Ground Zero(27)

Nobody tried to talk her out of it. The other passengers parted for her, and she positioned herself in the middle of the doorway. Richard and Brandon and the two other people in the hall got out of her way.

The woman took a deep breath, covered her face with her hands, and darted through the blue mist.

For a moment—for half a heartbeat—everything was fine. And then the woman burst into flames.

She screamed and beat at her burning hair as she collapsed to the floor. Brandon had never seen anything like it outside a horror movie, and experiencing it now, feeling the raging heat, hearing her awful screams, made him want to retch.

Inside the elevator, the other woman screamed and one of the men threw up.

“Roll! Roll!” the painter said, and unbelievably the woman had the presence of mind to do it. Richard beat the last of the flames with the wet shirt he carried, putting the fire out for good. The woman had burned so hot and so fast she had even set the carpet on fire.

“Don’t come through!” the painter told everyone else in the elevator. “That stuff’s jet fuel or something!”

The other woman in the hallway went running for water. The burned woman crawled over to the wall and leaned against it.

“I think I’m a little burned,” the woman said.

Brandon didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the lady. Her hair was gone, and her hands and arms were burned. Badly.

“I can’t even feel it,” the woman whispered.

The woman in the business skirt ran back with a cup of water, but no one knew what to do. She poured some of the water over the burned woman’s bubbling pink arm, and the burned lady screamed.

“We’ve got to take her down the steps,” the painter said. “Get her to a hospital.”

Down the steps? thought Brandon. They were ninety floors up!

“Can you move?” the businesswoman asked her.

The burned woman wept. Blisters were forming all over her body, but she nodded.

The painter and the businesswoman lifted her to her feet, and she cried out in pain.

“We’ll take her down. You two stay here,” the painter told Brandon and Richard. “See if you can find something to block that blue flame and get the rest of those people—”

The painter looked back over his shoulder and froze. Brandon turned.

The elevator car wasn’t there anymore.

No, Brandon thought. No—they couldn’t have fallen! They were just here!

His heart in his throat, Brandon edged as close as he dared to the river of burning jet fuel and looked down. Broken cables dangled where the car had been, and the elevator shaft was a big, empty black hole.

The elevator car had fallen. How far Brandon didn’t know. All the way to the basement? Wherever it had gone, the four people in it were surely dead.





“Give that back!” Pasoon cried, and he lunged for his plastic airplane.

Reshmina was too fast for him. She held it above her head and twisted away when Pasoon made another grab for it.

“Give it to me!” Pasoon commanded. “You’re just a girl! You have to do what I tell you!”

“I’m not a girl, I’m your sister,” Reshmina shot back, which somehow made sense.

Pasoon swiped for the plane again, and Reshmina danced out of the way.

“You can’t tell the Taliban about Taz,” Reshmina told her brother. “We gave him asylum!”

“Taz?” Pasoon said.

Reshmina blushed. “That’s his name. The American soldier. And you can’t give him refuge and take revenge on him at the same time!”

“See if I can’t,” Pasoon told her. “Badal is as Pashtunwali as nanawatai.”

Pasoon grabbed for the airplane, but Reshmina was too quick for him again.

“The Taliban don’t respect Pashtunwali,” Reshmina said. “They’ve killed just as many Afghans as the Americans have!”

“When was the last time we had peace?” Pasoon asked. “Under the Taliban, that’s when. They ended the civil war.”

“The Taliban killed whole families for no reason!” Reshmina told him, feeling a flash of frustration. “They made women wear burqas and locked them away in their houses!”

“They give people jobs,” Pasoon argued. “Darwesh and Amaan told me.”

“Darwesh and Amaan, Darwesh and Amaan!” Reshmina taunted in a singsong voice. “ ‘Darwesh and Amaan told me to jump off a mountain, so I did it!’ Do you ever have a thought that Darwesh and Amaan didn’t give you first?”

Pasoon’s expression turned stormy. “All right. Here’s my own thoughts, Reshmina. Do you think I’m going to be able to afford to get married herding goats that have nothing to eat and growing crops in a never-ending drought? No,” he said. “Why should I starve when the Taliban pay twenty times what I can make working for myself?”

“They’re killers, Pasoon. If you join them, you’ll become one too,” Reshmina said flatly.

“Have you forgotten who killed the person who gave me that plane?” Pasoon said, pointing at the toy. He sounded calmer now. More resolute. As though arguing with Reshmina had talked him into joining the Taliban, not out of it. “The Americans dropped a bomb on our sister,” Reshmina said. “On her wedding day.”