'What's happening down there?'
'IUF,' he said. 'They've covered all the exits, killed Sal, Nev . . .'
'Where are they?' Gideon asked.
'Outside, surrounding the building. Trying to burn us out.'
'Great,' Gideon said through clenched teeth. 'Any of your friends left down there?'
'I don't know.'
'The old guy?' Gideon asked.
The driver coughed a few times. 'He left to make a briefing.' There was a hint of irony in his voice. 'About getting you two to a more secure location.'
Gideon noticed the coughing and looked up. The roof above them had become hazy with smoke. At most they had a few moments to get out of here.
The driver started up the stairs, and Gideon leveled the Uzi at him. 'Where are you going?'
'This place is on fire—the first floor's a death trap already.'
Ruth looked back and forth between them. 'How're we getting out of here?'
Gideon started sliding back toward the center of the floor, keeping his gun trained in the driver's direction. 'Where were you planning to go from here?'
He pointed off to Gideon's left, where fire had damaged the roof enough to let outside light in. Gideon scrambled over to that wall. The plywood floor ended short of his destination, and he put his foot through a section of dry-rotted lathe. He cursed, but kept moving along the framing. He got as close as he could, and from where he was, it was obvious that there was little wood left on this corner of the roof. What separated him from the outside was little more than a layer of chaotically peeling asphalt shingles.
The smoke was getting worse, and Gideon could feel the temperature rising.
Gideon looked back at the driver. The driver said, 'They'll be watching the windows, but they might miss that.'
Great, but where to from there? Gideon turned around carefully and kicked some of the shingles out
of the way. Smoke began blowing in from outside. Even if the attackers had this portion of the roof covered, the thick smoke roiling up from the lower floors reduced visibility down to a few feet.
Gideon looked back at the others. The stairwell was flickering orange and the smoke in here was nearly as bad as the smoke outside. He heard sirens in the distance. He hoped that they were headed here, the arrival of the fire department might cause the IUF to scatter before they shot them.
'Come on,' Gideon waved at the other two.
Ruth hesitated—but she could hear cracking wood and breaking glass coming from downstairs as well as Gideon did. The sound of fire tearing through the building below them. She went first, pushing through the remains of the shingles. Gideon followed, letting the driver take up the rear.
Outside, the air was too warm. The heat radiated from below, through the choking smoke. Every few seconds the wind would tear away some of the smoke cover and Gideon could see a neighboring house with a second-floor porch to their left. He could also see two Dodge Ram pickup trucks on the lawn. With them he saw a hint of movement.
The three of them were hugging the side of the roof, a forty-degree slope into a gutter that was half-peeled off the building.
'The porch next door,' said the driver.
It was the only route left open to them, but it wasn't something Gideon wanted to hear. His leg was already throbbing in anticipation.
Ruth looked over at the two of them, then across the driveway, through the smoke, at where the neighboring porch should be. Her eyes glistened—it might have been fear, or it might have been the biting smoke. She shook her head and got to her feet, unsteadily balanced on the edge of the roof.
'Let me go—' Gideon began to say. But Ruth had already taken the leap. It was as if she silently vanished into the smoke. '—first,' he said into the choking wind. His heart throbbed in his neck as he pulled himself toward the front of the building, where he could make the jump himself.
Behind him the building groaned, and he could feel it shake beneath him. Something below gave way, and black smoke belched around him and the driver. He pushed himself upright, his half-working leg vibrating with the effort, and he strained to see something of Ruth through the smoke.
'Come on,' he whispered.
'There's no time! Jump.' The house made creaking noises behind him.
Gideon turned toward the driver, 'What's your name?'
'Alexander—Now go!'
Gideon couldn't even see where the neighboring roof was, he couldn't even see if Ruth had made it. Fifteen feet across, ten feet down. Simple . . .
Simple if his leg still worked, or if he could see where he was going.
Gideon crouched and launched himself into the roiling blackness. He kept his eyes closed, and held his breath against the choking smoke. It burned against his skin as if he were falling through the fire itself. It felt as if he were suspended in the air there for an hour or two—
Then his shoulder plowed into asphalt shingles with enough force to ignite a starburst rainbow across the inside of his eyelids. He felt his legs roll off the edge of the porch. For a terrifying, disorienting moment his lower body was suspended in midair—then a hand grabbed his belt and dragged him up over the edge.
He opened his eyes in time to see a shingle explode near his right hand. He looked up at Ruth, who was still pulling him toward the wall of the neighboring house. 'Take cover,' he yelled at her. He pushed her toward the windows facing them and another bullet hole sprouted in the roof between them.
Ruth headed for the darkened window, but she didn't let him go. That was probably a good thing, because the impact had stunned him, and all Gideon could manage was a wild scramble, his bad leg doing little more than kicking weakly at the edge of the roof.
Just at the time that Gideon thought the sniper had enough time to aim a shot right into one of their heads, something else slammed into the roof. Gideon turned to see Alexander, and another shot go wild into the roof between them.
Glass shattered, and Gideon found himself half-led, half-pulled through a window into a darkened bedroom. He turned around, from where he had fallen on the floor, to see Alexander diving for the window.
He didn't make it.
A shot tore into his neck. He spun half away from them, falling out of sight beyond the window.
'What the fuck?' A man sprang out of the darkness, yelling at them. He was swinging something threateningly. Somehow, Gideon had managed to keep hold of the Uzi, and he swung it at the man.
'Shit, I'm cool—' The object, ax handle or baseball bat, dropped. It took a moment for Gideon to realize-that the man was completely naked.
He scrambled away from the window with Ruth, keeping the Uzi leveled at the bedroom's occupant. The man backed away from them as they reached the doorway. Outside, the sounds of sirens became louder and Gideon could hear the screech of the trucks pulling away from the house.
It took a few moments to get to his feet, even with Ruth helping him up. 'I can't believe this is happening,' Ruth said.
'You ain't the only one,' said the naked man. He stood on a pile of blankets that had spilled from his bed. Behind him, Gideon could see someone else, probably his wife, cowering away from the two of them.
'Let's get out of here,' Gideon said.
By the time they made it outside, the fire department had arrived, the IUF had gone, and the Israeli safe house was a blackened shell holding an inferno inside itself.
2.06 Thur. Mar. 19
C OLONEL Gregory Mecham stood at a podium in a small, secure meeting room at Fort Meade. The room was
