by Chuck Holton
“Not we as in you and me, Liz. Rip, Doc, and I will take care of it. You stay here, with Sweeney and the others, both of you.”
“But, John, I want—”
John held up a hand. “No.”
Liz swallowed, and John saw tears in her eyes. She nodded and let go of his sleeve. She might be proud and desperate, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Go!” John moved quickly toward the stairwell, followed by Rip and the medic. God, please don’t let us be too late.
Above Lebanon
VALOR HAD BEEN QUIET for too long.
Mary stood behind the UAV pilot and stared at the grainy black and white video feed being sent by the tiny remote-controlled aircraft. It was doing a slow circular pattern above the fort. Much to Mary’s frustration, the high walls only allowed a momentary glimpse inside the compound on each pass.
“If I take it up to about six hundred feet AGL, ma’am, we might get a better view,” said the flight-suited captain.
“Do it.”
They had followed the radio traffic during the assault on the compound, and Mary had breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the report that though Rip Rubio had been hit, he was uninjured. The last thing she’d heard was John Cooper’s voice saying, “We’re going in.”
She turned to the radio operator. “Call for a situation report, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He flipped a switch. “Valor One, this is Solo Four-Four, over.”
Static.
“Valor One, we need a sitrep, over.”
Mercifully, the radio beeped a reply, and Mary’s shoulders relaxed a bit.
“Solo Four-Four, this is Valor Three, over.”
Mary looked at the notebook in her hand. “Sweeney. Good.”
The sergeant just shrugged. “Go ahead, Valor Three.”
“Buzz, Frank, and I are out in the courtyard pulling security. Be advised, we have secured Miss Fairchild and a Palestinian woman. Valor One went inside with Doc and Rip to attempt to secure the American hostage. I’m going to give them another minute and then go in after them.”
“Keep us posted, Valor Three.”
“Roger, Four-Four. But we have another problem. Miss Fairchild reports seeing men loading the ITEB into the back of a black Mercedes. It must be the same vehicle that almost ran us off the road on the way in here, over.”
Mary flipped the switch so she could speak directly to Sweeney. “Valor Three, this is Phoenix. Does Miss Fairchild have any idea where they might be headed? Over.”
“Roger, Phoenix. She believes they are headed to Beirut International. Please advise, over.”
“Stand by.” Mary’s mind raced. It didn’t take much imagination to see what the terrorists had in mind. In fact, it was the very scenario they feared.
The UAV pilot turned to her. “Valor has a vehicle, don’t they? Can’t they go after the car?”
Mary checked her watch. “It has at least a five-minute head start. Valor would never catch them.” She held up a finger for silence and narrowed her eyes as an idea slowly took root. Excitement made her heart beat a breakneck tattoo. This is going to get me in trouble. But the alternative, doing nothing, had terrifying consequences.
She looked at the pilot. “How fast will this thing go?”
The man’s eyes went wide. “Wait a minute. What are you thinking?”
A smile spread across her face. “I’m thinking that ITEB explodes on contact with air.”
The Fortress
Julie held her head up proudly as she watched the leader approach with a very large and very sharp knife. She would not whimper even though her heart was racing so hard she felt lightheaded.
Give me strength, Father. Let my death somehow bring You the glory that my life did not.
“A minute, Imad.” The young cameraman stood frowning at his equipment. “Let me put in another battery. I am afraid this one hasn’t much time left on it.”
Julie could feel the intense disapproval of the leader, and so did the boy though he didn’t back down.
“Be quick!” the leader snapped, leaving Julie kneeling before the Slay the Infidel! sign.
The boy nodded and began fiddling with the camera. He shot a quick look at Julie, and when their eyes met, she realized with a start that nothing was wrong with his camera. He was stalling, purposely holding up her execution. Because he didn’t want her to die? Because he didn’t want to be part of the murder?
Who cared why? She had been given several more minutes to live. She gave him a little nod of acknowledgment. He turned away quickly and concentrated on pretending to fix his camera.
What would his life have been if he’d been born into a family of wealth and privilege like Khalil’s? It was obvious the boy was intelligent. Might he have become an economist too, a man who could make a difference in the mixed culture of Lebanon?
The loss of her marriage and her husband pressed on Julie. What a sad, sad thing it was when two people as educated as she and Khalil hadn’t cared enough to make the necessary compromises that would have saved their marriage. Somehow they had allowed themselves to get to the point where there were only greater demands, greater damage, and greater pain.
She watched the terrorists conversing in the corner, probably rehearsing what they were about to do. The tall black-haired man produced a Palestinian kaffiyeh and, with his back to Julie, began slowly winding the scarf around his head and face while giving orders to the other two, whose faces were hidden by ski masks.
“What about the commandos?” one of the masked men asked Imad. “They’re still at large.”
“I have ordered one hundred men of Ansar Inshallah to search for them and not stop until they are captured.” He raised a fist. “They will not live!”
Shouts of “Allah ak’bar” filled the room, terrifying in their intensity. Julie squeezed her eyes shut.
I will never leave you or forsake you.
The door to the room burst open. A wild-eyed terrorist who looked to be no more than fifteen entered. “Imad! We are under attack!”
“What? Where?”
“Fighters are attacking the front gate! I think it is the Americans!”
Imad swore, then turned to the two masked men. “Go find Abu Shaaban! Take him to the cellar where naru Allah is stored. It must be safeguarded at all costs!”
The masked terrorists sprinted from the room.
“You!” Imad pointed at a young man wearing a gaudy red and yellow shirt. “Go into the corridor and guard the door. If the Americans come, defend it with your life.” He looked at Julie. “If they are here to rescue the girl, they will find that they are too late.”
The leader stalked toward the camera. “Roll tape! Now!”
The boy slid the original, perfectly fine battery into place. “All ready.” Imad strode toward Julie, and their eyes met. She willed herself not to look away.
He pulled a plastic restraint from his pocket and tied her hands behind her back. Then when he dropped the blindfold over her eyes, she knew time had run out.
In a cocoon of shock, she heard Imad read a statement that ranted about imperialistic Westerners, evil infidels, and extremist Palestinian xenophobia.
Julie’s tears saturated the blindfold. They weren’t tears of fear as much as tears of regret. There was so much that she wanted to do, so many dreams that would now go unfulfilled! She wanted to float around Venice in a gondola, see the Taj Majal, buy a house in the mountains. She wanted to have babies and learn how to knit tiny sweaters. She wanted to take art lessons from Annabelle. She wanted to finish her degree and—
Shots echoed in the hallway outside. Imad hesitated for a moment. When he began speaking again, his voice betrayed a renewed sense of urgency. “You have ignored our demands long enough!” He spat at the camera. “Now you will see what happens when you do not take us seriously!”
With that pronouncement, he grabbed Julie by the hair and jerked her head backward, exposing her throat.
John sprinted down the
dark passageway with Rip and Doc close on his heels. He vaulted over the body of a young man in an ugly red and yellow shirt who seconds before had been shooting at him and, without breaking stride, dropped his shoulder and hit the door at a dead run.
His momentum splintered the aging wooden door frame so easily that it threw him off balance, and he stumbled into the room, pulling his weapon up to bear with his right hand and throwing out his left to break his fall.
A man with his face obscured by a black-and-white kaffiyeh stood in the middle of the room. At the sight of the knife in the man’s upraised hand, John jerked the trigger instinctively. With a scream of pain the man fell.
Rip raced into the room behind John and held his fire as another terrorist, more boy than man, raised his arms in surrender from his position behind a video camera.
John executed a quick combat roll and was immediately back on his feet. Only then did he notice the third person, kneeling in the center of the room blindfolded with arms bound.
Julie! She must be terrified, not knowing what was happening around her.
“It’s okay, Julie. We’re Americans, and we’re going to get you out of here.”
Julie sobbed all the harder.
“Doc! Take care of her, would you?”
The medic knelt next to Julie and removed her blindfold. “It’s okay, Julie. The good guys have arrived.” He produced a pair of medic’s scissors and began cutting the plastic zip-ties that held her wrists.
“Clear,” Rip called, rifle still trained on the cameraman.
“Clear,” John echoed, speaking into his radio as he approached the man who had been about to execute Julie. He was facedown on the floor behind her, moaning.
John held the man in his gunsight and nudged him with a boot, rolling him onto his back away from Julie. The terrorist’s eyes flashed not with hatred as John expected but fear. He began to babble in Arabic, whimpering like a six-year-old with a bee sting. John was filled with revulsion. This was no soldier. He was little more than a street punk who thrived on hurting innocent people. People like Julie.
People like Vernon James.
John looked down his gunsight at the whiny coward before him, and it was all he could do not to pull the trigger. Men like this were responsible for most of the chaos and hurt he had seen and endured around the world. Such men appeared tough on camera when they had some hapless victim cowering at their feet, but stick a gun in their faces, and they turned into sniveling little girls.
Some called them religious zealots or nationalistic patriots, but John had always felt that if they really believed in the legitimacy of their cause, they wouldn’t feel the need to force it on others. No, men like these were the lowest form of cowards, little power-hungry barbarians bent on ruling the world.
And it was because of them that truly good men like Doc James died early. John turned away in disgust.
“Look out, Coop!” shouted Rip.
John swung back just in time to see the terrorist roll, scoop up his knife, and with a desperate scream, lunge for Julie.
John stepped between her and the terrorist as Doc pulled her from the danger. John aimed a swift kick at the man’s wrist, his leg arcing high. A searing pain in his shin told him that while the knife missed its intended target, it found flesh nonetheless—his.
Using the downward arc and his forward momentum, John stepped onto the terrorist’s arm, pinning the man’s hand to the stone floor with his full weight.
The Palestinian screamed and dropped the knife once again. John bent and tossed the knife away, and it clattered against the wall out of the terrorist’s reach.
“Nice try, skippy.” John aimed his carbine at the terrorist’s head. “Let’s hope that Allah shows you the same compassion you showed to this defenseless woman.”
The man’s eyes flicked to Julie, who was being helped to her feet by Doc. He tried to sneer through his tears.
John’s finger tightened on the trigger. He had every reason to give this coward a terminal case of lead poisoning, and nobody would question it if he did.
For some reason, though, he couldn’t pull the trigger.
The Palestinian began screaming in Arabic, whether at Julie or at him, John didn’t know. A dark pool was forming near the man’s right leg, which he clutched with both hands.
“You okay, Coop?” Doc had his arm around Julie’s waist, supporting her.
“Yeah.” John ignored the warm sticky feeling on his left trouser leg. He looked at Rip who was covering the cameraman and at the camera, which was still rolling.
“Turn that thing off,” John ordered brusquely.
Rip stopped speaking into his radio and motioned with his rifle at the young Arab. “You heard him, ese.”
The young man looked confused. Julie said something in Arabic, and understanding dawned on the boy’s face. He slowly reached to turn off the camera.
“How did you find me?” Julie asked. Her eyes were still red from her tears, but though she was pale, she was composed. John couldn’t help thinking that the Fairchild women were quite something.
“Liz found you,” Doc said.
“Liz?” Julie’s head jerked up.
Doc nodded. “We followed her here.”
“She’s here?”
“Right outside with the rest of our team.”
Tears once again spilled from Julie’s eyes as she took an unsteady step toward the door.
“Hold up a minute, Julie.” John gestured to the man on the floor. “Do you know who he is?”
“They call him Imad,” she said. “He’s one of the leaders here, and one of the men responsible for bombing the Hotel Rowena.”
For killing her husband. One more reason to cap him. So why was he hesitating?
Rip secured the videographer’s hands behind his back with a pair of flex cuffs. “What are we going to do with these two, bro?”
John took his finger off the trigger and shook his head. “We don’t know how we’re getting out of here yet, but if we’re walking, we sure can’t bring them with us.”
“Well, if we leave them alive, you and I both know they’ll be blowing stuff up again before long.”
John nodded. “Want to bet that if the tables were reversed, we’d have been strung up and set on fire already? And in my opinion, that would be too good a fate for this loser.” He looked at the writhing man on the floor. “But the truth is, he may be worth more to us alive than dead. He may be able to help us track down who’s making the ITEB.”
“I agree,” Doc said. “Cover me while I get some flex cuffs on him, and then I’ll see to his wounds.”
Rip shook his head. “You’re a bigger man than I am, bato. Where I come from, this homie would have already been roasting in hell.”
John didn’t mention Vernon James’s words echoing in his head while Doc Kelly bound Imad’s hands and feet. “We can’t complain about what the evil men do if we act just like the bad guys.”
Footfalls sounded in the hall, and John brought his rifle up. Liz raced into the room, her heart in her eyes as she scanned the room. Lowering his gun, John watched with a smile as she located her sister. “Julie!” With a joyful sob, she raced to embrace her.
“Liz!”
To his surprise John had to clear the lump in his throat as the sisters clung to each other. He saw Rip and Doc exchange satisfied glances as well.
Liz stepped back and studied her sister. “I was so afraid we’d be too late! Are you all right? Really all right?”
Sweeney burst through the door. “We got ourselves a problem, Coop.”
On the Road to Beirut
IT WON’T BE LONG NOW
Mamoud prayed for the aging Mercedes as it labored up a steep hill leading northwest toward Beirut. The other four men in the car were quiet, immersed in their own thoughts, much as he imagined he would be if it were his turn to be martyred. But today the glory went to others. Still, he was fulfilling a noble purpose, taking them to their targets.
W
hen Allah’s Fire ripped four fully-loaded passenger planes from the sky over Europe and the United States, he would be so proud of his part in the operation. Because of him, air traffic would effectively shut down for weeks, maybe even months, while the authorities scrambled to update their security mechanisms.
He downshifted, and the car jerked as the tortured engine groaned toward the top of the incline. His gut tightened as he hit a pothole. Be careful! He must not let anything happen to cause Allah’s Fire to detonate prematurely.
The men in the car with him each carried two bottles of the explosive, one in his suitcase and another in his canyon. More was stored in the trunk. That made for enough of the volatile substance to ensure that the Mercedes would virtually evaporate. Mamoud shook himself. That would not happen. Allah was watching over him in approval.
The air inside the car grew stale. He rolled down his window and breathed deeply of the crisp Lebanese morning. Its invigorating coolness filled him with a powerful sense of purpose. He was risking his life to take these men to their assignments. Imad had not even done that.
The sun was just rising over the Anti-Lebanon Mountains behind him, and even with his dark sunglasses, its rays reflected painfully off the rearview mirror. As he reached to adjust it, he heard a faint buzzing sound. At the same time, a silhouette of something passed between him and the red orb of the sun, breaking the sun’s intense beam. At first he thought it was a bird, but it seemed too rigid, and it was moving far too fast. The strange object grew larger and larger as it flew straight toward the Mercedes.
He turned in his seat to glance out the rear window, involuntarily easing off the accelerator. His eyes went wide at what appeared to be a very small aircraft.
The plane rammed his rear window, and the resulting impact tore the wheel from Mamoud Shaka’s hand. As he screamed, the car veered off the road and tumbled into a valley. Allah’s Fire blazed brighter than the sun.
