Page 146 of Whisper

Hamid scooted across the bench seat and opened the opposite door.

Carl glowered. He waved to the two men on the other side of the car. They moved in, reaching for Hamid.

Hamid stepped away. “You said you would treat me well!” His head whipped around, searching. He spotted Ahmad. “You said I was a hero!”

Ahmad stepped forward, hands outstretched. “You are. Come, these are just precautions. We are friends,habibi.” He placed his hand on his heart.

“We don’t have time for this,” Carl growled. “We have to search him.”

“Hey, calm down—” Kris snapped.

“I will show you a true hero,” Hamid said. He reached into his robe—

“What thefuckis he doing?” Carl shouted. “What is he reaching for?”

“Drop your hand! Drop your hand!” Carl’s men shouted in unison. All four whipped their rifles up, fingers more than half-pressed on their triggers.

“Don’t shoot!” Ahmad bellowed! “Don’t!”

“La illaha illah Allah,” Hamid wailed.

David’s eyes flicked to Kris’s.

It was a trap. Hamid wasn’t their savior. They weren’t going home.

“No!” He shouted. He took one step, running for Kris. Kris was too close, far too close. He was inside the blast radius. “Kris—”

He never took a second step.

A burst of light blinded the world.

Hamid blew apart, his body disintegrating as the bomb he wore burst apart in every direction. A blast wave tore through the air, a bubble of flame and fury, ripping through the staging area. The car, the rusted old sedan, flipped over and over, a toy tumbling and sliding on the gravel until it came to a stop upside down, pinning what was left of Carl beneath the roof.

Carl’s team, the three others, were shredded in a scatterblast of ball bearings and nails, screws and broken glass, packed shrapnel that flew in every direction. A thousandplinkssounded, the rain of shrapnel slamming into the command center’s walls, at the same moment the thunderousboomof the detonation shook the earth, trembling the ground and the sky for two miles in every direction.

The blast wave slammed into the group waiting to receive Hamid. Eardrums burst and lungs collapsed, the impact equal to slamming a car into a brick wall at one hundred miles per hour. Everyone tumbled, blown off their feet and thrown through the air, landing in a skid of gravel and blood, tens of feet away from the blast.

Silence followed, for a moment.

Then, tinychinksandclinksandplinksof debris hitting concrete and steel.Thunks,the larger pieces falling next. Hamid’s severed head, the only part of him to survive, fell to the ground and rolled, finally ending upside down in front of David.

David clawed forward, bloody fingers scraping through gravel as he struggled to breathe. Blood dripped from his lips, stained the rocks beneath his face. Fires raged, the car and two buildings and severed limbs burning. He could just see bodies through the heat haze, the shimmering air. Figures lying on the ground, unmoving.

“Kris—” he called, his voice choked. He coughed, his voice lost in blood pooling in the base of his throat. “Kris!” he called again, trying to drag himself forward.

Shouts rose… frombehindhim.

No. The gate.

It was still open.

David twisted, looking back. Men in dark clothes with black turbans covering their heads, wrapped around their faces, ran onto the base. Two trucks with a mounted machine gun in the bed screamed in behind them. Every man clutched a rifle.

They weren’t the cavalry coming to the rescue.

This was the second phase of the attack.

Al-Qaeda had planned this, everything.