The bodyguard came out of the barn carrying a cardboard box. His eyes were glued to it, and he walked slowly. Warnings on the sides of the box identified the contents as dynamite. The man set the box down in the dirt and returned to the barn.
Reynolds knelt down beside the box and opened it. Ali looked over his shoulder. Inside were stacks of yellow tubes made out of heavy paper and surrounded by clear plastic to prevent leakage.
The man who had returned to the barn came out carrying a cardboard carton. He set it down next to the dynamite. Reynolds opened that box. Inside were several two-inch-long aluminum tubes with the diameter of a pencil. Reynolds looked up at Bob.
“I want to test one of the blasting caps and one of the dynamite sticks,” he said.
“Be my guest.”
Reynolds’s hand hovered over the detonators. Then it dipped down and plucked out one of the tubes. After examining it, he selected a stick of dynamite. Then he turned to Ali.
“Let’s see what you’ve learned,” he said in Urdu as he handed over the blasting cap and the stick of dynamite.
Ali’s chest puffed with pride. As he went to the van, he vowed to show Steve how much he appreciated the American’s trust.
Ali returned with a shovel and a length of lamp cord. He took one wire from the blasting cap and attached it to one portion of the two-part wire in the cord. Then he attached a second part of the cap to the other part of the lamp-cord wire and stuck the detonator into the dynamite. When he finished, he looked at Steve. Reynolds nodded his approval.
Ali walked far away from everyone into the field at the side of the barn. Steve followed. Bob and his bodyguards stayed near the entrance to the barn. Ali stopped when he found a spot in the yard where the dirt was soft. He dug down deep and buried the blasting cap and the dynamite. Then he carried the other end of the lamp cord to the van and popped the hood. Steve followed. Ali attached the ends of the exposed lamp-cord wire to the positive and negative terminals of the car battery. There was an explosion. A geyser of dirt flew into the air. In the pasture behind the barn, the horses panicked and the sheep froze.
“Have your boys get the rest of the goods and put it in the van,” Reynolds told Bob.
Bob turned to his bodyguards and pointed at the open boxes. “Seal that shit up and bring out the rest of the boxes.”
The bodyguards picked up the open boxes and returned to the barn.
Steve turned to Ali. “Good job,” he said in Urdu. “Now bring me the gym bag and the duct tape.”
Moments after Ali handed him the bag and the tape he’d taken from the van, Bob’s men reemerged from the barn carrying the first two boxes, which had been resealed with duct tape, and several other boxes containing dynamite and blasting caps. While Bob checked the money in the gym bag, Steve opened each box to make sure of the contents, then resealed the boxes with the duct tape.
“What you boys fixing to do with this shit?” Bob asked with a grin, knowing damn well that Reynolds wasn’t going to tell him.
Reynolds let his eyes flick across the Baltimore Ravens logo on Bob’s T-shirt and grinned.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Bob, but you’re going to be pleasantly surprised when the time comes.”
W hen they got back to the house, Reynolds parked the van next to the side door.
“Have the others help you unload the van, and bring everything into the basement,” Reynolds told Ali.
When the three other members of the cell came out of the house, Reynolds opened the back of the van. Stacked in the back were four trays identical to the ones the men carried around their necks when they sold food and drinks in the stands during the Redskins games. Reynolds told the men to bring the trays to the basement after they brought down the blasting caps and the dynamite.
When everyone was downstairs, Reynolds ignored the explosives and put one of the trays on a table. The men were silent, very tense, and totally focused on the tray. Reynolds removed the top and revealed a hidden compartment lined with ball bearings, which were glued to the bottom of the tray. Next to the ball bearings was a space large enough for two sticks of dynamite and a detonator. A nine-volt battery was already in place.
After Reynolds explained to Ali how to attach the dynamite, detonators, and battery so that the tray would be primed to explode, he slid aside two panels on opposite sides of the outside of the tray revealing two red buttons.
“Each of you must push both buttons at the same time to set off the explosives,” he told the four men. “This way, no tray will explode accidentally.”
Reynolds’s features hardened into a mask of hate. “During the game, you’ll carry your tray into the stands and inflict horror on the infidels. Remember, this game will be televised to American troops in their bases around the world. They will see the cost of their unholy crusade. We will bring their war home. We will make them suffer.”
Chapter Twenty-one
After days of being raped and beaten, Dana was numb to almost all sensation. She no longer smelled the dank odor of mold on the basement walls or the stench from the foul water that pooled against them. She didn’t shiver when the chill air stroked her naked, battered body. She was dead to the pain caused by each thrust of the meth cook who was inside her.
There were, however, sensations she was capable of experiencing. There was the tactile pleasure she got from holding the smooth, cool rounded glass of the broken beer bottle the meth cook had foolishly discarded in his haste to satisfy his sexual desires. There was the joy she felt when she drove its jagged edge into the meth cook’s face and watched blood erupt from his eye socket. And there was the rage that gave her the strength to slash his face and throat until he was dead.
As the biker fell toward Dana, his lacerated head on a collision course with her face, she shot up in bed and screamed. It took a few seconds for her to realize that she had been dreaming. Dana fell back on the bed. Her breathing was ragged, and she was soaked with sweat. If Jake had been home, he would have comforted her until her night terrors smoothed out, but Jake was in Afghanistan, and she had to deal with her personal demons alone, in the dark.
During her yearlong stay in the mental hospital, Dana had learned how to deal with the horror of her captivity and the insane violence that had characterized her revenge against the men who had imprisoned her. She doubted that she would ever shake loose the graphic memories of her days in captivity, but those memories no longer had the power to paralyze her.
The nightmares had come less frequently by the time she was released from the hospital. For a while, she thought there might be a time when she was completely free of them, but they kept coming. At first, the nightmares had terrified her, because dreaming about the rapes was like being raped again. After a while, the nightmares made her furious, because the bikers were stealing a part of her life each night and she could not kill them again. Now the night terrors depressed her. They robbed her of sleep and left her exhausted.
Dana walked into the kitchen. She was tempted to unscrew the cap from the bottle of scotch Jake kept in their liquor cabinet, but she knew better than to go there. Instead, she filled a glass with ice-cold water and carried it into the living room. She sank down on the couch, closed her eyes, and held the glass to her forehead. The cold felt good.
Dana’s flashbacks and nightmares were usually triggered by stress. So what had triggered her dream? Was it her fear that something would happen to Jake? She loved Jake. For a long time, she could not tolerate even the thought of a man touching her. Jake had understood that, and he had been there for her anyway. It had taken her a long time to open up to him and admit that she loved him, because love made you vulnerable. Jake’s assignments were usually in places where violent death was common, and Dana suffered until he was home again and safe.
And then there was her business, which was not going well. All of the notoriety she had gotten from the articles in Exposed about the incidents involving President Christopher Farrington and Supreme Court Justice Felicia
