by Jack Mars
Too late. The car rolled. Luke banged his head against the dashboard. Then the car was upside down. He crashed into the ceiling hard, and with sickening speed. He landed on his back. His breath rushed out of him with the force of it.
Airbags blew all around him.
The car rolled again. He was thrown like a doll. He dropped down off the ceiling. The last thing he felt was his head hitting the steering wheel. Then all he saw was darkness.
Chapter 32
Ed Newsam watched the whole thing from the Little Bird.
The Navigator had rolled twice and landed right side up on some hard-packed dirt along the side of the highway. Its tires were all blown out. Its windshield was gone. The car was smoking from several places.
The second Range Rover pulled up on the soft shoulder. Three men jumped out and ran down the grassy embankment, guns out, charging toward the ruined Navigator.
The chopper was moving fast, sideways and to the left. Ed tried to get a bead on the men, but it was no use. The chopper was shuddering. He let off a burst of gunfire anyway. Two of the men dove into the grass. The third kept running.
“Mayday, mayday,” Jacob’s voice said. “Assume crash positions.”
Ed was tied to the bench with leather straps. The setup was not secure. Grinding pain dug at his right hip. Sharp pains, rips, and slices were everywhere else across his body. He stared back through the doorway at the cargo hold, with its safety straps dangling. There was no way he could make it in there and tie himself down in time. He slid his gun inside the door, then reached down and hugged the bench as hard as he could. This was his crash position.
In front of him, the ground was coming fast. If the chopper rolled, he was going airborne. He could never hold on. He’d be out there, moving through the same space as the spinning rotor blades. He shook his head. Not good.
The world zoomed by with dizzying speed. They were twenty feet from the ground.
Jacob’s voice, like a man ordering a pizza: “Impact in three, two…”
Ed gripped the bench tighter than ever. He closed his eyes.
Please don’t roll it. Please don’t roll it. Please don’t.
*
It took a few seconds for Luke’s eyes to focus.
He was still in the front row. He had hit hard, forehead to the steering wheel, and he was almost blind from the pain. The air bags had deflated, but the white dust hung in the air. His head rested on the driver’s legs. His own legs lay across the dead man in the passenger seat. Both men had been wearing their seatbelts. Luke had flown through the air. They had hardly moved at all.
Luke reached below the driver’s seat and felt around near the man’s feet. He found the man’s gun and brought it up. A Glock nine-millimeter. That was fine. It felt good in his hand. He clawed his way to a seated position. Shattered safety glass from the windshield was all over the front row. The driver was still unconscious, his head hanging against his seat belt.
Outside the car, two men approached warily, in crouches, Uzis drawn.
Luke glanced in the back seat. Ali Nassar and his little family were alive and awake, if a little dazed. Nassar had a big white cast on his right hand.
The little girl was cute, with a bright green ribbon in her black hair. She had big brown doe eyes. The woman was reed-thin and ethereal. To Luke, she had the air of a woman who spent her days reading about the latest fashions in Paris and Milan, and what the British royalty were up to. She had probably awakened this morning thinking she had seen and done it all.
Not anymore. Now she stared straight ahead. Luke had seen people in that state before, many times. The woman was in shock.
Luke forced the driver’s seat up and climbed into the back with them. He crouched low, in case one of those gunmen out there lost their discipline. He wedged himself deep at the feet of the little girl.
“You are a madman,” Nassar said.
Luke ignored him. He looked at the little girl instead, and past her.
The man in the back had hit hard. He was either unconscious, or dead.
“What is your name?” Luke said.
The girl was terrified, but still she spoke. “Sofia.”
“Hush, child! Do not speak to him!”
“Sofia, what a pretty name for a pretty girl. Okay, Sofia, I want you to do something for me. It’s really very easy. I want you to unclip your seat belt and come to me.”
Nassar moved to unclip his own seat belt. “Don’t you dare...”
Luke pointed the gun at his head. “Say another word.”
“Please don’t hurt him,” Sofia said. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“I won’t hurt him, Sofia, but I need you to come to me.”
The girl did exactly as she was told. She undid her seat belt and moved to Luke gracefully, like a tiny animal. He wrapped a gentle arm around her as if she was his own child.
Outside the car, the gunmen had arrived. They were both on the same side of the car, the left. They pointed their guns through the windows. The rear window was shattered. All it would take was for one of them to lose his cool. There would be a bloodbath in this car.
“That’s far enough!” he shouted to the men. “We’ve got a woman and a child in here. If you fire those guns, you’re going to kill us all.”
They didn’t care. Outside the car, one of the men slid his Uzi behind his back. He pulled a handgun and pointed it through the hole where the window once was.
BOOM!
The glass shattered as one of them fired into it.
The girl screamed as Luke held her, and he saw the bullet mark in the leather seat, just an inch from her head. Luckily, they’d missed. She might not be so lucky next time, he knew. Strangely, Luke found himself worrying more about the girl than he did himself.
So when one of them raised their gun again and approached, blinking into the darkness, it was the girl Luke thought of first. He could have had his shot. He could have killed them both. But he couldn’t risk it. Not with her in harm’s way.
BOOM!
Luke grabbed her and spun her around and fell on top of her a split second before the gun fired.
He felt excruciating pain as he felt the bullet graze his arm. Blood squirted everywhere. But he knew from experience it was a flesh wound. It was a small price to pay for saving her life.
Her mother shrieked, and Nassar yelled: “STOP FIRING, YOU MADMEN!”
Luke heard the men raising their guns, and sensed them finally locking him in their sights. He knew this was his last chance.
He spun, took a knee, and fired two shots. He knew they had better be perfect shots, or else he was dead. He wouldn’t have time to take a third.
BOOM. BOOM.
Luke saw no movement, as all became still. Finally, there was silence. He looked outside and saw the two men, both dead, both with perfect head shots.
He breathed a long breath of relief.
“You are a madman!” Nassar repeated again, his voice tremulous, shaking.
Luke turned to him and scowled as he leaned in and grabbed his shirt.
“I want them out,” he said. “Both the girl and your wife. Far from here. More people are coming and they might get hurt. And this is between you and me now.”
Nassar nodded to his wife, but she made a deep moan in the back of her throat.
“ALI!” Luke shouted, and raised his gun to his head. “NOW!”
The woman started to howl, and now the girl was crying, too.
Nassar leaned across, took the woman by both shoulders, and shook her violently. “Irina! Get hold of yourself. Take Sofia and leave.”
The woman unclipped herself. She climbed out and took the girl. The woman and girl were thirty yards away and running. Now fifty. For a second, Luke watched them go. He took a deep breath. If he’d ever had a daughter, he wondered if she would be like her.
Nassar made a move to leave the car. Too late. Luke grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back. He slammed the door and put his gun to Nassar’s head.
Nassar stared at Luke with fierce eyes.
“Now you listen to me,” Luke said. “I want to know everything. Who you’re working for. How you did it. When it started. What happens next. Everything, you got me? If I even smell a lie, I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
“If you shoot me, I promise it will be the last thing you ever do.”
“Talk! I’m going to count to three. Just like last time. Remember how that went? But this time, on three I blow your brains out.”
“You’re insane! Do you know that? You’re insane! You’re…”
“One,” Luke said.
Outside the windows, men in uniforms were sprinting down the hill. Cops. New York City cops, state troopers, a flowing river of policemen. Men in suits were with them, probably the SRT guys. Things were about to wrap up out there.
He was running out of time.
“Two…”
Nassar couldn’t bear it. “Stop! I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“Who did this?” Luke said. “Who do you work for? Iran?”
Nassar’s shoulders slumped. The strength, the very life, seemed to flow out of him. He shrugged.
“I work for you.”
Chapter 33
4:50 p.m.
116th Precinct House - Queens, New York
It took over an hour to process Ali Nassar and bring him downstairs.
While he was waiting, Luke talked to Becca on the phone.
“You’re a wonderful man.”
Luke pressed his forehead against the grimy wall in the basement of the precinct house, and listened to the musical sound of his wife’s voice in his ear. The police station was a harsh environment. The overhead fluorescents were too bright. Voices and footsteps echoed around him. Someone down the hallway laughed, a deranged cackle.
“I don’t feel very wonderful,” he said.
“But you are. You saved the President today. It’s incredible. It’s a miracle.”
Luke sighed. He didn’t feel like a hero. And it didn’t feel like a miracle—it felt like a nightmare, still unfolding.
“You’re just tired, Luke. That’s why you feel down. When was the last time you slept, over thirty hours ago? Listen, Gunner and I are both really proud of you. When you get back to DC, why don’t you go back to the house, get a good night’s sleep, and then come out here. It’s beautiful here right now. We’ll just take a few days, we’ll turn the clocks off, we’ll all be together. How does that sound?”
“It sounds really good.”
“I love you so much,” she said.
Luke loved Becca too, and he wanted to see her. He wanted to spend a few quiet days at the country house with both her and Gunner. But as much as he wanted it, he didn’t see how it could happen.
He couldn’t tell her anything. All he told her was that, after the briefing with the President, he had flown back to New York to track down another lead. He didn’t tell her about the helicopter attack. He didn’t tell her about leaping onto the roof of a moving car at a hundred miles per hour. He didn’t tell her about killing two men. He didn’t tell her that this case seemed nowhere near over.
A young detective with thinning hair, his tie pulled askew and his sleeves rolled up, came down the hall toward Luke.
“Agent Stone?”
Luke nodded.
“They’re about to start the questioning.”
Luke signed off with Becca and followed the detective to the observation room. The room was dim, with half a dozen men in it. Luke welcomed the half-darkness after the harsh light of the hallway.
The detective introduced Luke to three men in dark suits and ties.
“You probably want to meet these guys. This is Agent Stone with the FBI, these are Agents Stern, Smith, and Wallace.”
“We’re with Homeland,” one of the men said, while shaking Luke’s hand.
“Begley send you here?” Luke said.
The man’s smile faltered, just a touch. “Begley?”
“Yeah. Ron Begley.” Luke made the shape of a basketball with his hands. “Round guy? He runs a unit over there, don’t ask me what. He and I had a little misunderstanding this morning about whether or not Ali Nassar was worth pursuing. I guess he changed his mind.”
The three men laughed. “We don’t work for Ron Begley.”
“Good for you. You’re probably happier that way.”
On the other side of a large false window, Ali Nassar sat a metal table. He sipped from a white coffee mug. His ankle was cuffed to the table leg, which itself was bolted to the floor. It didn’t matter. Ali Nassar didn’t look like he was going anywhere.
He was utterly and completely disheveled. His dress shirt was torn and rumpled, and unbuttoned halfway to his stomach. His hair stood on end. There were black half-moons under each eye. His jaw hung open. His hand trembled whenever he lifted his coffee mug.
An NYPD detective loomed over him, a big, brawny, red-haired Irishman. Everything in the observation room went quiet when Nassar started to talk.
“Where is my daughter, and her mother?” he said.
The cop shook his head. “They’re fine. You don’t need to worry about them. We brought them back to the Iranian mission. They didn’t do anything. They have no idea what’s going on. Nobody’s even interested in them.”
Nassar nodded. “Good.”
“Right,” the cop said. “It is good. They’re safe. Now let’s put them out of our minds for a minute. I want to talk about you.”
Now Nassar shook his head. “You have no right to hold me here. I want to speak to a lawyer.”
The cop smiled. He was relaxed. Luke recognized a guy who heard that lawyer demand every single day, and then found a way around it.
“Why do you want to do that?” the cop said. “You have something left to hide? You already talked to the FBI agent in the car.”
“He put a gun to my head.”
The cop shrugged. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. That’s the first I heard of it. I wasn’t there, so what do I know?”
“It’s illegal for you to hold me here,” Nassar said.
“Ali, let me tell you something. We’re not actually holding you here. That’s the thing. You’re not under arrest. We couldn’t arrest you if we wanted to, you know that. We’ve got that leg iron on you for your own safety. These halls out here are crawling with violent criminals. Sometimes they get loose. Believe me, you’re safer in this room. But if you want to leave, you’re free to go at any time.”
Nassar seemed about to speak. He hesitated, maybe expecting a trick.
The cop raised a meaty hand. “Now let me tell you why leaving is a bad idea,” he said. “You’ve been involved in something. It’s something bad. You know that and I know that, so there’s no sense pretending. People tell me you blew up the White House. I don’t know if I believe that.”
“I didn’t do it,” Nassar said.
The cop pointed at him. “Right. That’s what I believe. I believe you didn’t do it. But it seems like maybe you know the people who did do it. And if I were those people right now, you know what I’d be looking to do? Clean up loose ends. A guy like you walks out that door, how long do you really think you’re going to live? Twelve hours, if you’re lucky? Personally, I doubt you’ll make it that long.”
Nassar stared at him.
“Your friends from the Iranian mission?” the cop said. He shook his head. “I don’t think they’re coming back for you. They lost four men today trying to get you to the airport. You’re a liability for them. You’re an embarrassment. If they do come back, I think it’s to put a bullet right here.”
The cop tapped Nassar on the forehead.
Nassar shook his head. “They weren’t involved. They have no reason to kill me.”
“Yeah. That’s what you told the guy from the FBI.” The cop referred to some notes on a clipboard. “You told him you were working for an agency of the U.S. government, something called Red Box. You don’t think the Iranian governmen
t would kill you if they knew you were working for the Americans? Come on, I think you’re a little smarter than that.”
Nassar’s eyes briefly widened.
The cop nodded. “Yep. You’re smart enough. You see it. You don’t have too many friends left, Ali.”
Luke thought back to that moment in the car. Cops were all around them. “I work for you,” Nassar said. Then he did say Red Box. Luke barely remembered it. He had jumped out of a helicopter. He had crashed the car. He had shot two men in the head only seconds before. He was as shaken up as anyone. At that moment, he almost couldn’t process what Nassar was telling him.
Now, as he watched, Nassar and the cop stared at each other for a long moment.
“I want to share something with you,” the cop said. “I know exactly what you’re going through. I have a younger brother. Maybe fifteen years ago, he gets involved in something, like you did. It was a mistake, like you made a mistake, and he got in over his head. Turns out he’s smuggling guns to the Irish Republican Army out of a bar up in the Bronx. I tell him Mikey, you’re stupid. You’re not Irish. You’re American. But by then, everybody’s on to him. He’s wanted by the American government. He’s wanted by the English government. And if his buddies in the IRA find him, they’re going to drop him in the river. They have to. What else are they gonna do, let him talk?”
A couple of cops in the observation room laughed. Luke glanced at them.
“This guy and his younger brothers,” one of the cops said. “My brother the rapist. My brother the arsonist. My brother the terrorist. You want to know the truth? He has three sisters, and they’re all older than he is.”
Inside the interrogation room, Ali Nassar said, “I think I’m in a bad position.”
The cop nodded. “I’d say you’re in a very bad position. But I can help you. You just have to tell me what’s going on.”
Nassar seemed to have come to a decision. He shook his head. “Red Box is not an agency. It’s a program, an operation. Operation Red Box. I didn’t know what it was for. I knew what they wanted me to do, and that was it. They wanted me to buy some drones from China. They told me to pay some jihadis, men who wanted to commit suicide for God. I made the payments from an offshore account they themselves set up for me. It wasn’t my account. I didn’t hire these men. I didn’t even know what they were going to do until two days ago.”