Though they wouldn’t discover the reason until a day later via a Homeland Security intercept, Clark and company had emerged from the main tunnel’s entrance with their now bound-and-gagged quarry not to the sound of helicopter rotors and sirens but rather dead silence. As Clark had suspected, their helicopter’s course north along Highway 95 and their subsequent intrusion of the airspace above the Yucca Mountain hadn’t gone unnoticed on the radar net that blanketed the Nellis Air Force Range and the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. However, the alert that would have normally brought helicopters and security forces from Creech Air Force Base’s 3rd Special Operations Squadron had been short-circuited by the DOE’s test shipment from Callaway Nuclear Power Plant. Somewhere in the inevitable and often unfathomable bureaucratic process, the DOE had neglected to tell the Air Force they’d decided to forgo the helicopter escort for the shipment. As far as Creech was concerned, the stolen EC-130 on which Clark’s team rode was air cover for the shipment.
Whether from fear or a suspicion that his passengers were indeed the good guys, Marty had taken Clark’s “stick around” order to heart and had sat in the idling EC-130 until Clark and the others appeared jogging down the service road. Twenty-five minutes later they were back at Paragon Air, where they discovered Marty had also stayed off the radio.
“Hope I don’t regret this,” he’d said, as everyone climbed out.
“You’ll probably never know it, but you did a good thing, my friend,” Clark told him, then wiped down his Glock and laid it on the passenger-side floorboard. “Give us an hour, then call the police. Show them that gun and give them my description.”
“What?”
“Just do it. It’ll keep you out of jail.”
And besides, I’m not exactly what you’d call “findable,” Clark thought but didn’t say.
Twenty minutes after leaving Paragon Air, they were back at the Emir’s house, where they pulled into the garage and closed the door behind them. Chavez and Jack went inside to collect Tariq, while Pasternak and Dominic pulled the Emir from the rear of the vehicle and laid him out on the garage floor, where Pasternak knelt down and gave him a once-over.
“He live?” Clark asked.
Pasternak peeled back the hasty field bandage they’d applied before leaving Yucca, palpated the flesh around the puckered entrance wound, then slid his hands under the Emir’s buttock.
“Through and through,” Pasternak proclaimed. “No arteries, no bones, I don’t think. Blood’s clotting. What kind of round?”
“Jacketed seven-six-two.”
“Good. No fragments. Barring infection, he’ll make it.”
Clark nodded. “Dom, you’re with me.”
The two of them returned inside to give the house a walk-through. Though they’d all worn gloves the entire time they’d been there, sooner or later the FBI would descend on the house, and the FBI was damned good at finding trace evidence where none should exist.
Satisfied, Clark nodded for Dom to return to the vehicle, then dialed The Campus. Within seconds he had Hendley, Rounds, and Granger on conference call. Clark brought them up to speed, then said, “We’ve got two choices, anonymously dump them on the steps of the Hoover Building or finish this ourselves. Either way, the less time we stay here, the better.”
There was silence on the line. This was Hendley’s call.
“Stand by,” the director of The Campus said. He was back two minutes later. “Get back to the Gulfstream. The pilot knows where you’re going.”
Forty minutes later, they arrived at the North Las Vegas Airport and pulled onto the tarmac beside the plane, where they were met by the copilot, who ushered them aboard. Once airborne, Clark again called Hendley, who’d already begun the complicated and delicate process of informing the U.S. government that the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository had been penetrated by now-deceased URC terrorists, and that while the suitcase nuke they’d left behind had been rendered safe, it might be wise to secure the device as soon as possible.
“How can you be sure this ain’t going to blow back on us?” Clark now asked.
“I can’t, but we don’t have much choice in the matter.”
“True.”
“How’s our patient?”
“Doc cleaned out the holes, stitched ’em shut, and put him on antibiotics. He’s stable but in one hell of a lot of pain. Jack’s given him a permanent limp, probably.”
“Least of his worries now,” Hendley observed. “Is he talking?”
“Not a word. Where’re we going?”
“Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport. You’ll be met.”
“And then where?” Clark pressed. They had in their possession the world’s most wanted terrorist; the sooner they found a bolt-hole where they could regroup and plan their next move, the better.
“Someplace quiet. Someplace Dr. Pasternak can work.”
At this, Clark smiled.
Four short hours after they departed Las Vegas, they touched down on CHO’s single runway and taxied up to the executive terminal. True to his word, Hendley had a pair of Chevy Suburbans waiting; in formation, they approached the Gulfstream’s retractable stairs, did simultaneous three-point turns, and backed up to the bottom step. From the passenger door of the first Suburban, Hendley leaned out and signaled to Clark and Jack, who climbed into the backseat, while Caruso and Chavez, trailed by Pasternak, escorted their charges to the trailing Suburban. Within minutes they were off the airport grounds and heading north on Highway 29.
Hendley brought them up to speed. From what little Gavin Biery was able to glean from the flood of coded electronic traffic, Creech Air Force Base’s 3rd Special Operations Squadron had arrived at Yucca within forty minutes of Hendley’s call. Two hours after that, in a sure sign the Department of Energy, Homeland Security, and the FBI had descended en masse upon Yucca Mountain, the electronic traffic dried up.
“Are they onto the Emir’s house?” Jack asked.
“Not yet.”
“Won’t take them long to find Paragon Air.” This from Clark. “So spill it, Gerry. Where’re we going?”
“I’ve got a few acres of horse land and a country house outside Middleburg.”
“What’s a few?”
“Thirty. Should give us some breathing room.” Hendley checked his watch. “Dr. Pasternak’s equipment should be there by now.”
90
AFTER THE nearly constant adrenaline rush Clark and his team had experienced since touching down in Las Vegas twenty-four hours earlier, what followed immediately upon arriving at Hendley’s country house was anticlimactic. To his obvious disappointment, Pasternak announced that it would be another day, perhaps two, before his patient would be stable enough to undergo interrogation. That left everyone with plenty of time to waste and nothing to do but play cards and watch cable news. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a whiff of what had occurred at Yucca Mountain, but there was wall-to-wall coverage of what the networks had universally dubbed “The Heartland Attacks.” The Claymore mine blast at the Waterloo, Iowa, church had claimed thirty-two dead and fifty wounded; the mortar attack at the Springfield, Missouri, statue unveiling, twenty-two dead, fourteen wounded; the grenade incident at the Brady, Nebraska, swim meet, only six dead and four wounded, thanks to a quick-thinking, off-duty volunteer police officer who shot the perpetrator dead after he’d rolled only three grenades beneath the bleachers. The Waterloo and Brady perpetrators, both of whom had been tracked to their respective homes within hours of the events, had taken their own lives. Added to the other attacks, the casualties were climbing into triple digits.
Under the guiding hand of the FBI and Homeland Security, the near-miss chlorine attack aboard the Losan in Newport News had been attributed to a galley fire.
By four p.m. of their first day at Hendley’s country house, as the plastic-pretty female and lantern-jawed male anchors that dominated afternoon cable news collectively announced that President Edward Kealty would be addressing the American people at eight p.m. e
astern, Clark got up and wandered off to find Pasternak. He found the doctor in Hendley’s woodworking shop, a fully appointed pole barn behind the house. The maple-topped bench had been converted into a makeshift medical suite, complete with halogen work lights, a Drager ventilator, and an EKG machine/resuscitator by Marquette, including manual external defibrillator paddles to convert an irregularly beating heart to normal sinus rhythm. Both machines were brand-new, fresh from their manufacturer’s shipping cartons, which now lay stacked a few feet away. Everything was ready and present, save the guest of honor, who was ensconced in one of the guest bedrooms under a rotating watch manned by Chavez, Jack, and Dominic.
“All set?” Clark asked.
Pasternak pressed a series of buttons on the EKG and got a series of apparently satisfying beeps in reply. He powered down the unit and looked at Clark. “Yeah.”
“Got second thoughts?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You ain’t exactly a poker player, Doc.”
Pasternak smiled at this. “Never was good at it. Guess it’s the whole Hippocratic oath—kind of a hard thing to shake. I’ve had over ten years to mull it over, though. After Nine-Eleven, I couldn’t figure out if it was just about revenge or about something bigger—the greater good and all that.”
“What’d you decide?”
“It’s both, but more of the latter. If we get something from this guy that helps save some lives, then I’ll figure out a way to deal with what I’ve done—what I’m going to do. Or God willing, when the time comes.”
Clark considered this, then nodded. “Doc, to lesser or larger degrees, we’re all in that boat. All you can do is decide what you think is right, go with that, and let the rest come as it may.”
The anticipation had everyone up at dawn the next day. Dominic, the best cook of the group, made a bowl of oatmeal and wheat toast for their guest, who, now fully awake and clearly in pain, stubbornly declined the meal.
At seven, Dr. Pasternak came to examine him. It took only a few minutes. Pasternak looked to Hendley, who stood in the doorway, the rest of the group behind him.
“No fever, no signs of infection. He’s good to go.”
Hendley nodded. “Let’s move him.”
The Emir neither struggled nor helped as Chavez and Dominic carried him out the back door and through the pole barn’s side entrance. It wasn’t until he saw the halogen-lighted workbench and makeshift leather restraints bolted to its surface that his face changed. Jack saw the fleeting expression but couldn’t quite put his finger on its nature: fear or relief? Fear of what was coming, or relief because he suspected martyrdom was at hand?
As practiced the night before, Chavez and Dominic laid the Emir on the workbench. His right arm was cinched into the leather restraint, while the right, the one on the same side as the equipment, was stretched across a folded towel and similarly secured. Finally, both legs were locked down. Chavez and Dominic stepped back from the bench.
Now Pasternak began powering up the equipment: first the EKG, then the ventilator, followed by a self-diagnostic test of the manual external defibrillator. Pasternak then turned his attention to the wheeled cart beside the table, on which lay an array of syringes and bottles. All of this the Emir watched closely.
He had to be curious, Jack thought, and he must be inwardly terrified. Nobody could be that indifferent to what was going on around him, all the more so a man who was fully accustomed to being the ultimate and total boss of everything that happened around him, used to having his every order obeyed with alacrity. The world around him was no longer in his control. There was no way he could be comfortable with that, but he retained a sense of dignity that was, in its way, rather impressive. Okay, he was courageous, but courage was not an infinite quality. It had its limits, and those in the room with him would be exploring those limits.
Dr. Pasternak rolled up the Emir’s shirtsleeve and unbuttoned his shirt, then stepped away from the table, reached to the cart, and retrieved a plastic syringe and a glass vial. He checked his watch and looked up.
“I’m going with seven milligrams of the succinylcholine,” Pasternak said, measuring the amount carefully into the plastic syringe as he withdrew the plunger. “Somebody write that down, please.” On the chart Pasternak had asked Chavez to maintain, Ding wrote the information down: 7mg @ 8:58. “Okay ...” the physician said. He stabbed the syringe into the brachial vein just inside the elbow and pushed the plunger in.
There was no real pain for Saif Rahman Yasin, just the momentary prick of something piercing his skin inside the elbow, and the needle was soon withdrawn. Were they poisoning him? he wondered. Nothing overt seemed to be happening. He looked at the man who’d just stabbed him and saw a face that was waiting for something. That was vaguely frightening to him, but it was too late for fear. He told himself to be strong, to be faithful to Allah, to be confident in his faith, because Allah could handle anything men could do, and he, the Emir, was strong in his faith. He inwardly repeated his profession of faith, learned as a small boy more than forty years before, from his own father at the family house in Riyadh. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Allahu akbar. God is great, he told himself, thinking his profession of faith as loudly as he could in the silence of his own mind.
Pasternak watched and waited. His brain was racing. Was he doing the right thing? he wondered. It was too late to worry about that, of course, but even so, his mind asked the question. The man’s eyes looked into his now, and the doctor told himself not to flinch. He was the one in control. Completely in control of the fate of the man who’d killed his closest relative, his beloved brother, Mike, the man who’d ordered the man driving the airplane to crash into the World Trade Center, causing the fire that would weaken the structural steel, and dropping the entire Cantor Fitzgerald office a thousand feet to the streets of lower Manhattan, crushing to death more than three thousand people, more than had been killed at Pearl Harbor. This was the face of the fucking murderer. No, he would not show weakness now, not before this fucking barbarian....
The man was waiting for something, the Emir thought—but what? There was no pain, no discomfort at all. He’d just injected something into his bloodstream. What was it? If it was a poison, well, then the Emir would soon see Allah’s face, and could report to Him that he’d done the Lord God’s will, as all men did, whether they knew it or not, because everything that happened in the world was Allah’s bidding, because everything that ever happened in heaven or on earth was written by God’s own hand. But he had freely chosen to do Allah’s will.
But nothing was happening. He didn’t know, he couldn’t tell, that his mind was racing at light speed, outstripping everything, even the blood in his own arteries, spreading whatever it was that the doctor had shot into him. He wished it were poison, for then he would soon see Allah’s face, and then he could report on his life, how he had done Allah’s will as best he understood it ... or had he? the Emir asked himself, as the final doubts came. It was a time for ultimate truth. He’d done the Lord God’s bidding, hadn’t he? Had he not studied the Holy Koran his entire life? Did he not have the Holy Book virtually memorized? Had he not discussed its inner meaning with the foremost Islamic scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Yes, he had disagreed with some of them, but the nature of his disagreement had been honorable and direct, founded on his personal view of scripture, on his interpretation of God’s word as written and distributed by the Prophet Mohammed, Blessings and Peace be upon him. A great and good man, the Prophet had been, as well he might be to have been chosen by God Himself to be His Holy Messenger, the conveyor of God’s will to the people of the earth.
Pasternak was watching the sweep-second hand of his watch. One minute gone ... another thirty seconds or so, he figured. Seven milligrams ought to be plenty for this application, delivered as it was, directly into the bloodstream. It would be fully distributed by now, infusing itself in all the man’s bodily tissues ... and first would be ...
... the flutter nerves. Yes, they’d be first. The widely distributed nerves, the ones that worked peripheral systems, such as the eyelids, right about ... now.
Pasternak moved his hand to the man’s face, striking at his eyelids, and they didn’t blink.
Yes, it was starting.
The Emir saw the hand slap at his face but stop short. He involuntarily blinked his eyes ... but they didn’t blink ... Huh? He tried to lift his head, and it moved a centimeter or so, then collapsed back down.... What? He commanded his right fist to close and pull against the handcuffs, and it started to but stopped, falling back down to a resting position on the wooden surface of the table, the fingers unflexing of their own accord....
His body was no longer his own ...? What was this? What was this? He moved his legs, and they moved under the command of his brain, just a little, but they moved as they should, as they had since before his childhood memory had begun, following the commands of his brain, as the body always did. Command your arm, an infidel philosopher had written, and it moves—command your mind, and it resists. But his mind was working, and his body was not. What was this? He turned his head to look around the room. His head did not move, despite his commands—neither would his eyes. He could see the white drop-ceiling panels. He tried to focus his eyes more closely on them, but his eyes were not working as they should. His body was like the body of another man; he could feel it, but he could not command it. He told his legs to move, and they barely fluttered, then froze limply in place. Limp like a corpse.