Brendan DuBois - Final Winter

No, he thought. Remember what the wise Sudanese said. Do not bring attention to yourself. Leave as quickly as possible.

Which is what he did, and he gasped again, going out into the hot day, back to the noise and dust and people out in the street, just a few more things to do, and then he would be done.

Amil walked along the crowded sidewalk until he found a grated opening at the side, for drainage, and he bent down as if to adjust a sandal, and he let the black plastic square fall into the stench-filled sewage. There. He stood up and kept walking, and as he walked he carefully tore up the piece of paper with his instructions until the little pieces were thick in his hand, and when he came to a series of trash bins, he scattered the pieces of paper amongst the piles of smelly trash, fat flies buzzing in and around.

Amil kept walking, his heart light, even his clubfoot not aching as much, and as he repeated, over and over again, Allah akbar — God is great — he remembered the last thing he had said to the Sudanese, two days ago, when he had asked if what he would do this day in that strange place, that Internet cafe, would make a difference, would strike a blow against the infidels.

And the Sudanese had squeezed his shoulders.

‘Yes,’ the Sudanese had said. ‘You will have struck a mighty blow against the Jews and infidels in America.’

And will some die, he meekly asked, after this task is done?

‘Many will die,’ the Sudanese had said.

And, shyly, he had asked, sir, could you tell me how many? Hundreds? Thousands?

And Amil had thrilled to the answer of the Sudanese, who had grasped his young hand.

‘Millions, my warrior,’ he had said in a fierce voice. ‘Millions.’

Just outside Greenbelt, Maryland, there are a series of office parks that stretch out like a series of glass and steel veins from the mighty concrete and asphalt arteries of I-95, traveling from Maine to Florida. One office park, called Lee Estates — for which the developer had received vicious criticism when the project was first constructed, from civil rights activists who were sure the place was honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee — boasted a number of buildings, home to software developers, medical imaging companies, a temporary employment agency and, in one smaller building set off from the rest, an outfit called Callaghan Consulting. The building looked like a converted New England colonial-style home, complete with black shutters and narrow windows, and on this May morning Brian Doyle strode up to the quiet structure, yawning. It had been a late night the night before, and it looked like a long day was ahead, and he was not in a good mood. Thirty-five years old, a native of Queens, Brian was a detective first grade in the NYPD and still wondered how he had pissed God off so much that he had ended up here in Maryland.

A minute earlier he had parked his rental car in a parking lot set fifty yards away from the small building, and then made his way up a narrow sidewalk that led to the front entrance of Callaghan Consulting whose premises had been built underneath a number of tall oak trees. There were circular concrete planters around the perimeter of the house, and the sidewalk was flanked with odd-shaped recessed lighting with grillwork, and before entering the house one passed through an arch-shaped white trellis that boasted fake red roses and vinery. An uneducated observer would think that this small building had been set up by someone with an odd and kitschy taste in architecture and landscaping.

An educated observer — like himself, Brian thought grumpily — would know something else: the concrete planters prevented a truck bomb from being driven through the front entrance, the isolated parking lot prevented a car bomb from taking out the building, the way the building had been built under trees, was to prevent hijacked aircraft from getting a good read of the building’s location, and the sniffing devices hidden in the lighting determined if visitors were bearing any explosives, and the metal detectors in the trellis announced what those visitors might be carrying before they came through the front door.

Which Brian now did, meeting the next line of defense, a twenty-something woman named Stacy Luiz, who sat behind a wide wooden desk set on thin legs. She gave him a big smile as he came through the door and he smiled back. A nice way to start one’s day, even if it was on a Sunday morning.

‘Good morning, detective,’ she said. She wore a tiny microphone headset that looked out of place in her thick auburn hair, and held a small redialing device in her left hand. She had on a yellow dress that showed a nice expanse of cleavage, and because of the way her legs were placed under the desktop the dress displayed a lot of leg as well. There were no chairs or coffee tables stacked with Time and Newsweek and Adweek, for Callaghan Consulting discouraged visitors, and Stacy — dressed as she was — was also part of the discouragement process. The way she was positioned, the way she was dressed, was to stop men — even dangerous men, men who were on a mission — just for a precious second or two as they came through the door, and give her enough time to use her other hand, her carefully manicured right hand, which Brian knew right at this instant was wrapped around a Colt Model 1911 .45 semi-automatic pistol in a middle drawer of the desk.

Earlier on during his assignment with this oddball group, Brian had made clear his interest in seeing Stacy in a more relaxed, out-of-work setting, and she had eagerly taken him up on it, only insisting that she would pick the day and place. The day had been a Saturday, the place had been the indoor shooting range at the Berwyn Rod & Gun Club in nearby Bowie, and in the space of a half-hour she had out-shot him in every type of target and environment. That had been their first and last away-from-work encounter.

‘Still carrying that nine-millimeter piece of junk?’ Stacy called out as he walked past her desk to the short hallway behind her. Office doors lined each side of the hallway where some of the support staff worked.

‘It’s a lightweight piece of junk, compared with the cannon you’re carrying,’ Brian said, smiling back at her, seeing the carefully hidden consoles on the other side of the desk that gave immediate readouts from the explosives and metal detectors outside.

Stacy laughed. ‘I know how to carry it, and how to use it, and that’s all that counts.’

He yawned again. Up to the door at the end of the hallway, a door that looked like wood, which it partially was: wood covering metal. At the lock near the doorknob, he punched in the number combination and let himself in. The door opened to reveal a small wood-paneled room housing an elevator with exactly one button. Brian got in, pressed the button, and felt that little surge in his stomach as the elevator went down into the Maryland soil.

The door slid open. Brian went out and through another door, along a short hallway, and into a small conference room. There were six chairs around the table, and three were already occupied. He nodded at the other people in the room and sat down, sprawling out his legs. One of the two remaining empty chairs awaited whatever guest might be attending this morning, and the other, at the head of the conference room table, was reserved for their team leader. Who was always late, and who had an office out at the other end of the underground complex, along with the other team members. Coffee and juice and pastries and doughnuts were set in the middle of the table. On the far wall was a thin plasma screen, displaying nothing save a pale blue light. Laptops were set up in front of the other three participants, and Brian didn’t feel guilty that his own laptop was locked up safely in his own little cubicle.