Snake Eye (2 page)

“No problem, honey,” the young woman said soothingly as she broke the old High Standard .22 open and carelessly spilled three empties plus six unspent rounds out onto the floor. “Let’s reload and go find Posada. Then, after we kill him, we’ll go see my sister.”

Shaw nodded, fumbled more shells into his weapon, and flipped the cylinder closed just like he’d seen detectives do in the movies. He nodded to Kossel, and said, “Hey, man” as he stepped over the graduate student and walked down the hall.

The bullets had entered Kossler’s abdomen within inches of each other but his entire belly had begun to hurt. The darkness was starting to gather by then, and it took everything the grad
student had to remove the cell phone from his shirt pocket and thumb 911. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was actually a couple of seconds a woman answered. Kossler managed to say, “U-dub campus…Rigg Hall…they shot me,” before he lost consciousness.

Posada had his eye glued to a microscope as the terrorists entered his lab. He assumed the footsteps belonged to Kossel and spoke without looking up. “Hey, Helmut, take a look at this….” Both McDonnel and Shaw brought their weapons up and opened fire. Posada jerked spasmodically, glassware shattered, and a .22 slug made a neat little hole in the flat-panel display on the far side of the room. The researcher slumped to the floor.

“All right,” McDonnel said grimly, “wet the place down.”

Aspee stood with gas cans in hand staring down at Posadas bloody corpse. A look of revulsion appeared on his face. His cheeks started to bulge and he threw up. The three of them had shared a special celebratory dinner four hours earlier and his share splattered all over the floor. McDonnel made a face. “That was gross, Greg. Okay, Larry, it’s up to us. Grab a can and let’s get going.”

The terrorists slopped gasoline over the countertops, and poured the liquid into file cabinets and onto the lab’s computer equipment. “All right,” McDonnel said, as sirens sounded in the distance. “Time to get out of here. Greg, are you ready?”

Aspee looked pale but determined. He nodded stiffly, lit a kitchen match, and tossed it into the middle of the room. There was a loud “whump!” followed by a wave of heat. The threesome backed out of the room.

The building’s sprinkler system came on, but it didn’t really matter, since the group had already accomplished what they came for. The first stage of the operation was complete. The second was about to start.

Rossi knew something was wrong the moment she saw Nealy’s sedan. Half a dozen students had gathered around it, the passenger side door was open, and a body was sprawled out onto the pavement. The agent grabbed the mike off her dash, identified herself, and told the dispatcher to send an aid unit plus back-up.

Then Rossi pulled over, jumped out of her car, and ran toward the scene. She could hear sirens and knew help was coming, but took out her weapon just in case. The agent held her badge up for people to see, and yelled “FBI! Move away from the car!”

It was a dramatic moment—and one that Americo Lopa managed to capture on tape from the edge of the steadily growing crowd. He wore his ball cap backwards so it wouldn’t interfere with the viewfinder, and the lower part of his face was obscured by a scarf. Other than that he was dressed student-style, in a parka, jeans, and boots.

Though manufactured for the high-end consumer market, the GR-SXM93OU JVC vid cam put out broadcast-quality images, even in low-light conditions. And that was important because the stuff that the cops would eventually harvest from the surrounding security cameras would be too static and vague to claim people’s attention for very long. And Lopa, who ran what he thought of as the Red Cell from the back of his van, wanted to ensure that the sanction received a lot of coverage. That was important because while there seemed to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of Muslim martyrs, people willing to die for the sake of the environment were in short supply.

Most of the bystanders moved back out of the way as Rossi arrived, but one, a resident from the university’s hospital, stood waiting. A stethoscope dangled from her neck. There was blood on her hands. Her eyes locked with Rossi’s. “Did they belong to you?”

The agent nodded mutely.

“I’m sorry. Both of them are dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

Rossi nodded for a second time. “Stay with them, Doctor. Don’t let anyone touch the vehicle or the bodies. Not Medic One…not anyone. This is a crime scene.” The resident nodded.

The agent’s hand shook as she pulled the Nextel phone off her belt, told the dispatcher that two agents were down, and that the killer or killers might still be in the area. That was when someone yelled, “Rigg Hall is on fire!” Rossi ran toward the brick building and Lopa panned. Meanwhile, having been alerted by 911, a member of the University of Washington’s police force arrived on the scene even as a fire engine bulled in from the north.

In spite of the fact that the sprinkler system had kept the flames down, flammable materials were stored in the lab and it wasn’t long before the fire found them. McDonnel heard a loud “whoosh” as additional oxygen was sucked into the room through the open fire door, and knew it was time for the second part of the operation to get underway. “Okay,” McDonnel said, “this is it. Greg, come here.”

The young man did as he was told. McDonnel told Aspee that she loved him, kissed him in spite of the vomit on his breath, and pulled back in order to look at him. He was crying. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “It won’t be that bad. Don’t forget what you’re supposed to do.”

Aspee shook his head. “I won’t.”

“Good. Larry? Are you ready?”

Shaw grinned, took McDonnel in his arms, and stuck his tongue into her mouth. He would have gone further except that she laughed and pushed him away. “Alright,” she said, her eyes shiny with emotion, “let’s go. I’ll see you in Paradise.” It sounded believable the way she said it, as if people went to Paradise every day and you could go there on a bus.

Aspee trudged in the direction of the door, saw Shaw push it open, and stumbled out into the cold. There were things he was supposed to say, slogans he was supposed to shout, but he couldn’t remember the words. Aspee heard a woman’s voice shout, “FBI! Stop or I’ll shoot!” and ran for the nearest bystander.

Rossi fired, felt the Glock buck in her hand, and saw the man go down. But then the subject was up again. The bastard was wearing body armor! The FBI agent considered a head shot, but the crowd was on the move by then and a number of people were running through the area immediately behind the suspect by that time. If Rossi were to miss, or if a bullet were to pass through the suspect’s head and keep on going, a bystander could die.

Aspee’s side hurt where the 10mm round had hit him, and although he could feel something wet running down his leg, there was no way to know whether it was urine, blood, or gasoline. The lady in front of him stood as if rooted in place, a look of terror on her face, as the terrorist closed in on her. She made a strange squeaking sound as Aspee wrapped his arms around her torso. Then, because the middle-aged office worker smelled just like his mother, he tightened the embrace.

The push-button lamp switch, which had been duct-taped to the inside surface of Aspee’s right wrist, made a
click
as he pressed the button. Electricity from a pair of batteries surged through a short length of wire, and a spark was introduced into one of six bottles of gasoline strapped to the terrorist’s body. There was a gentle “whump,” as Aspee burst into flames and the woman began to burn, too. Their voices formed a gruesome harmony as they screamed in unison and danced within a cocoon of flames. McDonnel had promised Aspee that it wouldn’t hurt, that
the cocaine would suppress the pain, but she’d been wrong.

Lopa, still located a safe distance away, knew what would happen next and pulled wide to capture the action. Though disappointed by Aspee’s failure to shout at least some of the agreed-upon slogans, everything else was going well and the cell leader was pleased.

Rossi pointed toward the spot where the two fiery bodies were locked together and shouted, “Smother those flames!” just as Shaw and McDonnel emerged from Rigg Hall and ran towards the crowd. Most of the bystanders turned and ran but one student tripped and fell. McDonnel screamed something incoherent as she prepared to throw herself on top of the helpless male.

Rossi yelled, “FBI! Stop or I’ll shoot!” but it made no difference. Having learned from the first episode Rossi aimed for the terrorist’s head but missed. Then, careful to lead her target, the agent fired again. McDonnel went down. There was no way to know whether the young woman triggered the fire bombs prior to being shot, or whether the explosion was the result of an involuntary movement of her thumb, but it didn’t make much difference. Her dead body exploded into flames, fell just short of her intended victim, and lit the surrounding area with an obscene glow.

Shaw was only twelve feet away from a campus cop by then. The police officer shouted for him to stop for the third time, fired his 9mm, and saw the young man stumble. But then the terrorist was up firing a pistol as he staggered forward.
I should have gone for the bastard’s head
, the cop thought to himself, and was just about to squeeze off another round when Rossi fired her Glock. The bullet removed the top of Shaw’s skull, sprayed the area behind with gore, and hit Rigg Hall. The terrorist toppled over backwards, landed with an audible “thump,” and was left to stare sightlessly up into the night sky.

Lopa lowered the camera and frowned. Rather than unfold the way it was supposed to, the sanction had been compromised by the female FBI agent, and that made him angry.
Very
angry. So angry that it might be necessary to cap the bitch. But that was for later. He had work to do.

Unsure of how many more opponents she might face, and which direction they might attack from, the agent tilted the Glock up and turned a complete circle. She saw bystanders, television cameras, and firefighters all waiting to see what would happen next. The first terrorist, the one that she hadn’t fired on, lay wrapped in someone’s steaming raincoat. A medic tended to him while the other worked to revive his victim.

Then, having completed her turn, Rossi realized that the fire department had water on the building, the police were pushing the crowd back behind yellow crime tape, and Kissler had arrived for work. He stood with his pistol pointed at the ground and a look of amazement on his moon-shaped face. “Jesus, Rossi, what the hell happened?”

Rossi shook her head, wrinkled her nose in response to the odor of burned flesh, and felt a snowflake touch her nose. “Something bad, Kevin. Something really bad.”

About a hundred feet away, toward the rear of the crowd, Lopa touched the camera’s power button. In spite of some initial misgivings, the sanction had gone fairly well and the day’s work was done. His van was parked on the west side of the U-district not far from the I-HOP. The terrorist stowed the camcorder in his pack, slipped his arms through the straps, and sauntered away. He had news to deliver.

The morning sky was Seattle gray, a steady drizzle fell, and most people were on their way to work as Jack Dexter stepped out onto the street. Baghdad, Mosul, and Fallujah were thousands of miles away, his forebrain knew that, but his hind brain, the so-called reptilian brain, was alert to the possibility someone could fire at him from a passing vehicle, blow him to smithereens by triggering an IED (improvised explosive device), or kill him with a randomly fired mortar shell. That’s why the ex-SEAL had to force himself out of what he still thought of as cover.

The leg
, by which Dexter meant his left leg, was a little sore after the run the day before, but that was not only typical but hardly worth thinking about compared to the pain he had experienced when the so-called resistance fighters had ambushed his convoy. He and his team had been in the process of escorting four VIPs from the Defense Department out of the green zone to an Iraqi government building located near Haifa street when their vehicles came under attack.

An IED had been used to destroy the lead Humvee, while the second vehicle, the one Dexter had been riding in, was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG.) He knew he was hit but didn’t realize how badly because there wasn’t enough time to think about it. The bad guys rushed in hoping to take hostages that could be sold to Al Qaida—but Dexter and his men had other plans. They sprayed their attackers with CAR-15, MP5, and M203 fire even as the rest of the convoy bull-dozed its way out of the trap and a crowd of Iraqi civilians began to throw rocks at the infidel occupiers.

Unable to break through the defensive fire, and having suffered more than fifty percent casualties by that time, the black-clad fighters were already in the process of pulling back when a Cobra helicopter arrived on scene and sprayed both sides of the street with 20mm cannon fire. Sixteen terrorists were killed, plus twelve civilians, one of whom was a woman holding her baby. The baby, amazingly enough, survived.

That was when Dexter felt the pain, and looked down at where his leg should have been, but saw nothing but mangled flesh. He passed out, woke up in Germany, and was put back to sleep. The amputation of what was left of his leg took the better part of three hours. From there, the lieutenant was sent to Walter Reed, where he had been fitted for a prosthesis and put through a grueling regimen of rehab before being discharged from the Navy. Now, more than two years later, Dexter was used to the pain and the inconvenience of wearing an artificial limb. What he hadn’t been able to accept was the disfigurement itself. Eventually he would adjust, that’s what the shrinks told him, but what the hell did
they
know? Every single one of them had both legs—and could take their clothes off without embarrassment.

Even though Jack Dexter hadn’t consumed much coffee when he was younger, he had acquired the habit during his Naval service and still enjoyed it now. That was why he began each day at Starbucks. It sat on a corner in the space previously occupied by a tiny grocery store, one more indication of the way in which the neighborhood had been gentrified.