John Gilstrap - Threat warning

Even as her knees were collapsing under her, the closest school bus-still fifty yards distant-seemed to bend for a fraction of a heartbeat before all of the glass exploded in a glittering rain and a fireball consumed everything. The bus itself, now on fire, left the ground, tumbled once in the air along its own axis, and then landed on its side.

She had just fallen to her hands and knees when she saw what could only be their minivan reduced to a fiery ball in the midst of hundreds of pounds of twisted, erupted metal. She knew that her father was dead.

Burning, white-hot shards of steel and aluminum whistled through the air, one of them passing over her head. Three feet ahead of her, and a little to the right, Mr. McMillan, the English teacher, made a terrible coughing sound as something sliced through his belly and spilled his insides out. His face looked blank as he fell nose-first onto the sidewalk.

Aafia pressed herself into the damp grass and curled into a ball, her arms concealing her head, as more pieces of things landed heavily around her.

Ten, fifteen seconds later, when the violence was over, the real nightmare began, driven by a dissonant chorus of moans and screams, combined with the whining roar of fires. When she forced herself to raise her eyes above her forearms, her first thought was that she had been killed after all, and that she had so angered Allah that he’d sent her to hell. So much fire, and so much misery.

All caused by the people who’d murdered her father. Was that even possible?

But she remained very much alive.

Soon, people stopped running away in panic, and started running around in a frenzy. Mostly, they were adults, but there were children among them, too. They ran, and then stopped to kneel, and then they would run again.

When Aafia rose to her feet, she understood. There were many wounded, too many to count. Some sat, dazed looks on their faces, while others lay writhing and still others lay horribly still. And the blood. So, so much blood. Everyone seemed to be covered with it. What spilled from the injured seemed almost magically to transfer itself to the people who came to lend aid.

For the longest time-she had no idea how long-Aafia just stood there on the lawn, watching dumbly as the activity swirled bigger and bigger. Teachers and students continued to flood from the school out into the drive, plus some people she didn’t even recognize. As if tugged by the current in a river, Aafia found herself being drawn along, moving closer to the carnage. Somehow, she’d lost her right shoe, one of her favorites-pink with white stripes. Her mother called them her pixie shoes.

Oh, Mama, she thought. “Oh, Father,” she said aloud. Who would do such a terrible, horrible thing to him? To all of them?

Of all the terrifying sights, the one she refused to look at was the burning hulk of their little van. She wished she couldn’t see the torn bodies and the blood splashes and the scattered body parts.

She needed to do something. She needed to help. Maybe she just needed to cry. She really didn’t know. All of it seemed so make-believe, as if she’d stepped into the middle of the worst video-game nightmare imaginable. Why couldn’t she do anything? Why, suddenly, did everything around her look to be such an odd color?

A teacher’s aide from one of Aafia’s classes-she couldn’t remember which one now-raced past, but then stopped very abruptly and reached out to her. One hand supported Aafia’s arm at the elbow, while the other hand cupped her chin gently at the jawline.

“Oh, honey, you need to sit down,” the aide said. “You’ll be all right.”

And just like that, Aafia was on the ground, staring up into the flawless sky, even though she couldn’t remember doing that. Just as she couldn’t remember what she had done to cut the inside of her mouth. But sure enough, she tasted blood.

An instant later, the sky was gone, replaced by what looked to be a white plastic ceiling with hardware. The world was filled with a new sound. Could it be a siren? And then a stranger was staring down at her. It was a man, a young one.

He smiled at her. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said with a smile that made some of the cold go away. “Can you tell me your name?”

She told him.

“Sweetheart, please stay with me,” he said. “I need to know your name.”

“Aafia,” she said, only this time, she could hear her real voice over the one in her head.

“Can you spell that for me?”

She thought. “I don’t think so,” she said. But she was such a good speller. Why not now?

“What’s your last name, sweetie?” the nice man asked.

“Janwari,” she said.

The face turned confused. “Excuse me?”

“That’s my name,” she said. At least she thought she did. “Aafia Janwari.”

The man said, “Oh, shit,” and then he went away. Aafia went away, too.

Jonathan met FBI Director Irene Rivers for breakfast at the Maple Inn in Vienna, Virginia. A dive by most standards, it was a favorite hangout for the spooky community that had grown up around CIA headquarters, which sat just six miles north on Route 123-or, as it was called within the incorporated limits of the Town of Vienna, Maple Avenue. Jonathan had lost track of the number of clandestine meetings in the open he’d had here over the years, but combined, his didn’t account for one tenth of one percent of the cumulative secrets heard by the restaurant’s walls.

Because the food was good and inexpensive, and the beer was cold and plentiful, the Maple Inn’s clientele attracted the widest possible demographic, from soccer moms with kids to working folks of every color collar. Most important to Jonathan and the people he met with, the waitstaff knew when to take an order and when to stay away.

After their eggs, sausage, and toast had been delivered, and the pleasantries were out of the way, Jonathan got down to business.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue last night.”

She shrugged it off. “The Secret Service has an arrogant streak that pisses me off,” she said. “It feels good to put a thumb in their eye from time to time.”

“Will you be able to keep my name out of the press?”

Irene dipped a corner of her toast in the runny yolk of her egg and took a tiny bite. “The Prince George’s County Police arrested and released a fellow named Chuck Carr last night,” she said. “He was suspected of being one of the bridge shooters.”

“And Agent Clark?” Jonathan had already finished his eggs, and had shifted his concentration to making a sandwich with his sausage patty.

“He was never there,” Irene said, her face showing disappointment. “That was part of the deal with Ramsey Miller.” He was Irene’s counterpart at the Secret Service. “Letting the shooter run away was a big enough screw-up that he didn’t want the embarrassment.”

“So who arrested me? I mean who arrested Chuck Carr?”

“Does that really matter?”

Jonathan thought about that. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

Irene smiled. “Good. So, tell me who you saw on the bridge.”

He started from the beginning and went through it all. When he was done, he had Irene’s full attention.

“A girl, huh?” she said. “That’s a twist. You sure it wasn’t a long-haired boy?”

“A long-haired boy with boobs, maybe. My powers of observation are really pretty well-honed. Why?”

She shrugged. “It just runs counter to the profile. These mass-shooting types are always male.”

“I think I saw her drop her weapon,” Jonathan recalled. “Anything useful from that?”

“Generic Bushmaster, two-two-three caliber, modified for fully automatic fire. What concerns me is the marksmanship. Both of the gunmen-gun persons -knew what they were doing, and both were firing the same ammo from the same lot.”