Of course not. In a strange way, my fight with Nana only drove that point home. I would do almost anything to save those kids.
Finally, just after midnight, I couldn’t stare at the ceiling anymore. I sat up fast. In the dark, there are two things I always know how to find — my phone and my Glock. I reached for the phone. Dialed Sampson’s number.
“Hullo?” he answered in a thick voice. “Alex?”
“Sorry to wake you,” I said. “I need to talk, John. Actually, I need your help on something.”
“No prob, sugar.”
“Put on a pot of coffee. I’m coming over.”
“See you in a few.”
I threw on some clothes, splashed water on my face, and left the house.
On the way to Sampson’s, I called Ned Mahoney, too.
He answered on the first ring. “I thought you might call,” he said.
SAMPSON WAS ON board the minute I told him what I wanted to do. He knew I couldn’t ask outright, so he volunteered, and I was just desperate enough to accept. John is six nine, with the kind of arms Michael Vick might wish for. Plus he had exactly the skill set I needed to back me up.
And Ned Mahoney had the tools. He was carrying a small messenger bag when we picked him up at a Park and Ride in North Fairlington.
With twelve years on Hostage and Rescue, Ned was the break-in expert of our group. For the rest of the ride, he did most of the talking. Planning. I just drove and listened.
By two thirty a.m., the three of us were huddled around the back door of Rodney Glass’s condo in Alexandria. It was an attached duplex with a well-lit shared driveway in front, but a lawn and pool area in the back that was all dark and closed up for the night.
I held a penlight for Ned while he unrolled a leather kit of picks and tension wrenches, each one in its own pocket. Usually Ned’s all about the forty-pound battering ram, but he knows how to do small and quiet, too.
Less than ten seconds after he’d angled the first pick into the dead bolt, it turned with a soft click.
The lock on the doorknob went even faster.
I took it from there and led the way inside. It was dark and quiet on the first floor. We stopped there to pull the black balaclavas down over our faces. Honestly, it wasn’t a good feeling. Seeing Ned and John in their masks really drove home for me what we were doing. This was nowhere I ever thought I’d be, but there was no turning back now.
For that matter, I didn’t want to. I wanted to save those kids if they were still alive.
We went in a line up the hall to the front of the house. The stairs were carpeted, and therefore no problem. It didn’t take long before we were standing outside Glass’s open bedroom door. I could hear him snoring and saw his outline, sleeping on his back with one arm thrown over his head.
I signaled John to take one side of the bed. I hurried around and took the other. Mahoney stayed at the foot with his first syringe uncapped and ready.
Then I counted it down for them on my fingers.
Three — two —
All at once, Glass roared awake. He rolled toward me and reached for something under the mattress, but John was already there to pull his arm back. I stuck my hand into the same place and felt the contours of a pistol. He was an avid hunter, I knew, with several legally registered firearms in his name. I left the pistol where it was.
As soon as Sampson had him, I tore off a length of duct tape and pressed it over Glass’s mouth. Then I pushed him facedown into the mattress while John slapped a pair of speed cuffs onto his wrists.
Mahoney was next. He knelt on the bed, flipped back the covers, and jammed a needle into his hip. Glass tried to scream from behind the tape. Then his whole body went rigid like he was being Tasered.
The rush of adrenaline made him even harder to handle, but that didn’t last long. Within a minute, his limbs started to go slack. Every sound he made got a little weaker, until they’d ebbed into a kind of lazy, constant hum. He shuddered the way we sometimes do at the edge of sleep. He wasn’t completely out, but he was completely useless, for the time being.
“That’s it,” Ned said. “We’re good to go.”
We hustled him into some pants and down the stairs, holding him up, dragging his legs. At the door, I threw a jacket over his shoulders to hide the cuffs. Then we walked him out to the car in a tight group.
As we took off, I had no doubt in my mind that, ultimately, we were doing the right thing. Rodney Glass knew where Ethan and Zoe were. He had to know. But God help us if I was wrong, I thought.
In fact, God help us, period.
We were kidnapping Glass.
“WAKE UP. WAKE up right now!”
It all happened very fast. Hala hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Now someone was there, shining a bright light in her eyes. By instinct, her hand went straight to the Sig in her lap. Before she could reach it, the point of another pistol came out of the light. It stopped just short of her forehead.
“Don’t, sister!” the other woman said. “Please. We’re from The Family. We’ve come to get you. We’re only here to help.”
“Hala?” Tariq was just stirring. The infection in his hand had left him feverish and bleary. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Someone is here. They say they’re from The Family.”
“We have to hurry,” a man’s voice said. “And I’ll take that weapon.”
Her finger tensed on the trigger. “I don’t think so,” she said.
“Sister, listen to me.” The woman took a step back now and lowered the light. Her voice was calm. Sisterly. “You placed an overseas call. One that you meant to be intercepted, isn’t that so?”
Hala stared up at the two strangers, but it was impossible to gauge their faces in the dark. It was also hard to think clearly. They hadn’t eaten or even had a sip of water in over twenty-four hours. Still, it was hard to argue with the information these people had. And what option was there, anyway?
“All right,” she said, and put the butt of the Sig into the man’s outstretched hand. “But I’m going to want that back.”
“Of course,” the man said.
The Al Dossaris were made to stand and lift their shirts next, to show there were no wires or listening devices of any kind. Then they were each frisked.
“Just a precaution,” the woman assured them. When her hand passed over the pocket in Hala’s skirt, she took the two cyanide capsules as well. “You won’t be needing these anymore,” she said. “You’re heroes. Both of you. Everyone in The Family honors your name and what you’ve done.”
For the first time in days, Hala smiled.
A black Toyota 4Runner was waiting at the top of the alley. In the streetlight, Hala saw that the two strangers both had olive skin and dark eyes. The woman’s hair was bleached blond, and the man’s head was shaved to a rough stubble, his scalp tattooed with an Arabian falcon at the back. In their tailored black clothing, they looked as if they could have just come from one of Washington’s trendier clubs. For all Hala knew, they had. She pushed Tariq into the backseat, then got in beside him.
“My husband’s been shot in the hand by the American police,” she said as soon as they’d pulled away. “I’m going to need antibiotics, disinfectant —”
“Here.” The woman handed a plastic grocery bag over the seat. “This will have to do for the moment. We need to get you out of Washington before we do anything else.”
When Hala looked inside the bag, she almost wept with relief. There were bottles of water, chocolate bars, a jar of almonds, a first-aid kit, and a small pharmacy bottle of amoxicillin. Two weeks ago, she might have wondered how all of this was even possible, but she’d learned — just like the Americans — never to underestimate the power and resources of The Family.
She took Tariq’s good hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. If he’d had his way back in that disgusting alley, she knew, he would have been dead by now.
“Thank you,” she said to the tw
o in front.
“No,” the other woman said. “Thank The Family. And thank Allah.”
MAHONEY DROVE. SAMPSON sat in front. I took the backseat with Glass, who was as high as a kite by now. His eyes occasionally rolled up into the whites.
I waited until we were out on the Beltway. Then I reached over and pulled the silver tape off his face.
“Wha’ the hell’s goin’ on here?” he started right in, running his words together like a drunk. “You assholes are in so much trouble —”
Sampson reached right across the seat and popped Glass hard, upside the head. It must have hurt because it immediately stunned him into silence.
“You listen first, dumbass,” John said with a finger in his face. “Then you talk.”
Glass hunkered down, trying to get away, but he seemed more pissed off than scared. That was the scopolamine, doing its thing.
“Wha’ever,” he said.
“Rodney?” I said. “Listen to me. I’m going to ask you about Ethan and Zoe Coyle. That’s our only subject here. Do you know where they are?”
He smacked his lips a few times. His eyes fluttered. “Wha’d you gimme? Is this thiopental? My mouth’s like a sandbox.”
“Glass! Where are Ethan and Zoe?” I said. “They’re in a basement somewhere, right? There’s a dirt floor. What else?”
“I dunno know … what you’re talking about,” he slurred.
It’s not that scopolamine is a truth serum, per se. But cognitively speaking, lying is a lot more complex than telling the truth. The drug just makes it that much harder to do. My best bet was to keep coming at him with simple, direct questions. Eventually he might slip up.
“Ethan and Zoe are in a basement somewhere,” I said again. “Isn’t that right, Rodney?”
His head lolled back and he swallowed several more times.
“Why should I tell you?” he said. John reached for him, but I put up a hand to stop him.
“Are they in a basement, Rodney? Or is it some kind of a cave?”
“I, um …”
“Are they? Tell me. Right now.”
“Nah,” he finally said, and my heart lurched. “I mean … yeah. But not a basement. It’s a, uh … you know. More like a root cellar.” His head fell back again, and he let out a bizarre, low chuckle.
“What the hell’s so funny?” Sampson asked him.
“You are, man,” he said, and laughed again. “I mean … you’re all cops, right? But now you’re the ones who’re goin’ to jail. That’s funny, man. That’s fuckin’ classic.”
IT TOOK A second injection and a lot of wrong turns to tease some more details out of Glass. The closer we got to the truth, the funnier he seemed to find it. It was everything I could do to keep from knocking that smile right off his face — or letting Sampson do it.
After two long hours, we found ourselves on a dark secondary road somewhere south of the Pennsylvania border and Michaux State Forest. The middle of nowhere, basically.
Mahoney kept our speed low and the high beams on. The result was — we were going nowhere. We had no final destination yet.
“Hang on,” Sampson said suddenly. “What’s that?”
Ned stopped and angled the car at the side of the road. A wall of high grass and brambles was broken in one spot, like it had been trampled and bounced back. On the other side, it looked like an old ATV trail, or maybe a driveway, running into the woods.
Glass let out another long, drunken laugh.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ned said, and pulled in.
As we drove on, a single set of tracks showed itself in the dirt. Someone had been here recently, but the trail wasn’t well traveled.
Had Glass been coming in from more than one direction? I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
About a hundred yards off the road, the trees cleared and I saw an old farmhouse straight ahead. It was falling down all around itself, barely holding onto the clapboard.
Beyond that was a three-story barn, standing a little straighter in the dark, and my stomach knotted right up. It looked like just the kind of place where you might find an old root cellar.
Ned pulled around and stopped, with the headlights shining inside the barn. Everything about this was eerie and scary, even though we were the ones supposedly in control. But Glass still was, wasn’t he?
“What the hell’s that?” Mahoney said.
A half-decomposed animal carcass, or maybe more than one, was piled right in the center of the open barn doorway.
“Nice welcome mat. That’s supposed to keep us out,” Sampson said. “I think we’re in the right place.”
“Cuff him to the door handle!” I was already out of the car. This thing had me in its own slipstream now.
I ran straight inside the barn, past an empty tack wall on one side and a row of stables on the other.
“Ethan! Zoe!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Anyone here?”
The only sound that came back was Glass’s obnoxious giggle from the car.
At the back, the barn opened up all the way to the beams overhead. Vines and saplings had worked their way in through the walls, but those were the only signs of life I could see.
“You got anything?” I shouted to the others.
“Nothing over here,” Sampson called back.
“Nothing,” Ned said.
“There’s got to be a way down. Stairs, or a ladder, or something.”
I came back and stood in the alley between the tack wall and the stalls, shining my Maglite in every direction. What were we missing? Were the kids even here?
As I came around again, I noticed that all but one of the stalls were empty. The one farthest from the door was piled high with junk. It looked like someone had taken everything they could find and dumped it in one place. Why?
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey! Give me a hand!”
By the time Ned and Sampson found me, I was already throwing splintered wooden pallets and loose lumber out of the stall. There was a truck axle, a few bundles of rusted wire mesh, some concrete pilings, and an old corn shucker — the kind of thing I hadn’t laid eyes on since I was a little kid in North Carolina.
As soon as the space was clear, we dropped down and started brushing away the dirt and gravel and old remnants of hay.
While I did, I noticed some of the debris was trickling down through a crack in the boards. Right away, it showed itself as a straight line — and then a definite rectangle in the floor.
“It’s a door!” John said, and we dug our fingers into the gap.
We heaved straight up and flung open the whole panel. Then we picked up our flashlights and shone them down into the space we’d just opened.
“Oh, my God,” Mahoney said. “Oh, no.”
Sampson and I stood there, speechless.
Just below floor level, there was a layer of dirt. It was dark, and moist, and looked like fresh earth to me. Like someone had only recently filled this hole.
The only other thing to see was the top of an old wooden ladder, just breaking the surface.
It looked like a grave.
And behind me, I could still hear Rodney Glass laughing in the car.
BY SIX THIRTY A.M., THE old abandoned farm was a full-blown federal crime scene, and it was lit up like Nationals stadium on a game night. The tension was unbelievable. I could see it on every face. I’m sure the others could see it on mine.
A military excavation crew had been driven up from Fort Detrick. Peter Lindley sent a team from the Crisis Management Unit in DC to supervise the logistics, including security.
Even the Frederick County Sheriff’s department was kept out on the road. And word was that the Bureau director himself, Ron Burns, was on his way to the scene. I didn’t doubt it for a second. I wondered if the president or First Lady would come here. I hoped not, for their sakes.
The toughest part was not knowing what to expect. Nobody was calling this a recovery mission yet, but no one was calling it a rescue, either. The feel
ing on the farm was incredibly intense. I’ve never seen such a huge operation get under way so quietly, and with so much mystery.
After a fast consult with an engineering unit from Quantico, it was decided that all the digging would be done by hand. There was a rotating auger and mini excavator parked in the yard, but this root cellar was a complete question mark. We couldn’t risk the machinery, or the vibrations it would cause.
Three soldiers in fatigues and headlamps got right to it. They worked with sawed-off shovels, taking shallow scoops as quickly and as carefully as possible.
Even the soil itself had to be loaded out, bucket by bucket, for transport to the Bureau’s forensics lab.
Ned, Sampson, and I split up. John helped haul equipment at first, and then dirt, as the digging got under way. Mahoney ran interference on Rodney Glass, who was sleeping off the last of his scopolamine in the back of a Bureau car. As for what Glass would say, or even remember, when he woke up, I couldn’t be bothered right now. I had other things on my mind.
I spent my time with two of the Bureau’s witness-victim specialists, Agents Wardrip and Daya. Both of them had extensive backgrounds in child and trauma psychology and knew a great deal about the impact that something like this could have on a kid. Survival was just the beginning.
I told them everything I knew about the case, but it was a tough conversation. We needed to be ready for the best and worst possible outcomes at the same time. The longer this went on, the harder it was to stay optimistic.
But then around seven thirty, everything changed.
I was outside with Wardrip and Daya when word started circulating that the crew had found something. We dropped everything and ran inside.
As I came to the edge of the stall, I saw one of the three soldiers, up to his waist in the hole. He was conferring with the special agent in charge from DC, while the other two were crouched down under the floorboards, furiously pulling dirt away from one side with their hands.