King turned back into the gas. When the hidden door opened, it had created a sucking effect, and the gas was coming right up the stairs around him. He almost just waited at the stairs until the gas dissipated. Sam surely heard him tell the men they were down there, so he knew she would be following soon, but he also remembered the fork in the underground hallway, and he had no idea where the other hallway went, maybe to another exit.
King took a step back, got a large breath of fresh air, then went back down. He ran into Sam on his way through, but he ran right past her. When he got to the back bedroom, sure enough, through the blur of his watery eyes, he could see that Jamila and Saajid were gone. Once King left the bedroom and turned left down the second hallway, the tear gas was all but gone. But so was the light. He didn’t have time to worry about what he would run into. As he sprinted down the hallway, extending his hands to the walls again, his breathing not quite as bad as before. What was bad was smashing into a wall in front of him. The hallway turned left, but he didn’t know it until the dirt in front of him knocked him on his ass.
King picked himself up and hurried left. His eyes and lungs were burning, but he could see a faint light up ahead. He pushed forward and ran for it. He rubbed the last of the water from his eyes, and the coughing had finally subsided. He could see that the light was the same orange glow from the fire in the street near the first door where they had entered the underground bunker. Finally able to see better, he spotted a ladder and then the lower half of a leg moving up the rungs. He surged forward and was able to grab the ankle. When he yanked down, Jamila squealed and fell downward. He half caught her and half threw her down to the ground.
With little regard for her, King shot up the stairs, and when he saw the direction Saajid was going to try to make a run for it, he knew he had him. He pulled the ladder up behind him to make sure Jamila was trapped in the tunnel for the men to capture her, and then he turned to run.
His back was to the fire, a fair distance behind him now. The fire had reached its limit for offering visibility, and once King dashed into the trees, he was plunged back in darkness. The light from the moon was still as it was before, enough for King, once he was beyond the wall of trees, to see Saajid running for the base of the mountain. He knew he was going to kill him as soon as he got his hands on him. There would be no bureaucracy. Not with this kind of evil. King was going to give him the chance to face the god Saajid had killed so many for.
Catching up to Saajid took only seconds. The man was frail, and King was in top shape. He grabbed Saajid by the back collar of his thobe and yanked him down to the ground. He grunted in pain after being laid out on his back. He tried to get up, but King put the bottom of his sneaker on Saajid’s chest and pushed him back down. King was done talking.
Saajid was not.
“I know you think you’ve won, King. But we will never stop fighting for what is right.”
King looked back toward the village. No one was coming yet, so he had a minute. He wanted some answers.
“Who shot your niece, Althea, in London? And who kidnapped Bentley Martin?”
The terrorist under King’s foot actually smiled. “This is what I mean, Mr. King. You think you have all the answers, but killing me is not the end. It will just make you feel like you’ve accomplished something when in fact you’ve actually stopped nothing. Not in the long term.”
King had no desire to debate. He learned a long time ago that you can’t reason with crazy. So he simply repeated what he hoped Saajid would shed some light on before he died. “Who shot your niece in London? Who kidnapped Bentley Martin?”
This time, Saajid laughed. “Althea gave her life much the same way my brother did. Sacrificing so that we may continue the fight to show the world the true meaning of God. And God has many tests for his people. Unfortunately for Althea, she did not pass. But at least she died trying, and with honor.”
Telling King how he’d put his own family in harm’s way seemed to be a source of pride for Saajid.
“What is that supposed to mean?” King said.
“Bentley and Althea have been competing for a long time. Ever since they were both here in Greece, and even more when Bentley moved to London. They both wanted to take the next step in being a soldier for their god, but their rivalry was making them sloppy.”
Listening to this poor excuse for a human slur out this ridiculous story was hard to do. But curiosity kept King from putting Saajid’s tirade to a halt.
Saajid went on. “I told Althea and her half sister, Bentley, that yesterday was the final test. That whoever survived would be the one to fight alongside me. It didn’t surprise me that it was Bentley. Althea was smart, but Bentley . . . she is special.”
King couldn’t believe his ears. He’d heard of things like gang initiations requiring taking someone’s life, but to play this sort of game with your family was sick—yet also par for the course when it came to an extremist like Saajid.
“But Bentley didn’t survive,” King said. “You had Althea killed for her.”
“I couldn’t let Althea be taken by the police,” Saajid reasoned. “Or worse, British intelligence. She knew far too much about everything. My hope was that Bentley would be able to kill you, too, when you least expected it.”
King’s mind was reeling. He couldn’t believe that he had fallen for Bentley’s act. She had been beyond convincing.
Saajid continued with a smirk, “Instead, seems as though she killed your man.”
King pictured Agent Karn dead on the couch, lying in his own blood He knew right then the doors he’d found busted in at the cottage was just part of Bentley covering her tracks. Making it look as though someone had been there to kidnap her. But Bentley had killed Agent Karn from the inside. It was also the reason Karn’s car was gone: Bentley must have driven away in it. He then pictured Bentley sneaking up on Karn and sliding the knife in his throat. And King had brought Karn there to protect her, only for her to end up killing him. It should have been King who was dead. King took his gun out and held it down by his side. He stepped forward and kicked Saajid in his crooked mouth.
Saajid might not have been much of a man, but he was resilient. He spit out more blood and rolled back over. “Bentley was always a lot more like me than her father. She was taught by the best. You will never find her now. But one day, she’ll find you. After all, you did murder her father.”
The terrorist, who was about to discover what truly awaited him in the afterlife, was wearing a proud smile.
King flashed back to when he first noticed Bentley in the car. The reason she hadn’t pulled away when she noticed King was because she wanted him to kill Althea for her. That was why she’d stuck around when King left her to go back to his flat. She wanted to make sure Althea was gone.
“You’d already be dead if she’d known it was you who killed Andonios,” Saajid said. “She’s that good.”
“She did know,” King said. “I just left too soon for her to try.”
“The holy book is a powerful thing, really,” Saajid continued to rant, something King noticed people often did when they knew they were about to say their final words. “It’s inspiring how someone as smart as Bentley, someone so good with numbers, wanted to follow in my footsteps. Wanted to follow the work of God.”
“What’s really amazing is that you don’t know when to quit running your mouth.” King stepped forward, raised his gun, and aimed at Saajid’s head. He’d heard all he needed to hear.
Saajid stared down the barrel. “Just tell me this one last thing. If you shoot me, what makes you different than me? You say I’m playing God when I kill. What is it that you are doing when you do the same?”
It was a question King had asked himself at least a thousand times, and one to which he never had an answer, because maybe there was no difference at all. But he knew one thing for sure: in the end, he and Saajid Hammoud were nowhere near the same person.
“Maybe me killing you is playing God, Saajid, and ma
ybe it’s not. But make no mistake, we are not the same.”
King could see that Saajid was about to interject, but he was tired of listening. He squeezed the trigger once, and once was all it took.
The Hammoud reign of terror was over.
47
14 hours later
Lexington, Kentucky
Bobby Gibbons poured a cup of coffee from the carafe on the kitchen countertop. The sun was shining through the window above the sink. He and his wife had had a wonderful meal last night. Being in Alexander King’s home had begun to feel like a vacation, which he and his wife hadn’t had in a long time. She was still fast asleep upstairs, so Bobby took his coffee outside to the oversized patio. He said good morning to the guard at the back door whom Sam had put in place for him. There was a guard outside the front door as well. He walked over to the stone rail of the raised patio. On both ends of the patio were stairs that wound down to the pool below. He paused for a moment to take it all in.
It had been unseasonably warm all week in the northeast. The weather this morning was beautiful, but the view was even more stunning. The rolling hills laid out in front of him were expansive. There was a horse stable a few hundred feet away off to his right. Down in the paddock to the left of the stable, a few Thoroughbred horses grazed on the shimmering bluegrass. It struck him once again, how could a man ever leave all of this for a life of fighting the most horrible people in the world? He knew firsthand that motivation was a funny thing. No matter what you have, or where you come from, one thing can happen to you, changing your life forever. It was the same for Bobby when he joined the Marines. He could have stepped right in after high school and taken over the family business, but when his friend was killed overseas, he was compelled to go and try to do something about it.
Bobby sipped his coffee and took in a long breath. While the past day here in Kentucky had been nice, he couldn’t help but feel dragged back into worrying about Doug Chapman. His worry wasn’t about whether or not he could still become the president of the United States in a few months; it was more about whether he and his wife could simply survive the next few months at all. He’d made a lot of mistakes over his lifetime, but he feared none had been bigger, more dangerous, than getting involved with Doug. Then again, when he really thought about it, he may have never had a choice.
The sequence of events that led him to hiring Doug suddenly seemed like they had been planned, or arranged, by someone else. And while he ultimately made the call to hire him, in hindsight he felt manipulated, and for that he was very disappointed in himself. Especially that he’d dragged Beth into it along with him. She’d always stuck by his side no matter what, and this is how he repaid her: by putting her on the run from a crazy man trained to kill.
Suddenly, the coffee that had tasted so good a moment ago was beginning to upset his stomach. He pulled out his phone and called Sam Harrison again. Once again, she didn’t answer. This wasn’t a surprise; he’d spoken to her as she and King were boarding a plane from Greece over twelve hours ago. They should be close to landing, but clearly they hadn’t yet. He put his phone away and walked down the patio stairs. Any time things became scrambled in his mind, a long walk always helped. So that’s what he decided to do.
A half hour later, Bobby was walking back toward the house. The walk had been spectacular both for what he saw and how it cleared his mind. He decided he wasn’t going to run from this thing. If he was going to be the leader of the free world, which was where he felt he deserved to be, he would want people to look back on this and see that he stood up to people who were trying to run over him.
To see that he was a fighter.
His pace back to the house was determined. Sam’s ability to help Bobby and his wife escape, keeping them from being brought in by either the CIA or Doug Chapman, had made an impact in his mind. Getting away from the campaign trail for a day, leaving Washington, had given him a chance to gain perspective that he wouldn’t have been able to have while he was stuck in the throes of it all. His passion for going after the highest office in the land and having a positive impact on the country he loved had been renewed. He would run from this trouble no longer. He was going to face the situation, and Doug Chapman, head-on. Just like he would want a president to do if he were looking on as a citizen and contemplating a vote.
Bobby walked past the pool and jogged up the stairs. He was excited to tell his wife about the walk and the clarity it had brought him. However, when he saw the man who’d been guarding the back door lying on his back in a pool of blood, his first thought was to hope his wife would be alive at all.
He ran over to the body, only to see that the gun was missing from his shoulder holster. He blasted through the double doors and into the kitchen. The gun he took from the box in King’s office yesterday was up in the bedroom, so he ran to the counter and grabbed the largest knife in the block. On his way to the stairs he glanced out the front door, stepping outside briefly. The guard out front was in a similar position as the man at the back. He had been no help in protecting Beth.
The phone began to ring in his pocket, but there was no time to answer it.
Multiple gunshots rang out from upstairs. Bobby’s heart leapt into his throat.
“Beth!”
He hadn’t meant to scream as he turned to run; it was just a reflex. He ran back inside, made sure no one was on the bottom floor of the house, then sprinted up the stairs. He turned left, and ran down the long hallway toward the door where he and his wife slept. There were drops of blood on the carpet leading to the door. He’d never been more afraid to open a door in his life. When he pushed it open, a gunshot blasted in the room. He heard a bullet hit the wall beside him as dove onto the floor.
“Bobby!”
He sprang back up to his feet when he heard his wife call his name. He saw her cowering in the corner, still holding the gun in her hands.
“I almost shot you!”
He rushed over to her and took the gun from her hands, then took her in his arms. “You’re okay!”
She pushed him away and pointed toward the door. She was shaking, and by the look on her face he could still see that she was terrified.
“Where is he?” Bobby said. “Are you okay?”
“I shot him. I was coming out of the room to go downstairs to find you. When I opened the door, he was walking right toward me. I remembered you setting the gun on the nightstand, so I ran right there and turned just in time to shoot him.”
“Beth, where is he?”
She hadn’t said that it was Doug, but Bobby knew it. He had no idea how Doug found them, but he wasn’t surprised—the man used to be a secret agent.
“I don’t know. I shot a couple of times, he grunted, then ran out of the room.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“Yes. He was holding it when I turned around.”
Bobby walked over in front of the door. “Was he standing here?”
“Yes, then he turned and ran when I kept firing.”
Bobby slowly dropped to his knees. He could’ve sworn he saw something under the bed when he’d dived to the floor a minute ago. He crawled forward, ducked down, then reached under and picked up the gun. This didn’t mean that Doug was unarmed—Bobby remembered the guards’ weapons were missing—but it meant at least both he and his wife had a gun. And while that didn’t equalize things—Doug was much more skilled— it would make a difference. He had kept his own skills sharp since leaving the marines, and knowing his wife was also armed gave him confidence as well.
Bobby also knew that while they were far outmatched tactically, now was the time to move, as Doug was likely tending to his injury. Giving him time, a chance to stop the bleeding and regroup, would be the worst thing they could do.
“Let’s go, Beth. We can’t wait here.”
As Beth walked over behind him, his next worry was for Dbie. He didn’t know exactly where in the mansion she was staying, but he sure as hell hoped she was okay.
B
obby poked his head out the bedroom door. For the moment, the hallway was clear. If the gunshot wound Doug suffered was bad enough, it would take some time to stop the bleeding. It was go time.
He reached back and took Beth’s hand, pulled her along into the hallway, and speed-walked with his gun held out in front of him as he made his way to the stairs. Bobby noticed that the drops, and in some places puddles, of blood continued past the stairs to where Dbie had said was the master bedroom. Regardless, Bobby was halfway down the stairs in the next heartbeat, breaking for the front door.
Beth was clutching at his hand as she tried to keep up. He made it to the door, swung it open, and ran for the circular driveway in front of them. Before they reached the blacktop, a black Cadillac Escalade, coming straight for them, slammed on its brakes and screeched to a halt where the driveway and the front lawn met.
The windows were all blacked out, so Bobby didn’t know if he and his wife were about to die or if their lives had just been saved.
48
King slammed on the brakes and the Escalade slid to a stop. His emotions were all over the place, but it was clear that he needed to get his shit together, and he needed to do it fast. This was the first time he’d been back to his home in over a year, and seeing it made him realize how much of a void he felt from not being there for so long. But he sobered up immediately when he saw presidential hopeful Bobby Gibbons and his wife running toward them in their pajamas, both of them carrying guns.
King had known from Dbie’s phone call to Sam a few moments ago that something was terribly wrong, but seeing this sight upon arrival jolted him, and readied his system for a fight. It had been a busy few minutes since they landed at Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport. Agent Roberts had called right after Dbie, with an update on Bentley Martin. Or a lack thereof. He’d had Heathrow Airport in London run the name Althea Salameh like King had asked. There was no one under that name flying on any airline. By the time they were able to match up Bentley with the fake passport she’d used to book the flight, she had already exited her plane in Germany. And if Saajid had been even remotely honest about Bentley and her training, he knew they weren’t going to see her use that same identity again. She was off to the shadows. Maybe one day they would meet again.
The Secret Weapon Page 22