We ducked into the car. “I’m a graduate of Columbia University,” he said as he turned the key. “Good English is a valuable asset there. You should teach it to more New Yorkers.”
I laughed.
As he backed out of the parking space, he glanced at me. “We think we have news of Simon.”
“What is it?”
“We believe we know who is holding him. Now we are working on finding out where.”
“Who has him?”
“A small group of Shiite thugs. They have ties to Iranian security forces, but not at any official level. It appears that they are attempting to make a name for themselves.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“This is not Texas, Miss Pasbury. There is no way of knowing who can be trusted in the police or the government. Allegiances are fluid these days.”
“So if you find him, what can we do?”
“We’re not sure. That will depend on the circumstances. Have you ever heard Lebanese music?”
“No.”
He reached for the radio and turned it on. The Beach Boys were singing “Help Me, Rhonda.” He smiled.
Twenty minutes later he pulled into the circular drive of a gleaming glass high-rise with a giant fountain in the drive. “This is the Seafarer. Four Stars. I think you will find it satisfactory. Let’s get you checked in.”
He walked past the bellman and led me into the hotel lobby. I headed for the check-in desk. He held up a hand. “Wait, one moment, please.”
We stood about thirty feet from the desk. From the corner of his eye he watched a heavyset man behind the desk who was handing a key to a customer. When the customer left, the man looked at Sakir and nodded.
“Now.” Sakir led me to the desk. He did not speak to the man as I registered but stood next to my suitcase a few feet away.
I’d already been told that most of the service employees who deal with the public in Beirut speak English. That proved to be true. Check-in was no more difficult than if I’d been in Kansas City. Sakir rode with me in the elevator to the seventh floor. My room was halfway down the long hallway.
“Right in the middle, lots of people around,” he said. “That’s good.”
I pulled out the card key.
“May I come in with you?” he said. “I have something to show you.”
I paused. “Sure.” I handed him the key. “You first.”
He smiled. “Smart. You should do well in Beirut.” He slid the key into the slot, swung the door open, and walked into the room. When he got to the foot of the bed, he dropped onto his stomach.
I took a quick step back toward the door. “What are you doing?”
“Just a minute.” He rolled onto his back and scooted his head to where he could see beneath the bed. Then he reached under it and moved his hand back and forth in wide swipes. His hand stopped. “There.” He swept his hand again. “And there! Thank you.” When he pulled his hand from beneath the bed, he was gripping a pistol.
I lifted my suitcase in front of me and backed toward the doorway, my eyes on the pistol.
He laughed. “No, no, come back. This is for you. Sig Sauer .357 is your preference, I believe?” He flipped it so he was gripping the barrel and held it out to me.
I walked back into the room and took it. Still on his back, he reached under the bed again and dragged out three twelve-round magazines. He sat up, his back against the bed, the magazines on the carpet beside him.
“Wow, you guys are good,” I said, as I got the feel of the pistol.
“I forgot something.” He dropped onto his back again and felt beneath the bed one more time. When he came up, he had a silencer.
“Let me amend that. You guys are pros.”
He stood and handed me the silencer. “We try. Firearms are plentiful in Lebanon, so if you need something else, just let me know. I can’t overemphasize how important it is that you exercise extreme discretion with your hand gun. It could create severe problems if a woman were known to be ‘packing,’ as they say in the States.”
I was beginning to wonder if I’d been dropped into the middle of an organized crime family. “I think they only say that in the movies. Thank you, though. Your people are very efficient.”
“Efficiency is power in Lebanon. We have to be able to provide what the government cannot. That ability creates influence.”
“I thought the Christians shared power in the Lebanese government.”
“Sharing control of the government and having real power are not always the same thing. We exert our influence within and without the government.” He moved toward the door.
“How will we get in touch again?”
“After you get unpacked and relax a bit, go downstairs and grab a bite to eat. You’ll be safe in this hotel. A number of people are watching out for you. I will call your room in a few hours and brief you on what we know at that time.”
“Thank you, Sakir. You and your family have gone to a lot of trouble.”
“You are welcome. You must remember, we are experienced in the ways of this country. It can be a dangerous place. We know what must be done to manage that danger. That may make us appear a bit—shady, should I say? But we are Christians, and we believe that what Mr. Mason wants to do here is important. We are happy to do what we can to help.” He gave me a slight bow and walked out the door.
I moved the pistol from one hand to the other. He was right about one thing: Lebanon seemed like a very dangerous place.
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
HAKIM’S FAMILY DID FIND Simon. He was being held in a suburb of Beirut. The group that had him was loosely organized—basically a new street gang looking to make a reputation. How they learned that Simon was in the country remained a mystery. In one way, though, we were fortunate. Simon had been grabbed by a bunch of rookies—and corrupt rookies at that. After a couple of days—and the payment of a substantial number of U.S. dollars—Hakim’s uncle, Paul Malouf, purchased an informant.
Malouf was an experienced leader. About sixty years old and solid as a block of concrete, he exuded quiet confidence. He had been a general in the Christian militia during Lebanon’s civil war. He assembled a team of six, including me, to rescue Simon. The others were soldiers with whom Malouf had worked on many occasions. I was allowed on the team for one reason: I knew Simon Mason. Malouf believed that could be a significant advantage when things got hot and we needed to make educated guesses about how Simon might react.
Before deciding to go it alone, the team discussed the possibility of bringing in the authorities. Simon was so high profile the government wouldn’t dare botch the job. It was a testament to the deep level of distrust of the government—or more particularly of certain individuals within the government—that Malouf nixed the idea.
Our informant operated on the fringes of several radical groups in Beirut. A more experienced bunch of terrorists would never have allowed him so close. He was able to provide us with firsthand information about the guard setup and weaponry in the house where they were holding Simon. Malouf held several planning sessions over a three-day period as he continued to receive details from the informant. We met at Malouf’s estate on the outskirts of Beirut’s suburbs. It was apparent from the sheer size of the place that, as Sakir had informed me at the airport, the Malouf family had done well over the years.
The night of the operation we had a final planning meeting in Malouf’s kitchen. By that time I was catching on to how names worked in Lebanon. I figured someone must assign them randomly. The names of the men around the table were Paul, Samir, Pierre, Hakil, and Joe. We sat at the kitchen table munching spinach pies that Malouf’s wife had prepared.
The kidnappers took a hide-in-plain-sight approach. That way they didn’t have to draw attention to themselves by posting an army of guards around the house. They were holding Simon in a neighborhood in which one of them lived, a fairly affluent suburb by Lebanese standards. There was no indication that the neighbors knew an
ything about Simon’s presence or were in league with the kidnappers.
The neighborhood consisted of a narrow street of one-story block houses, each with its own small yard. Paul explained that the house drew on the typical Lebanese central hallway floor plan. Every member of our team, except me, had been in many houses throughout Beirut with similar room arrangements. The house was a rectangle, longer from front to back than side to side. On each side of the house was a strip of grass that separated it from the neighboring house. The front door opened into a living area. To access the rest of the house it was necessary to walk through a door in the middle of the back wall of the room. From there, a hallway ran to the back of the house. On the right side of the hall was a bathroom with a large bedroom behind it. On the left side of the hall was a small bedroom, with the kitchen behind it at the back.
Each room in the house had only one window, except the front living area, which had a window in the front and another on the side. The back door opened directly into the kitchen, where our informant said at least one of the kidnappers hung out at virtually all times of the day and night.
They were holding Simon in the small bedroom in the middle of the house, between the living room and the kitchen. According to the informant, one guard stayed in the room with him at all times. Both Simon and the guard slept on mats on the floor. Simon was shackled by the ankle, with a thick, two-foot chain, to a heavy wooden desk in the corner of the room near the window. The shackle was screwed into the desk leg, so Paul decided the fastest way to free him would be to saw off the leg of the desk and take it with us.
Paul’s men had watched the neighborhood for the past twenty-four hours. The kidnappers posted a lookout in a parked car at each end of the street. The house had a single guard on the small front stoop. According to the informant, the guard was a burly sort who was both stupid and lazy but dangerously strong. The backyard was unfenced and watched by a smaller, more intelligent guard. Our informant said the outside guards carried only pistols, while the three to five men inside the house had a variety of automatic weapons. The front room was rarely occupied, as it faced west and was the hottest room in the house. The best television in the house was in the kitchen, so that was where most of the men spent their time.
Paul’s plan called for our informant to leave the house at 2:15 a.m. He would meet us at a nearby parking lot. At that time he would let us know the latest on where everyone in the house was positioned. Samir and Hakil would then head for the opposite street corners on foot. They were to take out the street-corner sentries simultaneously at exactly three o’clock. Samir would then rendezvous with Paul in a neighbor’s yard, and Hakil would make his way back to the parking lot to pick up the van in which we would make our escape.
Joe and Pierre would approach the house from the neighbor’s yard on one side and take out the front guard with a silencer. Paul and Samir would approach the house from the opposite direction, move into the backyard and take care of the guard there. Paul would be the first to enter the house with Samir right behind him. Paul was to shoot anyone in the kitchen, while Samir leapfrogged him and tossed a sonic concussion grenade into the bedroom where Simon was being held. The sonic grenade would send a shock wave in a six-foot radius, stunning anyone in the room. Upon hearing the blast from the grenade, Joe and Pierre would enter the front of the house and support Paul and Samir. I was to wait in the backyard and deal with anyone other than our people who approached or left the house from the back.
Four things were essential to the plan: stealth, marksmanship, the reliability of our information, and a great deal of luck. None of us had any illusions about the odds: They were not good. But if what our informant told us was true, the kidnappers intended to kill Simon. The only thing holding them up was their indecision over the best way to maximize publicity.
As we finished our final planning meeting, Paul surprised me by praying for the success of our mission. The idea of praying before heading out to kill people would never have occurred to me. It was apparent, though, that Paul would never have considered leaving without praying. By the time he began the prayer, my level of fear was increasing exponentially. My stomach rumbled so loudly that I worried someone might comment on it. When he finished the prayer, Paul did.
He motioned to me to stay seated while the others left the room. When we were alone, he smiled. “Nervous?”
I rubbed my hand over my stomach. “I guess so.”
“Me too. I take these.” He pulled a small tin of antacid tablets out of his pocket and offered me one.
“Thanks.” I popped it in my mouth.
“It will be fine. We live, we die—it will happen to all of us sooner or later. Better to go out doing something noble, eh?” He pushed his chair back, stood, and slapped me on the back. “You will see some action tonight, young lady. Remember to clean your weapon. Tonight would be a bad time to have a gun jam.” He turned and walked out of the room.
What he said to me helped, but I still headed for the bathroom.
CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE
PAUL AND SAMIR WEREN’T paying much attention to me as we knelt behind a row of shrubs in the backyard of the house next door to where the kidnappers were holding Simon. A single light glowed in the front porch of the house. What would the residents think if they happened to awaken in the middle of the night, look out the window, and see three people in black clothing and camo face paint crouching by their azaleas? I assumed that even in Lebanon that would be cause for concern.
In the Secret Service we trained for combat situations, but I’d never actually been in a firefight. I wondered whether I’d see any of the real shooting from my post in the back of the house, and how I’d react if I did. I thought of Dad and told myself over and over that it would be better to die than to run. I felt like throwing up.
The weather gave us two lucky breaks. The night was starless, and there was a brisk, swirling wind. We were difficult to see and hear. No more than fifty feet away, the backyard guard slouched in a cheap aluminum lawn chair. His back was to the kitchen, his leather boots propped on an empty orange crate. His head sagged so that his chin nearly touched his chest. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He hadn’t taken a drag since we arrived a few minutes earlier, and his shoulders rose and dropped in a slow, steady rhythm.
The light from the kitchen reached just far enough out the back door to illuminate the guard’s back but stopped at the base of his neck. With his head in the dark and his body awash in light, he had an eerie, half-human look, which made it easier for me to think that we would soon be killing him.
Something rustled in the bush next to my foot, then scurried along the shrub line. I had no idea what sorts of animals were common to Lebanon. Maybe it was a ground hog.
The illuminated hands of my watch pointed to three o’clock. We could not see into the kitchen, but the informant had told us that two men were playing cards at the kitchen table when he left. According to the informant, we had one more reason to be thankful for our luck: Besides the two in the kitchen, there was only one other man in the house: The one in the bedroom with Simon.
Paul nudged Samir, who eased his head above the bushes. He aimed his pistol at the guard. The wind increased the difficulty of the shot, but we were close enough to the target that it should have been manageable. I had no idea how well Samir could shoot. While I spent my spare time at Paul’s estate practicing with my new Sig Sauer, I hadn’t seen Samir do any shooting. It was a shot we couldn’t afford to miss. Just in case, I quietly took a knee, found a gap in the shrubs, and leveled my Sig at the guard’s head.
Samir didn’t seem comfortable in the wind. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, raised the pistol and lowered it. We were surrounded by windows, and I worried that his head had been exposed for too long above the bush. His fidgeting stopped and he became still. A bug landed on my ear. I forced myself to ignore it. Samir’s silencer zipped. The guard yelled and grabbed his thigh. I followed his head through my sight
as he bent to look at his leg, which was already bleeding through his pants. I squeezed the trigger. His head snapped sideways. He slumped from the lawn chair to the ground. Samir and Paul spun toward me, eyes wide. Paul smiled.
Someone in the kitchen shouted, “Ali!” It was more of a question than an alarm. Paul and Samir ran around the bushes, heads low, guns pointed at the ground. When they reached the wall of the house, they flattened their backs against it. The wind rose again. I strained but could not hear what was going on in the kitchen.
Paul lifted his pistol in front of his chest and rocked slightly from his heels to his toes. He took a breath, then spun around the corner and through the back door into the kitchen. Samir followed close behind. I heard several pops.
They were not the sound of silencers.
I waited for the boom from the sonic grenade. Nothing happened. I peered through the gap in the shrubs, but there was nothing to see. A light came on in the neighbor’s house behind me. I was doing no one any good squatting behind a stupid bush, so I ran around the shrubs toward the back of the house. As I got there, Samir stumbled out the back door, the shoulder of his shirt stained with blood.
He lifted his hand, which was closed around the grenade. “Take it! They’re all down.” I grabbed the grenade and clipped it to my belt. “Go!” he said.
I backed against the house and peeked around the corner into the kitchen. Two men sprawled on the floor near the table. Paul lay on his side near the door, blood puddling under his head and his leg. He moved his leg and groaned.
I spun through the door, stepped over him, and moved to the rear of the kitchen. Stopping with my back to the wall, I held my gun in both hands and peeked around the corner into the hall. The light was off, but I could see that the hallway was empty. I turned the corner and looked for the bedroom door on the right that I remembered from the floor plan Paul had drawn. Just before I got to it, I heard a click from inside the bedroom.
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