Agents of Treachery – Spy Stories

MEDICAL TRANSPORT SERVICES.

“The stairs’ electric motor! They’ll use that!”

Out! Sami ran crouched alongside moving cars. Fog blurred the van’s windows. Exhaust smogged out the tailpipe: engine running. Driver will be watching side mirrors.

Sami dove under the van. The shock of ice slush soaked his pants and shirt as he crawled on his elbows. Hot muffler! Gas stench, he crawled to the front tire, rolled out-

He rose like a cobra beside the driver’s closed window.

Startled stolen white uniform-wearing Ivan on the other side of that glass.

A woman rolled a hard-shell pink suitcase past Sami. He grabbed it-”Hey!”-swung the suitcase through the air. Bam! The driver’s window cobwebbed into a thousand shards. Bam! The pink suitcase knocked the cobwebbed window into the van.

Driver’s seat Ivan whirled toward a control box. Sami grabbed the Ameer’s lips, pulled him through the shattered window, and slammed him to the slushy pavement. “Stop! Police!” Sami kicked the Ameer in the head, drew his Glock, imagined the pull of the trigger, the recoil, the splat of brains on wet pavement. “Alive, Sami!” yelled Harry. Strangers screamed. “Police! Drop your weapon!”

Ted bellowed above the chaos, “FBI! Everyone freeze!”

“No one’s in the van!” Sami glared at the traffic cop who’d helped the medical crew park the brown van at the curb. “Was there another guy?”

“They had a patient pickup! With a wheelchair.” The cop pointed to the terminal.

“What did he look like?”

“Like a guy! White guy. Blond hair. White uniform. EMT vest.”

Ghosts whispered to Sami, “Diverting the enemy… let us attack. Timing.”

“Harry!” Sami yelled to the man cuffing the unconscious Ameer. “It’s Maher!”

“Go!” Harry guarded a brown van with a neutralized EMGF near an airport control tower and people-packed jetliners flying through a snowstorm.

“Ted-you know Maher’s face-work down from the other end!”

The FBI agent leaped into the tan sedan. Siren wailing, red light spinning, Ted raced back the way they’d come-straight into oncoming one-way traffic.

Sami ran toward the terminal, told the uniformed cop, “Stay away from me!”

Don’t blow my cover. I’m a spy. I’m a spy.

Plunging into a sea of shuffling humanity. Shoulder to shoulder. Move! Suitcases rolled like roadblocks. Crowd hubbub. Scents of Christmas pine, lemony floor cleaner, sweat, petroleum luggage fabric. Through the bedlam cut ringing phones.

Sami shoved his way toward the other end of the terminal.

Where is he? White uniform. Blond guy. Vest. Pushing an empty wheelchair.

Sami didn’t exactly know how his brothers packed the wheelchair’s tubular frame with gunpowder and particles they thought were radioactive. Wired an IV bag of liquid to the same detonation device Zlatko engineered for the gunpowder. But Sami knew.

A digital clock on the wall told him T minus 1.

The diversion bomb timed to cover the EMGF transmission. First responders might mistake the brown medical van for one of their own. Let it run as jetliners tumbled through the snowflakes.

Where are you? Move, out of my way! Sami jumped for a glimpse over the teeming crowd. “Watch it!” Somebody bumped him. There’s the terminal wall, the end, the last/first street exit, there’s-

An IV-bagged wheelchair sat by the wall of windows.

Sami leaped onto a planter-There! Fifty feet from the wheelchair. Nearing the exit: blond, EMT vest over a stolen white uniform. Get to him! Con him! Neutralize!

“Maher!” bellowed Sami.

Quiet filled the moment as if in slow-motion. Maher turned. Saw his brother waving at him above the airport crowd. A quizzical look filled the California blond’s face. He reached his right hand inside the vest.

Forty-four feet away, known murderer and terrorist Maher’s textbook gesture equaled gun! FBI Special Agent Ted Harris drew his service weapon, pushed an old man out of the way, acquired his target-fired three booming shots.

Panic exploded. Screaming. People tried to run. Dive. Hide.

“FBI!” yelled Ted. “FBI!”

Shots one and two blasted Maher off his feet.

His third bullet crashed into a metal heating grate above an exit.

Sami fought through the scared, silent mob toward where Maher sprawled on his back as combat-shuffling toward him came Ted, his eyes on what the suspect had pulled from his vest, still held in his right hand: only a cell phone.

Maher rose on his elbows, vaguely heard “Don’t move!” Saw his white shirt reddening. Felt phone in his right hand. Saw brother Sami scrambling through the huddled crowd to save him. Maher smiled blood. Saw Sami stumble, crawl closer. Maher’s right thumb hit speed dial as he raised a weakening left thumbs-up.

Sami screamed, “No!”

In the city, Zlatko stood outside a green door, left hand pushing a buzzer while his right hand held a pistol tied to four other murders as he terminated a loose end who ran downstairs to the peephole he’d blurred with street slush.

In Ronald Reagan National Airport, soldier John Heme huddled with blondish, black leather-coated Cari Jones. Beside them was redheaded, blue-uniformed, airline service rep Lorna Dumas pulling Amy Lewis and teddy bear closer to the shelter of an empty wheelchair rigged with a cell phone programmed to block every call. Except one.

They all heard ring!