True Faith and Allegiance

71

Chavez raced out the front of the house with his SMG on his shoulder, and found himself face-to-face with a dark figure rushing up the driveway in his direction. The figure raised a weapon in surprise, though clearly the last thing this guy had expected to see was one of the defenders of the cabin charging out the front door.

Chavez was faster, and he took the terrorist in the chest with a two-round burst. He charged up to the man as he fell, kicked the man’s Kalashnikov away, and knelt over him, rolling him onto his back.

The man was alive, just, and Ding needed at least one survivor, but as soon as he felt the man’s back and realized he was wearing a suicide vest, Ding rose up quickly and blasted the man through the skull. He then raced on toward the hill where Clark had been positioned, desperate to find his friend.

Jack ran headlong into the master bedroom as fast as he could, frantic to save his sister. When he got there, however, he saw a man standing in the entrance to the bathroom swiveling a pistol on an outstretched arm right in his direction. Jack dove into a forward roll, a shot rang out, and then Jack rolled back up into a combat crouch and put the red dot sight of his MPX on the shooter’s face.

Davi stood there in the doorway, Sally holding on to him from behind and looking out past his shoulder. “No!” she screamed.

Both Davi and Jack lowered their weapons quickly.

“My God!” Davi shouted. “I’m sorry, Jack!” He tossed the pistol on the ground, aware he’d almost shot his future brother-in-law.

Jack stood. “I told you to stay in the bathroom! What the hell were you shooting at back here?”

Sally lifted a shaking hand and pointed a finger to the corner of the bedroom, near the sliding glass door to the balcony that looked to the east. There, a man in a black windbreaker and black pants lay on his side, a pistol inches from his fingertips. He was clean-shaven, forty years old or so, and he blinked over distant eyes, showing Jack he was alive, but barely.

Jack moved to him, knelt down, and secured the pistol. He then felt the man’s jacket to see if he was wearing a suicide vest.

“No,” Jack said aloud. “Of course you aren’t wearing an S-vest. The leaders of your band of shitheads get others to sacrifice themselves, don’t they?”

Abu Musa al-Matari just blinked again; then he looked up at Jack. Blood dripped out of his mouth.

Jack searched him quickly, but as he did so he said, “Sally. I need this guy alive.”

Davi protested. “He came up over the balcony, he tried to kill us.”

“I know,” he said. “Congratulations. You just shot the chief lieutenant for North American affairs for ISIS’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau.” He stood back up and turned to al-Matari. “I’d love to watch him die, but he knows things we need to know.”

Olivia moved to start treating the man, and as she did so, Chavez came through Jack’s earpiece. “I found Clark. He’s alive and conscious but he looks like shit.”

“Roger that,” Jack said. “Is the area clear?”

“Seems to be.”

Jack said, “Okay, I’m sending you a doctor.” He turned to Davi, and pulled his medical kit off his chest rig. Unzipping it and dumping it on the bed, he said, “Davi, I need you to help my friend out front. Sally, this asshole is yours.”

The two doctors quickly began grabbing dressings, compresses, tourniquets, and other important items. Davi raced out of the room.

Olivia said, “Pick him up and put him on the bed. Make him comfortable.”

“He’s a terrorist, he doesn’t need to be comfortable.”

“Right now, he’s my patient,” she said. “Do what I tell you.”

Jack wanted to tell her that didn’t really change the fact the man was a terrorist, but he left it alone, scooped al-Matari up, and dumped him roughly on the bed.

“He’s shot through the lung!” Olivia protested. “Be careful!”

“We just need him alive, Sal. Not happy.” Jack pulled a pair of zip ties off his chest and secured the man’s hands on the bedposts. “This is so he doesn’t wring your neck while you’re saving his life.”

Olivia ripped away his shirt, felt around his back for an exit wound. It was there; her hand came back bloody. As she began cleaning the wounds to seal them, she looked up at her brother. “Who are you, Jack?”

“We’ll talk later, when this guy isn’t around.”

Al-Matari coughed. “Yes… who are you, Jack?”

Jack knelt over him. “I’m the end of your road. You don’t get to be a hero or a martyr today, Musa.”

“You’ll never get me to talk.”

“Me? I’m not the one asking you anything. Honestly, I don’t give a damn what you know. But others do, and they are going to take you somewhere and pump your twisted brain so full of drugs that you won’t be able to lie about anything.”

Chavez had found Clark lying in a heap thirty yards down the hill from the ledge. He’d bounced roughly down the darkened hillside, just below the rocket’s impact, so although he hadn’t taken the effect of the blast into his body, he’d tumbled down in an avalanche of soil and rock. Chavez held a light on Clark and admonished him each time he tried to sit or stand, while Davi checked him for serious injuries. Davi determined the dirt-covered senior citizen likely had a concussion, as well as a broken rib or two, and a sprained or broken wrist. But miraculously he’d suffered no more damage than that.

The two ambulatory men helped Clark back down the hill to the cabin, and by then Jack had called Mary Pat Foley directly to let her know that a wounded but alive Abu Musa al-Matari could be picked up at a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the only charge to the U.S. government for this item would be transport for five to the D.C. area.

A pair of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the FBI’s Tactical Aviation Unit landed behind the cabin forty minutes later. On board were medics prepared to keep al-Matari alive, and to make John Clark a little more comfortable, as the injury to his ribs was making it more painful to breathe by the minute.

The first aircraft took off as soon as it was loaded, but the second wasn’t going anywhere for a while. It had deposited a dozen members of the FBI’s vaunted Hostage Rescue Team. They spent the entire evening and part of the next morning combing the area with their night-observation devices for other terrorists, but all they found were seven dead bodies and three vehicles, two of which had several rolls of carpet over some cases in the back. They found weapons and ammunition, but when the HRT men pulled out the carpets from the vehicles, they were astonished to find four Igla-7 surface-to-air missiles, each one easily capable of taking down a jumbo jet.