Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice

by Helman, Scott

  After Tamerlan got in, he ordered Danny to start driving—right on Fordham Road, right again on Commonwealth Avenue—the start of an achingly slow ninety-minute odyssey through the peaceful, sleepy streets of Greater Boston, the outside world oblivious to the unfolding terror inside the dark Mercedes. As the night deepened, Danny thought these were very likely his final minutes alive. He silently analyzed everything Tamerlan said and how he said it, mining for clues about where and when he might be killed. I don’t want to die, he thought at one point. I have a lot of dreams that haven’t come true yet. He privately gamed out the scenarios: Should he plot a white-knuckled escape from the car? Should he beg for mercy? Should he just wait it out, hoping he would eventually be let go?

  • • •

  “It’s not so easy,” Danny replied when Tamerlan first told him to start driving. He was nervous, his hands shaking. He could barely control the wheel, the car veering out of lane. Tamerlan, not wanting to draw attention, told him to relax. Drive like nothing happened, he told him in a calming voice. Play it cool. Danny’s heart was pounding. Just don’t kill me, he thought. Don’t hurt me.

  They continued west. Tamerlan asked Danny where he was from. “I’m Chinese,” he said, thinking it might help to emphasize that he was not American.

  “Okay, you’re Chinese,” Tamerlan said. “I’m a Muslim-American.”

  “Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!” Danny assured him. “We are so friendly to Muslims!”

  As they talked, Danny cast himself as a recent immigrant with no friends and limited command of English. He apologized for his halting speech. In truth, he was hiding behind that self-portrait, trying to buy time to strategize. Trained as an engineer, he made scrupulous mental notes of street signs and passing details, even as he abided Tamerlan’s command not to study his face.

  “Don’t look at me!” Tamerlan shouted at one point. “Do you remember my face?”

  “No, no, I don’t remember anything,” he said.

  Tamerlan laughed. “It’s like white guys—they look at black guys and think all black guys look the same,” he said. “And maybe you think all white guys look the same.”

  “Exactly,” Danny said, though he thought nothing of the sort.

  It was one of many moments in their strange conversational chess match, Danny playing up his outsider status and playing down his wealth—he claimed the car was older than it was, and he understated his lease payments—and Tamerlan trying to make Danny feel sufficiently at ease, so he wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to the car. When Tamerlan asked him what he was doing in the United States, Danny didn’t tell him he had a job, in part because he didn’t want Tamerlan to think he had any close relationships with people—people who might grow worried about Danny’s whereabouts and call the police, which he feared might drive Tamerlan to do something rash. Better to figure out his own way out of this, Danny thought. So he told Tamerlan he had just finished a graduate degree at Northeastern and been in the United States only eighteen months. “Oh,” Tamerlan said. “That’s why your English is not very good.” It seemed to help that Tamerlan even had trouble with Danny’s pronunciation of the word “China.” In truth, Danny had come to the United States in 2009 for a master’s degree, graduated in January 2012, and returned to China to await a work visa. He came back in early 2013, leasing the Mercedes, moving into a high-rise with two Chinese friends, and diving into his work at a start-up.

  Eventually Tamerlan put the gun on the armrest, satisfied that Danny was behaving as directed. He asked for the PIN for Danny’s ATM card. Danny contemplated giving him a fake one, but thought better of it. When he told Tamerlan his PIN, Tamerlan asked him if the number was his birthday. It was really the birthday of Danny’s close friend, but Danny didn’t want him to think that he had any friends, lest Tamerlan think someone was waiting for him. So he told Tamerlan it was his girlfriend’s birthday, and that his girlfriend lived in China.

  “Does anyone care about you?” Tamerlan asked him.

  “There is no one who cares about me,” Danny replied.

  Tamerlan wanted to know about Danny’s roommate: Were they friends? “No,” Danny assured him, even though he was quite close to his roommate, a woman from China he’d met on his first trip to the United States. They had sat next to each other on the plane. She had gone to Northeastern University, too. Danny was driving fast. Tamerlan asked him to slow down, not wanting a police car to notice them. Directed to a quiet neighborhood in East Watertown, Danny pulled up as instructed on an unfamiliar side street, steering to the curb behind a parked Subaru. Tamerlan got out of the car, taking the key from the ignition, to prevent Danny from speeding away. He ordered Danny into the passenger seat, making it clear he would shoot him if Danny attempted an escape. Danny hopped out of his car, walked around the back, and got in on the passenger side.

  • • •

  A sedan had stopped behind them. It wasn’t until now that Danny realized that the car, a green Honda Civic, had been following them the whole time. A man got out and approached the Mercedes. The passenger door was still open, and the man was standing right next to him. This time, Danny had no trouble recognizing the face: It was the skinnier, floppy-haired suspect in the photos and videos released by investigators earlier that evening. He didn’t know either of their names yet, but he was face-to-face with Tamerlan’s younger brother, Dzhokhar. For several minutes, with Danny in the passenger seat, the brothers transferred heavy objects from the smaller car into Danny’s SUV. Luggage, Danny thought, hearing four or five pieces being loaded inside. Maybe they’re trying to run away. That’s how the script would play out if this were a movie, he figured. Tamerlan got behind the wheel. Dzhokhar climbed in the backseat. Danny’s hopes for release were dashed. He was a hostage; he’d better get used to it.

  Tamerlan asked Danny how to operate the transmission, and Danny showed him. They pulled away, cruising over side roads in silence. They turned onto a dead-end street. A dread came over Danny. Is he going to kill me there? he thought as he looked ahead at the darkness where the road stopped. But Tamerlan made a U-turn and kept going through the quiet neighborhood, no other cars around, no people, no lights. Tamerlan had told Danny that both brothers had guns.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” Danny finally asked him.

  “No, relax, man,” Tamerlan said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Tamerlan explained that they planned to drop him off somewhere remote, and that he would probably have to walk several miles to find anybody. If he was lucky, Tamerlan said, someone would come pick him up. Danny was hardly relieved, though. He didn’t quite buy it. If it were him, he thought, he wouldn’t do that. Surely the brothers knew Danny would call the police as soon as he could. Why put themselves at risk of capture? They have already killed a lot of people, Danny thought. It wouldn’t matter if they killed one more. Running through his mind were scenes from the life he might not live to see: his hopes for the burgeoning start-up, and the girl he secretly liked in New York. Oh my God, he thought, I have no chance to meet her again.

  Death, Danny thought at one point, is so close to me.

  No, Danny concluded. He couldn’t count on being released. He needed to escape. But how? They continued on to Watertown center so Dzhokhar could withdraw money from a Bank of America ATM using Danny’s card. Dzhokhar got out of the car. Danny, shivering from fear but claiming to be cold, asked for his jacket, which was in the backseat. “Can I have my coat?” he asked Tamerlan, thinking it might offer a chance to secretly unfasten his seat belt. His only shot at freedom, he thought, would come while one of the brothers was out of the car. Tamerlan said no. A few moments later, Danny asked again, almost begging. “I’m really cold—can I have my jacket, please?” This time Tamerlan agreed, turning into the backseat to grab it. He checked the pockets and handed it to Danny. Danny unfastened his seat belt to put the jacket on. I should run, he thought, though al
l he could see were locked storefronts. Danny knew Tamerlan expected him to quickly put his belt back on. Danny tried to do it behind his back. The buckle clicked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Tamerlan said, sensing even without looking what Danny was up to. “Do it right. Do what you should do.”

  “Sorry,” Danny said meekly, obeying his captor’s orders.

  It was one of Danny’s lowest moments. Not only had a chance to run evaporated, now Tamerlan knew what he was thinking. Surely he would be on high alert now. Escaping would be more difficult. Dzhokhar returned to the car a few moments later. They continued west on Route 20, in the direction of Waltham and Interstate 95, passing a police station. Danny tried to send telepathic messages to the officers inside. He imagined dropping and rolling from the moving car. He felt hopeless.

  • • •

  Back in Cambridge, cops from Boston and surrounding communities descended on the area around MIT, heartbroken to learn of Sean Collier’s murder and now doubly motivated to hunt down the killers. Some went directly to the scene of the shooting, but many others fanned out to nearby streets, hoping to catch sight of something suspicious. Ed Davis met the MIT police chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Collier had been taken, and called in a Boston Police “critical incident” team to help Collier’s family. Davis sent ballistics and K9 specialists to MIT to assist state police in combing the scene for evidence. Police also chased a potential tip, which turned out to be a false alarm, to a hotel in Dorchester. A few miles west, the Mercedes cruised through the night, no one wise to who was inside.

  • • •

  Danny studied the brothers as they drove, developing his own sense of them. Tamerlan seemed the bad guy, threatening and menacing. Dzhokhar came off as friendlier, chattier—asking questions, talking about music and iPhones, typical college-kid stuff. In the car, the discussion turned to how much money Danny had in his bank account, what his credit limit was, what year his Mercedes was, and whether he could take the SIM card out of his iPhone. He doesn’t look like a terrorist, Danny thought. He overheard them speak in a foreign language—“Manhattan” the only intelligible word to him—and then ask in English if Danny’s car could be driven out of state. “What do you mean?” Danny said, confused. “Like New York,” one brother said. But if the two fugitives were planning a dash out of town, they were remarkably slow to move, almost aimless in their actions. They didn’t seem headed for anywhere in particular. Three days out from the crime of the century in Boston, they displayed remarkably little urgency.

  The tank nearly empty, they stopped at a gas station. The pumps were closed. After pulling away, Tamerlan asked Danny to turn on the radio and show them how to use it. The older brother then quickly flipped through stations, seemingly avoiding the news. He asked if Danny had any CDs. No, he replied. Doubling back, they returned to the Watertown neighborhood where Dzhokhar had joined them. Dzhokhar hopped out and seemed to fetch a CD from the other car. FAIRFIELD STREET, Danny read on the sign, thinking, Maybe I’ll be alive and I can tell the policemen that. The brothers popped in an instrumental CD that Danny thought sounded Middle Eastern, believing it to be religious music.

  Just before midnight, Danny’s iPhone buzzed. A text from his roommate. Tamerlan got nervous; he demanded to know who it was and what the text said. Danny said it was his roommate, asking in Chinese where he was and telling him that there had been gunshots at MIT. Tamerlan laughed. “Oh, something happened in Cambridge?” he said. Barking at Danny for instructions, Tamerlan used an English-to-Chinese app to text a clunky reply. “I am sick. I am sleeping at a friend’s place tonight.” But it came out garbled, not the way one would ordinarily respond. The roommate texted back and asked if he was sure he was okay. If you’re not, she wrote, let me know. If you are, she said, you don’t have to write back.

  About ten minutes after the first text, Danny’s phone rang. It was his other roommate, suspicious about Danny’s cryptic replies. Tamerlan was furious. “Who is this?” he demanded. “Who is calling you?” He picked up the gun, pointed it at Danny, and told him to answer. “If you say a single word in Chinese,” Tamerlan said, “I will kill you right now.” He ordered Danny to tell his roommate, in English, that he was sleeping at a friend’s place. Danny didn’t answer the call in time, but the roommate quickly called back. Danny was nervous. He was praying. He knew a small mistake could cost him his life. The roommate asked where he was. Danny didn’t even say hello. He said he would be sleeping out tonight. “Why are you speaking in English?” his roommate asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Okay,” his roommate said.

  Click.

  “Good boy,” Tamerlan told him. “Good job.”

  Now more than an hour into their meandering journey, the brothers drove along the Charles River, back toward Boston, in search of gas. Crossing the Charles into Cambridge, the SUV came upon two gas stations, a Shell station on the left and a Mobil on the right. Tamerlan steered into the Shell station, pulling the right side of the car up to the gas pumps. Dzhokhar got out to fill up using Danny’s credit card. Danny, back in familiar territory, began thinking again about an escape, especially with Dzhokhar out of the car.

  • • •

  Dzhokhar quickly knocked on the window. “Cash only,” he said. Danny knew this was good news. He knew Dzhokhar would have to walk into the store, away from the car. Dzhokhar asked Danny how much money it took to fill the tank. Danny said he didn’t know. Tamerlan told his brother to buy $50 worth and peeled off the money.

  Danny watched Dzhokhar head inside, trying to decide if this was his moment. Not only was he now alone with Tamerlan, but the doors were unlocked. Tamerlan had unlocked them to let Dzhokhar out and had never bothered with the relocking. But Danny, employing the cool calculus of an engineer, knew he had to still do several things almost instantaneously: unfasten his seat belt, open the door, and jump out. He rehearsed the sequence in his head. He knew that if he wasn’t quick enough, Tamerlan would kill him on the spot. This is your best chance, Danny thought to himself. It’s your moment. His fear, the image he played on a loop in his head, was that they would drop him off at some distant spot, tell him to run, and then shoot him in the back as he fled. Unless he could get away, he convinced himself, this would be his fate.

  Even without looking at him directly, Danny could see that Tamerlan was preoccupied. He had stashed the gun in the driver’s door and was fidgeting with a GPS device. Danny collected his thoughts and counted quickly to four in his head, allowing himself one more integer than the typical three count, given the gravity of what he was about to do.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Go.

  In a flurry, Danny released the seat belt with his left hand and opened the car door with his right. He scrambled out, slamming the door behind him. He felt Tamerlan try to grab him, Tamerlan’s hand brushing against his. But Danny had tucked his left arm into his body. Tamerlan couldn’t get a grip. Tamerlan reacted fast, but Danny had him beat.

  “Fuck!” he heard Tamerlan shout. “Fuck!”

  Danny sprinted between the passenger side of the Mercedes and the gas pumps and darted toward River Street, not looking back, drawn to the lights of the Mobil station on the other side. He didn’t know if it was open or not. He prayed it was. The angle he was running at, he figured, would make it difficult for Tamerlan to shoot him. He glanced quickly to see if any cars were coming but barely gave it any thought.

  He dashed into the Mobil station, talking rapidly at the clerk behind the counter. Danny implored him to call the police. “They are terrorists!” he said. “They have guns! They’re trying to kill me!”

  Danny begged him to lock the door, but he wouldn’t. The clerk was skeptical.

  “Please call 911!” Danny pleaded, crouching behind the counter. “Please call 911!”

  The clerk then heeded his cry and pi
cked up the phone. Danny ran into the storage room as the man dialed, shut the door behind him, and sat down. The clerk brought the phone to him, passing it to him through a crack in the door. Danny was terrified. If the brothers stormed in, he was cornered. He feared they would come and shoot him dead at any second. The police dispatcher on the line told Danny to relax, to take a deep breath. “Come quickly,” he said. “Please.” A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

  It was the attendant. “Sir,” he said, “the police are here.” Danny walked outside the room, elated to see the swirling blue lights. He told the officers everything—that they were the bombing suspects, that Tamerlan had even boasted about what they had done, and that they had guns. The police asked if Danny knew where they were headed. Maybe back to Watertown, Danny said. He knew there was an easy way to find out. Danny told the police that not only was his iPhone still in the Mercedes, but that his car had a GPS and roadside assistance system they could track. Danny told them what it was called—mbrace—and gave them his full name and address, so they could identify the car. Police called Mercedes from the store.

  In the hours ahead, police would laud Danny’s quick thinking, saying his escape had helped avert further mayhem. Indeed, for the first time since Monday’s bombing, investigators, even if they weren’t certain of the brothers’ names, now had a way to track the suspects’ location in real time. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were still on the loose—armed, dangerous, their intentions unclear—but the trail was finally hot. All of Boston—much of the world, really—wanted them caught, wanted the week’s terror to end. But the brothers weren’t finished yet. Not even close.