Layla let out a breath. “That’s not all, is it?”
“No. Your boss is in trouble.” Jack unfastened his seatbelt and moved to the cockpit.
Fogarty greeted him with a nod. “We’ve been circling the area for almost thirty minutes, Agent Bauer. We’re nearly down to our reserve fuel. Either I land soon, or we’re diverting to Phillipsburg or Easton to replenish.”
“I want you to land inside the compound and let us out,”
Jack said. “Then you can divert to the nearest airfield, refuel, and wait for further orders.”
The pilot and copilot exchanged looks. “Then you’ve located Director Holman?” Fogarty asked.
“He’s in Kurmastan, and his life may be in danger,”
Jack replied.
Fogarty peered through the windshield. “We can land near the center of town. There’s enough open space for me to—”
“No,” Jack said. “You have to put us down where we won’t be spotted. Maybe half a mile away from the settlement. Somewhere in the woods.”
“You’ll have to hike to get to main street, Agent Bauer,”
Fogarty warned. “The hills around here can be steep.
You’ll lose valuable time.”
Jack frowned. “Can’t be helped. I don’t have numbers.
My only weapon is surprise.”
Fogarty nodded. “We’ll do what we can to back you up, sir,” he said, then shifted his gaze to the control panel, where real-time images of Kurmastan were displayed on the digital map screen.
Jack looked, too, and counted himself lucky that CTU
New York still had satellite capabilities. After the con-certed bomb attacks earlier in the day, no other law enforcement agency on the East Coast had access to orbital surveillance. Right now, a satellite was beaming these pictures of the landscape around the compound to the helicopter’s computer.
“I think I can put you down here,” Fogarty said, tapping the screen.
Jack studied the map. “It’s a shallow valley surrounded by trees. What about the rotors? Do you have enough space to bring this thing down safely?”
“It will be tight, but it’s the best place to land,” the Captain replied. “Chances are they won’t see us behind this hill, and you’ll have a whole line of trees to use for cover as you move toward town.”
Fogarty paused. “With luck, you probably won’t encounter anyone until you reach this stretch of mobile homes. If you do, you may have a fight on your hands.”
Jack nodded, memorizing the landscape.
Fogarty gripped his arm with his free hand.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Agent Bauer? I mean, you and Agent Abernathy aren’t exactly a strike team.”
“I’ve already ordered Morris O’Brian to dispatch a tactical team to the scene,” Jack replied, his tone resigned.
“But we’re not waiting. We’re going in now, even if there’s only two of us.”
Brice Holman shut out the shouts and screams, the sound of Reverend Ahern’s pleading voice as he begged the mob to spare him.
His attention was focused on the old Albanian man with the 9mm Uzi in his wrinkled hand and spare ammunition clips tucked into the belt of his tattered robes. The weapon was tarnished and pitted, and Holman wondered if it was truly functional, or merely for show.
Ibrahim Noor and the albino man were long gone.
They’d slipped through the curtained door and had not returned. Soon after they departed, the slaughter began. Now, on the podium, Ahern’s ravings about interfaith harmony and reconciliation morphed into howls of tortured agony.
Bound tightly to a sturdy wooden chair, shirt ripped, clerical collar hanging limply, James Wendell Ahern struggled vainly while two boys, no more than eleven years old, took turns ripping at his throat with a rusty saw.
Holman looked away.
Among the swirling, bloodthirsty throng, he caught brief glimpses of the Cranstons. The woman hung limply from her ropes, and though Mr. Cranston bled from scores of wounds, he was still conscious.
Dani Taylor had been screaming for several minutes.
The young women of the compound seemed to derive a special relish in her torment. They punched and kicked the teenager, smeared the makeup they found in her purse on her face, and tore at her clothing.
A particularly vicious slap from a heavyset black woman tipped her chair over, and the girl vanished in a swarm of flapping robes and kicking feet.
Holman strained against his own bonds, until loops of rope sagged onto his lap and tumbled to the blood- soaked floor. He was free now, but pretended to be trapped while he scanned the room, searching for a way out.
An abrupt silence ensued when Ahern stopped screaming.
A moment later, the crowd gasped when an older boy displayed the Reverend’s head, the eyes still twitching in their sockets. The youth swung the grisly trophy by its hair, then tossed the head on top of the stack piling up in the corner.
Several women gripped Mrs. Cranston, and Joe protested, cursing a blue streak and vowing to kill them all.
The old man with the Uzi stepped in front of Mr. Cranston’s chair and fired it in the air, to silence the old man.
Holman almost smiled.
Two burly women untied the ropes and hauled Abby Cranston out of her chair. She was alive, but only semicon-scious. Blood trickled from her nose and ears, the signs of head trauma. Mr. Cranston cried out again. This time women wielding rakes and hoes beat him senseless.
As women in burkas surged past him, carrying Mrs.
Cranston by her arms, Holman shot out his foot and connected with an ankle. A robed woman cried out, then whirled and struck him.
With one eye on the old man, Holman began to curse the woman, then he launched into a string of unspeakable blasphemies calculated to enrage his captors.
It worked.
The old man rushed to his side. But he didn’t aim the Uzi at the ceiling. He placed it against Holman’s temple.
Brice refused to be silenced. His taunts became more vicious, until the old man twisted the gun to pummel him with its butt — then Holman moved.
He shot out his arms, one grabbing the old man’s bony wrist, the other his wattled throat. Holman squeezed until the man’s throat was crushed. Then he yanked the gun out of the man’s dead fingers.
The women reared back, but one young boy lunged for him. Still partly ensnared by the tangling ropes, Holman shot the youth in the face.
A woman howled, dropped to her knees beside the corpse. The rest of the robed wall seemed to withdraw.
Holman spotted a man clutching a double-barreled shotgun and killed him, too. Another armed man fumbled with the rifle on his shoulder, and Holman blew the top of his head off. Finally, Holman shot the kid who’d brandished the Reverend’s head — just because he felt like it.
