Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (29 page)

“You came in from the basement?” Saleem asked the American. They ended up side-by-side while running behind the reception desks. It was the best place for them to avoid so much firepower.

“Yes,” Gary answered.

“Did you see a surveillance camera room there?”

Gary shook his head. “I didn’t look for one.”

“That is how they know our positions. This hotel is filled with security cameras,” Saleem told him. “We need to go there and take them out.”

Gary looked around the lobby and asked, “What about the hostages?” He saw that they had the two Italian women from the sand tour, Sophie and Anastasia, in their group.

“We will have to come back for them,” Saleem insisted. “But we must take out their cameras to stop their preparations.”

Gary didn’t like the idea of leaving the hostages, but he had no choice. They were greatly outnumbered.

“So, how do we get back to the staircase?” Gary asked.

“We have to cover each other. I will go first.”

Saleem still did not trust the American to shoot to kill, so he decided to make them a path himself.

Gary nodded and agreed. “Okay. You go first, and I’ll cover you.”

Saleem nodded and wasted no time. He ran low from behind the reception desk and cleared a path to the basement door with a round of bullets.

With the men concentrating on the Pakistani, the American came right behind him, firing as they had planned.

When they made it into the basement staircase successfully, Habib, Akil and the rest of the men inside the surveillance room grabbed their assault weapons and prepared to hold their positions.

“They are coming now for us,” Habib stated nervously. Both the Pakistani traitor and the American were very good with their guns and their movements, and Habib had little confidence that they would survive an attack from the two men.

“I must tell Heru that the American and the traitor are coming for us.”

Akil nodded and did not dispute that they were in danger. His head continued to hurt from the American’s first attack on him inside the basement hallways.

“Yes, tell Heru now.”

Akil hoped that Heru would arrive in time in the basement to save them, but he realized that that would be unlikely. So he prepared to fight for his life.

Chapter 30

After receiving the urgent call from Chief Ali Youssef of the dangers at the hotel, Tariq asked the UAE police officers to pull their squad car over less than a mile away from the hostage scene. They were so close to the hotel that they could practically smell the gunpowder of warfare from their cars.

Ali had strongly suggested that it was no longer safe to bring the Egyptian there to the hotel amidst the violent insurgence.

Nevertheless, Mohd expected to talk to them
all
and more than just one, so that his story would not be lost on the ears of only one man. He had prepared himself for a climactic performance, and did not plan to speak to the lower-ranking officers alone. So when Tariq climbed into the back of the squad car with him, Mohd was determined to avoid saying too much.

Tariq began, “I have already heard of your story, and I am sorry for the loss of your wife. But to take the International Suites hostage, endangering
hundreds
of tourists and families, is barbaric. And I would not expect that from a man of peace.”

Mohd nodded patiently and was not offended. He planned to keep his poise. “Indeed, you may know some of
my
story, but you know
nothing
of my son and the love that he had for his mother.”

Tariq was noticeably surprised. With Mohd in his mid-sixties, his son could easily be a grown man in his thirties, and more than capable of leading a group of rebels.

“So your son has served in the Egyptian military as well?” Tariq asked. With Mohd having military training himself, it was easy to imagine that his son would have followed in his footsteps.

But Mohd had no more to say about it, at least not to him. “I will reveal more to the proper authorities at the hotel.”

“I
am
an authority,” Tariq snapped. “You can tell the rest to me. It is not safe at the hotel.”

“And it will not
be
safe unless you know
all
that you need to know,” Mohd hinted.

Tariq became alarmed.
What if they are planting a bomb at the hotel?
he thought.
They surely have enough warehouse space, trucks and plenty of men to do it.

Instead of wasting more time with an older man who had no reason to bend, Tariq nodded and made his swift decision. “Then we will take you there.”

He stepped back out of the squad car and closed the door to inform the officers: “To the hotel.”

“But I thought Chief Ali said not to.”

“The plans have changed, and we have no time to argue,” Tariq answered calmly. “My good friend Ali Youssef will understand when we arrive. In the meantime, call the Union Defence Force and have their intelligence division do a full search on the sons of Egyptian Army engineer Mohd Ahmed Nasir.”

The lead officer was surprised by the new information as well. “So his
son
is leading them. How obvious.”

Tariq nodded. “We would have found out eventually. This has all been very sudden. But I can only imagine how long they’ve been planning it. So call the Defence Force intelligence while I speak to the chief.”

*****

Up on the top floors of the hotel, Ra-Heru continued to prepare, with his men, a counterattack on the UAE soldiers. He had gotten word from the basement that his surveillance force was under attack.

“They are coming up the staircase to the left, so be prepared for them,” he told four of his armed immigrants on the seventeenth floor. On each level of the higher floors, at least six men guarded the hallways at each exit and the elevators to make sure that no families escaped. But on the lower floors, up to level five, the soldiers had infiltrated the building, and hostages were rapidly escaping to safety.

“Do you need any help, Heru?” one of the men asked the tactful and energized leader.

Heru paused, reflecting on the men who had been most loyal to his father. And he was still looking for traitors to dispose of.

“Yes,” he answered. “I could use you. Come with me.”

The man quickly followed him into the staircase to the left, where the UAE soldiers were heard shooting their way up.

Heru aimed his assault weapon down into the staircase for his man to attack. But the man looked surprised and confused by it.

“You want me to go right into them?” Heru was already skeptical of him. Then he came up with an idea.

“I have a plan.” He pulled out a thick rubber rope from the carry bag on his back that he planned to use later. He also had a belt of hooks to attach it to. “Put this on,” he told his man.

The immigrant put on the belt reluctantly. “What is this?” he asked.

“It is a way that you can help,” Heru said. “They will not be expecting this.”

*****

Back down in the basement, Habib, Akil and the other men inside of the surveillance room were expecting a fierce battle with the American and the Pakistani.

Then the cameras began to disappear in the basement, one by one.

“He’s covering the cameras with bags,” one of the men stated.

“Let’s go,” Habib told the others. It was time for them to defend themselves.

“You go first,” one of the men responded nervously.

Unafraid of the challenge, Akil decided to go, firing first into the basement hallway at ghosts.

They all waited for a response and heard nothing. Akil then stooped down and began to work his way up the hallway. The other men followed him, standing tall, with Habib in the back. Only one of them was left inside the camera room.

With only the sound of whipping wind, a seven-inch hunting knife spun through the air and landed in the neck of the first man behind Akil.

“ULLKK!” the man responded with the knife poking through the back of his neck. His death was certain.

Akil immediately fired up the hallway again, while Habib nearly lost his lunch. He could only imagine how much blood would squirt out of his man’s neck if he ever attempted to remove the blade.

Before they knew it, a second man was struck in the chest from a single bullet.

The immigrant man looked down at his chest in shock at the bullet hole that had sliced through his shirt. He slowly dropped his gun to the ground and fell to his knees, knowing that he would die.

Akil and Habib watched it all as if it was in slow motion, before their man fell sideways into the wall.

Incensed, Akil shouted, “We must not die like
pigs,
but like
men!”
and he charged forward like a maniac, shooting his way up the hallway. Habib breathed deeply and followed him, but the two remaining men looked at each other and ran the other way, deciding to escape through the parking lot exit in the back.

Through his recklessness, Akil was able to make it up the hallway, only to be tripped by the same American that he had lost in combat to earlier. But this time he was more prepared, kicking the American with a right foot that sent him crashing hard into the wall and losing his gun.

Habib took aim at the American with his assault weapon, but he was too slow to pull the trigger before being struck by bullets from the Pakistani.

As Habib fell backward, shaking dreadfully in response to his fate, he still fired his gun in the direction of the American.

Gary ducked the bullets just in time, but only to take an elbow to the jaw from the fierce fighting of Akil. The two men were too close for Akil to effectively aim his gun, so he prepared to fight the American in close combat with it. But the American grabbed the handle of the gun again. Remembering the headbutt from their earlier fight, Akil released the gun from the American and shoved him into the wall with it.

Akil followed up with a jumping right knee to the American’s ribs. He then grabbed back onto the long assault gun and headbutted the American back.

In amusement, Saleem watched the two grapple. It was a one-on-one fight, and he wanted to see how well the American could handle himself in combat.

The American stomped on the Arab’s toes and kneed him in the chest. He followed up with a right elbow to Akil’s jaw that sent him crashing to the floor. And before he could recover, Gary kicked him in the face with his heel.

Saleem was impressed. He nodded. “Good. Now finish him.”

He then moved forward with their mission to overtake the surveillance room. He was sure that there were more men inside, so he led with his gun and was very cautious. But when he arrived at the desired camera room, there was no one there.

Saleem grinned to himself and mumbled, “To live another day as a coward is far more important to some men than to die in valor.”

He then viewed the dozens of small monitors that filled the room, in search of one man: Ra-Heru.

As he continued to eye the many screens in search of Heru, Saleem could see where the UAE soldiers were finally overtaking the building and allowing the hostages to escape from the lower levels. He also viewed a beautiful and uncovered Arab woman with an immigrant man who helped her to guide tourists and families to the exits.

As expected, the American man walked in and joined him there inside the surveillance room. He had obviously won his second battle over the tough immigrant.

Saleem looked back at him and grinned. “How did it feel to finally kill a man?”

Gary paused. “If I didn’t kill him, I would be dead. I had no choice,” Gary said somberly.

Saleem turned away and had his doubts. But at the moment, he had other urgent matters on his mind. He pointed to a monitor from the top floors of the hotel and said, “Here. Once we manage to kill him, this nightmare will be over.”

Gary looked at the monitor and saw an average-sized Middle Eastern man helping another to attach a rope to his belt.

Saleem became excited. “That is Ra-Heru, the Egyptian leader of this insane revolt. And he knows that he will die today. Nevertheless, the immigrant laborers of Dubai have already made their point. We will never be ignored in Dubai again.”

Gary thought about what Saleem meant when he said, “We will never be ignored.”
Could Saleem be part of the revolt? But why would he kill the other immigrants? Why would he work with me?

Gary thought he must have heard Saleem incorrectly in all of the excitement, then he scanned the monitors and focused on one screen. He spotted Ramia and Johnny in the middle of rescue missions inside the hallways.

“What are they doing? The police allowed them in here?”

Saleem looked back at him and asked, “You know them? I thought they looked out of place myself. But they are doing a good service for the tourists. They are showing extreme bravery. You must admire that.”

Gary made a note of what floor they were on to get them out of there and back to safety outside. He saw no reason for them to be there. He felt the police and the soldiers should have been more involved. But they had their hands full in the lobby.

“That lobby entrance will be their last stand,” Gary said.

Heru’s imposing lieutenant was still holding down the fort there, and with more hostages and more men, he showed no signs of breaking his reserve.

Saleem asked the American, “Do you think you can handle him?”

Gary sized the man up and nodded confidently. “Yeah. But the hostages are the problem.”

“Indeed they are,” the Pakistani agreed. “And Heru is my problem.”

They watched again as the rebellion leader prepared a daring tactic inside of the left staircase, more than halfway up the building.

*****

Back inside the high staircase up the building, Heru attached his immigrant follower to the thick rubber rope at his waist. He then looked down the staircase to measure how many flights down the soldiers were.

“I still don’t understand what you’re doing,” the immigrant gunman said apprehensively.

Still loyal to Mohd, he felt that his initial ideas of catching the determined son Heru off-guard and attacking him were getting further away from reality.