by Vince Flynn
The two men stood aside, and Aziz marched off in the direction from which they had come. As they continued down the staircase to the first basement, Aziz opened the fire door and stepped into the hallway. He stood there for several seconds, looking in both directions, and then he walked back into the staircase and continued down to the second basement. He repeated his actions on this floor, pausing just long enough to look down the hallway.
When they reached the third basement, Aziz pointed to the stairwell door and said to Ragib, “You wait here.” Aziz then marched down the hall with Bengazi.
When the corridor ended, the two men turned to the left and continued for another thirty feet. Aziz was immediately surprised by the lack of noise. When he had checked on his little thief some four hours earlier, the sound had been pronounced. Slightly alarmed by the change, Aziz brought his assault rifle up to a leveled position. Bengazi, sensing his boss’s tension, did the same. The outer door that Mustafa had broken through on the first night was only half open. As Aziz approached, he could see only a portion of the outer room to the president’s bunker, and his little thief was not in sight. Aziz walked to the left so he could see the right side of the room. There was still nothing: no sound, no Mustafa.
Without stopping, Aziz slid through the partially opened door and snapped the muzzle of his MP-5 to the left. What he saw upset him instantly. Against the far wall, Mustafa was sitting on the floor, asleep in an upright position—his short arms wrapped around his potbelly and his mouth open with a stream of drool running down his chin. Aziz took three steps and forcefully kicked the man’s feet.
Mustafa’s eyes opened instantly, and Aziz shoved the muzzle of his rifle to within an inch of his face. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Nervously, he replied, “I was taking a nap.”
“I can see that. Why aren’t the drills running?”
“They needed a rest.” The safecracker tried to move farther away from the weapon, but there was nowhere to go. “If I run them nonstop, they will burn out.”
Aziz moved the rifle away from the man’s face. The answer had satisfied him for the moment. “Are you still on schedule?”
“Yes.” Mustafa rolled his plump body onto one knee and stood. “I am actually several hours ahead of schedule.”
Aziz raised an interested eyebrow. “Really. When do you expect to have the door opened?”
Mustafa looked at his watch. “If the drills continue to work well, I think I can have the door opened around seven this evening.”
Aziz smiled. “That would make me very happy.” Slapping the shorter man on the back, Aziz said, “You have done good work, Mustafa.”
“Thank you.” Mustafa bowed his head slightly, accepting the rare compliment.
Aziz looked over at the shiny vault door. In less than twenty-four hours he would have his hands on the president. Mustafa’s news of being ahead of schedule helped assuage Aziz’s anger over the loss of Hasan. Once he had the president, he could breathe a sigh of relief.
LEAVING THE STASH room was a tense process. The only eyes Rapp had outside the room were the sole surveillance unit he had placed in the president’s bedroom. This assured him that it was safe to exit the stash room, but Milt cautioned him that the large closet also had a door at the opposite end that led into the First Lady’s bedroom.
“All right,” Rapp whispered, and Adams opened the wall several inches. Not moving, not breathing, Rapp peeked through the crack and listened. Stepping into the closet, he immediately noticed that its door to the First Lady’s bedroom was open. Rapp checked to his left and his right twice and then walked toward the First Lady’s bedroom. He stood at the doorframe for a moment and listened. The room was empty.
Directly across the room was another door, which was closed. Rapp figured it was either a closet or a bathroom. Whichever the case, it made no difference. The fact that the door he was standing in had been left open and the one across the room had been closed, however, was significant. It meant that Aziz and his men had done a sloppy job on the search. Each door should have been opened, checked, and then closed.
Because of this inconsistency, Rapp felt confident enough to close the door to the closet. He quickly rummaged through the closet, grabbing a sweatshirt, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of white sweat socks. Rapp went back to the stash room door and handed the clothes to Adams.
“Give these to Anna.” Rapp looked at the shelf to his right and saw a blanket and two pillows. “Here, take these too. Try to get her to sleep.” Rapp began to close the door and said, “And make sure you don’t bolt this thing. If I’m in a hurry to get back in, I don’t want to have to stand out here and knock.”
Adams nodded and said, “Good luck.”
Rapp closed the organizer tight and silently moved across the president’s bedroom. Three steps and he was across the entrance hall and into the bathroom. Reaching behind a light to the left of the medicine cabinet, he found the button and pressed it. The wall sprang open an inch, and with his gloved hand, Rapp pulled it open several more feet. With the push of another button, the elevator’s doors opened, and Rapp began his near silent descent. Seconds later the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Rapp retraced his earlier steps, down the hallway and into the stairs leading to the third basement.
When he arrived at the landing door, he reached for the handle and stopped just inches short. The stairwell was darker than the hallway on the other side, and a half inch of bright light bordered the bottom of the door. Rapp had seen something. His eyes had caught some type of motion, a variance in light. Cautiously, Rapp backed up, wondering if the SEALs could already have arrived.
With his gun leveled, he kept his eyes trained on the patch of light. After only seconds he saw the shadow again. Frowning, he opened up the monitor, this time not daring to holster his weapon. With the monitor opened, his gun in his left hand and the snake in his right, he moved to the far side of the door handle and slowly inched the tiny lens forward along the concrete floor. Rapp’s eyes went back and forth between watching the screen and watching the progress of the snake. An inch at a time, he nudged it forward. The first thing Rapp saw on the screen was a pair of boots. As he pushed the lens forward, combat fatigues came into view and then the distinctive barrel, handgrip, and curved magazine of an AK-74. Rapp pulled the snake back deliberately and swore to himself.
Why was a bad guy all of the sudden down here in the basement? They had come across no one on the way in. Why now? As Rapp leaned flat against the wall, he tried to make some sense of it. After a while he decided it must have been the girl. He had to make a decision, and the sooner he made it the better. Waiting in the stairwell was not an option. There was no cover, and someone could come along at any minute. It was too big a risk. Opening the door and shooting the terrorist was an option, but one that would have to be a last resort. Rapp was left with only one real course—go back and tell Kennedy and Campbell to put the SEALs in a holding pattern until he could make sure the basement was clear.
Rapp looked down at the corner where the white concrete wall met the hinges of the door. He reached inside the cargo pocket of his pants and extracted one of the micro video and audio surveillance units. Dropping to a knee, he attached a Velcro patch to the wall and then carefully positioned the unit so the tiny fiber-optic lens would have a view under the doorway.
Rapp ascended to the second floor of the mansion quickly, taking less than two minutes to cover the distance from the third basement. When the small elevator reached the second level, Rapp turned on his monitor and checked the view of the president’s bedroom. All was clear on the video and the audio, so he closed the screen and stepped out onto the tile floor of the bathroom. From there, it was across the way and into the large closet once again. With the doors closed, he found the hidden latch for the wall organizer and opened the way to the stash room.
Adams and Rielly were sitting wide-eyed on the floor when Rapp entered and Adams said, “You’re back kind’a quick
, aren’t you?”
Rapp shook his head while he dropped to his knees in front of the secure field radio. “Yeah, we’ve got a problem downstairs.”
“Like what?”
“We’ve got a Tango running around down in the third basement.”
“A what?”
Rapp pressed several buttons on the control panel of the radio. “A Tango . . . a bad guy . . . a terrorist.” Rapp brought the handset up to his ear.
With a worried expression, Adams asked, “Did he see you?”
“If he saw me, Milt, he wouldn’t still be walking around.” Rapp turned his focus to the radio and said, “Iron Man to control. Over.” Rapp had to repeat himself before he got a reply.
Kennedy’s voice came back clearly, “Iron Man, this is control. We read you. Over.”
“We have a problem. There is at least one Tango in the third basement. I repeat, one Tango in the third basement.”
“Where in the third basement?” was General Campbell’s question.
“Two minutes ago he was standing just outside the stairwell, by the door to the boiler room.”
“Any others in sight?”
“Not that I could see, but my only shot was with the snake under the door.” Rapp added earnestly, “My immediate suggestion is to put the brakes on the next two through the chute. It’s not worth the risk at this time to bring them into an unsecured area.”
“Hold for a second, Iron Man,” was Campbell’s reply.
While Rapp waited for the brass on the other end to finish their little powwow, he opened up his monitor and attempted to get a feed from the second surveillance unit he had placed in the basement. He was still playing with the unit when Kennedy came back on the line.
“Iron Man, any thoughts on what the Tango is doing in the basement?”
“Probably looking for the girl, which means Aziz and Bengazi might also be down there.”
There was another period of silence over the line while the brass conferred. Kennedy came back ten seconds later and said, “Iron Man, we concur. Stay put while we see if we can slow things down.”
“Roger.” Rapp pressed the speaker button and placed the handset back in its cradle. From the tiny speaker on the control panel of the radio, an electronic hum told Rapp the line was still open. Turning his attention back to the monitor strapped to his chest, he went to work trying to get something from the surveillance unit in the basement.
AZIZ’S SPIRITS HAD rebounded. The news that he would have his hands around the neck of the president by dusk today had helped temper the loss of the idiot Hasan. If he could just hold out until then, the chances for complete success would double, if not triple. The next fifteen or so hours would be the tensest of the siege. Aziz corrected himself on that point: it would be the next five hours. Once the sun was up he would be safe again. But come nightfall the chances of a strike would increase once again. Aziz had gone to great pains to study the techniques used by the world’s elite counterterrorist strike teams, such as Germany’s GSG-9, France’s GIGN, Britain’s SAS, and of course, America’s three premier teams. The groups all shared information on training, strategy, intelligence, and tactics, and competed in annual competitions to help hone each other’s skills.
All of the groups followed a fairly standard procedure when confronted with a hostage crisis: initial deployment of assets; intelligence collection; planning, development, and practice of the takedown; mission approval; and finally, execution of takedown. All of the groups were good, and the three U.S. teams were always ranked at or near the top in every category except one. When it came to mission approval, the U.S. teams were consistently ranked at the bottom. The common critique from the international counterterrorism community was that the U.S. had too many people in the chain of command. Too many people throwing their opinions into the arena and thus slowing down a process that depended on speed and efficiency.
This was one of the things Aziz was planning to exploit. This, as well as the American media and ultimately public opinion. The morning would bring a new day in the media cycle, and Aziz would begin to implement another crucial part of his plan. If he succeeded, it would keep the dogs at bay for another day. The politicians were his allies, and he needed to keep them believing there was a way out of the situation. Aziz needed to keep them and their opinions directly involved in the chain of command, because as long as they stayed involved, the generals would be unable to strike.
As Aziz walked down the hall with Bengazi, he started to see one fundamental flaw in his plan. He had succeeded in negating the Americans’ manpower advantage through the use of explosives and the exterior surveillance cameras he had seized from the Secret Service. With the amount of explosives he had deployed, any attack would result in the deaths of all the rescuers and, if need be, the hostages too. The flaw, Aziz was now sure, was created once again by the separation of the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. The West Wing was one hundred percent secured, but the mansion was not. If the Americans found out that he was in the process of extracting the president from his bunker, there was no telling what they might do. It was entirely likely that they would risk everything to prevent the president from falling into his hands.
As Aziz and Bengazi neared the end of the hall, Aziz stopped and said, “Muammar, I want you to stay here for the rest of the night. I will send you a replacement at”—Aziz looked at his watch—“seven. I want you to make sure that nothing happens to my little ferret.” Aziz pointed in the direction of the bunker. “If you fail me this time, you will be begging for a quick death.” The subordinate nodded while maintaining his ramrod posture.
Aziz turned to go back upstairs and was confronted with two doors. One of them he had not noticed before. Turning to Bengazi, he asked, “Where does this lead?”
“To the boiler room,” the heavily bearded Bengazi answered.
“Boiler room,” Aziz repeated while he mulled over the words. “Was it secured after we took over?”
“Yes,” stated Bengazi. “I checked it personally.”
Aziz stood looking at the doorway, thinking for a long moment. “Do you remember,” he asked Bengazi, “the incident at the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam . . . back in the seventies?”
Bengazi’s face twisted as he tried to jog his memory. After a while, he replied, “Yes, I remember what happened. The terrorists surrendered after a long standoff with the police.”
“Two weeks,” answered Aziz, referring to how long the siege had lasted. “Did you know that during the standoff the CIA assisted the Dutch government by getting one of their people into the building via the sewer pipe?”
“No.”
“Neither did the terrorists. The man came in through the basement and bugged the building. Everything the terrorists said and did was heard by the Dutch authorities.” Aziz looked back at the door. “When was the last time you checked this room?”
“I checked it yesterday afternoon.”
“A lot has happened since then. I think we should check it again.” Without waiting for Bengazi’s opinion, Aziz started for the door.
THE TWO SEALS trudged forward through the ventilation duct in complete darkness, Craft in the lead and Shultz close behind. This is what they had trained their whole lives to do. There wasn’t a Special Forces operator in the service worth his salt who wouldn’t have given his left nut to be in their position. All the push-ups, early morning runs, icy swims, hour upon hour of target practice, live fire drills, parachute jumps that ran into the triple digits—it all came down to this.
“Apprehension” was a word that didn’t belong in their vocabulary. Maybe “caution” from time-to-time, but not “apprehension.” These men relished the task before them and knew all too well what the stakes were. Death was a distinct possibility. They had seen team members die in both training and covert operations. That was the life they had decided to live, and there wasn’t a day they regretted the decision.
The younger Craft was in the lead because he had asked
to be. The two SEALs were now experiencing the same problem that Rapp and Adams had. The closer they got to the White House the worse their radio reception became. Like the two that had gone before them, they had removed their earpieces after a while because the static became so bad.
It had not occurred to anyone, either at Langley or at SEAL Team Six’s mobile command post, to have Shultz and Craft string along a phone line—a military practice that had been commonplace for almost a century, but had gone by the wayside with the recent onslaught of high-tech radios and billion-dollar satellites. Events had progressed too quickly, and a low-tech solution to a critical battlefield problem had been missed.
Craft was glad he had remembered to put on his elbow and knee pads before being lowered into the ventilation duct. He had about thirty pounds of gear on his body and was pulling another thirty behind him via a rope. Wiggling like a reptile, he could move only four to six inches at a time, and his elbows were doing most of the work.
The two men moved quietly for the most part, the only real noise coming from the equipment they dragged behind them. The noise wasn’t much, no more than that of a shirt sliding down a clothes chute. It was hard to tell how far they had gone, but to Craft it seemed as if they were nearing the end. He stopped momentarily and looked behind him. All he found was more blackness and the sounds of his swim buddy squirming his way forward. Craft decided to shed some light on the situation. Turning onto one side, he extracted his pistol, a Heckler & Koch USP .45 ACP. Attached to the pistol was both a cylindrical suppressor and a laseraiming module. Craft turned on the laser, and the red dot bounced off the walls of the duct. Aiming the pistol straight ahead, Craft found the end of the shaft not more than thirty feet away.
AZIZ PLACED HIS hand on the doorknob and nodded to Bengazi. Bengazi took up position opposite Aziz and signaled that he was ready. When Aziz opened the door, Bengazi swung his rifle and half of his body into the now open space. Bengazi looked down at the expansive room from a slightly elevated position. A small grated metal landing was just on the other side of the door, and three steps led from the landing down to the stark concrete floor of the boiler room. One dim light off to the left provided minimal lighting. After Bengazi looked from one side of the room to the other, he checked on both sides of the doorframe for more light switches. After coming up empty, he spotted a group of four switches at the bottom of the grated steps. Bengazi moved down the steps and slapped all four switches up with the palm of his hand. The room lit up with powerful overhead lamps.