Robert Tanenbaum - Bad Faith

“I’m quite capable of taking care of myself,” she noted pointedly-she’d barely managed to shoehorn some of her dealings with abusers and other miscreants into the strict confines of the law. “I’ve made plenty of enemies in this world without worrying about a few more nutcases. And even if they are dangerous, I’m probably more aware of my surroundings and potential threats than my dear, but somewhat naive, husband, and he won’t allow any extra security for himself. And to be honest, I certainly don’t want to rely on some cop watching my back; it might give me a false sense of security, trusting someone I don’t know. So I’ll watch my own, thank you very much.”

Karp had no more luck with his daughter, Lucy. But considering that she and her fiance, Ned Blanchett, worked for a secretive “off-the-books” antiterrorism agency that exposed them to grave danger on a regular basis, there was no reason to think that an NYPD officer or two was going to make much of a difference.

In fact, Lucy and Ned, who made their home in Taos, New Mexico, were in town on assignment for the agency, which was run by an old family friend and former FBI agent, Espey Jaxon. They’d had dinner with the family and spent the night in Lucy’s childhood bedroom. Karp had heard them stirring before dawn and got up, catching them heading out the door with to-go cups of coffee.

“Off to a boring ol’ meeting,” Lucy said unconvincingly. “We should be home by dinner, but if not, don’t wait and don’t worry.”

When the door closed, he’d walked into the kitchen to check out the television monitor mounted in a corner that was connected to a security camera above the outside door. He shook his head when a black sedan with tinted windows pulled up to the curb and the two young people got in and then sped off into the dark. Boring ol’ meeting, my ass , he thought. He’d already been filled in on the events transpiring that morning by Jaxon, but he knew that his daughter and future son-in-law were precluded from discussing it and he honored their silence.

That left the twin boys-Zak and Giancarlo-to worry about. The problem with them was that they were in high school and, as with any teenagers, they liked their freedom and sense of independence. They were active, involved in sports, the music scene in the Lower East Side, and whatever else two teens who considered Manhattan their playground might be up to at any given time. When he’d suggested that a plainclothes police officer be assigned to tag along “discreetly and at a distance” until after the Ellis trial, they’d complained mightily, saying, “a cop would cramp our style.” They threatened to “ditch the tail” as soon as possible.

“I’m not worried about a bunch of crazies; I’ll club them with this,” said Zak, the larger and more rambunctious of the two. He sounded disturbingly like his mother as he raised his right hand, which was in a cast due to his having broken it punching a larger, older upperclassmate who was bullying his brother and another player on their high school baseball team.

So for the time being, Karp had let it be. The truth was that while the biblical verses about God’s wrath were thinly disguised threats, they were no more alarming-indeed, quite a bit less alarming-than others the Karp-Ciampi clan had dealt with in the past. Because of his job the family was a magnet for trouble. They had been fending off a variety of sociopaths, terrorists, and other assorted killers and thugs since he and Marlene had met at the DAO and started dating. Marlene had even lost an eye opening a letter bomb intended for him before they were married and had kids. Lucy’s version of all these events was that the family had a spiritual calling to battle the “forces of evil.”

“We better get going,” Murrow said, standing up.

Karp looked at his watch-it was almost eight o’clock-and nodded. “Sure, let’s roll,” he said, pulling on an off-the-rack blue suit jacket.

Lucy Karp noted the look of surprise on the terrorists’ faces after they burst into the pilothouse and the crew hardly reacted except to cast hard glances at them before going about their business. Only the captain said anything, which was, “Go to hell.” He muttered the sentiment with his back turned to them.

The crew members were not the only other people in the pilothouse. Besides Lucy, there were the two young men who’d been standing in line-agents for USNIDSA, the United States National Inter-Departmental Security Administration, which her agency had teamed with for this operation. They both had their guns trained on the intruders, identified at the morning’s briefing as Aman Ghilzai and Hasim Akhund.

“Drop your weapons!” the lead agent demanded as he sighted down the barrel of his gun at Ghilzai’s forehead.

“Girnaa aap ka bandooq!” Lucy said, repeating the command in Urdu.

Swift as a cobra the terrorist pointed his gun at Lucy and pulled the trigger. His face registered surprise again when there was an empty click but no loud report and no bullet left the barrel.

Ghilzai dropped the gun and reached for the cord hanging from the faux life preserver to detonate the C4 explosives packed inside and spew ball bearings and fire throughout the pilothouse. He braced himself for the expected flash that would carry him off to his reward, but his path to martyrdom took a detour when his weapon failed him again.

“Maghloob ho jana,” Lucy yelled. “Surrender!”

Ghilzai sneered at her. “I speak good English, randi .”

“Well then next time you call me a whore, I’m going to slap that ugly mustache off your ignorant face,” Lucy replied.

The agent next to her smiled. “Sorry about that, asshole,” he said scathingly to Ghilzai. “The bomb’s a fake and the guns are loaded with dummies. You and your pal are my prisoners.”

Ghilzai wasn’t just some poorly prepared, brainwashed recruit from New Jersey. As they’d been told at the briefing that morning after she and Ned left her parents’ loft, he had been trained at a top-notch al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan. “Remember, he is able and dedicated, and he will be determined to carry out his mission,” Jaxon had said. “When he realizes the mission has been compromised, he will adjust and try to kill as many Americans as he can. Precautions have been taken, but that doesn’t rule out some surprise. Be careful.”

Suddenly, the second terrorist screamed something incoherent, dropped his gun, and started to run from the room. But he only reached the doorway before he was knocked back onto the deck of the pilothouse, where he lay clutching his midsection and gasping for air. A bronze-skinned man wearing a ferry company uniform stepped in behind the downed man, followed by a tourism volunteer named Tran, according to his name tag.

Lucy tried to smile when she saw her fellow agents John Jojola and Tran Vinh Do enter the room, but it was a weak attempt. She’d known that the guns the terrorists were going to “find” in the life preservers wouldn’t be loaded. Still, it had been unnerving to have one pointed at her head and to hear the sound of the hammer striking the shell. She felt nauseous and dizzy, so she concentrated on the bantering between Jojola and Tran.

“Jojola! I thought we agreed that I would get first shot at these guys if they made a run for it,” Tran complained. “Tham lam lon!”

“He just called you a greedy pig,” Lucy said, relieved to have something to take her mind off the incident. A super-polyglot, she had a savant’s ear and tongue for languages, more than five dozen of them by last count. She’d learned Vietnamese, which Tran had used to insult Jojola, by age twelve.

“I understood him, Lucy,” Jojola replied dryly. “My Vietnamese may be rusty but I heard enough versions of that back in ’68 to last me a lifetime, so I knew what the ngu ngoc khi was saying.”