Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (10 page)

The Buick’s horn blew in a constant, long, drawn-out honk that filled Dylan’s ears along with the pounding on the left side of his head. He gingerly brought his fingers to the wound on his head and winced when he touched it. He looked down at his fingertips and saw blood.

Cooper’s body lay on the dash, and Diaz’s body was on the floor of the backseat. Neither moved. Dylan reached for the door handle and pulled. He collapsed onto the pavement, the light clink of glass bits falling with him. The floor felt as though it moved in waves, and it knocked Dylan back to the ground with each attempt to try and move forward. His arms gave out on him less than a foot away from the cruiser, and he rolled to his back.

The morning sky above was suddenly blocked by two men in masks, aiming their rifles at him. They spoke to each other quickly then reached down to grab him. But before they could, Dylan watched both of their faces receive a thick piece of lead to their cheeks and foreheads, sprays of blood staining his shirt as they collapsed to the ground.

Dylan quickly scooted backward, pushing the two dead men off him, and when he turned around, he saw Cooper’s smoking gun, still raised and slightly shaking in her hands. She rested her head back down on the dash, the burst of energy that she felt dissipated. She went limp like a wet noodle.

“Cooper,” Dylan said, shaking her arm and trying to glance at the truck that hit them to see if there were any more bad guys heading their way. “Hey, we have to get out of here. Others might be showing up any minute.” The pounding in his head only intensified as Cooper refused to move. He placed his finger on her neck, checking her pulse, and she knocked it away.

“Check on Diaz,” Cooper said, her body struggling for breath.

Dylan checked the backseat, and Diaz was on his stomach on the floorboard, but he was moving. Dylan reached down to help him flip over, and he cried out in pain when he managed to move to his side. “What’s wrong?”

“My ribs,” Diaz said, his body shaking worse than before. “I can’t”—he gulped for air—“breathe.” His breaths came out in wheezed gasps, short, sporadic, each one triggering a grimace on his face that seemed worse than the one before.

Cooper managed to finally push herself up, groaning from the effort, and Dylan took a few stumbling steps outside the car. Smoke and steam rose from both engines, and the shop owners watched from their windows, no doubt staying inside due to the gunshots. Dylan tripped over one of the terrorists’ hands then opened the back driver-side door.

Diaz managed to push himself to a sitting position, and Dylan reached inside and dragged Diaz from the vehicle, cursing and grimacing the entire way until he managed to put Diaz upright against the car to lean on. Cooper popped out and checked the two dead terrorists on the pavement, patting them down.

“Cooper, we have to get out of here,” Dylan said, an edge in his voice. The long hours had eroded away what was left of his patience. Anger rolled through him now, slowly replacing fear, doubt, and the nervous anxiousness that clouded his actions from before. “Cooper!”

“Got it.” Cooper pulled a small notepad from the pocket of the second terrorist, and she tucked it inside her blouse. Both she and Dylan helped Diaz to the side of the road, where they traveled down back alleyways to the hospital.

“Can you call anyone for backup?” Dylan asked. There had to be someone that could help them, someone that could get to them even with all of this. He refused to believe that the people she worked for didn’t have resources that could.

“Cell towers are down,” Cooper answered. “I checked my phone the moment shit hit the fan back at the precinct. It must have been one of the terrorists’ targets. Bastards are smart.”

Smart.
It wasn’t the word that Dylan would have used. Their footsteps echoed in the alleyway as they pushed toward the hospital, but through the pounding of his head, a thought surfaced in Dylan’s mind. “What did you mean earlier?”

“About what?” Cooper asked.

“You said I was connected. The questions about the harbormaster. Do you think they picked my vessel on purpose?”

Cooper tilted her head to the side. “It crossed my mind.”

A cold shiver worked its way up Dylan’s spine as they walked. How did these people target him? And why? He’d never even traveled across the Atlantic, at least not far enough to make it to where these people were from. He had never been in the military, never even showed the slightest interest in any political affairs. Why would these people target him over the thousands, millions, of others?

“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” Cooper replied, catching the looks that his face was going through. “These people, they don’t have rhyme or reason. They probably just picked your boat because it happened to be in the area where they would be entering US waters. Nothing more than that.”

“Does this mean you’ve stopped thinking I was a part of this?”

“I never did. I just needed to make sure I looked at you from all angles. But even I have to admit, you picked to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In the worst possible way.”

None of it was a comforting thought. A liquor store appeared when they exited the end of the alleyway, and Dylan caught the glowing neon in the window advertising beer and liquor, and he twitched his fingers.

The slow tick digging into the back of his skull was beginning to burrow its way inside. Begging him to go inside the building, grab a bottle, and get as far away from the place as he could. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to look away as they passed right in front of the store. He broke out in a cold sweat, and he felt the weight of his past dragging him down to his knees, telling him any and every excuse of why he needed to go inside that store. But before the voice in the back of his head could finish, they were already past and down another alleyway. Dylan shrugged his right shoulder to adjust for Diaz’s growing weight, and the three continued their march to the hospital.

Chapter 8 – Saturday 9:30 a.m.

Nurses, doctors, police officers, and hundreds of other people crowded inside the hospital’s main entrance. The cries of patients and their families consumed the ER, each individual convinced their problems were more important than anyone else’s.

Cooper managed to flag one of the doctors down, and he marked Diaz as a priority, since he had a gunshot wound. But the ER was filled with worse. Despite the early-morning hours, the bombs that had detonated in the city had caused severe casualties and injuries.

Exposed flesh, limbs barely hanging on to their hosts, blood, gore—it was like something out of a war book. In all her years in law enforcement, even in her undercover work, she’d never seen anything like this.

“Cooper,” Dylan said, bringing her attention away from a man clawing at the stump of what was left of his leg as a team of nurses and doctors wheeled him into a room for surgery. “My family.”

“Right.” Cooper pushed past the wailing mothers, fathers, children, and spouses and found a frantic nurse at the reception desk, trying to do seven things at once. “I need to use your phone.”

The nurse didn’t even bother looking up. “I’ll be with you in a second, ma’am.” She picked up a pile of folders and sprinted down the hallway, calling the name of some doctor.

Cooper spotted the phone next to a pile of papers and reached over the counter and snatched it. She prayed the landline still had a dial tone, and when she pressed it to her ear, she let out a sigh of relief. “Good to know some of the old stuff still works.” She immediately dialed her superior in DC.

After a few rings, a man answered the phone. “Director Moringer’s office, how may I help you?”

“Jimmy, it’s Cooper.”

The proper, formal tone dropped, and Jimmy hushed his voice. “Are you okay? The director’s been going insane since Boston went dark.”

“I’m fine. Diaz was hit, but he’ll live. I need to know what’s going on beyond the city. The cell towers are down here, and I’ve just spent half my morning fending off terrorists trying to kill me.”

“Homeland is dragging their feet with giving us anything. Moringer’s been on the phone with Perry, trying to keep the lines of dialogue open, but at this point we know about as much as you.”

“What about the city? Has the news given anything to what’s been hit?”

“Utilities mostly, and communications. There were some blasts at the port, but it was mainly structural damage to the docks themselves. No real damage to any of the ships.”

“Is he available?”

“For you? Yeah, he’ll make time.” Jimmy placed her on hold, and her attention returned to the ER. The nurse who’d taken the folders had returned and given her a passive-aggressive glare, which only lasted as long as the next patient took to start screaming at her for help.

“Agent Cooper, it’s good to know you’re alive,” Moringer said. “Jimmy just told me about Diaz. Make sure you give him my regards.”

“I will, sir. Listen, I need you to get in contact with the nearest unit and have them meet me at Boston General. I’ve got a lead in the case, but with the amount of firepower I’ve seen so far, I know I won’t be able to go in alone.”

“I have Sanchez and his men heading over from Philadelphia. Cooper, we need to get a handle on this, and quickly. Homeland isn’t giving me much, but I think that’s because they don’t have anything. Whoever these people are, they caught them off guard.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said, her voice drifting as she took a look at the crowded hospital around her. “Boss, my lead that I have here was the boat captain that got pulled into this. He has kids that we need to get into witness protection. And I’d prefer if it were our guys.”

“You think Homeland’s hiding something?”

“I think that we’ll start sharing information when they do.”

“Risky, but I’ll tell Sanchez. He shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes from you now, pending the roads haven’t been destroyed on his route.”

“Copy that, sir.” Cooper hung up the phone, and before she went looking for Dylan, she made her way to the operating room where Diaz was being treated. The doctor had already administered anesthesia and was digging into the shoulder to remove the slug.

Dylan snuck up behind Cooper and placed his hand on her shoulder, causing her to jump. “I’m sorry.”

“He’ll pull through,” Cooper said. “He’s been shot before, although I’m sure he’d preferred it not to have happened again.” The risks of the job were always prevalent, and the moment that she thought she was comfortable, ahead of the curve, in control of the world around her, incidents like this cast her back into the realm of uncertainty. “We have a unit of men coming over from Philly. My boss sent for them the moment I called all of this in, just in case. They should be here in less than thirty minutes.”

Dylan exhaled, his body seemingly deflating within himself. “Thank you.”

The doctor pulled the slug out of Diaz’s shoulder and dropped the bloody piece of lead into a bucket then began the process of stitching him up. “I wouldn’t thank me yet.”

***

News coverage of the events put a smile on everyone’s face except Kasaika’s. He sat in the corner, watching from a distance as the rest of the group smiled with delight, jeering at the reporters, cursing and spitting at the mention of other terrorist groups taking credit for their work.

The mangled bodies of those at the hospital seeking medical treatment caused Kasaika’s stomach to turn. He closed his eyes and remembered why he was there, why he was inflicting this pain on those people.
They will know our pain.

A hand slapped his shoulder, and he looked up to see a smiling Sefkh looking down on him. “Brother, we are one step closer to our final act.”

Kasaika nodded. “Allah willing.”

“Do not fret, Kasaika.” Sefkh sat down beside him, holding a plate of food in his hand. “My people here are very reliable. They want the same thing we do. Justice.”

“I do not enjoy bringing outsiders into our fold.” Kasaika shook his head and spit on the ground. “And to tell them so much? It’s foolish. They should not know the intricacies of our plans.”

Sefkh frowned, setting his plate down with some force. “Do you doubt what you sent me here to do? Do you think I would put us at risk? Put my
family
at risk?” Sefkh kicked the plate, sending its contents across the floor and diverting everyone’s attention from the television to the two of them. “Your patronizing is becoming tiresome, brother.”

Kasaika rose to his feet, and Sefkh with him. The two men were nose to nose, and the crowd circled around them. Kasaika knew that he didn’t have any friends here, at least not as many as Sefkh. “And your arrogance has been irritable since I arrived. You do not think farther than your own needs.”

Sefkh shoved his hands into Kasaika’s chest, sending him backward and into the arms of the circle of men, who tossed him back. “I am married to your blood! I have given everything I have to this! And I do not need you to come here and undermine my plans.”

Hands gripped the butts of rifles and pistols. Kasaika looked to his own men, outnumbered three to one. He knew they were better trained and willing to do whatever it took, but this was not the way. Not now. “I speak out of turn, brother.” Kasaika gave a light bow. “It has been a long journey, full of struggles that you no doubt have experienced. I forget the burdens we all bear and the difficulties of keeping them lifted above our heads.”

Sefkh’s face softened. “No.” The group of men loosened their grips on their rifles and pistols. “I have not forgotten your burdens, brother.” Sefkh reached for Kasaika, and the two men embraced each other.

“How sweet.”

The voice triggered every man in the room to reach for their weapons and turn around. Kasaika was one of the last to reach for his rifle, and when he aimed it, he could see the man who spoke with both his hands up at his chest.

Sefkh waved them down. “Brothers, please, there is no reason for alarm.” Sefkh shook the man’s hand but ignored the two men with him then turned to introduce him. “This is Deputy Director Perry from Homeland Security. He’s been helping us gather intelligence against the Americans.”