without going over,” Barker always said. Wells figured he was playing that game with the plague now. As close as he could without going over.
Wells twisted his key in the ignition and the Ranger kicked into life. He pulled into the street. At the first light he turned right — south — then right again. West. Toward Manhattan. He was sure that Khadri would try to blow up the Yellow dirty bomb, whatever it was, as soon as he learned what had happened to his men. Which would be very soon. The media would be all over the bloodbath in apartment 3C.
WELLS CROSSED OVER the Willis Avenue Bridge into Manhattan as the sun rose in his rearview mirror. Time to call in the cavalry. He grabbed his cell and punched in 911. As he did the phone beeped. Low battery.
“Nine one one emergency.”
“There’s been a shooting on One Forty-sixth Street in the Bronx.”
He could hear the dispatcher clicking on her keyboard. “Yes, sir. Emergency units are on the scene.”
“Make sure they have biohazard gear. The apartment’s contaminated with plague.”
“Plague?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, are you certain—”
“Yes.” Wells hung up.
He didn’t know how to reach Shafer or Duto, but he hadn’t forgotten the number for the Langley crisis desk, which was always staffed. He punched it in. After a single ring a man picked up.
“Station.” An odd tradition that had lasted almost since the agency’s creation.
“This is John Wells.”
“And how may I help you, Mr. Wells?”
“I need to talk to Vinny Duto.” Again his phone beeped.
“There’s no one here by that name,” the man said smoothly. “Are you sure you have the right number?”
Wells punched the steering wheel in frustration. Of course the guy wouldn’t just put him through. He had probably never heard Wells’s name before. And Wells no longer had the emergency codes that agents used to prove their identities to the desk.
He coughed viciously and spat a fat glob of phlegm onto the Ranger’s passenger seat. It was still gray, at least. If he started coughing blood even the Cipro couldn’t save him.
“Hello? Hello?” The man had hung up. Wells called back.
“Station.”
“Please. Get Duto for me. Or Ellis Shafer.”
The man hesitated. Duto’s name was public record, but Shafer’s wasn’t. “Tell me your name again?”
“John Wells. I’m an agent. My EPI is Red Sox.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells. I have no way of checking your EPI. Whatever that is. If you have something else to tell me, please do it.”
“Look, I don’t have the codes anymore, but please believe me.”
“Mr. Wells, someone will have to call you back. Can you be reached at this number?”
“No. The battery’s going.”
“Mr. Wells—”
“Tell them to put out a BOLO”—be on the lookout—“for the Yellow.”
“The yellow what?”
“It’s a dirty bomb,” Wells said. He felt clouded and weak. The Cipro and the plague were at war inside him, and the plague was holding its own. At least. “I know I’m not making much sense, but that’s all I have for you. The Yellow. Also there’s a man in Montreal named Tarik who’s infected with pneumonic plague, a scientist—”
“Thank you, Mr. Wells. Someone will call you back.”
Click. Wells looked down to see that his phone had gone dead. Even if the guy sent the message up the line, the agency couldn’t reach him. For a little while he was on his own.
ON HIS WAY home Khadri stopped for steak and eggs at an all-night diner on Webster Avenue. He found himself ravenous. He could hardly wait for his men to begin their travels this morning. Nothing could stop the plan now.
He had just pulled into Ghazi’s garage when he heard the first bulletin on his radio. “And we have some breaking news for you from 1010 WINS. There’s been a shooting at an apartment building on One hundred and Forty-sixth Street in the South Bronx. Police have cordoned off the block, and neighbors say at least two men have been removed on stretchers. Stay tuned. We’ll update this important story as soon as we have more details.”
Khadri shook his head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until his head fogged and he had to stop. “No,” he said quietly. “No.” He sat back in the Lincoln and breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. How could he have been so foolish? What had the American done in that apartment?
He had to assume the worst, that Wells had killed his men and called the police. After so many years, Wells had fooled him, undone all his work. The plague would never leave that apartment now. Khadri cursed himself for his arrogance. And John Wells, that lying infidel. Allah would surely send Wells to the hottest fires of hell, and Khadri would deserve to join him there for losing this opportunity.
It wasn’t just the plague, he thought. The Yellow was registered in Ghazi’s name. The police could trace it easily once they identified Ghazi. He would need to blow the bomb this morning, before the police made the connection. He looked at the Lincoln’s digital clock: 6:29. Until now Khadri hadn’t planned to die in the attack; he had intended to leave the Yellow in a garage near the target and be in Mexico by the time the bomb blew. But he couldn’t take that chance now. He would have to blow the bomb himself.
At that thought, Khadri’s stomach fluttered. He pushed his fear aside. He had promised paradise to his jihadis; now he too would discover whether Allah awaited. And with that thought Khadri stepped out of the Town Car.
AT LANGLEY WELLS’S message was passed to Joe Swygert, the overnight head of the duty desk. The warning troubled Swygert; the caller knew the agency’s procedures, but none of the current codes. And the information he had offered didn’t make sense, Swygert thought. The daily hot sheet that listed the top current threats had never mentioned a Yellow attack.
He looked over the message again and sighed. The duty desk got calls like this a couple of times a year from nut jobs who somehow found its number. He punched up the agency’s Level III classified directory, looking for a John Wells. He couldn’t find the name, but he knew that absence didn’t necessarily mean anything. The directories didn’t stop at Level III.
Swygert looked at his watch: 6:32. In three years, he had woken Duto only twice: once when Farouk disclosed the dirty bomb to Saul and once when an agent died in a suspicious car crash in Beijing after meeting a high-level mole in the Chinese government. Swygert didn’t plan to call Duto or Shafer unless something else crossed the wires.
KHADRI WEAVED HIS way south through the Bronx on the Major Deegan. Already the traffic was picking up, box trucks loaded with vegetables to stock deli shelves, McDonald’s tractor-trailers with giant Big Macs painted on their sides. Khadri drove slowly. He planned to reach his target by eight. He would have liked to wait longer, make sure the buildings in midtown were full, but he couldn’t afford to delay. His arrogance had already cost him too much. Better to hit early than be caught and miss his chance entirely.
AT 7:03, WELLS parked his Ranger in a taxi-only zone on Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan, just off Eleventh Avenue. He ignored the cabs honking at him as he washed his hands and face with the last of a gallon of water he had bought the night before. He felt sick and weak, and his coughs were coming more quickly now. Soon he would need intravenous antibiotics more powerful than the Cipro if he were to have any chance to survive.
“This showcase can be yours,” he muttered to himself. He wondered if he would ever see Evan again. Probably not. But then a lot of fathers and mothers wouldn’t see their children after today if he couldn’t find Khadri. “Watch him, Lord,” Wells murmured. “Whatever happens today, please watch him.” He didn’t care whether he was praying to the Muslim God or the Christian anymore, and he supposed God didn’t care either.
