David Ellis - The Wrong Man

And hell, even if he missed the memorial completely, the federal building was still going to be there.

Don’t panic. Mr. Manning always said, don’t panic.

He checked his side mirror. Behind him, the other two members of his team, Briggs and Roscoe, were in a Chevy sedan. They were the getaway, and the backup if things got rougher than expected.

He nudged the You-Ride truck along as traffic inched forward. Up ahead at the cross street-Miller Street-he saw a police officer directing vehicles. It didn’t really make sense, though. They were still three blocks away from the federal building, and that was where traffic was detoured. Not at Miller Street…

“I don’t get this,” he said, hearing the nerves in his voice.

“It’s just traffic backed up,” said Briggs, in the car behind him.

“It’s fucked up, though,” said another voice, McPike. McPike was the driver of the second You-Ride, the one destined for the state building. Olsen checked his side mirror again. The second You-Ride truck was… call it ten cars back in traffic. It was going to turn right at Miller Street, cut over, and drive south to the state building a block away, while Olsen would plow directly south into the federal plaza.

“Keep cool,” said Olsen, trying to take his own advice. “Keep cool.”

Traffic inched forward. The cop at the intersection with Miller Street made each car wait, spoke to the driver, then released him or her to go forward. It was hard to tell why. Stupid government assholes, holding up traffic to justify their existence.

The car in front of Olsen was next up, pulling up to the intersection with Miller Street. The police officer walked up to the driver’s side door and spoke to the driver. He pointed to the left and then stepped away from the car. The car drove on through the intersection.

The traffic cop then motioned Olsen forward, wiggling his fingers. Olsen took a breath and eased the You-Ride forward. The cop walked up to Olsen’s window, avoiding eye contact. Olsen lowered the window.

“So listen,” said the cop. Then his hands quickly raised up, a firearm in his hand. He fired a rubber bullet directly into Olsen’s face, knocking him unconscious.

It happened in coordination: Army tanks came from each side of Miller Street to cut off the You-Ride’s forward route. U. S. Special Forces converged from behind buildings on each corner of the intersection and charged both the You-Ride and the vehicle behind it, Briggs and Roscoe. The satellites had been following the You-Rides long enough to know that there was a backup car immediately behind.

Briggs and Roscoe grabbed their assault rifles but didn’t even get out of the car before a barrage of rubber bullets pelted them. The Special Forces subdued them almost instantly, without firing a single incendiary round of ammunition.

The process was identical for the second You-Ride truck driven by McPike, except that the Special Forces had approached from the rear. Before the two team members backing up McPike knew what had hit them, assault weapons crashed through the front windows and fired rubber bullets into their temples. McPike hadn’t fared much better, reaching for his sidearm instead of trying to access the fuse to his feet to begin ignition of the bomb. In any event, the Special Forces had smashed through his window and knocked him unconscious before he could spell his own name.

They didn’t know what to expect in the cargo area, other than the incendiary devices, but it turned out there were no humans inside, just the bombs. Specialists jumped inside each cargo area and detached the fuses from the blasting caps, so that even if the drivers had managed to engage the time-delayed fuses before being subdued, the fuses wouldn’t be connected to the blasting caps anymore.

“Truck number one clear!” the specialist in Olsen’s truck shouted into his microphone.

“Truck number two clear!” said the one in McPike’s truck.

The bombs were defused. The trucks were in custody. The terrorists were subdued.

Two trucks down, one to go.

The time was twelve forty-four P.M.

I stood in the plaza of the state building, looking up at the all-glass building, wondering if it would still be standing in fifteen minutes, when my cell phone rang. It was Lee Tucker.

“Two trucks down, no casualties,” he said. “You were right, Jason. You were right all along. They had enough material to take out half the downtown. Time-delayed fuses hidden under the seats, state-of-the-art blasting caps, very sophisticated stuff. But we got them. We fucking got them!”

My heart pounded. Relief swept over me, followed by the churning of my stomach as the obvious statement hung out there between us: “Where the hell is the third truck?” I asked. We’d thought the third truck was destined for the Hartz Building, but that hadn’t come true. So where was it?

“I don’t know. Satellite hasn’t picked up anything. We don’t know. I’m out.”

I hung up my phone and stared, helplessly, at the screen. It showed a missed phone call from eleven fifty-one this morning. Right, I remembered that. I was pretty sure it was another call from Dr. Baraniq, asking about scheduling of the trial this week. I’d forgotten to call him yesterday.

I stared a little longer.

Dr. Baraniq had been concerned about the scheduling this week because he had a conflict.

A religious obligation, he’d said.

My body went cold. I clicked on the number that had called me at eleven fifty-one as my heart started pounding.

“This is Sofian Baraniq.”

“Dr. Baraniq, Jason Kolarich.”

“Yes, Jason, oh, I wanted to know when you-”

“Doctor,” I said. “Doctor. Is today that religious obligation you had?”

“Yes, it is, as I mentioned.”

“What is that religious obligation?” I asked, as I started walking.

“You want to know-what is the particular obligation?”

“I do.”

“Well, it’s the first day of Muharram, which is the first month of our calendar,” he said. “We have a different, shorter calendar than the American calendar. This year it’s December seventh on your calendar.”

I broke into a jog. “What are we talking about, Doctor? Some big deal?”

“To some, yes,” he said. “Not so much for the Shia-”

“Where are you, Doctor?”

“Where-well, I’m parking my car near the mosque.”

“That giant one on the west side where they protested after Nine/ Eleven? The al-Qadir mosque?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s some kind of service?”

“Yes, Jason. But why-”

“Starting at one o’clock?” I asked, the panic unmistakable in my voice.

“Yes,” he said, picking up on my concern.

“Tell everyone to get out, Doctor! There’s a bomb! Do you hear me? Tell everyone to evacuate right now!”

I punched out the phone and dialed Lee Tucker. By now I was in a full sprint westward.

“Lee,” I said when he answered. “That giant mosque… on the west side,” I managed, panting as I ran. “On… Dayton?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s truck number three, Lee. Get over there now!”

“How do you know?”

“It’s the largest mosque in the entire Midwest, Lee-”

“But how do you know the attack is there?”

I split through two people on the sidewalk and ran over the bridge that spanned the western leg of the city’s river. I was now about two miles away from the Masjid al-Qadir.

“Because today isn’t just Pearl Harbor Day,” I said. “It’s the Islamic New Year!”

I ran with everything I had, but my knee wouldn’t permit my best effort, no matter how hard I tried. I cut across plazas and diagonally across streets but I couldn’t run two miles in ten minutes or so. I wasn’t going to make it by one P.M.