Ottoman Dominion

by Terry Brennan

  “Where am I going? I can’t get up.”

  “I’ll send help.”

  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:02 p.m.

  Palmyra Parker felt as if her shoes were moving across the floor while she was standing still.

  Daughter of US Ambassador to Israel, Joseph Atticus Cleveland, and his de facto chief of staff, Parker was in the security office in the north wing of the ambassador’s seaside residence in the Herzliya Pitch neighborhood of Tel Aviv, going over the street maps with DSS agent Pat McKeon and the ambassador’s driver. In the wake of Tommy Hernandez’s death, McKeon was the interim head of the ambassador’s personal security detail. In any one week, seldom did the ambassador’s vehicles take the same route to the embassy. Cleveland was planning to leave for the embassy early in the morning, so Parker was helping to sketch out a new route. She felt a tingling in her feet.

  “Did you feel that?” asked the driver.

  Parker had her mouth open to respond when the wall behind the driver appeared to morph into an S shape. Her knees buckled.

  One hand grabbed the side of the desk and the other hand went for her phone but … everything stopped.

  The intercom buzzed. “Did you feel that?” came the voice.

  McKeon hit the intercom button that connected her to every phone and every mobile earbud in the residence. “Tremors,” she said. “Find the ambassador and let me know where he is.” McKeon paused for moment. “Let’s take it to code yellow. If there aren’t any more shakes in the next half hour, we’ll dial it down again.”

  She released the intercom button and turned toward Parker.

  “We used to get these all the time when I was stationed in New Zealand,” McKeon said. Turning back to the map, she said, “I can’t remember the last time Israel had—”

  As if she were on the string end of a mad puppeteer, Parker felt like all the joints in her body were out of her control. Everything was moving, but independently and haphazardly.

  Instinctively, Parker reached for the stability of the desk. But her hand grasped only air. The desk was tilting to the left and sliding across the floor. Parker turned to the driver … as a piece of concrete fell from the ceiling and sliced away half of his head.

  “My father!” screamed Parker. She would have been running for the door. Except she couldn’t get one foot in front of the other to run. And because the door to the office had disappeared.

  Ankara, Turkey

  July 22, 9:02 p.m.

  In the red room of the house on Alitas Street, downhill from the Citadel in the old city of Ankara, cryptic golden designs on the crimson painted walls were pulsing with life, glowing brightly in a macabre and random frenzy. The stabbing strobes of light cast cavernous shadows across the face of Arslan Eroglu’s body, now occupied and manipulated by the Turk, relentless enemy and pursuer of the Gaon’s box, malevolent leader of the Disciples, and servant of evil incarnate—the One. Its eyes closed, the body twitched and jerked as if speeding along a winding road.

  The Turk willed his otherworldly power roughly nine hundred kilometers beneath the Mediterranean Sea once more to erupt along fissures, through the bedrock and dirt, colliding with the foundations of both the US embassy and the ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv, thirteen kilometers apart. They were the only buildings in Tel Aviv under assault by the Turk’s power to move the earth.

  A massive wave of energy hit the two buildings simultaneously. And the Turk felt the collision.

  The face contorted in pain, the body violently thrown back into the stone chair, Arslan Eroglu’s vocal cords emitted a desperate, keening wail that sounded as if it had risen from the gates of Hades.

  “You … will … die.” The voice of the Turk emerged from Eroglu’s throat, ripped and raw. But a smile of evil intent bared its teeth.

  And a sulfurous vapor hung heavily over the stone table of sacrifice on the far side of the room.

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:04 p.m.

  Two jagged fissures tore the rear wall of the US embassy building on Herbert Samuel Street. The new commander of the Disciples stood behind a seawall, the vivid blue water of the Mediterranean only a dark swath of black. The sweeping crescent beach was dimly washed by ambient light, but the commander ignored the beauty behind him. His focus lay on the fortified and heavily protected building across the street. His other teams at the ambassador’s residence were well-trained, fervent believers. They had their assignment—swift, merciless slaughter. The commander’s target was the embassy and the Gaon’s bronze box, held in the embassy’s vault.

  Surrounded on this side by anti-tank barriers that blocked the only entrance to the rear parking garage, the US embassy to Israel was big, square, solid, and ugly. Situated in the middle of an eclectic downtown neighborhood with a mixture of hotels and restaurants, along with small, local shops topped with apartments on their upper floors, the sidewalks around the embassy building were studded with concrete-filled bollards—four-foot-high steel cylinders embedded into the sidewalks—linked together by a steel beam. The ground floor of the massive building was solid, windowless stone. But now ravaged by the ongoing earthquake, the defenses on the ground floor of the embassy were rent by two huge gashes running vertical to the ground, one to the north, near the corner of the building, another to the south, near the ramp to the underground garage.

  Along Herbert Samuel Street, men in civilian clothes, ID lanyards slapping against their chests, raced to the jagged fractures in the embassy’s walls. Locally hired security professionals, most of them former members of the Israeli armed forces, they formed the majority of the embassy’s security force.

  The commander, a young man with a livid pink scar rising from his right ear, along his hairline to the front of his forehead, glanced at the floor plan of the building in his hand. Elevated into his new role by the Turk only hours earlier, he was taking the place of his father—killed in a gun battle with the American agent Mullaney and his allies in Amman. Not only was the new commander determined to fulfill the orders of the Turk and secure the lethal box of power, he was also determined that Mullaney would lose his life in its defense.

  With a wave of his hand, as another jolt quaked the ground under his feet, the six disciples to his left began working their way to the gash at the northwestern corner of the building. “Keep them occupied.”

  Then the commander, a finely honed weapon capable of extraordinary violence, turned his piercing black eyes on the growing fissure near the parking entrance. “Follow me,” he said, and a dozen black-clad disciples rose from their hiding places.

  2

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:04 p.m.

  “Brian,” squawked his earpiece, “we have intruders. They used huge rips in the walls to pierce the building’s perimeter, north and south ends. Looks like we have security and agents down. Response is …”

  The radio in Mullaney’s ear went silent. “Report.”

  He heard nothing, except for the throbbing headache radiating from his day-old scalp wound and creaking moans as floors and walls continued to randomly shift.

  Mullaney stumbled toward where a gash had been ripped in the wall to his office, speaking constantly into the mic pinned to his lapel, whether the comm system was working or not. “Keep the marines at the entrances … rally all DSS agents to the incursion sites … I’m on my way.”

  Feeling like he was trying to run on water, Mullaney sloshed to the stairs. Holding on to the railing with one hand, grasping his Sig Sauer 9-millimeter in the other, he bounced down the rocking stairway, inadvertently thumping down two steps at a time. Coming up from below he could hear the sound of gunfire.

  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:04 p.m.

  Palmyra Parker slipped in the gore and crashed to the undulating floor. Next to her, blood was pooling to the side of the ambassador’s driver, his body limp on the floor, half his head and a shard of concrete t
wo feet away.

  Somewhere behind Parker, Pat McKeon was shouting urgent messages through the microphone in the lapel of her jacket. “Code red … Code red! All agents report. Lock down the building and grounds. And find the ambassador!”

  What was once the formidable, well-guarded official residence of the United States Ambassador to Israel had quickly dissolved into life-threatening Silly Putty. Another violent tremor shuddered the building from foundation to roof as a rumble and rending filled the air of the north wing with choking dust and the groaning cries of the collapsing structure.

  Parker was scrabbling along the floor, away from the bleeding body, but was tossed into the side of the wooden desk. Her determined focus overcoming her terror, Parker twisted to look back at McKeon. “Earthquake? Or something … somebody … else?”

  Sounding like shoes in a spinning clothes dryer, thumping rumbles echoed through the halls of the residence and were joined in a riot of sound by heavy crashes and the shrieks of a building being pulled apart. Another violent rending of the earth knocked McKeon to her knees, but it also opened a jagged hole in the wall of the security office.

  McKeon pushed herself to one knee, straining to stand. “Report … where’s Cleveland?” she shouted into her lapel mic as she staggered toward the opening in the wall. There was no answer. “Where’s the ambassador?”

  “Unknown,” said a voice in her ear. “We’ve not been able to locate him. He’s not in his quarters and he’s not in his office. We don’t—”

  Another voice drowned out the first. “We have a breach!”

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:06 p.m.

  The commander knew his time was short, even at the beginning of the engagement. This could not be a prolonged assault. He needed to get into and out of the embassy as quickly as possible, preferably with his two objectives successfully completed: the box of power desired by the Turk would be in his possession and the killer of his father would die by his hands. So even though the private security agents were brave and determined and bolstered by three US Marines, they were no match for the two Herstal MK 48 machine guns that opened up in a crossing pattern on the defenders near the southern breach into the underground garage.

  The machine guns swept through the defenders like scythes through wheat, leaving behind a bloody and ravaged harvest. The commander and his nine remaining disciples—two still manned the machine guns to guard their escape—rushed past the wounded and dying and poured through the rip in the embassy’s defenses. Running down the ramp, they turned left at the first landing and raced toward a gray, metal door. The bullet-riddled bodies of two civilians, whose defense of the door was short-lived, lay on either side as the commander fixed a rope of plastic explosive around the electronic lock.

  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:06 p.m.

  “Who’s this on the line?”

  “This is Connors. We—”

  Like a rapid cadence on a snare drum, McKeon heard the familiar sound of automatic weapons in her ear.

  “Connors?”

  “Armed men at the front gate!” His voice was drowned out by a deafening volley of return fire.

  “This is surveillance,” came another, clearer voice. “We have a breach on the beach wall. Armed intruders are in the garden.”

  McKeon reached over and grabbed Palmyra Parker under her right arm and lifted her to her feet. “C’mon … you stay with me.” She pushed herself through the jagged opening in the wall, tearing the shoulder of her suit jacket, and emerged into Brian Mullaney’s office which was a labyrinth of tumbled furniture and fallen debris. McKeon looked over her shoulder at Parker. “Stay behind me … do what I do.” She maneuvered her way into the deserted hallway of the north wing of the residence, stepping around huge chunks of plaster from the ceiling. Continuous gunfire came from both the front and the rear of the residence.

  The surface of the earth rolled once again like a wave on the sea, driving both McKeon and Parker into the wall. There was the noise of crashing behind them … someone crying in an office to their right. McKeon looked down the hallway in both directions. Which way to go?

  “We have the ambassador. We’re in the kitchen,” came a female voice in her ear. Kathie Doorley.

  “Stay there, Kathie,” snapped McKeon. “I’ve got Mrs. Parker. We are on our way to you.”

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:07 p.m.

  The rattling sound of automatic weapons and the steady staccato of the DSS standard issue Sig Sauer 9-millimeter created a stereo effect as Mullaney reached the ground floor. Off to his right, in the direction of the north side of the building and the main entrance, was one source of the fighting. But Mullaney snuck a quick look down the stairwell and into the basement where another battle was raging.

  Two of his agents were crouched near the bottom of the stairs, returning fire into the underground space.

  Mullaney started down the last flight of stairs just as a new earthquake tremor shook the building. He stumbled and tripped, a headlong fall staring him in the face. But something—an arm?—caught his waist and held him steady until his feet could once again find something solid upon which to stand. He looked over his shoulder but was not surprised that there was no one in sight.

  “Behind you, Jack.” Mullaney called as he eased down the remaining steps. “Status?”

  “Our men outside were slaughtered—machine guns,” he said. “Surveillance cameras picked up ten of the attackers when they raced into the hole in the wall by the garage entrance,” he said “I figure there are at least four of them, maybe six, down this corridor, minimum of two on each side, hiding behind debris. They were coming this way when we stopped them.” He nodded across the corridor toward the door to the armored vault. “Could they have been headed for the vault? I don’t know why else they would fight their way down here.”

  An image of the embassy’s basement layout filled Mullaney’s mind. Where could the others be?

  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:07 p.m.

  The kitchen was in the basement level of the residence, in the very middle of the building, a series of dumbwaiters serving into the formal dining room above them on the east side of the building. The open reception area faced the west side, looking out over the gardens and the Mediterranean.

  Gunfire came from the front of the building, at the main entrance on the east side, and also at the rear of the building, in the gardens on the west side. On both sides, the sound of the gunfire was getting louder … closer.

  McKeon had a choice to make. Stairs led to the lower level and the kitchen at the four corners of the building. The northwest corner was the closest … toward the garden. Gotta get her to safety! Scrambling to the right, keeping Parker tucked in close behind, McKeon skirted some light fixtures that had fallen from the ceiling. As she reached the stairwell, she looked out a broken window into the garden, bathed in the silvery glow of emergency lighting.

  At least six black-clad men in black hoods and body armor were deliberately advancing through the garden toward the rear of the residence, firing at targets as they moved. McKeon could see bodies strewn on the grass, some DSS agents in plain clothes, some marines.

  McKeon hesitated for a moment. She wanted to engage with the enemy right there, but her primary responsibility was the ambassador’s daughter. Get Mrs. Parker safely into the kitchen with the ambassador … then the fight. McKeon was about to turn down the stairs when she saw something that brought chills to her blood.

  As they inched closer to the residence, despite the withering gunfire that poured forth from its defenders, McKeon could see that the invaders had earbuds and mics pinned to their body armor. One of the men pointed down at ground level with the building, where patio doors opened into the garden. The kitchen was not that far from those doors.

  They are monitoring the communications of the residence. They know where the ambassador is hiding!

 
; 3

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:08 p.m.

  The commander and three of his disciples huddled in a darkened room across the basement corridor from where the American agents were firing down the passageway at his other men. His group, which had led the attackers, split off to the right after getting through the parking garage door and taken a service entrance to a narrow hallway on the east side of the building used primarily by the housekeeping crew and delivery people. After running halfway down the hallway and scrambling over huge pieces of tile floor thrust up into the air by the earthquake, the commander stopped at a door. Having studied the floor plan, he was confident this room had a door on the far side that opened to the corridor right next to the embassy’s vault.

  Instead of engaging with the enemy he could hear just outside, the commander waited, protected, behind the closed door. He knew what was coming.

  Jack’s partner, his gun raised, edged himself around the corner and unleashed a burst of gunfire down the corridor. But just as suddenly, he threw himself back behind the wall, his eyes wide. “Grenade launcher!”

  Before Mullaney could think of a way to counterattack what was coming, a violent explosion—louder than the rending of the earthquake—ripped through the basement. But the explosion didn’t erupt from the impact of a rocket propelled grenade against the door of the vault across the way. The blast originated from down the corridor to their right—where the invaders, with the rocket launcher, were entrenched.

  As a wave of smoke, dust, and debris flew past their position, Mullaney edged closer. He wanted to peek around the corner. But Jack’s hand on his chest stopped him.

  “We’ll do this, boss.”

  Jack turned and stood tall at the corner of the wall to the stairwell, his partner crouched low, near the floor. His partner slid out into the corridor, his gun leveled at the enemy. Jack took a breath, turned, and squared into the corridor.