Beowulf: Explosives Detection Dog (57 page)

Three hundred Americans on their knees. Just as it should be.
Freshta and Sidiq will be avenged
. Infused with the thought, Bashir traced the room with a slow, casual glance. Closed his mind to the past, to the devastation of that April morning so many years ago. His wife, his son … they would have justice.

He met the gaze of Dehqan. Steady eyes. Sure, so very sure. Bashir had trained him well. Perhaps one day, he would wage his own holy war against the infidels. The thought pushed a smile into his face, and Dehqan mirrored it. Bashir offered a nod of appreciation to the boy who was no longer a boy.

“General Lance Burnett,” Bashir spoke into the microphone.

The older man’s head popped up. Rage and terror struck his ruddy complexion as those around him reacted to his name being announced.

Bashir set his hand on the steel-framed chair that now bore a dark stain. “Would you have a seat, General?”

“No,” came a woman’s cry—the fiancée of Sajjan. She shook her head, sorrow weighting her as she pushed her gaze to the carpet.

Ah, see? They already knew what would happen. They knew who held the power. So many here, rich, dressed like kings and queens in their diamonds, beaded gowns that cost more than most of his people saw in a year, and their tuxes that could feed an entire village for months. The women with their colored hair and luxurious makeup … the military with their shiny buttons that belied the rust in their hearts … the dignitaries with their bellies bloated from excess and indulgence, not starvation.

“You are probably wondering, each one of you, why I singled these men out. Why, if I am going to kill you”—Bashir paused as the whimpers of fear rippled through the crowd, around the pillars, gauzy material, and lights—“do I take time to bring an individual before you.”

Dehqan, who stood at the back, gave him a solemn nod.

Good. Very good. “You see, beyond those doors guarded by my friends and brothers, the authorities are out there, trying to coerce me to talk to them, convince me to release you safely.” His heart tremored. “But I want you Americans to know how close hope can come, how close freedom can be—so very close that you can taste it in the air.”

For Freshta
.

“Then experience the shattering of that hope.”

Sidiq
.

“The devastation thereafter.”

As Burnett worked his way to the stage, escorted by Dehqan, Bashir supplied one last quote from the Qur’an. “Surah 60 says, ‘Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion and did not drive you out of your homes. Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity. It is regarding those who fought against you on account of religion and have driven you out of your homes and helped to drive you out that Allah forbids you to befriend them, and whoever will befriend them, then such are the wrongdoers.’ ”

Dehqan helped General Lance Burnett into the chair. Defeat had long ago stomped its imprint into the man’s face. “This has to end,” Burnett said.

Bashir smiled. “You are very right.” He stepped to the side, hugged Dehqan, and then whispered in his ear, “It is time. Remember what to do?”

Dehqan nodded and slipped behind the curtains that draped the wall abutting the stage.

Microphone to his mouth, Bashir asked, “General Lance Burnett, tell these people, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, where you were on April 9, 2003.”

As if drawing in a breath of courage—for he would need that to confess his sins. To confess the wrong he had done—he said, “I was in Baghdad, much like Colonel Abrams.”

“No,” Bashir said, outrage pounding through his chest. “Not
like
Colonel Abrams.” Control. Control it. “But that was a day of victory, was it not? You Americans played the video of that statue of Saddam being pulled down over and over again.”

“We helped liberate people.”

“No!” Bashir swung out with the microphone and whacked the sixty-something man over the head with it. A shriek pinged through the speakers as a rivulet of dark red sped down the general’s temple and fed Bashir’s fury. “That victory may have happened for the Iraqi people, but what were
you
doing?”

Burnett’s gaze bounced to him then back to the floor.

“Or are you ashamed?”

Head up, chin out, Burnett seethed. “I’m not ashamed.” The man had too much pride. “My team was engaged in an intense firefight on the other side of the city. Saddam loyalists weren’t happy to see us there. They fought us—hard. We fought back.”

Bashir waited. Waited for him to tell the rest of the story. To admit what he’d done. “What else?”

The general shrugged. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

“That you killed my family—my wife just minutes after she gave birth to my son! You ordered Abrams to fire that tank. And that round decimated my house!”

Burnett’s expression shifted from confusion to one of stunned awareness. “I’m sorry your wife and child died, but that wasn’t at my hand.”

“It was!” Rage boiled through his veins. Thumping. Whooshing. Hurting. Aching. “And now I will make you hurt the way I hurt!”

        Forty        

B
ashir!” Sajjan Takkar stepped forward.

Effectively cutting off Tony’s line of sight. He grunted and shifted to the side, his shoulder bumping Timbrel. Weapon trained on the guy, Tony watched from between the heavy black velvet as Takkar intruded on the violent end Bashir Karzai intended to give General Burnett.

Timbrel hovered at Tony’s right with Beo.

“Get ready,” he said, air barely passing over his vocal cords.

She nodded.

“What is this?” Bashir shouted. “You dare to defy me?”

“I would not dream of it, brother. But our time is short, is it not?”

“I will have justice.”

“Will that not happen with the plan?” Sajjan motioned toward the books. “Whether you shoot him now or he dies with the rest of them, he
will
die. And remember, brother, jihad is also against the flesh. Dying to our desires. Does your thirst for vengeance cloud your mission from Allah?”

Wild fury detonated on Bashir’s face.

C’mon, c’mon. Where’s the device? Who has it?

“What does he think he’s doing?” Timbrel hissed in his ear. “It’ll push him over the edge taunting him like that.”

“Challenging,” Tony corrected. And saving the life of Lance Burnett. Or maybe just extending it by two minutes. Tony couldn’t help but wonder whose side Takkar had taken with his slick words and jockeying.

“I begin to wonder, brother, if you even have the accelerator.”

Nice. Draw the guy out.

A flicker of movement. Tony’s attention fastened on the Aussie, kneeling at the back amid a cluster of other soldiers, including his superior. Shifting his position, he was locked on to something. No, someone. A woman. No, no. The man.

In the second Tony realized the SAS commando was going for the rogue terrorist, Tony noticed Bashir aim his weapon.

“Beo, seek!”

The dog bolted between the thick black velvet curtains. With one of his world-famous demon growl-barks, Beowulf sailed through the air.

Bashir spun around.

With the weapon.

Aimed at Beo!

Crack!

Chaos erupted.

All Timbrel could see, all she could process was the split-second explosion from Bashir’s gun. The yelp of her dog.

And his dogged determination. Beo latched on to the man’s arm.

Bashir screamed like a little girl.

The weapon thudded across the makeshift stage.

Burnett dove.

“Beo, out!” Timbrel shouted, afraid Beo would get hurt or hurt the wrong person. She rushed from cover seconds behind Tony, who broke right. Off the stage. Into the clogged ballroom, where the people sat huddled around the cone of books.

Screams echoed.

Like a bad horror movie, Timbrel spotted a man tossing a flashlight-like thing toward the books. It thumped against the stack.

A tendril of smoke spiraled up.

“Get out, get out,” someone shouted.

Timbrel dragged her attention toward the warning and found Watters pushing people out the doors.

Fights ensued. Shots. Fists. Utter chaos.

Timbrel sprinted forward to stop the device. If she could just get it away from the books, maybe she could stop it.

But a body sailed into the air. Straight through her path. A giant of a guy dove into the books. They erupted like a volcano around him. Shots peppered the pages, tattering them as if a thousand years rushed through the pages, leaving them yellowed and the edges eaten.

“The device!” Timbrel shouted.

It felt like minutes that turned into hours. But in seconds, the guy rolled onto his back with the thing cradled in his hands.

She double-checked Bashir. A tangle of bodies writhed on the stage, and she spotted his face among them. Someone walked toward them with a gun. Maybe someone could stop this insanity.

But the bomb, or whatever it was—Timbrel whipped back to the tendrils snaking into the air. Dare she take a breath? What if once the device was activated there was no way to stop it? Her gaze surfed the books. Searched for the chemical. If it was cyanide or such, there wouldn’t be an odor.

Except to bomb-sniffing dogs—Beo!