Cal had to make sure the local team acted quickly, but he wouldn’t explain this to Yancey and risk the information being changed in a secondhand communication. “I want to talk to the squad commander the moment he arrives. Don’t waste even a second but get him on the phone with me. You got that? Not a second.”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay, set two perimeters. Inside, a minimum of one hundred feet. Outside, another four hundred feet.”
“We’ve already started clearing the area, but there’s an apartment complex nearby and it’s taking time to evacuate the residents. We have additional officers en route and that should help.”
“Keep at it,” Cal said, now worried that this bomb could take out even more people.
“We’re working on it, but you know it takes time, man.”
“We don’t have time!” Cal pressed harder on the gas, as saving this woman, and now the neighborhood, rested solely on his shoulders.
* * *
Tara pulled up behind a white sedan parked in the exact location Oren had said it would be. Did he truly want to see her, or was this a way to subdue her? Was he hiding in the woods and when she got in the car he’d attack? Maybe put a bomb around her neck, too?
She opened the car door and heard the phone ringing from the other car. She had no choice. Only two minutes remained on Oren’s time clock and she had to move. Now!
She bolted from Agent Ward’s car and raced across the road. Her hands trembled and she fumbled with the door handle.
“No, no, no. June is counting on you.” She jerked the door open and saw the lighted cell on the passenger seat.
She dove to answer it. She soon discovered it wasn’t a normal call; he’d called on Skype. Dreading seeing his face on the video app, she tapped the answer button and averted her eyes.
“Hello, Tara.” His smarmy voice sent chills of repulsion over her body. “I thought for a moment you hadn’t obeyed.”
“Cal’s on his way as you requested, so now you can let June go.”
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
She had hoped that would be the case, but deep in her heart she’d known that Oren would require something more. “What else do you want from me?”
“Look at me, Tara.”
She swallowed hard and swung her gaze to the phone. Expecting to see his face, she saw her aunt instead.
“June,” Tara cried out.
“Enough of that.” Oren swung the camera to his face.
Tara nearly gasped at the change in his appearance since she’d last seen him at the pump house, but she managed to bite her lip before she displayed her shock. He wore a full but scraggly beard, a white woven cap, and a traditional white Indian shirt. His eyes were glazed and piercing at the same time, and she saw nothing of the boy she’d grown up with. Nothing of her friend. It was time to finally admit that person was long gone and evil faced her instead.
“We have no time to lose,” he said. “First, I want you to take the agent’s phone and yours, too. Smash them on the road. Be sure to aim this phone’s camera at it so I can see you destroy them.”
There was no point in arguing, so she got out of the car and dropped her phone on the ground, then stomped on it with the heel of her shoe. It took a few tries, but it finally cracked and died. She did the same thing with Agent Ward’s phone, severing any hope that Cal could trace her location.
“I want to see a close-up of the cells,” Oren demanded.
She bent low and demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the phones.
“Go back to the car and drive to June’s house. The car has GPS, and I’ve mounted cameras inside and outside the vehicle in case you planned to have someone follow you.”
“I’m all alone,” she said.
“Good, because I’ll know if you aren’t, and I’ll kill June.”
Tara wished Oren hadn’t planned all of this so carefully or she might have been able to come up with a way to outsmart him.
“Oh, and Tara, you have another thirty minutes. I’ll make another video call then, and you best be with June.”
He disconnected, and she wasted no time but hopped into the car and raced down the highway to her aunt’s driveway. The house was dark, and there was no sign of the car belonging to June’s protection detail. Tara wished Cal was there with her, but then, what could he do? He’d told her he couldn’t disarm the bomb yet. Besides, her intuition said Oren still wanted something from her or he could have killed her the moment she arrived at the car he’d left for her.
And what about Cal’s life?
They were just getting to know each other and starting to like and respect each other. And besides that, he was a fine man and didn’t deserve to lose his life because of a choice she’d made.
“But I have to save June,” she mumbled, and parked the car by the front steps.
She got out, barely noticing the cool breeze drifting through the fields bringing the fresh scent of recently mowed grass. She stepped toward the house, her shoes feeling like they were encased in lead. She forced her feet up the stairs and found the door unlocked.
Fearing some sort of trip wire or booby trap, she cracked the door open only a fraction and held her breath. When nothing happened, she pushed the door open another foot and yelled, “June.”
“In the living room.” Her voice came from that direction, but Tara wouldn’t take a chance.
“Did Oren really put a bomb around your neck?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if he booby-trapped the front door?”
“No. It’s fine.”
Tara shoved the door all the way open and flipped on the entry light, casting a glow into the living room. June sat on a wooden dining chair in the middle of the room, her hands folded on her lap, her eyes blinking at the sudden light.
Tara entered the room and stared at the plastic pipe around June’s neck. “Are you sure this is real? That it’ll explode?”
“I can’t be positive, but when he clicked it into place I heard a whirring sound from inside, so I know it’s not empty piping.”
Tara circled her aunt to evaluate the device. Right—like she had a clue about what she was looking for. That didn’t mean she didn’t desperately want to find a way to save June. Tara couldn’t lose her aunt, the woman who for all practical purposes was her mother. She loved her so much.
Tara dug deep to find even an ounce of bravery before she passed her fear on to June.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the sofa?” Tara asked.
“There’s a motion switch in the bomb. Moving could set it off, and I can’t risk that.”
Tara was suddenly grateful her aunt had always kept in tip-top physical shape so she had the stamina to remain still for as long as it might take to disarm the bomb.
“Oren left another cell on the dining room table,” June added. “He said he’d call you on that one.”
Tara stepped across the entryway and turned on the old crystal chandelier. The light fractured across faded floral wallpaper, and memories of the many meals she’d eaten in this very room momentarily replaced her anxiety. She glanced at the chair where Oren had often sat, but instead of seeing the boy, she imagined the man in the video. His narrowed eyes, darkness buried in the depths, and her terror came rushing back.
Would she escape from him and eat a meal here again?
Maybe. If she didn’t panic. She carried the phone and a chair into the living room and placed the chair next to June. Tara sat and gently twined her fingers with her aunt’s. “I love you, Aunt June.”
“You can leave the house if you want,” June said. “Take the phone with you and get far enough away. Oren will never know.”
Tara shook her head, as Oren had said he would make a video call again, and even if he didn’t, she wouldn’t leave June alone to face this horrible uncertainty.
Chapter 26
Burke, Virginia
Cal swung around the corner where patrol cars
and uniformed officers blocked the road at the outer perimeter of the bomb scene. He leaned out the car window and flashed his credentials at an officer standing in the road. The guy nodded and stepped out of the way, allowing Cal to move down the road to the inner perimeter. As much as the delay of having to show his ID frustrated Cal, he was glad that Yancey had listened and set up two perimeters.
Four fire trucks were parked just outside the barrier, and worried firefighters stood at the ready. Nearer the scene sat a heavy response truck with the county logo painted on the side. A tech had already moved a robot down the vehicle ramp. The device containment truck used to transport bombs to a disposal area hadn’t arrived. Perhaps Keeler chose this location outside of D.C. because he knew the county squad didn’t have the funds for such a truck.
Cal slammed the gearshift into park and was out of the vehicle with his ID in hand before the car quit rocking from his sudden stop. He charged up to the bomb tech. A disposal suit lay discarded on a storage case, and Cal hoped the suit had been worn to put a protective cover over the woman.
“Where’s Sergeant Udall?” Cal asked.
The officer gestured at a strongly built man in uniform leaning over the hood of a patrol car, a map spread out in front of him.
“Is the robot ready to go?” Cal asked the tech.
“Ready when you are.”
Cal nodded and marched up to Udall. As the squad leader, he’d phoned Cal and was expecting him, so Cal didn’t introduce himself but simply held out his ID. “Is the shield in place over the woman?”
Udall gave a quick nod.
“Good. I’d like your man to control the bot, but I’ll be the one suiting up to work on the device if it comes to that.”
Another nod.
“Show me the lay of the land.”
Udall bent over the hood and tapped a home five houses in from the intersection where they stood. “Subject’s house. We don’t have a blueprint yet, but it’s a two-story, and she’s on the first floor in the dining room. It faces east and the front door faces south. Back door, north, but the backyard falls off into a gully, and you’d have to climb two flights of stairs to get to the door.”
Cal looked down the road. “So the bot goes in through the front.”
He nodded. “Unless you want the dogs to take a look-see first.”
“You have dogs?”
“Best bomb sniffers in the country. We can strap a camera on ’em and send ’em in.”
“Let’s use the robot for now.” Cal didn’t want to risk a dog’s life when a robot could perform the task they needed to complete.
“We’re ready, Sarge,” the tech called out from the back of his truck.
Cal spun, and tuning out the commotion outside of the perimeter, he joined the tech inside the truck. The young man who looked barely out of college sat behind his control module.
“Let’s get the bot moving,” Cal directed.
The tech nodded and started the robot whirring forward. Bots didn’t move fast, so the drive from the perimeter to the front of the house seemed to take forever.
Cal’s phone chimed, and he glanced at it to see a text from Kaci saying she located Nabijah Meer’s address in D.C. Kaci had dispatched a team to Meer’s house to bring her in for questioning. Kaci had also attached Meer’s photo. Cal studied the woman’s face and wondered why she would team up with Keeler.
“Nearing the house,” the bomb tech said.
Cal’s attention needed to be on the bomb, and he could think about Meer after he’d neutralized the bomb. He stowed his phone and turned his attention to the tech. “What’s your name?”
“Frankie.”
“And the robot. Does he have a name, too?” Cal asked, knowing many teams named their bots.
“She, actually.” Frankie looked up and grinned. “Anne Droid.”
“From Dr. Who,” Cal said, recognizing the name.
Frankie nodded.
“How long have you been doing this, Frankie?”
“This job, three years. The marines another eight.”
So he wasn’t as young as he looked. And if he was a bomb disposal tech on a county squad, he’d be certified and have graduated from the FBI Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama, as Cal had done when he’d come out of the navy. That meant he and Frankie spoke the same language when it came to rendering a bomb safe. The knot in Cal’s gut loosened a fraction.
Anne Droid approached the house, and Cal quit talking to focus on the monitor. It didn’t take a great deal of skill to move a robot down a street, even if Frankie faced a flat screen in a three-dimensional world. But to enter a house and approach the woman took far greater concentration.
Frankie took the bot right up the stairs, and with great dexterity, used Anne Droid’s pinching arm to turn the knob and open the door. Inside the house, she veered to the right.
“Turn on the speakers so I can communicate with the victim,” Cal directed, and Frankie complied.
“Ms. Tabet,” Cal said into the microphone. “I’m Special Agent Cal Riggins with the FBI. We’ve just sent a robot into the room. If you speak up we can communicate through the bot.”
“Hello.” Her tone was tentative and, even in a single word, her fear evident.
“We’re here to safely get you out of this device, but I’m going to need your help.”
“What…what do you need?”
“Our robot is going to get up close and friendly with you now. The tech will direct it to lift the tent flap and zoom in the camera so I can get a good look at the device, and then we’ll take a few x-ray pictures of it.”
“Okay.”
“In all of this, I need you to remain still.”
“Okay.”
“We’re signing off for a few minutes so we can concentrate on the robot. Do you have any questions before we do?”
“N-n-no.”
“Okay, back in a few,” Cal said lightly, though the tightness in his gut had moved to his chest, too.
Frankie muted the mic.
Cal took a step closer. “From what I’ve been able to ascertain on the previous bombs—”
“Previous.” Frankie’s head shot up and he stared at Cal, who could almost see the thoughts racing through the guy’s head like sports scores on the bottom of a TV screen. “This is the work of the Lone Wolf, isn’t it?”
Cal nodded.
Frankie clutched a hand to his chest, then let it fall with a thud to his knee. “Man, oh, man.”
“Relax.” Cal rested his hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “This is the same job you were doing a second ago. Nothing has changed.”
“R-right. Same job.”
“Do you need me to take over?” Cal wasn’t familiar with this robot and, even nervous, the kid would likely do a better job.
“I got it.”
“Then as I was saying, the explosives will be packed in the rear of the bomb. I’d like a clear picture of that section along with x-rays for the entire device.”
He nodded and started Anne Droid moving to the tent where her pinchers lifted the fabric. Cal forced himself to breathe as the first pictures came over the monitor. The woman sat in a dining chair, her back rigid and shoulders level. She had a square face with a broad nose and her dark brown eyes were wide with terror. Her gaze darted around, but she remained seated and motionless. The white pipe circled her neck, and the front coupling held a crude drawing of a skull and crossbones as Cal had expected.
“We saw the design when we placed the tent,” Frankie said. “Is that the Lone Wolf’s signature?”
“Yeah, and I need you to keep that bit of info to yourself.”
“No problem,” he replied.
Cal doubted, despite good intentions by Frankie, that he would be able keep this quiet. Best case, he’d share it with his wife. Worst case, he’d pass it on to his sergeant, who would run it up the chain of command and word would spread, but Cal couldn’t worry about damage control right now.
At the moment, th
e most important thing was to get his mind into the game, as it was clear that he would be donning the eighty-pound suit waiting for him outside the truck. Even if a cell signal couldn’t pierce the tent to set off an explosion, Keeler packed his bombs with many hidden switches, and Cal had to be careful if he didn’t want to go boom right along with the device.
* * *
Spotsylvania County, Virginia
Tara’s palms were slick with sweat, so she scrubbed them over her jeans. She’d sat with June for thirty minutes now but time dragged. Each second, each moment an hour. Tara’s mouth had gone dry long ago. She wanted to get a glass of water, but June couldn’t risk tipping her head back, and she didn’t have any straws in the house, so Tara wouldn’t seek creature comforts for herself while June suffered.
“How did we find ourselves in such a situation?” June asked.
Tara shook her head. “I should have seen how unstable Oren is.”
“Now, don’t go blaming yourself. I spent more time with the guy than you did.” June swallowed hard. “Besides, Cal once told me that guys like Oren were good at hiding their psychopathic tendencies, and it wasn’t uncommon for people around them not to see it.”
“It’s one thing to hear that. Another to believe it.”
“So,” June said. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when your Agent Riggins comes riding in with his White Knights and saves the day?”
Tara smiled at the vision of Cal and their team on horses galloping across the field to save them, likely June’s intent.
“Maybe you should start by asking him out on a date,” June suggested.
Fatal Mistake--A Novel Page 24