Page 118 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Sampson clawed at the wheel and managed to straighten us out before we went off the other side.

“My Jeep!” He groaned. “And we can’t see squat without lights!”

I unbuckled my shoulder harness, dug out my Maglite, rolled down the window, and clicked on the light. I hung out the window and played the beam across the road.

“There’s your tracks,” I said. “Stay on him. Wait! He turned around!”

Sampson skidded to a stop, turned the SUV around, grabbed his radio, and said into it, “Metro Dispatch. This is John Sampson, over.”

Only a hiss came back.

“Must be some kind of frequency jammer on airport grounds,” he said, and he looked at his phone. “No bars.”

“He’s taking a left!” I said, my hand freezing from holding the flashlight out the window.

Sampson took the left and accelerated up Striker Avenue. The tracks were more distinct now. We were closing the distance.

Two minutes later, we hit a T with Structures Road and saw the tire tracks turn into a pullout on the opposite side. There sat the gray Mercedes Sprinter.

The rear doors were open. I shone the light in and saw a green wooden crate, the lid off, and under the lid a pair of legs in jeans and running shoes.

I raced to the back of the van, Sampson right beside me. He yanked away the wooden crate cover, revealing Fiona Plum.

With all the blood, I thought for certain she was dead. But John jumped inside and felt her neck for a pulse.

“She’s alive, but barely,” he said. “She needs an ambulance pronto.”

I thought about the Google map of the area that I’d studied as we drove to the gravel pit. “We put her into your car. You drive back to Perimeter Road. Take a left, then the first left onto Willard Road, then the first right onto Live Fire Road. Follow it to the end. I’m pretty sure the airport fire station is there. Tell them to shut the airport down.”

“Where are you going?”

A jet roared, taking off to our northeast. I gestured with the flashlight at snowed-over footprints headed into the woods and toward the airport.

CHAPTER 100

STILL IN SHOCK OVERthe shooting of Fiona Plum, Captain Davis, holding the loaded shoulder-mounted missile launcher Obaid had forced him to carry, slipped and stumbled amid the falling snow. Davis’s mouth, wrists, and ankles were no longer duct-taped, but he was unsteady, and he almost went down there in the forest, a quarter mile from Dulles International’s south runway.

But the terrorist grabbed him by the back of his jacket and kept him upright. “Not yet, Captain,” Obaid said calmly. “We’ve got important work to do here in memory of dear Fiona.”

Davis’s pulse soared along with his anger. He suddenly and overwhelmingly wanted to get extremely violent with this man. Brutal, in fact. He wanted to kill Obaid for what he’d done to Fiona Plum and the passengers of AA 839.

The terrorist seemed to sense the rage building in Davis because he pressed the muzzle of the suppressed pistol to the back of the former pro football player’s neck. “It would be a damn shame to end it here, Captain, but I will if I have to. We’re not far now, and with the snow, I could drag your carcass into position. So move.”

Davis told himself he’d cooperate for now, wait for his chance. By the dim light of Obaid’s headlamp, he began creeping forward again on the snowy game trail they’d been following the last hundred yards. He squinted into the driving snow, shifting the missile launcher to guide it around trees and branches. He could just make out the lights of the terminal and the flashing light of the control tower ahead.

Then the first strong beam of light from the tower hit Davis’s eyes, and it triggered a terrible memory of the flash of his rockets hitting a village he had been told was a stronghold of the Islamic State. He remembered the moment after he’d fired the rockets, remembered watching their contrails rip down through the sky as children ran from their homes and into the streets.

Then he remembered the muzzle flashes when Obaid shot Fiona.

This was worse, Davis decided. This was personal. This was someone he … loved.

He had, hadn’t he? He’d loved Fiona’s quirkiness and her smile and the way she adored him and laughed at his jokes no matter how corny. And he’d been so grateful to her for standing up to him, for forcing him to take a cold hard look in the mirror.

But now she’s dead. And so are those children.

“I’m sorry for killing them,” Davis said. “Your family.”

“Shut up, Captain,” Obaid replied. “They’re gone no matter how sorry you are. And you’ll get no forgiveness from me. Not tonight. Not ever.”

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