"Be careful!"
Barb tugged the steel fire door open. Deciding that poking her head in to check if the coast was clear would be too suspicious, she instead balanced the tray on her fingertips and stepped in with authority. Perhaps she moved with a bit too much authority, as she nearly ran right into a tall man with a suit and a thick mustache. She opened her mouth to apologize, but bit off the words. This wasn't an accidental collision. This man was waiting on her.
Barb spun to put distance between them and found a second man directly behind her. This one, bearded and muscular, actually grinned. He enjoyed the surprise in Barb's eyes, but was perhaps a little disappointed there was no fear. When the bearded man said something to her in Arabic, Barb didn't respond. At least not with her mouth. She lashed out with her sock foot, catching him in the groin. When he doubled over from the blow, she swung the drink tray like a bat, breaking it in half on his head.
Hands wrapped around her from behind, squeezing her into a bear hug. Barb lifted her feet off the ground and kicked out as hard as she could. Her feet hit the shoulders of the doubled-over man in front of her, knocking him on his ass and propelling her and her attacker backward. The man holding her stumbled and fell. When they hit the floor, she slid up his body, his face between her shoulder blades. She raised a leg and aimed a heel strike at his groin. The blow glanced off his thigh, hitting her target, but with less crushing force than intended.
Mustache Man roared in pain and frustration. He tried to wrap his arms around her neck and get a chokehold, but she was too high. When he loosened his hands, ready to wrap them around her waist instead, she took the opportunity to scramble perpendicular to him. She rolled from her back to her stomach, dropping an elbow onto the man's face.
The first blow shattered the bridge of his nose with a sound like stomping an egg. Blood splashed onto his teeth when he opened his mouth to cry out in pain. Barb managed to get a second elbow strike onto his already broken nose before a forearm locked around her neck and dragged her backward.
As Barb choked, she could hear Conor shouting into her earpiece, but she couldn't make out the words. She was too focused on trying not to blackout. Still holding her, the man backed into the wall, their motion coming to an abrupt halt. She understood what he was doing then. He was definitely trying to choke her out. Had he wanted to kill her, to break her neck, a slight adjustment of his hold and a mild increase in pressure would have been all that was required.
She tried twisting her head, trying to restore the blood flow to her brain, but he was too strong. She tried shoving back against him, and he responded by lifting her into the air, her feet flailing wildly as she tried to get traction. When she attempted to kick backward with another heel strike, she didn't hit anything that provoked a reaction. Then, as bursts of light began to appear in her vision, she remembered the fisherman's knife in her belt.
She fumbled with the front of her abaya, tugging it up around her waist. She found the knife and yanked it from its sheath, sinking it into the man's thigh with all her might. He screamed in her ear, loosening his grip. She twisted the knife hard, reaming a larger wound channel, and he released her. Gasping for air, she sagged back against her attacker. He shoved her away from him, falling to the floor and desperately working to staunch the flow of blood pouring from his femoral artery.
Barb laid on her hands and knees, trying to get her head together. Her blood roared like a train in her ears. She imagined her dad screaming into the radio, but the earpiece had dislodged. A polished black shoe came from a blurry corner of her vision and stomped down on her hand, trapping the knife beneath it. Barb screamed as several fingers snapped like pretzels. Unable to clearly think of a countermeasure, she acted out of instinct, sinking her teeth into the man's calf like she was a terrier.
Instead of screaming, the man jammed something against Barb's neck. She felt cold, then heard a crackle. There was the smell of burning hair and her body went rigid, wracked with intense pain. Although she realized she'd been hit with a stun gun, understanding what was happening did little to ease her mind. She'd fought and she'd lost. She was as good as dead.
Before she recovered her ability to move, more men in suits showed up. The man she'd stabbed was whisked into a service elevator, a tourniquet on his leg. Another zip-tied her wrists behind her back. The man whose nose she'd broken stood with his back to the wall, his head tilted back and a clean white towel pressed against his face.
Barb was rolled over onto her back and found Prince Abbas standing over her, looking at her with great curiosity. He wrenched the hijab from her head, pulling out a handful of hair with it.
"Fucking bastard!" she snarled.
One of the guards drew back to kick her but Abbas stopped him. With her face now revealed, Abbas grinned. He pointed at her. "I know you! You were with that crazy man on the boat. Did you really think you could stroll around this resort and not be noticed? Stupid American."
Barb said nothing, understanding she was royally screwed at the moment. The frustration she was experiencing was nothing compared to the fear going through Conor's heart on the other end of the radio. His daughter was now held prisoner by Abbas and the police would be here at any moment. If he ever wanted to see his daughter again he had mere minutes to find her.
50
The Resort
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Conor wanted to coordinate his actions with Sydner and Sandy but he knew their comms were compromised now. Whoever had subdued Barb probably had her radio and would be monitoring anything they said.
"Fuck!" Conor snarled. He yanked the earpiece from his ear and smashed the radio against the wall. He pulled on his shoulder pack and Barb's too, leaving her rifle laying on the ground. Though he could use her mags, trying to fight with a spare rifle slung over his back was a sure way to get his ass handed to him.
He broke cover and sprinted for the staff entrance. The cops, military, or whoever Abbas might call was probably on the way already. How much time did that give him? Minutes maybe? Certainly not enough time for caution or stealth.
He threw open the staff entrance and bounded up the hallway, pulling the first fire alarm he saw. A bell rang and a siren blared, notification for all employees and guests to evacuate the building. Conor barreled up the hallway like a bull in a china shop. A man stepped out of the laundry with a stack of folded towels. Conor lowered his head and ran into him, sending the man sprawling.
A second stepped out of the kitchen with a rack of coffee cups, fresh out of the dishwasher. He tried to duck back into the doorway he'd come from, but Conor swung with the butt of the AK, dumping the mugs onto the floor. The more chaos, the more confusion he created, the better his chances of reaching where he wanted to go.
He tore through the marble lobby. It wasn't as crowded as he'd have liked, but people were flocking toward the exits. Conor jogged his way through them, the seas parting at the sight of a determined man with a rifle. He ducked into an alcove with a house phone and checked his map. Finding the nearest stairs, he tucked the map into his pocket and charged through the door.
The stairwell was already occupied, staff and the few guests making their way down the stairs. They didn't expect anyone to be going upstairs, and looked at Conor with surprise and irritation when he blew by, shoving them to the side if they didn't move quickly enough for him. The congestion on the stairwell let up as he got closer to the top. Maybe these were the floors Abbas had reserved for the traitors, for their privacy.
Conor slowed two landings from the top, trying to regain his breath and patiently climbed the remaining steps one at a time. He didn't have Barb's level of conditioning and needed to let his muscles recharge before he was into the fight. At the last landing, he slowed and concentrated on not making any noise. Even through the fire door he could hear voices in the hallway.
Good, he was there in time to join the party. He grabbed one of the flash-bang grenades from the shoulder bag, pulled the pin, and reached for the door
.
51
Rooftop Veranda
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
The guards slammed Barb down into a chair. She glared at them defiantly, but fiery looks were all she had at the moment. Her hands and feet were bound, her knife and radio were gone. She had to assume the rest of her team might be coming...sometime...if they could find her. It wasn't very reassuring.
The group on the veranda, the remainder of the traitors from the Shandong, recognized Barb as easily as Abbas had.
"Why is she here?" Stephanie Fuller asked. She was an economist with some Washington think-tank, known for espousing a monetary theory in which the government ignored the national debt and printed as much cash as they wanted.
Abbas held up his hands. "I would think the answer should be obvious. The people who attacked us on the ship aren't done with us. Somehow they tracked us here and this poor woman failed in whatever intelligence-gathering capacity they assigned to her."
"They tracked us here?" another of the weary travelers asked, a worried-looking man with bug-eyes and a rash crawling up his neck.
"Have you called the police?" asked Fuller.
Abbas shook his head. "I can't do that."
The rest of the room looked at him incredulously. "And why not?" someone asked. "We could be in danger. Our families could be in danger."
Abbas let out a long breath. Barb could see that for as much as he was trying to look calm and in charge, Abbas was panicking a little bit. With this fire alarm and an injured man, it would be more difficult to keep the situation under wraps. His polished veneer was cracking around the edges.
"You have no idea how the royal family works. Many times we have competing interests. We all have our pet projects we're trying to accomplish. However, the king demands consensus. Publicly, we have to present a unified face. He gets angry when we go out on our own and embarrass the family."
Fuller looked a little miffed. "Is that what you've done? So in other words, you never told the king that you were working with us?"
Abbas shrugged. "He knew I was the ambassador. I was going to bring him into the fold eventually. I wanted to get the plan a little further underway before I involved him."
"Did he know you were working with the Chinese to help us purge our enemies and cement control of the American government?" she persisted.
"No, that was going to be a surprise," Abbas admitted, as if it was some little detail of no consequence that he'd failed to mention. "The king will be quite excited about it. I've opened a wider conduit for the importation of Chinese weapons and that's something no one else has been able to accomplish."
"Won't the police automatically respond with the fire department?" Bug Eyes asked. "They would in America."
Abbas shook his head. "Already taken care of. Maintenance called the monitoring company and canceled the alarm."
"What about the man I stabbed?" Barb asked. "Won't there be questions?"
Abbas gave her a patient smile. "Private hospital and private doctor. They ask no questions. Certainly not of a member of the royal family."
"She stabbed someone?" Bug Eyes demanded.
"May have even killed him,” said Barb. “Stuck the bastard good."
Her insolence apparently too much for Abbas, he slapped her, the report of his hand on her face startling everyone in the room. She glared back at him, her defiant gaze a promise of violence to come.
"I'm not sticking around to watch this," Fuller said.
There was a murmur of assent around the room.
Bug Eyes’ eyes got even wider. "Yeah, I didn't sign up to watch people beaten and tortured."
Their weakness appalled Abbas but he conceded. Perhaps it was better they not fully understand what he was capable of. He needed them to be scared of their own people, their fellow Americans, and not him. "Fine. My guards will take you back to your rooms. We can finish our business later."
In a hurry to avoid seeing anything that might make them uncomfortable, the remaining guests crowded around the door of the suite. One of the guards opened the door and let them out.
"See that they get to their rooms safely," Abbas ordered.
"Do you need one of us to stay with you?" a guard asked.
Abbas looked at Barb, his eyes moving down to her bound wrists and feet. "No, I don't think she'll be any trouble. Just stay in the hall until I call for you."
When it was just the two of them, Abbas and Barb glared at each other. Abbas despised Barb for the inconvenience and embarrassment she’d caused him. Barb felt the same revulsion toward Abbas, whom she considered to be nothing more than a terrorist with deep pockets. That he was a prince with billions of dollars at his disposal meant nothing to her.
Abbas's expression hardened as Barb stared at him so brazenly. He was used to more submissive women. Women who knew how to be women and didn't run around with weapons, fighting like men.
He threw a punch, a jab that caught Barb in the cheek and snapped her head back. He leaned close to her face. "That is only the beginning of what I have in store for you."
Just then, an explosion shook the hall beyond their door. Barb couldn't restrain the smile that crept onto her face. "You fucked up, Abbas."
When Abbas looked at her, there was fear in his eyes for the first time. She saw a glimmer of awareness. He realized she might be right. Maybe he had fucked up this time.
52
The Penthouse
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
After the flash-bang detonated in the hallway, Conor leaned out into the chaos and followed up by tossing a smoke grenade down the hall. In less than a second, the dense cloud set off the smoke detectors, triggering the sprinkler system for the entire floor. Conor burst into the hallway, squinting against the smoke and the water running down his face.
Ahead of him, a man in a suit was on his hands and knees, trying to regain his bearings after taking the brunt of the stun grenade's energy. Conor put a round in his head with the AK, the unsuppressed rifle deafening in the confines of the hallway. Men appeared, staggering toward him like they were lost in the fog. Those in suits, whom Conor assumed to be security guards, took rounds, spinning and falling to the floor.
All of the suits were coming from one direction and Conor headed that way, assuming that Abbas, and hopefully Barb, were ahead. An extended handgun emerged from the dense smoke a fraction of a second before the face of the man wielding it. Conor kicked the man in the wrist, sending the handgun flying, then put a round in his shocked face.
There were shouting and screams. It sounded like they were trying to organize a response against the intruder but were finding it difficult in the chaos. Conor heard splashing, running steps on the saturated carpet coming in his direction. He flattened himself against the wall just as another man in a suit came running by. By the time he noticed Conor, he had no time left to react. Conor lashed out with a foot, tripping the man and sending him sprawling. Before he'd even stopped sliding, Conor had put two AK rounds in his back.
There was gunfire at the far end of the hallway and Conor wondered if the guards had begun shooting at each other in the pandemonium. He considered throwing the AK to full-auto and sweeping the hallway ahead of him, but he couldn't see his targets.
Then he heard a familiar voice. "Conor!"
It wasn't the voice he'd hoped for—not Barb—but it was backup. Sydner had shown up and Sandy had to be with him. He called back. "Sydner!"
There was the sound of a brief struggle, then two gunshots before Sydner's familiar face appeared in the thick smoke. "You find her?"
Conor shook his head and gestured down the hall. "Everyone was coming from that direction. She better be behind that door because I don't know where else to look."
"Go!" Sydner shouted. "We'll cover the hallway."
Conor turned down a hallway with an ornate double door at the end. A well-dressed guard stood at the door. He had a pistol in his hand and paced nervously, torn between his duty to guard the door and his desire to wade
into the fight. Conor made the decision, bringing the fight to him.
Trapped in the narrow hallway with nowhere to go, Conor bearing down on him with a raised AK, the man dove onto his belly, sending two rounds at Conor while he was still in the air. Conor flattened himself against the wall, presenting a smaller target. He fired back at the man but led too much. Both of his rounds hit the concrete ahead of the target, but the effect was just as deadly. The rounds fragmented on impact with the concrete floor and shredded the guard’s face like a fistful of razor blades. He rolled onto his back, coughing blood, and gurgling from an open neck wound. Conor topped him off as he ran by, putting a final round into his forehead.
Ahead, the double doors were most certainly locked. Conor knew this type of door was inherently weak, the fixed side relying on latches at the top and bottom to secure it in place. He lowered his head and charged with all his power. He leapt into the air, striking the right side door with his shoulder. There was a crack and the door gave slightly on the latch side.
Conor picked himself up from the floor, backed up the entire length of the hallway, and charged again. He yelled as he ran, something in his Gaelic ancestry telling him it was the right thing to do, the key to tapping into that final bit of power he'd need to shatter the door. This time he crashed through, rolling to a stop on the polished marble floors of the penthouse.
He popped up like a gopher from a hole, his rifle high, scanning through the holographic sight. When he found Abbas, he was forty feet away, standing against the concrete railing at the edge of the patio. Conor lowered his rifle as the magnitude of what he was seeing settled over him. Abbas was grinning in genuine pleasure at Conor's shock.
The chair Barb was bound to was balanced on the edge of the concrete railing, only the two back legs resting on the narrow ledge. The front legs of the chair hung in the air, Abbas holding onto one of them as he carefully kept the chair from teetering over into the void. Conor couldn't pull his eyes off Barb's, the expression of sheer terror in her eyes. If Abbas removed his hand, she'd tip over backward and fall. How far was it? Five stories? Six stories? Did it matter? It was certain death.
Punching Tickets: Book Five in The Mad Mick Series Page 26
