Counterplay

35

“Watch her hands,” Giancarlo said.

“What?” his brother, Zak, replied. “Watch whose hands?”

Giancarlo said, “Watch Lucy’s hands.”

Like a good part of the rest of the world, the twins were camped out in front of their television watching the events as they unfolded at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. At the moment, a large man was holding a knife to the throat of the Pope while their sister stood somewhat to the rear but still in view.

If the twins had more at stake than some in what occurred, they were also somewhat used to their family going from the frying pan and into the fire on a regular basis. If it gave them a rather unusual childhood, they also developed a strong belief that things would turn out all right; after all, their mother and father were in the fray.

“So what?” Zak said.

“I’m watching Lucy’s hands,” Giancarlo said. “She’s signing.”

“Signing what?”

“Would you quit being dense? She’s saying something in sign language.”

“Cool! What’s she saying?”

After he was blinded by an assassin’s shotgun pellet, Giancarlo had taken up reading in Braille. Then when he regained his sight, he’d remained fascinated by how the blind, and then the deaf, communicated and started to learn sign language, which was one of the sixty-some-odd languages Lucy knew.

“Um, let me see,” Giancarlo said. “I’m still pretty shaky at this. She’s keeps signing the same thing over and over. ‘Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field…. Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field.’ ”

“I don’t get it,” Zak said.

“Neither do I,” Giancarlo replied. “But she wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t important.”

“So who do we tell?” Zak said. “We can’t get anybody on their cell phones.”

“The guy outside the door,” Giancarlo said and walked over to the front door. He opened it and invited the agent inside. “Um, we think our sister is trying to tell us something about what’s going on at the cathedral?”

The agent glanced at the television just as Kane stopped the broadcast. “Like what?” he said.

“We don’t know,” Giancarlo replied. “That’s why we want to go down there and tell somebody like Espey.”

“Espey?” the agent replied.

“Yeah, Espey Jaxon, he’s a G-man,” Zak said. “He’ll know what to do with the information.”

The agent smiled. “Why don’t you just tell me, and I’ll relay the information,” he said.

Giancarlo frowned. “No. I think we’ll go to the cathedral. Our folks are in there.” He started to walk to the front door, but the agent pulled him back and shut the door.

“Keep your mouths shut,” he said, opening his coat enough to show them his gun. “Where’s your mother?”

“Gone,” Zak said. “What’s it to you?”

“Shut up, kid, and have a seat.”

“Shut up yourself. We’re leaving, and if you try to stop us, our dog is going to eat you.”

The agent looked over at Gilgamesh who was standing watching the conversation but wagging his tail. The agent’s orders were to kill the kids and the mother, who had now mysteriously disappeared. He wasn’t looking forward to it; then again, national security sometimes required small sacrifices. He laughed and put his hand on his gun, ready to pull it and shoot the dog. “Yeah, right. Gilgamesh, attack!” The dog just stood there wagging his tail. The agent laughed again, “Gilgamesh, sit!” The dog obeyed.

The agent looked back at the boys and pulled his gun. “Some guard dog. You little fuckers aren’t going anywhere. Now, sit on the couch while I go check on your mom. If you try to get out of here, the agent at the front door will make things very unpleasant for you.”

“You said it wrong,” Giancarlo pointed out.

“Said what wrong?” the agent replied, walking over to scratch the dog’s neck.

“His word for ‘attack’ isn’t English,” Zak said.

“No? He speaks other languages?” the agent smirked.

“Yeah, Italian,” Giancarlo said. “The word is assalire.”

Too late the agent heard the rumble start within the big dog’s chest. He tried to reach for his gun, but the big dog already had his forearm in his mouth. The agent screamed as the dog bit down and screamed again at the sound of the bones in his arm being pulverized. He fumbled for the gun with his other hand and almost reached it when he noticed the dog had let go of him. There was a moment when he looked into the dog’s brown-yellow eyes, just before the animal tore his throat out.

“Mom’s going to be pissed about all the blood,” Zak said as they walked out the front door.

“I think she’ll understand,” Giancarlo said. He rapped the code on the elevator door. A moment later, the door opened and the hanging ladder appeared.

A few minutes later, the agent on the bottom floor heard the elevator coming down. Job’s finished, he thought. Figured that was what the scream was about. He waited for his partner to emerge after which they’d disappear-maybe take a month or two down in Costa Rica until the dust settled. However, when the door opened, the agent took a look at the slaughtered body of his partner and threw up.

Ten minutes later, the twins showed up at the police barricade at Forty-seventh and Fifth Avenue and squirmed their way to the front of the anxious crowd. “We’re District Attorney Butch Karp’s kids,” they told the officer at the checkpoint. “And we need to talk to the FBI guys at the cathedral.”

“Yeah, right, kids, just like everybody else here,” the officer said. “But sorry, no one gets through.”

Zak and Giancarlo backed off for a moment. “You got to get through,” Zak said.

Giancarlo agreed. “But how?”

“What we need here,” Zak replied, “is a diversion. You ready?”

“What? Wait! No!” Giancarlo shouted, but Zak had already dashed through the checkpoint, followed by the officer and several others. The officers who closed ranks to prevent other dashes watched the mad chase as Zak darted this way and that, so they weren’t ready when Giancarlo slipped between two of them and took off up Fifth Avenue.

Three blocks later, winded and barely ahead of the pursuing police officers, Giancarlo ran up to where he saw Jaxon and some other men who were watching a television screen. A pretty woman with dark hair and a mole on her cheek was speaking at the camera.

“We have increased our demands,” she shouted. “We insist that all prisoners held by the criminal United States and its puppet allies captured in its illegal wars on Muslim lands be freed immediately. We also demand that all Muslims captured in the Russian war of aggression against Chechnya be released immediately and that all Russian troops leave Chechnya.”

“She’s building up to something,” Jaxon said to Denton. “I think you better get your guys ready to go in. She knows nobody is going to go for these demands. And where’s Kane in all this? He’s not the sort to blow himself up for Allah or anybody else.”

“Jaxon, Jaxon!” Giancarlo shouted. “I have to tell you something.”

A police officer grabbed the boy and started to pull him away, kicking and screaming. The agent looked over and saw who was shouting at him and called out to the officer. “That’s okay. Let him go.”

When Giancarlo ran up, Jaxon leaned over. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re going to try to get your dad out of there.”

“Mom, too,” Giancarlo said.

“Your mom’s inside?” Jaxon said. “I didn’t see her go in.”

“She snuck in with a couple of guys after she figured out something was wrong.”

Jaxon smiled. “Smart lady, your mom.”

“Yeah, but that’s not why I came,” he said. “Lucy was using sign language on the television to tell us something.”

“What she say?” Jaxon asked.

“She said she’s a hostage,” Giancarlo replied.

Jaxon straightened up. “Not anymore,” he said. “She’s out and on her way to a hospital. She’s going to be okay. Now, I need to get back to-”

“No,” Giancarlo said tugging at his arm. “She said this when they were threatening to kill the Pope. So we already knew she was a hostage. She was trying to say she was still going to be a hostage. Sign language isn’t that exact, especially when Lucy had to be careful no one would notice.”

Jaxon furrowed his brow. Where is Kane? he wondered. Dead? Killed by the terrorists? Or gone? “What else did she say?”

“It didn’t make a lot of sense,” Giancarlo explained. “She just kept signing the same thing. ‘Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field.’ That’s it, but I bet it’s a clue on where she was being taken.”

Jon Ellis walked up. “We got a crisis going on over here, Jaxon,” he said.

Jaxon gave Ellis a funny look. “This is Butch Karp’s son, Giancarlo. He says Lucy was using sign language before she came out of the cathedral. He thinks she’s still a hostage and was trying to give us an indication of how to find her.”

Ellis scoffed. “Come on, that’s crazy.”

“Is it?” Jaxon asked. He strode over to Denton. “Hey, Bill, would you get your guys to check on that ambulance that was taking Hodges and Lucy to the hospital.”

Denton got on the radio, then turned around and shrugged. “The ambulance isn’t responding,” he said. “It never arrived.”

Jaxon whirled expecting to see Ellis. But the man had disappeared. He turned back to Denton. “We need to find that ambulance,” he said. “I think Hodges is wrong.”

“Wrong? As in a bad guy?” Denton asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know how he pulled it off,” Jaxon said. “But I think if we find Hodges, we’ll find Kane, and he’s got Lucy and Clay Fulton with him.”

Jaxon ran the clues through his head again. Annoy Satan? Baker? Field? But just then the sound of gunfire erupted in the cathedral.

“Go, go, go!” Denton shouted into his microphone and immediately the NYPD and FBI SWAT teams surrounding the cathedral rushed for the entrances.

Inside the cathedral, two different women fought to keep their emotions in check. As she made her demands for the television audience, Samira Azzam had battled back tears. This was to be the best day of her life when she and the woman she loved would sacrifice themselves for the ultimate triumph of Islam.

When Kane left the building, she’d felt an enormous burden lifted from her shoulders. Never again would any man touch her. She turned to Ajmaani and smiled. “It is time, my darling,” she said. But Ajmaani had walked up to her shaking her head.

“Perhaps for you, my little warrior,” she said, kissing her on the cheeks. “But I have other duties. I will be leaving now for a part of the building that has not been booby-trapped.”

Azzam had looked at her for a moment before comprehending what her lover was saying. “You intend to let them capture you?” she asked, aghast.

“Only for the moment,” Ajmaani nee Nadya Malovo replied. “I will be ‘exchanged’ later. Perhaps, if you wish, you could also survive this day with me.”

Hot, angry tears flooded Azzam’s eyes. Once again, she’d been betrayed. She considered killing Ajmaani, who turned and walked toward the back of the cathedral. But even as she pointed her gun, she could not pull the trigger. Instead, she’d allowed the hatred to boil up in her as she began to make her demands.

Across the dais from Azzam, Marlene had taken as much inaction as she could stand. It had taken every bit of willpower not to do something when the initial attack took place, and even more when her daughter and husband were assaulted. But she’d known that if she moved, she would have died without accomplishing anything. Her heart told her to defend her family. But her mind knew that if there was any way to save the Pope and the two thousand others in the cathedral, it had to take precedence.

Still, she also knew that Azzam was building toward the big moment. Soon she would have to take action and most likely die in vain. Jojola had once told her that a warrior wasn’t someone who weighed whether he would survive the battle or not. “A warrior takes the necessary action on behalf of others, regardless of the consequences to himself,” he’d said. “This sets him free to be a perfect weapon.”

Marlene felt a hot tear spring to her eye. Several times over the past weeks, her mind had played tricks on her. She’d see a face in a crowd and start to cry out, “John Jojola!” But the face wouldn’t be there when she looked again. Or from a distance…or when the lighting was unsure…she’d see some old bum walking away with that curious, bowlegged gait that her friend had. But she could never quite catch up and had finally quit trying, realizing that her mind was seeing what she wanted to see.

I wish I could see you here, now, John, she thought. You were the perfect warrior, and we need you. But I guess we’ll have to settle for me.

The moment arrived when Azzam motioned for the big male terrorist to again take his place behind the Pope with his knife. Azzam was almost shrieking now as she began to read off a list of “crimes” committed by Christians against Muslims. Marlene had no idea where Yvgeny and Tran were, but she locked eyes with Alejandro and nodded. It was now or never.

Just then, a large priest with a scarred face-the one she’d seen have words with Kane as he was leaving-stepped forward and grabbed the terrorist behind the Pope in a bear hug, pulling him back and away from the pontiff.

Distracted, Azzam pointed her gun and shot the big priest whose treachery had brought her so close to the glorious martyrdom she sought. At the same time, Marlene pushed through the crowd of nuns and began to sprint for the terrorist leader.

One of Azzam’s men shouted a warning and pointed behind her. Azzam whirled to confront the danger and was surprised to see that a nun had been moved to action. She was used to hostages going to the slaughter like sheep. She shouted at the assassin who was disengaging himself from the mortally wounded priest. “Kill the Pope!”

The man moved to carry out the command, but suddenly the top half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood, gray matter, and shattered bone. The sound of the.50-caliber sniper’s rifle stunned hostages and hostage takers long enough for FBI sniper K. C. Chalk to slam another bullet home and shoot a terrorist who was drawing a bead on the nun charging the female leader of the group.

Like Marlene, Chalk had sat quietly in the back of the cathedral biding his time. Earlier, Jaxon had asked him to quietly find a spot in the cathedral with his rifle “just in case.” The odd part of the request was to do it without letting the other security detail know he was doing it. So he’d disassembled the rifle and stashed it in a briefcase, which he’d hidden beneath the pew in front of him. With the help of hostages on either side of him who kept watch, he’d slowly reassembled the rifle, then kept it on the floor until the moment presented itself.

Chalk had almost gone for it the first time the terrorist put his knife to the Pope’s throat, but held off. This time, he had been sure that it was now or never, so in one well-rehearsed move, he’d stood and blown the head off the Pope’s assailant. He would have liked to kill the woman leader-chop off the head and the serpent dies-but other hostages had jumped to their feet and he couldn’t get a clear shot so he’d taken the second man.

Any moment he expected to feel a bullet from the two terrorists behind him. He heard one shot and then another, but neither was directed at him. Instead, the second shot took out the terrorist over to his side who’d turned to find him in the panicking crowd. Chalk glanced behind and saw a small Asian priest with one of the terrorist’s rifles taking aim at another. Sometimes one finds friends in the oddest places, Chalk thought as he turned and sought another target himself.

Tran, too, had waited, pretending to be a somewhat crippled, older priest as he worked his way toward the terrorist nearest to him. When the sniper stood and Marlene began her sprint, his target raised his rifle to shoot and so never saw him coming. Tran knocked the rifle up so that the bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling. He ripped the gun away with one hand and with the other delivered a killing atemi blow to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. Without pausing, Tran raised the rifle and shot his target’s partner, who seemed confused by the sudden turn of events.

One of the terrorists, who’d moved up the aisle to shoot Marlene, suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a left hook thrown by Karp, who’d appeared to be groggily out of action and leaning against the pew when the shooting started. The gunman went down hard, his head striking the floor with a sickening thud, like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk. Karp jumped on the man and hammered him in the face with two more punches.

“Mr. Karp, watch out!” Ned yelled behind him.

Karp looked up and saw another terrorist on the other end of the pew aiming for him. He rolled off to the side just as the gun cracked, the bullet finding its mark in the man he’d been punching. He landed next to the handgun that had flown out of the hand of the gunman he’d knocked out. He tossed it to Ned, who put two bullets in the terrorist at the end of the pew, then turned and killed a man who was charging from the back of the cathedral.

Meanwhile, up on the dais, Marlene closed the distance to Azzam, who fumbled for her pistol only to have it kicked out of her hand by the crazy nun. “Blow them up,” Azzam screamed to her man at the electronic panel that was wired to the bombs. He did as ordered but nothing happened. A moment later, he was dead with a hole the size of an orange through his chest from Chalk’s.50 caliber.

“I know you,” Azzam said to Marlene as she pulled her knife. “You were at the beach.”

“Damn straight, sister,” Marlene said. “And we have a little unfinished business.”

Azzam feinted with her knife and kicked for Marlene’s leg. But her target had moved and instead landed a kick of her own to the terrorist’s jaw, spinning her around.

Marlene moved in with another kick, but had taken her opponent too lightly and felt the burning as Azzam’s knife cut a small gash in her thigh.

Seeing her opportunity, Azzam leaped for Marlene. But again Marlene was fast and ducked beneath the flashing blade and delivered an upper cut that staggered her back toward the Pope. At the same time, a large-caliber bullet whizzed by her head and slammed into the pipe organ.

Azzam realized that her moment of ultimate glory had passed. The bombs had not gone off, the cathedral was still standing, and she was a moment away from her own death without having accomplished anything that would be remembered. I can still kill the Pope, she thought and whirled to cross the few steps to the pontiff and sink her blade into his heart.

Instead, in the last moment of her life, Azzam was surprised to see an ancient weapon, half-battle ax, half spear whizzing toward her. She didn’t feel the halberd blade pass through her neck, there was no time for pain as her head fell from her shoulders and rolled down the stairs.

Marlene looked up in surprise at Alejandro, who stood looking at the headless body of Samira Azzam with the bloody halberd still in his hands. “Take that, you fucking bitch,” he said. “You fucked around in the wrong city this time.”

Suddenly realizing who was sitting in the chair behind him, Alejandro grimaced at Marlene and turned. “Sorry, Holy Father,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”

The Pope, looking a little pale, waved off the apology. “All things considered,” he said, “I think you deserve a little grace. One Hail Mary, and all’s forgiven.”