He looked at the pistol in one hand and the knife in the other and paused. Standing, Milt Adams licked his dry lips, and with a worried expression on his face, he asked, "What are you going to do?"
Rapp looked sideways at him and after a short pause said, "I'm going to go out there and kill that piece of shit. It's not what I should do, but it's what I'm gonna do." Adams swallowed hard and with a nod said, "Good Then after a second, he added, "Do you want me to help?"
Rapp shook his head and closed his eyes.
"No… Turn off the lights, and open the door. Then stay here, and be quiet." Adams did as he was told. He couldn't see Rapp, but could feel him as Rapp slid through the passageway and into the closet.
ANNA RIELLY OPENED her eyes and tried to focus. Above her was darkness, but to her right there was light. Slowly, she turned her head and saw her attacker. The man had already taken off his shirt and was working on his pants. Rielly tried to move, but her arms wouldn't respond. Looking down, she saw her bare chest through tear-filled eyes. She was living the nightmare.
MITCH RAPP STOOD at the closet doorway for several seconds and listened.
His eyes were closed. He wanted them to adjust to the darkness as much as possible. There was a noise from the bedroom. It sounded as if the woman was crying, and then he heard a male laugh. Rapp opened his eyes and looked at his two weapons. He could shoot equally well with either hand, but he was better with the knife in his left hand. Rapp decided that if he could get close enough, he would use the knife, and he had few doubts he could. Before leaving, he started the timer on his watch and then reached for the door.
Slowly, cautiously, he turned the handle and began to open it.
RIELLY SOBBED AS she looked at the man looming over her. He was laughing, his disgusting cigarette breath enveloping her face. He held his erection with one hand and reached out with his other hand, pawing at Riellys groin. The young journalist clamped down with her legs and screamed. The terrorist yanked her legs apart and slapped her across the face.
Rielly tried to fight, but her strength was gone. All she could do was cry as he lowered his body on top of her.
THE DOOR OPENED slowly. Rapp peered through the crack and saw the light from the hallway spilling into the room. From his angle he could see a man with his back to him taking off his clothes and standing at the foot of the large bed.
The man began to climb onto the bed. Now was the time to move. With his knife in his left hand and the gun in his right, Rapp proceeded slowly.
He took his first step and then quickly looked to the left and the right to make sure no one else was in the room. He stepped silently, without vibration or noise, carefully placing his heel and then the rest of his foot on the floor.
Halfway across the room, Rapp slid his gun back into his holster. The terrorist was holding the woman's hands above her head and was trying to enter her, the woman's sobs muffled by the mans body.
Rapp moved quickly to the bed, his right hand open and stretched outward, the left rightly clutching his knife. With fluid precision, he grabbed the hair of the terrorist with his right hand and yanked the man's head back. With his left hand, Rapp stuck the tip of the knife directly into the man's neck and thrust it upward. The sharp knife sliced through muscle and penetrated deep into the base of the brain With a forceful twist of the knife, Rapp shredded the fragile brain stem. Abu Hasan never knew what happened in his final second on earth.
Still holding the man's hair, Rapp pulled him off the woman and dropped his lifeless body on the floor with as little noise as possible. He placed the bloody knife back in its scabbard, and Rapp held out his hands to the naked woman on the bed.
"Don't scream. We need to move quickly." The woman looked up with shocked eyes and tried to cover her exposed breasts with her arms. Rapp reached down, untucked the sheet that she was lying on top of, and gently folded it over her body.
He knew he had to move fast. There was no telling when someone else might come along. Looking the woman in the eye, he said, "Listen, I have to move you. I'm going to pick you up and bring you someplace where you'll be safe."
Rapp placed one knee on the bed, and Rielly flinched like a scared and beaten dog. Moving slowly, he said, "More of them could come at any minute. I need to get you out of here."
After giving her several seconds to think about the alternative, Rapp placed one hand under her legs and the other under her upper back.
Cradling her to his chest he stood and whispered, "Everything's gonna be all right." Rapp walked quickly across the room and into the closet. In a voice just above a whisper he said, "Milt, turn the light on." Almost instantly the light inside the stash room came on, and the hidden door opened wider.
Rapp moved the woman inside and placed her on the floor. Then grabbing his backpack, he opened it and extracted a small kit. Handing it to Adams, he said, "Give her some water and a couple of these." Rapp pulled out a packet of Tylenol 3.
"I have to get back out there and try to figure out what to do with that body."
RAGIB QUASAR LOOKED out across the mass of huddled hostages and checked his watch. It was nearing midnight, and his turn was approaching. There were two other terrorists in the room, and Ragib looked at the one closest to him. The man nodded, signaling for Ragib to go ahead. They were all eagerly awaiting their turn, and the sooner Ragib was done with the woman the sooner the other two would have their chance.
Ragib grinned and flashed his open hand to his compatriot three times, telling him to give him fifteen minutes With excitement, he strode from the room, his pace picking up as soon as the door behind him closed.
RAPP CLOSED THE main door to the bedroom and studied the body for a second. It was no good trying to hide it. Aziz would know his man was missing and would immediately deduce that he had been killed. There had to be another way.
Rapp grew impatient as he stood over the dead terrorist, racking his brain for a way out of the mess. After searching the dead man's discarded clothes for information, it came to him. Rapp grabbed the terrorist's knife from the pile of clothes, and he hoisted the body back on to the bed, laying the dead man on his stomach.
With the terrorist's own knife, Rapp stabbed him three times in the upper back. Rapp was careful not to use all of his strength, only sending an inch or two of the knife into the flesh. After pausing for a second, Rapp flipped the dead man over and stabbed him three times in the chest and twice in the neck. Blood was beginning to flow freely over the white sheets. For the finishing touch, he sliced the man's forearms and hands to make it look as if he had tried to block the blows.
Rapp took several steps back and looked at the body. He checked the area in front of him and around his feet to make sure none of the blood had gotten on his boots, and then he pulled the body off the bed and onto the floor again With the bedspread already disheveled and blood all over the sheets, it just might work.
RAGIB BOUNDED UP the last step and looked down the long hallway. He knew the president's bedroom was on the left.
He had visited it last night. Ragib smiled to himself while he thought of the fun he'd had with the blonde. She wasn't much of a fighter, but this one would be different. She had already shown some tenacity. Ragib just hoped that she wouldn't be beaten to a bloody pulp by the time he got there. He was a little early, and with any luck he would be able to hear Abu Hasan's moans of ecstasy. The bearded terrorist walked down the hallway, his AK-74 at his side and a look of anticipation on his face.
RAPP GRABBED THE pile of clothes and began to go through them again. In the combat vest he found a radio and held it up to his ear. There was no traffic at the moment. He was tempted to take it, but that would tip Aziz off. If the radio was gone, they would change frequencies and they would also begin to wonder if the woman had acted alone.
Rapp studied the device. It was made by a French company he knew little about. He placed the radio back where he'd found it and checked his watch. Four minutes and twenty-three seconds had passed. Rapp was standing over the body when he felt an almost indiscernible tremor.
Someone was coming down the hall. He drew his gun and bounded across the room to the closet. Just as he closed the closet door, he saw the main door to the bedroom begin to open. Rapp stood at the door for only a second and then cautiously retreated into the stash room, closing and bolting the door behind him.
BACK IN THE control room at Langley, Irene Kennedy had given up trying to raise Rapp on the radio. Instead she sat with everyone else in total silence and watched the events unfold.
No one spoke. They all watched, riveted by the real-life drama unfolding on the one small monitor. At first no one knew what Rapp was doing when he began to stab the man who already lay dead on the floor. Then people began to catch on.
General Hood turned to Stansfield and said, "Damn, that kid thinks on his feet."
Before Stansfield could reply, Rapp had bolted across the room and into the closet. Almost simultaneously, the bedroom door was opened and a man in green combat fatigues stood silhouetted by the hallway light.
Everyone watched as the man walked across the room and suddenly snapped up his gun from his side, spinning three hundred sixty degrees. Next, the lights came on, and then a series of excited calls over the radio.
WASHINGTON, D.C. WAS a city, a federal district, and most notably, the capital of the United States of America. The originally square geographic area was located at the confluence of the Potomac and anacostia Rivers and was bordered by Maryland on three sides and Virginia to the southwest. Founded in 1790 and originally called the Federal City and District of Columbia, after Christopher Columbus, the city was later renamed by Congress for the nation's first president.
Because the city's four corners pointed in the four directions of the compass, it was conveniently split up into quadrants.
The southeast quadrant was by far the most economically deprived. The heart of the area was the neighborhood ofanacostia. This violent portion of Washington accounted for more than half of the city's annual murders and was literally a war zone in the shadow of the nation's Capitol.
On the top floor of a rat-infested tenement building in the heart ofanacostia, a man with bleached white hair and a fresh set of tattoos worked diligently as the clock approached midnight.
The building was largely deserted, except for some drug addicts who used the lower floors to trade sex, stolen property, and sometimes even cash for their mood-altering chemical of choice. The building had been chosen by the group because the police rarely patrolled the area, out of fear for their own safety.
In the grungy apartment on the fifth floor the windows had been covered with three-quarter-inch plywood—the sturdy boards bolted into the window frames making them impossible to kick in. The door had also been reinforced with two-by-fours and plywood, and a series of new locks had been installed. Inside the room two motion sensors, mounted in opposite corners, had ensured the room's integrity for almost two weeks.
Rafique Aziz had ordered the white-haired man sitting on the folding chair to find the safe house almost five months ago, but Aziz had been adamant about waiting until the last possible moment to set it up. They did not want to attract too much attention. The man sitting in the dirty apartment was Salim Rusan, the same man who, for the last six months, had been an inconspicuous bellman at the Washington Hotel, the same man who had taken aim with his SVD sniper rifle at the Secret Service just yesterday.
Rusan was no longer an inconspicuous individual. Thanks to the FBI, his employee photo from the hotel had been splashed all over television and every newspaper in the country.
That was why Rusan had not seen daylight since walking into this apartment the morning before last. It had all been predicted by Aziz.
The group's leader had been explicit about every detail before the raid on the White House, and that is why he had given Rusan only two ten-round magazines. Aziz had other plans for Rusan, and he wanted him far away from the White House when the police and the FBI showed up.
After Rusan had fired all twenty of his rounds, he had left the Soviet-made sniping rifle right there on the balcony overlooking the White House and fled the building by a staircase.
When he made it to the street, he proceeded two blocks to the Metro Center stop at Twelfth and IF Street and caught the first southbound train. Ten minutes later he was walking through the slums of Anacostia, his hotel uniform replaced with a Chicago Bulls hat and a leather jacket. Everything had been waiting for Rusan when he arrived.
The copious amount of rat droppings and cobwebs had been cleaned up, and the apartment was stocked with everything he needed. Most of the supplies had been bought at the REI store in Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia. It was paid for in cash. The recreational equipment included a cot, a sleeping bag, several folding chairs, two tables, and some cooking equipment, all of it designed for campers. A battery-powered generator purred in the corner and provided juice for a small TV, a radio, a police scanner, and several lights. Two red Coleman coolers contained enough food and water to last him at least five days, but he doubted he would use all of it. Tomorrow morning he would venture back out into public and sow the seeds for a special surprise.
Rusan looked at his watch and then the cot. He had done everything Aziz had told him to do. He had shaved off his entire beard, with the exception of his mustache and goatee.
With a pair of clippers, he had buzzed his hair to within a half inch of his scalp and then bleached it until it was white. Next came the bleaching of the facial hair and eyebrows and then the pierced right ear. That was the difficult part, working backward in the mirror and then trying to stop the blood after he had shoved the needle through the earlobe. The finishing touch was a series of fake tattoos, the most conspicuous, an upside-down pink triangle on his right biceps with the words "Queer Nation" emblazoned underneath. Rusan was not completely comfortable with the disguise. He hated homosexuals, but it had not been his idea; it was Aziz's. And when Aziz gave an order, it was best to follow it.
Rusan had one task to perform before he left the apartment in the morning. Looking at his watch, he debated whether he should take care of it now or get some sleep first.
As he fingered the blocks of explosive Semtex and the box of detonators sitting on the other side of the table, he decided to wait until morning. He would sleep better knowing the bombs were unarmed.
RAFIQUE AZIZ AND Muammar Bengazi walked up the main staircase of the mansion. Aziz was furious. They had been lucky enough to take the White House without losing a single man, and now, when he was within twenty-four hours of achieving his ultimate goal, he had lost a valuable man due to outright stupidity. Momentum was something that Aziz was acutely aware of. The battlefields of history are littered with the corpses of soldiers whose commanders failed to notice the crucial role it plays in every conflict. Bengazi walked a half a step behind, ashamed that one of his men had been foolish enough to get killed by a woman.
When they reached the second floor of the mansion, Aziz and Bengazi proceeded directly across the hall and into the president's bedroom.
Every light in the room was on. Aziz walked to the other side of the bed and looked down at the bloody naked body. Ragib, the man who had found his slain comrade, was standing on the other side of the body, his radio in one hand and his assault rifle in the other. He started to speak, but Aziz raised his hand and silenced him. The leader of the group said nothing for a long time while as his eyes took inventory of the scene.
After several minutes, Aziz looked up. The expression on his face was one of controlled anger. In a curt tone, he asked, "What in the hell happened?"
Ragib nervously began to recount the events, content that for now Aziz hadn't executed him. Ragib told him how Abu Hasan had knocked the woman out and dragged her from the room. He gave his leader the details of what he had found and what little he knew about the woman. When Ragib was done, Aziz looked at the body for a second and then at the nervous man standing before him. No bad deed was to go unpunished. Examples had to be made; fear had to be maintained. With no warning whatsoever, Aziz brought his hand up and slapped Ragib across the face.
Ragib held his ground, offering his chin for another blow.
Although he was stronger and bigger than Aziz, he feared his leader deeply. Fighting back or blocking the blow was not a consideration.
Taking the muzzle of his MP-5, Aziz shoved it under Ragib's chin and backed him up until he was pinned against the wall.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you for your stupidity."
"I have no excuse." Ragib kept his voice calm, knowing that any sign of fear or disrespect could end his life instantly. "I deserve to die. I was stupid."
MITCH HAD MADE it into the room with seconds to spare.
Milt Adams knelt in the corner next to the woman Rapp had just saved and tried to keep her calm. The battered woman had been shaking for the better part of five minutes, and Adams was beginning to worry that she might be slipping into some type of shock.
Rapp tried his best to ignore Adams and the woman and stay focused on what the people back at Langley were saying.
He had already received his reprimand for not seeking the approval of the high command before saving the woman. Rapp liked to use the phrase "high command" to describe anyone who sat comfortably in a dark room that was dimly lit with computer and TV screens and gave orders to operators in the field. On this particular mission, he respected the people who were giving orders. Kennedy was someone whom he trusted implicitly, and Campbell, Flood, and Stansfield had all been in the field before—something that went a long way.
Rapp, however, had a new axiom in life. The stubborn half German had just recently figured out that instead of righting the system, it was often better to say yes and then go off and do whatever you thought was best. Washington was a bureaucratic monolith that more often than not moved with the speed and agility of a five-hundred-pound man. Like most clandestine operators, Rapp saw Washington's role as a secondary one, and because of this he had developed the habit of being very cautious about what information he passed on while in the field. Rapp had discovered that the less they thought he was doing the more support they seemed to give him, while inversely the more he told them, especially bad news, the less support he seemed to get.
Kennedy almost always went to bat for him, but there were others in Washington who had built their entire careers on doing nothing.
Rapp sat on his heels, his eyes trained on the monitor, his left ear receiving the audio from the president's bedroom and his right ear receiving the audio from Langley. The only voices coming from Langley were those of Kennedy, Campbell, Stansfield, and Hood. None of them had bothered to criticize him for saving the woman. They all knew or hoped they would have done the same thing. General Flood had, however, stressed that from this point forward there was a chain of command firmly in place, and it was to be used.
Using his new axiom, Rapp replied with a simple, "Yes, sir."
For the next several, tense minutes the group discussed how to proceed, but before long, there was no need to speculate.
The entrance of two men into the bedroom silenced all radio chatter.
Rapp squinted at the small monitor and instantly recognized the body language of the smaller man. The hair on Rapp's neck stood on end, and his palms became moist When Rapp heard the voice of this man, his heart began to race almost out of control. Instinctively, Rapp found himself reaching for his MP-10. The desire to kill seemed to possess him.
Rafique Ariz was on the other side of the wall, probably no more than ten feet away, and his back was to the door.
As Rapp rose to one knee, the voice of Irene Kennedy came over the handset.
"Iron Man, I know what you're thinking, and it's not going to happen.
The odds aren't right. There are three of them and one of you."
Rapp paused, tempted not to reply. Unfortunately, he had already tried that once, and it wasn't going to work twice.
Rapp exhaled and said, "I can take them down and end this right now," his voice a little edgy.
Kennedy's even voice came right back, "Or you could get killed and ruin our only chance for finding out what's going on in there."
"I won't get killed," answered Rapp in a tense voice.
"At least not before I take all three of them down first."
Back at Langley, Kennedy spun around in her chair and looked up at Director Stansfield. She shook her head vigorously at her boss.
Stansfield, for his part, sat calmly in his chair with one arm folded across his chest and the hand of the other one under his chin. Touching the arm of his headset, he said, "Iron Man, hold for a second while we discuss our options."
Stansfield pressed a button on his console and leaned forward.
General Flood scooted his chair over several feet, and Kennedy and General Campbell placed their hands on the long table that ran in front of the elevated row.
Kennedy was the first to speak.
"I don't like the odds." Stansfield looked from Kennedy to Campbell, and the general replied, "I don't know… I'm tempted. We've had a bull's eye on this guy's head for a long time, and Mitch is awfully good."
Stansfield turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Flood rubbed the knob of his chin with his hand. Frowning, he answered,
"We're not even an hour into this operation, and we have sixty-plus hostages on the line. I think we wait." With a shake of the head. Flood added, "If he doesn't get all three of them, we're in deep shit."
All of them turned and looked at the monitor showing the three terrorists. One of them turned and walked closer to the door.
Stansfield shook his head and punched the button on his console.
Adjusting the lip mike of his headset, he said, "Iron Man, you are to hold your position. I repeat, you are to hold your position."
Back in the stash room, Rapp squeezed the tough plastic handset so tightly his knuckles turned white. In his mind he was swearing the same four-letter word over and over while kicking himself for answering Kennedy's call. He should have put a bullet in the field radio and gone out and ended it.
Thinking he still had a chance, Rapp stated, "I respectfully disagree. I have three targets, all standing within fifteen feet of each other."
Rapp looked at the monitor.
"They have their backs to my position, and I have the element of surprise on my side. This is not a difficult takedown."
This time it was General Flood's voice that came back over the radio.
"Iron Man, you are not to move, and that is an order. We need your eyes and ears in there, and we have time on our side." Flood's voice boomed with authority. In a slightly softer tone he added, "You'll get your chance, son. Just be patient Reluctantly, Rapp replied, "Roger that.
"Then, taking the handset, he tapped the ear portion against his forehead repeatedly. Next time, he told himself, just do it. Don't bother asking.
RAFIQUE AZIZ STILL had the muzzle of his MP-5 stuck firmly under the chin of Ragib. If he'd had more men at his disposal, Ragib would be dead, but he needed every last body.