He was quickly caught by guards. But he was just the first drop in a powerful storm.
Giving up Elkins had bought Ruhi a reprieve. Not the name of an AQAP Islamist terrorist, to be sure, but Elkins represented everything that Saudi intelligence loathed about the manner in which the U.S. operated — with utter disregard for the kingdom’s borders and sovereignty. The kingdom’s power and control violated by a woman, no less.
Beyond her name, though, Ruhi could offer them little. “She worked on my computer. I don’t know what she did.”
He must have said some variation of that a hundred times.
Lennon had eased up a bit. He’d ordered an aide to pat him dry with a towel. While they swabbed Ruhi down, Lennon sipped from a water bottle.
Getting dry had eliminated Ruhi’s fear of being waterboarded again. He was still trying to recover his senses when a video screen was rolled in front of him.
Oh, no. What’s next? Ruhi wondered.
Lennon dismissed the men who brought the monitor in, then turned to Ruhi, seated across from him on the vinyl chair. “So tell me, who else is operating out of your kingdom without our express consent? You see, I’m beginning to think that you’re not Al Qaeda because no one in Al Qaeda would have known about Elkins. So that was good, Ruhi. Very good. But not good enough. Nobody would send a new guy like you out on your own. Even the U.S. isn’t that stupid. And if you are not new, if you’ve been working on your ‘game moves’ for a long time, then you have a long list of names inside your head. It’s one or the other, Ruhi. Either the list, or who’s helping you?”
“I don’t know anybody else,” Ruhi said. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
Lennon crossed his arms and said, “Okay, you told me a little something, so I’ll tell you something. We just got a report that an American was taken by AQAP a couple of hours ago. Do you know her?”
He used a remote. The screen came alive. Ruhi warned himself not to react, to silence even his body language. Even so, he shuddered when he saw a group of armed men rip a hijab off Candace. Then he startled when the dark-haired man taken with her was executed on camera. The lens followed his fall before tilting back up. Lennon worked the remote, and the screen froze on Candace’s face.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
Ruhi was so beaten down that he almost nodded in agreement. He couldn’t even brace himself for more waterboarding. But Lennon didn’t call his thugs back in. Once more, he pressed the remote. Once more, the video played. Once more, Candace’s face filled much of the screen. But this time, behind her, a man pulled back a curved Arabian sword. He looked like a batter getting ready to smash one out of the park.
At the last second, Candace must have caught a reflection in the lens, because she tried to look back. The same instant the blade sliced through her neck and her head toppled out of frame. Not for long.
The camera tilted down one final time, and her face filled the screen.
Ruhi stiffened, stifling a groan, but he was too late. Lennon had been watching him closely and nodding.
“Thank you for your honesty.”
Emma and Tanesa exchanged a quick look. Emma imagined what Tanesa would say, if she could: “You hang in there, girl. You’re doing great.”
Why had she ever given Tanesa a hard time? She wished she could just say she was sorry.
She wasn’t the only one sending looks Tanesa’s way. Other girls were eyeing her, too, as if to take their cues from their natural-born leader. Some of the boys were doing the same thing. Even the older ones. The terrorists, meantime, had been working their walkie-talkies, bragging to their listeners, whoever they were, wherever they were stationed. They couldn’t be too far away, at least based on what Emma had learned using walkie-talkies in summer camp.
But maybe theirs are more powerful.
The leader suddenly put the walkie-talkie closer to his ear, adjusting the volume so others could not hear. Then he stormed down the aisle and dragged Emma from her seat.
She thought he’d taken offense at her glance toward Tanesa. Emma was sure she was about to watch William Sr. get killed, and that she would die as well.
But once the leader hauled her to the front of the bus, he yelled to his compatriots, “Her mother is a spy. Our brothers checked the names. They say the Elkins woman at the embassy is the mother of this girl.”
“My mom’s not a spy,” Emma said. “She’s a—”
He smacked her face hard enough to draw blood from the corner of her mouth.
Emma wanted to kill him. Right now! She glared at him. Her mouth ached. William Sr. was shaking his head at her. It looked like he was trying to tell her no, don’t do anything. Trying to calm her down, despite the gag in his mouth.
She knew she had to stay cool.
“Yes, a spy. Our brothers have checked. They are sure. The Elkins woman has a computer company in Bethesda. That is her cover. They say she has a fourteen-year-old daughter. This is the girl.”
He grabbed Emma’s hair and shook her so hard that her roots felt like they would explode. Tears ran down her face.
“They are calling for her mother’s head in Riyadh. We have her daughter right here, praise be to the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.” He said that as if he were announcing a celebration. Then he yelled right in Emma’s face, “Outside the embassy, my brothers are holding pictures of your mother. They are burning them. But we have you. And now we will tell the world.”
He forced Emma to the floor. Her head was bowed, roots still throbbing from the thrashing. He told someone on the walkie-talkie, who must have been relaying messages to and from the men on the bus, that they would murder Emma if their demands weren’t met.
What demands? Emma wondered hopelessly.
The answer came when the man shouted into his mouthpiece, “Tell them we want safe passage to Times Square. If anybody tries to stop us, we will shoot her first. And if they keep trying to stop God’s will, we will all be martyrs.”
Now he exchanged a look of his own — to the man with the backpack bomb. He was in the last row all by himself. The leader had confirmed that the pack could kill them all in less than a second, and that the trigger was at the end of the long tube, just like she’d thought.
Emma saw the bomber nod. His eyes looked glazed. She wondered if he was high.
Sure he is, she said to herself. High at the thought of blowing them all to bits so he could go to heaven and have sex with a bunch of virgins and eat a lot of fruit.
That’s so crazy.
But Emma didn’t dare give evidence of her thoughts. Without realizing it, she folded her hands like the other kids on the bus. She wasn’t praying, not exactly, but she was certainly hoping harder than at any other time in her life.
CHAPTER 17
Lana was shocked by the fury of the Saudis pouring over the tall, dun-colored wall. They rose up along the entire length of it. Many shook their fists in triumph and screamed before jumping onto the embassy grounds. Behind them, tall lush palms moved languidly in a mild breeze, their calm appearance an eerie backdrop to the mob’s rage.
She watched a man crumple to the ground upon landing, then grab his lower leg as if he had snapped his ankle. She might have been the only person to notice his agony. The other demonstrators — even those who almost fell on him — raced right by the prone, pained figure.
An explosion turned her attention to a steel reinforced gate at the south end of the compound. In the attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the angry Shiites had only needed to use bolt cutters to open a gate. Here, their bitter and longtime rivals, Sunni Muslims, needed a great deal more — and had just demonstrated their powers of procurement.