a little to the left, a man, dressed in blue coveralls and wearing steel toe boots, slid unseen along the side of the building, walking faster as he approached the back. He was almost running when he turned the corner, only to meet the business end of a Heckler & Koch MP7.
“On the ground, now,” the agent holding the gun said. “Hands behind your back.”
Hands immobilized with quick cuffs, the man was escorted to their Mobile Command Center.
The agent slammed him onto a chair, not even looking at him or asking any questions. Then he swabbed the palms of his hands, his sleeves, and the inside of his pockets, and put the pad into a testing device, waiting for results. One beep indicated the result was negative.
“Command, Command, this is Delta Three, over.”
“Go for Command.”
“Command, I have one in custody. He swabbed negative for C4, but he was running. Over.”
“On my way,” Command answered.
A few minutes later, Special Agent Huntley climbed inside the Mobile Command Center. The geo-locating screen caught his attention. There were two red clusters now, and Homeland’s blue tag circle was no longer perfect. A red cluster of geo dots superimposed over one of the blue tags. Theirs. Whatever the red dots were, they were there, inside the MCC.
Huntley called the agent guarding the prisoner.
“Ben, empty his pockets.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent acknowledged. He pulled the man to his feet and started going through the pockets of his coveralls. From one of the side pockets he took out a handful of small screws. From one of his chest pockets, another handful of screws. He placed them on the table, in two separate lumps.
“Screws, smokes, and a lighter, sir; that’s it.”
Huntley studied the tiny screws attentively, looking at one from each pile. They were slightly different.
“What’s your name?”
“Chris Cohen,” the man muttered, showing more fear than attitude.
“What are these for?”
“They’re screws, for assembly. I work in assembly.”
“Why keep them in your pockets?”
“Bad habit, that’s all. It’s easier to grab them from where you can’t drop them on the floor, that’s all.”
Huntley’s turned his gaze to the geo-screen and lingered there for a while, thinking. Then he took a screw from each pile and went to the MCC’s door. He opened it and threw a screw out as far as he could. He looked over his shoulder to the geo-screen. Nothing had changed. Then he threw the other screw. A tiny red dot now showed outside the main cluster centered on top of the MCC, just a few yards away.
He took a chair and sat in front of Cohen, staring at him calmly for a few endless seconds.
“Let me tell you how this is gonna work,” he started to say. “I have some questions, and I need answers. I’ll only ask once.”
The man nodded anxiously.
“Have you heard of Gitmo?”
“I . . . I . . . thought it was closed,” the man whispered, turning pale and shaking.
“Ha, ha,” Huntley laughed. “Don’t believe everything you hear on TV. Gitmo’s still there. Do you wanna visit?”
“N . . . no, please, I didn’t do anything, I swear.” His chin was trembling wildly, signaling he was about to start crying.
“Then tell me, who gave you the screws?”
“It’s just screws for assembly, no one, just . . . I pick them from assembly trays, that’s all, I swear . . . You gotta believe me.”
“OK, then, Gitmo it is,” Huntley said, then stood up and turned away, ready to leave. “Ben, get a transport ready.”
“No, no, please,” Cohen pleaded. “I’ll tell you everything you wanna know, please . . . ”
Huntley turned around slowly.
“I am not sitting down again unless I hear a reason to in the next three seconds. One,” he started counting.
“The screws, the screws, you see, I have to change them,” Cohen blurted out.
“What do you mean change them?”
“My line inspects the devices for explosives. I’m at the end of the reassembly line, where we put the device covers back together again. Instead of putting the same screw back again, the one from the battery cover, I pocket it, you see, and then I replace it with one of those,” he said, pointing at the pile of screws that generated red dots on the geo-screen.
“That it?”
“Yes, I swear,” Cohen pleaded.
“Who gave you the screws? Who put you up to it?”
Cohen turned silent for many seconds, looking at his feet.
Impassible, Huntley shrugged, turned towards Ben, and asked, “Gitmo transport here soon?”
“Just a few minutes out, sir,” Ben responded.
“No, no, I’ll tell you,”