Either way, Nick was still breathing. While he murmured words of gratitude, his partner kneed Rashid in the groin. The terrorist grunted like a prizefighter and hunched over. Matt used his height advantage to stay on top of him. They seemed to merge into one entity as they took short, quick steps to support their upright wrestling match. Neither could afford to be the one who fell first.
Nick saw Matt’s gun on the floor behind Rashid. The assassin must have dropped it in the struggle. Nick was about to scramble for it when he heard a wild shriek.
It was Matt.
Rashid had clenched Matt’s ear between his teeth. He twisted and pulled on the cartilage until Matt’s ear looked like tan silly putty. Rashid was about to pull it completely off when Nick reached down and picked up the wooden table leg. He had a clear shot at Rashid’s head and he swung hard. The thick wooden dowel reverberated back in Nick’s hands as he connected across the back of Rashid’s head.
Rashid dropped to the floor. Nick grabbed the gun and placed his foot on Rashid’s neck. He heard Matt behind him gasping and muttering curses.
Nick pointed the 9mm at Rashid’s nose, only a couple of feet below him. “Just give me a reason,” he said. “I misinterpret one of your blinks and it’s goodnight, Rashid.”
Matt came around Nick with a pair of handcuffs. He rolled Rashid on his side and yanked the handcuffs onto the assassin’s wrists until Rashid’s face couldn’t hide the pain.
“You fight like a fucking girl,” Matt huffed, bringing his blood-spotted hand down from his ear.
Rashid glared up at Nick with rattlesnake eyes. “You think this is it? You think this is the end?”
Nick didn’t speak. He felt an anxiety attack tightening his chest. Shit, not another episode. Not now. He didn’t dare give away his condition, though. He handed Matt his gun back and said, “Here, I’m afraid I’ll shoot the bastard.”
“You think he won’t come after you?” Rashid spat, saliva spewing from tight lips.
“I don’t know,” Nick said, trying to appear nonchalant even though his entire body trembled. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
In a deliberately soft tone, Rashid said, “There is no one bigger than Kemel Kharrazi. And that is who you just brought upon yourself. You are now the target, Nicholas. No one else, just you. Are you prepared for that?”
But Nick barely heard him. He stepped around the shell casings and headed outside to slip away on his own. Maybe weather the panic attack before the place was swarming with FBI agents. Nick already knew the questions that would be asked and he was already tired of answering them.
As he approached the open doorway, Nick saw Truth’s body flat on his back, eyes shocked open. There were three bullet holes in his chest directly over his heart. Nick was relieved to know he went fast. He knelt down and touched Truth’s face with his fingertips. There was nothing to say. He could not have felt any more helpless than he did at that moment.
Sirens closed fast from two separate directions. The press would have a great time portraying America as a safer place because of Rashid’s capture. But Nick knew better. There was something much more malicious going on. Rashid Baser didn’t go through all the trouble to sneak into the United States to exact revenge on a single FBI agent. It wouldn’t stop the press though. At least in the short term. They’ll raise the freedom flag high and swagger with delight. In the world of terrorism there was no one bigger than Rashid Baser. No one.
Except Kemel Kharrazi.
Chapter 3
Nick left Dr. Alan Morgan’s office on Pratt Street just after noon. It was three days since the shootout and regulation mandated a session with a professional counselor whenever bullets left a chamber. The affected had seventy-two hours to complete the session. Matt went first, then waited in the car for his partner. Nick’s session took longer than Matt’s. There was too much psychological damage to go over in just one visit, so Nick agreed to return when the time was right. Which meant never.
Nick got in the car and started the engine. He drove a gray Ford sedan with soot clinging so masterfully to its exterior it appeared to create a designer pattern. This was not born out of neglect as much as an attempt to blend in.
He drove west on Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Baltimore field office. Matt sat in the passenger seat with an open lunch box on his lap. He held up an apple and inspected it like he was about to dust it for prints.
“What kind of apple is this?” Matt asked.
“How am I supposed to know?” Nick said.
“You do talk to your wife at night don’t you?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, don’t you tell her what I like and don’t like?”
“Listen, do you know why she makes you lunch whenever I have any kind of doctors appointment?”
“Why?”
“Because, she thinks you’ll sit in that waiting area eating lunch, while I’m getting my teeth cleaned and you’ll protect me from terrorists that might barge in and try to kill me.”
“Are you serious?” Matt chuckled.
Nick nodded. “However, what she doesn’t know is that you sit in the car and read Playboy, so if a terrorist ever did come in you’d have a hard-on so big you’d probably sit there with a smirk on your face and point directly to the office I was in.”
Matt took a bite from the apple and chewed slowly. “Playboy has excellent interviews.”
Nick rolled his eyes. He stopped the car at a light and hung his elbow out the window.
“What’s this meeting about?” Nick asked.
“All I know is, it’s a Red Ball special, and nothing good ever comes out of a Red Ball.”
A young black kid wearing a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap approached the car holding a stack of newspapers. “Wanna paper, Mister?”
Nick reached for his wallet, pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the kid. “Are you an Orioles fan?”
The kid handed him a copy of the Baltimore Sun, “You bet.” He dug his hands into his pocket for change.
“That’s okay, keep it,” Nick said.
“Thanks, Officer,” the kid smiled, then wandered toward the next car in line.
Matt laughed. “We may as well have a siren on the roof.”
Nick glanced at the front page. A soldier poked his head out from a U.S. tank surrounded by a mob of angry Turkish civilians. Their faces were twisted into sinister shapes. Their mouths open, assaulting the soldier with venomous emissions, while a U.S. flag burned in the background. Nick dropped the newspaper onto Matt’s lap and accelerated through the intersection. “Looks like the boys are getting a warm welcome in Turkey.”
Matt gripped the paper and shook his head. “They don’t belong there in the first place.”
“You know that and I know that, but try telling that to the President’s pollsters.”
“The Kurds have every right to fight back. Just because Turkey is part of NATO, doesn’t mean we should always side with them.”
“It’s all politics,” Nick said. “The Turks slaughter thousands of innocent Kurds and when the Kurds retaliate, we show up and claim that innocent Turks are being killed. Shit, everyone’s innocent.” He turned to Matt, “Except you.”
Matt gave him an aw-shucks grin. It reminded Nick of the night they’d met nine years earlier when Matt was still a sharpshooter with the FBI’s SWAT team. Matt chose to purchase a 10-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with his own funds and had an opportunity to use it that night while leaving a bar in West Baltimore. He saw a man in a blue FBI windbreaker crouched behind a Volkswagen dodging shots from another man crouched three cars ahead of him. The man in the FBI windbreaker was Nick. It was his first year with the Bureau and he found himself chasing down a wily gun smuggler by himself.
Across the street Matt had acquired a perfect angle. From thirty yards away he blew out the right kneecap of
