Seconds later, John reached the same spot and screamed to the female African American Prince Georges County deputy who’d emerged from the SUV, “I’m FBI! I got this. Get to the Grace’s Mandarin to your fallen officer.”
He didn’t wait for a response and ran up the pier, passing the enormous sand playground that contained a silver head and limbs sticking out from the sand, as if a giant were emerging from the ground. Known as The Awakening, it was another sight to behold at the National Harbor on a normal day that didn’t involve gunfire and mayhem.
The pier was several hundred feet long and ended in one of the biggest attractions in the area – the Capital Wheel, a one-hundred-and-eighty-foot-tall Ferris wheel that provided views of the Potomac, Alexandria, the National Monument, the Capitol, and even the National Cathedral far away up the hill in northwest DC.
This late in the afternoon so close to dusk, there was a lull of pedestrians on the pier, and both men ran around them like football players conducting cone drills.
John was within twenty yards of Samuel when the fleeing man reached the end of the pier and the enormous wheel above him. He shouted, “Just stop for God’s sakes! There’s nowhere left to run. I won’t shoot you if you surrender.” His Kimber was trained on Samuel’s back, but the big gondolas kept spinning behind him, and he didn’t want to risk striking one.
Samuel turned as the few pedestrians in the area scattered at the appearance of the two men. John’s peripheral vision caught a teenaged couple pull out cell phones and begin recording. Perfect. Just what I need. To be on Tik Tok.
“You’re right, but it doesn’t matter. This country has no place for me. I’d rather die than spend time in one of your prisons.”
“Well, I know what the prisons are like in Sudan,” John replied, recalling what Logan and Cole Matthews had told him about the black site prison they’d broken out of on their operation in Sudan. “And ours make yours look like wealthy country clubs. You killed a police officer back there, and no matter what happens, you’re going to pay for it. Your only hope is to stop running and get on the ground. Now.”
Samuel contemplated his fate, and he knew that the man spoke the truth. But he also didn’t care. His war had ended with South Sudan’s independence. Asim’s first cousin, he’d already been in America working as a taxi driver in DC when Omar had approached him months ago with an opportunity for vengeance. He’d tired of feeling like a cliché, a foreigner driving a cab in a rich country’s capital. The amount of money Omar had offered would have provided him a comfortable life until the end of his years, but that was not to be, and he knew it. But he also knew he’d rather die on his own terms than surrender on his knees in front of this American. I can die with honor, he thought, and responded with one resolute word: “No.” He turned and ran up the steps that led to the loading platform of the gondolas.
“I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” John muttered to himself as he reached the steps just as Samuel disappeared on the back side of the stairs. John bounded up the steps, reached the top, and leapt over a railing that divided the wide steps into multiple boarding lanes that led back down to the platform.
“Hey! What are you doing?” a white male in his thirties, one of the Capital Wheel operators, exclaimed more in surprise than fear at the appearance of the skinny black man with a bloody white shirt.
The operator stepped in front of Samuel, even as John clambered down the steps. He looked past Samuel at John, saw the pistol and FBI badge dangling from his neck, and said, “What the hell?”
Samuel punched the man in the face, stepped forward, and delivered a violent push that sent the staggered man flying across the platform. He landed on his haunches and lay back, dazed at the violent attack.
The only good thing about the assault was that it provided John the extra seconds he needed to holster his Colt 1911 and close the distance to Samuel. His prey heard his approach above the mechanical hum of the Ferris wheel’s four fifty-horsepower engines, and he turned his head just as John crashed into his back and sent the skinny man flying to his knees.
Multiple white steel canopies with white, opaque panels covered the space, creating shifting shadows in the fading daylight as the gondolas kept slowly moving down across the platform and back into the air.
“You,” John said to the fallen operator. “Get up and get out of here. Move.” The command shook the man back to reality, and he rose, moving slowly to the steps, holding his jaw where he’d been struck.
When the operator was out of sight, John stood still and waited for Samuel to recover. The man turned to face him, straightening up from the blow John had just delivered.
“Last chance. I won’t ask again.”
Samuel only smiled in a weird, bitter way, as if laughing at himself. “You are correct. At some point, we all run out of chances.”
Samuel rushed forward and threw a flurry of punches aimed at John’s head. John slipped and batted them away, as he found himself against one of the white steel girders supporting a canopy. Samuel suddenly turned to his left and swept his right leg up in a smooth roundhouse kick. John sidestepped it to his left and pushed Samuel’s shoe harder, forcing it to strike the steel girder.
Samuel grunted in pain and brought his leg back to the platform.
“That had to hurt,
