by Alex Lukeman
"Wonderful. Send her in. No, wait, I'll go out to meet her."
"Did you remember to take your pills?" Helen asked. She'd been with Margaret a long time. Sometimes the ambassador thought she acted more like a mother hen than a secretary.
"Yes, Helen, thank you." She got up out of her chair and went to meet Selena.
"Madam Ambassador," Selena said. She smiled. "Hello, Margaret. Thanks for seeing me."
"Selena, it's been too long. Come on into my office."
Selena followed her in, feeling the absence of weight on her hip caused by her missing holster.
Across the street Nick stood in the shade of a tall flame tree, watching the crowd and the Filipino police outside the embassy. Branches loaded with feathery green leaves and brilliant red flowers spread over his head, breaking up the heat of the sun. He wiped away a light coating of sweat from his forehead. It was already hot and humid. The weather forecast was for a scorcher.
Lamont and Ronnie were with the crowd of demonstrators and speakers at the beginning of the march, some distance away down Roxas Boulevard. The color of their skin made it easier for them to blend into the mob than it was for Nick. No one would mistake him for a Filipino. So far there'd been no sign of unusual activity, unless you counted the gathering of thousands of people opposed to an American presence in the Philippines as unusual.
Nick's earpiece crackled. He heard Lamont's voice.
"The march is moving," Lamont said. "Lots of people and they all seem pissed off."
"Roger that," Nick said. "You and Ronnie stick together. Try not to get separated."
Lamont said, "There's going to be trouble."
"Don't get caught in the crowd. Stay on the edges."
"Roger. Out."
Nick waited in the shade of the tree. Soon he heard a rumble of sound in the distance. As the crowd got closer the rumbling became distinct words.
USA OUT!! USA OUT!! USA OUT!! NO MORE BOMBS!! NO MORE BOMBS!!
Nick watched the march approach and felt his adrenaline kick in. The hair prickled on the back of his neck. There was something primal about mobs like this, an echo of a time before humans became civilized. It was more than a gathering of angry people. It was an entity unto itself, a force that could not be reasoned with. The chanting vibrated underfoot and echoed off the walls of the buildings.
Nick looked for Ronnie and Lamont and saw them on the outer fringe of the marchers, a few rows back from the front. They looked stressed. He held his hand over his ear.
"Ronnie, Lamont, I see you. I'm under that big tree with the red flowers across from the embassy. Break out and get over here." He saw them look his way.
They pushed through the protesters toward Nick. No one paid any attention. The march halted in front of the embassy. A double line of nervous national police in riot gear with helmets, clubs and shields blocked the front of the gates. The protesters ignored them and focused on the leaders. A man took out a crude American flag and set it on fire. A man with a bullhorn began haranguing the crowd, waving his fist in the air and shouting out slogans.
Inside the embassy, Selena and the ambassador watched from Cathwaite's office.
"Does this happen often?" Selena said.
"Not on this scale. Every once in a while somebody sprays slogans over the embassy sign out front. There hasn't been a big demonstration like this for a year or two. This one seems well organized and larger than most."
There was a knock and the door of the office was opened by a Marine wearing Gunnery Sergeant's stripes.
"Ma'am, I'd like to break out weapons and lock down the building. I don't like the looks of what's happening out there."
"Sergeant Crowder," she said. "If you think it's necessary, go ahead."
"Yes, Ma'am." He saluted and turned away. Selena could hear him giving orders to his men.
"I'm afraid you're stuck in here for a while, Selena," Margaret said. "These things can last for hours."
"Your sergeant looks competent," Selena said.
"He's a good man, commander of the security detachment. He watches over the others as if they were his family. As far as I know, they're the only family he's got."
Cathwaite pressed a button on her intercom. "Helen, would you assemble everyone in the ballroom please?"
The speaker crackled. "Right away."
"Let's join the others," Margaret said.
She swept out of the room, very much the Ambassador. You never know who someone is until things get difficult, Selena thought. Margaret Cathwaite looked like she was up to the task, whatever it turned out to be.
CHAPTER 15
The Museum of the City of Manila was located to the Northeast of the American Embassy. Ahmed settled himself comfortably in a sitting position on the roof of the museum. He placed the barrel of his Russian SV-98 rifle on the rampart, adjusted the bipod and peered through the telescopic sight. From the top of the four-story building, Ahmed had an unobstructed shot to the sentry tower on the back wall of the embassy. His rifle was chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum. The range was about 1200 meters, well within the round's 1750 meter accuracy.
Ahmed was the best marksman in Abu Sayyaf and proud to have this fine rifle. The SV-98 was an older design but it was still an effective sniper weapon, especially in the larger caliber. The rifle had a Russian PKS-07 scope with 7x magnification and a compact muzzle brake that acted to suppress the sound of the shot and reduce the powerful recoil. Even with a fiberglass stock, the SV-98 was heavy, weighing in at almost eight kilos.
Ahmed mentally calculated the breeze and the weight of the humid air and adjusted his sights accordingly. Shooting the way he did was an art, born of a natural gift and countless hours spent practicing. He made a slight adjustment to the scope and watched the uniformed sentry in the tower come into sharp, clear focus.
Bang. Ahmed pictured the man's head exploding. The heavy bullet would punch through the glass of the sentry tower as if it were paper.
Out on the bay, the boat with the assault team had turned toward the sea wall. Ahmed looked at his watch. Once the sentry was down, the others would scale the wall on the water side and move through the embassy complex toward the main building. There was a construction site near the wall that was usually busy with workers, but today it was abandoned. The Chancery was a large building situated directly behind the embassy. There might be trouble there but with the protest scheduled, most of the workers had stayed home. The chances of reaching the embassy unseen were good. Plenty would be going on in front to distract everyone.
Ahmed settled behind the scope. He took a breath and let part of it out, willing himself motionless, his mind focused on the head of the Marine in the sentry tower. He felt himself become one with the gun. His finger rested next to the hair trigger. The sentry was looking at the boat with Ahmed's comrades through a pair of binoculars.
Ahmed touched the trigger. The sound of the shot rolled across the bay, sending dozens of gulls screeching into the air. The rifle jumped with the recoil. Ahmed saw the Marine's head turn into a fog of red mist. The binoculars flew through the air. The man fell out of sight.
The boat moved in close, seconds after the shot. Grappling hooks and chain ladders locked onto the barrier wall. Men swarmed up the ladders and onto the grounds.
Inside the embassy, Master Gunnery Sergeant Crowder wasn't having any luck raising the tower on his radio. Crowder had been a Marine for twenty-four years. He'd developed a fine sense for trouble, honed in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. No one lasted long in the kinds of places he'd been if they didn't develop that sense. Now it was telling him there was more than a communications glitch behind the radio silence.
"Shit," he said. "Parker, Martinez, lock and load. Get your ass to the back of the building."
The two Marines carried M4A1's they'd taken from the arms locker. Crowder heard the metallic clacking of the bolts as his men charged their weapons on the run. One of his men came up carrying a rifle and handed it to him.
"Thought you might like
one of these, Gunny."
Crowder nodded his thanks. Better than the Beretta 9mm he carried. "Take Rodriguez and Jackson and get over by the front. Keep an eye on that crowd."
"Roger that."
The last stragglers were coming down from upstairs, headed for the ballroom. On a normal day there might be anywhere from fifty to eighty people inside the building. Today wasn't a normal day and the place was nearly empty. Most of the civilians and nonessential personnel had stayed home, anxious to avoid the demonstration. The Commerce Department attaché was there and his assistant, CIA's man in Manila. In addition to the ambassador, the only other Americans were Helen Martinson, Selena and a young woman who was the attache's secretary. Her name was Jean Wilson. Manila was her first overseas assignment.
Six American civilians, plus Sergeant Crowder and his Marines. A half dozen Filipinos rounded out the list, cleaning personnel and maintenance workers unwilling to be intimidated by the demonstration and lose a day's pay.
Selena was a step behind Margaret as they moved toward the ballroom. She heard sudden shouts from the rear of the building and the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons, followed by an explosion.
Grenade, she thought. Without thinking, her hand went for her gun. It wasn't there. Great. Locked away. She reached up to her ear and activated the comm link.
"Nick, do you read me?"
"Loud and clear. What's happening?"
"We're under attack. In the back."
Nick heard the background chatter of small arms fire over his earpiece. Out front, the only sound was the roar of the crowd. Ronnie and Lamont heard everything Selena was saying. Lamont's chronic tiredness seemed to have vanished. They stepped close to Nick and waited for his lead.
Nick cupped his ear. "Can you get to cover?" he said.
Selena was about to answer when men dressed in black shirts, white trousers and wearing black headbands spilled out of the ballroom into the central hall. They carried AK-47s. Sergeant Crowder shot the first man through the doorway before a burst from an AK cut him down.
The three Marines in front opened fire. The foyer echoed with gunfire and the eerie sound of high velocity rounds ripping through the air. Two more terrorists went down. Selena grabbed the ambassador from behind and pulled her down to the floor. The terrorists concentrated a stream of fire on the Marine guards. The open space echoed with shouts and the staccato blasts of the weapons and the ping of empty casings bouncing across the hard wooden floor.
Then it was silent except for the clacking, metallic sound of an empty magazine hitting the floor. The smell of spent rounds and fresh blood filled the air.
Selena looked at the carnage and whispered into her comm link. "Negative cover," she said. "Three terrorists dead. Six left that I can see. The guards are dead."
She stopped whispering as a pair of feet wearing Nike running shoes stopped nearby.
"All right," she heard Nick say. "Stay cool, don't do anything heroic. We'll get you out of there. Don't say anything unless you have to. I can hear everything going on around you."
"Get up." The voice was hard, almost bored. The Nike foot kicked her. "You are not hurt. Both of you, get up now." The speaker kicked her again for emphasis.
Selena got to her feet and leaned down to help Margaret stand.
"You are going to regret this," the ambassador said. "You, and all your cowardly comrades." She looked at the blood soaked body of Sergeant Crowder lying on the floor. Selena watched her get herself under control.
The terrorist leader was a small man with eyes that looked dead. Like the others, he wore a black headband, black trousers and a white shirt.
"I don't think so," he said. His English was good. "Unless you want to join your sergeant over there, you'll do as I say, Madame Ambassador." He turned his attention to Selena.
"Who are you?" he said. "You are not one of the people in our photographs."
Nick's voice sounded in her earpiece. "Tell him you're a journalist, visiting for a story. He'll like that."
"I'm a journalist," Selena said. "I work for the Times. I'm doing a feature piece on Manila and the American presence here in the Philippines."
"Ah, a journalist. Surely Allah has smiled upon me. You will tell our story to the world."
"Allah?" Selena said. "You are Muslim?"
Like a snake, the man's hand whipped through the air and slapped Selena across the face. The blow rocked her. Her cheek began to burn. At least he hadn't hit the side with the earpiece.
"You do not say the name of God," the man said. "In your infidel mouth it is an abomination. Look at you. Your hair uncovered, your legs and arms exposed for all to see. You are whores, both of you. But useful whores."
Selena wanted to rub her face where he'd hit her but wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much it bothered her. She also wanted to kick him in the balls. Who is he? she thought. Get him to tell you so Nick can find out. She looked him in the eye and said, "If you want me to write about you, I need to know your name."
"Why not? You may call me Omar." Omar gestured to one of his men. "Take them into the big room with the others," he said.
The man pushed them toward the ballroom. He wasn't gentle about it. Selena heard Nick's voice in her right ear.
"Good work, Selena. I'll get Harker on it." He paused. "I'm right here, I'll get you out of there."
She almost answered and caught herself in time.
The ballroom faced out the back of the embassy onto the Chancery through a wall of tall windows. Many of the windows were broken, blown in by the attack. Glass and bits of stone and wood littered the room. Two Marines lay dead on the polished ballroom floor. The rest of the embassy staff clustered together against one of the walls, under a large painting of Admiral Dewey's flagship at anchor in Manila Bay. The Americans sat together. The Filipino staff formed their own group. Omar herded Selena and the ambassador over to the others.
Cathwaite's secretary got up and hugged the ambassador. "Margaret! Thank God you're all right."
"I'm fine, Helen. Is anyone else hurt except for our poor Marines?"
"Just cuts and scratches from the glass. Nothing serious. Carmichael doesn't look good. I'm worried about him."
Matthew Carmichael was the Commerce Department attaché. He was sitting to the side of the group, holding his hand against his chest and taking labored breaths. Sitting next to him was a blond haired man who appeared subdued. Selena figured him for the CIA spook. Carmichael's secretary sat huddled on the other side of her boss. The Filipinos looked frightened. They stared at the floor, avoiding eye contact with anyone. It wasn't the kind of group she would have picked to go up against a dozen terrorists.
Omar jabbed Helen in the ribs with the barrel of his AK-47. "You, slut, shut up. All of you, sit. Now, or I kill you."
Selena sat down next to Margaret.
For now, she was on her own.
CHAPTER 16
"How many inside the building?" Harker asked. She and Stephanie were in Elizabeth's office in Virginia, talking to Nick over the satellite link.
"Uncertain. Selena said six. There could be more. The terrorists took out the Marine guards. They're led by a man named Omar."
"That helps," Elizabeth said. "It's a common name but they're probably Abu Sayyaf. We'll look in the database." She paused. "Don't do anything stupid, Nick."
"If it's only six we can take them. But we have to get into the building. They're going to have people watching the entrances. Can you get plans of the embassy? Blueprints?"
"I can do that. Give me a minute." Stephanie's voice came over the link. In Virginia, she entered a string of commands on her keyboard. "I'm looking for them now," she said.
The Project computers were Crays. A search for the embassy building plans was child's play for their enormous power. The drawings were up on Stephanie's monitor within a minute.
"I'm looking at the plans," she told Nick. "The whole complex is built on an artificial extension into the bay. The
y sank six hundred concrete pillars into the bay floor and filled it in."
"How does that help?" Nick said. Stephanie heard impatience in his voice.
"There's an underground drainage system combined with a service tunnel for utilities serviced by a pumping station on the surface. The tunnel is big enough for a man to walk in. The pumps are gone but the groundskeepers use the old pump house for a storage facility. If you can get into the tunnel and up into the building it would put you on the grounds next to the Chancery."
"You see a way into the tunnel?"
"There's a building over it now and no way to tell until you get there. The access might be sealed off. There are three buildings on the next street over, to the right of the embassy grounds. The one in the middle is the one you want. I'm sending a satellite shot now."
Nick looked at his phone. A satellite picture of the embassy complex appeared. He saw the buildings Steph was talking about.
"Okay, I've got it."
Nick looked across the boulevard toward the embassy. The speakers were riling up the crowd. The riot police fingered their batons. Some of them held guns that fired rubber bullets. Nick could see half a dozen teargas guns being held at port arms. Things were about to get ugly.
"Hold on," Nick said into his phone. "Looks like more cops are showing up."
A Kia SUV with police markings and four men dressed in police uniforms pulled up. An officer got out and signaled his men into the street. They were armed with AK carbines.
Something bothered Nick about the scene. Then he realized what it was.
"This isn't right," he said to Ronnie. "The Filipinos don't carry AKs."
The officer walked to the guardhouse. A Marine corporal came to the door and opened it. The officer raised his carbine and shot him. His men opened fire on the line of police stretched in front of the embassy gates. The crowd erupted in panic as people scrambled to get out of the way.
"Holy shit," Nick said.
"Nick, what's happening?" Elizabeth's voice crackled in his ear.
"Terrorists, dressed like cops. They shot the Marine guard and they're firing on the riot police and the crowd. They're taking over the guardhouse."
