Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (181 page)

'This is the last flight!' Dani shouted at Daliah. He threw his
helmet aside and his hair whipped in the prop wash. 'Get in!'

Daliah's eyes darted around. No one was trying to hold off
the terrorists in the palace any longer; of the five commandos
who had been doing that, four had already been ferried to the
jet. Now the single one who had remained had joined them
at the helicopter. Besides him, she counted herself, Dani,
Schmarya, the Israeli captain, and the helicopter pilot. Every
one else had already been flown out to the runway. She looked
back at her father. 'But what about Najib?' she yelled.

Dani's expression was fierce. 'Young lady,' he roared, 'if
you don't hurry, there won't be
time
to come back and get
him!'

Without another word, she ducked into the vibrating little
cabin. In less than ten seconds the rest of them had piled in
behind her and the helicopter rose heavily and made a tight,
sweeping turn. Below, the palace shrank in size and seemed
to tilt. Fires were sprouting from every wing and every floor
now, and then, suddenly, she saw that a new wall of flames was beginning to race toward the spot where the explosives
had been planted.

Daliah shut her eyes, willing Najib to be safe.
Please don't
die. Please come back to me.

Then they were over the compound walls and the palace was behind them. It was a mere half-minute up-and-down
hop. The runway was already coming up and the chopper
descended. She could feel the shudder as the skids hit the
concrete, and she opened her eyes. The men piled out, and
she climbed into the front seat beside the pilot.

Dani leaned into the cabin. 'Take good care of her!' he
yelled to the pilot.

Then the helicopter rose once more.

At the pipeline, the timer flashed down to four and a half
minutes.

Najib could sense the standoff drawing to a close. His eyes
flicked from Abdullah and Ghazi, twenty feet in front of him,
to Khalid and Hamid at his sides. He was trying to determine the exact moment when he should dive for cover. If he moved
too soon, he would force Abdullah or Ghazi to pump him full
of bullets. And if he moved too late, he would be shot anyway.
No matter what he did, it seemed he was doomed.

He wanted to scream at them to hurry.

What were they waiting for? Squeeze the triggers! Get it over
with! Shoot. Shoot! What's keeping
—

And then his sideways glance caught Khalid's split-second
nod, and he threw himself to the floor. The four automatic
rifles blazed blue fire, and prolonged bursts of bullets criss
crossed over his head. Roars exploded in his ears, the
vibrations of smashing bullets thundering and ricocheting all
around him.

He saw Ghazi being thrown backward in a grotesque dance
of death, his chest bursting into a splatter of crimson frag
ments. He seemed to hang suspended in midair, and then
slowly collapsed.

The weapon flew from Abdullah's hands as his body, burst
ing blood from his belly, jerked and spun in a 360-degree turn.
He stood hunched over, his wild eyes wide with surprise, and
then staggered in short, wobbly steps.

As suddenly as it had started, the gunfire ceased. The crack
ling of the flames seemed inordinately loud. Najib thrilled as
he realized he was unharmed. Behind him, he heard two heavy
thuds of falling bodies and the clattering of weapons hitting
marble.

Slowly he turned.

Khalid and Hamid had fallen across one another to form a
human cross, their features frozen with the contortions of their
last agony. Their eyes were wide and blank. Najib didn't need
to feel their pulses. There was nothing he could do for them.

Sickened, he stumbled to his feet.

'Najib!
No!' Abdullah's voice was an incredulous screech.
'You can't be alive! You have to be dead!'

'No, it's you who are going to be dead!' Nagib shouted.
'You're leaking blood all over.'

Abdullah stared down at his belly and staggered backward
in horror. His demonic eyes were wide as he gingerly touched
a stomach wound that was steadily pumping out blood.
Disbelievingly he raised his dripping red hand to his eyes. 'I'm
shot!' he moaned, jerking his face back from his hand as if it
were a viper.
'I'm
going to die!'

'Not soon enough!' Najib said grimly.

'Najib!' Abdullah's voice became shrill. 'You can fly me
out! To Riyadh—'

'No!' roared Najib. 'Never! It is time you were flung into
the fires of hell, where you belong!'

'Help me, Najib!' Abdullah pleaded. 'I'm your half-uncle!
We're family! You must—'

'I must nothing. Now at least the world will be that much
safer and saner!'

Madness flared in Abdullah's eyes. 'You fool! Do you think
I have not prepared for this day? I have trained others to
follow in my footsteps, to continue where I have left off.' He
roared with insane laughter, his mortal wound momentarily
forgotten. 'My people are in every country of the Middle East!
I have had legions to choose from, and I have chosen well!'

'Ah, but you won't be here to see how good they really are,
will you?' Najib taunted.

At that moment another of the blazing bookcases creaked
and came crashing down. It landed thunderously between the
two of them, and a wall of fire shot up to the ceiling, driving
Najib backward. Through the curtain of fire he could see
Abdullah as a hellish staggering shadow. His mad shouting
rose even above the roar of the furious flames.

'You will die, Najib! All of you will die! The girl! Her family!
All of you! The orders have already gone out! My people will
see to it!'

'You lie!' Najib bellowed. Oh, for the love of Allah, it
couldn't
be true! 'Even at the point of death you lie!'

Abdullah shrilled with laughter. 'You will never know for certain, though, will you?' His laughter rose and swirled and
howled. 'You never even knew it was I who shot Iffat, and not
the Jews, did you?'

'You?'

'I had plans for you, and I knew that by blaming the Jews I
would have your loyalty!'

Najib staggered, overwhelmed by the revelation. All those
years he had been fanning his hatred for Daliah's family and the Jews, and all the while it had been Abdullah who was the
cold-blooded murderer.

Najib was filled with a killing rage. For an instant an over
powering urge to dive through the fire and finish Abdullah off
with his bare hands seized him.

Then: You're an idiot, he told himself. Abdullah is finished,
and if you don't get out of this funeral pyre and back up to the
roof, you'll be finished too.

He hesitated for a mere millisecond, then turned and raced
out into the foyer. He sped up the stairs to the mezzanine and plunged down the endless halls, past blazing rooms, heading
for the stairs, racing the clock to the roof.

He didn't need a watch—his heartbeats were countdown
enough: 1:04 . . . 1:03 . . . 1:02 . . . 1:01 . . .

'One more minute!' the helicopter pilot shouted. 'We might
not even have that long. The place looks like it's ready to go
up at any moment!'

Daliah looked down. She was on her knees, grimly clutching
the sides of the open door for dear life as she leaned out over
the edge of the helicopter into space. They were hovering
twenty feet above the palace roof, and the rotors whipped the
oily black smoke around in a swirling tornado. It seemed that
orange flames were shooting up everywhere, grabbing for
them. The roar of the fire had even drowned out the ear-
splitting clamour of the helicopter.

'Do you see anything?' the pilot shouted.

Daliah did not reply. Her burning eyes were frantically
searching the rooftop for Najib.
Of course he's not there. No
one is still alive down there.

'Sorry, lady!' the pilot yelled. 'We gotta go! The heat's too
intense for the rotor to bite!'

'No!' Daliah shouted. 'He's
alive!
I know he is! We can't
just leave him here to burn! I'd rather die first!'

'Hey, you're forgetting something, aren't you?' he shouted.
'It's my ass too! We gotta go!
Now!'

'There he is!' she screamed excitedly. 'I saw him!'

'Where?'

'There! Down by . . .' She pointed and then scowled.
'Damn it! The smoke's hidden him!'

'Lady—'

'There!
See him?' She pointed to their right. The pilot
craned his neck and squinted. Sure enough, between breaks
in the smoke he could see a lone figure waving both arms
above him.

'Well?' Daliah shouted. 'What are you waiting for? Let's
set down and get him!'

'We can't set down,' the pilot insisted. 'The roof won't sup
port us!'

'So what do we do?'

'There's a rope behind your seat. Toss it down to him. It's
already attached.'

Daliah ducked back inside, scrambled over the seat and
found it. She heaved it out the open door.

'Hang on!' the pilot shouted, and nosed the chopper toward
the spot where they had last seen Najib.