None answered.
“Muhammad . . .” Halabi said.
Attia pulled a pistol from the holster on his hip and fired a single round into the German nurse’s chest.
Victoria Schaefer managed to catch him before he hit the floor and Halabi watched a scene play out that was identical to the one with her translator. She tore open Vogel’s shirt, looked at the wound over his heart, and realized that she was powerless.
This time, instead of running, she lunged with surprising force and speed. It wasn’t enough, though. Attia caught her and dragged her toward the door at the back of the room. She screamed obscenities and fought violently enough that Attia was struggling to keep hold of her as he slid an ancient key into the lock. She actually managed to inflict a superficial wound on his neck before they disappeared across the threshold.
Her shouts and the sound of her beating futilely against Attia continued and Halabi examined Bertrand’s reaction. The Frenchman’s eyes flicked back and forth from the body on the floor to the open door the woman had been forced through. He was a surprisingly simple and transparent man. He showed no more empathy for his comrades than he had for patients. Instead, he seemed entirely focused on calculating how this affected his own situation.
The sounds of struggling faded and finally went silent. The woman, just out of sight in the room, would now be secured to the table at its edge. She managed to shout a few more epithets, but then her words became screams. Within a minute, there seemed to be nothing but her terror, pain, and hopelessness bouncing off the stone walls.
“How can you stand there and do nothing to stop this?” Halabi asked Bertrand. “What was it you said earlier? Anthrax isn’t even dangerous. And, as you suspected, I’ve released videos with my plans. The Americans will know what’s coming and be vigilant.”
Bertrand didn’t respond. He seemed to be slipping into shock as the screams of the woman echoed around them.
“I need to generate fear, Doctor. That’s all. My goal is to convince the Americans that there’s a price to be paid for continuing to create instability and suffering in the Middle East. We don’t want to be murdered for our oil. We don’t want our democratically elected governments to be overthrown and violent dictators to be inserted. In short, we don’t want to live like you and we don’t want to be your slaves. We just want to be left alone to find our own path.”
It was a sentiment that he would undoubtedly be sympathetic to, because it had largely been gleaned from his own naïve political posts on Facebook. Still, he didn’t answer immediately, holding out until the woman’s screams took on a gurgling quality.
“I’ll do it.”
Halabi nodded and shouted to Attia in Arabic. “Finish her!”
A gunshot sounded and Halabi put a comforting hand on Bertrand’s shoulder. “I’m sure she appreciated your mercy.”
CHAPTER 12
AL HUDAYDAH
YEMEN
“THESE images are garbage, Irene!”
Scott Coleman had recon photos that covered a radius of twenty miles around the place where he’d split from Rapp, but they looked like they’d been taken through the bottom of a dirty Coke bottle.
“The wind’s kicking up and the satellite can’t penetrate the dust,” Kennedy explained.
He ran a hand over the hazy eight-by-tens arranged on Shamir Karman’s desk, leaving a streak of blood across them. The bandage on his forearm was so tight he could barely feel his fingers, but the wound just wouldn’t stop seeping. It was hard to complain, though. He was lucky his arm was still attached. The fight to get back to Al Hudaydah had been nastier than he’d counted on.
Rapp had been right about most of the ISIS forces focusing on him, but that still left three vehicles full of terrorist pricks to come after Coleman’s team. The climbing had been steeper and looser than it looked and they’d gotten pinned down in a cliff band about thirty yards up the slope.
With the crack troops concentrating on Rapp, the less disciplined fighters had unleashed as much ammo as they could in his team’s general direction, underestimating how good their cover was. After ten minutes of setup, his guys had started to return fire—single rounds aimed at carefully selected targets. About half the ISIS force went down in the first two minutes, but then the rest got wise. After that, the skirmish had turned into a stalemate that wasn’t broken until well after sunset. The injury to his arm, a set of bruised ribs, and a self-sutured gash over his kneecap were souvenirs of the two hours he’d spent silently climbing back down the dark slope.
The remaining ISIS forces had assumed Coleman would go up and try to escape over the top, leaving them completely unprepared when the four Americans walked into their camp with silenced pistols. Things had gotten a little hairy when the inexperienced force panicked and started shooting wildly in every direction, but eventually they all ended up dead.
By then, though, it was too late to do anything for Rapp. More ISIS troops had joined the hunt and there were headlights spread out in a search pattern that was probably five miles wide. Worse was the fact that a few of them noticed the shooting behind and reversed course to provide support for their comrades.
Piling into the ISIS pickups and turning tail was one of the hardest decisions Coleman had ever made. But with that many enemy fighters and no idea where Rapp was, there had been no other option.
“Screw the photos,” Coleman said, sweeping them off the desk. “They’re not going to tell us anything we don’t already know. Mitch is out there and there’s only so far he could have gotten in the last . . .” He paused and looked at his watch, cursing silently. “ . . . forty-three hours. All we need is air support from the Saudis and to bring in—”
“It’s not going to happen, Scott.”
“What do you mean it’s not going to happen?”
“America’s role in the Middle East in general—and Yemen in particular—has come under a lot of scrutiny since the presidential primaries started. Christine Barnett is on the attack and everyone else is in defense mode. Getting anyone to authorize an operation in Yemen and trying to get any meaningful cooperation from the Saudis at this point is . . .” Her voice faded but the message was clear.
“So after everything Mitch has done for the president, America—and even Saudi Arabia—this is how they repay him? By abandoning him in the middle of the Yemeni desert? Because the optics might not be great inside the Beltway?”
“I’m afraid optics are all that’s left inside the Beltway,” Kennedy said. “But I’m not completely powerless. Not yet. I have a chopper pilot on his way to you and I’ll find a way to borrow an aircraft. I’ve also contacted a number of private contractors who have worked with either you or Mitch in the past. We’re bringing them in—”
“When?” Coleman said, cutting her off for perhaps the first time in his life.
“You should have one chopper and as many as ten men within thirty-six hours.”
He did the math in his head. “By then he’ll have been out there for more than three days with nothing but a half-full CamelBak, an M4, and a couple of spare mags.”
“Christine Barnett has everyone on—”