by Ben Coes
He took the bottle opener and ran to the elevator, jamming it in the seam between the doors and twisting until he could get his fingers in between. He pulled the doors apart with all of his strength, his face turning red with effort. Finally, as if giving up, the doors slid open.
The elevator shaft was dark. But still, he could see a figure. There, on the roof of the elevator car, was a woman. She had blond hair and was dressed in some sort of black paramilitary gear.
“Help,” she whispered.
“I’m right here,” said Sullivan. “I’m going to get you. Don’t you worry. Can you move?”
The woman didn’t answer.
Sullivan ran back to the room and grabbed a lighter from the box. He lit it and held it out into the shaft. Below the elevator cars, he could make out the basement floor twenty-five or thirty feet below.
He could easily step onto the roof of the car, but the woman was perched precariously. Her head and chest were dangling over the edge. The slightest jostle and she’d drop several floors to the concrete floor of the basement.
Suddenly, the elevator car shook.
Sullivan held the lighter out and flicked it, illuminating the shaft above. He saw a vague silhouette several floors above.
“Stop!” Sullivan said. “Who are you?”
“FBI.”
“Don’t move any closer!” Sullivan implored in a loud whisper. “She’s going to fall if you do!”
“Okay,” said the FBI agent. “I got it.”
Then the words, in a whisper from above, “Are you Sullivan?”
Sullivan nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m Damon Smith. Okay, I can see what you mean. She’s barely on there.”
“I know,” said Sullivan.
“Do you still have the rifle?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a strap?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s good. I want you to remove the strap and get to the roof of the car to your right. Then hook the strap to her vest. She’s wearing a tactical vest that has various places you can attach it. Go ahead.”
“What do I do with the other end?”
“You hold it. Then I can come down.”
“Got it.”
Sullivan removed the strap from the rifle, then went back to the elevator doors. The car the woman was perched on was directly in front of him. He didn’t want to so much as look at it. He looked at the wall immediately to his right and then the roof of the next car. He leapt out and landed on that car. Then he got to his hands and knees and crawled to the far corner, near Katie. She was at the very edge, her hand wrapped like a vise around a carriage bolt on the roof. Gently, he ran his hands along her back until he found a loop. He fastened the metal clasp on the rifle strap to the loop. He then wrapped the other end of the strap tightly around his wrist and pulled slowly but firmly back.
“Okay,” he said, looking up. “She’s secure.”
Smith rappelled swiftly down from above.
He felt her neck for a pulse. Then he shone a light into her eyes, pulling back each eyelid.
“She’s alive. Good pulse. Looks like she has brain activity too.”
He waved the light down her body. The positioning looked awkward.
“Her legs are fractured,” Smith continued. “Let’s hope not her neck.”
He removed carabiners and ropes from his backpack and quickly built a system that would allow them to lower her to the bottommost level of the elevator shaft. He started by securing her in three places: at her feet, her waist, and her upper torso, using rope and tension to replicate the stabilizing effects of a stretcher. Each section had steel heavy-duty carabiners, which Smith put ropes through. The ropes were wrapped around the cable housing on top of the elevator car; this would provide the counterweight as they lowered themselves and her to the ground.
Smith removed his gloves and handed them to Sullivan.
“What are these for?”
“Climbing. You’re going to climb down there and we’re going to lower her down together.”
With a separate rope, Smith improvised a harness around Sullivan’s legs and torso, then wrapped the rope around the cable housing atop the car. He handed the rope to Sullivan.
“Hold this end. Let the rope out as you go. Don’t let go and don’t go too fast.”
“What about the gun?” asked Sullivan.
Smith grinned. “You don’t need it. If you do, I’ll give you one.”
“Okay.”
“Is that what you killed the guy with?”
“Yeah.”
“If we get out of here alive, I’m going to have it gold-plated for you.”
Sullivan descended slowly, aided by Smith, who governed the flow of the rope. When he was on the floor at the very bottom of the elevator shaft, Smith lowered Katie’s body down through the dim light, using the ropes and the leverage of his body weight against hers, with the steel cable housing as a sort of down-and-dirty pulley, to bring her down gently. When she was down, Smith tied off the top of one of the ropes and quickly rappelled down.
Smith looked for a door and found it. He and Sullivan lifted her and walked toward the subbasement, then up one flight. As they got to the top of the stairs, they heard voices. A team of FBI EMTs was charging toward them, wheeling a gurney. Behind them, another crew was cutting apart the students, freeing them.
After Katie was secure, the EMTs moved quickly toward the tunnel beyond the students.
“Coming through!”
Smith turned to Sullivan. “Contractor?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Mostly kitchens.”
Smith nodded. He put his hand on Sullivan’s shoulder.
“I’m going back in. I want you to walk through that tunnel. I’ll tell them you’re coming. You can get a cup of coffee, see how your kid’s doing. What do you have, daughter or son?”
“Daughter.”
“Go see how your daughter’s doing.”
“Thanks.”
“No, Jack. Thank you.”
“Mr. Smith,” said Sullivan, “there’s a woman on the third floor. She’s in the last room on the right, hiding beneath the bed.”
“I’ll make sure we get her out safely.”
* * *
Tacoma stood at the east stairwell, back against the steel door. He was breathing quickly and drenched in sweat. His left side was pressed against the door, left hand on the knob. In his right hand was a SIG Sauer P226 .45 caliber semiautomatic, silver silencer threaded to the muzzle.
He waited, listening.
Strapped across his back was an HK MP7A1, the same submachine gun as Dewey’s. The retractable butt was folded, the fire selector set to full-auto: Tacoma didn’t like to fuck around.
“Rob, go when you hear screams.”
Tacoma turned the knob but didn’t open the door.
He heard Igor. “Now, Dewey!”
Dewey was moving.
Tacoma took a deep breath, turned the knob a little farther, and spoke: “Give me positioning, Igor.”
Screams from the floor above.
“Rob, you have a guy in the room immediately to your right. The terrorist at the far end of the hallway is on the left side. Both men are moving to the hallway.”
Tacoma pulled the door open and stepped in, back against the wall, SIG P226 clutched in his right hand, aimed at the door to the right.
Several gasps came from students in the hallway. Tacoma put his left index finger to his mouth, telling the students to be quiet as he slid silently along the wall until he was in the corner, parallel to the door.
Tacoma saw the short steel end of the Uzi first as the terrorist charged into the hall. The terrorist didn’t notice him. Tacoma triggered the gun. The slug spat from the pistol, ripping the terrorist in the temple. A red cloud of bloody mist sprayed the door as students screamed. The terrorist crumpled, his face turned toward Tacoma, lifeless.
Tacoma holster
ed the SIG as he stepped into the hall. In one fluid motion, he swept the MP7 from across his back, unfolded it, raised it, and looked quickly through the optic.
Contingency.
Plan for the worst.
But what he saw startled him, even causing him to momentarily lower the gun and lose the target.
The terrorist was in the hallway. He held a young female student in one hand and had his gun pressed to her skull. The hall was silent. Slowly, the terrorist looked at Tacoma.
Tacoma fired without aiming—a three-burst spray of slugs that flew down the hallway just as the terrorist pressed his trigger. The man kicked violently as slugs ripped his back, neck, and skull. He dropped in a contorted heap, facefirst.
The girl screamed as she held her bloody cheek, nicked by the gunman’s bullet.
“I’m clear on ten,” he said.
Tacoma pointed the MP7 at the ceiling. He stepped toward the first cluster of students, seated several feet away.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “I’m American. We’re here to rescue you. But we’re not out of this yet. I repeat: Stay where you are!”
* * *
Sirhan heard the screams from below. He ran to the stairs and started to charge down. Halfway to eleven, he heard the deep baritone of a foreign voice. American.
He sprinted back up the stairs and down the hallway. His eyes were drawn right, to the south side of the building. He saw the two black specters in the same moment he heard the deep whirr of the helicopters slashing the air.
Sirhan stopped.
* * *
The din of the FBI choppers grew louder.
Dewey picked up his .45 from the carpet and was already moving when Igor came over commo, urgency—even panic—in his voice.
“He heard something,” yelled Igor. “He’s running to the stairs!”
Screams from the tenth floor suddenly echoed up from below.
“Which side of the building?” Dewey asked as he charged toward the stairs that would deliver him up to the twelfth floor.
“East side. He’s coming to see—no wait, he’s going up! He’s going for the roof!”
A female voice startled him: “Dewey!”
He stopped and looked down the hallway, scanning the swarm of students and parents now looking at him. Standing in a doorway was Daisy. He paused for several moments, looking at her. He didn’t speak.
Igor: “He’s on the thirteenth floor! Run, Dewey! You can cut him off!”
“I’ll be right back,” he finally said to Daisy.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Tell everyone to stay where they are,” he said. “It’s not over.”
Daisy nodded, putting her hand to her mouth, trying not to cry.
He charged up the stairs three steps at a time. He passed the entrance to the twelfth floor and kept moving.
“He’s almost there!”
When he got to the thirteenth floor, he found the door to the hallway open, pushed by the wind. The choppers sounded as if they were only a few feet away. Dewey held for a half second, then slunk into the hallway, looking around but seeing nothing.
“… he’s…!”
Igor was saying something, but Dewey couldn’t hear him. Was the terrorist on the roof already? He had to be.
As much as he tried to not think about it, Dewey found his mind imagining the moment when the terrorist ripped the wire and sent the bombs tumbling to the ground—the detonation and destruction.
You won’t feel it.
He ran up the stairs to the roof. There was a darkened alcove next to the door, and he swung the pistol. His eyes adjusted and he saw a shoulder-fired missile, already in its launcher.
The sound of the choppers was deafening. He glanced out to the roof. Both helicopters hovered just feet above the roofline and the surreal web of wire, saddled atop with IEDs.
Where is he?
It was pandemonium. Igor was yelling. Dewey held his .45 out in front of him, guessing the last terrorist was outside, just around the corner.
“… Dewey!”
Dewey covered his ear with his left hand, trying to hear Igor.
“… behind you!”
The next thing he knew, a knife plunged into his back. It entered below his right shoulder blade and moved deep and quickly.
Dewey let out an anguished groan as he slammed into the floor, then another as the blade was pushed farther in.
Igor’s warning had been too late to avoid the knife, but it had saved his life. If Dewey hadn’t turned at the last moment, the knife would’ve gone into his back and straight through his heart.
He couldn’t breathe. Blood spat from his mouth and nose as ferocious pain savaged every part of him.
The pain from the blade handle underneath his back, banging against hard concrete, and the blunt steel now goring his chest was otherworldly, the kind of moment that can never be forgotten, a moment just before death. A moment instead of death.
Gun.
Instinct, desperation, fear, above all, an animal need to keep living made Dewey reflexively lurch, still clinging to the handgun—somehow managing to stand—and fire at the dark blur that was now above him. Dewey fought to keep his eyes open and he searched within the fading light for the terrorist, firing again and again, the dull spit of the slugs lost in the gale until he heard the scream.
Dewey kept firing, emptying the mag into the black-clad figure, until there was only the click of the chamber on empty and the watery cough of blood, choking him now. Blindness swept his eyes, and all he could hear was a low, horrible groan, as an animal makes whose leg has been torn off by the steel teeth of a hunter’s trap—and he realized the sound was coming from him. He wanted to lie down, but he knew he needed to move. Not because he could do anything more. He needed to move because he knew if he didn’t get to a hospital immediately, he would die.
But he tumbled to the ground.
A few moments later, he heard footsteps, then Tacoma.
“Dewey!”
He felt Tacoma’s hand turning him over on his side so that the blade wasn’t pushed by the concrete.
“Holy shit,” Tacoma said. “Igor, tell McNaughton to move the choppers back. Twelve is dead. The wind is going to knock the bombs down. Then get a mobile surgical unit up here. Dewey’s been stabbed and I’m not sure he can be moved. They need to hurry. He’s going to bleed out.”
Tacoma sat down next to Dewey. He inspected the knife that jutted from both sides of Dewey’s body. Tacoma lifted Dewey’s head so that he didn’t drown in his own blood. Blood was everywhere.
“Dewey!”
Dewey heaved involuntarily. The spasm was like a convulsion, and Tacoma knew he was drowning.
“Igor,” said Tacoma, “change that. We need one of the choppers to lower a line down now. Dewey’s about to go cardiac. If he doesn’t get to a hospital in the next minute or two, he’s going to die.”
67
SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The Situation Room was crowded with people: White House senior staff, National Security, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Homeland, FBI, and State Department.
The walls were covered in plasma screens—sixteen in all—and all were in use. A screen in the middle of the room had flashing, bright yellow letters and numbers:
CENCOM
00:00:00
EST ARR TARGET = 01:27:44
Four screens showed live video of Columbia University, the dormitory seen from different angles.
Another six screens displayed various iconographies of the Mexican container ship, now loaded with nearly a billion dollars’ worth of guns, ammunition, and shoulder-fired missiles. Four were delivering a real-time video stream of action on the ship. Another provided an aerial view from a drone overhead. One more displayed the section of the Mediterranean, with a large flashing red X that was the ship and a green circle representing the Syrian Port of al-Bayda.
President Dell
enbaugh sat at the head of the table. He was quiet. Bill Polk was speaking, presenting an ad hoc operation that required immediate action.
The ship had been moved closer to the Syrian coast in case the decision was a go. They would need to execute the plan quickly, before Nazir realized or found out the dorm had been lost.
“Nazir doesn’t know the dorm has been taken back,” said Polk. “He doesn’t know his men are dead. So why tell him? We shut down all live coverage from Columbia. Move the students out through the basement. Pretend the terrorists are still in control. We cave in and let the ship go. We have eleven Navy SEALs on board that boat. Send the ship in, then lay waste to whoever comes to meet it. Trojan horse.”
Harry Black, the secretary of defense, was Polk’s main opponent.
“If it works, great,” said Black, his voice deep and gruff. “But if it backfires, ISIS might somehow still end up with the weapons. There are enough arms on that ship to finish the job in Syria and Iraq. Why create that sort of intolerable risk? Without the shipment, ISIS has serious, possibly fatal, problems.”
“They’ll figure out another way to get weapons,” said Brubaker, the national security advisor. “This operation shows how resourceful Nazir is. It’s worth the risk. We can always drop bombs on the ship if what you’re saying happens.”
“And kill a team of SEALs?”
“Mr. Secretary, if what you’re saying could happen does happen, they’ll already be dead.”
Stacy Conneely, Langley’s top ISIS analyst, chimed in. “I believe Nazir might even show up to inspect the boat,” she said.
“Ego?” asked the president.
“No, Mr. President. Symbolism. It’s the image, like MacArthur walking ashore at Leyte. Actually, now that I think about it, I’d bet anything.”
“You willing to bet your life?” asked Black, pointing at the twenty-nine-year-old. “Because that’s what we’ll be doing with the lives of those men.”
“Yes, I would,” said Conneely. “But Bill’s right. It only works as long as the illusion of Columbia is still real. We need to hurry.”
Black was mildly irate. He turned to Dellenbaugh.
