“This cell has been operating here for how long? Do we know? Sleeper groups have been here fifteen years. Leila’s been here five. You don’t think they could’ve brought the explosives in three weeks ago? A month? Why not six months ago, when the conference was first announced?”
DeSantos sighed, checked his watch, and then rubbed his chin. “So you think Aksel and Tasset are the targets.”
“Knowing what I know now, yeah. One or both. That’s my bet. Them and as many of those counterterrorism officials in there as they can take with them. Think like a terrorist— To blow up a counterterrorism conference, and to do it across the street from the goddamn White House—”
DeSantos brought his sleeve to his mouth and spoke into his mike. “This is Santa. Where are Director Tasset and Director General Aksel? Over.”
DeSantos listened through his earpiece, then looked at Uzi with concern.
“Tasset’s with his detail,” DeSantos said. “But Aksel’s late coming down and he’s not answering his phone. Secret Service just went up to his suite to get him.”
1:46 PM
14 minutes remaining
The Presidential Suite
Hay-Adams Hotel
Batula Hakim crossed the room and stood beside Gideon Aksel’s prone body. “Get him up.”
Alpha Zulu shifted his MP-5K compact submachine gun, then reached down and grabbed Aksel’s arm. “Get up, old man.”
Aksel, bound and gagged, could not respond other than providing resistance as Zulu struggled to pull the man to his knees, much like a tantruming toddler uses gravity in some super-secret high-tech manner to appear heavier than he is.
Frustrated, Zulu pointed the MP-5K at Aksel’s head. “Get up, goddamnit, or I’ll blow you away right now!”
Hakim threw out a protective hand. “No—”
“To hell with your personal vendetta,” Zulu said. “We have a mission to carry out and we’re running out of time.”
Hakim set her jaw and looked hard at him. “We’ve got fourteen minutes. And I deserve every one of them.”
Zulu stared back. But he knew that no amount of reasoning would change her mind. Damn bitch. If we didn’t need her and her group, we could’ve gotten rid of her a long time ago. “Fine. But if things go to hell, we take Aksel and leave. Whether or not you get Uzi. Am I clear?” He got a slight nod in response. “But we’re not going anywhere if we can’t get him into the elevator.”
Hakim stepped forward and viciously slammed the stock of her submachine gun into Aksel’s temple. “Get the fuck up!”
Aksel’s neck snapped to the side, and a trickle of blood appeared where the metal had ripped through the skin. He looked up at Hakim with bloodshot gray eyes that seemed to sizzle with anger. But the tough old bird shook off the pain and slowly got to his feet.
Zulu shoved him toward the door and was about to grab the knob when a series of firm knocks froze him in midstride. Zulu shoved the muzzle of his MP-5K into Aksel’s ribs.
“Director General,” called a voice behind the door. “Please open up. Agent Vickers, Secret Service.”
Zulu motioned Batula Hakim to a hidden spot off to his left, then dragged Aksel backwards a few feet to the middle of the room near where his dead bodyguards lay.
Hakim removed a suppressed Walther from the holster on her belt and unlocked the deadbolt.
“It’s open,” Zulu yelled from across the room. “Come in.”
The doorknob turned and two Secret Service agents walked in. In a fraction of a second, their gazes took in the scene—Aksel gagged and bleeding, his hands bound behind him—and four men lying on the floor in pools of blood. The agents reached for their weapons, but it was a fruitless maneuver.
Batula Hakim fired two headshots, and the men fell limp. She reached over, relocked the door, and walked across the room toward the phone.
1:48 PM
12 minutes remaining
Lobby
Hay-Adams Hotel
DeSantos was waiting for Director Knox to respond to his request for a modification of their operational plan when the telephone rang. The concierge looked up and cupped the handset. “Agent Uziel? Is there an Agent Uziel here?”
Uzi and DeSantos shared a perplexed look, then Uzi reached over and took the phone.
“This is Uzi.”
“I take it you know who this is.”
Leila. Batula Hakim. The woman who murdered my family. “Yeah, I know who it is.” Uzi moved the phone so DeSantos could share the handset.
“I have something you want.”
A few days ago, that statement would have brimmed with raw sexual tension. But now it carried visceral emotion filled with vengeance. “Where and when?”
“In the basement by the kitchen. Come alone or I’ll kill another person you care about.”
The line went dead. Uzi eyed the fire alarm panel across the room, to the left of the main entry doors. It had worked with Rudnick’s building. It’d be a much more orderly way to evacuate the hotel than to announce there were terrorists about to detonate a bomb.
“Where did that call come from?” DeSantos asked.
The concierge looked at his panel. “Presidential Suite, eighth floor.”
DeSantos’s shoulders slumped. “Go to the basement. I’m going up to Aksel’s room.” He brought his secure sleeve mike up to his lips and spoke into it: “Hot Rod, Santa. Come down from the roof, meet Uzi in the basement. Hakim may be en route. Armed and dangerous. Potential hostage situation. Hodges, meet me on floor eight, Presidential Suite. Same parameters. Rest of you, take support positions. Over.”
“Tell Knox and get HRT and SWAT up to speed,” Uzi said as he backed away. He ran to the fire alarm, and pulled the switch. A blaring siren started wailing.
A nearby bellman pointed at Uzi. “Hey! What’re you doing?”
Uzi moved quickly toward him. “What’s the fastest way to the basement?”
The young man with slicked back hair was frozen by Uzi’s urgent tone. “The John Hay room,” he shouted, squinting against the siren’s blare. “Far left wall behind the divider.” He gestured across the lobby.
“Get everyone out,” Uzi said, backing away. “Emergency’s real.”
He ran past the bank of elevators, then turned right down the short wood-paneled corridor and pushed through the etched glass doors. The two hundred foreign dignitaries and press corps packed into the grand dining hall/conference room collided with one another as they rushed for the doors. Four Secret Service agents looked overwhelmed as they attempted to exact an orderly exit.
Uzi pulled the Smith & Wesson from his belt, but kept it beneath the flap of his jacket as he worked his way through the crowd of tables toward the far left wall. After slipping behind the tall folding room divider, he entered the stairwell that led to the basement. With his back to the wall and his weapon now out in front of him, he slowly descended the steps.
The long, white-tiled basement hallway fed into, and dead-ended at, the kitchen. A room service cart stood off to the right, opposite a black elevator door. Uzi craned his neck, trying to see around tall industrial plastic containers and boxes of Evian stacked six rows high.
Close quarters and impaired line of sight. Great.
About the only positive was that the fire alarm was not nearly as loud down here.
He turned right into the main area of the kitchen. Aside from adobe tile flooring, stainless steel dominated the room. Ovens, cook stoves, refrigerators, and deep sinks brimmed with the matte-finish metal. Sizzling steaks sat on the broiler to his left. With the fire alarm ringing, the cooks had shut off the burners and evacuated. Uzi pushed forward into the adjacent room, where a walk-in freezer swallowed the far wall. Clear.
He lowered his Smith & Wesson and took in the lay of the land: this portion of the basement consisted mostly of the kitchen—which itself was a dead end. Though there was only one way in or out, an elevator and two feeder staircases spilled into the corridor twenty yards away, near where h
e’d entered.
A rumble in that direction grabbed his attention. Stepping out of the elevator was a ski-masked man with a compact assault rifle, followed by a bloody, handcuffed Gideon Aksel.
And Batula Hakim.
Uzi swung his S&W toward Hakim’s head. Their eyes met and he saw something in them he had never seen before. Deep-seated contempt. His probably said the same.
“Should I call you Leila Harel or Batula Hakim?”
“You’re a fool, not to know the woman who killed your beloved wife and daughter.” She spit the words, her tone full of disdain. “To make love to me, to dishonor your wife like that.”
Uzi’s glance fell to Aksel’s eyes. They said nothing, if not agreement with Hakim’s statement. Uzi did not bother defending himself, did not bother explaining that she looked vastly different from the grainy intelligence photo he had seen of her so many years ago. He stole a look at her masked conspirator— the man was letting the scene play out and presented no immediate threat. Uzi turned back to Hakim. “Your problem’s with me. Let him go.”
“You! The man who killed my brother—
you think you can order me around?” She pressed her submachine gun against Aksel’s temple. “Would it hurt you to see his brains blown out, Uzi? Would it?”
“I didn’t kill your brother, Hakim. Your own man killed him. His bullet ricocheted. I was pinned down and couldn’t get off a shot.”
“Liar.”
“Ask the Director General. He saw my report. If I’d killed Ahmed, there’d be no reason to say I didn’t. I fucked up the op. If I’d said I killed Ahmed, I would’ve looked a whole lot better.”
“He already told me what happened. Haven’t you, Gideon?” She looked at Aksel and smiled out of the left side of her mouth, then turned back to Uzi. “Years ago he told me what happened.”
Uzi’s brow furrowed. Why is she calling him by his first name? Why would he have told her anything? “What are you talking about?” He looked to Gideon for confirmation. But the man averted his eyes.
With her free hand, Hakim yanked on the knot holding Aksel’s gag in place, then tossed the rag to the ground. “Tell him, Gideon. Tell him who I worked for.”
Aksel kept his eyes on the ground and said nothing.
“I worked for Mossad,” Hakim said. “Just like you. Just like Ahmed. Yes, my brother was on Mossad’s payroll the whole time he lived in Egypt. Both of us recruited by your friend here. A fact that remains hidden from everyone at Mossad even to this day. When you were sent to kill my brother, it was because Gideon discovered Ahmed was a double agent who’d given him bogus information. Ahmed was playing him. And it cost two agents their lives.
“Mossad was still in trouble after several high profile fuck-ups, and Gideon Aksel—brought in to ‘save the day’—was going to take the heat if the new prime minister found out his grand master had been duped.” Hakim looked at Aksel, drew back, and spit in his face. “My brother would never betray his allegiance to the Palestinian people.”
The director general leaned away in disgust.
No. She’s lying. “Gideon?”
Aksel still would not look at him.
Uzi faced Hakim. “You killed an innocent woman...a sweet little girl.” He swallowed hard, fighting to keep his composure. “You’re a woman, how could you have done that?”
“Their lives were unimportant. You killed my brother. It was my right to take revenge, to give you the same pain you gave me. Relentless emotional pain, tortured forever.”
Uzi felt tears filling his eyes but fought back the emotion. “I told you, I didn’t kill your brother!”
“Deny it all you want. But I saw the mission reports. Gideon showed me the classified file. He told me he was sorry for what had happened and wanted to set the record straight, that you were acting on your own.”
Uzi looked at Gideon. “That’s bullshit. Our mission was to take out Ahmed and his cell before they could bomb the Knesset. About the only thing I’m guilty of is not following orders. I couldn’t believe Ahmed would do such a thing. I liked him, I wanted to give him a chance to explain.” Uzi stopped himself, realizing that his assumption as to why Maya and Dena had been murdered was incorrect. It wasn’t the terrorist who escaped who lied about the ricochet killing Ahmed. It was Gideon. He told Hakim I shot her brother.
“Why, Gideon? Do you realize what you did?”
Aksel looked up at Uzi with war-weary eyes. “It was a price that had to be paid, Uzi. It took me two years to clean up Mossad’s reputation and restore its credibility; even countries we’re supposedly at peace with give terrorists safe harbor, weapons, and money to attack us. You know that. An effective Mossad is essential to Israel’s survival.” He sighed, looked down, and then lifted his chin. “We made a mistake. I made a mistake. Recruiting Hakim and her brother... It was a fatal error. My fatal error. The only one I’ve ever made.”
“You needed a scapegoat,” Uzi said. “So you pinned it on me, falsified the mission reports.”
“I never intended for her to kill your family, Uzi. I never meant for that to happen. For that, I am sorry. But what I did, I did for the survival of our country.” He turned to face Hakim, the barrel of her gun jabbing him in the bloodied portion of his temple. “Uzi didn’t kill your brother.”
“He’s a Jew,” Hakim spat. “A Zionist. That makes him guilty. Whether he killed Ahmed or not, it doesn’t matter. He deserves what I did to him. And you deserve what I’m going to do to you.”
Uzi’s arms were still extending the gun out in front of him. “You got your revenge, Hakim. But this is a different time, a different place. This is where it ends. Drop your weapon.”
1:51 PM
9 minutes remaining
Basement stairwell
Hay-Adams Hotel
Troy Rodman leaned against the wall, his physique, black tunic, and assault gear leaving the ignorant bystander no doubt that he was some sort of Special Forces operative. Headset firmly atop his shaven scalp and the boom mike an inch from his lips, he stood outside the basement stairwell listening to the goings on thirty feet away and around the bend.
It had taken him longer than he would’ve liked to make it down from the roof after DeSantos’s call, as he had to take one floor at a time, checking for gunmen or booby traps—making sure he got to the scene in one piece. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he arrived riddled with bullet holes and an extra pound of lead in his body.
He wished he had a fiber optic camera that snaked ninety degrees to his right so he could see the position of the hallway occupants. But he wasn’t equipped for battle. He was on-site support, and his orders were to travel light—which meant stripped down gear. Enough for barebones recon and assisting SWAT, if necessary.
But SWAT, HRT, and Secret Service were occupied: they had less than ten minutes to find the explosives, evacuate the building, and look after the safety of the roomful of dignitaries. And that meant Rodman was on his own.
He fished through his pouch and pulled out a small dental mirror—the low-tech equivalent of a fiber optic camera—and knelt down low. He moved the device into position, taking care not to catch light and cause a flare—because that’s when the shooting would start. And as much as he loved his MP-5 submachine gun, there were too many people around to start letting the lead fly.
But what he saw in the reflection was not good. The director general sandwiched between two well-armed mercenaries, with Uzi at one end of the corridor and himself at the other, in each other’s line of fire.
Rodman withdrew the mirror and remained quiet, listening to the conversation, waiting for his window of opportunity to open. Because if all went south, it didn’t really matter who was in the way, since rounds would be zipping about in all directions. The odds of anyone coming out alive were not high.
He checked his MP-5, brought it into position, and focused on what Uzi was saying: “...This is where it ends. Drop your weapon.”
1:53 PM
7 minutes r
emaining
Basement corridor
Hay-Adams Hotel
“Drop my weapon?” Hakim asked. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Uzi. I don’t surrender. To anyone, let alone to you.”
Alpha Zulu checked his pocket watch. “We’re running out of time,” he said firmly to Hakim. He glanced over his shoulder toward the stairwell that led to the hotel’s side exit. “We’ve gotta go. Now.” He grabbed Aksel’s arm and pulled him backwards.
“Police! Don’t move!”
In one motion, Zulu turned and opened fire in the direction of the voice. He hit the man, but he wasn’t sure where, because the cop—or whatever he was—was firing too, and Zulu hit the ground hard, his Kevlar vest absorbing most of the rounds.
The corridor was an echoing mass of confusion, scattering bodies, and cacophonous submachine gun clatter. Zulu saw the gunman go down and slide back behind the corner—which was fortunate, because Zulu’s magazine was empty. He tried reaching the spare in his pocket, but stinging pain in his left arm and leg prevented him from retrieving it.
He craned his neck, hoping to see Hakim—but heard the elevator doors closing, and he figured she had left him there to die. The firing had ceased, but he had to get out of there. More Feds would be arriving any second.
He rolled onto his injured side and began crawling along the tile floor, hoping to reach the exit, where he could make it to the street. After that, he wasn’t sure where he would go. But he needed to go somewhere, because even if the cops didn’t come running, remaining where he was meant instant death.
In less than five minutes.
UZI SAW RODMAN’S HEAD a split second before his body appeared in the corridor, followed by the MP-5 muzzle and Rodman’s resonant voice. And then the ski-masked man’s submachine gun fire muted everything around him.
Uzi’s first instinct was to grab Aksel and get him to the ground. But an errant round had struck Aksel somewhere, and the hefty man dropped to the ground on his own. Uzi crawled forward and tried to shield the director general’s body, but a row of rounds struck the tile directly in front of him and drove Uzi back. He fired at the moving target—the ski-masked terrorist—and scored several direct hits to the body.
Hard Target Page 45
