Countdown in Cairo (15 page)

“ Ben laughed with them. “Something like that,” he said. “I think Steve Martin had a back-up group called the ‘Toot Uncommons’ for that.”

The laughter grew louder, along with a second and third round of Pabst. The mood grew goofier.

“How about this?” Alex said, moving her arms in the quirky parallel aloft motion of the ancient figures on the tombs. “Tell me where this is from. ‘All the swell paintings on the tombs,’ ” she sang, splitting up the other two with her brew-inspired riff on “Walk like an Egyptian.” “ ‘They do some silly dance, don’t you know …’ ”

She rolled her eyes and gave it her best Bangles—Susanna Hoffs imitation. The people at the next table applauded.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Janet. “Remember that goofy “Walk like an Egyptian” video with everyone walking around funny?”

“I was a little kid,” Alex said.

“I was in seventh grade,” Ben said. “I was in love with all four Bangles. Still am, actually.” Ben laughed. “I should have worn a fez tonight.”

They riffed on Egyptian stuff for a while, from Nefertiti to Nasser. Ben did his walking-like-an-Egyptian imitation with his arms and the women laughed again.

“When I was in Egypt, most people walked normally,” Janet said with a bittersweet grin. “Until Carlos’s car blew up.”

“I walked normally too, until I ran into a roadside bomb in Iraq,” Ben said. He tapped on his prosthesis. “But then I would never have met Alex if I hadn’t been rehabbing on the basketball court.”

“And I wouldn’t have been leading a normal life again if I hadn’t met Ben,” Alex said. “God works in strange ways, right?”

They walked back to the Calvert Arms later in the evening, a slight mist falling. Ben walked along with them, and both women felt as if they had exorcised a few demons over the evening. Two hours of beer and laughter with friends, and the world didn’t seem to be such a scary place. Janet felt better for being out of the apartment without incident, and Alex had calmed down a little concerning a possible trip to the Middle East.

Let’s see if it even happens
, she told herself.

Alex watched the street just in case. She didn’t see any danger, but she continued to pay close attention to the configuration of cars on her block. That one car that she had been noticing recently, the battered old Taurus, wasn’t apparent when she did a quick scan of the block. A good sign perhaps. Potential stalkers, she reasoned, were illusory after all.

They arrived uneventfully at the entrance to Alex’s building. Ben said good-bye.

Janet and Alex entered the building.

“Ben’s great,” Janet said. “He seems like a really good guy.”

“He is.”

“You’re lucky to have him.”

“He’s a friend, not a boyfriend,” Alex answered.

“So he’s available?” Janet asked.

“Not for you.” She answered with half a laugh. “I might want to grab him for myself eventually.”

“Got it. Well, you’re still lucky to have him,” Janet said.

Against logic, Alex felt mildly taken aback by the question of Ben’s availability. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess he’s available. I know he’s got a job, goes to classes at law school on most evenings, and hits the gym two or three nights a week too.”

“Wow.”

“That doesn’t leave much time for dating, I’d guess.”

The two young women stood for a moment in the lobby. Alex felt a little ill-at-ease with the personal topics. “Anything else you need to do?” Alex asked.

“Like what?” Janet asked.

“Any shopping?” Alex asked. “Groceries, maybe? How you doing on supplies?”

“I could use a trip to the store,” Janet said.

It sounded like a reasonable request. But it was after 11:00 p.m.

“There’s a mini-mart a few blocks from here,” Alex said. “Would that work?”

“That’d work.”

Alex held up her car keys and indicated the steps from the lobby to the garage. “Let’s roll,” she said.

Their car traveled up the ramp out of the garage. The mist had grown heavier and Alex flicked on the windshield wipers. She pulled into a flow of light traffic and didn’t think much of the coincidence when a parked car pulled into traffic about fifty feet behind her.

TWENTY-TWO

Alex drove eight blocks and spotted an open meter in front of the small 7-Eleven. The parking spot was small, but Alex knew she could squeeze her car in.

Janet, feeling suddenly frisky, jumped out of the car before Alex could finish parking. “I’ll go ahead and start getting stuff,” she said. “See ya.”

Alex was about to object, but Janet gave her the crazy walk-like-an-Egyptian arm movement again, followed by something reminiscent of the Steve Martin “Tut strut.”

Still a little beery, they both laughed. Before Alex could suggest that she wait, Janet had walked through the automatic glass doors into the store.

Alex parked. Then, in her rearview mirror, past the wiper that cleared the heavy mist, she saw a car pull into a No Parking spot close to the mini-mart entrance. She saw a man jump out of the car, and a second man, the driver, quickly followed. They were a pair of big men in dark jeans and black hoodies. The first man, who wore an overcoat over his hoodie, took one glance in Alex’s direction and forged onward into the store. The second man followed close behind. Alex felt a jolt go through her. Terrible vibes. There was something wrong with the way they were dressed, the way they swaggered, the way they went into the mini-mart on Janet’s heels.

Heavy outer clothes. What were they hiding?

Alex’s mind went into overdrive. In the back of her mind, she was processing something. The headlights of their car had been in her rearview mirror since pulling out from the parking garage. Under normal circumstances, she would have thought nothing of that. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Then too there was something about the first man, the quick furtive nature of his movements, that Alex didn’t like. She was three-quarters of the way into the parking place when she placed him. He was the man she had once seen sitting in a parked car on the block where the Calvert Arms stood. Alex kicked herself for letting Janet out of her sight for even a few seconds.

Then Alex recognized the Taurus. It had been lurking somewhere, and she had missed it. She was furious.

She ripped the keys from her ignition and threw open the door. An oncoming car blasted her with the lights and honked, splashing her as it swerved and went around her. She ducked back in the rain. The driver yelled some profanity.

Alex gestured back with the New York City turn signal, Robert used to call it, and kept moving. She turned toward the store and ran. Her hand went to her weapon, but she didn’t draw it yet.

The suspicious car had left its doors unlocked but there was no one in it.
Oh
,
Lord protect me
, she thought. The wheels had been left pointing out and the driver had left a space of three feet between his car and the one in front. Standard smash-and-grab getaway parking position. Alex had seen it before and knew she would see it again.

She also knew what she was seeing here. Trouble with a capital T. Alex burst into the store, looking in every direction.

She didn’t see Janet.

She didn’t see the two men.

She looked down the first aisle, then a second. Still no one. She ran to a third, bumping into a woman with a cart. She turned a corner on an aisle and spotted Janet.

“Hey! Janet!” she yelled.

Janet turned, gave her a big smile. She had a plastic shopping basket on her arm and had already grabbed a few items.

Alex made a sharp beckoning gesture with her hand. “Come here!” Alex hissed. “We got to get going.
Now!
”

“But we just got here!”

“Now!” Alex called.

She tried to make a gesture, pointing, that suggested imminent danger. She stepped quickly toward Janet. As a precaution she pulled her Glock out and held it to her side, as concealed as possible. The last thing she wanted was a close-in gunfight.

Janet started to speak again.
“But—?”

“We’re leaving! Let’s go!
” Alex demanded. She walked to Janet and grabbed her wrist, pulling her.

Janet resisted.
“What the—?”

“They’re in here! People who are after you!” Alex said.

Janet gasped and swore.

“Move!” Alex said. “We got to get going.”

Janet dropped her basket. The two women moved back up the aisle toward the door. Then in front of them, one of the two men from the street came around the aisle. He stopped and stared.

Alex froze first, then Janet.

The man was ten feet away, grinning, his hands in a position to indicate that under his overcoat he had firepower.

Alex looked behind her. As if by instinct, she felt the eyes on her back. She saw that the second man was behind her, about thirty feet away at the end of a long aisle.

“Just give Janet to us,” the man in front of Alex said.

“Not a chance!” Alex said. She kept her Glock hard by her leg, out of sight. No point to tip them.

“You
both
want to get killed?” the man asked. He had an accent.

Middle Eastern. Maybe.

“I should ask you the same,” Alex answered. With her free hand, she pulled out her bureau ID. “I’m FBI. Get out of our way and get out of the store!”

The man spat at her. The spit hit on the floor three feet in front of Alex. Alex knew: it was a diversion. She wasn’t falling for it.

Then, bedlam.

The man in front of Alex used both hands to swing up an automatic pistol and wheel it toward them. From behind her, she heard the second man retreat hastily for cover. Alex shoved Janet to the ground with one arm, following her into a low crouch. Once again Alex’s quick reflexes saved her, along with having her own weapon already in her hand and set to fire. Precious seconds saved now meant precious decades longer to live.

Alex’s right hand came up shooting. Her pistol thundered once with an enormous intimidating bang and then a second one. Her mind was lucid and her reactions crisp, as if the danger to her and Janet clarified her thoughts at the same time.

The gunman sprayed the area. But Alex’s first shot hit the man in the upper shoulder. He staggered backward. His coat quickly discolored with a dark crimson. His own pistol fired wildly thanks to the impact of Alex’s shot on his body. Five or six shots sprayed from the floor to the shelves to the ceiling.

Alex’s second shot had ripped into the right arm of the gunman, just at the inside of the elbow where the forearm met the upper arm. The sleeve soaked with the evidence of a clear hit. The gun flew from the shooter’s hand. It hit the floor hard, spun, and skidded.

The man bellowed, then followed with a long, monotonous stream of vicious obscenities. There was a slow-motion reddish explosion of blood and smashed bone from that section of his arm. It sputtered forth. The fabric of the coat had been shredded by the tumble of Alex’s bullet.

More chaos. Somewhere in the store, an alarm whooped like a fire siren. From the neighboring aisles, Alex could hear the screams of other shoppers and their frenzied, panicked footsteps as they sought an exit.

Janet crouched low behind Alex. Alex knew that the danger was far from over. The man she had wounded was scrambling backward, groping for his weapon with his left hand as he flailed and knocked dozens of items off the nearest shelves. Then he lost balance and was on his knees, chest heaving, still swearing viciously, profanely vowing to kill both women if he could get to his weapon.

His partner came around the corner behind him, his weapon already out, ducking low, trying to bring the nose of his own pistol in the right direction and aim it toward their female victims.

Alex jerked her Glock toward the second assailant before he could get his bearings. “FBI! Freeze!” she screamed.

He swung around his hand that held his weapon.

Alex fired three times. At the same time, the gunman poured a volley of shots toward her.

Janet hit the floor, flat and screaming. Alex felt and heard two shots hit the floor to her right with horrible loud skidding ricochets. Another smashed into the shelf display over her head, dispatching shampoo bottles and hairspray in every direction. But her own shots, one of them at least, had found its mark.

The second gunman staggered. Alex had hit him in the upper chest, not mortally, but enough to take him out of the fight.

He kept his weapon in his left hand and could have fired again. Instead, with his right hand he grabbed his partner and tried to hoist him to his feet.

Alex screamed again. “Freeze! FBI! Freeze!” she howled.

The gunman neither froze nor fired again. The fallen man rocked forward to his feet. If he had lunged for his gun, Alex would have shot him. Instead, the second man pulled the first man to his feet. They turned over the remaining part of an aisle candy display. They lurched and staggered toward the door, colliding with other panicked people trying to flee.

Alex whirled and eyeballed Janet, who remained curled on the floor and who was shielding her face and eyes. Alex saw no blood. Neither of them had been hit.

“You all right?” Alex blurted.

Janet gave her a terrified nod. There were tears in her eyes. Her face was white.

Alex made a decision to pursue the attackers.

“Stay here!” she said.

Alex rose to her feet and ran down the aisle. With her free hand, she dropped her FBI ID around her neck on its chain. There were customers down and cringing, and displays were turned over across the floor. Alex pushed and shoved past them.

The cashiers were still ducking low behind the counter. The footing was treacherous, but Alex ran after the gunmen.

She skidded and nearly fell. She hit the entranceway and turned the corner. The more severely wounded man had crashed into the backseat of the car and the second gunman was ducking into the driver’s seat. But he held his position.

He was waiting for her. The gun was trained right at her.

Again, Alex was quick and elusive. She dropped down immediately, hit the sidewalk hard, and rolled to her right, bringing her almost parallel to the car. The bullets crashed into the brick and glass of the store structure and window.