As the two arms merchants walked rapidly out of the doors of the warehouse and around the corner of the building, Evan raced across the opening—as one more hysterical terrorist—and thrashed his way towards the two well-dressed men through the excited crowds on the pier. He was within feet of Crayton Grinell, then inches. He pulled his long-bladed knife out of its scabbard on his belt and lunged, circling his left arm around the American attorney's neck and forcing him to pivot, to confront him face to face, inches one from the other.
'You!' screamed Grinell.
'This is for an old man who's dying and thousands of others you've killed!' The knife plunged into the lawyer's stomach, and then Kendrick ripped it up through the chest. Grinell fell to the planks on the pier amid a multitude of rushing, paranoid terrorists who had no idea that another well-dressed terrorist had been killed and lay beneath them.
Hamendi! He had raced ahead, oblivious of his associate, determined only to reach the vehicle that would take him to his radar-cleared plane out of South Yemen across hostile borders. He must not reach it! The merchant of death could not be allowed to deal in death any morel Evan literally sledgehammered a path through the onslaught of running, screaming figures to the base of the pier. There was a wide ascending stretch of concrete that led up to a dirt road, where a Russian Zia limousine waited, the exhaust-fumes indicating that the engine was roaring, waiting for the car's escaping passenger. Hamendi, his white silk jacket billowing behind him, was within yards of his escape! Kendrick called upon strengths within him that defied the outer regions of his imagination and raced up the concrete incline, his legs about to collapse, and then they did collapse twenty feet from the Zia as Hamendi approached the door. From his prone position, his weapon barely steadied by both trembling hands, he fired again and again and again.
Abdel Hamendi, the king of the court of international arms merchants, reached for his throat as he fell to the ground.
It was not over! screamed a voice in Kendrick's mind. There was something else to do! He crawled down the concrete incline, reaching into his pocket for a map code Blue had given everyone in case of separation and possible escape. He tore off a fragment, taking a small blunt pencil from another pocket, and wrote the following in Arabic:
Hamendi the liar is dead. Soon all the merchants will die for everywhere the treachery has begun, as you have seen for yourself this day. Everywhere they have been paid by Israel and the Great Satan America to sell us defective weapons. Everywhere. Reach our brothers everywhere and tell them what I have told you and what you have witnessed this day. No weapons from this day on can be trusted. Signed by a silent friend who knows.
Painfully, as though the wounds from the island off Mexico had returned, Evan got to his feet and ran as fast as he could back into the angry, still shrieking crowds towards the doors of the warehouse. Feigning hysterical pleas to Allah over the death of a brother, he fell prostrate in front of the small group of leaders, which now included those from the Baaka Valley in Lebanon. As hands came down to offer comfort he shoved the paper towards them, rose suddenly to his feet screaming, and raced out of the warehouse doors, disappearing into the now wailing, grieving crowds kneeling beside mutilated corpses everywhere. In panic he heard the bass-toned whistles from the cargo ship—signals of departure! He pummelled his way to the far side of the pier, where he saw Khalehla and Ahmat standing by the gangplank, shouting up to the men on deck, if possible more panicky than himself.
'Where the hell have you been!' screamed Rashad, her eyes furious.
They were lying their way out!' yelled Kendrick as Ahmat shoved both of them on to the gangplank, which, at his signal, began its retreat into the ship.
'Hamendi?' asked Khalehla.
'And Grinell—'
'Grinell?' shouted the agent from Cairo as the three of them staggered forward. 'Of course Grinell,' added Rashad. 'Where else—'
'You're a goddamned fool, Congressman!' roared the young sultan of Oman, still shoving his charges, now on to the deck of the ship, which had already floated away from the pier. 'Another thirty seconds and you would have stayed back there. Any minute that crowd could have turned on us, and I couldn't risk the lives of these men!'
'Christ, you've really grown up.'
'We all do our thing when it's our turn… What about Hamendi and this whoever-he-is?'
'I killed them.'
