Larsen turned to run, but then found, to his astonishment, that his feet were not touching the ground, and actually seemed to be going in opposite directions, as were the rest of his appendages…
Naomi saw a blinding flash, then heard a muffled wumph as the house was ripped apart. Maginnes was on top of her in an instant, shielding her body as fragments of brick, wood, and glass rained down around them.
Then there was silence and his crushing weight on her back. Nothing else, until he rolled off and she saw that there was part of a leg sitting two feet in front of her face.
That was when she began to scream.
CHAPTER 33
TYSON’S CORNER, HANOVER COUNTY,WASHINGTON, D.C.
Back at the TTIC, Ryan had finally stopped trying to fight the fatigue and decided to get some rest while he could. He tried to crash out in a secretary’s office, but sleep didn’t come. His mind was too occupied by everything that was going on, but most of all, it was Katie who held his thoughts.
Ryan recognized that he was largely responsible for their current situation, but he couldn’t help but feel let down by the fact that she had just run out on him without even trying to talk about it first. He was thinking about this, and getting angrier, when he realized that he had done exactly the same thing to her when Harper first asked him to come to Washington.
He was not pleased by this recollection. It would have been a whole lot easier to blame the whole situation on her, but at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to see her again. If being the first to apologize made that a possibility, then it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.
And all it would take was a phone call. In the dim light of the office, Ryan looked up at the clock on the wall: 5:23 AM. He knew she wouldn’t be awake, and Katie wasn’t a morning person in any case. She would be much easier to apologize to in a couple of hours.
He shut his eyes and tried to let the exhaustion overtake him. He was curled up uncomfortably on the cot, thinking about how he would explain everything to her when the door swung open, the lights came on, and he heard a distant voice calling his name.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so distant. When he opened his eyes and saw the expression on the deputy director’s face, he was instantly wide awake. “What? What is it?”
Harper’s voice was strangled. “Vanderveen just got seven guys from HRT in Hanover.”
Ryan was standing now, looking around for his shoes. “How? Was he there?”
“No, he rigged something up in the basement. They’re still trying to figure it out.”
Ryan stopped what he was doing and suddenly felt cold. He didn’t want to ask it, but knew he had to. “Naomi?”
He breathed out a long sigh of relief when Harper shook his head. “She was 300 meters away when it blew. She’s pretty shook up, though.”
“Oh, fuck,” Ryan said. He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks with open palms. “Oh, fuck.”
The area around the house was swarming with police cars and ambulances by 6:45, their flashing lights less pronounced now that the sun was occasionally peeking through the heavy clouds. The firefighters had pretty much finished their work, slightly aided by the damp snow that was still drifting down over the wreckage and surrounding fields.
The barn, for the most part, was still intact. Naomi was sitting with her back against the timbers, wearing a thick blanket around her shoulders and staring at what was left of the house.
Looking around, she saw a group of Bureau investigators trying to determine the outer boundaries of their search area. Maginnes was aimlessly wandering around the charred remains with a strange mixture of pain and confusion on his face. He had lost Larsen, Canfield, and Hudson, as well as four other members of his unit. One assaulter had been blown back through the front door, and had managed to escape with second degree burns, a broken leg, and a concussion. He had already been airlifted to a hospital in Richmond.
Naomi’s own injuries were minor; a few scratches was all she had suffered physically, but she couldn’t get the sight of that blackened stump out of her mind, nor the sound of Maginnes’s anguished moan when he had caught sight of it a few seconds after she did. She closed her eyes to block it all out, then opened them again when she heard someone calling her name.
It was Brett Harrison. He was standing next to a group of forensics people and holding a cell phone in his hand. As she stood up and walked over on shaky legs, she thought, if anything, the SAC looked worse than Maginnes. His face was as white as a sheet, and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. When she reached him, he muttered, “TTIC,” and handed her the phone.
“This is Kharmai.”
It was Kealey. “Naomi! Are you okay?”
When she heard the concern in his voice, it finally caught up with her. She turned her back to the group and tried to stifle a sob. “No.”
“Jesus,” he said. She couldn’t read his tone of voice. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m just…” Ryan heard some strange noises over the line and realized she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. “It was pretty bad, you know? God, this was my idea, Ryan. I’m the one who-”
“Naomi, it’s not your fault,” he interrupted forcefully. “Those guys knew the risks going in. Vanderveen did this, not you. Okay?”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “I should have been there-”
“No,” she said emphatically, unconsciously shaking her head in agreement with her own words. “You would have been in the house. I couldn’t have… dealt with that.”
On the other end, Ryan was lost for words. What he came up with, after about four seconds, was: “Come back to Washington, Naomi. I don’t think you ca — I just think you should come back.”
She could see that he was trying to make it easy for her. It would be so easy to give up being tough. She could go back to Washington, where he would show her some friendly concern and nothing more. She could sit behind a desk in the CT watch center and sip coffee, watch it play out on CNN, and remain perfectly safe.
But Vanderveen was still running free, and she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. And Ryan had been about to say, before he caught himself, that there was nothing else she could do in Virginia. Well, screw you, too.
“I’m not coming back,” she said. On the other end, Ryan was surprised by the sudden steel in her voice. “I’m going to grab one of Harrison’s aides and go talk to some people. I want to know what he’s driving, what he looks like. Otherwise, we’re still running blind.”
“Okay,” he said, after a moment of indecision. “Hold on a second.” He relayed the message to Harper, who broke off from another heated conversation with Patrick Landrieu to give his approval. “Harper says that’s fine. And he’s glad you’re okay. I am too, you-”
“I know,” she interrupted. “I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Pressing the END button before he could respond, she looked once more at the surrounding devastation and wiped away her few remaining tears. Okay, Naomi, she told herself. Time to get back to work.
Washington, D.C., in the half light of morning. The clouds were rolling in from the south, but the sun still poked through occasionally, sending bright beams spilling down over random objects and people. Looking around the waterfront, Jodie Rivers sipped from her travel mug and stood in quiet appreciation of the sight. She had worked herself to the point of exhaustion over the past week, and although there was a lot going on, she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to enjoy her morning coffee. Especially after getting called to the TTIC at one in the morning and the sleepless hours that had followed the meeting.
The colors of the city had that vivid look that is peculiar to a certain type of overcast weather. Across the sparkling surface of the channel, the grass of the East Potomac Golf Club seemed like an endless sea of emerald green. Although there was no precipitation, the air felt heavy and still, and she had received numerous reports of a storm moving in by early afternoon.
It would come too late to do her any good, though. For now, there was no trace of rain or snow on the ground, and no reason to cancel the boating excursion that was scheduled to begin in less than two hours. At least no reason that she could successfully argue to President Brenneman or his chief of staff, Ed Rigney.
