KURLAND SAW ALL THIS as he sat up. Saw the bodies behind him. Saw that the jihadi in the Land Cruiser was dead. Saw that they had stopped on the highway, smashed against the center median.
He unbuckled his belt, stepped out of the Suburban. He stood between the truck and the median. The road was strangely empty. A few hundred yards back, the carcasses of the first two vehicles in the convoy smoldered. Behind them, two panel trucks formed a
As his hearing returned, Kurland picked up horns honking and shots rattling. The noise was coming from behind the trucks, which he realized now had intentionally created a roadblock to split the convoy.
He turned the other way, south. Not far ahead, the two Saudi police cars that had been their escorts burned wildly. Kurland had never been a soldier, but even so, he could see how carefully the attack had been planned. Nearly a dozen vehicles must have been involved, and at least twice that many jihadis. And they seemed to want to take him alive. Otherwise, they would have blown up this Suburban like the others.
Maggs pushed out of the Suburban and grabbed Kurland’s arm. Kurland twisted away. “Enough. I’m a big boy.”
“I am trying to save your life. Get down. Now.” Maggs pointed at the roadblock, and Kurland saw that the Jeep was heading toward them, two jihadis standing, bracing themselves on the roll bar and holding automatic rifles. The two marines scrambled out of the Suburban. One took a knee at the back corner of the Suburban and braced his rifle against his shoulder. The other pulled himself onto the SUV’s roof.
“Have to sit tight,” Maggs said. “Take these guys out and wait for the cavalry.”
Kurland nodded. He heard sirens now, distant but closing. The Saudi police had faced terrorist attacks in Riyadh before. They would be here soon, first in ones and twos, and then by the dozens. So Kurland followed Maggs forward and hid beside the Suburban’s wheel. Maggs squatted low himself and reached for his cell phone, as the marines started to fire short bursts.
Kurland closed his eyes and prayed for the chance to see his wife again.
THE LEAD SUBURBAN HAD carried the radio and satellite uplinks that provided secure connections to the embassy. But everyone inside the lead Suburban was dead. Maggs was stuck trying to call embassy security into his cell phone.
Twice he punched *55, his pre-programmed speed-dial for embassy security. Twice he got an Arabic voice chirping at him. Either the Saudis had already shut down the network or the volume of calls had overwhelmed the local towers.
Even so, the deputy chief of security should be getting the embassy’s Black Hawk up and putting the tactical response team together. All the vehicles in the convoy were equipped with GPS transceivers that continuously broadcast their locations to the embassy. Even without a distress call, the ambush would have been screamingly obvious from the fact that the convoy had suddenly stopped in the middle of a highway.
But the security team would need at least ten minutes to get the bird in the air, and another five to get here. Maggs checked his watch. The ambush had started just five minutes ago. They were going to have to defend this position awhile. He drew his pistol and edged a few feet up the median so he cleared the front of the Toyota, whose wrecked grille formed an open jaw with the Suburban. From here he could cover the Jeep if it drove past them and looped back from the south. With the two marines covering to the north, they’d finally established a defensible position.
Maggs looked over the median. Astonishingly, on the other side of the highway, the northbound side, the traffic was still flowing. But it was slowing by the second as drivers stopped to gawk at the apocalypse across the road. Then he heard the sirens screaming north up the other side of the highway, saw blue lights flashing in the distance. Maybe the Saudi cops would get here quicker than he had expected.
WHEN THE JEEP GOT to two hundred yards, the marines opened up, short, controlled bursts that dug holes in its windshield and hood. The Jeep accelerated, and the two men in back stood and braced their AKs on the roll bar and fired on full automatic. The Jeep blew by as the marines kept shooting. Nobody hit anybody. No surprise. Shooting at a vehicle moving obliquely past a static post was next to impossible. A quarter-mile south, the Jeep slowed and began a tight right turn across the empty highway.
Maggs squeezed his Glock between his hands, wishing he had something more potent. The Jeep stopped, came forward two car lengths, then stopped. Maggs didn’t understand why the jihadis were hesitating. They had planned the ambush brilliantly. But they seemed to have run out of momentum. Maybe they hadn’t counted on facing three armed men at this point and didn’t have enough guys left to make the final assault.
The sirens on the other side of the highway got louder. So did the explosions behind the two panel trucks. If the jihadis wanted Kurland, they’d have to move soon, Maggs thought. As if the jihadis had suddenly reached the same conclusion, the Jeep accelerated toward the Suburban. Maggs retreated behind the corner of the Suburban’s armored grille. The marine on the roof twisted himself around so he was now facing south, toward the Jeep. “Wait!” Maggs yelled. “Let’em close!”
The Jeep closed to two hundred yards, one hundred fifty, one hundred, the jihadis firing high and wild, rounds dinging off the Suburban’s armored windshield and grille—
At eighty yards, the marine on the roof opened up, full auto this time, a burst that shattered the windshield. The driver was low in his seat, and Maggs couldn’t tell if he’d been hit. The Jeep skidded to a stop, its tires squealing. The driver jumped onto the pavement, holding his stomach.
Maggs took his time and squeezed off three shots that caught one of the guys standing in the back in the chest. His arms came off the roll bar as though he was trying to do a jumping jack, and he fell off the Jeep and thudded against the pavement. The guy next to him jumped down and crawled behind the Jeep and fired three shots that banged off the median a couple feet from Maggs.
THEN THE CAVALRY SHOWED up, in the form of two white Chevy Tahoes on the northbound side of the highway, blue bar lights flashing, sirens screaming, their front doors carrying the open-eyed logo of the Saudi police.
The Tahoes stopped across the median from the wreck, and their doors opened and four officers wearing body armor over their blue uniforms poured out. One yelled something in Arabic, and two of the others pulled out a pair of over-under double-barreled shotguns from the second.
Maggs turned, wishing he spoke Arabic, wanting to avoid friendly fire. “Hold your fire—” he yelled, wondering as he did how they’d had time to get into their body armor — and realizing too late that these weren’t cops at all, that they were terrorists, part of the ambush—
As one of them jumped onto the median and fired twice at the marine on top of the Suburban. Even the marine’s Kevlar couldn’t protect him from the shotgun’s fury, which nearly split him in half at the waist. Almost simultaneously, a second terrorist fired at the marine on the back corner of the Suburban, catching him in the neck and dropping him instantly—
And the third turned his shotgun at Maggs. Maggs lifted his pistol and fired wildly, his shots catching the jihadi in the neck and twisting him sideways—
But the jihadi was already pulling the trigger. A torrent of steel tore through Maggs’s arm and shoulder, a left hook from a giant wearing razor-studded gloves. Maggs fell against the Suburban and tried to raise his hand to return fire. Nothing happened. He looked down to see his arm hanging limply from its socket and his blood pouring down the side of his Kevlar vest. He knew he was dead, had to be, weaponless and useless, and he couldn’t do anything but watch as the jihadis reached for Kurland, who had been hiding like Maggs told him and was just now realizing what was happening—
Maggs was slipping to his knees, filling not with pain or even fear of death but with
Maggs tried to stand but couldn’t, he could barely hold himself on his knees, and all he could do was watch as the two fake cops,
Even as he watched, the light faded from the world. And the pavement rose up to meet him, and the darkness poured down his throat at a million miles an hour until Maggs didn’t feel anything anymore.
