Hakim could tell there was some disagreement between the two. “You saw it burn down?”
“No,” Ahmed said, sheepishly.
“The house caught fire faster than we expected,” Karim said. “People were bound to come. The RV was in danger of catching fire.”
“So the barn didn’t burn down?”
“We used some of the extra fuel and poured it on the ground between the house and the barn. I’m sure it caught fire.”
“The fuel cans were yellow,” Hakim said.
“What does that matter?” Karim asked.
“It was diesel fuel.”
“So?”
“Diesel fuel is combustible, not flammable.”
“It still burns.”
It did, but not anywhere nearly as easily as gasoline. Hakim didn’t have the energy to explain. The fuel had likely soaked into the ground and dissipated before it could give off enough vapor to ignite. “What did you do with the extra provisions?”
“There wasn’t time to deal with them,” Karim said. “But I am sure they are destroyed.”
He really was a pigheaded idiot. “And if they haven’t been destroyed, they will find the motorcycles, weapons, ammunition, food, fuel, passports, cash, and the two backpacks that I prepared for each of you.” Hakim tried to shake his head, but it hurt too much. “If the FBI isn’t already there, they are on their way.” He handed Karim the hand-held GPS device. “Head west. Stop at the first gas station you see and then take Highway 54 South. We need to get moving. And remember… only diesel fuel. No regular petrol.”
CHAPTER 35
SENATOR Lonsdale wasn’t entirely sure why she was going, but as she entered the lobby of the Watergate Complex South apartment building there was no turning back. Harry the doorman had already seen her and was on the move. From the outside she looked put together and ten years younger than her fifty-eight years, but inside she felt fragile, vulnerable, and beat. Even so she continued across the lobby on a course that would carry her toward the elevator bank and Harry, who was now waiting for her with a sad expression on his face.
“Good evening, Senator.”
“Evening, Harry,” Lonsdale said without much energy.
“Sorry about everything,” the doorman said sincerely. “I know you lost quite a few friends.”
Lonsdale was on her fourth day in a row of funerals and wakes. The pain of watching families torn apart was difficult, to say the least, but Lonsdale had to carry the additional burden of knowing that it was her hounding of the CIA that had more than likely opened the door for the terrorists. “Thank you, Harry. And my condolences to you as well. I know Senator Safford cared a great deal for you.”
“I’ve been here eighteen years, and he’s been here the entire time.” Harry choked up a bit. “I’m going to miss him something fierce.”
“We all are, Harry. We all are.” Lonsdale patted him on the arm. “You take care of yourself.”
“You too, ma’am.”
Lonsdale took the elevator to the sixth floor, and when the doors opened she stepped out and stopped. She looked to her right and didn’t move. She almost got back in the elevator, but the doors closed behind her and then the apartment door to her right opened. Senator Carol Ogden poked her head out and said, “Darling, you weren’t thinking of leaving, were you?”
Lonsdale looked at her fellow senator’s hot pink velour sweat outfit and put a fake smile on her perfectly lined lips. “Not at all.”
“You could have fooled me,” the senator from California said. “And you look like you need a drink.”
“Twist my arm,” Lonsdale said as she entered the apartment. There in the living room were two other women, Fran Burton and Amy Pringle, both United States senators. Together they were the Four Gals. That was the name their sexist colleagues in the Senate had given them sixteen years ago. In that time their ranks had grown to seven seats, but the fifth, sixth, and seventh female senators were all from the other party, so it was decided to keep their little group at four. Schedules were tough, but for sixteen years they got together at least one evening a month.
In the beginning, they played cards, smoked, and drank. Lonsdale figured it was their way of showing the men that they had no problem keeping up with them. Both Burton and Pringle had given up smoking about ten years earlier and that coincided with their starting a book club. That lasted a few years and then petered out after they realized they all liked different kinds of books and none of them were about to change the other’s mind. Lately they’d gone back to cards and drinking chardonnay. Mostly, though, they got together to network, to make sure they were watching each other’s back and offering support where it was needed.
Ogden handed Lonsdale a glass of chardonnay and in her smoky voice said, “Harry told me you seemed a little down.”
Lonsdale took the glass. “I think we all probably are… aren’t we?”
Burton and Pringle were starting a game of Thirty-one. Burton started dealing cards and said, “I haven’t slept more than an hour or two each night. I keep waking up feeling like I can’t breathe. Like I’m being suffocated.”
Pringle picked up her cards and said, “Me, too. I keep thinking… what was it like for them? What did they feel? Were they buried under the rubble and then slowly suffocated, or worse, burned to death?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing.”
Pringle said, “I was supposed to meet Greg Givens from the Sierra Club there for lunch, but canceled at the last minute. He and his wife and their kids all came over this weekend to thank me. We all sat around and cried.”
Ogden shot Pringle a look that could kill and then jerked her head toward Lonsdale. Pringle, who wasn’t always quick on the uptake, realized what she’d done. While she had canceled lunch and saved a man, Lonsdale had decided to skip lunch and condemned a man by sending her chief of staff to take her place. “I’m sorry, Barb. I wasn’t thinking.”
Lonsdale nodded, took a massive gulp of chardonnay, and then lost it. She had a full-blown meltdown. Ogden took her wine from her, afraid that she was about to spill it all over the carpeting, and steered her to the nearby couch and had her sit. The other two put their cards down and huddled around their bereaved friend. After a few minutes Lonsdale got her breathing under control and managed to say, “I feel so guilty.”
Ogden countered by telling her it was nonsense. “There was nothing you could have done. This was fate and nothing else. You’re a survivor. You always have been a survivor.”
Through sniffles, Lonsdale said, “And I have survivor’s guilt. I sent Ralph to his death. He was my best friend and he tried to…” She couldn’t finish the sentence and once again began sobbing.
Ogden patted her on the back a bit too roughly. She looked more as if she were trying to get her to spit out a piece of meat than to comfort her. “This is foolish. Ralph, of all people, would not want to see you like this.”
“Ralph tried to warn me,” Lonsdale said through tear-filled eyes. “He thought it was foolish the way we hounded the CIA and Mitch Rapp. He tried to get me to see who the real enemy was.”
Ogden frowned. “Ralph was a prince of a man, but he was… shall we say, morally inconsistent.”
“He was right,” Lonsdale countered.
“Well, I’m not so sure about that.” Ogden took a couple of steps back and placed her hands on her ample hips. “What I’m about to say does not leave this room. Do you understand me?” After all three women had nodded, Ogden said, “This whole thing is wrong to me. The timing… everything. You were supposed to be at lunch that day, Barbara, and so were you, Amy. You’re two of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the CIA. Just minutes after the explosions, Mitch Rapp and this Nash thug just happen to stumble across some immigrant who has the IQ of a Labrador, and then they proceed to beat a confession out of him.” She shook her head emphatically. “I’m not
