Authors: Stephen England
Sometimes, no matter how hard you tried…your best wasn’t good enough. And innocents paid the price of your sins.
“
Are you going to go find mommy?
”
He walked into the room they had cleared for their own use, finding his team watching the same news reports.
“They’re dead,” he announced flatly, shuffling through the blueprints spread out on the table. He could feel their eyes on him, but he didn’t look up. “Nothing we can do about it. All that is left to us…is to save every last person that we
can
inside that theatre. That’s all that matters now—that’s where I want everyone’s focus.”
There
.
What he’d been looking for. In plain sight. He glanced up, his eyes glinting. Blued steel. “Read me?”
“Loud and clear, boss,” Thomas replied. Tex merely nodded his assent, leaving Han standing there looking at him.
“Here’s how we get in,” Harry announced, drawing his finger across the blueprints. “From underwater, with the rebreathers used by the cast of the ‘O’ and stored backstage. We traverse across the catwalk here, thirty feet above the backstage and fast-rope down—”
He looked up to see Marika Altmann standing in the doorway. “I need a word.”
“Can it wait?”
No
. The look on her face gave him his answer and he gestured for his team to give them the room. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve been given the order to stand down. The assault has been called off.”
For a moment, he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “
Why?
”
“Orders from D.C, direct from the POTUS. He’s giving them Khaled Sheikh Mohammed in exchange for the hostages. Once the hostages are safe, a pair of Hornets will intercept and force the plane back down.”
It didn’t make any sense. He looked outside, to where his team awaited. Together they had pursued terrorists around the world…only to find their own nation under attack. This might be the end for him—for all of them. But not like this.
“All the hostages will be murdered the moment Tarik thinks KSM is safe. Every last one of them.”
“I know that,” Altmann said, setting her thermos of coffee down on the table. “You know that. The politicians don’t know that. So here we wait.”
Harry reached across the blueprints for his H&K, adjusting the submachine gun’s sling around his shoulders.
“No…we don’t. Not a chance.”
12:42 A.M. Eastern Time
The Situation Room
Washington, D.C.
“Mr. President, Guantanamo’s radar is reporting a four-engine turboprop just appeared on their screens. Bearing from the southeast, still over a hundred and seventy kilometers out.”
“Our plane?” Cahill asked.
“No way of knowing for sure,” the aide replied, seeming nervous in the presence of the President. “If it stays on its current heading and speed, it will be over Guantanamo in twenty minutes.”
“Right on schedule.” General Nealen tapped his finger against the table. “Do you wish me to alert the
Truman
’s captain, sir? Have him move the F-18s onto the catapults?”
Cahill leaned forward until both his elbows were resting upon the wood of the conference table—his pale eyes fixed on Hancock’s
face. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Mr. President?”
Hancock stared at the water bottle in front of him for a long moment,
feeling his face flush with anger. It really wasn’t fair…after the last four years, after all that he had done, that this—
this
would be his legacy.
“No,” he snapped, wishing the bottle held something stronger than water. “Of course I’m not
sure
, Ian. How could I be? I’m going to take the fall for this no matter which way it goes.”
The aide came back in. “We’ve got an incoming call from FBI Las Vegas. Special Agent Altmann for you, Mr. President.”
“My last orders were clear. What does she want?”
“She didn’t say. Just requested that she be put through to you.”
9:46 P.M. Pacific Time
The Bellagio
Las Vegas, Nevada
It had seemed like an eternity as they waited for Hancock to come on the line. Time they didn’t have. Couldn’t afford to spend.
Tex would be reporting back from his reconnaissance of the catwalk within moments.
“Mr. President.”
Altmann shot a look in his direction as she heard the President’s voice. “I have you on speaker…we’re here with the leader of our tactical team.”
“I’m assuming that there is a point to this call, Agent Altmann?” A cold voice, hundreds of miles away. The voice of the man who had signed David Lay’s death warrant, Harry thought.
A man who had betrayed his oath of office long before this day.
“There is, Mr. President. I called to ask for your authorization to proceed with the assault on the Bellagio’s theatre.”
Hesitation. “We can’t
risk
that, Special Agent, as I made perfectly clear in our last phone call. Not as long as we can still negotiate an end to this situation without even more lives being lost.”
“We have an assault plan, Mr. President,” she replied, giving Harry a look. “A way into the theatre without being observed by Tarik Abdul Muhammad. Once in place, we can take out he and the rest of the terrorists and free the hostages.”
“Look, this isn’t complex,” Hancock retorted, clearly nettled by her persistence. “We give them KSM, they give us the hostages. Once Congresswoman Gilpin and the rest are safe, we can dispatch the
Truman
’s pilots after the plane and either force it down or shoot it out of the sky. In this decision, I’m acting on the best counsel of my advisors, including General Nealen, here with me on this call now. I really don’t care which they have to do—but I will
not
risk a bloodbath storming into that theatre.”
“And a bloodbath is exactly what you’ll have,” Harry stated, leaning in toward the phone on the table. “All due respect to you and the general, Mr. President—but neither of you have ever actually
fought
this enemy. I have. And if I know nothing else…I know this. You can’t negotiate with those who only respect force.”
“It’s not your place to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
Something wasn’t adding up…all of this had been too well-planned. Harry took a deep breath, struggling to keep his composure. “Tarik wouldn’t ask for the release of KSM if he didn’t have an endgame in all of this. It’s too simple—there’s no way he’s gullible enough to believe that we’ll actually turn him over. I can tell you how this ends, Mr. President. It ends with Tarik and his men doing exactly what they came here to do…martyring themselves for their faith—taking as many
kaffir
with them as possible.”
There was doubt in the President’s voice when he responded, but not enough. “Having already considered all the options on the table, I’ve made my decision.”
So have I.
The reply was on his lips, but he bit it back. Now was not the time for truth, for honesty. “Very well, Mr. President. My men and I will be standing by as the situation develops.”
Without another word, Harry reached across, tapping the phone’s END button, terminating the call.
He looked up into the eyes of Marika Altmann, standing there with her arms folded across her chest. She looked tired, defeated almost. Not quite. “What now?”
“We proceed with the assault, of course,” he replied coolly, moving back to the blueprints of the Bellagio.
“But you just said—”
He shook his head. “I said what needed to be said.”
“You’re talking about deceiving the President of the United States,” Altmann hissed, leaning across the table toward him.
“Your point?” Harry asked. “I’ve deceived many a better man than Roger Hancock. There’s something at play here—something we haven’t yet grasped. Some reason Tarik Abdul Muhammad is playing the fool.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. It didn’t matter, not really. Defying a presidential order…he knew what lay at the end of that road.
What had he told Carol? “
It’s just a matter of deciding which set of consequences you can live with. That’s all it is, in the end.
”
The hard truth.
“EAGLE SIX to GUNHAND, give me a sitrep,” he demanded, keying his mike.
It was a moment before Tex came on the network. Harry could feel Altmann standing behind him, her eyes on the back of his head.
There might have even been a gun in her hand, for all he knew. He didn’t turn around. “We have a tango patrolling near the catwalk, EAGLE SIX. Not going to be able to go around him.”
“Then we go through him.”
There was a crackle of static and Carol’s voice came over his headset from the Bellagio’s security center. “It’s not going to be that simple, Harry. I was finally able to lock in on Tarik’s radio comms. He’s checking in with his sentries every three minutes.”
It wasn’t going to be enough time.
“What do you need?” he heard Altmann ask from the other side of the table.
Harry turned to face her.
No gun
. “We could use a miracle…what time does the next one leave?”
Time was running out for the hostages, grains of sand slipping away—there had to be an answer.
“There might be a way to do this,” Carol said slowly. He could hear her tapping on a keyboard. “I’ve been recording the audio of the transmissions…if I can get physical access to one of their radios, I can use the recording to ‘reply’ to Tarik.”
Physical access
. He knew what she was saying, knew the danger it could place her in.
But the mission…it was all that mattered. “Meet us in five,” he whispered. “I’ll find a way to get the radio back up to you.”
12:54 A.M. Eastern Time
NCS Op-Center
Langley, Virginia
“They’re saying it’s an Antonov
An-12,” Lasker said, looking up from his screens.
Kranemeyer swore. “That’s an old Russian job—hundreds of them in existence, all over the world. And enough range to fly KSM anywhere in this hemisphere…maybe even across the Atlantic if they play their cards right.”
“They’ll have a visual within five minutes,” the CLANDOPS comm chief replied. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will have a tail number?”
“We should be so blessed,” Kranemeyer murmured. This wasn’t going to end well—he could feel it in his bones. Releasing a terrorist…even for a little while.
There were too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. Negotiating with terrorists.
He felt the burner phone vibrate in his inner pocket—the last number he had activated and given to Thomas.
“I’ll be right back.” He moved past the rows of cubicles in the op-center, bank after bank of plasma screens, monitoring a night that seemed to be exploding around them.
“Yes?”
“Good evening, director,” a familiar voice greeted him. The last voice he had expected to hear on this night.
Nichols
. “Evening,” he replied, careful not to use names. “As you’ll see from your television, I’m having a busy night. What’s this about?”
“I’m here, director. In Vegas. Preparing to launch an assault on the Bellagio’s theatre as we speak.”
What
? Kranemeyer glanced back to the workstation where Lasker was coordinating the situation, struggling to process what he had just been told. “How?”
“Long story. There’s something wrong here with this demand for the release of KSM—something I don’t think we’re even looking at.”
They were both feeling the same thing, instincts born of years out in the night. “What’s your gut telling you?”
“That Tarik didn’t come all this way for one man. That he’s after something much bigger than the long-shot release of an aging terrorist—only a fool would believe that was his endgame.”
He was right. “You know what they say about fools and politicians…I don’t have the authority to overrule the President in this.”
“I know that…but assuming that the release of KSM is
not
the goal—why Gitmo?”
“He spent a lot of years there…” Kranemeyer responded, suddenly realizing where Nichols was headed. “You’re saying that this is personal.”
“Targeting Gilpin was.” Harry paused. “We don’t have much time, director. I need you to keep that plane from landing for at least another ten minutes.”
“And what then?”
“By then…the hostages will be safe.”
12:56 A.M.
The Antonov An-12
Over the Caribbean
The man in the pilot’s seat of the Antonov couldn’t have been much more than twenty-two years of age—slender fingers dancing over the big plane’s instrument panel, a thin, dark beard shrouding the lower half of his face. Eyes ringed with darkness, the look of a man on the point of exhaustion, yet those orbs glistened with a weary excitement. The eyes of the desert from whence he came.