R
APP was about to head back upstairs when Lonsdale came walking through the door with two Secret Service agents. The normally put-together and well-styled Lonsdale looked absolutely disheveled. As Rapp approached, he realized that she’d been crying. It dawned on him that she quite likely knew more about who was under that pile of rubble that used to be a favorite haunt of senators than anyone else in the building. A few of those people were also undoubtedly her friends.
Earlier in his career, Rapp would have never felt an ounce of compassion for this woman, but with age he had begun to realize that most of the players in this drama did not intend to do harm. They simply downplayed or ignored the threat. Some were naïve and merely thought the terrorists would go away if we understood them better. Others, like Lonsdale, thought the letter of the law was the most important thing. That we as a nation must never lower ourselves to their level. In Rapp’s world, where he saw up close the mayhem that these groups caused, the first sentiment was simply naïve and the second, while honorable, was not very practical.
Rapp looked at her cheerless, bloodshot eyes and wondered if the murder of her fellow senators would cause her to see things differently now. “Senator Lonsdale,” Rapp said in a polite voice, “thank you for coming.”
Lonsdale looked nervously around the room, and said, “Where are they?”
“Excuse me?” Rapp said not understanding what she was talking about.
“The men you captured,” she said, looking him in the eye for the first time. “I spoke with the president. He told me you have four men in custody.”
Rapp wondered if any of these politicians knew how to keep their mouths shut. “Senator, maybe after we handle the video conference with al-Haq, I can…”
“I want to see them now!” Lonsdale said forcefully.
The force of her demand took Rapp aback. “I can assure you, they are being taken care of, ma’am.”
Lonsdale clenched her fists and stepped to within a foot of Rapp. Looking up with her bloodshot eyes, she said, “I do not care about their welfare, Mr. Rapp. I want to see them right now.”
Rapp was suddenly very curious to see how this would play out. “Fine… follow me.”
After a couple steps he turned and told the Secret Service agents that they could stay put. It was bad enough he was bringing Lonsdale up. The last thing they needed was more men with badges. Lonsdale followed him up the spiral staircase in silence. When they reached the door to the conference room, Rapp knocked and said to Lonsdale, “Give me a second.”
Rapp opened the door a crack and saw Aabad sitting at the far end of the heavy wooden table, cradling his right hand across his chest. Nash was sitting on the edge of the table, looming over Aabad. When Nash saw Rapp, he got up and walked over to the door. Rapp stepped in and shut the door.
“I’d told him he’d better give me something good before you get back up here or that other arm would get torn out of its socket. Now he’s going on and on about these SWAT uniforms. He’s admitted that there’s nine other guys still out there.”
“Nine,” Rapp said, surprised by the number.
“Yeah, he says they are going to use these SWAT uniforms to get into and attack a federal facility.”
There was a loud knock on the door. “That’s Lonsdale. She wants to see him. Let’s make this quick, and then we’ll get this new info out.” Rapp opened the door.
Lonsdale entered the room and looked down the length of the table at the small man who appeared to be grimacing in pain. “Who is he?” she asked in a cold voice.
“Aabad bin Baaz. Saudi national,” Rapp said as he closed the door. He decided to leave out the part about the dual citizenship.
“I demand to see my attorney,” Aabad said in a pleading voice.
“Is he responsible for the explosions?” Lonsdale asked.
“He’s part of the cell.”
Lonsdale approached the prisoner and asked, “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” Aabad said with wide hopeful eyes.
“I’m Senator Barbara Lonsdale.”
“I am an American citizen,” he said earnestly.
Lonsdale ignored him. “Do you know where I was supposed to have lunch today?”
“No,” he said with a confused face.
“The Monocle. I sent my chief of staff there instead.”
Aabad looked nervously back and forth between Lonsdale and Rapp and Nash. “I know my rights. I demand to see my attorney.”
Lonsdale suddenly reached out and slapped him across the face. “He was my best friend.”
Aabad looked up in shock and in a more pleading voice said, “I am an American citizen. I have a right to see my attorney.”
“If you are an American citizen, then you are a traitor,” Lonsdale hissed, “and I will do everything in my power to see that you are executed.”
Rapp, who was still standing by the door, thought he heard a noise. He looked to Nash and they exchanged a quick glance. The noise came again. It was distant. Muffled.
“Are those gunshots?” Nash asked.
Rapp was about to open the door, when there was a much louder noise. The room shook just slightly. The one thing about combat was, you only had to go through it once and you were left with the sound, feel, and smell of battle for the rest of your life. Rapp had been in more than his fair share of dustups. He looked over at Nash, his face showing a deep concern. “I think that was a hand grenade.”
“I think you’re right,” Nash agreed.
Rapp reached for the door and asked Nash, “Do you have any flex cuffs on you?”
“No.”
Rapp opened the door, his primal instincts screaming that something bad was on the way. He glanced at the big screen and wondered briefly if the rumble of noises had come from some audio that they had just obtained. Without warning, the main door to the Operations Center was blown open. A split second later, a man dressed in full SWAT gear stepped through the cloud of dust and debris, his weapon raised. He pointed it straight ahead where the two Secret Service agents who had delivered Lonsdale happened to be standing with their arms tentatively raised in the air. Without provocation the man in the SWAT gear shot both agents in the head.
Rapp flinched as his brain tried to reconcile the irreconcilable. A second and third man in SWAT gear followed the first man through the door and began shooting analysts who were diving to get out of the way. Rapp’s left hand was already wrapped around the hilt of his gun. With the rifle shots ringing out from below, Rapp turned to Nash and screamed, “Knock him out!”
At the sound of rifle shots, Nash was already reaching for his gun. He’d been in combat with Rapp before and trusted him completely. He drew the heavy.40-cal from his holster and cracked Aabad across the temple with the weapon. The man fell out of his chair and tumbled to the floor.
“Senator,” Rapp yelled, “get in that far corner and stay there!”
Nash joined Rapp at the door. Both men had their guns drawn, and as they looked down at the floor, they watched the lead man in the line stop and look over his shoulder. He raised his right fist up in the air and paused for a moment. A final shooter joined the line, making it six total. The lead man motioned forward with his hand and the group began to move as one, shuffling forward into the room, unleashing a torrent of bullets. They were in a textbook raid line. Rapp and Nash had watched the drill hundreds of times. The first man is responsible for the first slice of pie immediately in front of the group. The second man takes the next slice on the left, and the third man takes the first slice on the right. They alternate their way back to the sixth man, who is responsible for all six.
The entire group opened fire, but it wasn’t the undisciplined fire of poorly trained insurgents shooting from the hip. These guys were firing only one or two rounds at a time.
“It’s got to be them,” Rapp yelled.
“Let’s take them out!” Nash shouted back, and began to move.
Rapp held him back. “They’ve got body armor on.” He surveyed the situation. The men were moving roughly from right to left in front of their position. If they started taking shots at them from up here, they’d be lucky to get two or three before the others returned fire. With almost no cover, the rifles would shred them.
“I want you to crawl up to the edge of the balcony and sight in the first guy. That’s their weak point. You drop him, and I can run right down their throat.”
“You’re going to charge them.” Nash was shaking his head. “That’s fucking crazy.”
Rapp ignored him. He could see it all in his mind’s eye. Lifting his right elbow up, he tapped his own side and said, “Put the first one into his helmet and then aim for the weak spot in his body armor. Right here on his side.” Rapp pushed Nash toward the floor and then got into a crouch and ran along the wall.
Nash crawled to the edge of the balcony, mumbling to himself. In the middle of something like this, there wasn’t enough time to question and dissect a plan. You simply had to go with it and hope it worked. He wedged himself up against one of the vertical supports and leveled his sight on the first man.
Off to his left he heard Rapp scream, “Now.” Nash placed his sight square on the man’s helmet and squeezed off his first round. The muzzle jumped an inch and came right back down. Nash lowered his aim a touch and squeezed off another round. He was going to zipper this guy right down his left side. After his fourth shot the sight came down and the guy was crumbling to the floor. Nash went to sight in the second guy and found himself staring straight down the hot muzzle of an M-4 rifle.
Rapp bounded down the steps two at time. There was only one way to do this, and it wasn’t complicated. It was a full-on blitz, and it was the last thing these guys would expect. Rapp hit the floor and charged forward at a near full sprint, his left hand extended with his Glock leveled right down the axis of the shooters. He knew Nash was doing his job, because the lead guy was looking to his left instead of straight ahead. Rapp closed in with lightning speed. At fifteen feet he squeezed off his first round, hitting the lead man in his goggles.
The second man was turned to the side and looking up. From ten feet away Rapp sent a round into his exposed throat. The third guy sensed the motion and was beginning to turn on him, but while he could swivel his head to face the threat almost immediately, he had a harder time bringing his muzzle to bear. Rapp shot him from six feet away, right in the bridge of his nose. He stepped over the first guy as he shot the fourth guy twice in the neck and then the fifth guy in face.
The sixth and last guy had his back to him. Rapp saw him reaching into his vest with his right hand for a fresh magazine, oblivious to the fact that the rest of his line had fallen. Stepping over the next two bodies, Rapp grabbed the back of the guy’s vest, stuffed the muzzle of the 9mm Glock into the man’s lower back, and shot him twice through the spine.
T
HE only thing Farid noticed before it happened was that, for a split second, it seemed as if everything had gone strangely quiet. The initial push into the building had gone perfectly. He’d taken out the three security guards at the turnstiles and led the team straight to the staircase, where he flipped positions and provided rear security. He fell slightly behind on their climb to the sixth floor when he had to stop and kill two women and a man who had stumbled upon them. By the time he reached the lobby on the sixth floor, the ribbon charges had already been placed on the cipher lock. Hauling seventy-eight pounds of gear plus yourself up six flights of stairs was no easy thing, but they could rest in paradise. In a few minutes it would all be over.
They knew their prize lay in the big room on the other side of the door. Karim had estimated that somewhere between two hundred and three hundred men and women would be in the Operations Center managing the crisis, trying to find out who was behind the attacks and coordinated the collection of evidence. Karim said they would represent the heart and soul of America’s satanic war on Islam. It may have seemed as if it was the American military who doggedly pursued them with unmanned aerial drones through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they were merely the instruments. These people were the thinkers, the trackers, the investigators. Their collective wealth of knowledge was America’s greatest asset in their war. They had more planes and tanks than they could ever throw into a hundred battles. If they lost one, they simply put another into service. That would not be the case with these people. It would take America years to replace them, and it would give al-Qaeda the time they needed to rebuild.
This is what Karim had preached to them for months, and Farid believed every word of it, but he couldn’t help think that his capable commander was withholding one aspect of the operation from them. Zachariah, Zawahiri’s nephew, had sensed it as well, and he had been the first to openly complain. He told the other men, and they had taken to grumbling about it when Karim was not around. Farid went to Karim with the problem. Zachariah was telling the men that while the martyrdom mission was honorable and would strike at the heart of the enemy, it would undoubtedly also make it far easier for Karim to escape. Two days later Zachariah was dead.
Even before the confrontation with Zachariah, Farid could see Karim was beginning to worry about certain people’s devotion. They had practiced the assault for months on end, and Farid was always at the vanguard. He was to lead them into the building, up the staircase, and into the Operations Center. They were to stop for nothing. If targets presented themselves, that was fine, but they were not to pause to engage a threat. The prize lay on the sixth floor. So, Karim ordered that once they reached the stairwell, Farid would cover their entry, and then take up the position at the rear of the attack.
Farid sensed there was a deeper purpose to the move, but he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure until just today. After all the men had their vests on, Karim pulled him aside and handed him a master detonator. Each vest had a digital timer that was to be started when they rolled through the gate. Those timers could be shut off or restarted, should they need more time to get to their target. They had five minutes to kill as many people as possible; moving through the room laying down a 360-degree cone of fire. Thirty seconds before detonation, the men were to spread out so as to maximize the blasts that would hopefully tear the roof off the building, kill any remaining survivors, and render the entire space useless. If any of the men had second thoughts about completing their mission, or they were somehow met with stronger force than they had anticipated, Farid was to hit the master detonator.
As he lay on his back trying to piece together what had just happened, this thought was floating on the periphery of his mind. He did not understand what had gone wrong. The SWAT uniforms had worked perfectly. Every security guard and agent they had encountered froze. Just as Karim had said they would. Everyone except this man standing above him. Farid remembered the bolt on his rifle locking in the back position. His thumb hit the magazine release, expelling the empty box, while he reached for a fresh one. It occurred to him that the rifle fire had suddenly gone silent. He sensed movement behind him, and then there was the stabbing hot pain in his back. He had dropped his rifle and fallen to his left, hitting the ground and then rolling onto his back.
Now lying there, Farid realized he couldn’t feel his legs. He tried to move them, but it was as if some great unseen weight had smothered them. Farid raised his head and looked at his lower body. Everything appeared to be fine. He tried desperately to move his legs again and then the harsh reality struck him that he was paralyzed. That hot pain that he had felt earlier was no doubt bullets slicing through his spinal column. Low enough, however that his arms still worked. Farid imagined himself in a wheelchair for a second, and then realized it was an extremely foolish thought. They were all wearing their vests.
Farid turned his head to the right to see what had happened to the others. All he saw was a jumble of black boots, vests, gloves, and helmets. They were all dead. The man standing above him started yelling at others, and that was when Farid remembered Karim’s order. He had told him if it appeared that they would be overwhelmed, he should not take any chances. He should hit the master switch and blow all the vests. He wondered how much time had passed since they’d come through the gate. Farid tried to remember where he had placed the detonator. Everything else had been rehearsed, but this had been a last-minute addition to the plan. He reached for his vest and then realized he’d put it in the cargo pocket on his left thigh. His hand began groping for the device, when there was a loud noise and a flash followed by searing hot pain in his elbow.