The Last Jihad (35 page)

“Yes, yes,”
cheered the men in the bunker down below.

Two down.

Two to go.

The sound startled her.

Down the darkened hall across from her, she could see and hear the east elevator door beginning to open. McCoy could hear the gunfire upstairs and her heart was racing. She had no idea who might be coming through that door. But Black had been clear. It wouldn’t be him. So blow them away.

She waited a split second for the elevator door to open just a little more, then saw a shadowy figure holding a machine gun. It certainly wasn’t Black. She opened fire—cool, smooth, just like she’d been trained. Double-tap to the torso. The man crashed to the floor, barely knowing what hit him.

Now the elevator behind her began to open as well. McCoy wheeled around and aimed her Beretta at the door. She’d hoped to God it was Black.

“McCoy. It’s me—Deek.”

“Hands! Hands!”
she shouted back, her adrenaline racing.

The door opened, and Black came out with his hands up. Both breathed a quick sigh of relief as Black hurried to her side.

“Look out,”
Black suddenly screamed.
“Get down.”

McCoy, already down on one knee, flattened herself to the floor. The bloody man in the elevator began lifting his machine gun. Black raised his revolver, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. But nothing fired. His weapon was empty and the bloody, shadowy man was still raising his weapon.

“McCoy—I’m out,”
Black screamed.

McCoy looked up and saw the machine gun barrel aiming at her face. She instinctively emptied her Beretta 9mm into the shadows. The man’s machine gun dropped to the floor as she heard him scream and collapse, limp and lifeless.

It was over. But it had been close. Black just stood and stared. It took a second for him to get his bearings again. But he did, rapidly reloading as McCoy did the same.

“How many left?” she whispered, popping in a fresh clip and watching nervously for any signs of movement in the dark hallway.

“Let’s see,” he answered, taking a fast accounting of their work. “We got two in this hallway. One up in the kitchen. That should leave just one more, I think. Upstairs.”

“What do you want to do?”

“It’s too risky to take the stairs. If he’s in the living room, he’ll see us before we see him. But he obviously knows about the elevators. He could be waiting at either one.”

Black looked around.

“Where did everyone else go?” he whispered.

“I have no idea,” McCoy responded. “They just disappeared.”

“I know. It’s weird.”

“Come on, Deek, man. We need a plan.”

“OK. You go up the west elevator here,” Black said, motioning to the one behind him, the one he’d just come down. “I’ll go up the other side. When the doors open, if you see movement just start firing. If not, try to work your way towards the living room. Make sure to check all the beds, the closets, whatever. Don’t take any chances, OK?”

“Don’t worry.”

“Good. Let’s do it.”

“And Deek?” asked McCoy. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“The ‘four horsemen’?” responded Black.

“Exactly.”

“We’ll know soon enough. Let’s just get this last guy before he gets us.”

Black quickly checked the hallway. It was clear. He raced across to the east elevator, grabbed the dead man’s AK-47, and ripped off his black mask. Then he dragged him back into the hallway and left him under the security cameras.

Sanchez and the president burst into the safety of the President’s Emergency Operations Center underneath the White House.

The vice president and Kirkpatrick—already assured the president was safe—were on a videoconference with Mitchell at CIA and Secretary Trainor and General Mutschler at the Pentagon.

“Jim, thank God,” said the First Lady, giving him a big hug, getting him seated and holding his hand.

“Mr. President, thank God you’re OK,” echoed the VP.

“Have you talked to Harris?” the president responded.

“We just did, sir. Told us the whole thing.”

“Cupid?”

“Unbelievable. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us earlier.”

“How could I?”

The cameras focused on the face of the dead man in the hallway.

It was instantly digitized and processed through a high-speed database. A few seconds later, Dr. Mordechai saw the Interpol record come up on one of his computer screens. Sure enough, he was Iraqi. The “four horsemen” had come gunning for them.

“Sir, I have more bad news,” said Kirkpatrick.

“What now?” asked the president, shaken and livid.

“There’s been an explosion inside Dr. Mordechai’s house.”

“Oh my God. What happened? What about Bennett and his team?”

“They’re in the house right now, sir. We don’t know what’s happened, or their status. Not yet. I immediately re-tasked a satellite to move over the house to let us see what’s going on inside. We should be in range in the next sixty seconds.”

“Get me Doron on the line.”

“We’ve been trying, sir,” Kirkpatrick told him. “For the last fifteen minutes. We can’t get through. Not since the gun battle at the Cathedral. We think they’ve gone into an emergency session. Our fear is that they are weighing a first strike against Iraq.”

“Keep trying. Try every number we’ve got.”

The president seethed. It was everything he could do not to explode at someone right now. One of his own Secret Service agents had just tried to kill him. Three of his best people were pinned down—possibly dead—inside Israel. And Israel and Iraq were on the brink of going nuclear.

“SEAL Team Six—are they still on the Reagan?” the president demanded.

“No, sir,” said Kirkpatrick. “They’re heading to Baghdad with the NEST guys.”

“Well, send someone in to rescue Bennett’s team—NOW.”

The west elevator door opened in Dr. Mordechai’s room.

McCoy peered out anxiously, her fully loaded Beretta leading the way. There was no one in the closet. She inched forward. No one in the office.

Black pushed the up button, but the east elevator started going down.

Down? Why was it going down?

Black tried not to panic, aimed his .45, and prepared to fire.

McCoy scanned the hallway—clear.

She darted across into Dr. Mordechai’s bedroom—clear. Then she plunged her Beretta through the bathroom door, scanning for signs of life. Nothing. She darted back across into the office and hugged the wall, trying to plot out her next move.

The elevator clanged to a stop—but the door didn’t open.

This is it
, thought Black.
I’m about to die.

“Black,” Bennett whispered. “Can you hear me?”

Black was stunned.

“Jon? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m going to open the door. Just don’t shoot.”

“I won’t if you won’t.”

Black still had his sense of humor, even under fire. The elevator door opened. Now Black saw what Bennett and the others had seen some thirty minutes before: a spectacular underground bunker where Mordechai could track two battles at once—one for his country, and one for his home.

“We can’t leave McCoy up there by herself,” said Bennett, triple-checking his Uzi and getting into the elevator.

“You really know how to use one of these things?” asked Black

“Hey, just aim and shoot.”

“Good grief, Jon. It’s an Uzi. Not a Polaroid.”

McCoy quickly—carefully—peered around the corner.

She still saw no one in the hallway to the kitchen. But where was Black? He’d have a much better view of the living room and the kitchen coming from the east wing than she had from this office.

She held her Beretta close to her face, her mind racing for options. She looked down on the hallway floor and saw something small and black. What was it? It was bigger than a clip. A wallet, maybe? She glanced down the hallway again, then quickly grabbed it.

It was Deek’s BlackBerry. She switched it to mute/vibrate to make sure it didn’t suddenly make a sound. Then she typed in a quick message.

“jon—where are you?—seen black?—erin”

Bennett suddenly felt his BlackBerry vibrating.

It was from McCoy.

“Deek, look,” Bennett whispered.

The two glanced at the message as Black realized his BlackBerry was gone.

“Where is she?” Black whispered back.

The elevator stopped, and the door opened. Black thrust his AK-47 out into the guest room and scanned for any sign of life or movement. Nothing.

He moved forward carefully, covering Bennett as he typed a note back to McCoy:
Where are you? Wait there. We’ll come to you.
When he was done, Black pointed to the hatch into his bedroom closet, instructing Bennett to go through it, then quietly explained he’d cross through the hallway, work his way down through the bedrooms on the other side of the hall. When he knocked twice on the wall, they should both burst out into the living room, guns blazing.

Black took off his night-vision goggles and put them on Bennett. They only had one set between them, and Black certainly had a lot more experience at this than Bennett. Confident they were as ready as they were going to be, Black glanced out the hallway door, drew his head back in, double-checked his machine gun, then sprinted across.

The hall erupted with gunfire, the distinctive tinkling of spent metal shells dropping to the hardwood floor. Bennett dropped to his knees, shivering with fear. His back against the wall, he huddled in the corner by the hatch, but didn’t dare go through it. What if this monster was on the other side?

The house suddenly became eerily quiet. Bennett strained to hear something, anything. Where was this guy? Had Black been hit? His BlackBerry vibrated again. It was McCoy. She was in Dr. Mordechai’s private office. He typed a quick note back.

“i’m fine—not sure about deek.”

She wrote back: “i’m praying for you guys.” Strangely enough, it actually did make him feel better. He tried to muster up some courage, settled his breathing, adjusted the night-vision goggles, and carefully lifted the hatch. He aimed the Uzi inside, peered through, not moving a millimeter, not making a sound. He saw nothing. No movement. No signs of a human presence of any kind.

Now what? His BlackBerry went off again. He grabbed it, hoping it was McCoy. It wasn’t. It was from the White House, half a world away.

“Jon—POTUS requests status check…you guys OK?…intel says explosions, gunfire in house…seal team three in route…thirty minutes…stand by—K.”

It was Kirkpatrick. The president was sending in a Navy SEAL Team to rescue them.
Thank God
, he thought. Maybe McCoy’s prayers really were working.
Then again
, he thought,
we might not be alive in thirty minutes
.

Black was hit.

He was bleeding heavily from the fiery gash in his right elbow and thought the bone might be shattered. True or not, he could barely hold his weapon, and wasn’t much of a shot as a lefty.

Slowly, painfully, he worked his way down through the bedrooms, leaving a trail of blood as he went. He made it to the final bedroom and crouched by the door. His eyes were blurring. His head was swimming. He was losing blood fast. If something didn’t happen soon, he’d be unconscious in less than five minutes.

“The satellite’s in place, Mr. President,” Kirkpatrick shouted.

The president and vice president were huddled in the corner, on the phone with the Joint Chiefs, considering their options. At the sound of Kirkpatrick’s voice, however, the two whipped around and stared up at the video screen on the far wall. The lights were dimmed. The static cleared up. Now the president and his NSC team found themselves looking down into Dr. Mordechai’s house via high-resolution thermal imagery.

“Who’s that?” asked the president

Mitchell, via video conference—but watching the same image in the CIA Op Center at Langley—answered quickly.

“The person on the far left, Mr. President—I think that’s McCoy.”

“How about the two on the right side of the house?”

“The one on upper part of the screen, in the northern bedroom of the east wing, looks a little larger, taller—probably Black. The one crawling through one of the walls, my guess is that’s Bennett.”

“The rest of those bodies look dead.”

“They do, sir.”

“And that guy—the one crouching in the stairwell—is that Dr. Mordechai?”

“Doubt it, sir. Looks like a bandit. In fact, looks like the guy’s surrounded, but the good guys don’t know it.”

The president’s combat instincts began kicking in.