The First Casualty

65

Within seconds of Jason’s first shot, Emphani and Andrews shed their Bedouin attire and were scaling the steep slope of the pyramid-like minaret like mountain climbers. A rope was tossed over a beam before each man pulled himself up, retrieved his line, and tossed it over the next protruding wooden log. Slow work, but certainly a better means of attack than the original plan, which had contemplated a frontal assault on the door on the other side of the minaret.

Each man carried only a knife and pistol for armament. Were anything heavier needed, the battle would be lost. Also, weight had to be saved for the other objects they carried in their backpacks. Andrews was standing on tiptoe to throw his rope over the next beam above his head when he felt his footing give way. He just had time to lift himself up when the wood beneath his feet snapped off like a broken matchstick.

“How the hell does wood in the desert rot?” he hissed at Emphani who was being less than successful in hiding his amusement.

“There is a rainy season here. That is why it is not quite desert. Perhaps one too many servings of assab at dinner last night is at fault, not the wood.”

Andrews started to retort he had eaten less of the spiced meat poured over boiled, cracked millet than Emphani, then realized the absurdity of arguing out here on the side of the minaret and pulled himself up to the next beam.

Inside the minaret, Moustaph watched uselessly as Abu Bakr entered a series of numbers into a laptop as they came to him through the earbuds. The older man felt purposeless in the face of such technology, but was determined to see this, his greatest victory over the infidels since 9/11, completed. He was mentally reviewing the CD already in the hands of Al Jazeera, Kawthar, and other major Islamic television networks in which he explained to the world at large why Al Qaeda and its allies would fight to the death to remove the Crusaders from the land of the Prophet, may Allah give him peace. Even the stations in America would run translations of parts of his speech, including Fox, the one hated most by the martyred Bin Laden, may Allah raise up his soul.

Speaking of whom, Moustaph…

These was a sound from outside the minaret, a sound right outside the window like the snapping of a dry twig but much, much louder.

Abu Bakr had heard it, too. Both men struggled to get past the giant nozzle to the window, but there simply wasn’t room for one, let alone two adults. The two men had the same idea at the same time: They swung the machine back away from the window and pressed forward to the opening.

For an instant, Moustaph could not believe what he was seeing: Two men, one white, one black, were standing, no, climbing, on the exposed wooden beams below. That devil Peters! But how…? For the whole past day, the American had not left the hotel according to Moustaph’s spies. Moustaph had been certain the president’s plane, or what was left of it, would be at the bottom of the Atlantic before Peters could figure out a way to prevent it. But now…?

Reaching into his shirt, Moustaph produced a 9-millimeter Makarov, a souvenir of his service with the mujahideen against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan two and a half decades ago.

Abu Bakr knocked his arm aside. “No time! We fire now or it will take minutes to recompute! Get the nozzle back into position!”

Moustaph complied. He would deal with the man’s insubordination later.

Emphani and Andrews were on the row of beams just below those even with the window. Andrews tied his rope to the wood protruding overhead, looped the ends around his belt to free his hands and hung his backpack from it. In seconds, he had attached a short hose to something in the pack. A few feet away, Emphani held a knife in a position where it could be thrown at anyone appearing at the window.

“Fire the thing, you insolent son of a dog, fire!” Moustaph snarled at Abu Bakr.

Hose in his right hand, Andrews used his left to raise his body until his eyes were level with the bottom of the window. He was looking into a narrow room almost completely filled with the machine. Jammed into a corner was a small, low table with two cushions stacked upon it and a pot Andrews guessed was designed to hold tea.

There were two men, one of whom had what looked like a Russian pistol in his hand. No time to take him out, just…

Ducking his head below the windowsill, Andrews squeezed the grip in his hand. There was the crack of a pistol and the angry buzz of a bullet past his head a split second before a click of a battery generated a spark and the hiss of escaping gas, and, instantly, the whoosh of the expansion of superheated air, a much magnified sound of the burner of a gas stove igniting.

There was a duet of screams from inside as a jet of napalm flames licked the room, hungering for its contents at the same time it was glued to them.

Andrews swung down from the window, making room for Emphani, who was reaching into his own backpack. Was that a red blotch Chief saw on the front of his shirt? No time to ask. Emphani was holding a package the size and shape of a book, a little something the Russian explosive expert, Viktor, had concocted. He snatched a string from the parcel and tossed it into the window. Both men hastily rappelled down the side of the minaret, dodging the beams that had made their ascent possible.

From the hotel window, Jason saw smoke belch from the minaret’s entrance, an assurance Andrews and Emphani had at least partially succeeded.

He spoke into the mike of the citizens’ band radio. “I need a taxi to the airport.”

Viktor’s cue. He would be outside the hotel in the Toyota in less than a minute. Jason glanced through the scope and fired two random shots into the mosque’s courtyard to freeze the men cowering there.

“Your taxi is here, sir,” Viktor’s disembodied voice said.

Jason took one last look through the scope. He had hoped, prayed if you could so define his pleas to an uncaring universe, that he would see Moustaph make a break through that door. Likely, the flamethrower had incinerated the bastard. Still, killing him, putting a bullet into the very face of evil, seeing one of the brains that had plotted 9/11 splattered over desert sands, would be a catharsis, an expurgation of the irrational guilt Jason suffered. Laurin had been on her way to fetch him a cup of coffee that late summer morning. Had it been the other way around…

No time for rumination. As much as he wanted to see Moustaph’s dark face quartered by the crosshairs of the Leupold, he could not risk the lives of his men on the chance the man had survived the flamethrower’s blast or what was to come next.