The Seventh Pillar (23 page)

Selena entered the Zone.

Sound became a muffled background murmur. She watched the empty shells erupt from the guns, twisting through the air in slow motion. Everything moved as if she were underwater. She ducked and rolled through the door, under the lethal stream of bullets from the hall. She could almost see the bullets in the air, almost feel them drift by. She rolled to the side of the hallway. She brought up her MP-5 and shot two men with machine pistols. She watched them lift backwards as her rounds struck. They drifted slowly through the air. They landed sprawled in a crumpled heap.

Time sped up again. She stood.

Five minutes.

"Which door?" Nick looked at the hall. It was papered in a bland pattern of pale yellow. It was carpeted and lit along the walls. The carpet was a vague blue. The lights were fake art deco. Doors stretched along both sides.

"Past them." Selena nodded at the men she'd shot. "It has to be past them"

Nick's ear was on fire. They ran past the bodies. A door opened. A man stepped out, a pistol in his hand. Ronnie put three rounds in his chest. The pistol flew into the air. The man fell back into the doorway.

Nick stepped over him into the room. A tall man in a black robe stood in front of a green metal footlocker. Behind him, the New York skyline shone in shifting patches of sunlight streaming through the clouds. The man had a sword in his right hand.

Hassan-i-Sabbah laughed.

"Too late. Now you will burn in hell."

He lunged and brought the blade down in a sweeping arc, slicing across Carter's armor. Nick grappled Sabbah's arm. He could smell Sabbah's foul breath, his unwashed body. Behind him, Ronnie started forward.

Nick ripped the sword free and brought it across in a roundhouse swing. The heavy blade bit into Sabbah's neck and kept on going. The head flew away. Blood fountained high in the air, splattered the room, misted the window, painted the ceiling. Painted Nick.

Sabbah's corpse crumpled. Nick wiped blood from his face. He looked at his watch.

One minute, fifty-nine seconds.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Elizabeth waited. Her screen displayed the wiring diagram for the WD-54 portable bomb. Static crackled in her headset.

"Director. I'm looking at the bomb. One minute, fifty and counting. What do I do?"

"There are five wires. Red, black, green, yellow and blue. Do you see them?"

"Yeah, I see them. I also see four more. Green, green, orange and black. They look new."

"There aren't supposed to be more than five."

"They must have wired in a backup. One minute, twenty-one seconds."

"Cut the blue and the red at the same time."

"Roger. Blue and red. Cutting." Elizabeth held her breath.

"Any change?"

"Negative. One minute, four seconds."

"Can you see the power source?"

"Looks like a motorcycle battery. Red and black and green wires."

"Don't cut the negative leads. That will set it off. Cut the positive lead, Probably red."

"Red and green. Forty-eight seconds."

"Cut both at once."

"Cutting."

Nick held his knife against the wires and prayed. He cut. The readout continued.

"No effect. Twenty-three seconds."

"Nick..."

"I'm cutting them all." There was a brief pause. "No effect. Twelve seconds."

"Nick."

"Goodbye, Director." Then he said, "Five."

Selena stood frozen in the middle of the room. She wasn't conscious of the blood pooling at her feet from Sabbah's headless corpse. She didn't hear the confused shouts in the hall.

"Four."

All she could hear was Nick counting down.

"Three."

Nick thought what an idiot he'd been. He looked at Selena. Their eyes met and locked. He should have told her how he felt about her, that he loved her, and now there wasn't any time left for that.

"Two."

Selena could see it. Maybe he'd never said the words, but she could see it. Feel it. Something wrenched at her heart, sadness for what might have been.

"One."

There was the sudden sound of a relay closing, the click of metal against metal.

No one moved. No one breathed. Nothing happened.

"A dud," Nick said. "The damn thing's a dud." He laughed. He laughed harder, tears running down his face. "A fucking dud."

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Events couldn't be covered up. The President had left the UN in a hell of a hurry right before his scheduled speech. Reporters and network helicopters listening to the police bands had converged on the apartment complex within minutes. The tabloids were splashed with pictures of body bags being carried from the building.

Everyone had seen the video of Sabbah with the sword. No terrorist since Bin Laden had gotten so much exposure. When his death was announced, all anyone knew was that Sabbah had been killed in the midst of a bomb plot aimed at the President and the world leaders at the UN. There was no mention that the bomb was nuclear. No one would ever know Manhattan had almost been vaporized, or that the bomb had been made in America.

Iran accused the United States of an elaborate plot to discredit Islam. Al-Qaeda vowed vengeance. But most of Islam wasn't buying Jihad or longing for Judgement Day. Most of Islam wanted to live their lives in peace. Islamic groups and nations across the world denounced Hassan-i-Sabbah as a madman who had perverted the teachings of the Qur'an.

Elizabeth had her pen in her hand. Nick waited for her to begin tapping it.

"Sabbah thought he'd destroy the West. Instead he may have laid the groundwork for a new dialogue with Islam. It's been a wake up call."

"What happened to the sword?" Carter asked. Nick, Selena, Ronnie and Lamont were in Harker's office.

"Oh, that. It was a forgery. We sent it to the Saudis for their inspection. Imagine if it had been real."

"It wasn't real?"

"Let's just say I'm sure the Saudis will verify our conclusion."

Nick considered that.

"How is Monroe doing?"

"He's in intensive care. He took one through the lung, even with the armor. Another in his leg. He'll be okay. Stephanie went over to check on him."

"Steph? I thought I caught something between them."

Elizabeth filed that away. She began tapping on the hard surface of her desk. "Hood sends his thanks. That was good work, Nick."

"I never thought we'd get help from Langley."

Elizabeth's pen went still. "As long as Lodge is DCI we can't rely on them.  He'll take the credit, along with the Feds. The President knows the real story. He's giving the entire team a commendation. Privately, of course. No one can know about it but us."

"I was sure we were done when that counter hit zero."

"You almost were. The bomb wasn't a dud."

"It wasn't?"

"That unit was assembled in 1982. The relay that triggers ignition was corroded. It missed making the connection by a hair. Literally by a hair. If it had connected, it would have detonated."

Nick thought about that. A pulse began pounding behind his left eye.

"What's next?" he asked.

"I need time to get back up to speed. You and the others need time off. Go visit your cat, or whatever it is you do out there at your cabin. I don't think the world is going to fall apart in the next week or so without us."

Later, Elizabeth settled back in her chair and closed her eyes. She was tired, very tired. She picked up the picture of the Twin Towers. Her hand trembled. They'd managed to stop it, this time. But what about the next?

She was sure there would be a next time.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

The road to the cabin lay buried under new snow. Heavy, wet clumps slipped from the branches of the cedars, soundless in the afternoon gray. They came around a curve. A trash can sat by the neighbor's gate. Nick jerked the wheel away. The truck slid toward the ditch on the side. He recovered and they climbed toward the cabin.

"Icy," he said.

Selena hadn't noticed any difference in the surface. She kept quiet. They reached the cabin and got out of the truck. A large cat waited for them on the porch, forty pounds of scarred muscle and matted orange fur.

"How did he know?" Selena looked at the ragged animal, big as a bobcat.

"Burps? I don't know. He's usually there when I show up. Probably wants out of the cold. It's a scam, though. He's got a nice warm place to sleep in the neighbor's barn. They feed him and he keeps the mice away."

"Hello." Selena bent down and scratched the cat behind his ears as Nick opened the door. Burps looked at her, drooled past one long tooth and ran inside. Nick lit a fire in the wood stove. He tossed his jacket on the couch. He got out two cans of cat food and put them down. Burps began chewing. Nick added a bowl of water.

Selena sat at the table and watched Nick. She saw him glance out the window. Jumpy.

The cat paused and belched, loud. He went back to eating.

Carter got out a bottle of wine and two glasses. He held up the bottle.

"Cabernet. Silver Oak."

The first time they'd had a glass of wine together it had been Silver Oak. The rest of that day hadn't gone too well. He sat at the table. Opened the bottle. Poured. Drank.

"That fire is nice." Conversation. She watched him.

"I like a fire. The furnace works fine. But I like watching the flames."

"What's wrong?"

"Wrong?"

"Something's bothering you. You think I can't tell?"

He got up and went to the window.

"I froze," he said. "In Pakistan."

"It was cold."

"No, I mean I froze. I was back in Afghanistan, back where that kid threw the grenade at me. Ronnie had to pull me out of it. I could have got us all killed. Then you got hit. I beat the guy who shot you to a bloody pulp."

She said nothing.

"If I hadn't frozen, you might not have been shot."

"But you handled it. Ronnie told me what happened. That you carried me out. It wasn't your fault. There were a lot of them and they were all shooting at us. We all could have been shot. Killed."

"That's it, isn't it? We all could have been killed. It's my job to make sure we don't get killed. And I froze. How the hell can I keep doing this?"

"You don't have to."

"Yes I do."

"You don't have to do it by yourself. You've got me and the others to do it with you."

"The team."

"That's right. And now Elizabeth is back. Less pressure. You just need a few days off. You know, where nobody's shooting at you." Selena smiled at him. When she smiled, the corners of her mouth wrinkled at the ends. "With me and Burps."

The cat had finished after dinner cleanup. He stalked over to the wood stove and curled up in a basket. In for the night. Nick looked outside and couldn't blame him. It had stared snowing again. Selena joined him at the window. For a few moments they both watched the snow.

"You're not the only one with something bothering you."

"What do you mean?" Nick looked at her.

"I'm not sure I like what's happening to me. I used to think the world was a pretty safe place, more or less. I knew there were agencies like ours who made sure people like me could go to bed at night with some reasonable expectation of waking up in the morning. I didn't think much about it. I've been protected, by the money, my education."

"But now it's different."

She nodded. "Now I know how dirty it is out there. Now I know you can't always take some high position and point fingers because someone breaks the rules to make sure fanatics like Sabbah don't get their way."

Nick said nothing.

"We broke a lot of rules. If we hadn't, that bomb might have gone off. He could have set it off even if the timer failed. New York would have looked like Hiroshima. We stopped that. But we were lucky."

"It's like what we were talking about in the desert, about morality. We're in a war and war isn't a game with nice clean rules. They used to try to do that sometimes, back in the days of horses and cannons. But it was always an illusion. It's always been about killing the enemy, any way you can, and getting information any way you can to defeat him. At least we stop at torture, we don't do that." He paused. "At least we don't do that in the Project."

"That doesn't help. What I'm getting at is that a part of me comes out I didn't know was there. It's like I'm someone else, a killing machine. What's that about? When we were shooting those sleeping men, something in me was totally into it. Like I enjoyed it."

"Yeah, you enjoyed it so much you puked your guts out afterward. Look, Selena. I'm no shrink, I don't know what makes us tick. I know this, though. When it's life and death you do what you have to do when you have to do it. You don't think much about it before, you try not to think about it afterward. If you weren't a moral person you wouldn't even be worried about this."

Nick poured another drink, poured one for her. She took it and sat down on the couch.

He sat down next to her. "You and I, we're the front line in a war no one wants to look at because it's too vicious. It's not about feel good parades and shiny buckles on uniforms and flags waving. It's a shit job that gets everybody covered in shit. But it has to be done."

"You won't win any recruits with a speech like that."

"I'm not looking for any."

"No more rookies like me?"

"You're not a rookie anymore."

Selena stood and took the glass from his hand. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

"Kind of early."

"Don't be dense. I didn't say anything about sleeping, did I?"

That night, Nick dreamed.

He stood with Megan in front of the restaurant, the one where he'd asked her to marry him. Where she'd said yes. He felt guilty but he didn't know why.

"It's all right, Nick. It's all good."

"But I love you."

Then he was across the street, looking at her as cars and busses streamed by. She raised her hand. She waved her fingers at him, something she'd always done when they parted. He couldn't hear her, the traffic was too loud, but he knew what she was saying.