by David Lender
Neither of them could sleep, so a half hour later they got up and dressed. Daniel called Tom. “Steady progress,” Daniel said when he got off the phone. He started pacing.
“You want to go back over?”
“He said he’ll call if he needs us.”
At that moment, someone pounded a hard object against the door. “Get out!” Daniel yelled just as the door flew open and a man hurtled through it brandishing an Uzi. Daniel grabbed him before he could get off a shot, flinging him to the floor. He saw Sasha poised with a bookend in her hand, then heard the crunch of it striking the man’s skull. Daniel grabbed the Uzi and squeezed off a burst at two other men who now entered the doorway, handguns drawn. They both went down.
“Get out!” Daniel screamed again, saw Sasha disappear into the bathroom, and remembered the fire escape running from the roof to the courtyard below. He picked up the Uzi and ran to check the hall for more attackers. Clear. Then he ran toward the bathroom door. Out he went through the open window, and down the fire escape. He stood panting in the courtyard, looking, but Sasha was gone. Only a terrible silence.
He felt an anguished sense of injustice. They’d been so close, and now this. He looked down and saw that his shirt was splattered with blood. He’d just killed two men. And Sasha had taken care of the other. Arabs. The terrorists.
Someone must have heard the shots. There’d be police. He had to think, get help. And find Sasha.
Sasha knelt behind the parapet of the roof on a townhouse two buildings over from the hotel, looking at the gun she’d grabbed from the man’s belt after she’d crushed his skull with the bookend. It brought a rush of the past: a blue-steel Beretta Cheetah with a custom-made silencer. Like the one she’d wrenched from another man’s belt the night she’d killed Ibrahim. Focus. No more shots. She’d seen the first two men go down in the line of Daniel’s fire as she’d grabbed her computer case and purse and darted into the bathroom, then up the fire escape, responding to her training as much as to Daniel’s command to escape. Time to go back, find him. She leaped over the parapet onto the next roof, freezing as she saw a man, his back to her, crouching against the parapet on the other side of the roof.
She saw the door to the stairway to the roof swinging in the breeze, the barrel of a rifle extending beyond it. A backup. In one motion, she fired two rounds at the man behind the parapet, then another two quick shots through the wooden door. She watched the man at the parapet fall to the surface of the roof. She hurried to the door, jerked it open, stepped over the other body and pointed the Beretta down the stairway. Clear.
Then there was a scuff of feet on the stairs below, two, perhaps three people coming toward her. She jumped to the roof next door, hunched behind the parapet, heard voices cursing in Arabic.
She remembered she’d fired four rounds. The Cheetah in her hand was .22 caliber. Standard magazine. Four rounds left. The men were fifteen, maybe twenty yards away. She wasn’t sure she could hit all of them, and decided not to try it. She looked behind her at the next roof, then ran from her hiding place. She heard the voices of the men behind her and the scramble of feet. She took the next parapet, onto the next roof, two feet up to the next level, then glanced back to see the men coming toward her. There were four of them! She found the doorway to the stairs below, fired a round into the lock and it fell away. Then she pulled the door open and flew down the stairs.
Daniel was safe, she told herself, willed it in her heart. She ran panting down the stairs, thinking. She’d need to get to the car if Daniel hadn’t already, then to Milford. She knew he wouldn’t forget their plan to rendezvous there.
CHAPTER 44
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. NEW YORK City. Tom was awakened by the alarm on his cell phone. Oh, yeah. FBI Headquarters. He fumbled for his watch. 6:30. He dialed the phone.
“Stone, it’s Goddard. Where are we?”
“You sound like you have a mouthful of cotton. You okay?”
“Yeah. Just a catnap. What’s the status?”
“Progress on all fronts. We’re getting all the help we need from the foreign intel services. Fifty-six teams of computer techs on it. Patches either in place or in process.”
“Any other types of logic bombs.”
“None so far. The ones we’ve found, forty or so, are all modeled on the four IR Systems designs.”
Tom felt a flood of relief. We just might pull this off. “Great work.” He forced himself not to relax. The real proof would come at noon. If they didn’t get them all…“Go on. Any bad news?”
“Yeah. You obviously haven’t heard that Youngblood and Sasha were attacked at some hotel.”
The news jolted Tom fully awake. “How in the hell?”
“They’re missing. But some bodies—Arab—in their room and on the roof.”
The thought of it sapped his strength.
Son of a bitch bin Abdur. That did it. Even if they hadn’t debugged all the logic bombs yet, he was organizing countermeasures. Countermeasures his ass, he was gonna set up hits to kill all the bastards. Bin Abdur first. Then light up every quasi-terrorist nut they’d ever put on their list.
The first things Tom received from Langley later that morning were jagged-edged photocopies of the published versions of Sheik bin Adbur’s manifesto that had appeared in London’s Islamic Times and Pakistan’s The Believers:
A CALL TO ALL ISLAMIC BELIEVERS
Islamic Believers unite! These are historic times. Not since the first caliph, abu Bacr, the successor to the prophet Mohammed himself, have the Shiite and Sunni Muslim brothers been united in our spirituality or our way of life. We call all our Muslim brethren to unite with us under the al-Mujari banner and join us in our jihad, our holy Islamic war! We seek the overthrow of all Middle Eastern non-Muslim governments and the reestablishment of the Khilafah, our worldwide Islamic state. The infidel nations, led by the grandchildren of pigs and monkeys, who pollute our Islamic states, will be brought to their knees! There is no god but Allah!
Witness the power of Allah in the events of the last twenty-four hours, the commencement of our jihad! We will continue. We will remove the stain of the infidels upon our all Muslim brothers. Witness the current monarchy in Saudi Arabia, the al-Asad family succession, which purports to act as a protector of the Muslim principles on which our kingdom was founded, and upon the guidance of the Koran and the guidance of shari’a, our Muslim law. Until now they have had the support and approval of our religious leadership. We, the clerics, the religious leaders of the Muslim faithful, have allowed them to assume the title of Iman, the lawgiver.
But as the Koran says:
“If anyone walks with an oppressor to strengthen him, knowing that he is an oppressor, he is gone forth from Islam.”
They have wedded themselves to the infidel American government, profited from the Gulf Wars they instigated, and in doing so taken up a war of Muslim brother against Muslim brother. All in direct contravention of shari’a. The Americans, and with them their fellow pigs, the al-Asad monarchy in Saudi Arabia, only understand the language of violence, and now they have seen our wrath. They run away only after there is major bloodshed. So we will give them bloodshed.
And we declare the al-Asad monarchy, this puppet government of the offspring of dogs and swine, to be infidels. As infidels, they, like the Western infidels, must be expelled and destroyed. We declare this government illegitimate. They have permitted infidels to inhabit our sacred Arabian Peninsula, site of Islam’s two holiest places.
The jihad has begun! The Khilafah will be reestablished! Islamic brothers, Believers, hear our call!
Sheik Mohammed Muqtar bin Abdur
Jesus. As verbose as he is crazy. This nut had to be stopped before every lunatic in the world jumped in.
Tom’s office at Langley took forever to get him a secure line to Nigel Benthurst at British Secret Service and Ira Land at the Israeli Mossad. But soon they were on the line.
“Are you fellows current?” Tom asked. He was antsy. He w
anted to get on with it.
“Ira and I were just, uhm, talking about it when you rang,” Nigel said.
Tom grunted, then said, “We’ve had just about enough of this shit. I’ve talked to my guys at Langley. We think the manifesto published in the London and Pakistani Islamic newspapers is genuine. The al-Mujari. We’re gonna do something about this son of a bitch bin Abdur. Are you guys in?”
“Do something, uhm, like we did when we took out Ibrahim, you mean?” Nigel’s voice was emotionless.
“Exactly. Light the bastards up. Only go all the way this time.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ve already got resources allocated,” Ira said.
“Good. All hands meeting in New York tomorrow morning at ten a.m.”
“Whitehall’s on board. We’ll carry our end.”
Ira just grunted.
This had been a long time coming. Tom felt the urge to gloat, savor the revenge, then realized it was too soon. He checked his watch. 10:30. An hour and a half left. The last time he spoke to Stone, she’d run out of leads to chase. All 56 software vendors on Kovarik’s list were debugged, 47 tainted with logic bombs, 9 clean. At noon they’d know for sure.
Then he thought about Sasha and Daniel. Still alive?
Daniel hung out in Times Square until noon, watching the big screen and the news ticker, hoping. At 12:15 he was starting to feel more confident. When no reports of oil and gas facilities exploding appeared by 12:30, he smiled and let out a sigh. We did it. That was all the celebration he permitted himself. He had to find Sasha. He started thinking through how to get the Mercedes SLS AMG out of his building’s garage if it was being watched, that is if Sasha hadn’t gotten to it already.
CHAPTER 45
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. BURAIDA, SAUDI Arabia. Habib watched the throng coming up the street from a few hundred yards off; two hundred men trudged in the streets of Buraida around Sheik bin Abdur. The Sheik had finished his evening prayers and apparently couldn’t resist the urgings of his senior aides to walk among the people, inspire them with his presence and encourage them that now that the jihad had begun the Believers would prevail. Habib had already received his payment in full via wire transfer, but Sheik bin Abdur’s summons had been so urgent and his intermediaries’ assurances so great as to how lucrative the new job would be that Habib had to accept. For the money, but also out of curiosity.
He saw the cleric disappear inside the ramshackle hut that constituted Sheik bin Abdur’s headquarters. After fifteen minutes the crowd began to dissipate. By the time Habib knocked on the door, only a few dozen people were still in the street, apparently waiting for the great man’s return. One of Sheik bin Abdur’s aides let him in. The anteroom to the chamber where Sheik bin Abdur customarily held forth was faintly lit with two candles. The man ran in front of Habib and opened the other door without knocking. Sheik bin Abdur’s chamber was also faintly lit. Habib smelled the omnipresent dust.
Here we go again. Bin Abdur wore a traditional plain headdress, his deep-set, intense eyes alone setting him apart from his followers.
“As usual, you are prompt, man who calls himself Habib,” the Sheik said. “Now we wait. Perhaps an hour. Until nightfall.”
They passed almost an hour in silence. Then: “It is time,” Sheik bin Abdur said and turned to Habib. “Abdul has been instructed to wire one million dollars to your Swiss bank account if you will accept our assignment. We have taken the liberty of preparing the transfer already.” His eyes burned. “You have brought your vehicle, this Land Rover?”
“Yes.”
“Good. All we will require for this payment is your service and your silence. And your agreement to provide additional transportation if the situation warrants. It is as you call it ‘a package deal.’”
CHAPTER 46
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. MILFORD, PENNSYLVANIA. Sasha returned from her morning walk around the grounds at the Black Walnut Inn bed and breakfast. Her legs were stiff, as they always were when she was stressed. Her concern for Daniel dominated her thoughts—and spurred the reverberations in her heart. Had he escaped? She’d clearly drawn off the attackers. But where was he?
She’d been acting on instinct and training. Fleeing. A rental car after she decided not to retrieve the Mercedes SLS AMG, leaving it for Daniel. A hundred thousand dollars in cash. Her own passports and another two hundred thousand in multiple currencies in her satchel, as well as Daniel’s new Swiss passport her contact had sent. Ready.
It was that ache, the terrible consuming ache for Daniel, that scrambled her thoughts.
She stopped at the steps to the porch, willing herself under control again. The men on the roof. Arab voices, the al-Mujari. How could they have found her? It wasn’t inconceivable that someone had gotten inside the royal family again.
She went to her room, opened the window, took in the rolling green of the field through the eyes of a trained observer. Nothing unusual. Then those last tender moments with Daniel visited her again, their embrace, then her rage at the injustice of their being torn apart.
Her skills, her training were operating now. She pulled out an electronic device from beneath the bed, plugged the phone into it and called out, listening to Daniel’s voice on the answering machine at the New York apartment. She looked at the device. A red light flashed on, the voltage meter dropped halfway down, fluttered, and then plunged all the way to the bottom of the scale. Her heart went cold. Still bugged. It was the same at the Milford house. She reluctantly tried Daniel’s cell phone—she was afraid if she got through they might triangulate to his location—and got the recording that he was either outside of the service area or the phone wasn’t functioning. She was still afraid to call Tom. He and his colleagues were the only ones who knew Daniel and she went to Barton Manor. There must be a leak or an al-Mujari plant at FBI Headquarters. Wait. Daniel will show up.
She drove her rented Toyota Camry back through town, wearing sunglasses, her hair up under a wide-brimmed straw hat, and circled by Daniel’s house. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She drove back to the Black Walnut Inn.
September, This Year. New York City. Tom Goddard was thinking that if they’d had this big a team twenty years ago they probably wouldn’t be here today. He was looking around the suite in the New York Hilton, ready to address the room full of members of the various intelligence and military agencies cooperating on the retaliation against the terrorists. His shoulders still ached and he still had cottonmouth at 10:30 a.m.
There were forty-two people in the suite, organized in three major groups. Each group clustered in a geometric arrangement of furniture around PCs placed on makeshift platforms out of end tables. Each team had a projector that beamed light onto the walls. Computer wires from notebook PCs streamed in all directions from the outlets. Food was set up in the entranceway.
“All right, everybody,” Tom called. His eyes found Ira Land with his Israeli colleagues in one of the groups around a projector, Nigel Benthurst and the NATO team in another and his own crew by the third. “You all know why we’re here.” The voices in the room grew silent. “We’ve got the group broken down into three teams. The Israelis, headed by Ira Land, an expert in the Middle Eastern region and familiar with the al-Mujari and their methods, will head up the Mid-East sector. Nigel Benthurst, my counterpart from British Secret Service, also an expert in the Mid-East, will head up the European team, joined by Nathaniel Crow, a representative from NATO,” Tom looked at that grouping. French, Belgian, German and Austrian. Scads of them. Half the people in the room. “And I’m heading up the North American team, joined by my colleagues from U.S. Intelligence.”
He looked out at the faces, some grim, some with chins raised expectantly, all professionals. These were the men who would select, plan and execute the hits. Most of them had been waiting for a moment like this and had fallen all over themselves to get in on it. “All right. Your team leaders will go through the targets and as much intelligence on them as we’ve collectively gathe
red. Fifty-five lieutenant-level and higher members of Sheik bin Abdur’s extremist group, the al-Mujari. All targets for tactical operations, some covert, some dynamic, over the next few days, coordinated with military strikes, mostly cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs. Each team has a couple of members of each of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, British, German, and NATO air and naval commands as well. Each of you has a primary contact for mercenaries if you need them. Overall coordination by a consortium of British Secret Service, the Israeli Mossad and CIA—Ira Land, Nigel Benthurst and me, Tom Goddard.” He smiled for the first time. “Hopefully you’ll get to know and love us.” His smile broadened. “And then forget who the hell we are and what we look like.” He looked around. “Okay. We’ve got one shot at this. Let’s not screw it up.”
“We should have done this twenty years ago,” Tom said to Nigel Benthurst three hours later.
“As I recall, that was the advice both you and I gave to our respective superiors at the time,” Nigel said. “Take it all the uhm, uhm, way, get to as many as we can, including bin Abdur himself.” A few wisps of his thin blond hair hung down in front of his face. His shirt was still freshly starched, but seemed a size too big. “Don’t even think the bloody Saudis will mind us doing some of it on their soil. After the scale of this attempted terrorism, they and the entire world will thank us.” He half closed his eyes. “If we’d done this last time none of this would be necessary.”
Tom grunted a reply. Nigel was right, he allowed. Back then, they’d capped five al-Mujari senior operatives, as well as Prince Ibrahim. It was enough to cripple the al-Mujari for years, but not snuff it out. This time they’d do it right.