MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, EVENING
Trapped in the claustrophobic hell of the small, rancid underground tunnel, Alex pushed with her arms. She prayed. Oh, she prayed! She almost prayed out loud, and she cursed herself for getting this far along. She stretched out her arms with every inch she could, dug her fingernails into the sandstone that formed the floor of the narrow passage, and she pulled with all the strength she could muster.
Nothing.
She tried again. There were tears forming in her eyes.
Nothing.
She tried a third and final time, pulling in her breath, trying to scrape through.
Nothing.
Then, something.
She groped along. She moved an inch. Then a few more inches. Then, ahead of her, a small trickle of sand and a mini cave-in.
She fought to suppress the panic. Once, years ago, she had read about miners who had been trapped in a cave-in. She felt in her gut the terror of their claustrophobic ordeal as water rose past their knees, their waists, their shoulders, their necks until they had only a few inches of breathing room at which time rescuers found them.
Well, that was them. This was her. She closed her eyes against the dust ahead of her and figured she was dead.
But she wasn’t. The dust had loosened the tight walls of the passage. She pushed the sandy dirt away and she started moving again, pushing the lantern forward with her head.
Then suddenly she could move a few inches at a time. Crawling on her stomach like an infantry soldier under live rounds, she was able to push several inches ahead at a time. Then her motion was unabated. She pushed forward with her knees and traveled several feet. The other end of the tunnel loomed in front of her.
Six feet. Then three. Then two and then her head nudged the lantern forward and it rolled forward and dropped with a clack. But she could still see the light of the lantern. And she could hear a sound of a person working.
Or something.
She reached the end of the tunnel with her hands. She dug in with her fingers and pulled herself free, the greatest feeling she had ever encountered in her life. And then she was on her feet, covered with dirt and crap and coughing and so delirious with joy over just being free and alive that she was almost oblivious to why she was in this damp, dark chamber and what she was looking for.
She coughed again.
Then she saw that there was one more small chamber where there was a light similar to hers. She managed a glance at the GPS. She knew that she was under the embassy. She heard footsteps.
SIXTY-EIGHT
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 18, LATE EVENING
Mahoud had been looking forward all day to a shower after working in the hot kitchen of an Ethiopian restaurant on the Calle de Montevideo. He had been jittery all day but had calmed as night had fallen and as midnight came and went. Perhaps the whole thing was just one tremendous mistake, he thought to himself. He still harbored his deep hatred of the United States and Western culture, but he was half-relieved that the big blast hadn’t happened.
Once the bomb went off, nothing would ever be the same again. He would be frightened of every shadow and would jump at every knock on the door. Every day would be like this one, except worse. Planting the thing had been one thing, almost a challenge to see if it could be done. The actual detonation of it was something else, something secretly he hoped would never happen. But he couldn’t tell anyone that. He would have seemed like a traitor.
He thought of all of this as he walked the final block to his home in the Arab quarter, past the closed fruit and produce stands that would open again at dawn. It was now past 11:00 p.m. and he was looking forward to bathing.
But the end of the bombing mission had him spooked. Everything bothered him today. Well, at least he felt safe in his own neighborhood. As safe as one could be.
He cautiously approached his doorway. He saw a problem, but not an unusual one. There was a vagrant asleep on the sidewalk, a slight man in an old coat that was too hot for this weather. But there were vagabundos all over this neighborhood. There had been one lying in this doorstep for a couple of weeks and no one did anything. And these bums wore everything they had all the time.
Mahoud cut a wide berth around the downtrodden figure. Under Mahoud’s own coat, he had a kitchen paring knife, just in case of trouble.
He stepped around the man and reached his doorway, noting in passing that this was a different bum tonight and the regular man was gone. Well, sic
Images of flaming bodies made him think back to the explosives he had helped plant. He really did have mixed feelings about that charge going off. He really wondered if-
Then he heard his name.
“Mahoud?”
A voice in the darkness spoke softly. He jumped.
In his attention on the hobo, Mahoud had not even noticed a man sitting on the steps to the next building. He was a sturdy man but obviously way out of place in this neighborhood.
The man had a foreign face. Asian, of some sort. Japanese. Chinese. Who could tell the difference, anyway?
“Mahoud?” the man said again.
Mahoud’s hands went to his knife and held it under the jacket. But the man held up his hands to show that they were empty and that he meant no harm.
“Who are you?” Mahoud asked in Spanish.
I’m a friend of Jean-Claude,” Peter Chang answered in Spanish. “I bring you news.”
Mahoud answered cautiously. “I don’t know any Jean-Claude,” he said.
Peter Chang laughed. “Of course, you do, my friend,” he said. “Don’t be so frightened. Your entire group, you all are under
A pause as Mahoud considered it.
“What is the news?” he finally asked.
“Come closer,” Chang said.
“Tell me from there,” Mahoud said, taking one step toward the doorway.
“I’d rather not,” said Chang.
“What is the news?” Mahoud repeated with insistence.
“The news is that everyone will die tonight,” Peter Chang said.
Mahoud flinched, wondering just how that was meant. Then there was a further explanation of the news. The vagrant had risen to his feet behind Mahoud and had slid out of his coat. The vagrant had slid, in fact, into his own true identity, that of Charles Wong. And Wong, like Chang, was there to conduct business.
Wong slapped one hand across Mahoud’s face, holding a filthy rag to his mouth and his nose. Mahoud fought back with his elbow and tried to kick at the instep and shin of the man behind him. But Wong had two hands. The
