Blackout (32 page)

Monday, September 14, 6:45 p.m. EDT

New York, New York

“So how do you think all this is going to end?” Afshin asked Keith as they walked down the street.

“Beats me. My guess is that we're all going to have to hike on out of here eventually. Otherwise you're talking like half a million bus trips to evacuate everyone—more if they're using helicopters,” Keith said, huffing a bit. They were about halfway back to the off-ramp, and Keith was starting to envy Afshin's stamina and younger legs.

“Yeah, but look around,” Afshin said. “How would they even get any buses in here? No, I'm with you; we'll be doing some walking.”

“Excuse me, sir, but could you spare any food?” said a female voice next to Keith.

“Sorry,” he mumbled without looking down. “Got a bunch of hungry mouths to feed back home.” He picked up his pace, hoping to escape his guilt a little faster.

Even before leaving the buses, he had covered this eventuality with his teams. “People are going to be trying to get your food from you—asking, begging, demanding—but you can't give in. If you give in to one person, you'll be swamped. Just say sorry, make yourself look as big as you can, and keep walking.”

Fine words those were,
he thought now.
Easy to say; a lot harder to do. It kills me to walk past those in need, but I have to take care of my team! There are guys counting on me! So toughen up and keep walking!

Sweat poured down his face, and Keith longed to crack open one of the Gatorades he was carrying. In order to distract himself, he asked, “How you holding up, Z?”

Afshin puffed a little laugh. “Doing better than you, old man!”

“No doubt about that. These knees have seen a few more games than yours. But I mean, how are you feeling—like how're your spirits and stuff?”

“You know, I'm doing okay. Really. Story time?”

“Sure,” Keith said. Why Afshin always felt the need to ask permission before talking about himself, he'd never know.

“I remember my dad telling me about when he fled Iran. He waited a little too long, so when the time came, it was cut and run. He and my mom left with basically nothing, and when they arrived in America, they had to start all over again. But in all that time, never did he get angry or discouraged. He told me he just kept thinking that nothing had really changed for him and my mom. Sure, they had less money, and their immediate future was less certain. However, they knew that God still loved them. They knew that Jesus Christ was still on His throne. With that knowledge, they felt they could handle anything.”

A little ways up, two guys moved into Keith's path. Keith stared them down with his “I'm taking the quarterback's head off this play” look and never quit moving forward. Eventually the would-be banditos slipped away in search of easier prey.

“I remember Riley saying something like that,” Keith said to Afshin. “It was a couple of weeks after his dad's funeral. I asked him how he was surviving, and he said, ‘As long as I know that God loves me and that I'm doing what He wants, nothing's really changed.' Then he talked about how if life is falling apart around you, it didn't really matter—not in the grand scheme of things. This life is just a blip on the radar screen of our eternity.

“I don't know. I mean, of the two of us, you're the theologian. But I'm just thinking that God's got us in this mess for a purpose. And as long as we're doing what He wants, then we're good. Right? There are a lot more comfortable places we could be. But whether we're here or there is no biggie. The biggie is that in either place we're doing what He wants us to do. What do you think?”

“I think you're more of a theologian than you think you are. What you're talking about is called contentment. The apostle Paul put it this way: ‘I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.' Memorized that one for a camp scholarship,” Afshin said proudly.

“Nice. I like Paul. He wasn't no weak-kneed girlie-skirter.”

“‘Paul wasn't no weak-kneed girlie-skirter.' I actually think that was one of John Calvin's original ten points before he pared them down to five.”

“Bummer. Didn't make the short list, huh?”

“Nope. Must be tough getting cut.”

“I wouldn't know,” Keith said with a grin.

As they walked, dusk began to descend. A rainless cloud-cover had begun to blanket the city but was barely visible through the thick haze of smoke. Four blocks up, Keith could see the freeway. Walking up the off-ramp, recognizable mainly because of their size, were Donovan Williams and Travis Marshall. Both seemed to be carrying boxes.

“Dude, you see—”

“What do we have here?” a voice interrupted Keith from behind.

Keith just kept walking.

“Hey, you two deaf or something?” the same voice asked. Something big and round pushed hard into Keith's back, causing one of the boxes of Gatorade to slip off.

Keith whirled around and saw eight young thugs standing behind them. Each held an aluminum baseball bat. As soon as Keith and Afshin stopped, the group fanned out into a circle, surrounding them. Carefully, Keith put his bags and the other box on the ground. Afshin followed suit.

“You don't look like you belong in my neighborhood, Mr. Fancy Shirt,” the leader of the pack said, using his bat to flip the collar up against Keith's chin. “What you doing around here?”

Keith's heart was racing. This situation was bad.
Just get out of this. It doesn't matter what it costs you; just get yourselves out of this.
“Listen, we're not looking for trouble. We were just up on the freeway when whatever happened happened. We just came down to do some shopping.”

“Oh, how nice. Did you hear that, D. B.? They just came down for a lovely afternoon of shopping.” D. B. and the rest of the guys started laughing. “You sure seemed to shop a lot for just two dudes.”

Suddenly D. B. burst out, “Hey, I knew I recognized him! This joe's Keith Simmons—you know, from the Colorado Mustangs!”

The first pulled his bat back and began laughing. “Seriously? You really Keith Simmons?”

“Yeah, that's me,” Keith said, relief starting to flood his body.

“Well, why didn't you say so? I'm Dizzy, and these are my boys. Imagine that—Keith Simmons walking through my hood. Tell you what, you leave one of those cases of Gatorade here, you can grab the rest of your stuff and go.”

Keith put on his best smile and said, “Thanks, Dizzy. That's a solid thing to do.”

The leader laughed again. “Check out Keith Simmons—getting all old-school on me. That was a ‘solid' thing to do.”

The rest of the group started laughing. Keith's hands shook slightly as he and Afshin began to pick up their bags. Then Dizzy put his bat under Afshin's chin and lifted his head up.

“Hold on a second, my man. I said Mr. Keith Simmons could go. I didn't say anything about your ragheaded self.”

Keith's heart sank. He dropped the bags.
This is really, really bad!
He could see the fear in Afshin's eyes.

Keith stood back up and forced a chuckle. “Ragheaded? Matt? Come on, Dizzy, he's just one of the team's trainers. I brought him along to help carry stuff. Seriously, does Thorrockson sound like an Arab dude?”

Dizzy laughed harder. “Thorrockson? Did you guys make that up yourselves? Thorrockson?” Suddenly Dizzy turned serious. “You disappoint me, Mr. Keith Simmons. Why'd you go lying to the D-man? You see, I know who this is,” he said, pushing his bat hard into Afshin's chest. “This is that first-rounder camel jockey, Zifanat or Zinafat or whatever his funky, suicide-bombing name is. Look around! Don't you know that his buddies are the ones who did all this to us? And you go lying for him?”

Keith looked for help from the crowd that had gathered around the confrontation. Many of the people seemed troubled, some even on the verge of tears. But others, at the revelation of who Afshin was, had something else in their eyes—hatred and revenge.

“Come on, Dizzy. Listen, I'm sorry I lied. Afshin has nothing to do with this. You know that. He's caught in it just like the rest of us. Just let us on our way. You can keep all—”

Keith's words were stopped by a blow from Dizzy's bat to his midsection. Keith doubled over, gasping for breath.

“Leave him alone,” he could hear Afshin saying from above him. “It's me you want. Let him—”

Afshin's words were cut off by a metallic ping, and suddenly Afshin dropped flat next to Keith. Blood ran from a gash in his cheek. His eyes were glazed, but they managed to look in Keith's direction.

“Run,” he mouthed, before another blow landed on his shoulder with an audible crack.

A cry rose up from the depths of Keith's soul and burst forth as he lunged at Dizzy.

“AUUGGHH!”
He caught Dizzy under the chin with his head. The group's leader was out cold even before his skull cracked the pavement. Keith spun around to find his next victim, but something slammed into the back of his head. He pitched forward, then took another hit on the side of his leg. He dropped to his knees. One more hit to his right temple sprawled him out on the pavement.

Although his vision was clouding over, he could still make out Afshin. Four guys had surrounded him and were gleefully raining blows down with their bats. In his mind, Keith pictured himself jumping to his feet and rescuing his friend; he could see himself snatching a bat out of one of their hands and whaling blows on them until their bones broke and their heads split open. He so desperately wanted to do something—anything—but his body wouldn't cooperate.

After what seemed like an eternity, the men tired of Afshin. Keith looked at his friend's face. Half of it wasn't recognizable anymore—torn, swollen, bloodied. But it was the other side—the side with the hazel eye that was still open, staring, empty, and lifeless—that broke Keith's heart.

“Dirty raghead,” one of the attackers said, giving Afshin's head one last whack, blessedly turning that eye away.

The group walked back over to Keith, and one of them prodded his cheek with a bat. Then, wheeling back, he brought the toe of his shoe directly into the center of Keith's face.

Monday, September 14, 8:15 p.m. EDT

Washington, D.C.

Riley leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling of the open room. Kim Li and Ted Hummel were laughing about some story Li had been telling. But other than that, the room was silent. The air-conditioning was set high, and Riley felt a chill after having been out in the evening humidity.

When Riley and Skeeter had first arrived back from Georgia, they had stopped by the Room of Understanding. There had been a very quick greeting from the analysts, who all had then gone immediately back to their work. Even Scott and Khadi had simply given them a fast “Good to have you back” before they left them standing alone in the middle of the room.

Reading the invisible Do Not Disturb sign, the two went three doors down the hall, just past the men's and women's restrooms, to the area that contained the ops side of the special operations group. Kim Li, Ted Hummel, Gilly Posada, Matt Logan, Carlos Guitiérrez, and Steve Kasay were all in the brightly lit room—geared up and ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

After exchanging greetings, Riley and Skeeter had changed into the all-black uniform that the SOG team favored. Then Riley gave a brief rundown of the events at Stone Mountain.

“As soon as we get a location on that boat, we're out the door. After the way Secretary Moss's people botched the New York City operation, Stanley Porter's got us first in line. But let's not forget what happened to those other guys. We lost four of our brothers when that boat blew. There's no reason to think that couldn't happen to us, too. So we go in fast, quiet, and hard. If you even think there might be trouble, pull the trigger and let God sort them out.”

That had been an hour ago. Everyone had checked and rechecked their gear and their weapons. Now it was just the nerves, the anticipation, and the waiting.

Riley looked for patterns in the acoustic ceiling tiles in a vain attempt not to think about what was floating out on the water somewhere east of the city. The very real possibility of another EMP launch twisted his stomach.

However, if he were being honest—totally, deep-down, bottom-of-the-heart truthful—he wasn't really thinking about all the people who would be affected, the tens or even hundreds of thousands of possible casualties. Sure, they were there somewhere bouncing around his cluttered mind. But standing out in the forefront of his thoughts was none other than himself.

I do not want to go through that again! Especially this time without an escape hatch—no Scott to come rescue me. Yet here I am again, smack-dab in the middle of the possible ground zero.

The fact that it could happen anytime kept every muscle tense. He was just waiting for the lights to go out—to be again caught up in that impossible nightmare.
But if it is going to happen, it's better for it to happen now than when we're in the middle of the city—or worse, when we're in a chopper.
That thought gave his insides another twist.

Why am I here, Lord? Why can't I just be having a normal life with a normal career living in Normalsville, U.S.A.? I hate where you've got me! And it's not like this is the first time you've put me in a situation like this, where not only is my life in danger but I also have the lives of thousands of others on my shoulders.

Honestly, I'm tired of it! I'm tired of the responsibility! I'm tired of the danger! Despite what everyone says, I'm not Captain America. I'm still just the little kid who was scared of the ghosty tree that swayed on breezy nights outside my window.

He looked at Skeeter, who was calmly loading another polymag for his Magpul Masada.
He's gotta be feeling it too. How can he not? But look at him—all cool, calm, and collected—and here I am sweating bullets! The guy's amazing!

Seeming to sense he was being watched, Skeeter looked up and saw Riley looking at him. With the faintest hint of a smile, Skeeter brushed his hand across his forehead like he was wiping away his sweat. Riley smiled back and nodded.

Maybe he's human after all,
Riley thought as he watched Skeeter insert another round. Tilting back up toward the ceiling, Riley prayed,
Lord, I know You understand my lack of faith and my fears. Please give me the strength to fulfill the mission You've placed before me. Like You prayed in the garden, ‘Not my will but Yours be done.' Whatever You want from me I'll do.

Li had finished his story, and the room was silent again—every man lost in his own history, his own family, his own role on the team.

Suddenly Scott's voice cut through the silence. “Mount up! We've found the boat,” he said over the intercom.

Instantly the room was a flurry of activity—each man grabbing his equipment and running for the back door that led to the helipad. Riley picked up his gear and Khadi's as well. He had insisted on being the one to check her pack and her weapon while she continued her work in the RoU. Skeeter had done the same for Scott.

As they exited the room and ran across the lawn, Riley could see the two jet-black, MH-6J Little Birds bringing their rotors up to speed. These helicopters, which had been brilliantly modified for special-ops infiltrations and exfiltrations, could carry up to six troops on a bench-looking external personnel system that hung on the chopper's sides. Because of their shape and their deadliness, the MH-6J had also been given the nickname “Killer Egg.”

Running to his designated position, Riley seated himself, then held on tightly as the Little Bird lifted off the ground. Next to Riley was Skeeter; Scott and Khadi were on the opposite side of the aircraft. Looking below, Riley saw the second Bird beginning its ascent.

Once they leveled off, Riley reached behind himself and found his headphones. He slipped them on and shouted, “You on, Scott?”

“Been waiting on you,” Scott responded.

“We're heading north,” Riley said, more as a question than a statement.

“Yeah, the National Reconnaissance Office was able to track a midsize fishing trawler up from Cuba to where it's sitting now in the Chesapeake Bay right at the mouth of the Patapsco River.”

“Baltimore?”

“Baltimore,” Scott confirmed. “Its present location is less than forty miles outside of downtown D.C. Well within range to make a serious mess.”

The chopper was reaching its cruising speed of 135 mph, causing Riley to hold tightly to the bench and lean back into the helicopter. “So the NRO found it, huh? Didn't that tweak the kids?”

“They were mostly all right,” Khadi answered. “They were just happy it was found. Well, all except for Gooey, who was vowing revenge on the NRO folks using something called Avool's Sword of Jin.”

“I've really got to get him away from
World of Warcraft
. He's getting a little bit addicted to that thing,” Scott said.

“Gee, you think?” Khadi responded.

As they sped through the sky, Riley tried to think of something to say to the team to pump them up for the task ahead. The only problem was, the image in his mind of the chopper losing power and plummeting to the ground made it a little hard to focus.

Finally he said, “Well, this is it, guys. We take care of this thing, and it'll be time to start figuring out who caused all this mess. But if we blow this, it probably won't matter too much to us one way or the other. So let's get out there and get the job done!”

The tepid response to Riley's little speech let him know he had probably said exactly the wrong thing to get the guys psyched up. His suspicion was confirmed when Scott said, “Wow, Pach, for a second there I was picturing General Patton in front of that huge flag giving the speech to the Third Army. Very inspiring!”

That was followed by an “Ow!” as Khadi most likely gave Scott the elbow to the ribs that he deserved.

Well, good speech or bad speech, these guys know what to do. Lord, please, just let them all come back alive,
Riley prayed as he watched the city lights pass by under his boots.