RAFIQUE AZIZ AND Muammar Bengazi walked up the main staircase of the mansion. Aziz was furious. They had been lucky enough to take the White House without losing a single man, and now, when he was within twenty- four hours of achieving his ultimate goal, he had lost a valuable man due to outright stupidity. Momentum was something that Aziz was acutely aware of. The battlefields of history are littered with the corpses of soldiers whose commanders failed to notice the crucial role it plays in every conflict. Bengazi walked a half a step behind, ashamed that one of his men had been foolish enough to get killed by a woman.
When they reached the second floor of the mansion, Aziz and Bengazi proceeded directly across the hall and into the president’s bedroom.
Every light in the room was on. Aziz walked to the other side of the bed and looked down at the bloody naked body. Ragib, the man who had found his slain comrade, was standing on the other side of the body, his radio in one hand and his assault rifle in the other. He started to speak, but Aziz raised his hand and silenced him. The leader of the group said nothing for a long time while as his eyes took inventory of the scene.
After several minutes, Aziz looked up. The expression on his face was one of controlled anger. In a curt tone, he asked, “What in the hell happened?”
Ragib nervously began to recount the events, content that for now Aziz hadn’t executed him. Ragib told him how Abu Hasan had knocked the woman out and dragged her from the room. He gave his leader the details of what he had found and what little he knew about the woman. When Ragib was done, Aziz looked at the body for a second and then at the nervous man standing before him. No bad deed was to go unpunished. Examples had to be made; fear had to be maintained. With no warning whatsoever, Aziz brought his hand up and slapped Ragib across the face.
Ragib held his ground, offering his chin for another blow.
Although he was stronger and bigger than Aziz, he feared his leader deeply. Fighting back or blocking the blow was not a consideration.
Taking the muzzle of his MP-5, Aziz shoved it under Ragib’s chin and backed him up until he was pinned against the wall.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you for your stupidity.”
“I have no excuse.” Ragib kept his voice calm, knowing that any sign of fear or disrespect could end his life instantly. “I deserve to die. I was stupid.”
MITCH HAD MADE it into the room with seconds to spare.
Milt Adams knelt in the corner next to the woman Rapp had just saved and tried to keep her calm. The battered woman had been shaking for the better part of five minutes, and Adams was beginning to worry that she might be slipping into some type of shock.
Rapp tried his best to ignore Adams and the woman and stay focused on what the people back at Langley were saying.
He had already received his reprimand for not seeking the approval of the high command before saving the woman. Rapp liked to use the phrase “high command” to describe anyone who sat comfortably in a dark room that was dimly lit with computer and TV screens and gave orders to operators in the field. On this particular mission, he respected the people who were giving orders. Kennedy was someone whom he trusted implicitly, and Campbell, Flood, and Stansfield had all been in the field before-something that went a long way.
Rapp, however, had a new axiom in life. The stubborn half German had just recently figured out that instead of righting the system, it was often better to say yes and then go off and do whatever you thought was best. Washington was a bureaucratic monolith that more often than not moved with the speed and agility of a five- hundred-pound man. Like most clandestine operators, Rapp saw Washington’s role as a secondary one, and because of this he had developed the habit of being very cautious about what information he passed on while in the field. Rapp had discovered that the less they thought he was doing the more support they seemed to give him, while inversely the more he told them, especially bad news, the less support he seemed to get.
Kennedy almost always went to bat for him, but there were others in Washington who had built their entire careers on doing nothing.
Rapp sat on his heels, his eyes trained on the monitor, his left ear receiving the audio from the president’s bedroom and his right ear receiving the audio from Langley. The only voices coming from Langley were those of Kennedy, Campbell, Stansfield, and Hood. None of them had bothered to criticize him for saving the woman. They all knew or hoped they would have done the same thing. General Flood had, however, stressed that from this point forward there was a chain of command firmly in place, and it was to be used.
Using his new axiom, Rapp replied with a simple, “Yes, sir.”
For the next several, tense minutes the group discussed how to proceed, but before long, there was no need to speculate.
The entrance of two men into the bedroom silenced all radio chatter.
Rapp squinted at the small monitor and instantly recognized the body language of the smaller man. The hair on Rapp’s neck stood on end, and his palms became moist When Rapp heard the voice of this man, his heart began to race almost out of control. Instinctively, Rapp found himself reaching for his MP-10. The desire to kill seemed to possess him.
Rafique Ariz was on the other side of the wall, probably no more than ten feet away, and his back was to the door.
As Rapp rose to one knee, the voice of Irene Kennedy came over the handset.
“Iron Man, I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not going to happen.
The odds aren’t right. There are three of them and one of you.”
Rapp paused, tempted not to reply. Unfortunately, he had already tried that once, and it wasn’t going to work twice.
Rapp exhaled and said, “I can take them down and end this right now,” his voice a little edgy.
Kennedy’s even voice came right back, “Or you could get killed and ruin our only chance for finding out what’s going on in there.”
“I won’t get killed,” answered Rapp in a tense voice.
“At least not before I take all three of them down first.”
Back at Langley, Kennedy spun around in her chair and looked up at Director Stansfield. She shook her head vigorously at her boss.
Stansfield, for his part, sat calmly in his chair with one arm folded across his chest and the hand of the other one under his chin. Touching the arm of his headset, he said, “Iron Man, hold for a second while we discuss our options.”
Stansfield pressed a button on his console and leaned forward.
General Flood scooted his chair over several feet, and Kennedy and General Campbell placed their hands on the long table that ran in front of the elevated row.
Kennedy was the first to speak.
“I don’t like the odds.” Stansfield looked from Kennedy to Campbell, and the general replied, “I don’t know… I’m tempted. We’ve had a bull’s eye on this guy’s head for a long time, and Mitch is awfully good.”
Stansfield turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Flood rubbed the knob of his chin with his hand. Frowning, he answered, “We’re not even an hour into this operation, and we have sixty-plus hostages on the line. I think we wait.” With a shake of the head. Flood added, “If he doesn’t get all three of them, we’re in deep shit.”
All of them turned and looked at the monitor showing the three terrorists. One of them turned and walked closer to the door.
Stansfield shook his head and punched the button on his console.
Adjusting the lip mike of his headset, he said, “Iron Man, you are to hold your position. I repeat, you are to hold your position.”
Back in the stash room, Rapp squeezed the tough plastic handset so tightly his knuckles turned white. In his mind he was swearing the same four-letter word over and over while kicking himself for answering Kennedy’s call. He should have put a bullet in the field radio and gone out and ended it.
Thinking he still had a chance, Rapp stated, “I respectfully disagree. I have three targets, all standing within
