Kill Zone: A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller (17 page)

Haddad turned to look at her. “Why didn’t you send Jenna with me? Because you don’t trust me? Or maybe you don’t trust
her
?”

Lucy didn’t tell him the answer to both questions was yes.
 

“Did you see a lot of,” she searched for words, “this kind of thing when you were in Afghanistan? Like what happened to those schoolgirls the Taliban killed?”
Like sixty innocent civilians slaughtered.

He didn’t answer for a long time. “We were mainly search and seizure,” Haddad finally said, his voice distant. “The Marines took care of clearing any militants before I went in. But yeah. I saw a few IEDs go off. You don’t get used to it, not really. You just kind of block it out. Say to yourself: I’m not dead, therefore everything’s okay. Then something
does
happen to you or guys you know and—” He trailed off, his hand going to the scar on his forehead. “Suddenly everything’s not okay. And you wonder if it will ever be okay again.”

She blew her breath out. It was exactly how she felt after last month. It was why she'd never talked to anyone about it: talking made it real and she’d much rather deny it ever happened.

The cell lines were jammed, but she kept dialing until finally she got through to Nick’s phone. Straight to voicemail, again. She was surprised he hadn’t called or texted, asking her where she was.

“Hey, it’s me.” She hesitated. She couldn’t bring herself to let him know she was headed into the worst neighborhood in Pittsburgh searching for the leader of a violent Mexican cartel, her backup a DEA agent with a personal agenda.
 

“I’m sorry. I need to cancel tonight. I’m sure you saw what’s happening.” In the side view mirror flames danced behind them. “Do me a favor and stay home. I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.” If she lived that long. Shit. He was going to hear the panic in her voice if she wasn’t careful. Nick was good at listening. Sometimes too good. “Love you. Bye.”

She hung up before she blurted out a warning for him to be careful. Funny, usually it was Nick telling her that.

Haddad was taking advantage of the lack of traffic and driving faster than the posted limit by a good fifteen miles an hour. They rounded a slight curve leading past the Port Authority bus garages and approached the tunnel under the railroad tracks and Busway. Too late the Mustang’s headlights caught the hulking silhouette of a dump truck stopped inside the tunnel, its lights off.

“Look out!” Lucy called out.

The truck was angled to block both lanes. Haddad slammed on the brakes. The Mustang skidded, bounced over debris in the road, ended up sideways, the edge of the truck bed scraping along Lucy’s door, metal shrieking.

“What the hell?” Haddad shouted, hitting the horn out of frustration. The noise echoed between the walls of the tunnel.

The truck was obviously deserted, left as a roadblock. Its hydraulic bed was elevated, the top edge wedged against the low hanging ceiling, its payload of broken concrete, rebar, and other construction debris emptied all over the road.
 

“Back up, turn around,” she ordered. The Mustang’s wheels spun as he shoved the gearshift down. “That’s neutral.”
 

Haddad cursed and rammed the car into reverse. Rocks pinged against the windshield as bits of brick and stone bounced against the Mustang. The wheels spun then caught, bouncing them over the debris scattered across the pavement.

“You said this was the quickest way into Homewood,” Haddad said as he finished the U-turn.

“Turn right.” She told him.

“You mean left. We need to take Meade down to Braddock.”

“Too close to the 911 Center. They’ll have it shut down.”

He slowed the car. “So where are we going?”

“You want to catch them, don’t you? Just turn. Now.” She pointed to the sign that read:
No entry. Buses only.

He took the turn so fast the momentum threw her against the car door. They hugged the concrete barrier, ascending the on-ramp in a steep semicircle, and ended up on the Busway. It was a two-lane highway crossing the heart of the city—and without traffic since the buses would have been sidelined because of the emergency.
 

She felt sorry for all the commuters left stranded in the December night, but buses made for easy targets to carry bombs. Too risky to keep them running.

Lucy shivered and rolled up her window, not liking this change in her thinking. She grew up near here, had jumped at the chance to bring her family back here, raise her daughter here. Yet now she was thinking of the city as the enemy, its inhabitants targets or terrorists.

If you thought that way, Homewood was the perfect place for a cartel to plant roots. Only a few blocks north of where they were now, it could have been an Afghanistan war zone in comparison to the quiet street where the Raziqs lived. Homewood was already so dangerous with the rival drug gangs fighting for turf that school buses wouldn’t enter and firefighters and EMS responded only with police escorts.
 

She understood what Haddad meant about the main war being a psychological one. A fight for emotional dominance.
 

Even though she was a trained and seasoned professional, even though she’d risked her life on the job, hell, had even killed a man, even though she wouldn’t be on the front lines of the urban warfare sure to follow tonight’s events, she still wondered if she would stay in Pittsburgh. She had her family to think of—would she risk them just for her job?
 

If she couldn’t help thinking that, how many others would also hesitate? Pittsburgh already had a shortage of police and first responders. How many would stay to face an enemy who wouldn’t think twice about targeting them and their families?

Suddenly all the news of the bloodshed and violence in Mexico felt very close to home. She’d promised Nick she’d avoid high-risk field operations. And she’d meant to keep that promise, she really had. But who could have predicted something like this?

Haddad gunned the Mustang. He seemed to have gotten a new surge of energy now that they were getting close to Raziq—or at least to where they hoped Raziq was. “How do we get off this thing?”

“Up ahead, there’s a ramp down near Brushton Avenue.”
 

“Ready to go take on Pittsburgh’s nastiest gang? Along with the Zapatas?”

Lucy finished reloading their weapons and shoved all the spare ammo into her pockets or the ones on Haddad’s vest. “Sure. Nothing better to do on a Friday night.”

He gave a grunt that sounded like something from a war movie. But that’s where they were headed. Into war.

<><><> 

Medcontrol 3RMC: Attention, attention. This is Three Rivers Medical Center. We have a credible bomb threat, repeat a credible bomb threat. Requesting Code Gray implementation. We need all available ambulances to transport critical patients as we evacuate. All incoming traffic both emergency and nonemergency to be diverted to Presbyterian. We are evacuating the medical center. Please advise with ETA of police and ambulances. Angels 1, 2, 3 are starting evacuation via helicopter.

Angel 1: Medcontrol, we are lifting off from Three Rivers, destination Presbyterian. Five souls on board.

Medcontrol 3RMC: Copy that, Angel 1. Angel 2 prepare for landing as soon as the pad is clear.

Angel 2: Roger.

NIMS Incident Command: Medcontrol we have two State Police helos headed your way to aid with the evacuation as well as their Bomb Squad.

Medcontrol: ETA?

NIMS Incident Command: Fourteen minutes out. Proceed with evacuation but if you find any suspicious objects do not approach. Repeat, do not approach.

Medcontrol: Understood.

Chapter 19

Police cars, EMS, and fire trucks choked the northbound lanes on Braddock, heading towards the 911 Center. Too little, too late.

Thankfully Jenna and Walden were headed south. All they had to worry about were a few civilian drivers dawdling as they rubbernecked, trying to figure out what all the commotion was about and which way was the safest to get home.

Some genius had turned all the traffic lights on the main streets flashing amber, leaving the secondary roads congested, but keeping traffic moving for first responders. Jenna made good use of the Tahoe's lights and siren.

Walden monitored the NIMS channel as well as the local police frequencies. Jenna figured it was a good sign that he was thinking clearly enough to help despite the blood that had saturated the pressure dressing again.
 

“Three Rivers is evacuating,” he told her just as she was about to turn down Penn Avenue toward the medical center. “We’ll need to go to Presby. Zone Five is still pinned down by snipers. Local SWAT is on scene. Bomb threats all over the city: hospitals, synagogues, college dorms, even a high school hockey tournament.”

“They had all spring to study our playbook on that,” Jenna replied. Right before finals, Pitt University had been plagued with bomb scares. There'd been over a hundred evacuations requiring multi-agency responses before they ended. Not her case, the FBI had taken the lead.

“Hell, maybe they’re the ones behind those.”

“Testing us?”

“Gathering intel,” Walden said. “It’s what I would do. Face it, we’re up against an opponent who’s just as smart, just as well-armed, and better funded than we are.”

“And with no paperwork to file or regs about not letting civilians get caught in the crossfire.”

“Exactly. The more civilians panicking the better, as far as they’re concerned.”

She glanced over at him. “Which means we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”

Before Walden could answer, he finally got through to the FBI offices on his cell phone. “Taylor, it’s me. Go to the training channel on your radio before this call gets dropped.”

He switched to the radio and waited a beat. Then Taylor’s voice came through. “I’m here. Greally is deploying us.” He sounded excited, his voice cracking with adrenalin.

“Is Greally there?” Walden asked. John Greally was the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office.

“Walden. What’s the situation?” A second man’s voice came through, older and calmer than Taylor’s.

Walden gave him a quick rundown on what had happened at the 911 Center. “A DEA agent, David Haddad, ID’d the subjects who bombed the Communication Center as members of the Zapata cartel. They’re working alongside a local gang, possibly the Ruby Avenue Rippers. Lucy and Haddad are following a lead into Homewood.”
 

“They left the 911 Center?” Greally didn’t sound too happy about that. It was definitely not protocol to leave a crime scene and mass casualty site unsecured. Especially not on a night when first responders were coming under fire.

Damn, not even Saint Lucy had thought of that.
“Sir,” Jenna said, “No one could have survived that blast. And Walden was shot. He needed medical attention.”

“We neutralized all the subjects in the area,” Walden interrupted, his voice managing to match Greally’s administrative calm. As if they hadn’t almost gotten shot and blown up and burned alive.

Jenna steered them onto the Parkway West. Traffic was light at first.
 

“I don’t think you understand,” Greally snapped. “No US city has faced anything like this since 9-11. We have to clear every bridge and tunnel before we can re-route civilians, evacuate multiple targets—”

Suddenly a sea of brake lights filled both lanes of traffic between the Tahoe and the entrance to the Squirrel Hill tunnel. There was no traffic coming the other way through the tunnel. They must have closed the tunnel, probably checking it for bombs. She didn’t hesitate, immediately steering the Tahoe onto the shoulder’s rough washboard pavement. Walden grimaced in pain as his leg bounced against the dashboard.

“We think these operations are following the pattern set by the 2008 Mumbai attack,” Greally was saying. “Locating their base of operations could be crucial to stopping them. How definitive is this lead Lucy is following?”

She glanced at Walden. Pretty damn tenuous, if you asked her. At least the part about the Ripper’s HQ. Jenna was certain she’d found her bomber in Andre Stone.

An idea occurred to her. Why couldn’t they find the cartel the same way?

“Sir, if the Zapata’s base is in Homewood, I can find them.”

Walden stared at her.

“And just how the hell would you accomplish that, Galloway?” Greally’s voice whipped through the radio.

“They wouldn’t be relying on cell communications. Too unreliable with the towers overloaded. And radio is too easy to intercept; they’d save that for team members during an operation. Just like we do when we’re in the field.”

“Go on.”

“They must be using secure satellite communications. If so, we might be able to track them.” Unfortunately there were a ton of variables and not a small amount of luck involved. But hell, if she could find Andre Stone in the haystack of leads David had given her, why not Zapata?