Terminal Rage

by Khalifa, A. M.

  That still left the third trigger to deal with.

  The attacker was monitoring the house and had warned he would detonate the explosives around the girls’ necks if anyone attempted to rescue them. The only way to circumvent this fail-safe was to block the collar bombs from receiving any external electromagnetic signals.

  There was only one way to do that. Generate enough random noise within a radius of one mile around the house to momentarily jam all incoming waves, providing a limited window of opportunity before a signal could theoretically seep back in. Ninety seconds, they had calculated, which as it happened, was just enough time for a Hostage Rescue Team unit to storm the house and extract the girls.

  Once they were out, the girls had to be shielded within a Faraday cage, an enclosure formed by a mesh of conducting material that blocks incoming electromagnetic waves.

  The FBI had one such contraption. A modified communication van brought in overnight from the Los Angeles field office. Protected from the incoming detonation signal, the girls would be swept away to a nearby FBI holding facility where the bomb squad would figure out how to remove the death collars safely.

  Blackwell sat around the table near Monica at forward command post as they listened to the plan being outlined. The engineers, the bomb squad and the Hostage Rescue Team described it in intricate details, each unit expounding on its respective part of the puzzle.

  No one in the room seemed to deny this was a perilous plan. But short of giving in to the attacker’s demands, as flimsy as this proposal was, it was the only chance they had to rescue the girls.

  Experts had assessed the risks and quantified the odds of success as slim to moderate. The fate of three innocent girls had been reduced to a statistical model. Blackwell didn’t need the benefit of fancy analysis to conclude the plan was plain rotten. He scrutinized Monica’s expression and body language, certain the woman he was intimate with a few hours ago would reach his same reasonable conclusion—pay the damn ransom and save the girls. Play it safe.

  The parents could certainly spare the money and were willing to pay up if it came down to that.

  Monica, however, was sold on the extraction plan from the get-go. That part about not giving in to the criminal’s demands had appealed to her most. Regardless of how loaded the parents were, paying the ransom when a viable rescue plan was in place seemed to her like opting to shoot up heroin when you could rid yourself of the addiction altogether.

  Blackwell didn’t buy this analogy at first and tried to make her see things differently by taking her aside to express his concerns. At best, the plan was cavalier and riddled with holes. The science was fuzzy and the timings were razor-thin, leaving no margin for error. Surely, she would see the girls stood a slightly higher chance of surviving if the ransom was paid. Granted it wasn’t much higher, but it was all they had.

  Monica stared at him without blinking, listening as he pleaded his case. When he was done, she smiled and grasped his hands tight.

  “He raped them. What does that tell you?”

  Blackwell shook his head, not able to find an answer.

  “It’s personal. Even if we pay him, he’s still going to kill them, Alex.”

  She peered into his eyes and brushed the back of her hand against his crotch without the other agents noticing. A touch lasting mere microseconds but one that transported him back to the hotel room the night prior. Blackwell never stood a chance.

  Monica was the commanding officer on the case and a few years his senior at the Bureau, but if he had really wanted to, he could have openly challenged her.

  But he never put up a fight. He never stood up for those girls.

  Against his better judgment, he based his decision on craving Monica’s good side, ignoring his gut instinct and forcing himself to believe what he knew was prime-time bullshit. She had infected his soul and clouded his instincts.

  With no one challenging her, Monica gave the green light for the rescue mission to proceed. The first two parts of the plan worked like a breeze. The girls were evacuated from the house and placed into the vaulted vehicle without setting off the collar bombs. As the van raced out of Hermosa Beach toward the secure warehouse, euphoria set in at command post. Monica seemed vindicated.

  Two minutes and sixteen seconds into the escape, at the corner of Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue, the van exploded. The three girls and the five FBI agents escorting them were only identified through their dental remains. Nothing else was left after a ferocious fire charred their obliterated body parts to ashes that soared high over Hermosa Beach.

  In the final analysis, the FBI forensics team concluded the collar bombs were not detonated by a direct signal or caused by the broken contact with the beacon. Something else no one had even considered when the rescue mission was devised. Another fail-safe the abductor had kept as his cruel little secret. Each of the collar bombs had been fitted with an internal GPS unit and a cellular chip programmed to trigger the explosion if the devices changed their geographic location. Both the GPS and cellphone hook-up relayed their location every ninety seconds. After three failed location confirmations, a massive three-way explosion was triggered inside the van.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Friday, July 22, 2005—11:35 p.m.

  Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt

  Sam Morgan had fallen asleep while reading. He woke up to find his glasses on the nightstand, on top of a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. He had purchased it during their three-day stopover in London. The bedside lamp was switched off. Angela must have put his glasses and the book on the nightstand, he figured. His wife liked to stay up late to watch TV or catch up on her own reading, but it never bothered Sam. He was a deep sleeper, hardly affected by noise or light. Rarely, a bad dream would jolt him awake, but drifting back to sleep was never hard for him.

  The digital clock on the nightstand revealed he had only slept for about an hour and a half. That’s odd. He usually got a solid eight at the very least.

  Why did I wake up?

  He didn’t feel cold or thirsty and his bladder wasn’t busting for a pee, so something else must have interrupted him. Sam turned around in bed and stretched his hand to hug Angela to lull himself back to sleep, but her side was empty.

  A series of tiny electronic beeps came from the direction of the kids’ bedroom, and sounded like the electronic ear thermometer. That can’t be good.

  Moonlight was flooding into the kids’ room, revealing the outline of Angela’s body leaning over their wheezing two-year-old son Ryan.

  “Is he all right?” Sam said in a whisper.

  “Heard him coughing. When I checked him he was burning up.”

  On the other side of the bed, their five-year-old daughter Maya was fast asleep, clutching her Hello Kitty bag stuffed with her favorite toy figures.

  “What does he have?”

  “A hundred and three and pretty congested. Listen...” Angela was usually composed, but he heard a quiver of concern in her voice. Maybe because they were in a foreign country, far from home.

  “Tylenol?”

  “Expired. I noticed it the other day and forgot to buy a new one before we traveled.”

  Sam picked up the phone in the children’s room and started dialing. He put his hand on the mouthpiece and turned to Angela.

  “I read somewhere they have a doctor on call in the resort.”

  The Spring Roy was a boutique chain. Their informal slogan was Five Stars that Feel Like Ten. The phone rang for at least a minute.

  “Ten stars, my ass,” Sam said under his breath.

  Finally, a woman with a voice too perky for this time of the night picked up.

  “Thank you for calling guest services, this is Seham speaking. How may I assist you, Mr. Morgan?”

  He visualized a plastic smile as she sang those words, and imagined her practicing this fake greeting in fron
t of a mirror, daily.

  “Good evening, Seham. My son’s unwell. We were wondering if you could send a doctor to our suite as soon as possible.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Mr. Morgan. I will page Dr. Barakat and have him meet you there immediately.”

  Ryan was calm for a sick toddler. Fixed on his mother, his huge brown eyes were wide open and glistened in the moonlight like little stars. Despite his fever, he seemed serene with a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth.

  Both he and Maya were attached to Angela. Ryan’s bond with her was particularly strong and was immediately evident since his birth. Angela’s presence always soothed him, even during the worst terrible twos tantrums. She had a way with him that always grounded his energy fields.

  Sam helped Angela place cold compresses on Ryan’s small body, but his temperature remained high with no sign of dropping. Maya was still sound asleep, oblivious to her brother’s predicament.

  Forty-five minutes later and there was still no sign of the doctor.

  “We can’t just sit here doing nothing while we wait for that idiot to show up.”

  He called the reception again but this time nobody picked up.

  “How about a room-temperature bath? Always worked with Maya.”

  Sam nodded, but the waiting was eating him up inside.

  “Do it. I’ll run to reception to see what happened to that damn doctor.”

  He dashed back to his room and slipped on some cargo shorts and a tee, strapped on his sandals, and grabbed his wallet.

  Ryan cried when he saw Sam about to leave the suite and called out, “Papa,” which was unlike him. This sort of attachment was typically reserved for Angela. Sam turned back and sat at the side of the bed next to his wife to settle his son down.

  He gave him a kiss on the forehead and held his tiny hand. He kissed that too.

  “Ryan. Papa’s going out to get a doctor who will make you feel better, okay? Won’t be late, I promise.” He kissed him again.

  The little boy wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck and stopped crying. After a minute’s pause, Ryan’s raspy voice broke the silence.

  “Okay, Papa.” He loosened his grip from around Sam’s neck and returned the kiss on his father’s cheek.

  Sam couldn’t see it but felt Angela smiling.

  We made this beautiful creature.

  He turned to her and kissed her lips, then walked to Maya and planted a small peck on her forehead. His daughter had uncovered herself and her body was diagonal so he pulled the duvet up to her chest. Even now she still smelled like a kitten.

  Reaching out to Angela on the other side of the bed, he caressed her bare arms and whispered, “I love you.”

  The lobby of the hotel was still buzzing with activity, despite the late hour. Two portly men in their sixties with plum-red faces stepped out of the elevators. Confused, they looked ridiculous in their hotel-issued bathrobes, and the serious amount of booze they had consumed was betrayed by their breath.

  “Are you looking for the spa?” Sam made sure his words were slow and clear, but these guys didn’t seem to have a clue what he was talking about. He mimed the kneading motion of a massage and pointed with his finger up, then gestured with his hands the number seven.

  “The spa—it’s on the seventh floor. Up. You need to go up.”

  There was little doubt about their nationality, and Sam could have conversed with them in Russian immediately. But he didn’t want to offend them by suggesting their behavior or appearance had singled out their place of origin.

  The hell with political correctness.

  He articulated what he had tried to communicate in English.

  “Vy dolzhny poyti na sed’moy etazh.”

  “Spasiba!” the two men sang in gratitude. Radiant smiles erupted on their faces as they stepped back into the elevator, nodding and grunting until the doors closed.

  Across the lobby behind the reception, Sam noticed Sandra, the young Canadian brunette who had checked them in a few days ago. She’d played with Ryan and Maya, and her admiration of how cute they were hadn’t seemed corporate or scripted.

  A hostess walked by holding a tray with mango juice in shot glasses and offered one to Sam, which he declined politely.

  “Sandra, right?” he smiled to the receptionist.

  “Good evening, Mr. Morgan. How can I help you?”

  “I called earlier for a doctor to check on my son. It must have been an hour ago.”

  “Ryan, right? Cute kid! Sorry to hear he’s unwell.”

  Sam was impressed she still remembered.

  “Your colleague, Seham I believe, has been trying to reach a Doctor Barakat.”

  “Unfortunately he’s not on site. He’s at our sister resort in Dahab covering for their resident doctor, who had to go back to Cairo for a family emergency.”

  “When’s he due back?”

  “We’ve been expecting him all evening. His cellphone is out of coverage and we haven’t been able to reach him.”

  Sam ran his tongue on his lips and stared at the marble floor, searching for other options.

  “Is there any other doctor in town we can call?”

  “There’s a private clinic but it closes at nine and they don’t do outcalls. Then there’s the—” Sandra grimaced as if a disturbing thought had rattled through her mind.

  “What?”

  “The public hospital.”

  “Should we take him there?”

  Sandra shook her head with conviction.

  “Oh, no. You’d have to take Ryan through the emergency ward. I wouldn’t recommend it unless it’s really serious.”

  Sam shrugged, now they were back to square one.

  “What’s wrong with him, if I may ask?”

  “High fever. Congested chest. And he’s got thoughtless parents—we ran out of Tylenol.”

  Sandra turned her eyes to the ceiling like it was her secret stash of ideas, then back to Sam again.

  “There’s a twenty-four-hour pharmacy at the other end of Ne’ma bay. Your driver can go there and buy some Children’s Tylenol for you, or better still you can go with him and speak to the pharmacist yourself. Ask them what else you can do to make Ryan feel better. Just until Dr. Barakat gets back.”

  Sam pondered Sandra’s proposal. He loathed being at the mercy of someone else when his children’s well-being was at stake. This would give him something proactive to do. Ryan responded well to Tylenol and reducing the temperature could do the trick.

  “Okay. Let’s do it. I’ll go with him.”

  Less than ten minutes away from the hotel, the Red Sea Pharmacy was sandwiched in a commercial strip between souvenir tourist traps, dive centers and small grocery stores. When they got there, the pharmacy was locked for the night, but they could see inside where light from a television was flickering.

  Sam’s driver rang the buzzer and they waited.

  A young pharmacist in a white coat emerged from a room behind the counter and let them in. With a cellphone to his ear, he munched on something as he spoke in bored or indifferent monosyllabic Arabic. His eyes tiny slits, his posture droopy and his gait lethargic, here was a man who had come to peace with perpetual sleep deprivation.

  Whiffs of roasted garlic and grilled chicken overpowered the otherwise long-standing odors of perfume and makeup samples. His head tilted as he rambled on the phone in Arabic, he turned to face them unexpectedly as if he had only just noticed Sam and the driver.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Children’s Tylenol, or anything similar.”

  After the swift exchange of money and medicine, the pharmacist resumed his call.

  Sam motioned with his head outside toward the car so they could leave, but the driver was nailed to the floor. His eyes were darting back and forth between the television and the pharmacis
t.

  The action seemed to be unfolding on the television, via live news coverage. Shaky hand-held cameras captured images of ambulances rushing to the scene of a fire or explosion.

  No longer void of expression, the pharmacist’s face had contorted to something more sober, his eyes wide as he hung up the phone.

  “What happened?”

  “A bomb blast in the old town of Sharm a few minutes ago.”

  It must have gone off while we were driving to the pharmacy. We would have felt it otherwise.

  A knot clotted in Sam’s stomach and radiated wider, engulfing his heart and breaking him out in a cold sweat.

  Then time stopped.

  Air was warped in a vacuum, and for a billionth of a second Sam glimpsed unfiltered evil roaring in his face before lodging in his chest cavity.

  In slow motion unfolding before his eyes, the earth rumbled in a massive vibration, forcing all three of them to the floor. Like nature’s own technical glitch, a thunderous crackling boom ensued, after the fact.

  A second explosion.

  His hearing muffled and drowned out by his galloping heart, Sam could barely make out the hysterical sirens of emergency first responders wailing by.

  With a parched throat and weak-bodied, Sam struggled to capture his bearings until he willed himself to his feet.

  He pulled the driver by the sleeve of his shirt and growled in his face.

  “Back to the hotel, now!”

  They raced along for a few deserted miles until they were stopped by a police roadblock.

  Two stern-faced officers ordered them out as they checked their documents, frisked them and searched the car.

  All the angry drilling and screaming was directed at the driver in Arabic.

  Rapid-fire exchange with words like ‘Spring Roy’ and ‘Amerekani’ weere Sam’s clue he was the central topic of their discussion.

  The shouting stopped suddenly.

  The cops took the driver aside and started whispering.

  Sam stood waiting, liquid fire bubbling in his chest as the safety of Angela and his kids clutched at his throat.