The Last Days (21 page)

The president closed his eyes. The list of horrors went on for pages. But he couldn't take any more. What if one of these thugs actually ended up in power? What if he let it happen?

He called an end to the meeting. They'd been going for more than an hour. Now he needed time to think, and Bennett and McCoy needed time to rest. He ordered both of them, and Ziegler, to call it a night. They'd all regroup at 9:00
A.M.
Wednesday, Washington time.

Ten minutes later, Bennett was out cold.

It came without warning.

One minute the Hotel Baghdad was standing. The next minute, it was not.

The attack came at precisely 4:49
A.M.
local time. Without warning, the five-story structure above Gaza Station began to implode, rocked by three massive explosions and an eighteen-hundred-degree firestorm.

The east face came down first, followed by the south portico. Then, just a few seconds later, the rest of the building came down in a deafening roar of shattering glass and disintegrating concrete. The street filled with smoke. Flames shot out from every crevice, and thick clouds of smoke and ash began rising into the night sky.

Bennett was thrown to the floor. Covering his head with his arms, he desperately tried to shield himself from chunks of ceiling crashing down all around him. Everything in the room was shaking violently. He could hear the pipes in the bathroom being ripped through the tiles and erupting into a ceaseless spray of water. The lights flickered, sparked and then all shorted out, and then several more explosions rocked the so-called safe house.

Disoriented and half-asleep, Bennett was overtaken by an almost paralyzing sense of fear. His thoughts were racing. He tried to make sense of what was happening around him—on his stomach now, coughing, gagging, struggling to fill his lungs with anything but the hot, toxic gases rapidly filling the room. There'd been three successive detonations, followed by two or three more. It was a devastating surprise attack. But by whom? Was it a car bomb? Could that be causing so much destruction so quickly? That might explain the first explosion, but what about the others? Missile attacks? Mortar rounds? RPGs? From where? Who was firing at them? Who knew they were there?

He knew the questions had to wait, but more kept pouring in. Where was McCoy? Was she safe? What about Galishnikov and Sa'id? Had they told anyone where they were? How could they have? They didn't know. Not precisely. He needed to get his team out of there alive. But how? And where would they go? The minute they surfaced outside—assuming they could find a way out of the rubble, through the raging fires and the suffocating smoke—weren't they likely to get cut down in a hail of machine-gun fire?

The explosions stopped. Debris stopped falling. The temperatures were spiking quickly and it was getting more and more difficult to breathe.

Bennett crawled his way through the broken glass of the television and shattered mirror and picture frames over to the door. He put the back of his hand against the door, just like his father had taught him when they'd stayed in hotels. It was hot—too hot—and he winced in pain and quickly pulled his hand back and blew on it. He could see an orange glow through the cracks in the door frame. The fires had to be close. But he didn't really have any choice. If he stayed in Ziegler's room, he was a dead man. That much was certain. He decided right there—he might not make it out of this place, but at least he was going to die trying.

Bennett took off his right shoe, pulled off his sock, and put it over his left hand. Then, using that hand, he turned the handle and pulled the door opened. A blast of superheated air hit him in the face and he drew back, using the door as a shield. He put his sock and shoe back on and looked around the room. The fires in the hallway provided more than enough visibility to see the destruction that had been wrought all around him. He'd been lucky to survive the initial blasts. It was an oddly comforting thought, but it didn't last long.

Suddenly he heard the crackle of automatic gunfire. It was muffled and distant. For a moment, he couldn't tell if it was above ground or from the other side of the sprawling Gaza Station complex. Either way, a shot of adrenaline coursed through his veins. He had no way of knowing who was shooting at whom. But how was he supposed to defend himself if he had to—
when
he had to? McCoy always had that 9-mm Beretta with her, usually in her bag. His eyes darted around the room. He didn't see it. Maybe she had it with her now. He hoped she did. Maybe she was working her way back from wherever she was to him? Then again, maybe she was dead.

The thought terrified him. She couldn't be dead. He was falling in love with her. He couldn't even explain why. Not exactly. She had something he didn't have, and he had everything. She knew something he didn't. She
was
something he wasn't, and it drew him to her like a magnet. Better yet, she loved him. She'd never said it. But she'd never had to. He just knew it. It was instinct, and he had great instincts. That was his job—finding buried treasure—and he'd found it in McCoy.

Another explosion ripped through the building. Bennett wiped his face. It was soaked in sweat, as was his entire body. The temperature in this room had to be heading past a hundred degrees. Out in the hallway, it had to be fifteen to twenty degrees worse. He was out of time. He couldn't stay there. He needed to make his way down the hall, to the main control room, to Galishnikov and Sa'id's room. He needed to find McCoy, to make sure she was safe, to get them all out of there, come what may.

First, though, he moved to Ziegler's desk. The heat was unbearable. The floor was rapidly filling with water from the shattered pipes in the bathroom. He tore open the desk drawers and began ripping out everything he could find. But it wasn't until the bottom file drawer on the right-hand side that he found what he was looking for—two .357 Magnums, locked and loaded. Bennett clicked off both safeties, used his shoulder to wipe the sweat off his face again, then moved toward the hallway, holding both guns out in front of him. His heart was racing. His mouth was dry. His head was pounding with question after question.
What if he didn't shoot fast enough? Or worse, what if he shot one of his own?

 

He worked his way to the door of the main control room.

He was on his stomach, on the floor—the only place he could breathe—covered in at least a foot of water. The water was ice cold now and pouring out of a dozen other shattered pipes. But in forty-five minutes to an hour, it would be heating toward a boil. He didn't have any choice. He had to keep moving.

Bennett could hear men shouting in Arabic—he assumed it was Arabic, anyway—but he hadn't seen anyone, dead or alive. Where were they? All he could see were flames and smoke and the water he was trudging through. For that, he was oddly, slightly grateful for the flames—at least they provided some light in this subterranean labyrinth. But the raging electrical fires in the walls and ceilings also worried him. It would only take one wire or cable falling into all this water and he'd be electrocuted instantly. An involuntary shudder rippled through his body.

His eyes—bloodshot and stinging from all the smoke—searched wildly for escape routes. But his options, limited from the beginning, were narrowing fast. The fires blocked his path to Galishnikov and Sa'id's room. Now they also blocked the way back to Ziegler's room. He wasn't completely trapped, but it was only a matter of time. He couldn't move laterally. He couldn't go back. The only way out was forward. There was only one door through which he could be saved. The question was, who or what was on the other side?

A gun battle had been under way in the control room for the last few minutes. But now things were quiet. Should he take a chance, or wait and keep listening? What was worse, the prospect of being electrocuted or boiled to death by staying put, or being shot in the head the minute he went through this door? It wasn't much of a choice, and only the thought of finding McCoy tipped the scales. The smoke was too thick to let him stand up. He'd suffocate for sure. All he could do was yank on the door handle and roll into the control room like he'd seen on TV. A moving target in a smoke-filled room with no light but exploding computer consoles and a back draft in the walls and ceilings couldn't be that easy to hit, right? He made up his mind. He'd move fast and take his chances.

Bennett took a deep breath. Then he lunged for the handle, tugged the door open and rolled into the room.

The sound of the door swinging open and the sloshing water was a near-lethal combination. The place exploded with automatic gunfire. Bennett could hear the rounds smashing into the concrete walls and ricocheting into the water all around him. In all the noise and confusion, he dove under a desk. He pressed himself flat against the floor, his eyes and nose just barely above the waterline. Then he held his breath and tried to be completely silent, completely still.

A few seconds later, the gunfire stopped. All was quiet again.

 

Bennett squinted through the smoke.

His eyes burned. His lungs burned. He glanced to the left, then back to the right, scanning the room for movement. His vantage point was actually pretty good. He was under Tariq's desk and next to one of the mainframe computer consoles. He had decent cover, and could see most of the open spaces in the room from there.

He couldn't see into the various conference rooms and hallways jutting off this main control room. He had to assume that's where the gunfire was coming from. But at least he knew there was no one behind him, and he'd be able to see anyone that tried to approach him from the front or sides.

But now what? Was he supposed to just lie there, pinned down forever? The hatch to the Hotel Baghdad was only five or six yards ahead. But how could he make it without getting shot in the back? Even if he did make it up the ladder, he wouldn't be able to get out, would he? That lobby no longer existed. It was buried in five stories of concrete. If there was another way out, he had no idea what or where it was.

Suddenly he heard the slosh of water behind him. Someone was yanking the door open. Bennett rolled onto his back and pointed both guns at the door. Sprinting through the door wasn't a face he recognized. It wasn't a face he'd ever seen before. It wasn't a face at all. It was a man shrouded in a mask—a black hood, actually—like the ones he'd seen on the streets of Gaza City as they'd tried to escape the ambush at the PLC headquarters. He held a machine gun. He was moving fast, moving toward him.

Bennett didn't think twice. Both weapons fired. Both guns exploded. The man in the black hood snapped back, slammed against the wall, and slowly slumped to the floor into the water rapidly turning red. He was dead. Bennett had killed him. But now everyone knew where he was. The room again erupted in automatic weapons fire.

Bennett rolled right—away from the dead man, toward the hatch. He didn't know why. He was operating purely on adrenaline and instinct and fear. Bullets were crashing into computers and files and walls. He saw a figure in the shadows, on the other side of the room, moving to take up a better position, also masked in black, his eyes glowing red in the fierce glow of the flickering flames.

Bennett rolled into the small conference room where he and McCoy had spoken with the president and NSC just a few hours before. Inside, he pressed his back against the wall, then pivoted hard and thrust both arms—both guns—out the doorway. He fired two shots each into the firestorm, then pulled back. The figure scrambled left and let loose another burst of gunfire. Bennett waited, pivoted again, fired again, but the rounds hit a television console that exploded on impact. He pulled back again as more gunfire erupted into the conference room.

Bennett waited again, then popped his head back out the doorway to see where this guy was hiding. The roar of the fire was deafening. Bennett pulled back again. He was shaking uncontrollably. The smoke was so acrid, so pungent he could barely suck in enough air to fill his lungs. The heat was so intense his raw, exposed skin was beginning to blister and boil. In a few minutes, the entire control room would be completely engulfed by fire, and there was no way out. He couldn't leave this room without being blown away, and even if he could, he had nowhere to go.

He didn't dare shut his eyes, though they were burning with pain, but he tried to picture Erin McCoy. He had no idea where she was. He had no idea if she were dead or wounded. But he tried desperately to imagine what she'd be doing right now if she were still alive in this inferno. She'd be fighting and she'd be praying, that much he knew. With her last breaths, she'd be firing back, defending this place and these people with her life. And she'd be asking God to protect them all from this hell, and the one to follow.

He knew it. He knew it because she'd done it before. When he'd been shot by the Iraqi at Dr. Mordechai's house in Jerusalem, he'd been slipping in and out of consciousness, but he'd heard her praying. She was literally begging God to save his life and his soul. She talked to God like she knew Him, like He could hear her, like she expected to see the supernatural. It was completely out of the realm of his understanding and experience. Yet it gave him the strangest sense of peace he couldn't explain away.

But that was
her
God, not his. It was
she
who had no fear of evil, not him.

He could feel the evil in this room, and it terrified him. Something was stalking him. Something was hunting him. With the fires raging all around him, the temperature had been shooting past a hundred degrees, but Bennett's entire body felt chilled, as though an unseen presence, cold and dark, was moving through the room. It encircled him, surrounded him. It was poised to crush the life out of him. His body was trembling. He wanted to scream, but no sound would come. He wanted to run, but his legs would not move. He wanted to cry out to God to help him, to save him—but it was too late.

Bennett heard the burst of gunfire. He saw the grenade slam against the back wall of the conference and drop into the water on the floor. Then the room erupted. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the room. Flames tore into his eyes and consumed his flesh and in an instant, it was over.