Path of the Assassin (17 page)

“Who knows? Maybe the others were fanatics who were prepared to die. Maybe they were promised protection or new identities after the hijacking. There’s no way to tell. The one thing that’s for certain is that the nonmasked hijackers were spaced throughout the cabins as regular passengers and therefore had no choice.”

“How do our masked hijackers fit in, then? They couldn’t have gotten on board with masks on. You’ve already got the security tapes from O’Hare International. Let’s have Meg review each of the passengers that way.”

“We already have. Everyone is accounted for.”

“So what are you telling me? Hashim Nidal and his lieutenant are ghosts?”

“Maybe ‘Operation Phantom’ wasn’t such a bad name after all,” injected Morrell.

Harvath ignored him and said, “Let’s forget for a moment the fact that it was predominantly Egyptian military guarding the perimeter, how do you suppose they escaped?”

“This is where I get really pissed off,” said Ellis. “I think we had them in our hands and were forced to let them go.”

“Wait a second, Tom. You had them in your hands? What do you mean? When?”

“I’ve got a team going over the plane as we speak, but here’s what I think happened. The 747-400 was designed to be easily reconfigured. Lavatories and galleys can be moved to different parts of the aircraft, and whole classes of seating can be moved about.”

“I know all of this. What’s your theory?” said Harvath.

“This flexibility also applies to the workout facility. Normally, everything beneath the main cabin level on a 747-400 is for cargo, but United is trying to offer more perks on its long-haul flights to compete with other carriers. If at some point United decided they didn’t want to offer this perk on a particular flight or they wanted more cargo room, they could off-load the exercise equipment, pop out the walls, and that would be that.”

“I still don’t see what you’re driving at.”

“The walls of the exercise room can only be removed from the cargo side. With the right tools, it’s not very difficult at all. As a matter of fact, there are certain sections where you can take out just one panel—”

“Enough for a person or persons to gain access to the aircraft from the cargo hold?” asked Harvath.

“Exactly.”

“So you think Nidal and his lieutenant had been stowed away in the cargo hold and waited until the plane landed before making their move?”

“Yes. Their weapons and explosives were probably hidden there as well.”

“And you think they returned to wherever they were hiding when the takedown happened?”

“That’s when I think we had them right in our hands and lost them.”

“I thought the cargo hold was thoroughly searched, just in case.”

“It was, but there were several crates that we didn’t get to look into.”

“Why not?”

“There were a couple of mummies being shipped from the Field Museum in Chicago to the Egyptian Museum here in Cairo as part of an exchange program. There were two mummies, their wooden boxes, and the sarcophagi—all shipped in separate crates.”

“So you searched the crates, right?”

“We couldn’t. I was actually at the airport supervising the search and had the minister of antiquities and the museum’s curator breathing down my neck about not exposing the artifacts to the air. The crates were supposedly hermetically sealed in Chicago, and there was risk of accelerated decay if they were opened outside one of the museum’s contained laboratories.”

“Did you at least x-ray the crates?”

“I didn’t get a chance. The minister of antiquities and the curator were freaking out because the crates had been sitting in the cargo hold of the plane on the tarmac for so long. They thought the items might be irreversibly damaged because of the temperature or humidity or something.”

“What happened to them?”

“The minister of antiquities got on his cell phone with someone in his government who called our ambassador, who told me to release them. When it comes to antiquities, the Egyptians are pretty serious.”

“So somehow Nidal and his lieutenant used the crates to sneak in and out of the plane?”

“I’m positive. Earlier this morning we picked up a police report that there had been a shooting at the Egyptian Museum.”

“Let me guess,” said Harvath.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” replied Ellis. “Apparently, the minister of antiquities and the museum curator went out for breakfast while they waited for the customs broker to load the crates at the airport and deliver them to the museum. We put a tail on the truck, just in case, but it drove straight to the museum and never made any other stops. The minister and the curator apparently returned from breakfast, got checked through security, and were last seen making their way down to the contained lab where the crates had been placed. Two hours later, a lab technician showed up and found both of them shot in the head. They were on the floor in front of two heavily insulated crates, each with several bottles of oxygen and related gear inside.”

“There must be surveillance monitors in the museum.”

“There are, but not in the lab itself. The closest camera was in the hall. Security tapes showed what looked like the minister and the curator leaving the lab and exiting the building through a side entrance. What was interesting, was that the curator seemed to lean against the minister as he walked. We didn’t get a clear shot of either of the faces. They were very careful.”

“So, that’s it then. Somehow Nidal and his lieutenant used the crates to get away from the airport, killed the minister and the curator, changed into their clothes, and left the museum by a side door. Doesn’t seem to be much room for doubt on this one. What about the customs broker?”

“The Egyptians haven’t been able to find him yet, and even if they do, who knows how much the guy knows, if anything at all.”

“Is that why you went public with a news conference?” asked Scot.

“We had to make some fast decisions. If Hashim Nidal was making a run to get out of the country or using a local safe house, we wanted to at least throw up a net to try to catch him. We had to do something. We’re too close to let him slip through our fingers again.”

“But what about the other stuff, about this being a band of untrained individuals and all that? What happened on that plane was no amateur night, I can assure you. These guys knew what they were doing.”

Now Morrell chimed back in. “We hoped that through the news conference we could not only get a tip that could help capture Nidal, but also discredit and potentially embarrass him, as it were, on the world stage. People working with him or thinking of hiring him, might not want to be associated with him if he’s shown to be incompetent.”

“That’s a long shot,” replied Harvath.

“Yes,” said Ellis taking over control of the conversation once again. “But it’s one of the few shots we have. We are taking it to this guy, and his organization, on all fronts. We’ve already added him to the FBI’s most wanted list and expect confirmation shortly from the State Department that any information leading to his arrest or capture will qualify under the Rewards for Justice program.”

“So the message to the world is going to be that this guy is a bumbler, but we’re worried enough about him to offer millions of dollars for his arrest or capture?” asked Harvath.

“Not only is he a bumbler, but a lone civilian, a woman no less, was responsible for thwarting his hijacking. That’s the most damning fact, and the one we hope will seriously demoralize his organization and impede his ability to carry out further actions.”

“Having your ass handed to you by a woman is probably the pinnacle of shame for a guy like this,” offered Morrell.

Harvath was silent and that made Morrell nervous. “You’ve spent time over here, Harvath. You know how these people think. Avoidance of shame is a major motivator in their culture. You don’t agree this is going to be a serious blow to the guy?”

“I think it’ll be a serious blow to his ego, and yes, I think it will damage his reputation some, but not enough to keep money and support from flowing in his direction.”

“That’s the other concern,” said Ellis as he straightened up and stopped leaning on the podium. “Had he been able to ransom Mayor Fellinger and Bob Lawrence, that would have been twenty million dollars right there. Had the Egyptians fully delivered on Abu Nidal’s frozen assets, that would have been almost another five million. What the hell does he need that much money for?”

“And,” added Morrell, “have we been able to stave off whatever it is by foiling this hijacking?”

Harvath pondered a few moments before responding. “I’ll tell you this right now. I have no idea what this guy is up to, but from what I’ve seen so far, if he wants the money bad enough, he’ll find another way to get it. And I think he wants it bad enough. If anything, the only thing we’ve done is slowed him down.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing,” said Ellis as he crossed the room and unlocked the door, indicating that their meeting was drawing to a close. “Now we need to figure out what his next move is going to be and make sure we’re one step ahead of him.”

“Something tells me,” responded Harvath as Morrell followed Tom Ellis out the door, “that we’ll hear from Hashim Nidal before he hears from us.”

As if on cue, an enormous explosion rocked the opposite side of the hospital and sent a concussion wave racing down the hallway.

The violent force of the blast ripped through the open doorway of the conference room and sent all three men flying backward. Harvath was the first to recover. He couldn’t tell if Morrell and Ellis were okay, and frankly, there just wasn’t enough time. He had to get to Meg Cassidy. The explosion was no accident. Scot was sure of it.

Even before he had been informed of Hashim Nidal’s escape, something about Ellis’s news conference had made Harvath uneasy. Now he knew what it was. It was the piece of paper taped to the podium. Scot looked behind him, and miraculously there it was, still taped in place, though the podium had been flipped over. The sign told the world where the woman responsible for foiling the hijacking was being treated, Cairo’s Anglo-American Hospital. Instinct kicked in, and before Harvath knew it, he was already on his feet and out the conference room door.

The hallway was quickly filling with thick black smoke. Many of the fluorescent lights along the corridor ceiling had come loose and hung at angles resembling sinking ships, as they sputtered and shot red-hot sparks onto the bland linoleum floor. Overturned supply trolleys, IV trees, and crash carts littered the hall. The incessant blaring of the fire alarm and the spray from overhead sprinklers made the scene even more chaotic and more difficult to navigate. Staff members and patients alike held surgical masks and wet towels to their mouths to help them breathe as they began assisting each other toward the exits. It took a few moments before Harvath was finally able to locate Meg Cassidy’s room.

Remarkably, he found both Gordon Avigliano and the beefy CIA sentry, Jerry, unhurt inside. When Harvath entered the room, both of the men had their weapons drawn.

“Are you guys okay?” asked Harvath.

“We’re fine. What the hell was that?” asked Avigliano.

“It was a bomb of some sort. Probably a car bomb. How’s Ms. Cassidy?”

“I’m okay,” came the woman’s voice from the hospital bed.

“What about Morrell and Ellis?” asked the sentry.

“They were standing in the doorway of the conference room down the hall when the blast hit. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how they are. You need to go take a look. Gordy and I will look after Ms. Cassidy.”

“Will do,” said the sentry, who soaked a hand towel in water and then crouched low beneath the smoke as he ran from the room.

“I thought you two were standing guard outside,” said Harvath as he carefully removed Meg Cassidy’s IV from her arm.

“We were,” replied Avigliano. “Jerry had orders to physically check on Ms. Cassidy every half-hour. He had come in the room to see how she was doing and I was in the doorway when the explosion happened.”

“Gordo,” said Harvath as he threw the young CIA man the keys to their car, “I want you to bring the car around to the back of the hospital. There’s probably a service entrance of some sort. We’ll meet you there.”

“What about Morrell and Ellis?”

“There’s no time for them. That explosion was a little too coincidental and I don’t—”

“Believe in coincidences,” said Avigliano, finishing Harvath’s sentence for him. “Neither do I.”

“Good, then get going. We’ll meet you in back.”

Avigliano didn’t bother to look for a towel to cover his face. He knew time was of the essence and sprinted from the room. Meg already had her legs swung over the side of the hospital bed.

“Are you going to be okay?” said Scot.

“Do you think that explosion was somehow meant for me?” she asked.

“Now is not the time to find out. We need to get you out of here to someplace safe. Do you think you can make it?”

“I think so. Scot, are we in danger?”

“I don’t know, Meg,” he said as he slung his left arm around her waist and helped her up. “Let’s just focus on getting out of here, okay?” She was a little unsteady on her feet and leaned heavily against his chest. He helped her to the sink, where he soaked a small hand towel for each of them before they left the room.

A raging fire was rapidly spreading throughout the small hospital. People were trying to run through the corridor, but stretchers and wheelchairs were causing mini, yet deadly, versions of the ubiquitous Cairo traffic jam. With a couple of well-placed hip-checks against the gridlocked stretchers, followed by commands barked in both English and Arabic, Harvath managed to get the frenzied flow of patients and staffers moving again. Judging from the distance they had traveled, Harvath figured they weren’t far from the stairwell they needed. It was then that a hospital patron wearing a surgical mask caused Harvath to stop dead in his tracks.

Though the figure was across the smoke-filled corridor and was dressed in the traditional galabiya robes, Harvath still knew who it was. It was those eyes. Eyes so silver they bordered on black. They were the eyes of the assassin he had faced in Macau who had killed Sammy Cheng. They were very same eyes that Schoen had described seeing in Israel and that the old gypsy woman in Bern had attributed to the Devil. They belonged to Hashim Nidal himself, and Harvath was sure of it.

For a sliver of a second, Scot was torn. His Secret Service training had taught him that fighting was best left to others because his job was to see to the safe evacuation of his protectee. His SEAL training, though, had taught him that if you have a shot, you
take
the shot.

The struggle between an offensive reaction and a defensive one was no struggle at all. Hashim Nidal was too important to let go. It was obvious that he had come to the hospital looking for Meg. He was risking everything to come and finish her off. But, if anyone was going to be finished off, it was Nidal and Harvath would do the finishing.

Scot dropped the wet towel covering his mouth and drew his pistol from his waistband. “Get down!” he yelled as he forced Meg to the floor.

He spun hard to his right and for a moment lost the figure in the billowing smoke of the corridor. Several distinct cracks from an AK-47 told him that Nidal had seen him as well. The bullets tore up the wall to his left.

Scot swung his weapon toward where he thought the shots had come from, but the smoke was still too thick to see. The already frenzied mob of people trying to escape the hospital began screaming in terror at the sound of the gunfire. There were just too many of them. Harvath couldn’t risk taking the shot, not until he knew he had Nidal directly in his sights. The AK-47 burst forth with another deafening fusillade of fire.

The rounds were thankfully well off their mark. Harvath rose from where he had been shielding Meg with his body and swept his pistol from left to right. For no more than an instant, the curtains of smoke parted and Harvath strained to pinpoint Nidal’s eyes. As the curtains swept back together, he thought he had a lock and pulled the trigger of his powerful handgun, letting loose a devastating deluge of fire.

Right away, he knew his shots had been wasted. Nidal was using the smoke to his advantage and had moved before Scot had even fired a single shot. It was now Nidal’s turn, and Scot knew what was coming. With his powerful arms, he pulled Meg Cassidy to her feet and urged her on toward the stairwell. If Nidal was using the smoke for cover, so could they, but they needed to get moving, fast.

Just as Harvath had predicted, Nidal swept his assault rifle in a wide swath of flaming lead, tearing up everything in its path. Scot and Meg made it into the stairwell just as a half dozen rounds chewed up the emergency exit door behind them.

There was no need to urge Meg to run faster. She had found her stride and despite all of the punishment her body had been through, she was moving faster than Harvath. In his defense, it was quite a job barreling down the stairs in front of them while simultaneously keeping an eye out behind for Nidal or any of his accomplices.

When they hit the lower landing, the door for the service entrance was right in front of them. Harvath ran past Meg, slammed his hip into the horizontal, stainless-steel bar, and the door crashed open. As instructed, Gordon Avigliano was right there waiting for them. He was scanning the surrounding area with a silenced Ingram model 10 submachine gun.

“Where the hell did you get that?” asked Harvath as he bundled Meg into the backseat of the car.

“I told you. This is my first visit to Cairo. I wanted to be prepared.”

“Do you always travel like that?”

“Sure. I bring my Pepto, hot water bottle, and plenty o’ firepower.”

Scot shook his head and got into the driver’s seat. He really was beginning to like the kid.

When Avigliano was in and had slammed the passenger-side door, Harvath peeled out. They drove north then crossed the Nile and headed south along en-Nil Street. Scot took advantage of its sparse traffic to pick up as much speed as possible and deftly weaved in and out of the relatively slow-moving vehicles. When they passed the el-Gala and el-Gama Bridges, Avigliano, who had been studying his map of Cairo, decided it was time to speak up. “Ah, Scot?”

“I’m a little bit busy right now, Gord,” replied Harvath, who pushed the embassy car faster and faster through the ever-thickening Cairo traffic.

“I can see that, but is there any reason we haven’t crossed back over to the Garden City side of the river yet?”

“Because we’re not going to Garden City.”

“You do know that’s where the embassy is, don’t you?”

“Where are we?” asked Meg Cassidy as she started to crawl up onto the backseat.

“Meg,” said Scot, who could see what she was doing in his rearview mirror, “I want you to stay down on the floor back there. We’re not out of the woods yet. I’ll let you know when you can get up.” Harvath then turned his attention back to Avigliano. “We’re not going to the embassy.”

“We’re not?” said the CIA operative, confused.

“Nope,” replied Harvath. “Now, when we slow down, which is inevitable in Cairo traffic, I want you to have that door of yours ajar at all times. Keep one hand on the door handle and one hand on your weapon, which should be off safety. You understand? I want you to be able to spring from this car at a moment’s notice. You got me?”

“Yeah, I gotcha, but where are we going?”

“Do you have a cell phone on you that works over here?” asked Harvath, ignoring the operative’s question.

“Yes, why?”

“Give it to me,” said Harvath as he fished Bob Lawrence’s business card from his pocket.

Avigliano handed Scot his phone as Harvath drove the car up onto the sidewalk to get around a group of cars stopped at a red light. Avigliano braced for impact, but they made it through the intersection without incident. As Harvath maneuvered the car back into the street, he dialed Bob Lawrence’s cell and prayed that as an international CEO, the man also had a phone that worked in Cairo.

Lawrence picked up after the second ring. “Bob Lawrence,” he said.

“Mr. Lawrence, Scot Harvath here,” said Scot as he once again pulled the car up onto a sidewalk to get around a group of cars stopped at a red light. Avigliano braced for impact again and closed his eyes. Harvath was either incredibly brave, or incredibly insane. Avigliano couldn’t yet tell which one it was.

“Agent Harvath, when I said keep in touch, I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you so soon. What can I do for you?”

“Have you taken off yet?”

“No. We’re just boarding the aircraft now. Why?”

“I was hoping I could hitch a ride with you.”

“We’re not going to D.C., we’re returning to Chicago.”

“Chicago’s fine—”

Harvath was interrupted by Avigliano, who said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Hold on,” said Harvath, as much for Avigliano’s benefit as for Bob Lawrence’s. He swung the wheel hard to the left, and the car spun onto the Giza Bridge. “I have a special passenger with me who I think will be very glad to get back to Chicago.”

“Is this our friend to whom we owe a very deep debt of gratitude?” asked Lawrence.

“You can’t take her on that plane,” broke in Avigliano.

“Indeed it is,” said Harvath, who then pressed the phone against his chest and turned to the CIA operative and said, “The embassy is the first place Nidal would expect us to take her. Morrell and Ellis fucked up with that news conference and led him right to her. I am not going to give him a second chance. This is the right thing to do.”

“If you ask me—” began Avigliano.

“I’m not,” said Harvath, who then held the phone back up to his ear and said, “Sorry about that, Mr. Lawrence. The two of us would like to fly back to Chicago with you if that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay. What about the embassy, though?”

“This whole transport operation is on a need-to-know basis, and the embassy doesn’t need to know right now.”

“I hear you loud and clear. We’d be happy to give you a ride back. As a matter of fact, it’s the least we can do. Is there anything else you need on our end?”

“Please have your pilot alert the tower that you are awaiting two last-minute passengers. We’re in an embassy car with diplomatic plates. As long as security knows we’re coming, we should be able to sail through.”

“Any idea how long you’ll be?”

“We’re on Salah Salem Street right now, heading toward the airport. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Good enough. We’ll wait for you.”

“Our friend will also need a change of clothes,” said Harvath. Meg was still wearing her hospital gown.

“I’m sure we can find something for her.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lawrence. We’ll see you when we get there,” said Scot as he punched the
end
button and tossed the phone back to Avigliano.

For his part, the young operative now knew better than to argue with Harvath. He sat back and tried to survive the ride as he wondered how the hell he was going to explain the situation to Rick Morrell.