instantly hurled her back in time.
She saw herself at four, at her grandfather’s place in the desert, petrified by a pack of wild dogs that were tearing into a young goat that had gotten out beyond the fence. Horrified and angry, Hala had gone to help the goat. The dogs turned on her, mauled her legs and arms, tried to kill her.
Twenty-nine years later, hiding beneath the train and listening to the police dogs howling, Hala was enveloped by the same terror she’d felt when the pack in Saudi Arabia had tried to tear her limb from limb. Shaking now, sweating, she had to use everything in her power to keep herself from collapsing and curling into the fetal position.
A voice in Hala’s mind, her late husband’s voice, told her she had to fight. She could kill the first dog, and maybe the first dog’s handler. But the police that followed them? And the second dog? And the third?
Despite Tariq’s voice commanding Hala to focus and figure out a way to escape the dogs and join Nazad, she kept thinking about that baby goat from her childhood, how it had bleated in fear as the pack circled and snapped at its legs. She kept seeing the dogs turn on her, feeling their teeth ripping at her skin.
Hala fought off the urge to puke and shook her head, willing herself to conquer a fear that felt primitive and instinctual.
The howling stopped. She gasped, feeling smashed up inside and somewhat embittered at the method Allah had fashioned for her martyrdom.
“Hala Al Dossari.” A voice that echoed through the terminal came from the public address system high overhead. “This is Alex Cross with Metro DC Police. You are surrounded. You have no chance of escape. And we have your jacket and boots from the ventilation duct. You have one minute to lay down your weapons and reveal yourself.” A long pause. “Or we’ll release the dogs.”
Cornered, up against the wall, she considered giving up, surrendering herself so Nazad and the others could complete their mission and put Al Ayla, the Family, at the front of the fight against the great Satan. She might not share in the blessed experience, but she would live to hear about these great things. She would live to rejoice at God’s will on earth.
Or she could buy Nazad even more time. He had not yet called her or texted her to say the transfer had been completed. And it was still snowing, was it not? It was. Her duty, her obligation, was to the overall mission.
Hala made herself slide down off the axle, forced herself to go back once more to that day when she was four and the dogs had tried to kill her. In her mind, she rewound the tape of the attack, finding her little-girl self watching the baby goat die, and feeling an injustice and a rage like no other begin to boil.
CHAPTER 75
“Robby? you by the channel?”
Frantically, Nazad dug in the snow around the rail worker.
“Brother?”
The Tunisian looked back and saw the three other Family men, eyes wide at the sight of the body. “Not now,” he barked, feeling something in the snow.
An antenna!
The Tunisian jerked it up, brought the radio to his lips, triggered Transmit, coughed, went nasal, and said, “Dropped the goddamned radio in the snow and I think I’m coming down with a frickin’ cold. Come back.”
“We got Nyquil and other stuff in the locomotive cab up here. Ice building on them rails?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Nazad said.
“You better start heading this way, then,” Tony said. “Union Station’s saying we might be able to move along here at some point.”
“They say what’s going on?”
“Some nut’s loose in the station, but they’re bringing in dogs after her.”
Dogs? Nazad flashed on Hala, begged Allah to have mercy on her, and then responded, “Be right along. Fast as I can get through this snow.”
The Tunisian stuck the radio in his coat, looked at the three men. One said, “Everything is in the van, brother. We are good?”
Nazad thought about that, shook his head, pointed at the other two men and then the dead body. “Bury this one in the snow on the other side of the tracks, where he won’t be seen from the freeway when it melts.”
He looked back to the third man. “You come with me, Aman.”
“Where are we going, brother?” Aman asked, confused.
Nazad said, “To see this Tony who drives the train before he comes looking for his friend.”
CHAPTER 76
The second hand on my watch swept past twelve. A minute had elapsed.
“Her call,” I said, and then I nodded to Mahoney, who spoke into his radio and ordered the dog team at the far west end to pick up her scent.
From my position midterminal on the rear platform, facing the locomotive for the Crescent train, I saw a rottweiler, as dark as Jasper was white, leap off the postal loading dock on a leash. His handler let him sniff the jacket and boots Hala had left in the ventilator duct.
Flanked by FBI HRT personnel, three to a side, the dog started to arc northwest and quickly disappeared from my view. I looked to Officer Carstensen, who was stroking Jasper’s head.
“Will we know when he’s got the scent?” I asked.
Before she had time to answer, an excited howl rose and then broke into baying.
“That Pablo’s a good dog,” Carstensen said.
I picked up the microphone that connected me to the terminal’s public address system and said, “Can you hear him, Hala? His name is Pablo. He smells you. You can’t see him yet, but that dog’s salivating, wild with the idea of tracking you down. So are the others. There’s an absolute monster dog named Jasper here next to me. He’s dying to meet you too.”
Mahoney looked at me, amused. “You’re kind of enjoying that, Alex.”
I shrugged. “You always say, if you’re gonna do something, do it right.”
“Now?” Carstensen said.
“We’re following your lead from here on out,” I replied.
The K-9 officer listened for the barking of the tracking dog and then gave her animal partner an order I did not understand. But Jasper certainly did. If the dog had been a football player, he’d have been a safety, up on his toes, alert, excited, ready to cut in any direction. Jasper’s ears stood straight up, swiveled like mini satellite dishes. He raised and lowered his head, halted, quivered, and then surged against the leash and barked.
“He hears something,” Carstensen said.
“You gonna let him go?”
“Didn’t you say there could be booby traps?”
I nodded.
“Then I’ll be holding him until I get a visual,” she said, gripping Jasper’s leash with both hands. You could tell the dog wanted to run. You could also tell Carstensen loved the dog too much to let him. We followed her lead, heading out onto platform F, the Crescent to our left. Amtrak had opened all doors on all trains in the terminal so the dogs could scent-check each car.
Four or five cars along, Jasper paused, listening to the sound of the other two dogs barking in the terminal. Then he nosed around the exit to the sixth car and began progressing at a brisker pace, as if he were ignoring
