by Bryan Devore
Nothing in Kazim’s life had made him as angry as the thought of his two oldest brothers helpless and being mistreated by Americans. So when he and his other brother had the opportunity to leave Afghanistan and enter Iraq through Turkey to join the growing insurgency against the American invasion, they had been eager for the chance to continue their older brothers’ fight and honor them by killing any Americans they found in Iraq.
In Iraq, he and his last remaining brother, Haluk, had fought in dozens of major engagements against American soldiers. Most of their attacks had been in Baghdad, and many targeted Iraqi translators and Iraqis training to become police and security personnel to serve the American agenda for controlling Iraq through a puppet government. It hadn’t taken Kazim long to learn that the Americans’ greatest mistake after invading Iraq was to disband the military. This strategic error had given the insurgency a chance to thrive momentarily. But the Americans were a strong enemy. And what most surprised him about the American soldiers was their courage. Both sides fought hard.
And then one day, only a mile outside the Green Zone, during a chaotic firefight after an ambush on a patrol of two US Army Humvees, the worst thing imaginable happened: his remaining brother was hit by enemy fire.
Kazim had seen his brother fall and rushed to his aid despite his commander’s shouts to stay down. The firefight had raged on as Kazim sprinted across the dirt-and-gravel road, bullets hissing past him, snapping as they hit rocks or stone building walls. When he slid to his brother’s side, he found him on his back, gurgling blood in an effort to breathe. His brother’s eyes, staring in panic and confusion at the bright sun, turned toward him at the last moment. And Kazim would never forget the helpless feeling as he held his brother’s head in his arms and tried in vain to help him. But there was nothing he could do, and as his brother slipped away, Kazim had prayed to God to stop time. He could see the confusion in Haluk’s eyes—the weakness, the fading away of life. Amid the bullets and explosions and yelling from the surrounding firefight, Kazim had sat by Haluk, held his head, and stared into his panicked eyes, telling him that everything would be all right and that he wouldn’t leave him.
But Kazim’s prayers went unanswered. Haluk slipped away and died in his arms, and suddenly, he was alone in the world. And the overwhelming pain turned to rage.
In that moment, he became lost to everything he had once known. He was lost to God, lost to his fellow al-Qaeda fighters. He no longer cared about the war or the insurgency or any of the fighting. Everything that mattered to him, everything that he cared about—his three brothers—had been taken from him.
So he just sat there in the dry dirt, not knowing what else to do with himself. Nothing seemed important anymore. And he probably would have continued sitting there in baffled silence for hours if the world had left him alone. But it hadn’t. He was still sitting in the middle of a firefight. A bullet struck him just below the left shoulder. Then another bullet struck the chest of his dead brother, enraging him more.
He laid Haluk’s head down with his good arm and—fighting the pain in his left shoulder—stood and raised his AK-47 toward the American soldiers scrambling around the two Humvees to help their own wounded. He flicked the selector to automatic and held down the trigger, channeling all his rage through the weapon, firing all thirty bullets into the American soldiers trying to help their wounded. Five seconds, all seven US soldiers lay dead or dying beside the tan Humvees. A thin cloud of dust drifted away from the bodies.
Suddenly, everything was quiet—except for his raging heart. Wind blew through the spaces between the squat stone buildings and the rock walls along the dirt road. No people were in the streets or looking out their windowsills or doorways, but he could sense that dozens were out there, hiding inside their homes, waiting for a prudent amount of time to pass after the last explosions and gunfire.
He dragged his brother’s body into the shade of the nearest building. He had nowhere to take him. He was nothing now, and he was alone. He hated the entire world and didn’t know what to do with that hate and rage. So he had left his last brother’s dead body along the wall and hurried away when he heard the US helicopters approaching from the Green Zone.
That night, he abandoned his unit of al-Qaeda fighters. Leaving the building in Baghdad where they were housed, he walked down the dark street of their controlled city block, past the barking dogs, past the darkened checkpoints, never to return again. He walked the desert roads of Iraq between towns, catching rides on the backs of trucks when he could, until he arrived at the Turkish border. Because he was a nobody soldier in al-Qaeda, neither the government intelligence agency nor the military had any record or understanding of his terrorist connections. He was too young to be a leader or a courier or even a trusted midlevel operative for al-Qaeda, so he hadn’t made it onto anyone’s radar. But he still had his Turkish citizenship, so after presenting his passport and spending a few hours in an interrogation room explaining why he had been in Iraq—for which he pretended to be a failed business opportunist looking to capitalize on the millions the Americans were spending on private contractors and translators—the border patrol had let him return to Turkey.
And then Kazim began the long journey of discovery that would forever change his life—a journey that would eventually lead him to encounter Maximilian on the Trans-Siberian Railroad a lifetime after Iraq. A journey that would eventually lead him to Paris.
* * *
Kazim tried to wipe the smoky sting from his eyes. As he struggled to his feet, he seemed to will his strength to return. Death was all around him. He searched for the president’s body, hopeful that his clouded memory of her escape was a phantom, frantic to find evidence that would end his long quest for revenge. But after he scoured the rooftop, his rage boiled. He had been through too much struggle over the years to let his quarry escape. He had suffered too long to fail now.
Turning from the destroyed rooftop, he rushed back into the hotel, driven by his hatred.
37
AT THE SIXTH FLOOR, DAVID stepped off the ladder onto the small shelf that rimmed the elevator shaft. There was one at each level, which helped with the climb. A small platform on the other side of the ladder gave him something to stand on as he removed his gun. Holding the side of the ladder, he leaned out and looked up past the shelf above him, to the blurred, dark movement of the three agents moving down toward him. He peered up toward the unseen heights where they had started, eight flights up. He watched and listened but sensed no threat.
Turning his gaze below, he saw the president moving slowly, carefully, down toward the fifth floor. Below her, Alexander moved easily, gently swinging his bulk from side to side, then waiting, always staying close to the president. Farther down, Rebecca swung along, graceful as a gibbon. Like David, she moved fast enough to leave no more than a few unguarded seconds before reaching a shelf to stand on and watch for threats. And below her, the military aide clambered along, the nuclear football briefcase attached to his wrist by a cable wrapped in leather.
Amid the ongoing chaos, David was at least relieved to have Rebecca still with the group. At Beltsville, no other agent from their cadet class was better than she when it came to intelligence and a knack for getting protectees safely through the most intense training drills.
From the floors below, streaks of red and yellow crept into the shaft; below that, the bluish-gray light faded into black.
Without warning, gunshots rang out above them. The sound cracked but didn’t hiss or whine, which meant no bullets had been fired down at them. The shooting was from side to side several floors up, where they had entered the shaft. The agents they had left to guard the entrance must be under attack, and the three other agents on the ladder were now holding their position.
David’s adrenaline surged.
“Cover! Cover! Cover!” Alexander yelled.
David swung out onto the ladder and leaned back out over the shaft to protect the president from any down
ward shots. Looking down over his shoulder, he made sure he was in position to shield her from above. Alexander had climbed up to where he could now have a hand on her back and was helping her move off the ladder onto the shelf. Once on the shelf, she would be better protected from above and less likely to fall.
“Reid! Colonel Marks!” Alexander yelled. “Take spread firing positions!”
David had holstered his pistol and hung out wide on the ladder with both hands. He watched below as Rebecca moved onto a lower shelf near the fourth floor, and the military aide joined her. It was difficult to see in the dark, but she appeared to be sliding out along the shelf toward the back of the shaft. Marks, the military aide, moved toward the front.
“She’s secure,” Alexander said, leaning out from the shelf and looking up at David. “Take position for counterstrike. Don’t shoot unless we’re engaged. Our men above might stop them.”
The gunfire above continued to crackle, then ended with a sharp, inaudible cry from above. He heard voices; then everything went silent. The eerie quiet lasted for a dozen excruciating seconds before he heard the hiss of something large falling fast from above. A short yell followed. Then he felt a sharp jolt on the ladder, and he knew that something heavy must have fallen and hit at least one of the three agents above him on the ladder. Then a number of heavy objects flew passed. One fell straight down and cannonballed into Marks, knocking him off the shelf. His brief scream stopped as several heavy thuds sounded below. David didn’t need to look up to know that all three agents above him had been knocked off the ladder, probably by the body of another agent thrown into the shaft by the attackers, many floors up.
Now gunfire came from above, and this time it hissed. The terrorists were firing down at them, and the bullets were pinging all around them, sparking off metal.
Below him, Rebecca fired her P229 up at the men. He could barely see her in the darkness, and he was pretty sure she couldn’t see the men far above. But as she fired, the shots from above kept coming, so she must not be getting close to wherever the attackers were positioned.
It was the stuff of nightmares for any Secret Service agent. They couldn’t whisk the president to safety, and from their disadvantaged position, they couldn’t effectively engage the threat.
David had been the top shot in his recruitment class, and he was anxious to turn his lethal skills on the terrorists hiding in the darkness above. Wrapping his left leg around the back of the ladder, he locked his right leg into a straight and steady stance on a lower rung. He closed his eyes to focus on their position in his mind without the distractions of reflecting light from the gunfire. Then, knowing his position and imagining the position of the men, he fired.
He had imagined where the assailants might be firing from if they were near the shaft’s entrance point on the fourteenth floor. And with that image in mind, he fired for a two-foot rotating spread by making slight adjustments to his aim. Controlling his breathing as he fired, he concentrated on counting each shot in his mind to match it with the imagined spread of the targets above. One shot . . . two . . . three, a scream . . . four . . . five, another scream . . . six, another scream.
He had concentrated hard to keep track of the shot locations and the screams from above, and he now had a good sense of where to focus his remaining shots. Squeezing the trigger faster, he unloaded the final six rounds, then loaded a fresh magazine and continued firing.
He heard another scream and more yelling. Then another body fell past him in the dark, making a short blowing sound as it rushed through the air before bouncing off a support beam below and crashing with a heavy thud into the top of the elevator, far below on the floor of the shaft—four levels below the first floor.
The gunfire slowed, making the angry shouts above more distinct. He could hear John speaking to the president. David was a marksman, and even though tonight was the first time in his life he had actually shot at anyone, he felt as if he had been preparing his entire life for this moment. The firing from above had paused, but he heard more men shouting than before. They were regrouping, maybe even calling others to join them. He felt certain that a larger, more concentrated attack would begin at any moment—that as soon as the men were ready above, they would unleash a hail of bullets on the team, making it impossible to protect the president.
“I’m going up!” he yelled to Alexander.
“What!” Alexander yelled.
“Up—I’m heading up!”
“No!” Rebecca yelled.
“I have to, or the president’s dead! There’s no other way!”
“Go!” John yelled.
David holstered the pistol and climbed. He pulled hard with his arms and pushed gently with the balls of his feet, conscious of climbing as fast as possible without making noise. Other than occasional slivers of light slicing through sections of the dark elevator shaft, almost nothing was visible beyond twenty feet. This was the one thing in this nightmare scene that he was actually thankful for. For while the men above couldn’t be positive where his group was, he knew exactly where the open floor access door was above them.
He knew where they must be, and they had no idea that someone from the protection team was climbing up to meet them. The men attacking the president were about to get the surprise of a lifetime.
38
DAVID CLIMBED THROUGH THE DARKNESS, focused on stealth. He could hear the men above yelling to each other as they regrouped. Other than their voices, the shaft was quiet.
He could hear shuffling footsteps, as if they were stepping toward the edge. He had been climbing fast, swinging rhythmically upward as he felt his aggression build.
Locking his left leg to steady his stance, he wrapped his right foot around the ladder and leaned back onto a horizontal I-beam. He was practically invisible in the shadows. He slid an index finger into the center of the Velcro holster so he could pull it apart without much sound. Drawing the P229, he pointed it up at the point in the darkness where he heard the men. He had slapped in a new magazine before making the climb, so he had twelve hollow-point .357 SIG rounds ready to shoot. He had more magazines, but being this close without any real cover meant that if any hostiles were still alive when he ran out, they would easily kill him before he could reload—especially since he was balanced on the ladder in the open air of an elevator shaft.
He peered into the blackness, listening for any sound of the enemy.
Raising the pistol, he trained it on the flicker of light he had seen forty feet above. Something metal was moving and casting a strobelike sparkle from the red emergency light farther above. A gun or a wristwatch or a belt bucket—he didn’t know. But it marked one of his enemies. And a few feet to the left of the flickering, he saw a small cloud of dust particles float down through a sliver of light from the elevator shaft. The dust was probably kicked over the edge by a boot sliding to the end of the shaft platform as another enemy leaned over to prepare the second assault on the group below.
He had these two locked in, and he was afraid that they were about to unleash another wave of gunfire on the president. He couldn’t wait any longer. Even though he had only two of them identified, he had to attack the group now. He prayed there weren’t too many, for once he fired even a few shots, his position would be compromised.
He took a breath and exhaled. Then, with his legs and feet braced on the ladder, and his back against the I-beam, he fired.
Men screamed. Then a spurt of flashes flickered in the darkness as shots came toward him in frenetic, misdirected lines. Bullets snapped and pinged off the metal around him. But none hit him. A man toppled into the shaft and slid down like a large bag falling down a laundry chute.
David relied on his instincts for where to shoot. The light coming from the door into the shaft was now enough to show him where the bulk of the group was. Shooting from a low angle, he aimed at waist level in case they should duck or step back. Having studied marksmanship in depth, he knew that from this angle, most
missed shots would miss high, still hitting the torso.
Two more bodies fell into the darkness below—one screaming, the other silent.
David’s back hurt, and his legs were weakening. He had been leaning out above the abyss while shooting, and he didn’t know how much longer he could hold the position. But the men kept coming, so he kept firing. He had maybe five or six shots left before he must reload—five or six shots to kill them all.
He kept firing. Men screamed and hurried their shots, and fell and died.
The platform above him went silent. He stopped firing. There couldn’t be more than one shot left in his gun. Steadying his breathing, he watched the dark platform above. Nothing moved. He listened for the faintest sound to tell him if anyone up there was still alive, still a threat. Nothing stirred. He waited, knowing that the greatest threats were the ones not seen. There had to be someone still alive up there. He couldn’t possibly have killed them all.
As quietly as possible, he ejected the empty magazine, pocketed it, and inserted a full one. And he waited. Someone had to be up there still. Like a sniper or a leopard lying in ambush, he slowed his breathing and stood silently in the darkness over the elevator shaft—waiting.
And then he heard a soft rustle. It was the smallest sound, a bare whisper of cloth and rubber on concrete . . . the faintest click of metal. A muted rattle. It was above him now. One man still alive. One target.
