Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (176 page)

Ghazi shrugged. 'Not too bad.'

'We'll have it seen to soon,' Abdullah promised. 'When my
half-nephew returns, I will tell him to fly a doctor in from
Riyadh.' He paused and held his bodyguard's gaze. 'You real
ize, I hope, how important it was that you followed my orders
and hurt yourself? Only through an action of such magnitude
could I prove to Khalid and Najib how selflessly devoted you
are to me.'

Ghazi shrugged his huge shoulders.

Abdullah placed his elbows on the arms of the chair,
steepled his hands, and went on warmly, 'I am very glad for
you and Surour, and you should both be proud of yourselves.
How many other men will be able to say they marched directly
by my side as I rewrote history? Who knows? Perhaps we will
even enter Paradise together.' His vulpine lips smiled with
satisfaction. 'It is not everyone who is chosen to serve Allah
in such an awesome—'

He cocked his head as he heard a jet scratching the silence,
becoming louder and louder, until, with a deafening roar, it
shot past directly overhead, rattling the stained-glass panels
of the skylight in their soaring domed frame. As the roar receded, he could hear a second sound, that of the clattering
rotors of a helicopter.

'What did I tell you?' Abdullah told Ghazi. 'There is my
half-nephew now. You will have your hand seen to even
sooner than I anticipated. As soon as he is brought to me, I
will have him send the jet to Riyadh to fetch a doctor for you
and Surour.'

Ghazi's expression was bland. 'I am all right. There is really
no rush.'

'Ah, but there is.' Abdullah's eyes were alight with a silver
fire. 'Do not forget, Ghazi, that I am counting on you and
Surour to protect me. I need you both in excellent shape to
do that!'

'Yes,' Ghazi replied. 'If that is your wish.'

'It is.' Abdullah leaned forward and bent back over the map
of Mecca.

Suddenly, three storey above him, the skylight lit up with
all the rainbow colours of daylight as a white flare exploded.
Soft turquoises and pinks and blues and greens dappled him
and the sea of flokati in a wide radiant circle, so that he looked
like a tiny target in the exact centre of a giant rose window.
He looked up, an expression of amazement on his face. Then his eyes filled with fury, but his voice remained calm. 'I see I
shall have to have a talk with the men. Sometimes they behave
like children. Flares are nothing to play with!'

A bleak joy came into Ghazi's eyes. 'Let me go and put a
stop to this!'

'No, no, you stay here by my side,' Abdullah told him
briskly with an elegant wave of his hand. 'I am almost finished
for the night, and we will drop by the barracks before we go
upstairs.' As he bent over the map again, the approaching
whickering sounds of a helicopter sounded much closer. He
felt oddly disturbed. Then he shrugged the feeling away. Najib had indeed returned, he thought, and for another two minutes
he gave the helicopter no further thought.

It wasn't until a second white flare brightened the skylight
even further, bringing the colours of the stained glass to even
richer, more vivid hues, that Abdullah realized his folly. The
thought flashed through his mind just as the clattering rotors
filled the
majlis
with unbearable noise, lingered, and then receded again, droning swiftly away. Already the first crack
of gunfire rent the air, and the stunning truth froze him momentarily. Then he leapt from his chair and, Ghazi at his
side, made a dash across the white carpet of the enormous empty room. Even before they reached the door, a projectile
came crashing through the green-tinted windows at the far end
of the room, and a shower of glass merged with a rocketing
explosion. A great orange-and-black fireball bloomed and
rose in a column, and its fiery wind knocked Abdullah and
Ghazi off their feet and slammed them flat to the floor. The explosion seemed to suck all the air out of the room. The U-
shaped desk area, where they had been only moments earlier,
was showered in a massive hailstorm of coloured glass as the dome exploded. It was a savagely beautiful and fleeting sight,
like a column of magnified, multicoloured fairy dust.

Abdullah shook his head to clear it; his ears rung from the blast, and the smell was ghastly—acrid cordite and some sort
of kerosene propellant. The walls all around were pock-
marked with shrapnel. The flokati was on fire, smoking heav
ily, smelling like a herd of burned sheep. The air in the
majlis
would soon be unbreathable. Miraculously, he and Ghazi had
survived. He felt something warm and sticky on his face. He
touched it tentatively. Blood. He had been cut by fragments
of flying glass.

He felt a black, dizzying killing rage come over him. His
majlis
—his throne room and war room—the symbol of his
omnipotence, had been destroyed.

Talons of fear dug into Abdullah's heart while his screeching
curses became a shrill scream of terror, and he knew then that
precious minutes had already been lost. Realization had taken
too long to dawn. Now he knew what had disturbed him
earlier.

Najib's jet was one thing, but there shouldn't have been a helicopter within a hundred and eighty miles.

He jumped to his feet. 'Mobilize!' he screamed at Ghazi.
'We are under attack!'

Chapter 24

It was like the epicentre of a massive earthquake.

A series of shockwaves from an explosion somewhere
within the palace rocked the floor and caused a tremor which
sounded like a rumbling freight train passing by directly
below. The walls shook so violently that beside her, a hairline crack slashed across the pink suede wall covering and tore it
apart at the seams with a loud ripping noise. From behind her,
in the living room, she could hear the crashes as the windows
imploded and the Venetian mirror burst on the wall and went
flying. A mad staccato rattling gave evidence of the expensive
objets
on the sideboards and tables dancing spastically and
falling. Daliah shouted and pounded on the Nevelson doors
with renewed vigour, but it was futile. No one was coming to
get her, and the big bronze portals only vibrated and groaned.
It would take a lot more than a little shaking to loosen
them.

Then the shockwave passed as suddenly as it had come.
She put her ear to the cold bronze door. Muffled shouts and
screams came from somewhere out in the hall, and she shouted
and pounded on the doors some more. After a moment she
slumped against the wall. Her fists were beginning to hurt and
her knuckles were bleeding. From the way things sounded,
she wouldn't be at all surprised if the whole palace was soon
blown to kingdom come—herself included.

Lesser explosions were reverberating with less force from
somewhere outside on the grounds. Turning her head, she
glanced once again back into the living room. Earlier, she had
opened the windows and drawn the curtains aside so that she
would have no trouble hearing the jet when it approached,
and now, through the horizontal hairline cracks between the
shutter slats, lightning flashes of red and orange burst and
boomed like fireworks. With each tremor, the shutters rattled
and shook, but like the bronze doors, they held fast.

Strangely enough, despite her anger and frustration, she
was not the least bit frightened. Rather, she felt a thrill of
exhilaration. Her heart surged warmly. Najib had come for
her, just as he'd promised. Wonderful!

Not so wonderful. There was a terrible whistling noise and,
again, an explosion rocked the walls and sent another shockwave rippling and rattling all over again. Clouds of plaster
rained down from the ceiling, and the big marble floor tiles
actually lifted, shifted, and did a little dance. All but one,
which had popped up and cracked, settled back in place.
Whatever missiles were being aimed at the palace, they were
certainly starting to hit closer to her suite. Not wonderful at
all.

The shouts out in the hall seemed to be getting closer now
and from somewhere right outside the shutters came the
unmistakable roar of a helicopter swooping down yet once again. A moment later there was the staccato rat-tat-tat of
machine guns.
Oh, God, don't let Najib get hurt!

She glanced around fiercely. She had to get out of here. If
only there were something she could do.

She let out a gasp. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it
before?

Brandy! During her rummaging, she had come across a
bottle of brandy in the sideboard!

She stood there hesitantly, her heart thumping, and then
literally flew into the living room. She lunged for the floor,
ducked instinctively, and put her arms protectively over her head as another explosion rocked the palace. A hailstorm of
shrapnel rained against the outside of the shutters. Mad fingers
of blue and white electricity jumped from the slats to the now-
glassless window frames and sizzled.

Keeping down and crawling on her belly across the floor on
broken glass, she made it to the sideboard and yanked the
doors open. The bottle was just where she'd seen it. She
grabbed it by the neck. Courvoisier. Beautiful. On impulse,
she kissed it.

Now, matches. She would need matches and a wick. No,
not matches. A lighter! There was a table lighter on the night
stand!

She crawled madly into the bedroom, cursing the size of the
rooms and the length of the crawl. When she reached the
bedside, she lunged up for the lighter, blessed Ronson, and
grabbed a pillow off the bed. She tore the case off it and
giggled to herself. Courvoisier and a Pratesi pillowcase! It
would make one hell of an expensive Molotov cocktail!