A few men raised their hands or stepped forward, then more followed. Although they were only construction hands finishing the midnight shift, it would not be wise to be known as an enemy of the NMO. Al-Masri had counted on that fear. He put a volunteer who said he had once been with the Pakistani military in charge and ordered that weapons be issued to the men on guard duty, for he did not want any of them having second thoughts about their loyalty.
Most of his team had also run topside when the alarm sounded, leaving behind only the computer specialist who had the original idea for the alarm. He was still down in the tunnels trying to find the defense systems control room. When they all had weapons, and the entrances and exits were effectively cut off, al-Masri gathered the others and went back inside.
On the elevator ride, he joined the doctor and his bodyguard, who were heading for the infirmary to determine if the captive chief engineer might be able to divulge some of the secret passwords needed in the control room. If necessary, he could be forced to talk. Pain could do wonderful things for a memory.
* * *
T
ANGLED
,
INTERESTING IMAGES HAD
been wafting through the brain of Chief Engineer Mohammad al-Attas when the fire alarm sounded, the shrill noise penetrating the last barriers of the sedative he had been given. He came awake slowly with a series of blinks, yawned, and smiled to himself.
Still alive.
He wondered only momentarily about the fire, because there was nothing at all he could do about it. Burning to death or a bullet in the head would have the same result. Instead, he ran a mental diagnostic of his body. His arms and legs were all still secured by straps, with two more bands of strong woven plastic running across his hips and his chest. For some reason, the clamp around his head had been removed, or perhaps it had slipped off while he thrashed about in the nightmares. Irrelevant. At least he could see around him now.
He surveyed his situation. He was still in the infirmary, with the rolling curtain hiding the rest of the room from view. The usual hospital apparatus was near the bed but was not connected to him. He sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out hard to expel the old, stale air from his lungs. When he did it again, the heartbeat slowed to normal as his mind shifted from a place of uncertain fright to cold analysis. Al-Attas was not afraid. He just settled in for the long wait, until whatever was to happen happened.
Insh’Allah.
He wondered about Sergeant Hafiz and the al Qaeda inspectors who had examined him like a goat. There was no doubt that he was tagged for death, but then everyone is, and there was no need to fear it. The chief engineer understood that if he had been an ordinary man of ordinary skills, he would have been dealt with some time ago. Since he wasn’t, his guardians in Islamabad and Washington were still protecting him, at least for the time being, but he could not count on that.
The alarm was irritatingly loud, and he wished he could shut it off. He wanted to be back in the chair in the defense systems control room, operating his digital domain, supervising the workers to finish the bridge project. Everyone wanted it completed, and the pressure was on him to get it all running. No one else could do it! Another part of him, the invisible part, wished he could be outside, running free beneath the bridge, loose in the valley.
His thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the infirmary door. It closed quickly, and the lock snapped into place. Soft footsteps, not the usual stride of normal workers, came from the far side of the curtain. He saw the silhouette of someone cautiously approaching, and the curtain was thrust aside.
* * *
K
YLE
S
WANSON PUSHED THE
curtain back with his left hand and brought up his pistol with his right, pointing it straight at the startled face of a dark-haired young man lashed down to a bed. The decision not to shoot was made in a split second, and Swanson moved around the bed to be sure the rest of the area was clear of potential threats. Satisfied, he holstered the pistol, ignoring the bound figure, and removed a satellite phone from his pack. Beth covered the front of the room with her finger resting on the trigger guard of the CAR-15.
“Trident Base, Trident Base. This is Bounty Hunter.” His voice was unhurried and clear. He heard only static in return and tried again. “Trident Base. This is Bounty Hunter. Do you read me? Come in.” Still, only the hiss of interference.
“Your sat phone won’t work down here,” said the patient on the bed. “You’re beneath tons of rock. The signal can’t get out.”
Swanson was startled. The words were clear English with only a slight accent. Ledford pointed her rifle at the man. “Who the hell are you?” Kyle asked.
The man shifted the weight of his shoulders, as if trying to get comfortable, but was held tightly by the chest strap. “My name is Mohammad al-Attas.”
“Why are you tied down?” Beth Ledford had not lowered her guard.
“They are going to kill me,” the young man said.
“Who is? Why?”
“I am considered a security risk by the New Muslim Order. I suppose I am, because I know too much, and don’t say my prayers all the time.”
“The Order?” Swanson put away his radio and sat beside the man. “You’re saying the NMO is involved here? How do you know that?”
“Oh, they surely are involved,” the man replied, with a small, sly smile. “I know that because I am the chief engineer of the entire project. I know everything about it.” He relaxed even more. “Other things as well.” This encounter was going better than he could have dared hope. Americans: one the usual hard-case commando type, but the other a pretty young woman.
He asked Beth, “I assume you people are the reason for the fire alarm? Did you set it off?”
“We don’t know anything about that. Where did you learn English?” She was fascinated. A man tied to a bed in the infirmary of a hostile facility, and apparently under a death sentence, was carrying on a casual conversation, as if he had not a worry in the world. His clothes were bloodstained, and his face and hair were filthy.
“Boston,” al-Attas said. “Actually, across the river over in Cambridge, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Picked up my master’s degree there. Trust me, your sat phone is useless in this location.”
“Can you make it work?”
“Of course. Let’s do a deal. Like I said, I know everything about this place, including how to get out. I will be a gold mine for your intelligence people. Take me back with you.”
Swanson was still hesitant. “You talk a good game, dude, but why are you so messed up?”
“Basically I outlived my usefulness, and they really did not like that I helped some strangers, particularly an international medical team that wandered in here by accident a few weeks ago. I tried to help them escape, but they caught all of us. It was horrible; they killed those unfortunates after torturing them for sport for a while. They made me continue my work, and when I tried to escape on my own, they put me in here to await execution, probably tomorrow. We’re wasting time, sir. Help me get out, and I’ll help you in return.”
“You built all this?” Kyle knew the man had potentially vital information.
“Yes. I designed every inch.”
“Why? For what purpose? All the weaponry?”
Al-Attas shook his head. “At first, I thought that I was just building a bunkered and well-protected bridge. Then it turned out that the New Muslim Order plans for this to be a new hideout for Commander Kahn so he can carry out his attack on
America
while protected against reprisal.”
“What new attack on America?”
“It’s complicated,” he said, “but I know everything. I listened to a lot of conversations that I was not supposed to hear.”
Swanson began to unlash the patient. “Let’s get the sat phone working,” he said.
Al-Attas sat up and rubbed his wrists, then pointed toward a nearby door that was set meticulously into a steel frame. “Sure. Right this way,” he said.
23
T
HE ELEVATOR MADE A
smooth descent that ended with a slight bump and opened onto a pale yellow corridor with directions painted on the walls in bloodred lettering pointing to the infirmary. After the fire alarm had cleared out the workers, an unusual stillness had settled throughout the big project, where the deep rumble of construction work had been such a constant noise to the ears of Ayman al-Masri that its absence now was startling to the inspector.
He recognized the area and led the other two men directly to the outer door of the airlock that shielded the sterile clinic. “Come,” he said. “We can all go through it at the same time.” The three stepped inside, the door shut tightly behind them, the rubber seals locked into place, and the automatic fans blasted them for ten seconds. Al-Masri closed his eyes against the force of the wind and remained immobile until the fans cut off and the automatic inner portal opened with a hiss to admit them into the infirmary.
The startled inspector came to a halt. The cloth screen at the far end had been pushed aside, and the bed behind it, where the chief engineer had been subdued, was empty. The restraints hung down to the floor like sleeping snakes. There was movement at the far doorway, through which a figure dressed in black and carrying a weapon was disappearing. Al-Masri shouted an order to stop, fumbled out his own pistol, and snapped off two shots. The bullets flew wide and chipped the wall.
The unknown figure immediately spun back and answered with a hard rip of automatic rifle fire, a raking stream of bullets that crashed through the room left to right and hip high. The three New Muslim Order men went sprawling on the floor, hugging the cool tiles as a hail of glass and wood and plaster chips splattered into a rising cloud of debris and dust, while ricochets sang wherever the slugs hit metal. When the firing stopped, al-Masri looked up again, pointing his weapon over a flipped table, but no one was there. The door was closed, and the empty room smelled of burned gunpowder.
He eased his weapon down, and they all got to their feet, shaking off the surprise assault. There had been no forewarning of any danger. Both of the others had their own weapons out, too late to join the fight. “Who was it?” the bigger one asked.
Al-Masri surveyed the wreckage, taking quite a bit of time to process his thoughts before speaking. He knew what he had seen clearly before the shots were fired: the diminutive size, the white feminine face, and the short blond hair were unmistakable. A woman had made him cower like a whipped dog.
Impossible.
It could only be a little Satan from the Zionists, who were the only people that used women to actually fight their battles for them. He would never speak of it, at least until after he killed her; slowly. “It is a Jew special operations team,” he concluded, walking to the bed where the technician had been strapped. “The Zionists have stolen the chief engineer. They must not leave this bridge alive.”
Where was Sergeant Hafiz?
* * *
“D
AMMIT
,
C
OASTIE
!
D
ON
’
T DO
that.” Swanson barked at Beth, who was changing magazines. She had emptied a full clip into the room when the man fired at them and had seen three of them dive to the floor as she hammered away with long bursts.
“They were shooting at us,” she explained, a calm, empty voice. She had not given the possibility that she had killed anyone a second thought. Worrying about that sort of thing was part of another life, a distant memory of an lowa farm girl who no longer existed.
“We have limited ammunition, so stop hosing down things like this is some action movie,” Kyle said. “Be selective. Short, targeted bursts.”
“Huh,” she said, turning away, angry. She had just saved their asses and all he could do was bitch, although she knew he was right. There had never been a shortage of ammo in her HITRON helicopter, but they were using NATO 5.56 mm rounds today and had only had what they carried. She would not make the same mistake again. Beth made a mental note to pick up the next AK-47 she saw and a bunch of magazines. There was certainly no shortage of AK bullets in this place.
Swanson found himself in a large, well-appointed suite that would have fit in well at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston: walls of finished wood, well-made furniture, and an open balcony that extended outside. “Will the satellite phone work out there?” he asked their new guide.
Mohammad al-Attas shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. No guarantee. May I make an alternate suggestion?”
“Sure.” Kyle was ready to try anything. The mission had been blown, and the bad guys knew they exactly where they were. It was time to call the birds and get out.
The engineer moved to a small desk on one side of the room and pulled open the center drawer to reveal a computer keyboard, then unfolded a seventeen-inch flat-screen monitor. “This has a separate hard drive but is wired into the main computer system to get a clear wireless link. Can you send an e-mail, or do a Skype face-to-face video connection?”
For a moment Kyle considered Commander Kahn of the New Muslim Order sitting before this keyboard, playing chess by himself, adding new friends on his Facebook page, updating his MySpace profile, checking out porn sites or launching an attack on the United States. The beauty and the bedevilment of social media was its anonymity, and it was so simple that a caveman could do it.