The Eye of Shiva (9 page)

"Thought you might like one of these, Gunny."

Crowder nodded his thanks. Better than the Beretta 9mm he carried. "Take Rodriguez and Jackson and get over by the front. Keep an eye on that crowd."

"Roger that."

The last stragglers were coming down from upstairs, headed for the ballroom. On a normal day there might be anywhere from fifty to eighty people inside the building. Today wasn't a normal day and the place was nearly empty. Most of the civilians and nonessential personnel had stayed home, anxious to avoid the demonstration. The Commerce Department attaché was there and his assistant, CIA's man in Manila. In addition to the ambassador, the only other Americans were Helen Martinson, Selena and a young woman who was the attache's secretary. Her name was Jean Wilson. Manila was her first overseas assignment.

Six
American civilians, plus Sergeant Crowder and his Marines. A half dozen Filipinos rounded out the list, cleaning personnel and maintenance workers unwilling to be intimidated by the demonstration and lose a day's pay.

Selena
was a step behind Margaret as they moved toward the ballroom. She heard sudden shouts from the rear of the building and the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons, followed by an explosion.

Grenade
, she thought. Without thinking, her hand went for her gun. It wasn't there.
Great. Locked away.
She reached up to her ear and activated the comm link.

"Nick, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear. What's happening?"

"We're under attack. In the back."

Nick heard the background chatter of small arms fire over his earpiece. Out front, the only sound was the roar of the crowd. Ronnie and Lamont heard everything Selena was saying. Lamont's chronic tiredness seemed to have vanished. They stepped close to Nick and waited for his lead.

Nick cupped his ear.
"Can you get to cover?" he said.

Selena was about to answer when men
dressed in black shirts, white trousers and wearing black headbands spilled out of the ballroom into the central hall. They carried AK-47s. Sergeant Crowder shot the first man through the doorway before a burst from an AK cut him down.

The three Marines in front opened fire. The foyer echoed with gunfire and the eerie sound of high velocity rounds ripping through the air. Two more terrorists went down.
Selena grabbed the ambassador from behind and pulled her down to the floor. The terrorists concentrated a stream of fire on the Marine guards. The open space echoed with shouts and the staccato blasts of the weapons and the ping of empty casings bouncing across the hard wooden floor.

Then it was silent except for the
clacking, metallic sound of an empty magazine hitting the floor. The smell of spent rounds and fresh blood filled the air.

Selena
looked at the carnage and whispered into her comm link. "Negative cover," she said. "Three terrorists dead. Six left that I can see. The guards are dead."

She stopped whispering as a pair of feet wearing Nike running shoes stopped nearby.

"All right," she heard Nick say. "Stay cool, don't do anything heroic. We'll get you out of there. Don't say anything unless you have to. I can hear everything going on around you."

"Get up." The voice was hard
, almost bored. The Nike foot kicked her. "You are not hurt. Both of you, get up now." The speaker kicked her again for emphasis.

Selena got to her feet and leaned down to help
Margaret stand.

"You are going to regret this,"
the ambassador said. "You, and all your cowardly comrades." She looked at the blood soaked body of Sergeant Crowder lying on the floor. Selena watched her get herself under control.

The terrorist
leader was a small man with eyes that looked dead. Like the others, he wore a black headband, black trousers and a white shirt.

"I don't think so
," he said. His English was good. "Unless you want to join your sergeant over there, you'll do as I say,
Madame Ambassador
." He turned his attention to Selena.

"Who are you?" he said. "You are not one of the people in our photographs."

Nick's voice sounded in her earpiece. "Tell him you're a journalist, visiting for a story. He'll like that."

"I'm a journalist," Selena said. "I work for the Times. I'm doing a feature piece on Manila and the American presence here in the Philippines."

"Ah, a journalist. Surely Allah has smiled upon me. You will tell our story to the world."

"Allah?" Selena said. "You are Muslim?"

Like a snake, the man's hand whipped through the air and slapped Selena across the face. The blow rocked her. Her cheek began to burn. At least he hadn't hit the side with the earpiece. 

"You do not say the name of God," the man said. "In your infidel mouth it is an abomination.
Look at you. Your hair uncovered, your legs and arms exposed for all to see. You are whores, both of you. But useful whores."

Selena wanted to rub her face where he'd hit her but
wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much it bothered her. She also wanted to kick him in the balls.
Who is he
? she thought
. Get him to tell you so Nick can find out.
She looked him in the eye and said, "If you want me to write about you, I need to know your name."

"Why not? You may call me Omar." Omar gestured to one of his men. "Take them into the big room with the others," he said.

The man pushed them toward the ballroom. He wasn't gentle about it. Selena heard Nick's voice in her right ear.

"Good work, Selena. I'll get Harker on it.
" He paused. "I'm right here, I'll get you out of there."

She almost answered and caught herself in time.

The ballroom faced out the back of the embassy onto the Chancery through a wall of tall windows. Many of the windows were broken, blown in by the attack. Glass and bits of stone and wood littered the room. Two Marines lay dead on the polished ballroom floor. The rest of the embassy staff clustered together against one of the walls, under a large painting of Admiral Dewey's flagship at anchor in Manila Bay. The Americans sat together. The Filipino staff formed their own group. Omar herded Selena and the ambassador over to the others.

Cathwaite's secretary got up and hugged the ambassador. "Margaret! Thank God you're all right."

"I'm fine, Helen. Is anyone else hurt except for our poor Marines?"

"Just cuts and scratches from the glass. Nothing serious. C
armichael doesn't look good. I'm worried about him."

Matthew C
armichael was the Commerce Department attaché. He was sitting to the side of the group, holding his hand against his chest and taking labored breaths. Sitting next to him was a blond haired man who appeared subdued. Selena figured him for the CIA spook. Carmichael's secretary sat huddled on the other side of her boss. The Filipinos looked frightened. They stared at the floor, avoiding eye contact with anyone. It wasn't the kind of group she would have picked to go up against a dozen terrorists.

Omar
jabbed Helen in the ribs with the barrel of his AK-47. "You, slut, shut up. All of you, sit. Now, or I kill you."

Selena sat down next to Margaret.

For now, she was on her own.

CHAPTER 16

"How many inside the building?" Harker asked. She and Stephanie were in Elizabeth's office in Virginia, talking to Nick over the satellite link.

"Uncertain. Selena said six. There could be more. The terrorists took out the Marine guards. They're led by a man named Omar."

"
That helps," Elizabeth said. "It's a common name but they're probably Abu Sayyaf. We'll look in the database." She paused. "Don't do anything stupid, Nick."

"If it's only six
we can take them. But we have to get into the building. They're going to have people watching the entrances. Can you get plans of the embassy? Blueprints?"

"I
can do that. Give me a minute." Stephanie's voice came over the link. In Virginia, she entered a string of commands on her keyboard. "I'm looking for them now," she said.

The Project computers were Crays. A search for
the embassy building plans was child's play for their enormous power. The drawings were up on Stephanie's monitor within a minute.

"
I'm looking at the plans," she told Nick. "The whole complex is built on an artificial extension into the bay. They sank six hundred concrete pillars into the bay floor and filled it in."

"How does that help?" Nick said. Stephanie heard impatience in his voice.

"There's an underground drainage system combined with a service tunnel for utilities serviced by a pumping station on the surface. The tunnel is big enough for a man to walk in. The pumps are gone but the groundskeepers use the old pump house for a storage facility. If you can get into the tunnel and up into the building it would put you on the grounds next to the Chancery."

"You see a way in
to the tunnel?"

"There's a building over it now and no way to tell until you get there.
The access might be sealed off. There are three buildings on the next street over, to the right of the embassy grounds. The one in the middle is the one you want. I'm sending a satellite shot now."

Nick looked at his phone. A satellite picture of the embassy complex appeared. He saw the buildings Steph was talking about.

"Okay, I've got it."

Nick looked across the
boulevard toward the embassy. The speakers were riling up the crowd. The riot police fingered their batons. Some of them held guns that fired rubber bullets. Nick could see half a dozen teargas guns being held at port arms. Things were about to get ugly.

"Hold on," Nick said
into his phone. "Looks like more cops are showing up."

A Kia SUV with police markings and four men
dressed in police uniforms pulled up. An officer got out and signaled his men into the street. They were armed with AK carbines.

Something bothered Nick about the scene. Then he realized what it was.

"This isn't right," he said to Ronnie. "The Filipinos don't carry AKs."

The officer walked to the guardhouse.
A Marine corporal came to the door and opened it. The officer raised his carbine and shot him. His men opened fire on the line of police stretched in front of the embassy gates. The crowd erupted in panic as people scrambled to get out of the way.

"Holy shit," Nick said.

"Nick, what's happening?" Elizabeth's voice crackled in his ear.

"
Terrorists, dressed like cops. They shot the Marine guard and they're firing on the riot police and the crowd. They're taking over the guardhouse."

"Nick, we gotta take cover," Lamont said.

There was a parking lot full of cars and a restaurant behind them. They ran behind one of the parked cars and watched what was happening across the street. A window in the front of the restaurant shattered, hit by a bullet. Another stray round whined through the air with a peculiar singing sound.

Nick was still on the link with Harker.
"Everything's turning bad," he said. "The crowd's running. People are going down. The cops are getting slaughtered."

In
a few minutes it was over. The demonstrators had fled, leaving trails of blood behind. Bodies lay in the street. Backpacks, pieces of clothing, shoes lay scattered on the ground. Banners and signs littered the pavement. The riot police lay where they'd fallen. It was a massacre.

A
man walked among the bodies and fired an occasional kill shot. The embassy gates swung open. The terrorists took out black headbands and put them on. They got back in the Kia and drove into the compound. The man who had shot the Marine guards emerged from the gatehouse as the gates swung closed and followed them into the embassy.

Nick said
, "They're not covering their faces. That's a bad sign. It means they don't care if they're identified. It could be a suicide mission."

Lamont said,
"If they're the ones who blew up the Indian Embassy, they could be planning the same thing here. We need to get in there, get Selena."

"You think I don't know that?"
Nick's voice was strained.

"Take it easy Nick, just sayin'."

"Yeah. All right, let's figure out how to get over to that building where the tunnel is."

Nick
studied the urban terrain. Beyond the restaurant parking lot was a children's playground, then a building with another parking lot. If they could get through the playground and to the end of that lot without being seen, they'd be right across from where they needed to go.

"We'll
move down to the end of the lot behind the cars, then through that playground," he said. "Keep going until we get to the end of the next lot. From there we can make it across the street. We time it right, they won't see us."