Blowback Read online

  It looked like he was their prisoner. But he had called them in to rescue him.

  He had been undercover in Afghanistan for months, inside the Taliban, eventually close to its top leadership. He had participated in terrorist operations. He had almost been killed several times. And he had narrowly avoided the nightmare that haunted his sleep.

  Most importantly, Faraz had accomplished his mission, called in the drone strike, setting the terrorists back, he believed, by months, if not years.

  On the chopper, they had Faraz lie down on a gurney so a medical team could check him over. He protested when they lashed his chest and legs down, but they said it was for safety.

  He threw a look at the medic when he started the IV. The man said, “Hydration, sir.” But those were the last words Faraz heard before he went under.

  The Black Hawk stayed low and banked hard, descending the Hindu Kush into Pakistan.

  Chapter Two

  Bridget walked along the hospital corridor, her navy-blue power suit covering her insecurity. She was about to take her boyfriend Will home to recuperate from having his left leg just about blown off in Afghanistan.

  As the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s new secret counterterrorism unit, Task Force Epsilon, Bridget Davenport had tracked terrorists, faced down four-star generals, and argued with the president of the United States. That seemed tame now, compared to taking Will Jackson back to her place for the long term.

  She stopped to check her reflection in a window with a curtain drawn behind it. Bridget had finally made time to get her light brown hair cut above her shoulders. Her suit was tailored to her trim frame and matched her eyes, and her white silk blouse was unbuttoned just the right amount. She adjusted the lapel.

  Bridget smiled at some wounded troops gathered at the far end of the hall who were clearly checking her out. Then she took a breath and knocked on Will’s open door.

  “Hi, babe.” He was freshly shaved and his black hair was trimmed tight to his head. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt that hugged his muscles and set off his skin. Will was sitting in an upholstered visitor’s chair. He flashed a broad smile when Bridget came in, complete with his lone, right-side dimple.

  “Babe?” She stopped just inside the room and cocked her head. “Is that a promotion from kiddo?”

  “I guess it is. Now, come here so I can pin it on you.”

  Bridget walked over and kissed him. Their hug was awkward. He couldn’t stand because of his injury, and no one was saying when he might be able to. She could only hope his SEAL training would help him power through.

  After months away from Will during his deployment, Bridget had visited him most evenings since he’d arrived at the Bethesda military hospital a week earlier. Physically and mentally, he had good days and bad days. Now, minutes away from getting out of the hospital, this was clearly a good day.

  A nurse appeared at the doorway with a wheelchair and a clipboard. She cleared her throat to interrupt them.

  “Ah,” Will said. “Here is the other woman in my life. Bridget, Nurse Gabby—tough, but unfair.”

  “Hi,” Bridget said.

  “Hello, ma’am. We are just a few signatures away from getting rid of Lieutenant Commander Jackson, and not a moment too soon.” Gabby bent down to hand the clipboard to Will, and he signed his discharge papers. Even wearing flat nurse’s shoes, Gabby was taller than Bridget in her medium heels. Thin, blond, and fresh-faced, Gabby looked maybe twenty-two, if Bridget had to guess.

  While Gabby went over Will’s rehab plan, Bridget scanned the room. It was immaculate. All the monitors were lined up along the wall, ready for the next patient. Will’s duffel and a small backpack waited by the door. Through the window, she saw several other hospital buildings, including the campus centerpiece, a World War Two–era, fifteen-story tower that held hundreds of patient rooms.

  Will handed Bridget his copies of the paperwork, and she deposited them into her purse. Gabby helped Will put on his camo jacket and transfer to the wheelchair.

  “I can take it from here,” Bridget said.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I need to see him all the way out. Hospital rules.”

  “Ladies, ladies, please, don’t fight over me.” Will pulled the duffel onto his lap. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  Bridget picked up the backpack. “Lead on, Nurse Gabby.”

  * * *

  Eight floors below, the small phone vibrated in the pocket of Fatima’s jeans. Her breath caught, and she nearly cut herself with the knife she was using to chop celery for the cafeteria’s lunchtime salad. This was the signal she had prayed for, and also feared.

  “Excuse me, chef,” she said to her boss. “Bathroom break, please.”

  “Okay, but quickly.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Fatima stepped off the stool that made her tall enough to reach the prep table. As she left the kitchen, she wiped her left hand on her apron and used the right to tuck a stray lock of hair into her hijab. The traditional scarf, tight around her face, made her olive cheeks look chubby and accentuated the false smiles she offered colleagues as she made her way to the exit.

  In the hallway, Fatima checked her watch. Three minutes before nine. The signal meant this was the hour that would change the world, cripple the infidels, and end her life in the most virtuous way. Her religious beliefs and personal grievances brought her here. Working with the military people these many months as she smuggled in the components, she had come to hate them more deeply than she thought possible.

  Fatima awakened to the true calling of Islam not long after arriving at George Washington University three years earlier. Her parents spent their life savings to send her to GW from their modest home in Pennsylvania. They were immigrants from Jordan—nice enough, but clueless collaborators with the infidels.

  And they weren’t even her real parents. Her mother and father, may Allah protect them, had died in a Zionist air strike on their refugee camp in Lebanon when Fatima was only two years old. Her so-called parents in Pennsylvania would cry this night, but she long ago convinced herself not to care. It would only prove their treachery.

  Fatima went into the ladies’ dressing room, opened her locker, and knelt in front of it to block the view in case anyone else came in.

  She removed the black rectangular metal controller from a cardboard box hidden under a pile of old magazines and pulled out its long antenna. The device was heavy, with a powerful battery inside—its weight matching the gravitas of what it would enable her to do.

  Fatima flipped its power switch. The red light glowed. She caressed the bulb with her thumb, felt its warmth. She stared into the empty locker, letting her eyes lose focus, and breathed in a steady rhythm as she had been taught.

  All fear was gone now. She was in Allah’s hands. The task was simple and much rehearsed. Fatima glanced at the numbers counting off on the watch.

  * * *

  Bridget, Will, and Gabby were delayed in the small lobby on his floor. There was some sort of medical emergency. All the elevators had been put under manual control to get the right people to the right place as soon as possible.

  A crowd gathered. Bridget checked her BlackBerry. Nothing urgent, but she knew that wouldn’t last. It never did. She needed to take Will back to her apartment and get to the Pentagon before the next crisis hit.

  She put her hand on Will’s shoulder, and he put his hand on top of it. Neither of them was good at waiting, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Finally, an elevator arrived. Bridget, Will, and Gabby were the last to board.

  * * *

  Fatima thought about the others. She had never met them, didn’t know who they were. But she knew they worked in different parts of the hospital complex. They had smuggled in their components, as she had. Now, they were crouching by their lockers or hiding in closets or bathroom stalls, ready to join her in the greatest strike of Allah’s holy jihad.

  As the seconds ticked off, Fatima moved her thumb to
the small button next to the light. At 8:59:50, she said the Shahada, the affirmation of faith, the words a Muslim is supposed to recite before dying.

  “La ilaha illa-lah, Mohammed rasulu-lah.” There is no God but God. Mohammed is the messenger of God.

  The time turned over to 9:00:00. Fatima took a breath, closed her eyes, pressed the button, and whispered, “Allahu akbar.”

  Chapter Three

  Bridget heard the first boom. Inside the brick and concrete shaft, it was hard to tell what it was. Then a huge explosion shook them and seemed to push the elevator against the shaft wall and back against the opposite side.

  The crush of falling bodies tipped Will’s wheelchair onto the legs of the man next to him. Bridget’s head smacked into the door, and on the rebound, she fell onto Will. His chair collapsed, sandwiching him inside it. He cried out and dropped the duffel onto the floor. The lights went off, and people screamed in pain and panic.

  The elevator seemed to hang in space, then plunged downward, accompanied by more screams from its passengers. The handle of Will’s wheelchair pushed into Bridget’s chest. Nurse Gabby was on top of her.

  Then the braking system kicked in, and they came to a screeching halt, the handle digging into Bridget’s ribs. Will’s legs were crushed between the big wheels. The man under him cried out. Pieces of the ceiling came down—the light fixture onto Bridget’s head, the ventilation fan and its motor onto Gabby, who rolled off Bridget in a tangled heap of arms and legs.

  The emergency lights came on. Bridget pushed herself off the handle, easing the pressure on Will. He was holding his bad leg.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Shit. Leg hurts like hell.”

  “Don’t try to get up. You have blood on your cheek.”

  Will wiped it away. “Yours, I think.” He pointed toward Bridget’s head.

  She reached up and found blood soaking the hair on the right side. “Jeez.” Bridget reached into her purse. There was nothing she could use on her injury except Will’s discharge papers. She pressed them to the wound and winced.

  “Please. Off me,” the man under Will said. His voice was weak. He appeared to be in his eighties, and he’d borne the weight of three people, plus the wheelchair. Bridget helped Will disengage from the chair and slide off the man onto the floor.

  Gabby was lying behind Will, bleeding from her head and not moving. A man and a woman in scrubs crouched down to take her vitals and assess her injuries. They ordered others to push to the sides, laid her out flat, and started CPR.

  Bridget moved to help them, but the pain in her head spiked, and she felt dizzy. She steadied herself against the wheelchair, one hand still holding the papers to her head. She rubbed her chest. Broken ribs, she figured.

  A navy captain in fatigues was trying to open the gray steel doors, and Bridget turned to help him. No go.

  They heard two more distant explosions, then another, much closer, that rocked the elevator again. Everyone reached out to hold onto something.

  An older, red-haired woman in the back of the elevator was crying. “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

  Bridget answered. “Try to calm down, ma’am. They’ll get us out soon.”

  “Good question, though,” Will said.

  “Must be an attack, so many explosions.” Bridget took stock of what happened. She had heard half a dozen explosions in the last minute or so.

  “Hey! Help us!” the captain shouted. Others joined in. “Help! Help!”

  There was no response.

  “They won’t hear us, but they’ll know we’re in here,” Bridget said. “From the sound of it, they have lots of other priorities.”

  The man in scrubs—Dr. Carlton, according to the stitching on his pocket—knelt over Gabby and performed chest compressions. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  A woman in a nurse’s uniform sat next to Gabby’s head, stroking her hair and delivering the breaths at the proper intervals. Their actions were professional, practiced.

  “Let me help you,” Bridget said, moving into position on the other side of Gabby.

  “Ma’am, you should sit down with that head wound,” Dr. Carlton said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” Carlton resumed his work.

  Bridget felt a wave of dizziness and sat on Will’s duffel. Bridget’s head hurt like hell, and she got shooting pains in her chest with every breath. She reached up to wipe away a bead of sweat running down her cheek and realized it was blood.

  A high-flying counterterrorism expert, now a terror attack victim. She didn’t like the sound of that. And she especially didn’t like being trapped and unable to spring into action. She reached for her purse and took out her phone. No signal. “Damn.”

  “One . . . two . . . three,” Dr. Carlton continued.

  Will was talking quietly with a young blonde, also on the floor, who had ceiling debris in her hair and tears streaking her makeup. She was saying something about coming to the hospital to visit her boyfriend. Will was telling her it would be all right. The older man who had been crushed under them sat with his back against the wood-paneled wall, holding his left leg.

  Dr. Carlton and the nurse stopped working on Gabby and stood up. They bowed their heads. The doctor bent down and put a handkerchief over Gabby’s face.

  Bridget reached out to take Will’s hand. “Oh, God,” she said. Bridget had seen death before. Too much of it. But it was not supposed to happen here, not like this.

  Will held her hand. “We’ll get those bastards,” he said. “We have to.”

  * * *

  President Andrew Martelli was having breakfast with the congressional leadership in his private West Wing dining room. The waiters in black pants and vests, white shirts, and bow ties were removing the remains of bacon and eggs with croissants and fruit salad. The time for small talk was almost over.

  The House minority leader was finishing a story about one of his down-home constituents, probably not a real person, designed to illustrate why the president was wrong about trade policy. Martelli was preparing a polite but dismissive response.

  Two Secret Service agents and Chief of Staff Greg Capman came through the door to the president’s left with an urgency that drew everyone’s attention. The minority leader stopped mid-punchline.

  Capman whispered into Martelli’s ear. “Protocol One, sir. No drill.”

  “No drill?” The president’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Martelli said, “I have to go.” He got up.

  The others pushed their chairs back to do the same. “What’s happening?” the minority leader asked.

  The president was halfway to the door, flanked by the agents.

  Hurrying to keep up, Capman answered for him. “We’re not sure yet. We’ll keep you posted.” By the time he finished talking, they were already in the hallway.

  Martelli turned toward the Situation Room, but Capman grabbed his arm. “No, sir. The bunker, for now.” A Secret Service agent was already indicating the way, and another was holding the elevator open at the end of the hall.

  Martelli exhaled, turned, and moved quickly. Over his objections, they made him practice this on a monthly basis.

  * * *

  Bridget rested her aching head in her right hand. Her left hand was still holding onto Will. She hated surrendering to her situation. Hated the pain. Hated the awful people who would do this. She wiped the continuing trail of blood on her face and fought off another wave of dizziness. The air was already getting stuffy.

  The red-haired woman slid down the wall, knees to her chest. She started keening, rocking forward and back. “I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here.”

  Bridget struggled to her feet, with one hand on Will’s wheelchair for support. She leaned toward the woman and took her hand. “It’ll be all, right ma’am. We all want to get out. And we will. It’ll just be a little longer.”

 
; “I can’t breathe.”

  “I know it’s tough. Just go slow. In . . . out. Nice and easy.”

  The woman complied.

  “Good. Now, close your eyes, take yourself somewhere else. It won’t be long now.”

  Bridget turned toward the front of the elevator, her eyes passing over Gabby. How could this happen? It was her job to prevent such attacks. Well, it had been her job until two days ago. Now it was her job to respond.

  * * *

  When Martelli and Capman came out of the elevator thirty feet under the White House, the small military staff on duty in the secure command center had the TVs on and the video link open to the team upstairs.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the president said to the empty room.

  “Attacks in at least three cities around the world,” came the voice of National Security Council duty officer Jay Pruitt from the Situation Room. He turned toward the camera to face the president, adjusting his dark-framed glasses and bow tie. “They hit Bethesda Naval Hospital big-time, sir. Over half a dozen bombs. Unknown number of casualties.” He took a piece of paper from someone off camera and glanced at it. “Reports of multiple bombs and heavy casualties in London and Paris, too. All around the same time. Within the last few minutes.”

  The president sat heavily in his leather chair at the head of the table. “How the hell . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked at the ceiling.

  He was back on task about two seconds later. Martelli looked into the camera next to the TV screen. “All forces on high alert, maximum security everywhere . . . bases, airports, everywhere. All resources to Bethesda, and whatever help we can provide in London and Paris.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the voice of the president’s chief military liaison, a three-star general. Martelli saw him on another screen, hunched over a laptop computer at the far end of the Situation Room.

  “And get me the hell out of here,” the president added.

  “Working on it, sir,” the general said. “We need to be sure there are no further threats.”