Juba settled again on the windshield and saw some young hero had raced to the driver and was pulling at her. A shot, and he pulled no more. The children left inside, of course, panicked, filled the aisles in their desperation to escape, perfectly silhouetted by the illumination pouring through the rear door from the east, and he put the chevron to each squirming blur and brought it down. In time, the windshield was so occluded by bullet fractures that it became incapable of displaying detail. But movement was enough, and he shot until there was no movement, stopping at ten to switch magazines—ack, a cartridge had slid a quarter inch forward, and so he quickly pushed it back in line—ack again, his glove caught on the lip of the mag, so he quickly shook it off, forced the cartridge under the lip down with his thumb, snapped the box in with a dexterous aplomb, and came back to find a child had actually escaped and was heading toward tree cover. He was faster than she was.

Seventeen rounds later, it was over. No more movement. Nothing.

Praise be to Allah. Thanks be to Him for blessing my enterprise, for sanctifying my mission to completion, for rewarding my effort and virtue with success.

8

The black cube, sixth floor

The present

He looked at the crime scene pictures, or at least the ones taken outside the bus. Three bodies inert on pavement or curb. The bus windshield a smear of cracked glass, supernovas of fracture. Fragments glittered all over the bus’s hood and the street.

He did not look at the shots from the interior of the bus. What was the point?

“And you want to interview this guy?” he said. “See, if it was me—and what do I know, I’m just an Arkansas hick—I’d cut off his face and feed it to the pigs.”

“Alas,” said Cohen, “we’re a little Jewish country. No pigs.”

“Dogs, then,” said Swagger.

“Commendable enthusiasm,” said Gold. “But Juba’s secrets are more important than his life. Who can he identify? What is he working on? Who gives him orders, who supplies the logistics, the egress and exit. Who’s in planning, who in execution, who is liaison? Which unknown state actors are influencing him? What has he heard of other operations? Perhaps most important, what is the source of their considerable funding?”

“Do you have a photo of him? What about DNA? Without those, he could be anybody that looks like anybody else named Mohamed.”