The Black Widow

By the time the first units of the Metropolitan Police had arrived, the three surviving terrorists had crossed the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway on foot and were entering Washington Harbor. There they moved from restaurant to restaurant, killing without mercy. Fiola Mare, Nick’s Riverside Grill, Sequoia: all were raked with gunfire. Once again, they encountered no resistance from the Metropolitan Police; the Americans, it seemed, had been caught flat-footed. Or perhaps, thought the leader of the attack cell, Saladin had deceived them. The three men reloaded their weapons and headed into the heart of Georgetown in search of other prey.

It was into this chaos that the two women — one dark-haired, the other blond: subjects one and two, as they were known — entered the rear parking garage of the Key Bridge Marriott. A second car, a rented Toyota Corolla, was waiting. Much later, it would be established that the car had been left in the garage earlier that day by the same man who had delivered the suicide vests at Tysons Corner Center.

Usually, it was subject one, the Israeli agent, who handled the driving, but this time subject two, the Frenchwoman, slid behind the wheel. Leaving the garage, she careened past the little blockhouse of the parking attendant, smashing the barrier gate in the process, and headed for the hotel’s Lee Highway exit. The undercover SWAT teams stationed in the surface parking lot did not deploy lethal force against subject one, the Frenchwoman, because they had received no authorization from the president or the director of the FBI. Even the FBI surveillance teams were momentarily paralyzed because they were receiving no guidance from the NCTC. A moment earlier the watchers had heard something over their radios that sounded like an explosion. Now, from the NCTC, there was only silence.

The Lee Highway exit of the hotel was a right turn only. The Frenchwoman turned left instead. She evaded the oncoming cars, turned left onto North Lynn Street, and a few seconds later was racing across Key Bridge toward Georgetown. The FBI undercover SWAT and surveillance teams had no choice but to repeat the Frenchwoman’s reckless moves. Two vehicles spilled from the Lee Highway exit, two more into North Fort Myer Drive. By the time they reached Key Bridge, the Corolla was already turning onto M Street. It had no tracking beacon and no interior microphones. From the heights of the bridge, the FBI teams could see flashing red-and-blue lights streaking toward Georgetown.

62 LIBERTY CROSSING, VIRGINIA

GABRIEL OPENED ONE EYE, then, slowly, painfully, the other. He had lost consciousness, for how long he did not know — a few seconds, a few minutes, an hour or more. Nor could he fathom the attitude of his own body. He was submerged in a sea of debris, that much he knew, but he could not discern whether he was prone or supine, upright or topsy-turvy. He felt no undue pressure in his head, which he took as a good sign, though he was afraid he had lost the ability to hear. The last sound he could recall was the roar of the detonation and the whoosh-thump of the vacuum effect. The supersonic blast wave seemed to have scrambled his internal organs. He hurt everywhere — his lungs, his heart, his liver, everywhere.

He pushed with his hands, and the debris yielded. Through a fog of dust he glimpsed the exposed steel skeleton of the building and the severed arteries of network cables and electric wiring. Sparks rained down, as if from a Roman candle, and through a rip in the ceiling he could make out the handle of the Big Dipper. A cold November wind chilled him. A finch landed within his grasp, studied him dispassionately, and was gone again.

Gabriel swept aside more of the debris and, wincing, sat up. One of the kidney-shaped tables had come to rest across his legs. Lying next to him, motionless, dredged in dust, was a woman. Her face was pristine, save for a few small cuts from the flying glass. Her eyes were open and fixed in the thousand-yard stare of death. Gabriel recognized her; she was an analyst who worked at a pod near his. Jill was her name — or was it Jen? Her job was to scour the manifests of incoming flights for potential bad actors. She was a bright young woman, barely out of college, probably from a wholesome town somewhere in Iowa or Utah. She had come to Washington to help keep her country safe, thought Gabriel, and now she was dead.

He placed his hand lightly on her face and closed her eyes. Then he pushed away the table and rose unsteadily to his feet. Instantly, the shattered world of the Operations Floor began to spin. Gabriel placed his hands on his knees until the merry-go-round stopped. The right side of his head was warm and wet. Blood flowed into his eyes.