crowd, and kept pushing forward. Past a steel-shuttered elevator pit, past a plastic Dumpster filled with trash, and then into the basement level before realizing his mistake, because the lure of the light had prevented him from turning right.
It came without warning. There was no explosion of sound, no tunnel of light, and no pain. All he felt was a grazing sensation at the back of his head, and then darkness.
Ryan was about twenty steps and seven seconds behind. He saw the prone figure of the police officer as soon as he entered the construction area, and tried not to look at the gaping exit wound in the young man’s face, or the spray of blood and tissue on the tile in front of him as he reached down and snatched up Howson’s Glock.
Ryan sensed that Vanderveen was not waiting to get the drop on him, and he needed to move fast now if he wanted to catch up. He turned into the open area recklessly, the 9mm down low in the same two-handed grip that Howson had adopted less than two minutes earlier. Twenty feet in front of him, Ryan saw people running in his direction out of Filene’s Basement, the only store on the lowest level. He bounded up the stairs, passing black bins of cashmere and racks of discounted Prada, forcing his way through the frantic crowd, knowing full well that this might be his last chance at getting close enough to put the man down for good.
Vanderveen was about fifteen seconds ahead of Kealey when he passed through the glass doors leading out onto F Street, moving quickly but casually. His posture was relaxed, and calm enough so that none of the passersby immediately noticed what was dangling from his right hand.
The few extra seconds gave him the time he needed to scan the street for police cars or the unmarked Suburbans that were favored by so many of the government’s more notorious agencies. He wasn’t thinking about what had gone wrong; there would be plenty of time for that later. At the moment, his only goal was to get out of the city as fast as possible.
He stepped into the road, crossing the first lane before a westbound Camry with a dented hood screeched to a halt a few feet to his right. As the shocked and relieved driver furiously leaned on his horn, Vanderveen walked around the side of the vehicle.
The man had been smoking while he drove, and the window was rolled halfway down, despite the cold. He started to say something smart as the person he had nearly hit approached his door, but never got it out. Vanderveen smoothly lifted the. 40 with his right hand and jammed it into the driver’s ear, pulling the trigger once.
Ignoring the screams of nearby pedestrians, Vanderveen pulled open the door and yanked hard on the driver’s body, which tumbled lifelessly out into the road.
Then he was in the car and moving away, not bothering to fully close the door until he had already upshifted twice. Looking up to the rearview mirror, he saw the glass doors of the National Place building swing open as a figure emerged at a dead sprint.
Kealey burst out onto F Street in time to see the red Camry pulling away in a squeal of tires. He had the Glock up in a heartbeat, banging away two shots at the retreating vehicle, going for the tires but catching the bumper instead.
Then it howled around the corner onto 14th, disappearing from view. Kealey swore under his breath, saw the body on the street and moved to pull someone out of their vehicle. Seconds later, a pair of black Suburbans with light racks flashing on top came flying up behind him on 13th Street, slamming forward to a halt at the intersection. Then there were men streaming out of the vehicles with their MP5s locked onto his head, screaming, “FBI! Drop the gun! Drop the gun right now! ”
Kealey turned and shouted back, for what seemed like the tenth time in as many minutes, “I’m a Federal officer! Susskind knows me, for Christ’s sake! The guy you’re looking for just turned that corner-” He almost pointed before he realized he still had the gun in his hand. “In a red Camry. I got the plate-”
“Put the gun on the ground! Do it!”
The people approaching him didn’t look all that accommodating. He had his left hand on the door handle of a silver Mercedes, the middle-aged woman behind the wheel staring up at him in fear and shock. Ryan took his hand away and lifted his arms at the elbows, the grip of the gun pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Swearing again, he set the weapon on the pavement and stepped back as the agents swarmed in around him.
It was over, and Vanderveen was gone.
CHAPTER 35
LANGLEY, CAPE ELIZABETH
The debriefing was held at Langley more than eight hours later, with very few people in attendance. The director’s office was spacious enough to accommodate the small crowd, which included Naomi Kharmai, who had been flown back from Ashland courtesy of the Virginia State Police, Jonathan Harper, DCI Andrews, and Ryan Kealey.
It had been relatively easy for Harper to get Kealey out of FBI custody. Susskind spoke to the D.C. field office’s HRT commander just minutes after the second shooting on F Street, and orders had been relayed from there to the team that was holding him. The handcuffs came off almost immediately, and his Beretta was retrieved from Howson’s body and returned to him. The agents that he rode with expressed regret at the incident, but only reluctantly; the muted apologies he received were next to inaudible. The Suburban in which Kealey was seated departed immediately for Tyson’s Corner, but most of the agents remained behind to secure the scene and wait for reinforcements.
He couldn’t really blame them for arresting him. He had been out on the street in civilian clothes with a gun and no identification, standing less than 5 feet from a man with a gunshot wound to the head. In retrospect, Ryan realized that being confronted by the highly trained HRT operators was a lot better than most of the alternatives. At least they hadn’t shot him out of panic.
When he arrived at the TTIC less than twenty minutes after leaving the scene, the helicopter blades were already turning. Despite angry protests from Director Landrieu and Joshua McCabe, Harper had arranged for transport for Ryan and himself so they could be immediately flown back to Langley. Unfortunately, that was where the rapid movement ended. They had been forced to wait for hours, as the DCI had been caught up in a lengthy inquisition by a shaken President Brenneman at the White House. Now, seated in the director’s capacious office, the events of the morning seemed like nothing more than a horrible dream.
It wasn’t a dream, though, and Ryan had proven it by recounting his story to Director Andrews no less than three times, all the way from the time he received Harper’s telephone call up until his detainment by the FBI. Kharmai had also been asked to thoroughly describe the events that had transpired in Hanover County. The two junior officers did most of the talking, but they got some of the answers they were looking for as well.
Naomi was seated next to Ryan, while the two senior officials sat in comfortable armchairs on the other side of a low coffee table. She had enjoyed a long hot shower in the women’s locker room upon returning to Langley, and someone had been dispatched to her house to pick up some clothes. Her unknown benefactor had chosen well. As a result, she looked a thousand times better than she had that morning, and was anxious to learn more about the disastrous raid in Virginia.
Harper was the one to explain it to her. “The Bureau’s Explosives Unit concentrated their efforts on the basement. They found damage consistent with a gas-leak explosion, but leaks almost always originate from the output valve, which is located on the ground floor. So they think that Vanderveen disconnected the fittings to the stove, drilled a hole into the tile and rigged up a hose leading down to the basement. Then he used duct tape to seal off the hole and all the air vents leading out, so that the gas was just trapped down there.”
Harper took a sip of coffee and continued: “They found other evidence that corroborates that account as well. There were pieces of a gasoline can — one of the old-fashioned metal ones — jammed into the walls, and what appeared to be two contact plates and traces of SEMTEX H. He didn’t have time for anything fancy, so he simply taped a block of explosives to a gasoline can, then wired up a battery to an electric cap. The device was set to go off when the buffer was removed from between the steel plates.”
Ryan was shaking his head. “What about the bomb in the van?”
“That one was a little more complicated, though not overly so,” Harper said. “They only got around to moving
