Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

“What the hell?”

She was wearing a white hijab, sitting with clasped hands before her on a plain wooden table. A framed photograph of her son and husband came into view.

“I am Samara. I am not a jihadist.”

Jake’s jaw dropped. Ice shot up his spine. His gut convulsed with the collision of disbelief and knowing.

As the video played, the pieces locked together.

Jake knew.

Iraq.

The papal visit.

All her time on this computer, her long-distance calls and private conversations.

“And it is for these crimes that I deliver my widowmother’s wrath. For these crimes you will taste death in your country…”

This was Samara’s suicide video.

She was security cleared as medical staff for the visit. She would get close to the pope.

God, what have I done! I’ve got to get Logan out of here! Call the FBI! We have to stop-

A flash, movement of light; a shadow blurred on the screen and Jake felt a soft punch to his throat.

What?

It hurt.

He couldn’t swallow.

He pressed his hands to his throat and something warm and wet cascaded through his fingers. The computer and the room began to spin. Jake’s hands were coated with blood. He turned, fell to the floor.

He saw Samara standing over him.

She held a large serrated knife and watched in silence as Jake’s life slipped away.

Calmly she slid her arms under his, locked them in front and dragged him into their bedroom. Straining, she lifted his corpse onto his side of their bed and covered him with sheets.

Taking pains not to wake Logan, she got cold water, dish soap, a plastic pail and washed away the blood.

She glanced at the faces of Muhammad and Ahmed on her computer before shutting it off.

Nothing would stop her from keeping her vow.

It was down to hours now.

Faust’s Fork. Near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Campsite #131.

The Tarver family site.

Still cordoned by yellow tape.

Stepping from his truck to stretch, Royal Canadian

Mounted Police Corporal Arnie Danton took in the scent of pine forests, the view of the majestic Nine Bear Range and the rushing Faust River before he began his preparations.

He used the remaining daylight to set up, going to the back of his truck, pulling out his lamps, his cover alls, his gloves, and arranging his solutions, his cameras.

Then he sat on the tailgate and ate his dinner, a sub sandwich, potato chips with a bottle of water and a peanut butter cookie, chewing contentedly as he waited for night.

He needed the darkness.

Sitting alone with the rush of the river for company, he thought of Graham. He felt sorry for the guy and for what had happened to his wife. That’s why Danton was here on his own time doing him a favor. A lot of guys had been doing Graham favors lately.

Night came quickly in the mountains.

Danton crumpled his food wrappings, placed them neatly in his recycle bag, then set out to determine if blood was spilled anywhere in or around the Tarvers’ campsite by applying luminol.

A fifteen-year veteran who’d trained at the RCMP Academy, several universities, and crime labs in Ger many, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., Danton was rec ognized by courts in Canada and the U.S. as an expert in analyzing bloodstain patterns at crime scenes. He had a keen interest in the process of chemical lumines cence.

The process detected the presence of blood that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye by applying a solution of water, sodium perborate, sodium carbonate and luminol to a given area. Once the solution contacts blood, even minute traces, it reacts by turning bright blue under ultraviolet light.

Danton pulled on hooded coveralls, a face mask, latex gloves. On his head, he then slipped on an expen sive lightweight surgeon’s headlight offering LED illu mination and magnification. He prepared a large batch of the solution, then poured it into a cylinder resembling a diver’s air tank. He connected it to a hose and sprayer applicator, then slipped the tank on his back.

In the black, moonless night, Danton began working on the scene.

Section by section.

Spraying then scoping with the ultraviolet lamp.

Spraying. Scoping.

He’d devoured every study on outdoor application of luminol.

The Russian, Swedish and Icelandic studies showed that months, even years of rain and snow, did not entirely eliminate the presence of human blood. Of par ticular interest was the study that indicated human blood was present on a centuries-old stone the Vikings had used for ritual ceremonies.

Anyone coming upon Danton would have witnessed a surreal ballet as he worked the scene like an artist.

First, the immediate campsite. Then the ground, the picnic table, the trees.

All remained as dark as the sky.

All negative.

Danton followed the short path to the riverbank and worked his way back slowly.

Spraying. Scoping.

A couple of paces from the water he froze.

Two small circles glowed blue.

“And thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

Danton, like most blood-pattern experts, knew the passage from Genesis.

He continued, moving forward from the riverbank toward the campsite.

Spraying. Scoping.

More blue droplets glowed until they formed a virtual Milky Way of blood.

For the next half hour, Danton painstakingly worked in a pattern that radiated from the site.

Spraying. Scoping.

He was running low on solution and about to pack it in when something in the bush glowed.

Like a distant star.

A grapefruit-size rock with bluish smears. Danton examined it.

Now, this would be your murder weapon.

Great Falls, Montana

That night, beyond the pool, across the motel’s mani cured courtyard, the crack splitting the drawn curtains of the silent room moved ever so slightly.

Binoculars were trained on the units used by Graham and Maggie. The tranquility was deceptive. The watcher’s breathing had quickened.

Stay calm, Sid told himself.

Crickets chirped as he rolled the focus wheel. Sid and Faker had taken shifts in their intense sur veillance, for they’d reached a critical point in the operation; one underscored by the headlines of the newspapers neatly arrayed on the desk.

The pope would arrive in Montana in the morning. The network’s operation was advanced and proceeding. However, since Graham, the Alberta RCMP officer, had emerged in the U.S., Sid and Faker had been urging ter mination action. They knew there had been operational activity in Canada.

They could not permit anything to put the greater mission at risk.

A few days ago, after Sid and Faker had urged ter mination, they were ordered not to take any action, other than to observe and report.

But now, the stakes were higher. The threat was closer and gaining. They were running out of time and continued to press for termination action.

Faker was talking softly on the satellite phone. His voice was so low, Sid had to struggle to hear. At times, Faker would pull the phone away to whisper updates.

“Some of them are getting nervous,” he told Sid, “because the threat is getting close to the messenger.”

Of course, Sid nodded, the risk of the mission being shut down was huge.

“Some want us to remove the threat now. Others say it would jeopardize the operation, draw attention and lead to a cancellation, or more tougher security, or possible exposure of the network.”

Sid couldn’t bear the debate.

All of his life, from the day his teenaged mother had abandoned him in the pew of a Brooklyn church, he’d yearned to be part of something greater than himself. Ached to make his mark in history.

As Faker returned to the phone, Sid’s thoughts rolled back to all the work that had gone into this operation. Risks had been eliminated to get them to this stage. The termination operations in Virginia and Canada proved that threats to its success could be eliminated with efficiency.