But Emma won’t let go of Lana, much less stand up to the woman. Em’s trembling horribly and clearly in shock from what she’s witnessed. Lana isn’t even sure Em heard a word of what she just told her.
“She’s going to kill me, Em. Don’t let me die without hope for you. Please.”
Pleading with all her heart, all her love, which is all Lana has left for her child at this moment — the worst she’s ever known.
The woman points her gun at Emma. “Lana Elkins, I will cut her to pieces if you don’t come out.”
Emma clings fiercely to her mother. Her strength is astonishing.
“I mean it — let me go!” Lana shouts at Em.
When she still holds on, Lana shoves her into the metal bars on the side of the cage. Emma loses her grip and Lana darts to the gate as the woman opens it.
“My daughter is Muslim,” Lana shouts to the cameras. “Her boyfriend is a young Muslim who helped convert her.” She looks at the killer in the mask.
“Say another word and she dies,” the woman says softly, wielding the same gun she used to destroy Horvat’s crotch before she cut him slowly to pieces. “I’ll shove it right up inside her and pull the trigger.”
The threat sickens Lana.
“Lie down.”
Lana obeys in the hope Emma will survive. Horvat’s blood has run across the concrete. It seeps into the back of her shirt.
First her feet are clamped, then her hands.
“I turned the mikes off,” the woman says to her. “Nobody heard a word you said.”
She walks over and pulls four more stakes from a cabinet and slides them into slots in the floor next to Lana, right below the third camera.
She was always going to kill us both. Lana tries to think of something she can do, then tries to imagine what she could have done. She fails on both counts.
The woman picks up the blood-streaked chainsaw and starts it, sending a warm red mist into the air that settles on Lana’s face.
When she walks to the cage, Emma backs away.
“Do you remember how close I came to cutting off your foot?”
Em doesn’t reply. Her eyes are fixed on the whirling teeth of the saw.
“I’m not playing games, Emma. If you don’t come out right now, this time I’ll throw your mother’s foot in there, then her hands. I’ll throw her head in, if I have to. I promised her you’d live if she came out. I keep my promises.”
“Come out, Emma.” Lana finds herself praying softly for Emma’s survival. As a confirmed non-believer, she’d never do that for herself. But as a mother, those words come swiftly and with the most desperate hope.
Emma steps out, lies next to her mother. In seconds she’s fully clamped.
The woman lets the chainsaw idle while she pauses by Lana’s side. “You don’t remember me yet, do you?”
Lana shakes her head.
The woman leans over her, the back of her head to the camera above them. She peels up Obama’s features. “Flowers had me thrown out of the agency after 9/11. She said I couldn’t be trusted. Not just me, but other Muslims, too.”
Lana winces in recognition. “Fayah Kouri. I remember you now.”
Fayah nods, keeps the mask up. “Fay, that’s what Flowers called me. She wouldn’t even use my real name. She had to Americanize it. You didn’t do that, Lana. You tried to keep so many of the ‘questionables’ in the agency. Did you know that’s what Flowers called us?”
“Yes. It was despicable.”
“Here’s the irony: If you’d succeeded in keeping us around, I would’ve stayed by your side the whole time. But you didn’t. We were forced out with lies and smears.”
“It was wrong. I wasn’t party to that. You know it.”
“But you were party to it. You didn’t resign. You didn’t speak out. You did what you were told. You were a good little moderate.”
“I did try to stop it.”
“You risked nothing. I risked my life to help the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. I lost a brother, a sister and my mother when they were accused of being traitors because of me. But I still believed in America. I believed you would help my homeland. I even came here to work for the NSA. They milked every last drop of information I could give them, every last hacking technique I’d ever developed and used over there, and then they put me on a plane back to Baghdad where monsters were waiting to torture and kill me.”
She puts aside the idling chainsaw and opens her shirt, revealing her bare chest. The mutilation is breathtaking.
“That’s right, they’re gone.” Fayah’s nipples. “And they used acid for the burns. They didn’t stop there. I’ll never have children.”
“How did you survive?” Lana wants to keep her talking, wants to remind Fayah that she’d never joined the agency’s pack of xenophobic jackals.
“Men who knew I’d worked for U.S. intelligence bought my freedom. They knew I could be useful. I’ve been happy to pay them back and the U.S. Once, I was for the same things you wanted. I was a moderate. I was for freedom. I believed all the lies. And what did your country do? It supported the worst people our countries could produce, tyrants who terrorized men, women, and children. They forced millions into the arms of the faithful, the believers who could make sense of a crazy world. And now we’re here, Lana. All of us. The chickens have come home to roost.”
She pulls the mask back down.
“Flowers is still horrible. Go after her.” Not me. Not my kid.
Fayah stands. “First, I’m going to cut your daughter right up the middle for all the world to see.”
“But you promised—”
“You Americans say an eye for an eye. This is a lie for a lie. But I will only kill her.” She looks at Emma, then her watch. “In minutes the martyrs will be here, and then we’ll all take a piece of you.”
Emma is seized by spasms, shrieking “No-no-no-no… ” Her arms and legs, head, torso, all drum the floor with fear.
Fayah revs the chainsaw and steps between Emma’s spread legs. The young woman lies naked below her, shaking uncontrollably. Lana screams, “No, take me. Take me!”
Fayah ignores her.
Emma’s cries and the saw are so loud Lana can’t hear the gunshot that strikes Fayah, but she sees her arm jerk when it’s hit and the saw fall from her hands. The tip hits the concrete inches from Emma’s torso and kicks back so fast it’s only a flash as the roaring blade rips into Fayah’s upper body, chewing through her sternum in a blink.
Fayah falls backward onto the floor as the buried blade stops moving and the engine dies.
A woman on the stairs jumps down. She’s blond, full camo, and armed with a short-barreled handgun.
Only then does Lana notice a border collie at the bottom of the stairs. Cairo follows gingerly, then heads straight for Lana. He sniffs her, then tries to open the clamp on her right hand with his teeth and claws.
“Who are you?” Lana asks.
“No, who are you?” the woman demands in a Russian accent.
“My name’s Lana. That’s my daughter Emma.”
Em’s eyes are closed, face awash in tears.
The Russian woman eyes the body on the floor.
“Is Vinko Horvat?”
Lana doesn’t know what to say, horribly afraid the answer will enrage another armed woman.
“Please let me go and I can tell you.”
“You tell me now. Maybe live later.”
Lana nods and points to the head, realizing when she moves her hand that Cairo has just freed it. The dog rushes to her feet.
“Vinko die like that?” The Russian’s eyes move back and forth between Vinko’s remains and Fayah’s motionless body.
“Yes,” Lana says as neutrally as possible.