her throat. She could taste blood in her mouth, and that frightened her more than anything else. “Lee, can you hear me? Say something. Please, just say something.”
There was still no response. A sudden flurry of voices outside the car jolted the secretary of state back to reality. She was hit by a wave of relief but then realized that the voices weren’t speaking English. There was a banging on the door, then a strange noise that she couldn’t decipher. It almost sounded as if something was being affixed to the exterior of the car, and if that was the case, it could only be one thing. She felt another sick wave of fear, but she just couldn’t move; there was nothing to do but wait for the end. The voices moved away as suddenly as they’d appeared. Fitzgerald could hear running feet and the screams of injured civilians. She was trying to figure out what to do next when her body was wracked by a fit of coughing. Then she realized that she hadn’t made a sound; it was Patterson who’d been coughing on top of her. She could feel his chest rising and falling against her back, but his breathing was erratic and labored.
“Lee?” She tried to turn to face him, but the seat was wedged too tightly against her shoulder. It was almost impossible to keep the panic out of her voice. “How bad is it? Can you move?”
He muttered something she couldn’t understand. There was a flash of searing light, followed by a loud bang. Fitzgerald blacked out again, but only for a second. Coming back to herself, she realized that the passenger-side door—the door closest to her feet—had been blown off its hinges. Although she could no longer hear out of her right ear, the desperate screams of pain and fear were suddenly louder. There was a sustained rattling noise, the sound of automatic gunfire, and some of the screams stopped abruptly. Fitzgerald felt the weight on her back shift without warning, Patterson’s body sliding down her own. Then the weight was off completely, just as a pair of hands clamped round her ankles. She cried out and tried to kick the hands away, but it was no good. Arms were waiting for her as she was pulled roughly from the remains of the Suburban, and then she was dragged clear of the vehicle.
A pair of men hauled her across the road, supporting her with one arm on either side, their free hands gripping hers. As her feet scraped over the shattered glass that covered the asphalt, one of her shoes came loose. The splinters instantly tore through her nylons and into her foot. A scream rose in her throat, but she bit her lip and held it back in time, not wanting to give them the satisfaction. Turning her head to the right, she saw that Patterson was being moved by another pair of armed men. He was unconscious, his body limp, chin lowered to his chest. Once they were clear of the devastation, she was dropped into a painful heap on a patch of dead grass. Patterson was deposited a few feet away. The secretary of state looked back to the vehicle she’d just been pulled out of, and what she saw caused bile to rise in her throat.
The Suburban’s engine compartment was a smoking ruin. The reinforced windshield was completely opaque, damaged by the force of the explosion, but Fitzgerald could see through the passengerside window, which had completely blown out. Mike Petrina’s head was partially caved in, covered in blood and lolling forward against the dash, which had been pushed into his chest. The man charged with her protection was clearly dead, and that was the worst blow yet. With Petrina at her side, Fitzgerald had never felt vulnerable; it had never occurred to her that something could happen as long as he was alive. He was just too capable. But now he was gone, and a man was walking toward her. . . .
The tall figure was dressed in what appeared to be a Pakistani army uniform, but his head was covered by a black balaclava. All Fitzgerald could see was his eyes, which were a flat shade of amber brown. He was holding a gun in his right hand, and as he drew near, he slowed by the prostrate form of an injured woman. She lifted a bloodied hand and said something that Fitzgerald couldn’t hear, but she was clearly pleading for help. The man paused, looking down at her, then lifted the gun and fired once into her forehead. A fist-sized mass of bone, blood, and tissue spattered over the pavement. The man kept moving forward as if nothing had happened, impervious to what lay behind him, a nightmarish scene of burning vehicles, maimed people, and mangled bodies.
As horrendous as the sight was, Brynn Fitzgerald couldn’t look away. Her mouth was hanging open, a scream frozen in her throat, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the man who had just killed an innocent woman in cold blood. She had just witnessed—and survived—a brutal attack, but it had happened so fast that it hadn’t really hit her yet. None of it could compare to what she had just seen; the casual, routine way in which the man had carried out the act was simply overwhelming. Now the killer was walking toward her,
“Brynn.” She swung her head to the right, gasping as a bolt of pain shot through her neck. Patterson had risen to his knees, and the two men behind him had their hands on his shoulders. Fitzgerald wasn’t sure if they were keeping him down or holding him up; she was just relieved to see he had regained consciousness.
“Brynn, don’t fight them,” Patterson rasped. He was bleeding badly from a cut beneath his right eye, which was swollen shut, and more blood was streaming down from a wound on his scalp. His suit was torn and stained, but he didn’t look scared in the least. “Help is on the way. A GPS signal went out to the backup team when the first rocket hit . . . The technology is standard issue for embassy vehicles. All the cars are fitted with it. Reinforcements will be here any minute.”
“They won’t arrive in time,” a voice announced in perfect English. It was the man who’d just killed the injured woman. He had stopped a few feet away, and his gaze was alternating between them. “You have no chance of being rescued. You have no chance of escape. At this point, I’m afraid you only have one option, and that is to cooperate.”
“What do you mean, ‘cooperate’?” the ambassador demanded, his voice getting stronger and more indignant with each passing syllable.
“Who the hell are you? Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“Nothing from you,” the man responded calmly. “In fact, we don’t need you at all.”
He nodded to one of the soldiers standing next to Patterson. The subordinate stepped back to allow for the length of his rifle, which he brought to his shoulder in one clean movement. The muzzle was aimed directly at the back of the ambassador’s head.
“No!” Fitzgerald screamed. She got to her feet and staggered forward, but she was quickly restrained on either side. Her heart was pumping so hard, she thought it would burst. She didn’t know exactly what was happening here, but she couldn’t let her oldest, closest friend die right in front of her eyes. Not if she could stop it.
“Don’t hurt him!
The man with the handgun looked at her steadily for a long moment. Then, without warning, he peeled off the balaclava with his free hand.
“Oh my God,” Fitzgerald breathed. She looked hard at the man’s face, unwilling to believe her eyes. “I know you. . . .”
“Yes, I can see you do.” Amari Saifi smiled gently; there was something about his voice and manner that was eerily pleasant. “Tell me, Dr. Fitzgerald . . . Why shouldn’t we kill this man?”
“He’s a senior member of the Foreign Service,” she said, thinking frantically, “and he’s very wealthy. If it’s money you want, he could be useful to you. If you intend to keep me alive, it will be . . . You’ll have two hostages instead of one. Killing him doesn’t help you.” Her voice had been rising steadily, but it couldn’t be helped; she could no longer restrain her panic. “Don’t you see that?
“It doesn’t necessarily hurt us, either, and we only came for you.”
Having made his instructions clear, Saifi nodded to the man with the rifle.
Fitzgerald howled in helpless rage and tried to pull away from her captors. At the same time, Patterson opened his mouth to speak. He didn’t manage a single word. There was a sharp crack as the 7.62mm round tore through his face, leaving a gaping wound in place of his left cheek. There was a strange moment where everything seemed to freeze, after which his lifeless body pitched forward onto the grass. Fitzgerald just stared in horror for a few seconds. Then it hit her like a solid blow to the chest, and she dropped to her knees, a low, sick moan rising up in her throat. She was in shock, completely numb, and she missed what happened next: the rapid approach of an unmarked van from the north, where the road was still clear; the sound of distant sirens and the steady blat of helicopter blades; the Algerian’s rapid commands carrying over the din. However, despite her semiconscious state, she couldn’t miss the needle that was jabbed forcefully into her right arm. The plunger went down, and the needle came out. Then the dark swarmed in, swallowing her in an endless black sea.
