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“Shit! We’ve got big problems! These bombs are counting down! Control, did you hear me? Whiskey Four, did you hear me?” Rapp ran back into the Roosevelt Room. “People we have to move fast. Who needs help?” One of the remaining six raised his hand. Rapp snatched the Secret Service officer from the ground like a rag doll and threw him over his shoulder.
“Say again?” General Campbell asked.
“These bombs are counting down. Something went wrong. Get the Alpha Team back up to the roof.” Rapp headed out of the room. “Let’s go! Everyone, follow me.” As Rapp raced across the hall and into president’s dining room, he yelled, “Harry, move everybody into the tunnel fast. It’s our only chance.”
Rapp cut through the short hallway and started down the steep stairs. When he reached the bottom, he handed the wounded Secret Service officer off to several other hostages and told Anna and Milt to head down into the tunnel and keep people moving. Rapp then ran into Horsepower, where he saw the first of the hostages coming his way. Rapp screamed, “Come on, people! Move! Hurry up!”
The line slowed for a second, and Rapp backed up to the door and screamed, “Get your asses moving! This whole building is wired to blow!”
The line instantly surged forward. Rapp checked his watch. He had no idea how much time they had left, but it couldn’t be much. Harris and the other three SEALs finally appeared. Reavers was carrying a hostage in each arm. Clark, Rostein, and Harris appeared within seconds, each of them helping a hostage.
“Is anyone else left?”
“No.” Harris passed Rapp and said, “Get your ass in the tunnel.”
Rapp didn’t need to be told. He was right on Harris’s heels and slamming the heavy steel door closed behind him. Rapp yelled over his headset, “Milt, make sure the door on the other end is closed.”
AZIZ PEAKED AROUND the corner to see if Bengazi was coming. The gunfire had stopped, and he took it as a bad sign. The Americans would have silenced weapons, and if he could not hear shots, that meant Ragib and Bengazi had been overpowered. The Americans would be arriving shortly.
Looking at his pager, he smiled. The Americans were in for a big surprise. The pager had gone into countdown mode. The system was foolproof. He had designed and tested it himself. With the laptop jammed, the pagers didn’t receive their codes. Now they were in countdown mode, and in sixteen seconds they would start to blow.
The green fatigues were off. Underneath them Aziz had been wearing black coveralls similar to those worn by the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. The black assault vest he wore over it had FBI printed in yellow across the back. The plan was a long shot, but in the confusion created by the bombs going off, it just might work. The Secret Service MP-5 submachine gun, the black gas mask he would put on once the explosions occurred, the coveralls—they would all h
elp him blend in.
Aziz looked around the corner again, expecting to see members of the Hostage Rescue Team working their way down the hall. There was no one. It was completely silent. He checked the pager one last time and pulled his gas mask down.
The first explosion was a rumble in the distance. It was followed by a quick succession of explosions, each one getting a little louder. The building began to shake, dust and plaster started to fall from the ceiling, the lights fluttered several times and then failed completely. All of the sudden a huge blast came from the left, where the entrance to the Treasury tunnel was located. The concussion knocked Aziz to the floor, where he landed on the president’s unconscious secretary.
Aziz pushed himself up, spitting the dust from his mouth and shaking it from his hair. His hearing had been rendered useless from the explosion. Commanding himself to get up, he stood and found the small flashlight in his assault vest. Aziz turned it on and tried to regain his sense of direction. The air was thick with dust and smoke, preventing him from seeing more than five feet in any direction.
He was pretty sure the tunnel was to his left. Grabbing the woman, he threw her over his shoulder, picked up his gun, and felt his way along the wall for the tunnel. At the next corner he went right, and several steps later he stumbled over chunks of concrete that had been knocked loose from the blast. In front of him was a mound. He started to climb into the tunnel. For a moment he was fearful the entire structure might have collapsed, but then the rubble began to dissipate.
Breathing through the gas mask was difficult. It didn’t give him oxygen; it just helped filter the dust and smoke from the air. Carrying the woman was proving to be more tiring than he had anticipated. He stopped for a moment to gather himself. The dust started to settle, and his breathing became slightly easier. The visibility grew better with each passing step, and it motivated him to pick up the pace.
All of the sudden he was out of the tunnel. He was immediately met by several figures wearing dark coveralls like his. Aziz did not want to have to use the weapon unless he had to. They were trying to talk to him as he continued forward, but they were not pointing their weapons at him.
When Aziz was within several feet, he yelled through his gas mask, “Ambulance! I have to get her to an ambulance!”
One of the men grabbed him by the arm and started to jog with him up the ramp. As they stepped out from under the covered part of the Treasury garage, they were hit with the rain. The man kept trying to talk to Aziz.
Finally, Aziz yelled, “I’m deaf from the explosions! I can’t hear a thing!”
When they reached the top of the ramp, a stream of fire trucks raced past them and onto the south grounds of the White House. Aziz turned to the left and started jogging. Dead ahead on the other side of Fifteenth Street was where Salim was supposed to be. Emergency vehicles were lined up, their lights flashing in the pouring rain. Every second counted. Aziz pressed on. He desperately wanted to take the gas mask off, but it was too big a risk to show his face.
When they reached the intersection of Fifteenth Street and Hamilton, just a half a block away from the White House, another explosion occurred. The circular lid on the concrete trash receptacle across the street shot up in the air almost fifty feet and then came spinning back to earth. It landed with a thud in the middle of the intersection and lay smoldering in the rain.
The few people that were out in the deluge were now running for cover. Aziz continued through the rain. The man that had been with him stayed behind, fearing more explosions, which Aziz assumed, if Salim had done his job, were occurring all around the area.
Aziz made it across the street and ran down the sidewalk. He couldn’t take the mask any longer. It was too hard to breathe, and it was fogging up. He yanked the mask up onto his forehead and took his first real breath of air in minutes. It felt incredible in his burning lungs. Aziz pressed on, looking in the windows of the ambulances for a white head of hair. As he neared the end of the row of vehicles, he began to worry that Salim had abandoned him, but there, in the last ambulance, he spotted him.
Aziz ran around the back and pulled open the doors. He quickly climbed in and dropped the woman on the gurney. Before the door was shut, he yelled, “Get us the hell out of here!”
Salim threw the vehicle into reverse and hit the emergency lights on the roof. He spun the wheel and yanked it into drive, stepping on the gas. The wheels spun for a moment on the rain-soaked street and then caught. Salim hit the siren as the ambulance raced forward. The police at the next intersection hustled to move the barricades just in time for the ambulance to pass through.
VICE PRESIDENT BAXTER had just finished bawling out Dallas King. Less than thirty minutes earlier, Baxter had been blindsided by the information that President Hayes was no longer out of the loop and that he himself was no longer in charge. After being humiliated like never before in his life, Baxter had gotten off the phone and started screaming at Dallas King. The vice president went into a tirade, blaming his chief of staff for the entire mess, belaboring the point that he should never have listened to a word of King’s advice.
King had taken the verbal beating without a fight. Secretly he was relieved. Baxter not becoming president wouldn’t end his career, but Abu Hasan making it out of the White House and telling his story to the FBI or media would. With Hayes back in charge, the odds were a raid would be ordered.
