They entered the hidden room and pulled the organizer shut behind them.
Adams turned on the wall light and slid a heavy steel bolt across the doorway. The small room, referred to as the "stash room" by the Secret Service, was eight feet long by six feet wide, and the ceiling was almost ten feet high. The walls were lined with bulletproof Kevlar and a fire-retardant cloth on both the exterior and interior walls. The room also contained four biohazard suits complete with oxygen tanks and gas masks.
These were packed in storage lockers that were bolted to the walls above their heads, along with some weapons and a first aid kit. The room was built in response to a small plane crashing into the South Portico in the fall of 1994. THE TECHNICIANS IN the first row of the control room at Langley had faintly heard Rapp's original signal. They had been working diligently for five minutes to clear up the link as Irene Kennedy and General Campbell watched from one row back. The two knew enough to let their people work and stay out of their way.
With the help of Marcus Dumond, who was manning the control panel of the Cia's communications van parked outside the White House fence, they were making progress. The telescoping boom on the back of the van was helping penetrate the electronic interference the terrorists were using.
When Rapp began to transmit on the powerful secure field radio, there was a collective sigh of relief in the control room as forty-plus minutes of tense radio silence came to an end. General Campbell was the first to speak.
"Give me a sit rep. Iron Man."
Rapp's reply came back slightly garbled but audible. He recounted how the insertion had progressed and the device he had discovered in the president's bedroom. After Rapp had given as much detail as possible about the explosive device, he asked Campbell and Kennedy what they wanted him to do.
Campbell thought about it for only a second and replied, "Continue your reconnaissance, and we'll figure out what to do about the bomb."
"Roger that," replied Rapp.
"I'll get to work."
Back in the control room at Langley one of the technicians in the front row raised his hand up and snapped his fingers.
Kennedy leaned forward and listened to what the technician had to say, then spoke into her headset.
"Iron Man, we need you to conduct a radio check on your portable. Over."
Rapp was holding the handset to the secure field radio to his ear and replied, "Roger." He put his headset back on and adjusted the lip mike.
"Testing, one, two, three, four. Do you read? Over."
They could hear Rapp well enough to understand what he was saying but not as clearly as when he used the field radio.
The larger problem was that Rapp was having a hard time receiving signals. After several tries Rapp lifted the lip mike of his headset and picked up the handset to the field radio.
"My radio isn't working. Over."
"We can hear you on our end, Iron Man," replied Kennedy.
"Are you saying you can't receive us?"
"That's correct."
Kennedy looked to one of the technicians to see if there were any answers. All she got was an unknowing shrug. Into her headset, she said,
"Iron Man, we'll work on that. For now, why don't you check out the rest of the second floor and then check in on the field radio in thirty minutes?"
"Roger that. I'll start to set up the surveillance cameras.
Over and out." Rapp placed the handset back in its cradle and started to organize his gear. Taking the fanny pack of miniature surveillance units, Rapp extracted five of the devices and placed them in his web vest.
"Staircases first?" asked Adams.
"Yep." Rapp grabbed his gun.
"Just like before. Milt. Keep your eyes peeled, and don't walk anywhere where I haven't walked first. All right?" Adams nodded.
"Any questions before we get going?"
"Yeah." Adams looked slightly embarrassed.
"I gotta take a piss."
Rapp grinned, appreciating the much needed levity.
"We can take care of that. In fact we'll make it our first stop. All right, let's move out."
Adams pulled the bolt back, and he and Rapp quietly walked out into the large closet. Adams pushed the bookcase like organizer back into place, and it stopped with a soft click.
With his gun at the ready Rapp stood outside the bathroom while Adams went in and took care of business. Rapp took the time to look around the room and noticed something he had missed earlier. Something odd. The president's bed was in disarray.
Rapp walked over to the bed, and on closer examination he saw something startling, something that made his blood boil. There was a substantial splotch of blood on the white sheets and dangling off the side of the bed was a woman's bra.
Rapp shook his head in disgust at the scene. When Adams came out of the bathroom a moment later, Rapp pointed at the disturbing evidence.
Neither man said a word. After a long moment Rapp walked across the room to a small end table situated near the door that led to the Truman Balcony. Taking one of the small surveillance units from his pocket, he attached one of the Velcro patches to the underside of the table and secured the tiny device.
Rapp motioned to Adams.
"Let's go." He moved for the main door and stopped when he reached it.
Adams stuck the tiny black snake under the door and checked the hallway.
The lights were on, and the picture was very clear.
The cross hall on the second floor of the family residence was wide, about fifteen feet. It was brightly lit and the walls were adorned with built-in bookcases and several oil portraits of past presidents. Various groupings of couches, chairs, tables, and lamps gave the space the dual role of informal living room and hallway.
Adams manipulated the snake back and forth and whispered, "It looks clear." Rapp nodded and said, "Let me take a look first, and then I'll wave you out." Rapp looked at the camera one more time and checked the hallway. Slowly, Rapp turned the knob and opened the door, taking the first step into the brightly lit hallway. HER EYES BLINKED several times before they could stay open. Anna Rielly let out a weak groan. It took her a second to regain her senses, and even then she had no idea where she was. All she knew was her head ached and she was having a hard time breathing. As her eyes came into focus, she saw stairs and then a pair of legs and boots. For a second she thought she was dreaming, and then everything fell into place. The terrorist was carrying her over his shoulder.
She tried to lift her head, but a searing pain shot through her neck.
She knew she had to fight no matter how much it hurt. Rielly commanded herself to ignore the pain, and with as much strength as she could muster, the young journalist bolted upright and grabbed onto the slicked-back hair of the man who was carrying her. Rielly kicked her feet violently and began to scream at the top of her lungs.
MITCH RAPP ALMOST jumped out of his skin. The female voice was so loud and so sudden that it caught him completely off guard. He was standing exposed in the middle of the hallway, bathed in light. The violent scream had shattered the stillness and sent his nerves right to the edge. Rapp paused just long enough to ascertain which direction the scream was coming from and then immediately began to move, while Milt Adams stood frozen two steps behind. Like a big cat, Rapp began a rapid retreat. Instinctively, his right hand reached back in search of Adams.
His left hand kept the lethal barrel of his MP-10 aimed in the direction of the scream, and he pushed Adams back into the open doorway of the president's bedroom.
With Adams now in the lead, they hurried into the closet, and Rapp closed the door behind them. Adams had the door to the stash room open and paused for a second to see what Rapp wanted to do. Rapp pushed him into the small room and pulled the organizer closed behind them.
Adams turned on the light and grabbed his heart.
"Jesus, how do you do this shit for a living?"
Rapp, his own adrenaline pumping, grabbed the monitor around Milt's neck and tuned the picture to the tiny surveillance device they had just planted less than twenty feet away.
ANNA RIELLY CLUTCHED her stomach with one hand and the wrist of the terrorist with the other. Her shoes had fallen off, and she could see them halfway down the hallway as the thug dragged her across the carpet.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and the pain from the kick to her stomach was so intense she thought she might vomit.
Abu Hasan liked the fight. He considered it part of the thrill, part of the domination. This one, the dark one, was much better than the one he had taken care of last night. The blonde had turned out to be boring.
There was no fight in her, only tears. Hasan smiled widely as he rounded the corner and saw the door to the president's bedroom. It was the perfect place to rape this American whore. Hasan thrust open the door with one hand while he held on to Riellys ponytail with the other.
After dragging her another ten feet, he violently lifted her off the ground and threw her onto the king-size bed. Drawing his knife, he yelled at her, "Take your clothes off, you bitch."
Rielly started to get back up. There was no way she was going to give in. She would rather die than be raped again. The terrorist blocked her arms and sent the butt end of the knife crashing down and into Rielly's temple. The blow knocked her unconscious, and Rielly went limp, leaving her completely motionless and vulnerable on the bed.
Abu Hasan wasted no time. Taking his knife, he began cutting off her clothes. The more skin he revealed the faster he cut. Once he had her pants off, he ripped at her blouse, and then stopped for a second.
Lustfully, he looked down at the young woman before him and admired her tanned, firm body.
Slowly, he reached down and ran his hand over her leg. He stopped at her black lace panties, and then with a violent yank, he tore them from her body.
MILT ADAMS WAS disturbed by what was happening in the other room, but it wasn't as scary as the transformation taking place right in front of him. Mitch Rapp's face had taken on a very different look. His eyes had twisted into a menacing stare, his jaw was clenched, and a sheen of sweat now coated his forehead.
Rapp shook his head several times and muttered something through his clenched teeth. Inside his mind a battle was being waged. The logical side was telling him that the mission was more important than what was going on in the other room. All of his professional training had taught him that he should stay put and continue to collect information without announcing his presence, that the lives of the other hostages were more important, that killing Rafique Aziz was more important. Despite knowing what he should do, there was another voice in his head that was saying something entirely different.
BACK IN THE control room at Langley, all eyes were on the big board. A surveillance device had been activated by Rapp, and its grainy transmission was being received on one of the monitors. The technicians at Langley worked with Marcus Dumond, who, with the aid of the communications boom on the back of the van, was homing in on the frequency and trying to filter out the disturbances. Over the course of several minutes the picture began to clear, eventually revealing a lone man in a lit doorway.
Without taking his eyes off the screen. General Campbell asked Kennedy,
"Is that the president's bedroom?"
"It must be," replied Kennedy as she squinted at the monitor.
She watched as the man in the doorway turned and walked quickly back into the room. A second man's profile appeared in the doorway, and Kennedy immediately recognized it as Rapp's.
"Why are they going back into the closet?" asked Campbell.
Kennedy frowned.
"I don't know."
One of the technicians turned around and said, "We've got audio on the unit."
"Put it on the speaker system," stated Kennedy, without taking her eyes off the monitor. A second later a scratchy audio came over the room's overhead speaker system.
There was a loud noise, and General Flood, who was sitting one row behind Kennedy and Campbell, asked, "What in the hell was that?"
Kennedy stared at the monitor showing the open doorway of the president's bedroom with the lit hallway beyond and said, "It sounded like a scream."
Just then a man appeared in the doorway dragging a woman behind him. As if on cue everyone in the control room moved closer to the screen in an attempt to discern what was happening. Within seconds it was brutally apparent what was unfolding before them. Kennedy, in an unusually tense voice, snapped, "Get me Iron Man on the radio right now!" Kennedy knew Rapp better than anyone in the room and possibly better than anyone in the world. Kennedy knew she had to assert some control over him and assert it quickly, if she had even the slightest chance of stopping him from doing what she knew he was contemplating.
THE MP-10WAS on the ground in the corner and had been replaced by the silenced 9-mm Beretta. Rapp stared at the gun.
Angry beyond comprehension, he felt like punching a hole in the wall. He told himself to bring it back a notch. Too much anger led to poor judgment. But Rapp hated thugs, people that took from others, animals that did what they wanted to do with little or no thought of what their actions did to fellow human beings.
Mentally, Rapp was gone. The decision had been made.
There was no turning back. The woman in the other room was somebody's daughter, probably somebody's wife, and maybe some poor kids mother, and there was no way he could allow himself to sit in the safety of the bulletproof room and let it happen.
The secure field radio spurted a quiet beeping noise, and a green light on the panel began to flash. Adams reached for the handset, and Rapp stopped him.
"Don't answer that."
Adams slowly withdrew his hand. He no longer recognized the man sitting next to him. Rapp reached out, turned the power switch on the radio to the off position, and pulled his headset down around his neck. Standing, he retrieved his matte-black combat knife and kept it in his left hand.