that? Birk had wanted the entire half hour. Rare as hen’s teeth to have a whole show’s worth of face time, but it wasn’t every day—hell, it wasn’t even every decade—that you had a talent of Birk’s magnitude reporting from the heart of a Mother Earth smackdown.
“You got diarrhea of the mouth,” Raggedy Ass told him in his thick Southern accent. “I could have said all that in five minutes flat.”—flea-a-a-at—“But no, you got to go on and on. What? You think if you talk-talk-talk it’s going to save those fingers of yours?”
The wire cutters were still attached to Birk’s thumb, the blunt edges of the blades Flex-Cuffed together, like Birk’s hands, behind his back. Christ, those fucking blades hurt.
“Next time you’re in front of that thing,” Raggedy Ass nodded amiably at the teensy camera, “I’m going to make you hold up your thumb—and it’s not going to be attached to your hand.”
“You’re not going to do it live?” The indignity burst out of Birk before he gave himself time to think. Don’t encourage the bastard. But even after a moment’s reflection, he knew that video of his dismemberment would be fucking priceless. How could Raggedy Ass even think of doing it off camera? An insult to injury in every possible way. What is wrong with these people?
“That disappoint you?” Raggedy Ass asked.
“No, not at all,” Birk lied. He regained his senses enough to think that maybe he could yak his way out of an on-air amputation. “Look, if you start cutting me apart like a roast chicken, I’m going to be useless to you. I’ll be in so much pain, you might as well throw me to the sharks.”
“Inshallah, I will.”
“But don’t you want me making your case for you? You start cutting through bone, man, I’m done.”
Raggedy Ass stared at him so coldly that Birk could almost feel the sharp blades bearing down.
“I can’t make idle threats,” Raggedy Ass replied matter-of-factly. “I said we’d do it if they didn’t start shutting down the plants immediately. That was hours ago, and all we’re hearing is how they’re not going to shut down a thing, so we have do to it.” He shrugged.
Oh, God. The savage climbed down from the chair, reached around Birk, and grabbed the wire cutters. “Please, I beg of you, don’t do this,” Birk shouted. The pressure only increased. “Give me a drink for God’s sake.”
His last words before he blacked out.
* * *
A doctor finished bandaging Jenna’s thumb and index finger in the emergency room at Malé’s big public hospital. The care had been first rate, the female Indian doctor kind, but Jenna still found herself shaking every time she remembered how close the fuse came to setting off a bomb that would have taken down the entire hotel, according to the fast assessment of a Maldivian police team.
“You will be okay,” the Indian doctor told her. “It is not such a bad burn. But you must keep it clean. You are very lucky.”
“I know.”
“There are some people in the waiting area who want to see you.”
Jenna figured on Nicci, and she was there, but the doctor apparently meant a contingent of U.S. intelligence agents and more Maldivian police. She and Nicci were whisked to a conference room at police headquarters, several blocks away. A Maldivian gentleman in a dark suit told Nicci she would have to wait outside, then asked Jenna if she wanted anything to eat or drink.
“Just coffee,” Jenna said, now that her hands no longer shook. “And some water.”
The police, and two men from the National Defense Force, had her look through more than a hundred photos, mostly mug shots plus a number of surveillance photos. She did not see the young man from the van. She was asked to describe the man in detail to a young female sketch artist. Alas, none of Jenna and the artist’s attempts bore much resemblance to the runaway driver.
Jenna felt herself growing tired, and perhaps the Maldivian in the dark suit noticed, because he had his people step aside so the U.S. intelligence agents could debrief her. That didn’t take long. Then a tight-lipped American in his thirties and an older white man of considerable girth led Jenna and Nicci to an SUV. As they drove back to the hotel, the senior of the two told them the bomb had been made from the same materials that Timothy McVeigh had used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building.
Members of the Maldives National Defense