The Last Days (31 page)

“Can it wait a few minutes, Tariq?” Ziegler asked his second-in-command.

“No, sir. I need you right now.”

Ziegler could see a flash of panic in Tariq's eyes. He excused himself from the call, promising to get back with the senior commanders in a few minutes, then stepped back into the control room. What he saw on the first black-and-white security monitor he looked at terrified him. Six men—their faces shrouded by black-and-white checked kaffiyahs—were setting the VW van on fire.

Scanning from one monitor to the next, Ziegler could see at least a hundred men, possibly more, all covered by kaffiyahs gathering on the narrow streets in front and behind the Hotel Baghdad. Some were throwing rocks at the windows. Some were firing machine guns into the air. One was burning an American flag. All of them looked violent and Ziegler couldn't process all the images fast enough.

How could anyone know where they were? Had someone seen them enter the hotel? Hadn't the van been stolen? Hadn't it been untraceable? Of course, that was all history, water under the bridge. What kind of threat did this mob pose? That was the real question. How secure was Gaza Station? They were about to find out.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Lights and buzzers on the internal security panels began going off. Sensors indicated intrusions in the center east quadrant of the hotel foyer.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Now sensors in the southwest quadrant began going crazy. The mob was trying to break through the back doors as well.

Suddenly, a powerful explosion hit the northeast corner of the building. Even three stories down, Ziegler and Tariq could feel the impact as everything around them began to shake. The lights flickered. Then came a second massive explosion, and a third.

Ziegler's eyes darted from screen to screen. The unthinkable was happening. The Hotel Baghdad was beginning to teeter. It appeared ready to implode. Again the lights in the main control room began flickering. Ziegler grabbed the headset on the desk in front of him, and flicked on the microphone, activating a direct line to the Global Operations Ceneter at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“GOC, this is Gaza Station. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. Communications may soon be compromised. We need air support and extraction immediately. I repeat, we are under a Level Five attack and need immediate assistance.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the entire bank of video screens in front of him went dead. Then the lights went out. Gaza Station was shaking furiously. All power was gone. They were standing in complete darkness.

Those living under the Hotel Baghdad never knew what hit them.

But all of them could feel the five-story structure above them disintegrating, succumbing to the three massive explosions and an eighteen-hundred-degree firestorm. The east face came down first, followed by the south portico. Then, just a few seconds later, the rest of the building's core collapsed as the crushing weight of the top floors became too much for the lower floors to bear. A noxious cloud of smoke filled the air. Flames shot out from every crevice.

Bennett smashed to the floor. Instinctively covering his head with his arms, he tried desperately to shield himself and McCoy from the chunks of ceiling crashing down all around him. Everything in the room shook violently. He could hear the pipes in the bathroom being ripped through the tiles and erupting into a ceaseless spray of water. The lights flickered and sparked, then all shorted out, then several more explosions rocked the safe house.

And then, the explosions stopped. Debris stopped falling. The temperature in the room began spiking quickly. It was getting more and more difficult to breathe. Bennett was numb. Hadn't he been through this already? Hadn't it all been a dream, a nightmare? Yes, he told himself, yes—both. But this was no premonition. This was no vision of an evil yet to come. This was real.

“Erin, you OK?” he whispered in the darkness, a rising anxiety thick in his voice.

“I don't know. I'm bleeding from some glass, I think. But nothing seems to be broken. How 'bout you?”

“Same, I think. I'm OK. Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Where's your Beretta?”

“It's here, somewhere—what just happened?”

Bennett didn't answer. He crawled his way through the broken glass of the television and shattered mirror and picture frames over to Ziegler's desk. He felt around in the pitch-blackness for the file drawers, then pulled open the bottom one on the right. Sure enough, it was unlocked. And sure enough, they were there—two loaded .357 Magnums and boxes of spare rounds of ammunition, just like in the dream.

“What are you doing?” asked McCoy, feeling around for her purse and the handgun and spare clips inside it.

“The other night, I had a nightmare. I saw this exact situation, except you weren't with me.”

“What?”

She suddenly found her purse under the shattered coffee table.

“The Hotel Baghdad just collapsed. Three huge explosions. I think one of them was a car bomb. Maybe a truck bomb. I don't know for sure.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you. The dream I had the other night—there was a huge explosion. I was in this room. All the lights went out. But I could see Gaza Station filling up with fire and smoke—burst pipes, men firing AK-47s, coming in through gaps in the ceilings. Look, we don't have much time. We need to get Sa'id and Galshnikov, and find Ziegler and Tariq and anyone on their team still alive.”

McCoy didn't know what to say. She didn't know what he was talking about, or what to believe. No one knew Jon Bennett better than she did, but she'd never heard him talk like this. Dreams? Premonitions? It wasn't like him. It didn't make sense. But he was right about one thing—they didn't have much time to get out alive. Worse, they had no idea how to get out. There was no way they could go back up the silo by which they had entered. They had to find Ziegler or his deputies.

She chastised herself for not getting briefed earlier on all the possible escape options. It was standard operating procedure for every operative at every CIA safe house—planning for every contingency, always preparing for the worst. She hadn't done any of it. She'd let her guard down, and now it might cost them.

McCoy felt around in the darkness for the phones on Ziegler's desk. Finding one, she grabbed one of the receivers and began to dial the control room.

“Jon, the lines are dead.”

There was a long silence.

“Jon, in your dream, did you see how to get out?”

He hadn't. He didn't know. Not for sure. All he'd seen was a shoot-out in the main control room, the one that ended with him getting killed. But he couldn't tell her that. She'd already done so much for him. She'd saved his life countless times. He owed her as much, and he was determined to protect her at all costs.

“Just follow me and stay close,” he said, then scrambled over to the door, holding the two .357s out in front of him.

As he'd done in the dream, Bennett put the back of his hand against the door, just as his father had taught him when they'd stayed in hotels. It was hot—too hot—and he winced in pain and quickly pulled his hand back and blew on it. He silently cursed himself. He should have seen that coming. He could see an orange glow through the cracks in the door frame. The fires had to be close. But they didn't really have any choice. If they stayed in Ziegler's room, they were as good as dead. That much was certain. He decided right there. They might not make it out of this place, but at least he was going to die trying.

Bennett set the pistols down on the floor, took off his right shoe, pulled off his sock, and put it over his left hand. Then using that hand he quickly turned the handle and pulled the door open. A blast of superheated air hit him in the face and he drew back, using the door as a shield. He quickly put his sock and shoe back on, looked around the room and scooped up the guns. The fires in the hallway provided more than enough visibility to see the destruction that had been wrought all around him. Bennett just stared at it all, then looked back at McCoy. Her face was sweaty and glowing amidst the raging flames, but her eyes sparkled with an inner life that he found so magnetic.

“You ready?” he whispered, his mouth close to hers.

“I guess.”

His face moved still closer to hers. He wanted to kiss her before he died. Now seemed as good a time as any. But suddenly, another explosion rocked the building. They could hear the crackle of automatic gunfire. It was definitely inside the Gaza Station complex, but it wasn't close. It had to be on the other side, closer to the main control room. But a shot of fear and adrenaline coursed through his veins. He had no way of knowing who was shooting at whom. How was he supposed to defend them if he had to—
when
he had to?

They worked their way to the junction of two hallways, staying low to avoid suffocating on the smoke snaking along the ceilings. One of the hallways led to the main control room. Ziegler, Tariq, and their team were probably in there, and the urge to keep going in that direction was almost overpowering. They had to find them. They had to find out how to get out of this place before it was too late.

The other hallway led to Sa'id's and Galishnikov's room. They had to find them, too, especially Sa'id. The man was now the prime minister of Palestine. They were all under direct orders by the president of the United States to protect him at all costs. Still, what good would it do to find them if they had no idea where to take them? Couldn't they come back for those two later, after they hooked up with Ziegler and his men? Bennett froze for a moment. His eyes scanned both hallways, looking for any sign of friends or enemies, as he processed both options. Finding Ziegler first made more sense. It seemed logical, and it was closer, faster. But it was a seduction, a temptation. He knew it. He could feel it. Something was luring him in. Something was warning him off. He agonized as the flames and heat grew more intense. They couldn't stay still. They had to keep moving.

Dressed in blue jeans and a black T-shirt, Bennett was on his stomach, on the floor—the only place he could breathe—covered in at least a foot of water. McCoy, in navy blue sweatpants and a thick gray fleece, was right behind him, shivering in the ice-cold water pouring out of at least a dozen shattered pipes. But in less than an hour, she figured, that water would be heating toward a boil. She was coming to the same conclusion. They had no choice. They had to keep moving. They could hear men shouting in Arabic, but hadn't seen anyone, dead or alive. Not yet. Not a soul. Where were they all? Had all of the Gaza Station team been killed either in the initial explosions or the gun battles that followed?

Not seeing a single living soul besides themselves was an eerie feeling. All they could see were flames and smoke and the water they were sloshing through. Still, Bennett was actually grateful for the flames—at least they provided some light in this subterranean labyrinth. But the raging electrical fires in the walls and ceilings worried him. It would only take one wire or cable falling into all this water and they'd be electrocuted instantly.

His eyes—bloodshot and stinging something fierce from all the smoke—searched wildly for escape routes. But their options, limited from the beginning, were narrowing fast. Small but rapidly growing fires seemed to block their path to Galishnikov's and Sa'id's room. Now more fires blocked the way back to Ziegler's room, as well. They weren't completely trapped, but it was only a matter of time. The only way out seemed to be forward. But something in Bennett's gut whispered it was a trap, told him to go to the right, through the flames, to Sa'id and Galishnikov, before it was too late.

Flashbacks from his nightmare came like a strobe light. He remembered the gun battle in the control room. He remembered the overwhelming presence of evil he felt, and being trapped in the conference room, where he'd almost died. It was as though sirens were calling him to that control room, luring him forward. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe he'd woken up to soon. Maybe it wasn't a death trap but a road map he could follow better this time.

Fresh bursts of automatic gunfire—closer, louder, and coming from the main control room in longer bursts—snapped Bennett back to reality. He looked over his shoulder, made sure McCoy was OK, then silently motioned her to follow him down the hallway—now almost completely engulfed in fire—to Tariq's quarters, to Galishnikov and Sa'id. Maybe it was suicide. But there was only one way to find out.

 

Both phones and his pager went off all at once.

It was well past midnight, but such was the life of a
New York Times
White House correspondent. Forever electronically tethered to a world that never stopped moving. Marcus Jackson clicked on the light beside his bed and tried to get his bearings. He raced into the bathroom to grab one of the cell phones out of its charger, and just in time.

“
You wanted to know about Bennett?
” said the voice at the other end.

“Talk to me.”

 

Danny Tracker raced downstairs.

The hastily scribbled note passed to the CIA's deputy director of Operations during a crisis meeting in his office bore only a few words—“GS down…L5…request immediate extract.” But the message was devastating. Everything was suddenly at risk. If it were true—if Gaza Station had really been compromised, or worse, was going down in flames—the implications were unthinkable. Losing a $25 million intelligence gathering facility would be bad enough. Losing Bennett and McCoy, plus Ziegler and his team, would be a nightmare. But losing Ibrahim Sa'id, the newly appointed prime minister of Palestine, would be catastrophic. Everything now hinged on him. He needed to be protected and extracted at all costs.

Mitchell wasn't at Langley. He was in an armor-plated SUV, en route from the White House, and his phone was busy. Tracker raced down the stairwell to the Global Operations Center. He tried Mitchell again—still busy. Then he tried Ed Mutschler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“Mutschler—go.”

“General, it's Danny,” shouted Tracker as a guard opened the door to the Global Ops Center and waved him through. “You see what I'm seeing?”

“Gaza Station?”

“We've got to go in now, General,” said Tracker. “Are your guys ready?”

“My guys are always ready. The real question is: are they even still alive?”