Quicksand (33 page)

John winced. “How was she?”

“Starved and crazy for meth by that point. She went straight to the hospital. Her mother is with her now.”

John sighed. “At least … she's going home.”

“Yeah, except now she's gonna have years of rehab ahead of her for the meth they got her hooked on.”

John shook his head. “I don't have any answers, Nora. I wish to God I did, but I don't.”

She sighed. “We got a lotta work to do.” She had just unclipped the poster when her BlackBerry shuddered with a new text message. She glanced at the phone. Monty Watt had sent the words
Teff flour
.

She and Wansbrough made their way through the basement from the range to Watt's lab. “What's going on? What's teff flour?” she asked.

Monty looked up. “The hood used on the shooting victim was actually more like part of a burlap sack containing teff flour.”

“Which is—?” John pressed.

“An Ethiopian flour used in injera bread … and general baking.”

John and Nora looked at each other pensively, then back at Monty.

Monty shrugged wearily. “Look, I don't make the information. I
relay
it.”

*   *   *

They found Ben
and Eric Burton at their desks and shared Monty's latest discovery.

“Okay, but what's teff flour?” Ben was saying as they sank into their desk chairs in the cubicle.

“Don't you know anything, man?” Wansbrough asked, throwing up his arms in mock frustration.

Nora suppressed a smile and felt a surge of gratitude that Wansbrough was back to lightening the mood again.

Ben wasn't quite there yet, though. He rejoined irritably, “Apparently not,
man
. What does it have to do with anything?”

Eric Burton gave Nora a wink so surreptitious she at first questioned whether she'd actually seen it. Then he piped up, “Well, Benjamin, given the ‘investigators' moniker, we're optimistic we'll figure it out.”

Ben raised his eyebrows at all of them, then laughed out loud. “Okay, let's ask the Google Oracle.” He scanned the screen, and Nora rolled her chair over to his desk. “Also known as ‘lovegrass,'” he read. “Imported from Ethiopian highlands … What's injera bread?” He Googled that too, and all three of them stared at the images of flat bread on the screen.

“‘Popular in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia…'” Nora read aloud.

“What does a fifty-pound bag of teff flour cost in this country?” asked John.

Ben typed it in, wondering aloud what had gotten done at the Federal Bureau of Investigation prior to the emergence of the Internet. “More than two hundred dollars,” he responded finally.

John harrumphed. “Then that's not just something average people are buying.”

All three men suddenly looked at Nora, who exhaled sharply and then murmured, “
Restaurant
.”

*   *   *

The Suburban skidded
around a corner, then swerved to miss an elderly woman pushing a grocery cart full of plump trash bags. Ben and Eric followed not far behind in Ben's car. The SWAT van was barreling through the tangled streets of West Philly and deep into Kingsessing. It had taken all of an hour to get surveillance on the small detached garage behind the neighborhood's one Ethiopian restaurant. The confirmation was quick in coming: One Cadillac Escalade.

“How many gang members?” Nora was asking.

“Our guys put the count at eight,” Wansbrough responded.

Nora cast a quick glance at him. “Vest?”

He nodded, patting his chest and smiling at her.

The vehicles converged on the small building, so close to the site where they had found Hafsa's body. As Nora anchored her BlackBerry in the dash holder and opened the line with Ben and Eric, she stared at the tiny restaurant. Its bright plastic sign gave homage to the Ethiopian flag, the colors striking a contrast with the gray day and grayer surroundings. A curling metal railing sprawled wildly to the side of rickety cement steps, an entryway that did not appear to beckon to customers.

Now the black-swathed men poured out of the van with swift efficiency, with half the team crouching as they raced for the back entrance, and the other half assembling at the front door. Nora watched breathlessly as they entered the restaurant; despite herself, she checked her watch. She noted that it was two o'clock, and wondered if such a restaurant drew late lunchers. Everything in the neighborhood seemed to slow to a standstill as the sound of shouting spilled out onto the street; they heard the shattering of glass within, and the discharge of a weapon, followed by more shouting that escalated to a fever pitch.

Nora was just going to ask John what their next move should be when the garage door exploded outward in an angry shower of splintered wood, and the Escalade barreled out onto the street with a banshee shriek of its spinning tires. Behind the wheel they saw a tall, lean Somali wearing black wayfarer sunglasses. Just as the imam had described him.

John stared for a split second at the empty SWAT van, its team ensconced within the restaurant, and without further hesitation slammed the Suburban's gearshift into drive. Nora leaned over and flipped on the siren and flashing lights, then fumbled with her seat belt as the SUV devoured the uneven pavement of Kingsessing.

Suddenly, a bullet slammed against the front window; the glass held, but exploded into an intricate web that crackled across the surface. “Jesus, how can he drive and shoot that well?” John protested, craning his neck to look through a clear spot in the glass.

Nora heard Ben's voice—“Are you guys all right?”

“We're fine,” she shouted. “Do I return fire, John?” Nora pulled the Glock from the elastic holster at the small of her back.

“I want you to shoot out his tires, Nora, but only when you have a clear shot—we can't risk striking a pedestrian!”

She rolled down the window and took aim.

“Ha!” John was yelling. “Trolley! That should slow you down, bastard!”

The snail-like Chester Street trolley was just ahead, with a line of traffic approaching from the opposite direction, and Nora watched in terror as the Escalade jockeyed for position, nearly flattening a mother pushing a stroller across the street. The woman screamed and thrust the stroller between two parked cars, then leapt after it. Unable to pass, the Escalade suddenly tore across the oncoming lane and into the grass of Clark Park. It jolted down the steep hill, past a dog walker who dropped all six leashes in his charge; the dogs scattered. John had to wait for two oncoming cars to pass, but then he followed suit, almost striking a galloping yellow Lab. The Suburban bumped across the grass, as Nora clutched her weapon, still hoping for a shot. The Escalade was out of range now and had just tumbled onto Baltimore Avenue and continued its flight.

She cast a backward glance and was relieved to see that Ben wasn't behind them—his car would never have made it through the park. John grimaced as he steered with his bad arm, downshifting with his right to help the Suburban up the hill onto Baltimore; the intersection was hopelessly congested, but he added a honking horn to the scream of the siren, and most of the cars parted.

“Did he stay on Baltimore or cut through?” John was shouting.

“Baltimore, Baltimore! Go, go, go!” Nora cried, leaning slightly out of her window for a better view. Then they heard the sickening sound of careening vehicles and the crunch of metal smashing into metal. In a moment, they saw what had caused the noise. Two cars had swerved to miss the Escalade and crashed into each other, spinning into the middle of the intersection and coming to rest perpendicular to the flow of traffic, effectively sealing off the road. John couldn't get the wide Suburban through the fissure between the wreckage and the parked cars lining the sidewalk.

“Mother
fucker
!” John swore, as he jammed on the brakes. Nora flopped forward against the iron embrace of the seat belt. The Escalade whipped out of sight, turning the corner onto 38th Street.

But both agents immediately heard a screech of tires, and Nora was shocked to see Ben's Ford barrel past them on the sidewalk, and then bump down gracelessly just beyond the accident.

“Alright, Calder!” John yelled.

Ben's response was clear through Nora's cell, “We gotta keep him off Seventy-six!”

At almost any other time of day they would have been able to count on the Schuylkill River Expressway being impassable and hopelessly clogged. But at two o'clock in the afternoon it would be clear; at higher speeds on the expressway, the pursuit could potentially become far more deadly.

John yanked the gearshift into reverse and spun the car around to rocket the wrong way up 40th Street, up to Spruce and into the heart of the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. “He's heading up to Market,” Nora heard Eric Burton shouting.

Nora holstered her weapon in order to cling better to the handle above her window. John's entire concern now was to keep from plowing the Suburban into a group of backpack-toting students, and his knuckles gleamed beige on the steering wheel. Nora saw he was gritting his teeth through the pain in his injured arm. He cut up to Market Street, desperately trying to catch up.

“Where's that backup?” Just as Nora asked, a counterpoint to their siren reverberated through the air. They heard Eric Burton hollering orders that the police should seal off the entrances to the expressway. Nora spotted the Escalade careening past the 30th Street Station, but veering sharply right onto JFK when Asad spied the roadblocks. John sped up, weaving in and out of the traffic. Nora heard gunshots and saw that Eric Burton was leaning out the window of Ben's car, trying to shoot out the Escalade's tires. The Escalade returned fire, and Ben's front window exploded.

“Ben!” Nora screamed.

“Goddammit!” he was shouting. Then, “We're okay!” he shouted.

All three cars were rocketing up 20th Street now, and the sound of sirens bearing down from behind them filled the air. Traffic was getting congested again, and a taxi and a minivan slid into each other as the Escalade shot through the red light at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. “I can't get a shot—” Eric was yelling, even though he didn't have to hang out the side window anymore.

Nora watched the Escalade and the Ford swing left onto the parkway. “Where is he going?”

John was shaking his head. “He's just desperate now—maybe he's trying for the expressway access from the Spring Garden Bridge.”

But Nora could see the flash of red and blue lights blocking that route as well.

“What the—!” John exclaimed.

The Escalade had changed directions again and was heading up 23rd and then inexplicably turned left, vanishing into the tunnel that traveled one way under the parkway, beneath the Museum of Art's east entrance and the seventy-two steps where Nora so often ran. It emptied out on the other side of the museum by the Spring Garden Bridge. From there the Escalade could easily enter the expressway.

“Gotcha now,” Nora heard Ben yell, and she heard the squeal of his tires as he turned hard left to pursue the Escalade.

“No, Ben—” John shouted. “Don't follow him into the tunnel!”

Nora looked from John to the still distant entrance to the tunnel in terror. “Oh,
shit
!” she heard Ben yell. “He's shifted into reverse…”

That was when a deafening crash filled the Suburban. From the open windows, from the BlackBerry on the dashboard—to Nora it seemed that the sound tumbled down upon them like an avalanche. The Suburban half-skidded, half-spun to a stop at the mouth of the tunnel, bringing into view the remnants of Ben's car.

*   *   *

No sound would
come, even though Nora's mouth was open, and in her head she was screaming Ben's name over and over and over.

John Wansbrough's door was closest to the tunnel, and he opened it and crouched down, his gun drawn, with the door between him and the scene. He peered into the smoky opening, glanced at Nora, and began to shout Ben's and Eric's names.

Nora opened her door, but he motioned to her not to descend from the car yet.

“Something's going on,” he hissed.

Then, as the smoke was clearing, Nora saw John's eyes widen. Midway through the tunnel, they could see that Asad had pulled an unconscious Ben out of his car and was holding a gun to his neck. The Somali's sunglasses were nowhere to be seen, and Nora could just make out the hollow, shrunken space where his left eye had been.

“I want safe passage!” he was shouting, and Nora knew the voice immediately, had heard it every night in every dream she'd had since the same gun had been held against her own neck. Hearing that voice made her see the bright red stain on Basheera's chest all over again. She stared desperately at Ben's limp form.

“Your man is
alive
, see—he is still breathing! I am going to put this man in my car, and I will drive away. If anyone comes near me, I will kill this man! If anyone cuts me off, I will kill this man! If I see flashing lights or hear even one siren, I will kill this man!”

John repeated these things into the radio on his dashboard, then glanced at Nora, who was blinking rapidly. She wondered with a sinking feeling if Eric had survived the crash at all. John began shouting, trying to stall the tall Somali by any means—“Now, wait, now … we can talk about this. You know, if you kill a federal agent it will be much, much worse for you! We can cut you a deal…”

Nora stared at Ben's helpless body, dangling from the crook of the tall man's elbow. She glanced at the traffic jams piling up behind the Suburban, making it impossible for the police cars bearing down on them to get through. Uniformed officers were beginning to approach on foot, weapons drawn, but John was furiously waving them off in an effort to protect Ben. The man called Asad would surely hear the sirens and brakes of any cars approaching from the tunnel's other end. The Somali was dragging Ben backward, step by step, his eyes riveted on John Wansbrough. Twenty paces behind them was the waiting Escalade, the back of which was severely dented, the massive window destroyed, but which otherwise appeared intact.