The Toymaker (35 page)

He recalled the diagram of the floor plan, corridors around the perimeter and halfway down each corridor was another tunnel that led toward the center electrical room. Backtracking two hundred feet to the center corridor, Jake spotted a crowbar on the floor near the turn.
Perfect
. Jake didn’t want to shoot the terrorist until all the explosives were disabled. He picked it up and ran toward the center of the structure. Circling around the electrical service room, Jake found the adjacent corridor and ran to cut off Khan’s route.

When he reached the last corridor, he stopped and peeked around the corner. Khan was kneeling over his backpack obviously rigging the final device. Jake moved further down the corridor toward Khan, ducking in every nook and cranny along the way to conceal his approach. He was thirty feet from Khan when he felt something on his leg. A rat. There were several more around him. He instinctively swatted the rat scaring them away—in Khan’s direction.

Jake saw Khan jump at the sound of the rats scurrying, raised his pistol in the direction of the rats, and then lowered it when he realized it wasn’t a threat. Jake was close enough and had his chance. Khan was distracted. Approaching from behind Khan and slightly to his right, Jake raised the crowbar and took a baseball bat swing at him—head high.

Khan must have seen him because he ducked, rolled ten feet away, leveled his pistol, and took a shot in Jake’s direction. Jake felt the bullet whiz past his head. He hurled the crowbar at the terrorist. The metal shaft struck Khan in his right arm forcing the gun from his hand and knocking him to the ground. Khan screamed and grabbed his arm. Jake saw blood ooze through the man’s fingers.

Jake dove for the device and in seconds had deactivated the detonator.

Five down.

Now for Khan.

But Khan was gone and so was his gun.

CHAPTER 70

K
HAN DUCKED WHEN he detected movement too large to be rats out of the corner of his eye. Someone was threatening his mission. His first thought was to kill the intruder but the man with the wavy blond hair moved with lightning speed. He looked familiar. Was he the man in the car in Trappes—the one he saw as he shuttled his martyrs to their deaths? And then he made another connection as well. He was looking at one of the men from the fishing boat in Spain, the man giving the orders.

Khan rolled with his pistol leveled and fired but the shot missed, ricocheting off the concrete wall. As he went to fire again a black metal rod struck his arm knocking the gun from his hand.

Pain shot through his arm as he felt the metal tip rip through his skin at his elbow. He heard bone crack. His arm became warm as blood soaked through his sleeve and ran down his arm. He clutched his elbow with his left hand, blood ran through his fingers.

The blond man dove for the bomb. Khan grabbed his gun and ran toward the exit. He knew there were three smaller devices and one large one still in the truck. All four were armed and once he’d cleared the block he’d detonate them. It would still have the same cataclysmic effect. The museum would crash to the ground killing thousands.

He ran fast, ignoring the pain in his arm. This madman had been tracking him from France to Spain to New York. He had underestimated him. Khan needed to escape, go underground, and not resurface for a long time…years perhaps. It would be more difficult now; he was injured and needed medical treatment. They would ask too many questions at a hospital or clinic. Too many eyebrows would be raised. He couldn’t afford the risk. He’d have to alter his plans yet again.

He heard footsteps, running footsteps, from behind and moving toward him fast. He turned and saw the madman gaining on him. He increased his pace as much as he could. One hundred feet to the exit. He kept running. Fifty feet to go when the madman shouted. He ignored him and kept running.

Khan heard the pop and felt the stabbing pain in his leg at the same time. It felt like a fiery hot poker had been thrust into his leg, deep into his thigh. He fell to the concrete with a busted right arm and a bullet in his left leg. His hope for escape was gone.

† † †

Jake’s anger drove him. As soon as he’d disabled the fifth and final bomb, his anger kicked the door open and demanded revenge.
It’s my turn now.
He drew his Glock and pursued his quarry. He was faster than Khan, much faster, and gained on him with every stride he took. The man was fifty feet in front of him.

He stopped, leveled his gun, and fired. Khan dropped to the ground clutching his leg. Jake started walking toward the terrorist when Khan raised his pistol at Jake.

Jake dove to the ground and saw the muzzle flash. The bullet pinged against a water boiler behind him. He couldn’t let Khan leave the basement. Jake raised the muzzle of his gun toward the ceiling and shot out the lights around him plunging his corner into darkness. Now he could see Khan, but Khan couldn’t see him. He hoped.

Khan pulled himself away from the exit side of the corridor, dragging his injured leg behind, and took refuge in back of a large air handler unit. Jake made his move toward the exit, shooting out lights each time he moved. Every time Khan appeared, Jake drove him back into hiding with bullets.

“Give it up, Khan.” Jake shouted. “There’s no way out except through me.”

“Who are you?” Khan shouted.

“Doesn’t matter. Your only chance to live is to give yourself up.”

“Were you the one in France? And in Trappes?”

“Yes.”

“Spain? On the boat?”

“All of the above.”

“How did you track me? I have to know.”

“You’re sloppy Khan. You leave a trail everywhere you go and before long, all the breadcrumbs lead to you.”

“If I come out, are you going to kill me?”

As much as he wanted Khan dead—for Wiley, for himself—he felt he owed it to Bentley to give the terrorist at least one chance to surrender. If Khan refused, then Jake would kill him. “That depends on you.” Jake said.

“What do you mean?”

“If you throw out your weapons and do as I say, I’ll take you in alive. My guess is you’ll end up at Gitmo for a long time.”

Jake heard shuffling and suspected the injured man decided to give himself up. Not like an al Qaeda terrorist. But Khan was an American after all, a mastermind of evil but with an apparent desire to live.

Movement.

Khan had somehow managed to pull himself to his feet and hobbled into the corridor. Jake aimed his Glock dead center on Khan’s forehead as the man gradually emerged. Soon, Khan was in full view. He’d ripped his sleeve and made a makeshift tourniquet on his leg. His arm bloody, he walked and looked like a zombie. If he so much as flinched, Jake would send him to the land of the dead.

Jake noticed the cell phone in Khan’s hand. “It won’t work, Khan. I’ve disabled your bombs.”

“Perhaps there is one you don’t know about.”

“You're a failure, Khan.”

“It is you who has failed. Say goodbye.”

Khan pressed the button.

CHAPTER 71

N
OTHING HAPPENED. HE checked the signal strength; even in the subbasement he had three bars
and
3G. Then he heard ringing. The cell phones. And no explosion.

“But how could you know?” Khan asked.

“I didn’t. But I found the box in the truck and disabled it. Your overconfidence made you overlook one important detail; the bomb wasn’t tamper resistant. Easy to defuse. You’ll be remembered as a failure, an embarrassment to al Qaeda. You’re no terrorist; you’re just a pathetic excuse of a human being who believed killing children would give him martyrdom."

Khan flushed, body temperature rose, face turned beet red. Was the infidel right? Was he a failure? Or was this man that good? He had failed this mission, he saw that now. He had one last chance to make a name for himself—to save face—one final chance for al Qaeda to be heard.

“Give it up, Khan?” The man pointed to the exit. “Any second now, a dozen men will come through that door. When they do, you’re a dead man.”

Khan stepped back until he was even with the exit. “You’re bluffing.”

 “Am I?” The man said. “I called for reinforcements before I followed you down here. The museum has been evacuated, Khan. Your plan failed.”

Pounding sounds of footsteps filled the stairwell behind the exit door and Khan knew the madman spoke the truth.

The perpendicular corridor leading to the electrical service room was directly across from the exit and Khan was standing in the middle of the corridor. He feared death, but now he felt trapped. To give up was to admit failure. He ripped open his coveralls and revealed an explosive vest and grabbed a dead man’s switch from his pocket.

With a click, it was armed.

Khan held up his arm. “Then you will die with me.”

† † †

Jake was squeezing the trigger, ready to blow the man to Hell, when he saw the suicide vest. He couldn’t shoot now. The only thing stopping the detonator from activating was the pressure from Khan’s finger. If Jake took the shot, Khan’s finger would relax, the spring-activated switch would push forward triggering the detonator, and the vest would explode. At a distance of thirty feet, Jake might survive the blast, but the men coming down the stairwell would die.

A suicide vest could do a great deal of damage to people, especially when it’s been loaded with shrapnel…nails, pellets, glass. But what it couldn’t do was bring down the museum and, based on the small size of the vest, wouldn’t do much structural damage to the basement. Jake had already ensured the safety of those above, what few remained. He played it through in his mind, after his phone call, the entire area would have been cordoned off and everyone—men, women, and the thousands of children—herded far enough into Central Park to remain clear of danger in the event Jake failed to stop Khan.

But now he had to figure out how to get out of the subbasement alive. The pendulum had swung and Khan held the upper hand.

For the moment.

Jake didn’t know what type of squad was on the other side of the exit door. It could be New York City beat cops, or a SWAT team. He hoped it was a team trained to contain this type of situation. But, whoever it was, he was glad they were here. It gave him the distraction he needed. Khan was preoccupied with whoever was in the stairwell and retreated toward the center of the basement.

Jake took advantage of the situation and backtracked through the dark corridors, working his way through a maze of boilers, water tanks, air handlers, generators, and diesel fuel tanks until he spotted Khan sitting against the wire cage of the electrical service area. Khan chanted something Jake couldn’t understand, but he knew its meaning. Not a good sign. Jake realized Khan had resigned to die.

Khan held the dead-man’s switch in his injured right hand and his pistol in his left hand resting it on his injured leg. Jake aimed his weapon at Khan. This time the terrorist could not get away. A penance had to be paid for all the lives he took. The people in Paris. The two young women he dumped into the sea. Khan wasn't just ruthless, he was evil.

The squad stormed through the exit door.

All hell broke loose.

CHAPTER 72

I
T TOOK THREE hours for the rescue workers to find Jake. He was pinned beneath a water storage tank that was blown off its supports from the shock wave of the blast. He was alive. Considering how close he was to Khan when the New York City SWAT team unleashed a hailstorm of bullets, he was lucky.

After the first barrage of bullets, he dove to the basement floor behind a double-wall of solid concrete blocks used to support the water tank. The blast was almost immediate, toppling the tank and wedging him between it and the wall…unconscious from the concussion wave.

Two SWAT members were killed from head trauma, the rest suffered the same injury as Jake, temporary deafness and disorientation. The same effect as a flash-bang in confined quarters.

While he lay there waiting for the first responders to dig through the rubble, locate him, move the tank, and pull him free, he could think of only one thing.

Ian Collins.

Unfinished business.

Jake had gone rogue and left Bentley out of the loop until the last minute.
Off the reservation
as he heard it described many times. His phone call wasn’t well received by Bentley. The director said nothing except he’d handle the evacuation. The tone in his voice relayed his dismay with the situation. But as Wiley reminded him the last time they spoke, Jake didn’t take orders from Bentley.

He’d successfully completed the mission, but by whose measure? Bentley’s mission was to capture Khan and put him through rigorous interrogation in an attempt to get at the terrorists further up the al Qaeda food chain. Wiley wanted Khan dead, his note to Jake was clear. Wiley told Jake on the first day that the number one priority in his business was to meet the objective. The how didn’t matter.

Jake had followed Wiley’s instructions. Even though he didn’t technically
kill
him, Khan was dead—a failed martyr on a failed mission. But he still felt an allegiance to the CIA director. Bentley had been the one who had taken him under his wing. Not once, but twice. The first time while Jake was a naval intelligence officer on the USS Mount Whitney. Bentley had recruited Jake to work directly under him at the Pentagon. The second time just seven months ago when Jake’s world turned upside down in Savannah, Bentley recruited him to go after the man he thought, they all thought, had killed Beth. Now the truth had been revealed, Ian Collins was the killer. And Ian Collins would pay with his life because now it was personal.

The New York City Fire Department used a pneumatic jack to push the tank away from the concrete wall and pulled Jake to freedom. The dust from the explosion had caked his clothes and face with a powder white dust. He’d cupped his undershirt over his nose to help filter the air until the sediment settled to the basement floor. FDNY tried to put him on a gurney but Jake refused.