Page 20 of The Last Days

  it would be heating toward a boil. He didn’t have any choice. He had to keep moving.

  Bennett could hear men shouting in Arabic—he assumed it was Arabic, anyway—but he hadn’t seen anyone, dead or alive. Where were they? All he could see were flames and smoke and the water he was trudging through, For that, he was oddly, slightly grateful for the flames—at least they provided some light in this subterranean labyrinth. But the raging electrical fires in the walls and ceilings also worried him. It would only take one wire or cable falling into all this water and he’d be electrocuted instantly. An involuntary shudder rippled through his body.

  His eyes—bloodshot and stinging from all the smoke—searched wildly for escape routes. But his options, limited from the beginning, were narrow ing fast. The fires blocked his path to Galishnikov and Sa’id’s room. Now they also blocked the way back to Ziegler’s room. He wasn’t completely

  trapped, but it was only a matter of time. He couldn’t move laterally. He couldn’t go back. The only way out was forward. There was only one door through which he could be saved. The question was, who or what was on the other side?

  A gun battle had been under way in the control room for the last few minutes. But now things were quiet. Should he take a chance, or wait and keep listening? What was worse, the prospect of being electrocuted or boiled to death by staying put, or being shot in the head the minute he went through this door? It wasn’t much of a choice, and only the thought of finding McCoy tipped the scales. The smoke was too thick to let him stand up. He’d suffocate for sure. All he could do was yank on the door handle and roll into the control room like he’d seen on TV. A moving target in a smoke-filled room with no light but exploding computer consoles and a back draft in the walls and ceilings couldn’t be that easy to hit, right? He made up his mind. He’d move fast and take his chances.

  Bennett took a deep breath. Then he lunged for the handle, tugged the door open and rolled into the room.

  The sound of the door swinging open and the sloshing water was a near-lethal combination. The place exploded with automatic gunfire. Bennett could hear the rounds smashing into the concrete walls and ricocheting into the water all around him. In all the noise and confusion, he dove under a desk. He pressed himself flat against the floor, his eyes and nose just barely above the waterline. Then he held his breath and tried to be completely silent, completely still.

  A few seconds later, the gunfire stopped. All was quiet again.

  Bennett squinted through the smoke.

  His eyes burned. His lungs burned. He glanced to the left, then back to the right, scanning the room for movement. His vantage point was actually pretty good. He was under Tariq’s desk and next to one of the mainframe computer consoles. He had decent cover, and could see most of the open spaces in the room from there.

  He couldn’t see into the various conference rooms and hallways jutting off this main control room. He had to assume that’s where the gunfire was coming from. But at least he knew there was no one behind him, and he’d be able to see anyone that tried to approach him from the front or sides.

  But now what? Was he supposed to just lie there, pinned down forever? The hatch to the Hotel Baghdad was only five or six yards ahead. But how could he make it without getting shot in the back? Even if he did make it

  up the ladder, he wouldn’t be able to get out, would he? That lobby no longer existed. It was buried in five stories of concrete. If there was another

  way out, he had no idea what or where it was. Suddenly he heard the slosh of water behind him. Someone was yanking

  the door open. Bennett rolled onto his back and pointed both guns at the door. Sprinting through the door wasn’t a face he recognized. It wasn’t a face he’d ever seen before. It wasn’t a face at all. It was a man shrouded in a mask—a black hood, actually—like the ones he’d seen on the streets of Gaza City as they’d tried to escape the ambush at the PLC headquarters. He held a machine gun. He was moving fast, moving toward him. Bennett didn’t think twice. Both weapons fired. Both guns exploded. The man in the black hood snapped back, slammed against the wall, and slowly slumped to the floor into the water rapidly turning red. He was dead. Bennett had killed him. But now everyone knew where he was. The room again erupted in automatic weapons fire.

  Bennett rolled right—away from the dead man, toward the hatch. He didn’t know why. He was operating purely on adrenaline and instinct and fear. Bullets were crashing into computers and files and walls. He saw a figure in the shadows, on the other side of the room, moving to take up a better position, also masked in black, his eyes glowing red in the fierce glow of the flickering flames.

  Bennett rolled into the small conference room where he and McCoy had spoken with the president and NSC just a few hours before. Inside, he pressed

  his back against the wall, then pivoted hard and thrust both arms—both guns—out the doorway. He fired two shots each into the firestorm, then pulled back. The figure scrambled left and let loose another burst of gunfire, Bennett waited, pivoted again, fired again, but the rounds hit a television console that exploded on impact. He pulled back again as more gunfire erupted into the conference room.

  Bennett waited again, then popped his head back out the doorway to see where this guy was hiding. The roar of the fire was deafening. Bennett pulled back again. He was shaking uncontrollably. The smoke was so acrid, so pungent he could barely suck in enough air to fill his lungs. The heat was so intense his raw, exposed skin was beginning to blister and boil. In a few minutes, the entire control room would be completely engulfed by fire, and there was no way out. He couldn’t leave this room without being blown away, and even if he could, he had nowhere to go.

  He didn’t dare shut his eyes, though they were burning with pain, but he tried to picture Erin McCoy. He had no idea where she was. He had no idea if she were dead or wounded. But he tried desperately to imagine what

  she’d be doing right now if she were still alive in this inferno. She’d be fighting and she’d be praying, that much he knew. With her last breaths, she’d be firing back, defending this place and these people with her life. And she’d be asking God to protect them all from this hell, and the one to follow.

  He knew it. He knew it because she’d done it before. When he’d been shot by the Iraqi at Dr. Mordechai’s house in Jerusalem, he’d been slipping in and out of consciousness, but he’d heard her praying. She was literally begging God to save his life and his soul. She talked to God like she knew Him, like He could hear her, like she expected to see the supernatural. It was completely out of the realm of his understanding and experience. Yet it gave him the strangest sense of peace he couldn’t explain away.

  But that was her God, not his. It was she who had no fear of evil, not him.

  He could feel the evil in this room, and it terrified him. Something was stalking him. Something was hunting him. With the fires raging all around him, the temperature had been shooting past a hundred degrees, but Bennett’s entire body felt chilled, as though an unseen presence, cold and dark, was moving through the room. It encircled him, surrounded him. It was poised to crush the life out of him. His body was trembling. He wanted to scream, but no sound would come. He wanted to run, but his legs would not move. He wanted to cry out to God to help him, to save him—but it was too late.

  Bennett heard the burst of gunfire. He saw the grenade slam against the back wall of the conference and drop into the water on the floor. Then the room erupted. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the room. Flames tore into his eyes and consumed his flesh and in an instant, it was over.

  BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

  The senior controller snapped to attention.

  He hadn’t been drifting off. But after nine hours on patrol on an E-3

  AWACS some 33,000 feet above the barren deserts of Iraq in the middle of

  the night, he wasn’t exactly in top form. His eyes were heavy, his breathing slow. He was on his umpteenth cup of bad coffee and starving for something dece
nt to eat.

  But all that suddenly changed. He had an unknown contact—it had to be hostile—and he snapped back to life. The controller held the headphones tight against his ears and scanned his instruments. He called over to his commander. He had a vehicle of some kind—no, two—wait, make that three, and they were moving west-northwest. “Can’t be up to any good, can they?” “Not likely, sir.”

  It was a convoy all right, racing for cover at eighty, maybe ninety miles an hour.

  “Breaking for the Syrian border, are they? I guess we’d better stop them.” He punched a few buttons and opened up a secure channel with a pair of Apache helicopter gunships on patrol to the north.

  “Mongoose One Five, Mongoose One Six, this is Sky Ranch, do you copy, over?”

  “Sky Ranch, this is Mongoose One Five, copy you five by five.” “Ditto that, Sky Ranch. This is Mongoose One Six. Tell me you’ve got some action, sir. Ain’t nobody out there but the Eighty-second, the Third

  ID and a whole lot of sand.”

  “If you hustle a little, this just may be your lucky night.”

  “Every night is lucky with you, sir.”

  The E-3 commander filled in the Apache pilots on what little he knew so far.

  “Nobody gets across that border. That understood, boys? Nobody.”

  “You got it, sir. Mongoose One Five, inbound hot.”

  “Mongoose One Six, I’m right on his tail.”

  The Apaches broke out of their patrol pattern and raced south. Their rules of engagement didn’t allow them to cross into Syrian airspace. That meant they didn’t have much time. At most, they had three or four minutes to intercept whoever was in such a hurry to get out of the frying pan and into the fire. Who knew? This could be fun.

  The large red-and-white bus pulled away from Dizengoff Center.

  It was a miserable night to be out, still pouring rain. The storm hadn’t let up a bit. The driver made a few stops along the way, then began making his way north toward the Tel Aviv University campus. It was the last run of the night, which made it the last run of his career. He’d been with the Israeli transit authority for exactly twenty-five years and one month and he was retiring to spend more time with his wife, his four grown children, and his six grandchildren. His two daughters still lived in Israel. One just got married. His two sons and their families lived in the United States—one in Los Angeles, the other in Seattle.

  They were good kids, and smart. For that he and his wife were blessed. They’d worried themselves sick with how to pay for each of them to go to college. It wasn’t easy to raise a family on a bus driver’s wages, even if his wife worked part-time as a dental hygienist. But they needn’t have worried at all. In the end, each of their kids had won full scholarships to MIT, Caltech, Cornell, and Princeton. They met good Jewish kids along the way, got married, and started having children of their own. Now, finally, it was time to enjoy them—all of them—and as soon as they were finished taking some vacation time of their own down in Eilat, they’d start their “world grandkids tour.”

  The bus was noisy and chaotic. It was packed with foreign students, mostly Americans from TAU’s Overseas Student Program, all of whom had just stumbled out of a row of bars just now closing. Everyone was on break for a few weeks, celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas. How could they all be so drunk during the holidays? Didn’t any of these kids have a religious bone in their body? Of course, thought the driver, his didn’t either. Nor did he,

  for that matter. At least he wouldn’t have to drive on New Year’s Eve. Maybe he’d get drunk himself. One more stop and they’d be at the TAU campus, He could let all these kids off and he’d be free at last.

  He pulled over to the curb and opened the door. A young woman got

  on, the only person dumb enough to be out in the rain this late at night,

  the driver noted. She couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one,

  maybe younger, and she wore the green fatigues of the Israeli Defense Forces,

  and a thick, padded army jacket. She was carrying an armful of packages and

  struggled up the steps. But she paid her fare quickly, nervously looked from

  side to side, presumably for a seat. There weren’t many, the driver told her

  in Hebrew, maybe one or two in the back.

  She seemed confused, even intimidated by so many kids, not much younger than her, yelling and laughing and carrying on. She slowly began making her way down the aisle. The driver closed the door, checked his mirrors, and began pulling away from the curb. Two more miles, and he’d have peace and quiet all the way back to the bus compound.

  “You hear that, Colonel?”

  Daoud Juma was finally asleep. After two days and hundreds of miles on

  the run, he was bone tired and desperate for rest. But someone was calling

  him. Someone was asking him a question. Why? Couldn’t they see he wanted

  to be left alone?

  “Colonel? Colonel Juma? Sir, can you hear that? Something’s approach

  ing

  It was Arabic. Daoud could hear the words. He knew someone was talking, But he struggled to understand the words. He was fighting his way out of REM sleep, and he wasn’t happy. He tried to open his eyes. They were covered over in film. The infection was coming back. He angrily wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and cursed the driver he now could see and hear all to well, even in the darkness. “Sir—Colonel—I’m sorry to wake you. …” Sure you are, thought Daoud.

  “… but I think that’s the sound of a chopper echoing through the can

  yon.

  The night was as black as he’d ever seen it. But for their headlights and the internal lights of the dashboard, there’d be no light at all. He looked out the side windows, but all he could see was his own reflection. He’d have to take this kid’s word for it. They were in a canyon of some kind, probably still winding along the Euphrates River. They couldn’t be far from the border

  now. Or had they crossed over already and he hadn’t been told. No, that was impossible. They wouldn’t dare fail to keep him apprised. Even if he was sleeping. And there’d be border guards. Passport checks. Officials to confer with. Money to change hands.

  A chopper? Is that what he’d just said? No one had helicopters out here— not coming from behind them. The Iraqis certainly didn’t. Not anymore. That would have to be American. Daoud’s eyes widened.

  The junior officer’s radio crackled to life. The men in the minivan behind him were also reporting what sounded like a helicopter several miles behind them. For a few moments, there was a lot of cross-chatter. Then came the question from one of the fedayeen commanders. What did Colonel Juma want to do?

  “Any of you geniuses have a Stinger missile?” he barked over the walkie-talkie sitting on the backseat beside him. He was fully awake now.

  “Yes, sir. We’ve got one left.”

  “Then in the name of Allah, use it,” he shouted.

  Surely he’d trained these men better than this. The convoy sped up now, hugging the dirt road through hairpin turns. On straightaways, they were pushing at least ninety miles an hour. The problem was none of them knew the road well and were having trouble anticipating upcoming twists and turns. On top of that, the dust and sand they were kicking up was cutting visibility—already minimal—to just a few dozen yards, at least for the second and third drivers in the convoy.

  Someone from the Range Rover came over the radio asking if they should all cut their lights. Daoud put an end to such nonsense. If this was really an American helicopter, it was an Apache or a Cobra gunship, perhaps a Blackhawk. Either way, all of the Americans had night-vision systems and state-of-the-art FLIR technology—forward-looking infrared thermal imaging systems that could pick up the heat signatures of their bodies and engines. Shutting off their headlights wouldn’t trick the infidels, he stormed. It would only cause the three of them to crash into the canyon walls or into the river. Just floor it, he told them, and get that Stinger ready
to fly.

  The minivan driver was on the radio. His eyes were glued on the road ahead, but several of his men could see the lights of the chopper behind them. It was coming in fast and low. It couldn’t be flying more than thirty or forty feet above the ground and was coming in at upward of a hundred eighty knots.

  The Stinger operator raced through his procedures. He hadn’t even had the thing out of the box until a few seconds ago. He was having trouble getting everything together in the dark, in the back of a packed minivan.

  But he’d have to do it fast. The chopper was bearing down on them and he was running out of time.

  OK, he was almost ready. He needed to power up the battery, and estab lish the range to target. Just a few more seconds, that’s all he needed.

  “What the—we’re getting painted. “

  “Mongoose One Six, this is Sky Ranch, say again—I repeat, say again.” “Sky Ranch, I said we’re getting painted. Probably a Stinger.” “One Six, do you have a visual on the convoy?”

  “Roger that, sir. We can see the convoy. Three cars. The last one just shot out their windows and they’re painting us up. Do we have permission to fire, sir?” “How many people in the last vehicle, One Six?” “Looks like five or six, sir—they’re on the run. ” “Roger that, Mongoose One Six, you have authorization to fire.” The canyon narrowed. The convoy was moving at nearly a hundred miles an hour. It was a wonder the Renault could keep pace. But it wasn’t the Renault they were after. “I’ve got lock.”

  The Apache was closing in, but the pilot could also see the mountain walls narrowing still further. He might have time for one clean shot. After that, he’d have to pull up and reacquire the convoy on the other side of the pass. “I’ve got tone.”

  The Apache pilot could see someone leaning out of the back of the min ivan. The Stinger was ready to fire. He flipped a switch and took his weapons system off safety. “Fox one, fox one. “