The questions all dampened her fantasy. Suddenly Ramia began to feel foolish. She thought, Is this gorgeous American man pulling my leg? Is he a con man on an international scheme? Is he really married with a wife and children back at home, while attempting to sell a young and innocent Muslim girl the world?
So she paused to consider Gary’s information and answers the way Basim would have asked her to view it. It was all too good to be true, yet the possibilities all crossed her mind. Ramia was as human and opportunistic as any other woman could be.
As she stood there in a brief silence along the waterfront and considered it all, Gary began to look up at a group of four helicopters that seemed to appear out of nowhere. They hovered in military formation over the nearby hotels.
Gary winced and wondered what was going on. Ramia read the deep concern in his eyes and turned to look at the helicopters as well. Then they heard gunshots ring out.
Ramia ducked and cringed, surprised. But she remained amazingly calm, not screaming or panicking.
Gary instinctively secured her hand in his for protection.
“Something’s going on,” he told her. He began to lead them back in the direction of the hotels. But as they jogged forward, one of the helicopters was hit before spinning wildly in their direction near the waterfront.
“What in the world?!” Gary exclaimed as he began to duck and run them both for cover under the tall palm trees that stood to their right.
The spinning helicopter careened out of control right above their heads and crashed into the Gulf waters less than a hundred yards in front him.
“Whoa! That was close!” Ramia said. She was more amazed than terrified. She had witnessed military battles as a kid near her home in Jordan. There was always a violent dispute going on in the Middle East, so helicopters being shot down did not unnerve her. Nevertheless, the falling helicopter in Dubai was closer than she had ever been to one.
“It looks like they’re circling the hotels,” Gary said, pointing.
“Which one?” Ramia asked.
“Let’s go find out,” Gary responded.
They quickly climbed back to their feet, brushed themselves off and began to run for the downtown hotels. There were at least three major hotels in that same area, including the Hilton, the International Suites and the Executive on the backside around the corner. But as they jogged closer to the area, they could clearly see the helicopters, UAE police officers and military troops that were just arriving in armored trucks. And they were all focused on the International Suites.
Ramia raised her hands to her face and was filled with anxiety. “Oh, my God! I could have been in there.” Fortunately, it was not yet noon, and she was not due back for her impromptu interview with the hotel’s management until one.
She immediately thought of calling her cousin on his cell phone to let him know that she was all right and that she was not inside. The scene was so loud and filled with commotion that she decided not to call her cousin, knowing he would worry about her safety. As for Gary, as he ran forward his heart began to pump faster as his mind raced through a collage of memories and emotions. He reflected on all of the military lessons he had learned over the past three years of group training in Northern Virginia. He felt flashes of the pain, despair and helplessness of losing his mother and his best friend to separate acts of murderous terrorism five years ago.
Even though the old incidents in Kentucky and in Colombia, South America, were disconnected from the present, in Gary’s mind they were connected. The moment of tragedy and urgency in Dubai connected everything for him.
Several men inside the helicopter had just died or were on their way to dying. Gary was sure of it from their violent crash into the Gulf, a crash that made him think back to his mother and her carjacking wreck while trying to escape two criminals near their home in Louisville. And every gunshot reminded Gary of his best friend begging for his life in Medellín, Colombia, before one gunshot splattered his brains all over Gary’s head and back, while Gary was tied to his friend back-to-back on a hard, cold floor of a dirty Colombian warehouse.
Since he had not been around another urgent tragedy in recent years, he had been able to contain himself and suppress his emotions. All that Gary could think about was running to save his mother and his friend from being murdered. He didn’t even respond to his cell phone that was ringing loudly from the holder on his hip.
“Your phone is ringing,” Ramia said. It was the loudest phone she had ever heard.
Gary looked down at the screen and saw that it was Jonah calling again, likely to calm him down and make certain that he avoided trouble.
I don’t have time for her right now, he thought. I’ll call her back later.
Once he and Ramia arrived at the scene, the news traveled to them quickly from the gathering crowd. Most of the men were already talking, groups of immigrant taxi drivers who had pulled over and had jumped out of their cars in the middle of the street.
“Some men took over the hotel and are holding everyone hostage!” someone yelled.
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know. They are just mad at the Emirates.”
“Someone said they are immigrant workers who want fair treatment for their work,” another man informed the crowd.
“So they respond by doing this? This is insane! They will all be put to death, and nothing will come of it but stricter rules for the rest of us who work here.”
When Gary heard the word “hostages,” he began to think immediately about all of the tourists and innocent families involved. He didn’t care about anything else that was going on. Who could ever understand the disputes of the Middle East anyway? Desperate men seemed to always do desperate things, even the criminals and mad men in America shooting up innocent people in movie theaters and children and teachers in grade schools. And no nation or people were exempt from the psychosis of terrorism.
Whether they were individuals or groups, it was all insane and someone had to do something to stop it. Gary stood there in the crowd and thought about it all, with Ramia still clenching his hand.
Ramia felt Gary sweating and thought Maybe the American isn’t so brave after all. She was not sweating. War, death and tragedy happened all the time in Jordan. It was disturbing, but it was perfectly normal. Gary felt like a race car engine that was revving up at the starting line before blasting forward. He felt like a bull in a holding gate in Spain, before charging out at the people who ran through the streets. Then he thought about the American family who traveled into Dubai on the same Delta airplane with him from Atlanta, and the cute blond-haired boy who sat next to him to with excitement and questions. Gary was ready to explode. He was now trained to do something about it, but so far he had not budged. The police were holding everyone back anyway.
Ramia finally pulled her clammy hand from him and stretched her eyes wide. She then clasped her hands together in prayer. “Oh, my God! Aren’t those two Italian women in there—Sophie and Anastasia, who rode with us yesterday?” She shook her head. “It’s such a shame. I pray that everything works out for them.”
That was it! Gary’s racing heart, along with his civilian hesitation and his feelings of continued helplessness, finally flatlined. He reflected on the philosophy of combat and military training that he had been given by Special Command Officer Cummings in the hills of Northern Virginia:
“In life or death combat, every move is the right move, so you must complete it with authority. You cannot hesitate or rethink it and expect to survive. Every move must be fierce, fast and done with the intention to win. And if it is not, then hope and pray that your opponent will hesitate on his part. Otherwise, you can expect to lose—and possibly die.”
With that Gary, wiped his sweaty hands across his chest to dry them, and as his phone began to ring a second time, he told Ramia, “Pray for me too,” before he took off running toward the hotel entrance.
Ramia watched him in confusion. What is he doing? Then she r
an behind him to see.
From the right side of the crowd, Johnny saw Gary and Ramia running, and he yelled out to his American friend to get his attention, “Hey, Gary!”
Johnny had just called him on his cell phone, with no answer. He wanted to ask if Gary knew what was going on near the Hilton. But obviously, the American traveler was already out and about, accompanied by a beautiful Arab woman to boot.
“GARY!” he yelled again, louder.
His loud and pressing shouts through the crowd had unexpectedly distracted the police officers, enabling Gary to find a crease between them and make his way toward the entrance of the hotel. Without stopping, the crazy tourist ran right past the Union Defence Force of Arab soldiers, while they began to yell at him, “STOP! STOP! STOP!”
The crazy tourist was running, unprotected, right into the range of bullets from the men who waited inside the lobby of the hotel with their assault weapons.
As soon as they saw him running out from the left, three of the men inside began to fire in the man’s direction through the thick hotel glass windows, which deflected their bullets away from the target while shattering the glass.
Expecting as much, Gary dove forward into a perfect summersault, rolling over and popping right back up on his feet. He was untouched by a single bullet as he continued on his reckless and sudden path toward the basement driveway to the right of the hotel entrance. It was where the valet staff would park exotic cars. As an experienced striker in the American game of lacrosse, Gary had performed the same forward rolling move ever since he was eight years old, albeit on grass instead of concrete. Nevertheless, his execution of the move was the same—an astounding success.
The UAE military and police looked around at each other in shocked silence until the commanding military officer spoke up. “What was that? Who is he?”
The police had no idea. “We don’t know. We were trying to stop him,” they said excitedly.
The commanding officer sensed an opportunity. Gary had acted as a decoy. “He just showed us another way in,” the commanding officer shouted. “Establish a formation to follow him.”
Even the immigrant men inside the hotel were astounded by what they saw: one man charging the terrorists, dodging bullets and unscathed.
“You idiots!” the lead man shouted at his three fast trigger-men. They had shot down their own protection of glass.
“He came out from nowhere. We were surprised,” they yelled in their defense.
“Call surveillance and see if they caught him on camera,” the leader told his men.
The brief distraction was just what the Pakistani, Saleem, needed to slip into the nearby bathroom unnoticed.
Meanwhile, Ramia and Johnny watched Gary’s amazing feat with the rest of the crowd outside of the front entrance. They stood far behind the military and police but were still able to see it all.
“Did you see that?” members of the crowd asked.
“That was amazing!”
“Yes, but what will he do now with no gun? He will get himself killed,” someone else called out.
Johnny reached Ramia in the crowd. “What is he doing?” As far as he could tell, the American traveler looked like a maniac who had gotten lucky.
Ramia shrugged her shoulders and answered, “I don’t know. He just took off running and told me to pray for him.”
Johnny shook his head and thought about it. All of the mysteries of Gary Stevens were beginning to add up. He even began to question if the American man’s name was really “Gary Stevens.” He first called himself “The Traveler,” as if he didn’t want to reveal his identity.
Johnny leaned into Ramia and whispered in her ear, “I think he may be a secret agent.”
Before Ramia overreacted, she faced him and asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Johnny Napur, his tour guide in Dubai for the past three days. I picked him up from the airport when he first arrived here. And I saw him kick a man’s ass the other night who was twice as big as him.”
That made Ramia rethink everything. Maybe Gary’s sweaty palms meant the opposite of what she thought. “He was in a fight?” she asked the excitable British hustler.
Although he was obviously Sri Lankan, from his exotic brown skin and thick black hair, Johnny’s British accent was very strong. He said, “Man, was he ever. He knocked this huge guy on his ass with just three moves. It was amazing, just like that one!”
And the women also love him! Johnny kept to himself. He’s gotten me plenty of status these past two nights! He planned to take the American out again for more status. But now he was unsure if he would even survive.
“Man, I hope he makes it back out of there. I had big plans for him tonight.”
That got Ramia thinking about her big plans for the American, with desperation of her own.
She thought, Okay, so how can I get him back out of there? She began to look for another crack in the police force or a way around the back of the building. But the police and the UAE military were scouting around the back as well, where the armed immigrant men were barricaded against them.
Nevertheless, Ramia looked back at Johnny. “Would you help me to find another way in?”
Johnny looked at her as if she were a screaming lunatic. “What? You want to go in there?”
Ramia shook her head at his foolishness and began to walk away without a response. She wanted to think of another route in and had no time for him.
Johnny watched the beautiful Arab woman walk away in an obvious fit. Is she serious? he wondered. He was curious to see if she was, so he decided to follow her. “Hey, wait up. I’ll help you.”
Ramia stopped and turned. “Really?” She had no patience for games. This American mystery man had her majorly intrigued now. She was out of her senses.
“What’s your name?” Johnny asked her.
“Ramia,” she answered hesitantly. She hoped that he wasn’t trying to use the opportunity to hit on her, because she was not interested.
But Johnny didn’t plan to do that. He realized that the American had left her seriously love-struck.
“Okay, let’s go this way,” he said, as if he were suddenly in charge.
Ramia shook her head at his fake swagger and followed him through the crowd, reluctantly.
Johnny thought, She’s crazy! But let me at least see how far she’s willing to take this.
Chapter 28
Tariq finally made his way to the edge of the crowd in downtown Dubai. Cars and trucks were stopped all over the street due to the disturbance at the International Suites. No longer the young man that he used to be, Tariq huffed and gasped to catch a breather.
While leaning over, he spotted an unmarked white van only twenty yards in front of him. There was nothing peculiar about the van, and it was too small to load anything more than a dozen men. But then Tariq watched as an imposing driver looked around him before he quickly opened up the back doors. Had Tariq still been standing, the man might have spotted him. But in his stooped position, he was able to witness the prime prize of the day: Mohd Ahmed Nasir, who calmly jumped out of the back with two other men as they all followed behind the driver to the sidewalk and around the nearest corner.
“The Honorable Allah,” Tariq said to himself. He happened to be in the right place at the right time. So he followed after Mohd and his men while keeping a safe distance from them.
He rounded the corner and caught the four men just as they stepped into a building. To camouflage his move, Tariq continued walking across the street like an average citizen. Once he was out of eyesight from the building, he made an immediate phone call to his friend.
“Yes, Police Chief Ali Youssef.”
“I found him—Mohd Ahmed Nasir,” Tariq responded. “He is with three men inside of a building in downtown Dubai. And they are not heavily armed. They could have maybe four to six pistols on them, unless they have more inside.”
“Give me the address, and I will send my men to obey your command,” Ali said
. “We cannot even make it to the hotel through the traffic, and the Union Defence Force is already there. So capturing Mohd would be even more important to us at this time.”
“Exactly,” Tariq agreed. “I will stand guard and await your backup. But please tell your men in advance that we must capture him alive. So it would be wise to send me your best and most experienced officers.”
“Indeed,” the chief said. “I agree one hundred percent. I will send only the best.”
After Tariq hung up, he thought again about calling Abdul, but he was still uncertain if the Emirati developer was free to answer.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” he mumbled to himself. “I will help you get to the bottom of this. I give you my word.”
*****
Back at Sheikh Al Hassan’s home in Abu Dhabi, word of the immigrant takeover at the International Suites in downtown Dubai had gotten back to their distinguished group, where Abdul was forced to sit and listen to the much wiser and older men while he steamed and got agitated over their conclusions.
The elder Sheikh Al Rashid insisted with an angry balled fist upon the brunch table, “You and your wife will go nowhere near Dubai for a week! And we will allow the army and the proper authorities to handle this absolute embarrassment to the United Arab Emirates. I will advise the building commissioner myself that your license should be suspended for at least ten years! But I will strongly recommend twenty!”
Each dramatic point was made with a hammering fist to the table, as the food, plates and wine glasses shook from the force. All the while, Abdul took his medicine like a man, with measured breathing and incredible poise. To lose his building license for ten to twenty years would be torture. But under the present circumstances, there was no argument he could make in his favor. His inflammatory business practices and inhumane treatment of the immigrant labor force had put the young and celebrated nation under an extreme weight.
Nevertheless, Abdul eyed his loving uncle Sheikh Al Hassan to speak up on his behalf.