Unholy Code

Chapter 16

Vinko stared at his screen, stunned by the setback. All he could see was the view from the camera strapped to the head of the colonel, who remained still slumped in the back seat. The driver was racing away from the debacle toward an intersection, leaning forward and peering through a bullet-shattered windshield. Vinko could just make out a black man on the far side of the intersection leveling a handgun at the Hummer.

Vinko had another urge to shout a warning but no one would hear him, so he remained silent as bullets ripped into the hulking vehicle. The fourth one took off half the driver’s face, leaving him screaming and slumping against the door, hands no longer gripping the wheel but what had to be a gruesome wound.

All of it caught by the colonel’s head-mounted camera, as the SUV barreled past the shooter.

Not for long.

The Hummer smashed into three parked cars before rolling up over a curb and crashing into a tree.

The colonel lurched forward, then fell back. The camera reflected those wild movements, then settled on the driver as his hands fell away from his bloody face and his head lolled left, smacking the driver’s-side window. A moment later he spilled forward, chest, shoulders, and head collapsing against the steering wheel.

Vinko heard groaning, realizing it hailed from the colonel when he saw the man’s head-mounted camera pointing toward a semi-automatic pistol on the floor. As the colonel grabbed it, a man with an unusual accent yelled, “Put it down!”

“You are so dead,” Vinko growled, furious with the colonel for the mess he’d made of what should have been a simple assassination. Those motorcyclists should have shot Elkins 1-2-3, not the fucking tires in some Hollywood attempt to take her alive.

But Vinko knew he had to take some of the blame for that lame maneuver. He’d posted at various times that POWs in the war on American traitors should be subject to online trials. “Show trials,” Vinko had called them, “and then we’ll execute the people who betray their race.” Of course they’d want to seize Lana. Seize her and try her on video.

So the colonel had swung for the fences and failed.

And now he’s about to die.

Or was he? The colonel was scrambling gamely despite his leg wounds to grab the 9 millimeter.

“Good. Yes!” Vinko whispered to the screen, as though he were in the Hummer’s back seat beside the wounded man.

The colonel had the gun in hand, but as he pulled himself upright the weapon was blasted out of his grip, bloodying and mangling his fingers. Someone wanted him alive.

But the identity of that person remained a mystery because a black hand ripped the camera off the colonel’s head. After a quick repositioning, the device must have been strapped to the African American’s brow, for it now revealed a horrified expression on the colonel’s face.

“No,” the colonel begged. “Not that.”

Not what?

The answer came quickly: Vinko watched a serrated blade plunged into the colonel’s throat. With the man still very much alive — with his eyes bulging in horror — the sawing of his neck began.

A black hand grabbed the colonel’s head and yanked it backward for the final deep cuts.

With the colonel’s eyes still open — the head was placed upright on the console between the two front seats.

The camera was in motion again, this time returning to the colonel’s head where the lens peered up at the decapitated, blood-drenched torso.

Vinko heard footfalls recede, but not quickly. He detected no sense of panic. The killer who’d beheaded the colonel might have been cruising stalls at a Saturday market. He’s killed like this before. He’ll do it again. Which scared Vinko most of all.

He stared at the colonel’s blood-soaked shirt and, for the first time, had no doubt: This was ISIS. They’re really here.

Lana woke in the ambulance, finding herself strapped to a gurney with her wounded calf packed in gauze.

“How are you feeling?” asked a female paramedic sitting by her side.

“Better,” Lana lied. She felt on the verge of delirium but wanted straight communication with the people around her. The shrapnel in her calf burned like a torch.

“Police and federal agents want to talk to you when we get to emergency. Do you think you can handle that? You don’t have to. We’ll be arriving in a few minutes.”

“Yes. What happened to me?”

“You passed out,” the woman replied. “It looks like you caught some fragments from an explosion and they severed an artery down there.” She nodded at Lana’s lower right leg. “Not a major one,” she added quickly. “We’ve got you hooked up.” Lana saw what appeared to be a plasma line feeding into her arm.

The ambulance braked, turned, and slowed even more. Next, the rear doors flew open and she was wheeled into the emergency entrance.

A woman in a Bethesda Police Department uniform rushed up, trailed by Agent Robin Maray in jacket and tie. Lana managed a smile. The two law enforcement officers hurried alongside the gurney as the paramedics wheeled her into the hospital. Lana noticed that Agent Maray was looking her over carefully, then caught her eye and nodded, she assumed in reassurance.

The gurney came to a stop in an area that was quickly curtained off. A doctor entered as Maray leaned over Lana, she assumed to ask him questions. But the doctor waved him away. “Not now. Step aside.”

A nurse hooked her up to a blood pressure cuff and heart rate monitor, then started cutting off Lana’s pants leg.

“You’ll have to leave,” the doctor said to Agent Maray and the officer. “I need to examine her in privacy.”

Robin nodded and followed the officer through a gap in the floor-length curtains.

“I’m Dr. Rivera,” he said, filling a syringe. “I’m going to give you something for the pain, then I’ll be examining for shrapnel wounds. You caught some in your calf so you might have caught others.”

He injected the painkiller while the nurse methodically removed or cut off the rest of Lana’s clothes. Just as systematically, Rivera examined every inch of her, turning Lana over to complete the task.

“Just your leg,” he pronounced minutes later.

The nursed draped Lana with a sheet. “Do you want the FBI and Bethesda Police back in here? Can you handle that?”

“That’s fine,” Lana replied.

Robin swept to her side first, asking if she’d seen an African American male anywhere near the attack.

She shook her head. “Why?”

Dr. Rivera turned back to them. “I wouldn’t go into that now.”

“I can handle it,” Lana snapped. “Why?” she asked Robin again.

“There was a beheading down the block from the scene. A black male cut off the head of the man who appeared to have been in charge of the assassination attempt on you.”

“I don’t think it was an assassination attempt,” Lana said. “They could have killed me right at the start, if that’s what they wanted. I think they wanted to take me alive.”

“How many did you see?”

“Four men. Never their faces. But I saw their hands. They were white. A beheading? Really?”

Robin nodded. Dr. Rivera tugged on the agent’s jacket sleeve. “Do you have enough for now?”

“How long will she be under?” Robin replied.

“I don’t think we’ll put her under. I’ll use a local anesthetic. But I want her focused on the procedure. If she feels any serious discomfort, I’ll need to know right away.”

Robin backed out of the curtained cubicle for a second time, already on his phone. The Bethesda police officer followed him.

Dr. Rivera might have wanted Lana thinking about the procedure but all she could do was wonder why Tahir — she figured that was a solid guess — had cut off the man’s head. Did he want to leave the impression that ISIS had advanced into the District’s toniest suburbs? Wasn’t he worried he’d show up on video? Or did his convoluted relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies grant him a special form of immunity? But even if that were the case, why would he want to generate the widespread fear that a beheading would bring?

Or maybe he wants to fight fire with fire?

“Ouch,” Lana squealed as Dr. Rivera probed her wound.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m putting you under,” he said a moment later, nodding at an anesthesiologist. “I’ve got to go deeper than I expected,” he said, turning back to Lana. “Just so you know, you’ll have some scarring down here.”

Lana smiled. That was the least of her…

She hadn’t finished the thought before the drugs took over.

Vinko brought up YouTube, hoping against hope that the failed abduction had not been posted.

1,257,546 views in the first hour and a half.

He groaned.

“Cyber Spy and Park Ranger Heroes” was the website’s headline. All four of the dead attackers were on vivid display. But they didn’t show the colonel’s severed head, though Vinko had no doubt that that grisly sight would show up somewhere, probably sooner rather than later.

He didn’t know how he’d get to Lana Elkins now. And then he told himself to return to basics.

Get her kid. That’s what you were thinking before the colonel fucked things up. Emma’s the bait.

He murmured her name to himself, as if invoking those two smooth syllables would grant him mantra-like powers. Then he got to the point: “I’m coming to get you, Emma. And then I’m taking down your mom.”

It was personal for Vinko now. He’d make sure it would be no different for Lana Elkins.