“My name is Hamza,” the leader announced as they drove past a rest stop. He scratched his cheesy beard and added, “It means ‘the lion.’”
He paused after issuing those words, as if the real meaning of his proclamation needed time to be fully absorbed and appreciated by his captives. It was long enough for Emma to bet dollars to donuts with herself that his name had been Josh or Andy or Lucas just a few years ago.
“Okay, Hamza,” the driver said, breaking what the leader might have thought was a reverent silence, “maybe you should get your lion self up here and check out the gas, because this gazelle is going to run out of gas.”
Hamza kneed Emma in the back of the head and ordered her not to move, then swaggered up to the driver and cracked his head with the butt of his gun, knocking the man’s cap off. Emma turned just enough to see a thin stream of blood run down the back of his neck.
“Do not insult me again, infidel, or I will shoot you.”
“Roger that,” the driver said.
Emma stiffened, fearing Hamza would shoot him right then. Instead, he leaned into the driver’s face.
“You think you are playing a game with me, don’t you?” Hamza smacked the man’s skull again. Now she saw two streams of blood running down his neck.
“It’s not a game,” the driver said, sounding chastened. “I can’t control that thing. It’s not like we’ve been able to get any gas in the last few days. So I’m guessing we’ve got fifty miles to fill up. Then it’s going to stop no matter what I do.”
Hamza jabbered into his walkie-talkie, saying that fuel would have to be made available to them or they would start killing kids one by one and tossing their bodies off the moving bus, adding, “We will start with the spy’s daughter.”
He walked back to Emma as he said that and tapped the barrel against her cheek. Emma stiffened. He looked like he’d enjoy putting a bullet in her brain.
Then he stopped, and she dared to glance up. Hamza was staring at Tanesa, and Emma thought, No, not her. Jesus Christ.
“So tell the president to get us gas,” he shouted into his device.
“Diesel,” the driver said. “Gas isn’t going to help.”
“Tell him to get diesel,” Hamza said, but Emma could tell that he did not like being corrected.
As if to confirm this, he walked back up front. The driver tried to turtle his head this time, but to no avail. A third line of blood darkened his skin.
“Inshallah, I should kill you now,” Hamza shouted at the cowering man.
Emma shook her head without realizing it, and then worried Hamza had seen her and would pistol-whip her, too. But he was just now turning away from the driver.
“This”—he held up his walkie-talkie—“lets me speak to the world. Even the president must listen to me. Do you know why? Because we have you.”
That’s not the only reason, Emma thought. It was because they had him, too, the mad bomber sitting straight down the aisle from her in the middle of the wide backseat, all by himself. He had never moved an inch away from the backpack bomb beside him. He looked goony-eyed with glory, like he couldn’t wait to blow them all to kingdom come.
She heard a helicopter, then Hamza barking into his mouthpiece: “Tell them not to come any closer or I will kill her.”
Her?
“But,” Hamza quickly said, “they can use their spy in the sky to see this.”
He grabbed a fistful of Emma’s dark hair and dragged her to her feet. The sharp pain pooled her eyes again, but that instant burst of agony was quickly eclipsed by his next, far more frightening move: roping his arm under her chin and jerking her head up. With her neck fully exposed, he forced her to turn toward the window, then pressed the edge of a long filleting knife, the kind she’d seen fisherman use, against her bare skin.
She saw the copter keeping pace with the bus, guessing they could see what he was doing to her. Now Hamza pressed the blade against her skin.
“Stop, oh, Jesus,” she cried.
“She prays to her worthless God,” Hamza yelled into the walkie-talkie, which he’d clipped to his shirt, “because of a little blood on my knife. I will bleed her like a pig if they don’t leave.”
Emma closed her eyes. Her world was no bigger that that blade, her fears as large as the whole of humankind.
Lana was still in the middle seat of the van, wedged between the commander, the Texan named Travis, and the New Yorker. She did not dare look up, lest one of the men or boys pounding on the windows spot eyes that betrayed a less than pious woman. Travis still worked his prayer beads, subvocalizing as if he knew what he was doing.
With all the pounding on the van, she feared the glass would shatter any second. Then, despite the brisk walking pace that the driver maintained, the mob started rocking the vehicle.
“That’s a bad idea, folks,” Travis drawled under his breath, still working those beads. “Very bad. Prepare to execute our exit, men.”
“Our exit?” she asked.
He didn’t explain. He didn’t have to. The answer came with the metallic clinks of weapons surreptitiously readied.
The van, with its high clearance, felt terribly unstable, like it might tip over any second, as it almost had in the huge open area below the embassy.
“Go, go, go!” Travis growled.
All around her, the SEALs began to shoot, a furious fusillade that blasted out the windows, sparing only the driver’s window and the windshield. Though the shots were aimed above the heads of the screaming, chanting mob, chunks of safety glass showered the crowd.
The deafening sound numbed her ears. She couldn’t even hear the engine when the driver started to accelerate. But she heard the horn when he leaned on it and never let up.
Thump, thump, thump.
She also heard men screaming as bodies bounced off the front of the van and others scrambled to get out of the way.
The van ran over at least one person, maybe two, while the guns continued to blaze. To her knowledge there was no return fire, though that would have been hard to tell with the horn and the nearly nonstop volley that surrounded her.
How long could this go on? she wondered. Were there endless blocks of humanity still ahead of them?
There might have been, but the driver hung a sharp left, scattering a thinner crowd on a narrower street. The SEAL riding shotgun shouted directions. He wore dark glasses. She glimpsed a color-coded street map, presumably of Riyadh, on the inside of his lenses. The map — what she could see of it — changed as they moved. The driver, she now saw, had donned a pair of identical dark glasses.
“Where now?” she asked Travis, looking past him to see the shocked looks on the faces of the people they were passing. Shards of glass still protruded from the black rubber molding in most of the windows, and the onlookers undoubtedly had heard the gunshots.
It looked like the van could be pinned in easily on this street. Lana no sooner thought that than the driver wheeled right, turning onto a thoroughfare with huge homes on both sides. Now the only obstacles were cars, but the SEAL at the wheel darted around them easily.
Just as Lana started to breathe, a convoy of police vehicles pulled into view, blocking an intersection. Uniformed officers rushed to get into position behind the SUVs and cars. They aimed their weapons at the van. The driver took cover by keeping them behind a car in the right lane.