Two men in camouflage pants with backpacks and assault rifles ran across the white marbled floor toward a large seating area filled with zebra-striped chairs and shiny red sofas. One of them, dressed in crimson Harvard T-shirt, stopped and fired at a heavyset man in Bermuda shorts and a golfing shirt trying to reach a side door. Bullets punctured the man’s shirt and pierced his soft flesh before he went down out of Steve’s sight. Inside and to the right of what remained of the glass front wall, a bearded young man with a black bandana around his head stood behind the concierge’s chest-high counter and scanned the street in front of the hotel, the muzzle of his AK-47 leading his gaze back and forth. Glass shards littered the floor around him.
Looks like Mumbai all over again, Steve thought, remembering the 2008 terrorist attack against the Taj Mahal Hotel. There, it had taken the local police and army hours to show up while the terrorists went from room to room on a killing spree.
Still crouching, he retreated to the stairwell from which he had emerged, and pushed the door open carefully while looking back toward the lobby. The stairwell lights were now off, but a weak battery-powered emergency lamp gave off some light.
Have the authorities cut off the power? Or do the terrorists prefer darkness for their murders?
He reached for his phone wondering whether Bahrain had an equivalent to 911. Instead, he tried zero and reached an alert operator who promised to call the police. Steve gave him his own number and pocketed the phone before he heard the door from the lobby begin to open.
He barely had time to flatten himself against the wall behind the door before the Harvard shooter stepped through and, after a cursory look into the dimly lit stairwell, walked quickly toward the stairs going up. When the door closed, Steve rushed him from behind and tripped him. As Harvard fell forward, he squeezed the trigger of his AK-47, the deafening sound of 7.62 mm bullets bombarded Steve’s eardrums, and the sharp smell of gunpowder penetrated his lungs. The man’s head hit the first step, and his body was limp when Steve stepped over him to strip him of his weapon and ammunition.
Steve quickly staged the body at the bottom of the steps, ran up around the turn past the first landing and loaded a new thirty round banana clip. He shot the emergency light out and waited in the pitch darkness for Harvard’s pals. His heart was racing, and he wondered why he just didn’t get the hell out, following his friends from the fitness center.
Before he could change his mind, the door opened again allowing a spear of light to reveal Harvard’s body for an instant. Steve stayed crouched and hidden as one man stepped into the stairwell below him and quickly moved to the left toward the wall while a second man went to the right toward the down staircase. Steve regretted that he hadn’t fired immediately. His eyes were more adjusted to the darkness and, wanting to take advantage of the night-vision he had acquired over the previous few minutes, was preparing to fire at one of the two men when melodious ring tones coming from his pocket with the impact of a ten-alarm fire broke the silence and sent Steve’s heart into a somersault.
The sound triggered shooting from the three men, all within twenty feet of each other. Steve, whose weapon was already pointed at the terrorist on his right, fired first. His target’s bullets smashed against the wall to his right within a millisecond. Steve heard his man fall and his weapon hit the floor.
Steve tossed his still screaming phone up the stairs as the second terrorist’s bullets whistled over his head and ricocheted against the steel railing. He jumped to the other side of the staircase flattening himself on the platform and fired again. Bullets hit the wall around him sending sharp pieces of masonry through his light workout shirt and stinging his back. He jumped down the stairs, rolled to a kneeling position, and shot a burst toward the second terrorist’s position. However, in the dark his target had moved closer, and the burst caught him at point-blank range throwing him backwards. The phone finally stopped ringing. After the sound and light show from three AK-47s in a closed black space, the silence was almost as startling, and Steve’s ears were ringing. The only sounds were his quickened breathing and the pounding of his heart. He consciously took a slow and deep breath and listened for the arrival of more visitors, but it was useless. He collected the dead men’s weapons and ran up the stairs.
* **
The next day, after a thorough debrief by the police, Steve finally met with Colonel Jawad Salem al-Fadhel.
“Thanks to you, the problem was settled quickly,” the colonel, a large man with a neat dark beard, told him. “Eighteen people were killed, besides the six terrorists. But it could have been much worse. The terrorists were all Shiites. Obviously a suicide mission.”
They were in the colonel’s office in the Ministry of Defense on Al Fuhaidi Street. An aide was taking notes, and two boys brought tea and sweets that they placed on a large round handcrafted copper table. Steve sat on a sofa on one side. The colonel, wearing a white dish-dasha, a long sleeved robe, under a light black and gold over-garment, sat on the other side in a tan leather chair.
“I have been told,” the colonel said, leaning back comfortably with his steepled hands in
