The hospital was evacuated, and Alex Ford was discovered lying bleeding on the asphalt. When he was revived, he told them what he’d seen, and an APB went out on the ambulance.
Djamila ran into a roadblock barely five minutes outside of Brennan. There were three cars in front of her, and the police were making people get out of their vehicles.
She glanced back at the boys. The baby had fallen asleep, but the other two boys were still crying hard, and Djamila too felt tears sliding down her cheeks again.
Ahmed said he did not know her. He had told her not to talk to him. Ahmed had been killed right in front of her. He had tried to stab the man. He’d gone against the plan and been killed for that. And yet what hurt her most of all were his words: “I do not know you.” His hatred had consumed him, crushing the poet’s heart in its grip. That was the only way Djamila could make herself understand what had happened.
She was brought back from these thoughts by a tapping on her window. It was the police. She rolled down her window, and the howls of the children reached the ears of the officers.
“Damn, lady, are those kids okay?”
“They are scared,” Djamila said, launching into her prepared speech. “I am scared too. There are sirens and police and people running and screaming. I have just come from downtown, and people they are screaming everywhere. It is mad; the world has gone mad. I take children to their home. I am nanny,” she added, probably unnecessarily. She started to sob, which made the kids cry even harder. This woke the baby up, and he added his powerful lungs to the crisis.
“Okay, okay,” the officer said. “We’ll make this real fast.” He nodded to his men. They looked through the van and underneath it. They were searching inches from where the president lay unconscious. However, he might as well have been invisible, and the police were quite anxious to move on to another car. From the putrid smells coming from the backseat, all three boys had gone to the bathroom.
The officers slammed the doors shut. “Good luck,” one of them said to Djamila, and waved her on.
A minute later, after repeated attempts, George Franklin finally got through on the flooded 911 line and reported what had happened, giving a description of Djamila, the boys and the van. However, Djamila was on the way to her rendezvous spot long before this message was relayed to the field.
Ten minutes later the black chopper soared over the devastated dedication grounds and landed in the parking lot. One of the doors opened, and Tom Hemingway stepped out and hustled over to Carter Gray, who stood talking to some federal agents.
Hemingway said, “My God, sir, we were on our way back from New York when we heard. Is the president still alive?”
Gray’s eyes had regained their focus and his mind its priorities. “The president, we have just learned, has been kidnapped,” Gray said. “I need to get back to Washington as soon as possible.”
A minute later the chopper lifted into the air and headed south.
CHAPTER
56
DJAMILA SLOWLY DROVE BACK from the rendezvous point toward the Franklins’ house. The transfer of the president from her van to his final transportation out of the area had gone very smoothly, taking barely a minute. She had the radio on to drown out the sounds of the boys from the back and also to find out what the news stations were reporting. The airwaves were filled with the breaking events, although the commentators were not making much sense. There were reports of many dead, but right now it seemed that the country, which had been watching the event on TV, was focusing on the fact that the president had been rushed to the hospital. They would soon find the truth far different.
So engrossed was Djamila in her thoughts that she failed to notice the police cruiser closing in on her from behind. She finally looked in the rearview mirror when the flashing roof lights caught her attention. She could hear a loud voice coming from one of the cars as the police talked to her through their PA system.
“Pull the van over and get out immediately!”
She didn’t pull the van over, and she had no intention of getting out immediately. Instead, she accelerated slightly.
In the lead cruiser the officers eyed each other. “Looks like she’s still got the kids in there with her.”
The other cop nodded. “We can box her in and try to talk her out.”
“Yeah, but if she doesn’t come out? Call in a sniper unit, pronto.”
“I don’t think there’s any left. Hell, we haven’t had a single murder here in over four years, and in one day we have an attack on the president and some crazy nanny kidnapping her employer’s kids.”
A half mile farther up the road another police cruiser blocked the way. Djamila saw this and pulled off the asphalt and drove across the grass. The cruisers were about to follow but then stopped as Djamila turned the van around so it was facing back toward the road. She unfastened her seat belt and climbed into the backseat.
“What the hell’s she doing?” one of the cops said. “You think she’s gonna hurt those kids?”
“Who knows? What’s the status of the sniper?”
“I took it as a really bad sign when the dispatcher laughed when I asked for one.”
“There’s no way we can chance a shot with those kids in there.”
“So what do we do?”
“Look! The side door of the van’s opening.”
They watched as an arm appeared and the baby was set on the ground still in its car seat. Next the two older boys were likewise deposited on the ground.
“I don’t get this,” the cop in the passenger seat said.
“If she makes one move to run them over, you take out her tires and I’ll try for a head shot through the windshield,” the other replied.
The men climbed out of their cruiser; one had his pistol out, the other held a pump shotgun.
However, Djamila had no intention of hurting the children. She glanced at them each in turn as she settled back in the driver’s seat. She even waved to the oldest boy.
“Bye-bye, Timmy,” she said through the window. “Bye-bye, you naughty little boy.”
“Nana,” was all the tearful boy said back as he waved his hand at her.
As much as Djamila had disliked Lori Franklin, she was relieved she hadn’t had to kill the woman. Children needed their mothers. Yes, children needed their mothers.
She took a moment to write something down on a piece of paper that she pulled from her purse. She folded it carefully and then gripped it in her hand.
She put the van in gear, started rolling forward and pulled back onto the road.
Another police cruiser had joined the hunt now. Djamila headed toward the two policemen who were standing outside their cruiser.
“Stop the car!” one of them said over his portable PA.
Djamila didn’t stop. She accelerated.
“Stop the car now or we’ll open fire!” Both officers aimed their weapons. One cruiser closed in on the rear of the van while the other cruiser broke off and got the boys safely in their car.
“Shoot the tires out,” one of the cops said as Djamila bore down on them.
They both fired and took out the front tires. Still, Djamila kept coming. She gunned the motor, and the van hobbled along at a fair clip on the shredded wheels.
“Stop the van!” the cop yelled again through his PA.
The cops behind the van shot out Djamila’s rear tires, and still she rolled on. The van was weaving and lurching but was still headed directly for the two policemen.
“She’s crazy!” one of the cops cried out. “She’s gonna run us down.”
“Stop the car! Now!” the cop shouted again. “Or we will open fire on you!”
Inside the van, Djamila didn’t even hear him. She was chanting over and over in Arabic, “I bear witness that there is no God but God.” For an instant, as she hurtled forward, her thoughts careened to a young man named Ahmed who didn’t know her, despite having captured her heart. Ahmed, her poet, who was dead, and surely now in paradise.