End, in the middle of rush hour traffic. Most of DC came to a standstill for the September 11 anniversary. But not everyone.
He followed the map, jogging through dense underbrush and scrambling up the sides of the gully, trying to climb out of the ravine. If he followed this gully, he should pop out on—
Asphalt appeared, dark and cracked. Ridge Road, running up the northwest side of the park. He jogged onto the street, his back, his legs, his entire body screaming.
Tires hummed over the pavement, coming from around the bend, heading his way. Perfect. Kris stood in the center of the road, spreading his legs and taking aim.
The driver screeched to a stop, brakes squealing, almost side-sliding to a stop. His hands rose, hovering by his ears as his jaw dropped.
“CIA!” Kris bellowed. “Get out of the car!”
A man in a jogging suit poured out, falling over himself in his scramble from his SUV. He stared at Kris, hands held high, and sputtered. “You’re CIA?”
What a sight he must be. Dirt stained his jeans, the pullover he’d borrowed from Dan after his shower. He wanted to rip it off, throw it on the ground, shoot it until it was nothing but threads that blew away. His trench coat fluttered in the morning wind, flapping behind his thighs. His hair stuck up at every angle, and grime stuck to one half of his face.
“CIA business. I need your car.”
The jogger frowned. “I need to see some ID—”
Kris pointed his gun at him, right at his chest. “This is my ID.”
The jogger backed away, all the way off the road, until he slipped onto the dirt shoulder. “Take it,” he snapped. “Just fucking take it. It’s insured.”
“The government will contact you.” Kris hopped in, slammed the door. The jogger glared at him, flipped him a double bird, but stayed on the shoulder.
Kris threw the car in reverse and slammed on the accelerator, yanking the wheel hard to the right. Tires squealing, the car spun in a slick turn, until he shifted gears and straightened the wheel.
0755 hours.
Fifteen minutes.
He dialed George’s number as he came out of the park and skirted Adams Morgan on Rock Creek Parkway.
“George Haugen,” his gruff voice answered on the fourth ring. He sounded like he hadn’t slept, not once in his whole life. Like the entire world was about to crash down around him. Like he’d failed, everything and everyone.
Kris knew exactly how he felt.
“It’s me.”
“Kris!” George’s tone changed instantly, sheer shock and amazement laced with terror winding through each consonant. “Jesus Christ, where the fuck are you?”
“Heading down Rock Creek Parkway toward Arlington Memorial Bridge. I think Dawood and whoever Dan’s partner is are on their way there. I found a text on a burner phone of Dan’s, with a location and an ETA.”
“Where is Dan?”
“Where I left his body, in a ravine in his crashed car in Rock Creek Park.”
Silence.
“He was about to kill me.”
George exhaled slowly. Kris heard everything he didn’t say, couldn’t say, in his shaky breath. “Later, George. Listen, last night—”
“Haddad recorded everything on his phone. We have everything. We know what Dan did. We think Noam Avraham and Haddad are together in an SUV. Older, with remanufactured tires. We don’t have a make or model.”
Noam. Kris swallowed. Noam. “They’re coming in from Marymount University, so if you have any units in that area, tell them to keep on the lookout.”
He heard George repeat what he’d said, bark it out to the analysts and operators around him. In the background, he heard Ryan’s gruff voice ask, “Is he okay?”
“Where are you, Kris? Where are you going?”
“To the bridge. I’m going to my husband.”
“We’re right behind you.”
0804 hours
Traffic backed up for a mile off Arlington Memorial Bridge, onto Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The Watergate rose on his left, overlooking the river. Ahead, the Kennedy Performing Arts Center gleamed in the morning light. And beyond, miles of snarled traffic, gridlock on the roads, stretching across the bridge in both directions.
Fuck this.
Kris grabbed the cell phone and his gun and jumped out of the SUV. He weaved between the vehicles, ignoring the honks, running as fast as he could southbound on Potomac Parkway, past Easby point, past the sand volleyball courts. The Lincoln Memorial rose ahead, sitting on a hill overlooking the bridge, gazing at Arlington National Cemetery on the opposite bank of the river.
He jogged up the cloverleaf, rounded the bend, raced past the Arts of Peace statues.
Pedestrians clogged the walkways, the sidewalks on either side of the road. Cars sat bumper to bumper, exhaust fumes heavy in the air. Honks sounded up and down the bridge, angry drivers frustrated at the gridlock. He tried to see, tried to crane his neck over the crowds, reach around the mass of humanity—
Impossible. It was fucking impossible like this.
Kris clambered onto the hood of the nearest car. The metal warped beneath his boots, groaning. The driver honked, horn blaring as a window rolled down and a man screamed, “What the fuck?”
Kris jumped from the hood to the trunk of the next car. He jogged over the roof, jumped off the hood and onto the rear spoiler of a low-slung white sports car. It rocked, and he leaped sideways into the bed of a pickup before running forward, jumping to the hood of a sedan. Horns blared, following his every move.
He kept his head on a swivel, scanning every car coming in from Virginia, searching for an SUV, an older model, dark. It would be low on its tires, weighted down with explosives. Heavier in the rear, sitting back—
Sunlight glinted off a midnight blue Che
vy Blazer, late nineties model. Something almost obsolete. Something that could be bought for around two grand, cash-only in a back-alley deal.
Its back end sat heavy on the tires, its suspension weighted down.
He ran forward, jumping from hood to hood until he was a hundred feet from the SUV, close enough to see.
Two people in the front.
One driving, clinging to the steering wheel.
One beside him, something in his hand, outstretched toward the driver, hidden beneath the dashboard.
The sun gleamed, winking off cars and the river. He couldn’t see, couldn’t make out—
Dawood.
Dawood sat in the driver’s seat, staring at Kris like his bedraggled, dirty ass was an angel sent from heaven, like he was the Prophet Muhammad come back to life, Jesus Christ resurrected. Like he was every dream Dawood had ever had, standing on the hood of a honking sedan in the middle of Arlington Memorial Bridge.
Kris raised his gun. Took aim. The wind shifted, blew his trench to the side.
I’ve come for you, my love. I will never doubt you again.
Dawood closed his eyes. Smiled, bruises on his face stretching.
Four gunshots split the air, cracking the DC morning.
Three bullets slammed into the Blazer’s windshield, pummeling Noam in his chest, one dead center through his throat. Blood arced against the windshield, the passenger window.
And one bullet slid sideways, from the gun concealed in Noam’s hand, through Dawood’s side. Kris watched Dawood double over, clutch the steering wheel, grit his teeth as he screamed.
“Dawood!”
He ran, jogging over cars and leaping from hood to hood. The horns had stopped. Drivers had their cell phones out, recording him, his wild sprint to Dawood. Sirens rose in the distance, from both sides of the bridge.
Good luck getting to them, through the gridlock.
It was just him. Only he could get to Dawood.
Through the cracked windshield he watched Dawood sit back, press one hand to his side. Cringe, before the sun obscured his view.
“Dawood!”
Dawood threw the Blazer into reverse. The SUV rammed the car behind it, flattening the front end, sending it crunching into two cars behind it. He roared forward, shoving three cars out of his way. Again, and again, until he had maneuvering room, until he was able to turn the SUV.
Aim it toward the walkway.
The edge of the bridge.
“No!” Kris bellowed. “No! No!”
Dawood honked, over and over, his fist pounding the horn as he crept forward, enough to get the message across. Pedestrians scattered, shrieking, racing out of the way.
“No! Dawood, no, stop!”
Dawood turned to Kris, only twenty feet away. Kris saw his battered and bruised face, his swollen eyes, his busted lip. Someone had beaten him. Dan.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Dawood was the hero, and he was supposed to live. There had to be something, anything they could do. Anything other than this.
“No!”
The Blazer roared. Jerked forward, and then barreled over the empty walkway, crunched through the old concrete barrier on the side of the bridge.
The SUV hung in midair, suspended like time was paused, like Kris had grabbed the hands of a clock and frozen the seconds, the moments that would bleed forward. Kris exhaled. Too slowly, he was moving too slowly, trapped in a nightmare, locked in a reality where he was always too slow, too late, too wrong.
The SUV tipped forward, the back end rolling over the front, tumbling as it careened toward the glassy surface of the Potomac.
Kris made it to the edge of the bridge in time to see the Blazer slam into the water’s surface, in time to see the nose and roof of the SUV hit the river as one.
Water poured in through shattered windows. He saw the outline of an airbag.
Saw Dawood’s still body deflate against the airbag, slump sideways in the driver’s seat as the SUV began to sink.
Not this time. He wasn’t losing his husband. Not again.
Kris peered over the edge of the bridge, over the broken concrete and shattered rails Dawood had driven through. It was a thirty-foot drop, give or take a few feet.
He didn’t think. He didn’t question. He shoved his gun in his trench coat pocket and ran.
People screamed as he jumped, pointed his feet and plugged his nose and closed his eyes.
He hit the river like an arrow, like he was being stabbed everywhere in his body, like his soul had just been punched out of his chest. Disoriented, he flailed, first sinking before kicking up, swimming his way to the surface. As he broke the water, gasping, he heard someone shriek, up on the bridge, “There he is!”
Dawood’s SUV was sinking, and he was too far away. Dawood was still inside, still not moving. Blood smeared across his face, marred the side of his head.
No, not you. Not you. Not like this.
He kicked, swimming harder than he ever had in his life, racing the sinking SUV and all of time, watching as the water rose, creeping over Dawood’s chest, up his neck. Closed around his lips, and then his nose.
He screamed as the water covered Dawood’s head, and the Blazer gurgled, slipping beneath the Potomac’s muddy waters.
He took a deep breath and dove with the sinking Blazer, pushing through the water. Just a few more feet, just a few more. Dawood was still limp in the SUV, floating like a mannequin in the driver’s seat. Blood haloed him, a river of it dyeing the waters red, staining the Potomac. Beyond Dawood, Noam’s limp body slumped against the passenger door, his face mangled by the airbag, body bloodied and hovering lifeless in the cabin.
Finally, Kris gripped the broken glass of the driver’s window. He reached in, yanked on the door handle, practically ripped the door off.
Handcuffs glinted in the river’s fading light, catching a sunbeam from above. Kris’s stomach clenched.
Noam had cuffed Dawood’s right hand to the steering wheel. When the airbag deployed, it had shattered his cuffed wrist, his arm, his elbow. Dawood’s right arm seemed to have four extra joints.
And Kris couldn’t get him out of the Blazer. Not until those cuffs were off.
He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out his gun.
He’d get one shot at this. The back blast in the water would break their ribs, if they were lucky, and probably break another bone in Dawood’s arm. But he could live with that, if it got them out of there.
Kris lined up the barrel of his gun against the chain of Dawood’s handcuffs.
His lungs burned, and his brain started to panic, started to demand more oxygen.
Time to go.
Kris pulled the trigger.
Back blast from the shot created a shockwave in the water, spreading out and behind the gun, catching Kris in the chest. He tried to absorb the full impact, tried to take the hammer that had just been thrown through the water into his ribs completely, sparing Dawood. He screamed underwater, curled forward. Almost breathed in, reflexively.
The bullet had shattered the chain, burying itself in the SUV’s dashboard.
Dawood was free.
Kris grabbed him and pulled, pushed off the sinking Blazer with both his feet. Dawood was deadweight, motionless, completely still. Blood floated in front of Kris’s eyes as he tried to push for the surface.
Burning, burning, his lungs were screaming, collapsing. If he just opened his mouth. If he just breathed, just a little bit. But there was no air, not here. His brain was trying to trick him.
He had to hold on, just a little longer.
Darkness haloed his vision, the water, the surface going blurry. No, no. Just a little longer.
They broke the surface together, erupting into a world of light and sirens, of people screaming, shouting from the bridge. “There! There! There they are!”
“Help me,” Kris croaked. He gasped, chest heaving, but could barely drag in any air. Water lapped into his mouth, and he coughed, sputtering into the Potomac
. Dawood lay heavy in his arms, dragging him back down.
Splashes, nearby. His head dipped under water. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.
“We got you, we got you.” Hands lifted him, helped him get his head out of the water. More hands hefted Dawood.
People, in the river. Men who’d come to help him, swimming from the banks by Ohio Drive and the Lincoln Memorial Circle. They dragged them both back to shore, where a crowd waited, civilians on cell phones recording every moment, police muscling their way through, firefighters and paramedics racing to get to the riverside.
“He… he’s CIA,” Kris sputtered. “He’s CIA. He’s one of the good guys. Just saved us all.”
They dragged Dawood out first, up the muddy banks and onto the grass. Blood trailed behind him, staining the ground a watery red. Kris shook off his rescuers, scrambled up the muddy slope. Slipped on the grass and crawled the rest of the way to Dawood’s side.
Paramedics hovered over Dawood. “I’ve got no pulse. Asystole.”
“No breathing. Starting compressions.”
“Dawood, you have to come back,” Kris whispered. He reached for Dawood’s hand. “You have to come back. You have to come back to me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. This can’t be the end. I cannot lose you again!”
“Airway ready.”
“Intubate.”
A second paramedic dropped Dawood’s jaw, tipped his head back, and slid a breathing tube down his throat.
“Resume compressions.”
A third paramedic slid a needle into Dawood’s vein, an IV line and a bag of saline. He held a syringe in one hand, poised over the access port for the IV. “Ready with the epi.”
“Go.”
He slid the needle into Dawood’s IV, plunging epinephrine into the line, into Dawood’s body. Kris lunged for Dawood as they did, cupping Dawood’s cheek, pressing his lips to Dawood’s icy skin, willing him back to life. “Come back to me!” he screamed. “If you die, I’m coming with you!”
“Get back!” One of the Paramedics shouted. “Get back! We have to keep working!”
“Dawood!”
Hands grabbed him, yanked him, lifted him bodily off Dawood. He tried to beat them off, tried to fight, but he was carried away, down the grass slick with river water and blood, until they both collapsed, falling into the mud.