The Best American Mystery Stories 2011

Destiny City by James Grady

FROM Agents of Treachery

FOUR MEN WALKED through the December night along tracks for Washington, D.C.'s subway and Amtrak trains that rumble through America. Their shoes crunched gravel. Música ranchera drifted from a nearby industrial park where Sami, who drove a taxi, remembered signs for a Latino ballroom.

"When?" Maher was a California blond born with the name Michael.

"Soon," said Ivan, their Ameer.

Zlatko said, "Ameer, I have money for my last buys tomorrow."

"Brother, I can ride you with my taxi," said Sami.

"No," said Ivan. "Work alone. Let no one see us as fingers of a fist."

"A fist is five," said Maher. "I thought there were only us four."

"Jihad is the thumb that shapes us," proclaimed their Ameer.

Sami said, "Someone's coming."

A trio of hombres swaggered toward them through the darkness.

"Hola, amigos, "said that trio's jefe. "What you doing here, eh?"

"Leaving," said Sami.

"Don' thin' so." Jefe soured the night with his beer-and-tequila breath. "You gringos got lots of nowhere to run."

His tallest compañero frowned. "Not gringos. Only the blond guero."

"Who cares?" Jefe drew a black pistol. "Tool up, Juan."

The third Hispanic fumbled inside his coat's back collar.

Maher jumped Juan as he unsheathed a machete.

Jefe blinked-and Sami ripped the pistol from him with a move taught in Al-Qaeda's Afghan camps, while Zlatko and Maher wrestled the machete from Juan.

Ivan relieved Sami of the gun. "See what they have."

"Amigos!" said Jefe as Sami searched the three thugs, made them kneel on the gravel. "We all just joking, si?"

Maher said, "Shut up, motherfucker!"

Sami gave confiscated cell phones, cash, and IDs to Ivan. Zlatko threw away the machete.

"Let's go," whispered Sami. "They can't tell anybody anything."

"Whach you sayin'?" called out the kneeling jefe.

Ivan whispered, "They are kuffars. Unbelievers."

"That is not enough." Zlatko shrugged. "But they saw we don't belong-especially with Maher."

"They can't tell police or FBI or CIA," said Sami. "They don't dare."

"You talkin' FBI? La migra? Don' fuck with us! We MS-13!"

Ivan said, "Loose ends. They'll tell someone. And America is full of ears."

He put the pistol in Maher's hands. The blond kid stared at it. Stared at three men kneeling before him. The night floated their clouds of breath.

Ivan told him, "You asked when. Allah granted you the answer."

Maher fired three flash-cracking shots. The thugs crumpled into the gravel.

Ameer Ivan led his followers away from the trackside executions. He gave Zlatko the gun. Distributed the dead men's cash to all of his soldiers. Sami saw Zlatko tuck his bills inside an envelope he returned to his jacket's outside right pocket.

The Ameer tossed the thugs' cell phones. Plastic clattered on unseen rocks.

Maher staggered away from his comrades. Vomited.

"Be proud, Maher." The Ameer wrapped an arm around the youngest man's shoulders. "Diverting the enemy with the gun let us attack."

Maher mumbled, "I went wild in my mind."

"And learned a key lesson," said the Ameer. "Timing. When is now, and if all goes well with Zlatko's work… three days."

"Three days?"said Sami. "Are you sure, Ameer?"

"Yes." They neared the gap in the chain-link fence. "And only we four know."

"And Allah," said Zlatko.

"Sami," said the Ameer. "Keep that vaquera in your control."

"She is no problem," said Sami.

They left the tracks for a street that was once a route from the capital to a rural town. Now city sprawled from Congress's white dome to far beyond D.C.'s Beltway.

Ivan stood alone by a roadside white pole, an ordinary, fortyish man waiting for the bus that took him to his gold SUV stashed among a multiplex's moviegoer machines.

When the bus rolled out of sight, his three warriors walked from the shadows to a Metro subway station. Sami made Maher stand alone on the platform. Zlatko's nod approved such tradecraft for the cameras mounted on the platform's ceiling.

A silver subway train snaked to a stop. Maher carelessly drifted onto the same car as Zlatko and Sami. Words bounced in his eyes. Sami's glare welded the young man's jaws shut.

The subway slid out of the station. Zlatko sat between Sami and the window. They memorized their fellow passengers: A black guy bopping to earphone music. Two Spanish-babbling women dressed like office cleaners. A white-haired security guard.

Zlatko whispered, "Brother Maher did well, though not like our karate school teaches. But he would not last fifteen minutes in interrogation. He needs to tell. Get fame so he can be real. I worry that he'll always be a born American."

"Our Ameer must know what he's doing, choosing Maher."

"The smallest cog turns the whole assembly." His engineer past haunted Zlatko's words. "But, brother, that is not what troubles me most."

Brake squeals killed Sami's question. The train stopped. Zlatko and Maher stood to leave the train for wherever they would spend that night, facts the jihad brothers did not share among themselves.

Sami stood to let Zlatko pass. Pickpocketed the money envelope.

Zlatko stepped onto the platform.

The train slid away.

Sami rode to a neighborhood known for vegetarians, PEACE lawn signs, and citizens who thought the 1960s meant something holy. A bus took him to twin high-rises on a smog-soaked hill.

A high-rise elevator clunked him to its ninth floor. He entered his one-room apartment and closed the door with a thunk for any eavesdropper. Fought for breath. You 're clear! Clear! He eased back into the hall. Glided down the stairwell like a shadow.

In the basement, Sami dialed open the combination lock on an electric breaker box. Left the Glock pistol on the box shelf. Turned on the shelf's cell phone, texted a four-word message. Grabbed keys for a stashed car, drove toward the white dome center of town, and parked by a brick building with a peeling sign for Belfield Casket Company. The coffin factory's door flew open.

Harry Mizell-who looked like a bear-waved Sami inside.

Harry and boyish FBI agent Ted escorted Sami through the beehive of cubicles where men and women monitored computers and whispered into phones.

They sat Sami at a conference table in a windowless room. Video cameras clung to the walls. Sami imagined the scene transmitting to the aging H-shaped CIA headquarters, to Homeland Security's new complex in a powerful congressman's district, to the FBI. Maybe even to the White House.

Sami wondered if the private contractor Argus, whose ID dangled from Harry's neck, got a direct feed.

As COOK-Case Officer/Operation Control-Harry debriefed. Ted, who wore the FBI ID Harry had forsaken, sat mute at the table.

Sami told Harry, Ted, and the cameras about the murders. About when. Put the pickpocketed envelope on the table. Told Harry, Ted, and the cameras what they had to do now, right now.

Harry said, "When you texted 'Crash Exfilt Base Soonest,' we cocked to rock. Now…Now you sit tight. Relax."

Harry left the room. Left the FBI agent in charge of their spy. The glass eye of a video camera captured Sami's slump.

Ted cleared his throat. "Do you want a soft drink?"

"A soft drink?"

The FBI agent nodded yes.

"No, Ted. I don't want a soft drink."

Hmmm. The room's CTSU-Covert Transmission Suppression Unit.

"Sami," said Ted, "I pray for you every day."

"You don't know how much that means to me."

The FBI agent nodded. "God's work."

"So they tell me."

Ted let Sami go to the bathroom alone. The fluorescent retreat smelled of ammonia and angst. Sami washed his hands, face. Stared into the sink's mirror. Was there a camera behind that glass?

An hour later, Harry returned. "Bottom line, our op is still running."

"What?" Sami whirled to the video cameras. "We've got them right now on triple murder charges! Scoop them up!"

"Bosses say we need to find who's behind the cell, Al-Qaeda or-"

"There is no mastermind link! No organizational chart like we've got. That's mirror reasoning. These guys are homegrown! Self-contained."

"So you say, and I'm inclined to agree, but…" Harry got up from the table, disconnected the visible cameras. " Ted, leave us alone."

"I'm the FBI liaison and thus the official presence for-"

"Ted, Homeland Security outsourced Argus Inc. to run this op. I'm Argus's archangel. Go write a cover-your-ass e-mail about how I kicked you out."

The door closed on Ted's exit.

"Realize what we've got here," said Harry.

"You were CIA special ops in JAWBREAKER hunting Al-Qaeda in A-stan. CIA used your real Beirut life, snuck you in with captured Taliban guys our Paki allies freed. For years you've worked your terrorist bona fides all over the globe.

"Just like your buddy Zlatko. After Bosnia, he pops up looking for phony papers in Rose's outlaw gig. She's righteous enough to call her ex-FBI buddy, moi. My clout jerks you from CIA to Homeland Security. We put you next to Zlatko at Rose's. He brings you to Ivan, a Chechen physician who found Zlatko at the night school English class where Ivan teaches and fishes. Ivan had already hooked that goofy suburban kid who showed up at a mosque before they shoved Ivan out as a false Muslim.

"And presto," said Harry, "we've penetrated a terrorist cell. A cell that's going to attack in three days. And with ninety-three Islamic terrorist groups on our radar, our bosses are convinced this cell has got to be somebody's baby. Those sponsors are who we want."

"Three people got murdered tonight. That's enough!"

"Those thugs don't count right now."

"So we won't tell the local cops? What about those men's families? Hell, if they are MS-13, those murders could spark a street war!"

"Terrorists are America's number-one priority. Ivan compartmentalizes. He might have other soldiers. Something even the hard boys can't sweat out of him."

"They're going to hit on Christmas Eve!"

"Is it coordinated? What's their target? Their method?"

"Take them down, Harry. Get me out."

"We all want out. But we are where we are. This op-"

"No, not this op. Everything. I want all the way out. Now."

"Oh." Harry leaned back. "I can't make you spy. But bottom line, our gov bosses are going to let the cell run to get what they want whether it's there or not. Without you on the bricks, without me as COOK, will guys like Ted do it right?"

"Not my problem."

"My company and I get paid big bucks however this breaks. But I want to nail this job. I'm no walk-away guy. What kinda guy are you?"

That image sat at the conference table like a giant question mark.

Sami blinked. "Three days-and before they pull a trigger."

"Damn straight. So what are you going to do?"

Sami stood to leave, took the pickpocketed cash. Told Harry, "I'm going to fuck with them."

The next morning Sami worked his cab between Capitol Hill and glistening downtown. Such fares made him remember his high school senior class trip to "our nation's capi tal," how "the Hill" had been open driveways looping past the vanilla ice cream Capitol. White-shirted congressional cops looked like marshmallow men.

That post-9/11 routine December morning, concrete barricades blocked all vehicle approaches to the white marble heart of Congress. Steel barriers funneled pedestrians past barbell-muscled, black-jumpsuited, mirror-sunglassed sentinels with M-4 assault rifles or shotguns strapped across their armored chests.

But it's not Beirut, he thought. Not yet. I can stop that clock.

At 10:07 he flipped down the ON call visor sign. Drove to an Asian fusion restaurant where lunch for one cost enough to feed a shantytown Malaysian family. Parked in the alley so he faced the restaurant's service door.

10:11: Two cooks walked past his cab and into the restaurant. 10:13: A sixtyish Vietnamese man in busboy's black shirt and pants took a Saigon second to scan the vehicle crouched near his destination. 10:14: Zlatko strolled into the alley carrying a dishwasher's white apron and a flat expression. Used the restaurant's back door. 10:21: Zlatko appeared in the cab's mirrors, arms by his side, coming toward the blue taxi on a circular route justified, Sami guessed, by the bummed cigarette tucked above nonsmoker Zlatko's right ear.

Zlatko got in the back of the cab.

Right behind me! Can't see his hands!

Sami said, "As-salaam alaykum."

"Why are you here?" Zlatko's eyes burned in the rearview mirror.

"On the subway, you said you are troubled. We are brothers. I came to help."

"And that is all? No confession?"

"What do either of us have to confess?"

Zlatko shrank in the backseat.

"On the train, I was worried our Ameer has confusion about what is righteous and halal. What is haram and not permitted. How the Koran forbids killing innocents, women, and children, so the planes that hit the towers, the one crashed in that green field, they must be haram. The Pentagon plane, against soldiers, yes, halal, and civilians there who served the soldiers, unavoidable. Loose ends or contingency casualties. But instead of worrying about our Ameer, I should have paid attention to my own duties."

Zlatko shook his head. "Last night I lost our money envelope."

"Wait-you thought I stole it?"

"Ours is a wicked world. I saw the bodies of my wife, two daughters, son. Saw what my neighbors had done to us Muslims in our Bosnian town while I was out riding my bicycle thinking about the Olympics… Forgive me: I feared this kuffar world around us had swallowed your soul. But it is I who lost the money. Have endangered our mission."

"You are not to blame for accidents." Sami let his mercy sink in, then threw out a hook. "Have you told our Ameer?"

"Not yet."

"How much money do you need?"

"All of my end should cost around nine hundred and fifty dollars. I've spent about six hundred. All the rest plus the extra from last night was in the lost envelope."

"I have a hundred and forty-seven dollars. If I hustle now, my taxi can make the rest."

"You are a true brother! I will be waiting down the block in that grocery store parking lot at two-oh-five."

As Zlatko left the cab, out of his sleeve popped a restaurant butcher knife.

That's why he sat behind me.

He let Zlatko sweat until 2:19, raced the taxi into the grocery store lot. Zlatko told him: "Radio Shack on Georgia Avenue."

There Zlatko made Sami wait in the parked taxi. Sami kept a window open to hear the street. An instrumental "Jingle Bells" from a store competed with a man ringing a handheld bell by a red bucket.

Cari Jones defied her dark hair with blond highlights, wore a black leather trench coat, marched past the taxi telling her cell phone, "Soon as I get there, Mom'll say it's great I have a career, but my baby clock…"

Zlatko put packages in the taxi's back seat. Climbed in front with one Radio Shack sack, told Sami to drop him off on a corner different from any the Homeland Security/FBI/outsourced street dogs had trailed him to before they broke off surveillance to avoid spooking the streetwise warrior.

Zlatko pulled two prepaid cell phones from the sack, fished out the manual, saying, "Yes, call waiting, call conferencing, call blocking…"

He looked at Sami. "In Baghdad, we learned you don't want to be holding the right cell phone when someone dials a wrong number."

After he left Zlatko, Sami drove eleven blocks to find a pay phone. Twenty minutes later, as he cruised up North Capital Street, Sami drove past a waving ebony-skinned lawyer in an Italian suit to pick up a white man who looked like a rumpled bear.

"I wish your Ameer let you guys carry cell phones," said Harry as he settled in the back of Sami's taxi.

"No cell phones. Coded messages on Facebook from computers at libraries, Staples, and Internet cafés."

"But Zlatko just bought two phones. 'Course, it's in the rule book that every black ops honcho, spy runner, and Ameer lies to his button boys."

"Every case officer lies? Even you?"

"I play by my rules." Harry winked. "We've got our geniuses reverse-engineering Zlatko's latest buys from that Radio Shack."

The rearview mirror showed Sami a tan sedan.

"It's Ted," said Harry. "Don't shake him, okay? He's learning. He's got to. FBI, CIA, Uncle Sam's top street shooters are turning in their papers, going private, getting outsource-contracted back to do the same job at twice their government paychecks."

"Private armies fight for private profit. Government is about citizens carrying their public weight."

"When did Sami start caring about how Uncle Sam works?"

"I'm almost straight, remember? After your geniuses report, you'll have the who, when, and how. You can take down the cell. I can fly free."

Sami fed the taxi into traffic up Constitution Avenue past Smithsonian museums.

A dead pigeon lay in their traffic lane. Sami saw a sunbaked soldier named John Herne standing on the corner, staring at the fallen bird as if it hid a bomb.

"Look at this town," said Harry. "I remember when this was an AM radio burg where white folks were scared to come out after dark and Nixon had his finger on the Doomsday trigger. 'Top dollar' meant a civil service paycheck. Nobody was from D.C. People came here as cause-humpers. Now, crash or no crash, all the big money has a D.C. cash register.

"Some say we're inevitable. Like Rome, only adjusted for the Internet and Mister Glock.40. I say if we create a Sophia Loren like Rome did, let the D.C. of Washington stand for 'Destiny City.'"

"My jihad brothers say the same thing. So do Ted and his evangelical crusaders."

"What do you say?"

"That real people are trapped in those big ideas."

"Yeah, but what about Sophia Loren?"

The two men laughed.

"D.C. is your story, Sami. Destiny City. Born and bred for it. Spy life and street action are all you know. What makes you think you can quit?"

Harry's cell phone rang. He took the call. Listened. Clicked off.

Told Sami, "Our geniuses got no idea what Zlatko is building. We're flooding every Radio Shack kinda place with agents and Zlakto's photos to see what he bought before, but it's elbow-to-elbow Christmas rush in those stores."

They rode past a block strung with colored bulbs.

"In this life," said Harry, "you're either doing something or something's getting done to you. What's your deal, Sami?"

Sami let Harry out of the cab, drove to a commercial strip where French and African patois jammed with Spanish. Cruising cars blasted gangsta rap idolized by white Kansas teenagers. Sami parked his cab in the lot of a four-story commercial building.

He checked his watch: 4:29. Ivan usually closed his doctor's office at 5:00 and drove his gold SUV home. Sami scanned ethnic stores, discount furniture barns, a veterinary hospital with a green Dumpster. Told himself he couldn't see flies circling the emerald steel. Wondered where Harry'd set up the surveillance posts. Wondered if they'd called in his presence, if a satellite snapped his picture.

"Understand our new spy biz," Harry had told Sami. "Sure, satellite surveillance of Doc Ivan's office and house is overkill, but it's about buy-in.

"We got something real, but if it's only a Homeland/CIA/FBI-outsourced Argus show, with sixteen major spy shops dancing for the old U.S. of A., we might be weak on bureaucratic muscle. So I partnered my company with a contractor for the National Applications Office to satellite-monitor your Ameer. Now NAO'll line up to make sure we get what we want so they can share our credit."

I'm a taxi driver, thought Sami. I take you where you want to go.

I'm a spy. I take you where you want to go.

At 4:47 a brown medical transport services van parked at the building. The driver in a white uniform got out to lower the electric motored stairs.

They shuffled out of the building. Some were black, some brown. A wispy blond girl on crutches swung toward the van. They were all poor. The bottom line mattered as much as any for two women in black burkas that exposed only their eyes.

Last out of the door came Ivan, a doctor who didn't care about health insurance, charged what patients could afford for what he could do. Sometimes, like now, that meant walking a white-haired old lady to the van.

Sami parked behind the van, pulled on a black Detroit Tigers baseball cap to hide his face as he joined his Ameer and the old lady.

"Taxi," said Sami.

Ivan kept the poise of an emergency room boss. "Here you go, Mrs. Callaghan."

The white-haired old lady wrinkled her brow. "But… I didn't order a cab."

"You've got a voucher for today," said her doctor. "Remember?"

"I do?"

"Yes."

The white-uniformed van driver took his cue from Doc Ivan. The stairs' electric motor whined, the doors shut, and away drove the brown van.

Her doctor said, "Emma, did you drop your gloves in the elevator?"

The old lady looked at her trembling bird hands. "I must have."

"I'll wait with the cabbie. Take your time."

She toddled back inside the building.

"Ameer, I must confess," blurted Sami. He told him about breaking the rules to confront a worried Zlatko and replace the lost money.

"But why are you here now?"

"I fear that Zlatko's vision of what is acceptable for our target and the vision you and I share… I fear a conflict of faith. I have seen this before."

"In Beirut," said the Ameer, "where holy martyrs blew up the Marines' barracks and Ronald Reagan slunk away. There we learned Americans will back down. Then sex-crazy Clinton ran from one Blackhawk helicopter crash, missed Osama with missiles."

The Ameer put a fatherly hand on Sami's shoulder. "Sometimes it's easiest for a soldier not to know all, so if his heart is challenged, his conscience is clear. Don't worry about Zlatko. He will do what must be done. His part will not pain his soul. All else is sacrifice to contain this disease called America. Americans fear death. Their overreaction to us will force our misguided Muslim brothers to rally to our true path."

"What of my part, Ameer? I have done so little."

"You are whispered about online." The doctor smiled, so Sami knew the legend birthed by the CIA still lived. "Praise Allah that I work in a building where if you make friends, keys are shared. With my colleagues at the medical imaging office. With two kuffars who repair computers that are probably stolen."

Dozens of computers! Untraceable! That's how he makes contacts!

"I dared not put you too close to the operation. If your fame attracted attention… But in two days, we will both be heroes on the run."

The building's glass doors showed Emma tottering toward them.

The Ameer told Sami what to do that night at the vaquera's. Told Sami where to go tomorrow morning.

Emma wiggled her gloved hands. "They were in my pockets!" Sami drove her home, refused a tip of her few silver coins.

He drove to a pay phone. Called Harry, told him about the computers, the Ameer's new orders. Argued for the cell to be rolled up. Got told, "We're gonna let it ride." Drove to 13th Street's hilltop panorama of Destiny City, parked on a block of row houses where a Latino grocery store flanked a green door.

He pushed the doorbell for the green door. Made a loud ring!

Invisible feet clunked down unseen stairs. The door's glass peephole darkened as someone looked out. The green door opened. Star-streaked midnight hair curled to her blue sweater. She wore faded jeans. Had a clean jaw, high cheekbones with a puckered scar on her heart side from the punch she'd taken in junior high soccer. The scar gave her lips a perpetual sardonic smile. Those fleshy lips along with her desert tribe Jewish Sephardic tan skin and the Sinaloensa Mexican she'd perfected while surfing away the summer before law school fooled people into thinking Rose was gringo for Rosalita.

"I wasn't expecting anyone," said Rose.

Climbing those stairs behind her rounded blue jean hips, Sami smelled Christmas pine, spices like cumin and chili from the downstairs store, perhaps incense, her musk.

Her apartment's main room held a computer, fax, photocopy machine. An eviction-salvaged sofa. Two chairs separated by a table where Sami had set his tea the morning he'd been officially waiting for a fax from the Taxi Commission but truly waiting for Zlatko to return for credit card applications the vaquera had promised him.

Sami's eyes swept through the kitchen to the closed door for a room lined with law books, government manuals. The door to her bedroom-closed. He refused to fear the closed doors. Refused to wonder whether Harry had bugged all of Rose's rooms.

She stood behind Sami. "Are you here for work?"

"Yes."

Shadows filled the apartment. Her walls and fading-gray-light glass windows kept out sounds of the street. Muffled screams.

He lunged with his hands like a Muay Thai strike, caught her face in his prayer grasp, pressed her against the wall as she met his kiss.

Night took the city.

They sat naked in her bed, propped on pillows, covers drawn up. A lamp glowed.

Rose lit a joint. "Do you think Harry figured this would happen?"

"He's practical."

"For your crew, I'm just an inferior woman you seduced to use, but Harry… Maybe he figures, What the hell, let them get some happy."

"Maybe," said Sami as he watched her take a hit.

Across town in her Virginia apartment, redheaded Lorna Dumas exhaled burned tobacco, stared at the blue uniform on her bed, thought, I gotta quit smoking.

Upstairs from her green door, Rose asked Sami, "Do you still think of yourself as Muslim?"

"Feels like some God is chasing me."

"Nice dodge." Rose passed him the joint.

Sami took a hit.

She said: "Getting stoned puts you in solid with both your jihad and the FBI."

"I always wanted to be popular. What about you?"

"My mother taught my girlfriends how to give a blowjob," said Rose. "Made me promise not to have sex until I knew what the hell I was doing.

"Who the hell ever knows what they're doing? I fell for the wrong guy over and over again, became a kick-ass federal prosecutor who one day found a certain political slant to her job, spent two years as a public defender, realized that helping unconnected people work the system was the only way they were ever going to get a fair shake.

"So now I'm the vaquera. Don't speak enough English to fill out an immigration form without fucking yourself? Go to the vaquera. Work permits, car registration, insurance, your political asylum application with the photo of you minus your arm that got hacked off in Sierra Leone-hey, America is the fill-in-the-blank society.

"Then came Zlatko. Everybody lies, but he lied like an antiabortion murderer I interviewed when I was a prosecutor. Hard-core eyes. Plus no way was he Albanian. I can't trust badges, but the tingles made me call my old pal Harry."

She hit the joint, held it to him. "Zlatko found me through the people who snuck here with him from Mexico, right?"

Sami waved away another hit-

– fluttering wing vision vanished like smoke.

"Right," said Rose. "I'm not supposed to know anything."

"Be glad you've got no idea what it's like out there."

"I stipulate to a certain degree of unreality. But I'm no virgin."

Sami said, "I knew this kid. His virgin mission, he gets handed killing three guys. Said he went 'wild in his mind.' That's what it's like out there. You live behind the world others see. All alone out there on a street full of invisible gunmen is you."

"You adopt survival mechanisms," she said.

"Fuck survival. You beat the other guy.

"Beirut. I'm thirteen. Men drove into the neighborhoods, gave us kids AK-47s. I never thought to ask who the ammo really really came from. Barricades cut up my home blocks. Sandbags, barbed wire, fuel barrels. Fuck what our parents said, we were cool and saving our world. I learned to run fast because I was small, and the fucking snipers' priority was wounding kids because that suckers out rescuers.

"One day, down the block at some other crew's barricade, those guys made an old man step out front, hands in the air. We see he's one of us, a Muslim. They tell him to walk to us. So he does, him and us thinking it's a swap. They let him get 'bout nine feet from our sandbags. Shot him dead.

"We couldn't leave cover to pull his body in, so it lay there. After three days we had to abandon our barricade. The stench. The flies.

"Two weeks, different barricade, same thing-only now it's a teenage Muslim guy just like me, hands up, had taken three steps toward our spot.

"I nailed him. Head shot." Sami paused. "He was dead as soon as he walked my way. I just got to choose his time and place, his meaning."

Night held the city.

"Is that why you left Beirut?" asked Rose.

"PLO guys I idolized took custody of a sniper we captured, set him free. Started me thinking: Whose side is anybody really on? Then my father got a job at the Marine barracks. One of our factions blew it and him up. The Marines took care of my family. Put me in a Detroit high school. Soon as I could, I joined the Corps. Semper fi."

"Me too," she said.

He leaned into a kiss she captured. She kicked off the covers, cupped his hand over her breast. Seven minutes later, he guided her on top of him, straddling him, arcing over him like a quarter moon as he whispered, "I see you. I see you."

Afterward, Rose lay across him. "Don't say anything. Neither of us. Not unless we can say it again and again and again."

"Until,"he said. "Until, not unless."

Their flesh goose-bumped. He reached for the sheet and blanket.

"Are you hungry?" she said.

"Not now. Now you have to fall asleep."

"Why?"

"I have to use your computer when you don't know it."

"Oh," she said.

"But I can spend the night."

And he did, his last waking moment echoing a fluttering wing.

A mile away in her go-to-sleep teddy bears bedroom, seven-year-old Amy Lewis whispered to her best friend through a cell phone bought for the adventure: "Gramma says I'll really be going to bed a whole three hours later because the world is round!"

Wake up! Sami bolts upright in Rose's bed. Glides through the dark to her main room, grabs her phone, taps in the panic number, gets routed to a woken bear who hears Sami whisper, "The Ameer! Keys! Medical imaging office! He's got access to-"

"Fuck!" Harry killed their call.

Sami calmed his jackhammering heart. Made himself go back to sleep. Have faith in himself and a bear.

Gray clouds covered the morning sky. Sami drove to where the Ameer had sent Maher. Maher waved. Too friendly for just a cab, but this feral kid's street skills had beaten Harry's tails. Maher climbed in front. Another mistake. Sami thought, Where do you live? How do you get money? Did you come up with using Facebook?

"What's that smell?" said Sami as they drove around the Beltway.

"Sorry, chemicals from the dry cleaners. The Koreans are nice. Took me a month to get the job through that Christian youth hostel."

Maher carried a backpack. "The newspaper calls it the Trackside Slaughter. Ballistics say the gun was also used to shoot a gangbanger from the Clifton Terrace crew. The cops can't figure Latino and black bodies."

The future filled Maher's eyes. "We'll be something to write about. Brother," he said, "I know Ameer is worried. But I'm chill. He's so smart! Combining what you've got to do with checking me out while I get the last of my shit, like, how tight is that?"

"Very tight." Sami grinned. "Is that how American kids say it?"

"Yeah." Suburbia flowed past the taxi. "Look out there. Re-dondo Beach. Akron where my cousins live. Here. It's all the same TV shows. Stupid news about dumb rich girls who do nothing but get their pictures taken. The holy Jesus in the Koran, blessed be his name, what if he were driving with us today, seeing all this meaningless crap? We gotta stop all the ruining. If not us, who?"

"We're in the same car, my brother."

The gun shop sat in a Beltway exit mall. A pine wreath decorated the barred door. The clerk behind the glass counter wore a holstered Glock and a red Santa Claus hat.

"Hey, guy!" The clerk smiled at Maher. "Good to see you again."

"Yeah." Maher handed the clerk his California driver's license for routine processing by the law with a five-year backlog.

The clerk filled his eyes with nonblond Sami.

"This is my uncle," explained Maher. "He's Jewish."

"Oh, well Sha-lum Ha-nooka."

"Shalom," said Sami.

Maher rented a 1911 Colt.45 automatic and ear protectors, bought four boxes of ammo and a black silhouette from a target display that featured a pistol-pointing, grizzled Arab in a burnoose and bumper stickers proclaiming that an aging, antiwar movie actress should still be bombed back to Hanoi.

The store's shooting range had ten lanes, three occupied. Gunfire boomed. As Sami shot holes in their target, Maher dumped three boxes of ammo into his backpack.

"The.45s are the biggest bullets," said Maher, taking his turn on the firing line. He showed no post-traumatic stress syndrome from the last time he'd fired a gun.

As they left the gun shop, the clerk said, "Happy New Year!"

At the next mall, the sporting goods store roared with crazed shoppers. Sami gave a clerk the order printed from Rose's computer. The clerk said, "You know these bikes are unassembled in boxes, right?"

"Cheaper that way."

"It's for orphans," said Maher.

"God bless you." The clerk took their cash so they could skip the line.

"Um," said Maher. "Do you guys sell steel cup protectors? You know. For… for down there. For hockey."

"I think they're all plastic."

As they carried three bike boxes to the taxi, Sami said, "Hockey?"

Maher shrugged. "Won't happen tomorrow, but when I become a holy martyr, the virgins waiting for me in paradise will get one too. I wanna be able to have kids."

"You want to have children in paradise?"

"Got to be a better place to raise them than here."

They crammed the bike boxes in the taxi. Drove to a subway stop. Only then did Maher relay the Ameer's orders for that night, where to be tomorrow, what to do precisely when. Before he vanished into the crowd, Maher said, "I love you, brother."

Thirty-four minutes later, Harry rode in the taxi beside Sami and said, "Before dawn, NEST black-bagged Ivan's building-not the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams, their shadows whose S stands for Strike. They pulled all hazmat out of the medical imaging office, substituted fake material, and broke the machines so nobody will wonder when they don't work. We're still balancing records hacked from the office computers, but it looks like all radioactive material is accounted for. Put that together with your horny teenager looking for a metal cup to shield his balls, and they're probably building a put-together-at-the-last-minute dirty bomb."

"So now it won't be dirty, but it'll still be a bomb."

"Yeah, but even if they augment hydrogen peroxide or chemicals from a dry cleaner with gunpowder from bullets, how big could it be?"

"How many deaths add up to 'big'?"

"We don't think that's the point," said Harry. "We know what Zlatko is building. I posted what we had on A-Space and Intellipedia, the classified sites, set it up like a game. A dozen nerds came up with an Explosive Magnetic Generator of Frequency. The Soviets perfected them. Both Ivan and Zlatko grew up behind the Iron Curtain. A U.S. general challenged some grad students a few years ago, and they designed an EMGF to fit in a pickup truck with a cost of eight hundred dollars-most of it bought from Radio Shack.

"EMGFs are why you turn off your cell phone when you fly. They don't really explode, they beam a sphere of electronic waves that fries unshielded computers, phones, circuit boards for car engines-"

"That's why I'm supposed to turn off my taxi tomorrow at precisely two P.M.!"

"And why you're parking where they told you. That pull-off by the Potomac is across the freeways from the Pentagon. EMGFs are designed to slam the enemy's command and control centers. They're invisible inside any pickup-sized vehicle…"

"Like the Ameer's SUV," said Sami.

"Assemble an EMGF with an electric motor into your shielded vehicle, drive it-hell, park it -outside the Pentagon's secure perimeter, turn it on, fry systems all over a mile-thick spherical zone. We'd be burned all the way to Baghdad and A-stan."

"What about the bomb they think is dirty?"

Harry said, "We figure it's a Baghdad double tap. They park the EMGF vehicle. The longer the EMGF runs, the more it destroys. When SWAT teams figure out what's going on, blitz the source… boom! Booby-trapped. Radiation is bonus blood."

"And the cell phones?"

"Maybe one of your crew is gonna be a martyr, stay behind, detonate the booby trap when he sees SWAT closing in. That'd be optimum."

"Frying the Pentagon meets Zlatko's conscience. After they ditch the EMGF vehicle, I'll be the walk-to getaway. If my cab engine gets fried, bikes will still work. Three bikes, four brothers, one staybehind.

"When do we hit them?" said Sami.

The blue taxi crawled through holiday traffic.

"No!" said Sami.

"After dark, the Pentagon gets ringed by camouflaged snake eaters. Tomorrow when your brothers attack, we got 'em. Odds are, we get two alive for interrogation."

"Take them now!"

"Then we get Ivan, but even you don't know where the other two are. We can't let them run free. And if we take them too soon, we won't find out who they report to."

"They answer to no one but themselves! You said you get that!"

"I do-our bosses don't."

"Get the fuck out of my cab."

On that night before Christmas Eve, Sami assembled three bikes in his apartment. He looked around the mattress-on-the-floor hideaway that his Ameer believed had been made safe from discovery by the vaquera's tricks, told himself, No more lying rooms.

At 9:30 he broke all the rules, used the breaker box phone outside in the night.

Cold kisses wet his skin. He told Rose, "It's starting to snow."

"Too early for holiday clichés. Can't count on the weather."

"Tomorrow starts a whole new season."

"I'm ready," said Rose.

The city went to sleep.

Cari Jones brushed her streaked blond hair, saw her black leather coat hung ready to go, decided to try computer dating when she got back.

John Herne packed three different pill bottles for post-traumatic stress syndrome in his soldier's duffel at Walter Reed Hospital.

Lorna Dumas decided to let her red hair swing free on her blue uniform tomorrow, threw her cigarettes down her building's trash chute.

Amy Lewis chose her bestest brown teddy bear for Gramma's.

Morning woke Sami to a snow-dusted town.

At ten A.M. he grabbed the cell phone and Glock. Loaded three bikes into his taxi. They gotta see what they 're expecting. Called Harry: "Launching." Drove his taxi into Christmas Eve snowstorm traffic.

"It's a mess out there," said the man on news/traffic radio. "Washingtonians have never figured out how to drive in the snow, and we weren't expecting this storm."

Sami flashed on the Beirut radio announcer who daily reported which commuter streets were ruled by snipers.

He eased the blue taxi over slick streets: Fender-benders fuck up ops.

Windshield wipers washed Sami's view as he drove through a whooshing tunnel, popped up on an interstate threaded along the city. Green metal highway signs arrowed routes for I-395 south to Virginia, for exits to the Jefferson Memorial, federal office complexes, the airport, George Washington Parkway, the Pentagon.

Traffic on the bridge over the Potomac parted for the blue taxi obviously headed to the airport, taking that exit-but then unexpectedly pulling off the main road into a tree-lined turnout where the sign read roach's roost waterfowl sanctuary.

Bad day to be a bird. Sami parked the taxi away from the only other vehicle in the bird watchers' roost, a battered car with bumper stickers reading "One Planet, One People" and "Audubon Society." A passenger jet roared overhead. Snowflakes died on the warm blue taxi. A husky man wearing a parka stood at tripodmounted binoculars aimed at the icy gray river, at the highways that blocked a view of the Pentagon.

Parka Man turned to face the taxi and Sami saw he was a bear.

Harry lumbered to the taxi, got in beside the driver. "Anything- anything -from your Ameer, the others?"

"What's wrong?"

"It's nearing noon. Attack time is two P.M. Doc Ivan came to work like always. But his SUV is still in its parking spot. Given the traffic, the weather, the time they'll need to fit in the EMGF and some electric motor-"

"Hit him! Hit him now!"

Harry started to protest-barked orders up his sleeve: "COOK to all units: HRT Alpha: Take down Target One. I say again: Hit Target One now! Go! Go!"

The idling taxi grew close. Sami shut off the engine. A passenger jet roared overhead. The bear unzipped his parka. The taxi smelled of bike oil and rubber, fading car heater fumes, salty hope.

Harry's eyes lost focus. He listened to his radio earpiece. Blinked.

"Shit!" Harry radioed, "Core plan! Reset to core plan!"

Told Sami, "All they found in Doc Ivan's office was a scared old lady in an examination robe. She's Muslim, did what the doctor ordered. Ivan walked out of the building right under our eyes inside her full burka, rode that charity van to poof.

"S'okay," Harry said. "He's just being cagey. Doesn't know we're on him. He'll keep with the plan. We're set if he comes back for his SUV. They'll attack the Pentagon and we'll nail them. Everything's cool, got FBI execs visiting Muslim leaders here to assure them that the busts are legit. It's okay."

Sami said, "I don't know about them having other vehicles!"

"That's the way a cell works. Nobody knows everything."

"Except the guy you let slip away."

"Life is risk. You don't play it that way, you get played." Harry shrugged. "You gotta go with what you know. That's why we have spies."

They sat waiting in the cold until 12:51- trigger (time) minus 69 minutes.

A tan sedan pulled into the parking lot. Ted raced to the taxi through sleet. Through the lowered driver's window and the hail of ice pellets he said, "An hour till they're due here. We do this now or I have to pull Sami!"

"What?" said both Sami and Harry.

"You're six months overdue for your mandatory drug test. Has to be cleared immediately, or we pull you off. I got a portable kit in the car, on-site processing will clear you so you can stay on-"

"This is bullshit!" yelled Sami. "We've got a terrorist attack!"

"I've got orders," said Ted. "The Hoover Building says I'm fired if I don't get this done right darn now."

Harry said, "Okay, Ted. He'll be right over."

The FBI liaison ran for the shelter of his tan sedan.

Sami stared at the bear.

"Go do it. Time like this, we all gotta pee."

"If I go… I'm gone."

"Ahh." A jetliner roared overhead. Harry smiled. "Fuck them."

The bear used his cell phone.

"Hey, Jenny." He asked Sami for his real name, Social Security number, CIA identifiers. Relayed them to Jenny. Said, "Crash RIP. "

Hung up. Grinned at Sami. "Congratulations. Ted's off your case, but give him what he wants or he could still fuck this up. You've been Rebooted In Place, RIP. Now work for Argus. Twice the salary, half the BS."

Harry sent the dazed spy to the tan sedan.

"Sorry," said Ted as Sami filled a plastic bottle with his urine.

Don't give this holier-than-thou bureaucrat the time of-

"This is so stupid," said Ted. "So what if Argus wants to certify-"

"This came from Argus? Harry's company?"

"Well… sure. This is their show."

Sami left Ted watching liquid change colors in a bottle. Slammed the door when he climbed in the blue taxi. His expression killed the bear's grin.

"Why?" said Sami.

"You're too good to lose."

"I'm quitting! I'm not working for Argus!"

"Sure you are. It'll take a year commitment to get your ass out of the drug-use sling. And yeah, don't worry: I'll protect Rose. Why wouldn't I? One more op. You spy as the holy warrior hero who escaped from the Christmas Eve D.C. bust."

"Fuck you!"

"Fucking costs. I know what you're thinking," continued Harry. "Going Beirut on me gets you nothing but Uncle Sam's sniper scopes zeroing your back."

The bear said, "I didn't pick any of this war. But I'm not going to lose."

Snowflakes hit the taxi windshield. A jetliner roared overhead. The bear sighed. T minus 47 minutes. The choppy gray river lapped against the riprap of the bird sanctuary. Harry relocated Ted's tan sedan next to the bumper-stickered car. T minus 17. Pentagon units reported all clear. A jetliner roared. Ted got out of the tan sedan to look through the tripod binoculars.

Sami yelled, "They're not after the Pentagon!"

"What?"

"The Ameer doesn't give a shit about our 'command and control.' He hates our whole thing. He wants fear. To humiliate us. Make us overreact. Maher's expecting to live today. Ivan wants to be a hero on the run. He implied that Zlatko's mission is solo and won't bother his beliefs. Zlatko'd love to hit a target like the Pentagon, but he's not coming here. So that's not it. Three bikes: Ivan, Maher, me. Here!"

Harry touched his radio earpiece. Said, "That Al-Qaeda media group al-Sahab, 'The Clouds.' NSA just intercepted an e-mail to them via a D.C. server saying that today will be a great day, to watch the skies."

A jetliner roared overhead.

"They know the taxi!" Sami ran toward the tan sedan.

A bear charged his heels.

A Marine sniper popped out of his hide, his rifle hungry for a target.

Harry crammed himself behind the wheel of the tan sedan, Sami dove in the front seat, and Ted jumped in the back, even though he didn't know why. The tan sedan fishtailed out of the bird sanctuary as Harry yelled, "Told you they were linked!"

"Ivan posted bragging rights, not-just drive! Go, go!"

Christmas Eve afternoon on the way to the airport. Falling snow. Cars surging bumper to bumper on a two-lane, one-way road.

"Get around them!" yelled Sami.

Harry whipped the tan sedan onto the shoulder. Horns honked. They ran over a highway reflector pole. Slid past a parked airport police cruiser. Spinning red lights filled their mirrors.

"Call them off!" yelled Sami.

"No unencrypted radios!" Harry yelled into his sleeve at T minus 13."They could have a police band monitor! Cell phone the airport cops!"

Ted yelled, "What are we looking for?"

"We gotta know it when we see it!" said Sami.

The electronic marquee sign mounted over one-way airport traffic read THREAT LEVEL CODE ORANGE. The digital clock revealed T minus 11.

Ronald Reagan National Airport sits across the river from the white dome of the Capitol. The "old" terminal is a gray concrete box few airlines use. The air-travel gem is the "new" white stone terminal: one million square feet, three levels, a rectangle shopping mall with three-story windows between thirty-five gates to jetliners. The airport control tower rises from the terminal's far end like a towering rook from chess.

The tan sedan forced its way back into airport traffic.

Harry barked orders up his sleeve.

Wide-eyed Ted braced himself in the backseat.

Ahead, at the old terminal, sweeping into the car-clogged road, airport cop, phone pressed to his ear, hand on his holstered pistol, he-

Halts the chasing cop cruiser.

Autos hunt drop-off parking spots. Travelers drag wheeled suitcases. Snow falls.

"Nothing!" yelled Sami. "I see nothing! Go! Go!"

Driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic to the upper level of the new terminal ate two minutes off the clock. Three lanes of vehicles lined the sidewalk.

"Couldn't evacuate this place now!" Harry's eyes scanned the chaos.

"Gotta be here, gotta." Sami stared through the falling snow. Saw-

"Way down at the end! Close to the control tower!"

Parked near the sidewalk. Flashers blinking. A brown van. 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, 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 Herne 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!