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In the apartment building, Frank quickly exited Tamara Gorridge’s apartment and ran to the front stairwell to make his way down to the basement. He ran past many people who were being evacuated from the building with confused looks on their faces about what is going on. They heard the fire alarm, but there was no sign of either smoke or fire. As Frank got down to the first floor level, a huge man blocked him from going down to the basement.
“You cannot go down there, you must leave the building at once,” the man said. Frank carefully held on to the wooden box as he pulled out his wallet to show his identification card to the man and said, “I have a government pass, I must get into the basement now.”
“I was told not to let anyone down there,” the big man said, “There’s only one family left in the basement apartments, and they’re on their way up right now. No one else is going back down, now get out the front door before I throw you out.”
Realizing that he was not getting anywhere and that precious time was ticking off the clock, Frank turned around slowly like he was going to leave and swung around quickly leg-kicking the huge man in the head and knocking him unconscious.
“Sorry about that, but you’ll understand later,” Frank stepped over the huge man and then he yelled to two men who were leaving the building, “Please take him outside, he passed out, it must be too stressful for him.”
Frank ran down the poorly lit stairway, into the basement, and he worked his way down a main hallway before he spotted the door to the boiler room. He went into the boiler room and quickly set the wooden bomb case down on a workbench in the corner of the room. He thought for a few seconds about doing something else with the bomb, but found himself pacing around in a circle and not coming up with any alternatives. He left the bomb on the workbench, exited the boiler room and was suddenly surprised when he ran directly into the last family in the hallway as they were leaving their basement apartment. The mother and father and their two young children stared at the stranger with blank faces, unsure of what was going on that was disrupting their lives. The little girl, who was wearing a light blue coat and carrying a doll, smiled at Frank like she was having fun and could care less about what was going on.
“Hurry, go quickly, you must leave now,” Frank urged the family as they hurried down the hallway and up the stairs with Frank right behind them. On the stairway, the little girl turned around and looked at Frank as she walked up the stairs holding her mother’s hand. Frank stopped in the middle of the stairs and looked at his watch that showed 4:00 minutes until detonation. He cursed himself for wasting so much time and then he ran back down the basement hallway and into the boiler room. He turned on the light above the workbench and opened up the bomb to expose its inter-workings. His heart was pounding as he pulled up a bench to get comfortable, and the he called Hoskins.
“Jack, I’m almost ready.”
“What the hell do you mean you’re ‘almost’ ready? You get the hell out of there right now,” Hoskins yelled.
“Is the predator armed and ready?” Frank asked.
“Sure it is, you don’t have time to talk to me, get out here now.”
Frank set the phone down on the workbench and let Hoskins continue to yell at him. With the timer and trigger wires exposed and in his hand, it was time for Frank to make his decision about which wire to cut and disable the bomb.
He thought about the little girl and his own daughter, who were probably the same age. He studied the wires intently and said, “I can’t let those bastards destroy any more lives.”
He picked up the phone and said to Hoskins, “Jack, get ready to launch, I’m almost at the front door, if you see the bomb go off early, send those missiles.”
He didn’t stay on long enough to hear Hoskins say, “What the hell are you...?”
Frank hung up the phone and grabbed his wire cutters.
One thousand feet above the building the predator was flying in a tight circular pattern. The predator’s laser has already locked onto the middle basement window, and even as it continued to circle, the predator’s computer remembered the target location and re-locked onto it for the duration that the target was in sight. Leslie has it in a pattern that will allow the predator to launch the first missile and circle around to launch the second missile 20 seconds later.
Frank looked at the bomb’s timer that read 1:10 and counting down. He closed his eyes and cut the red wire. When he reopened his eyes, he was glad to be alive, but shocked that the clock was still ticking off precious seconds and was down to 00.59 and counting.
“Damn fail-safes,” he said to himself, “If it wasn’t that red wire then it could be the black one, he thought, or even the blue wire? What the hell would the crazy bastards have used?”
Frank looked at the timer. 00:20, 00:19..... He looked at the door and thought about running when suddenly he remembered the little girl in the light blue coat, almost the same color as his daughter’s favorite coat. He grabbed the cutters, saw the clock at 00:15 and knew that it was far too late to run. He looked skyward thought of his wife and daughter and said, “I guess this is for you.”
Frank closed his eyes and cut the blue wire.
He reopened his eyes and saw that the display stopped at 00:08 second, and then the display reading flipped from armed to unarmed.
Frank exhaled and quickly picked up the cell phone to call Hoskins.
In the RV, they were watching the clock tick down to 00.00, and when the phone rang, nearly everyone jumped.
Hoskins pushed the answer button on the speaker phone and everyone heard Frank say, “Jack, call off the hellfires, the bomb is disabled.”
While everyone in the RV jumped for joy, Hoskins picked up the telephone handset and privately said to Frank, “You crazy bastard, I can’t believe you did that.”
“Let’s just say I received a sign that we were going to be okay.”
“That’s nice,” Hoskins said, “I’m sure that’ll look really good in our report.”
“When you’re finished bitching, could you send the bomb unit in? I’ll baby sit this thing until they get here,” Frank said as he exhaustedly laid his head down on the workbench.
“We’ll get them in there ASAP,” Hoskins said as he walked away from the others in the RV.
“Frank you know that I can’t condone what you did, but... if I sent the missiles in or that bomb went off, we’d be staring at an international disaster of major proportions, I want you to know that I owe you big.”
“Don’t worry about it, its just part of the job,” Frank said.
“Thanks, Frank,” Hoskins said before he hung up the phone and made another call.
“Mr. Evans, the situation at the apartment building has been contained for now, send a bomb squad into the building’s basement ASAP, and don’t let any civilians in the area until I tell you that it’s all clear.”
“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Hoskins, and I’ll wait for your next call,” Evans said.
Hoskins hung up the speakerphone and joined the others in the RV as they were still talking about what just happened.
“My God,” Tamara said tearfully, “I thought that my building was going to be destroyed and that my city was going to be poisoned, thank you all for helping us.”
“I apologize, Miss Gorridge, for getting you into this mess in the first place, I understand that it was you who called our attention to the radioactive canisters, so I’m greatly relieved that no harm has come to you or your home,” Hoskins said.
She put her arm around David and said, “Our parents taught us that if you want good things to happen to you, you can’t let bad things happen to others.”
“Those are truly wise words,” Hoskins said, “Thanks to your parents, an untold number of lives have been saved.”
Leslie pulled a bottle of wine out of the RV’s refrigerator and started filling some glasses.
“I guess we could take this opportunity to sample the French wine that Henry gave us. Let’s drink a toast to a successful mission that never seems to end, and also to Veronica, who I hope will have an enjoyable tour of duty.”
As they sipped the wine, someone knocked on the door of the RV.
“That can’t be Frank already, it may be someone from the bomb squad,” Hoskins said.
Tamara was standing near the door and without knowing enough to check the one way window before letting someone in, she instinctively pushed the door handle before anyone in the RV could tell her not to.
The door came open and Tamara now had a handgun pointed in her face.
She slowly backed away from the door and the familiar voice of Abdula Nassir said, “All of you sit down and don’t move or I’ll kill this woman.”
“Calm down everyone,” Hoskins said, “We don’t want any trouble, what do you want from us?” Hoskins asked.
Abdula closed and locked the RV door behind him, turned to Hoskins and said, “What do I want from you? Let’s start with the lives of my dead brothers in Batumi, and the money you stole from me in Baku. That small bomb in the apartment was my last chance to salvage anything from this job, and somehow you managed to steal that from me too. So, with everything lost, all I want right now is revenge,” Abdula said as he aimed his gun at Hoskins.
Hoskins raised his hands in the air and said, “You know that Tariq Amin was going to kill many thousands of innocent people and contaminate whole cities, we had to stop him for the good of mankind. And if you were his primary supplier of death, we had to stop you too.”
Abdula sneered as he moved closer to Hoskins and said, “You noble Americans think that you could do whatever you please anywhere in the world. You may have stopped me here in Tbilisi, and in Baku, but now I will leave your dead bodies as the final symbol of my revenge.”
Brad lunged at the terrorist, but the Abdula backhanded him with his pistol causing a bleeding gash on his head and knocking him to the floor.
“Everyone, please calm down.” Hoskins implored, “It’s okay, Abdula, he’s young and foolish, that won’t happen again.”
Abdula shrugged his shoulders and said, “It makes no difference to me, the next one that moves will die.”
“If all you want is revenge, why don’t you just take me?” Hoskins said, “I’m the high ranking CIA officer that caused your humiliation today. You know that I’m the one you really want, why don’t you let these young people live? Someday, you may need them to save your own children from monsters like Amin and yourself.”
“Why you brazen CIA bastard, you have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy killing you,” Abdula said as he again pointed his gun at Hoskins.
Hoskins stood up with his hands above his head and said, “Come on then, let’s you and I go outside and you could have your revenge.”
Abdula pointed the handgun at Leslie’s head and said, “Please sit down, American, I have little time for your tricks, and I warn you, I’m not a patient man.”
“I understand,” Hoskins said, “But before you to do anything rash, there’s a few interesting things that I think you’d better take a look at.”
“I don’t have time for your nonsense, I think that you’d better sit down and be quiet.”
“Since you’re so intent on killing us, you’d better take a look at this TV screen,” Hoskins said as he pointed to a monitor showing the group in the CIA’s RV.
“Go ahead and wave to yourself.” Hoskins said as he waved in the direction of the RV’s internal camera, “That is exactly what they are seeing on the U.S. aircraft carrier Constellation out on the Black Sea. On this monitor over here we have a view from the armed predator spy plane flying above the city. If you start shooting you had better be quick because the Constellation has orders to take control of the predator and send missiles at this vehicle in the event of a terrorist takeover.”
“You must really think I’m stupid, they will do no such thing in the middle of an innocent city,” Abdula scoffed.
“Why not? We’ll all be dead, so they might as well kill Abdula Nassir, the world-renowned arms dealer to terrorist millionaires.”
“You’re lying,” Abdula said.
“You could believe what you want, but each of us took a sworn an oath to our country that we would willingly give our lives than have a butcher like you live and kill innocent people.”
“Silence,” Abdula yelled as he held the gun closer to Leslie’s head.
“Okay, just calm down, I don’t want you to do anything that we’ll all regret.”
“The only thing I regret is not killing you and shutting your big mouth the moment I came in here,” Abdula said to Hoskins.
“Let me give you one more thing to think about,” Hoskins said, “Just in case you think you could kill all of us and get out of here quick. There’s five of us in here, and I’m willing to bet that one of us will have enough time to push the hidden self-destruct button to blow up this vehicle.”
“You’re nothing but a lying CIA bastard,” Abdula said.
“You could believe what you want, but nobody has to die here, Abdula, we want to return to our country, and I’m sure you want to continue to live your rich life in Syria.”
Abdula just stared quizzically at Hoskins and doesn’t say anything.
Hoskins looked him in the eye and said, “It’s no secret that you’re in this for the money, you’re not going to do anything stupid because you don’t have a suicidal bone in your body, am I right?”
“Go on,” Abdula said curiously.
“If you’ll allow me, I’m going to pull a brief case out from under my chair.”
“Be careful, American,” Abdula said as he moved away from Leslie and pointed his gun at Hoskins.
“I swear to you that I have no hidden weapons,” Hoskins said as he slowly reached under his chair. Abdula then moved back to Leslie and grabbed her by the hair and held the gun to her head and repeated, “You’ve been warned, American.”
“Easy now, Abdula, I just want to give you this, because I think that we could all come to a common resolution of the situation that we’re in here.”
Hoskins unlocked and opened the briefcase and slid it across the floor in front of Abdula.
“Does that money look familiar? It should, that’s your cash payment from Amin that you left behind when you decided to take a swim in the Caspian yesterday.”
Abdula snarled at Hoskins as he reached down and pulled a wad of bills out of the bag and took a minute to scan them to see if they were authentic.
“Can I show you what’s behind door number two?” Hoskins asked.
“Please do, but again I warn you to be very careful,” Abdula said as he pointed the gun back at Leslie’s head.
“I know, you’re not a patient man,” Hoskins said, “But believe me, you’re really going to like this.”
Hoskins pulled a second brief case out from a hidden compartment under the console. He unlocked and opened it and slid it across the floor where it bumped into the other briefcase in front of Abdula. The terrorist’s eyes widened as he looked down and saw that it is filled with nearly identical wads of bills.
“That’s the half million American dollars that we were going to use to bribe you to sell the cesium to us. Now I’m going to use it to bribe you to get the hell out of here. If you kill us, I promise that you’ll die here with us, but if you take the money and run, you’ll live.”
“This is quite generous of you, American, I think that I’ll accept your offer.”
Abdula then said to David, “Lock the briefcases and hand them to me.”
David stalled for a moment and Abdula screamed at him, “Do it now,” as he stuck his pistol in Tamara’s side.
David handed him the briefcases, and Abdula put one under his arm and grabbed the other by the handle. He then put his other hand that he is holding the pistol with in his coat pocket, so no one out on the street would know what was going on.
Abdula looked at Hoskins and said, “I appreciate your generosity, but just for insurance, I’d better take him too,” he said as he pushed his coat-covered gun into David’s side.”
“No,” Tamara screamed.
“That’s not part of this deal,” Hoskins yelled.
Abdula ignored him and said to David, “Open the door and get out.”
David stalled for a second looking to Hoskins for guidance.
“Come on, Abdula, he’s just a kid, take me instead, I’ll go with you,” Hoskins pleaded.
“No, you insolent bastard, I want you to remember that you took his young life when you led him here to chase me down and kill my brothers. I want you to remember this for the rest of your life.”
With his gun in David’s back, Abdula said to David, “Either you open the door and get out now or I’ll kill your sister.”
David looked at Tamara who was sobbing frightfully and opened the door and walked outside.
“You don’t want to do this, Abdula,” Hoskins said.
Abdula turned back only to sneer at Hoskins as he walked out of the RV behind David. As soon as he got outside, Abdula who was holding the money filled briefcases in one hand and his gun in his coat pocket in the other, kicked the RV door closed behind him.
The deadly reality of the situation kicked in with the sound of the slammed door, and Tamara screamed, “No, David.”
Hoskins quickly went over to comfort her and think of something to do and a split second later, everyone inside the RV heard a loud thump and felt the vibration as if someone or something hit the side of the RV really hard.
“David” Tamara screamed again as Hoskins rushed to open the RV’s door. He jumped outside and saw Abdula lying unconscious on the ground next to the RV.
“Henry Carr, I told you that we were going to need your help again,” Hoskins said, “But did you really have to cut it so close?”
“Better late than never, besides, knowing how persuasive you are, I knew that you were going to talk him into leaving eventually.”
“You knew he was in here?” David asked Henry.
“Yeah, I was watching him all the way.”
“When he saw the concerned look on David’s face Henry said, “Come with me, I’ll show you something.”
Henry took David to the back of the RV. Next to the ladder and below the rear window, Henry slid a lever that exposed a small window.
“These units are equipped with a hidden access window just for these kind of emergencies. On my way over, I received a call from one of my men on the Carrier Constellation and he told me that they received an intruder alarm.”
“Then why didn’t you shoot him?” David asked.
“I was watching his every move,” Henry said, “If I thought for a minute that he was going to fire his weapon, believe me, he was going down. It worked out okay, he’s worth a lot more to us alive than he would be dead.”
David extended his hand to Henry and said, “Thanks for looking out for us.”
Henry shook his hand and said, “We’re all in the same family, you would’ve done the same for me.”
When they walked back to where Hoskins was standing guard over Abdula, Hoskins said, “I knew that Abdula’s greediness and love of money would get him out of the RV, but I really didn’t expect him to take you with him, David.”
“You and me both.”
Hoskins picked up the money filled briefcases from the ground and said to Abdula who was slowly gaining consciousness, “You won’t have any use for these where you’re going, for your crimes against humanity, you will be imprisoned for the rest of your life.”
“When he gets to Guantanimo, I’ll do what I could to make sure that he shares a cell with Tariq Amin,” Henry said as he motioned for his men who just arrived to take Abdula away.
“Henry, would you mind giving Frank a hand, he’s in the basement of that apartment building with your missing cesium.”
“Sure, I’ll take it back to Germany with me.”
“Great, but before you leave, I hope you and your men could stick around until tomorrow night, the Ambassador doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to put all of us up for the night throw one hell of a party for us tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Henry said before he and some of his men walk off in the direction of the apartment house.
Hoskins walked back to the others that were gathered outside the RV and said, “I can’t help but wonder what else the day will bring.”
“I don’t know if I could take much more of this,” Leslie said.
“You did a magnificent job this week, Leslie, we couldn’t have pulled this off without you, I guess that you might as well bring the predator down for the night.”
“I already checked with air traffic control at the airport and they gave us a field where we could land and disassemble it.”
Hoskins turned around and saw David and Veronica sitting next to Brad on a park bench. Veronica had the hummingbird laptop with her and just flew the spy bird back from the side of the apartment building and settled it down onto David’s waiting hands.
Hoskins applauded and said to Brad and David, “Tell your boss that the hummingbird field test was a complete success.”
Leslie you and Veronica are welcome to stay with us at the Embassy tonight, you certainly deserve a good nights rest, and you could give us a hand with the paperwork in the morning.”
“Thanks, Jack,” Leslie said, “We’ll head over to the airport now, do you want us to drop you off at the Embassy on the way?”
“No, you two go ahead, the walk will probably do us good, and I want to get Brad checked out at the hospital.”
Leslie looked at Brad who was sitting on a sidewalk bench with his one arm bandaged and holding a bag of ice to his head with his good arm.
“I’ve seen a lot worse, you’ll be just fine.”
“Will they give me a purpleheart medal or something like that.”
“No, but when we get back to Langley I’ll help you sign up for some in-house classes on self-defense. You really have to learn how and when to attack an armed opponent,” Leslie said.
“Thanks, I wasn’t hurting enough already.”
“I’m sorry, but we like to keep you rookies alive so we could reminisce about old times when we get back to Virginia,” Leslie said as she and Veronica got in the RV and headed to the airport.
Brad managed to smile through the pain.
Hoskins picked up his cell phone and called the Embassy.
“Mr. Evans, would you kindly send an ambulance over to our RV on the westside of Freedom Square.”
“It will be there in a few minutes, sir.”
As Hoskins spoke to Evans, he saw Frank and Henry escorting the police bomb squad as they carried the small wooden box from the apartment building.
“And it looks like you could start sending all of the people back into the evacuated buildings,” Mr. Evans, “With the exception of the Shervnadze apartment building, you’d better have the building dusted for contaminants first, we believe that the radiation was sealed, but you never know.”
Hoskins saw the look of concern on Tamara Gorridge’s face and said, “Have them do an especially good job on Miss Gorridge’s apartment number 210, have them dust it good, thanks,” Hoskins said before hanging up with Evans.
“Thank you, Mr. Hoskins, “You’re very kind,” Tamara said.
“It’s the least we could do for all the trouble and inconvenience that we caused you, and you’re very much welcome to stay with us at the Embassy until your apartment is ready.”
David put his arm around his sister and said, “Since the Embassy is putting us up for the night, you might as well join us, Sis.”
“As long as I’ll be spending time with my little brother, I don’t care where we stay.”
Hoskins walked over to Brad who was still sitting on the bench.
“You know, there’s absolutely nothing like the cool, clean night air of Eastern Europe,” Hoskins said as he inhaled, you could almost smell the birth of civilization in the air.”
“I’m going to have to take your word for that, my arm hurts even when I breathe,” Brad said as the ambulance pulled up on the street right in front of them.
The EMT crew came over to Brad and assisted him into the back of the ambulance where they immediately begin treating him.
A few minutes later, David, who was with Brad in the ambulance when the EMT’s were treating him, came over to Hoskins and said “Jack, would you mind taking Tamara back to the Embassy with you? I’ll go to the hospital with Brad, the EMT’s said that its only a flesh wound on his arm, so we should only be there for an hour or two.”
“That’s fine, give me a call when he’s released, and I’ll send a car over to pick you up, and don’t worry about your sister, she’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, Jack,” David said before he climbed into the back of the ambulance with Brad. He waved good-by to Tamara before the doors closed behind him and the ambulance quietly drove away.
Frank walked over to Hoskins and Tamara and said, “Henry went to the police station to give them our report on Abdula and the bomb. The police said that they found an Azerbaijani car parked on the other side of the square, it was stolen from an old couple that was murdered in Baku.”
“That rotten bastard,” Hoskins said, “Maybe I should have Henry’s men make sure that he requires the use of a wheelchair when he gets to Guantanimo.”
“I’d like some of that action myself,” Frank said.
“I guess we should just be content that we got him,” Hoskins said as he, Frank, and Tamara started walking back to the Embassy
“You’re right,” Frank said, “Besides, there will be more bad people to deal with tomorrow, we might as well save some energy for them.”
As they passed near Tamara’s apartment building, many of the children from the evacuated apartments waved to the schoolteacher as they slowly shuffled back into the apartments with their families.
“They have no idea how lucky they were,” Tamara said as she smiled and waved back at the children, “Thank God the bad guys didn’t win today.”
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