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“Well, Mr. Kruse, if we decide it’s time to kill these terrorists,” said Tutwiler, repeating his words in a mocking tone, “we will make sure we give you a call. Until then, we would all appreciate it if you would take a seat so we can get on with the business at hand.”
Tutwiler’s smugness was really starting to irk Rapp, and his temper was dangerously close to reaching a level that he couldn’t control. He studied her for a second and then asked, “Ms. Tutwiler, have you ever been to Beirut?” Rapp waited a moment for her response and then said, “I didn’t think so. Just in case you were wondering, that’s where Rafique Aziz is from. How about Iran? Have you ever been there?” Rapp gave her less than a second to answer.
“I didn’t think so. I was in Iran last night,” Rapp added casually. “Actually, I spent most of the last week there. And since we don’t have an embassy in Iran, you can probably figure out that I wasn’t on official government business. Do you by chance speak Farsi or any Arabic dialects?” Rapp shook his head, answering the question for her. “I didn’t think so. How about the Muslim faith, the jihad? Are you up to speed on the customs of Rafique Aziz and his people?”
“What’s your point, Mr. Kruse?” asked a defiant Tutwiler.
Rapp looked down the long table at the smug attorney general and growled in a voice that was barely beneath a shout, “The point is, Ms. Tutwiler, you don’t have the slightest clue who you’re dealing with!” Rapp pointed at her with each word. “While you were running around on the talk-show circuit criticizing law enforcement officers, who have done more in one week to stop crime than you will do in your entire academic-theory-laden lifetime, I was crawling around in the gutter of every hellhole in the Middle East trying to find Rafique Aziz.” Rapp watched Tutwiler fold her arms tightly across her chest and roll her eyes.
The last gesture did it, and in a voice intended to shake up more than just the attorney general, he yelled, “Hey, lady, this isn’t a game! This isn’t about who has the most master’s degrees or the biggest job title. People have died, and before this thing is over, more people are going to die!” Rapp turned his face to the side, showing the pinkish mark that angled downward across his bronzed face. “Do you see this scar? Let me clue you in on a little secret. It isn’t a paper cut. It was given to me, in person, by none other than Rafique Aziz. So when I offer my opinion about a man who you have never met . . . who you know nothing about, you should sit up and listen.” Rapp tightly gripped both sides of the podium. “The man we are talking about here isn’t a bank robber, and he sure as hell isn’t some hack like David Koresh. He’s a religious zealot who also happens to be a very highly trained and intelligent killer. Your little plan for tomorrow might stand a chance if we were dealing with some pissed-off employee who had taken over a bank or a post office, but this is the big leagues.” Rapp zeroed in on Tutwiler. “Aziz isn’t some two-bit criminal. When you jerk his chain tomorrow, by only giving him part of what he’s asked for, he’s going to take a bite out of your ass, and he’s going to bite hard.” Rapp leaned forward, elbows bent, poised over the podium, looking for even the smallest sign that he was getting through to the politicians at the other end of the room.
The expressions on their faces said it all. Everything he said was falling on deaf ears. The men and women at the opposite end of the table were looking at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. Rapp couldn’t believe it. Rafique Aziz was his cause. It had become his personal crusade; he’d devoted a full third of his life to hunting this one man. And that was only the start. It had grown to be much more than that as the death toll mounted. It had turned into a race to stop him from killing again. There was no one in this room, and probably no one in the world, who understood the mind of Rafique Aziz better than Rapp, and after all that he had given, how was he being repaid at the exact moment when they should be listening to him most? He was being regarded as if he were some crazed idiot.
Rapp bit down hard on his tongue and fought back the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. At that moment he realized he had one course of action. If the smug Marge Tutwiler wanted to put her little theories to work and these idiots wanted to follow her, then so be it. Tutwiler had given herself more than enough rope to hang herself with, and Rapp knew that as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, she would be swinging from the gallows in the morning.
Rapp shook his head and said, “I’ve given you fair warning.” As he started for the exit, he yelled over his shoulder, “Call me after you’re done playing games, and I’ll come in and clean up your mess.” With that Rapp opened the door and disappeared into the hallway.
General Flood watched Rapp leave the room and then swiveled his chair away from the table, beckoning one of his aides over with a discreet wave of his forefinger. When the general had asked Director Stansfield to bring the young operative, he had not envisioned the scene that had just unfolded, but he was happy somebody had stepped up to the plate. An Air Force captain bent to the general’s ear and Flood whispered, “Please detain Mr. Kruse for me, and have him wait in my office until we’re finished.”
ALL OF THE hostages, with the exception of the Secret Service agents, had been moved to the White House mess. The tables and chairs that normally occupied the room had been thrown into the main hallway that led out onto West Executive Drive and now formed a tangled blockade. The hostages were seated on the floor, bunched in a tight circle like corralled cattle. Anywhere from one to four terrorists were watching over them at a time, and they came and went with no apparent pattern, often stopping to kick and scream at the hostages.
Anna Rielly was relieved as she sat back down on the blue carpet of the White House mess. She had made it to the bathroom and back without being hit or kicked. The woman in front of her had been slapped for daring to look up at one of the terrorists. Rielly had kept her eyes down with only one exception. One of the terrorists had followed her into the stall and to her complete humiliation had watched her go to the bathroom. Rielly was frightened by the expression on his face. He had stared at her intently while she relieved herself, and when she stood to pull her pants up, his eyes had followed her every move. The thought caused Rielly to clutch the neck of her blouse and shudder.
After the World Trade Center bombing Rielly had done a piece on Islamic terrorism for the NBC affiliate in Chicago. That two-week project had given her enough insight into the minds of radical Islamic fundamentalists to know that they were crazed in a way that was difficult even for the daughter of a Chicago cop to understand. In her captors’ minds women were objects to be owned or discarded, no different than a piece of livestock. Women who were not “of the faith” were deemed impure and evil, another way of saying, “fair game.”
What a first day on the job, she thought to herself. Rielly had wanted to be in the thick of real news, and now she was an actual part of one of the biggest stories in decades. She brushed a strand of her brown hair behind her ear, and with her head tilted toward the ground, she looked up toward one of the guards. The guard turned in her direction, and she quickly averted her eyes. Don’t make eye contact, she told herself. Look submissive and try to blend in.
Anna Rielly was blessed with a healthy sense of street smarts. Having grown up in the heart of Chicago, she had been exposed to the seedier side of life at an early age. Her mother, a social worker, and her father, a Chicago cop, made sure their five sons and only daughter understood that life was much different from what was shown on TV. All of this exposure had given the young woman a very strong survival instinct. Several years earlier in Chicago it had saved her life, and here in Washington she was hoping to repeat the performance.
Rielly had already removed all of her jewelry and as much of her makeup as possible. She knew that the less attention she attracted to herself the better. There had already been two men who had had their noses split wide open, and there was another woman who had been slapped so hard on the side of her head that her ear had started to bleed. Rielly kept repeating to herself, “Just keep a low profile, and you might make it out of here alive.”
Less could be said for Rielly’s new office partner, Stone Alexander, who was sitting at her side. He hadn’t wandered more than several feet from her since the onset of the attack. Not that he was protecting her—if anything, it was Rielly who was protecting him. Alexander leaned closer to her and asked, “How long are they going to make us sit here?”
Without moving her lips, Rielly whispered, “The only thing I know is, if one of these guys sees you talking, he’s going to come over here and crack his rifle over your surgically altered nose. . . . So for the last time, shut up.”
Alexander shrank away and dropped his head onto his folded hands. He had already cried
twice. Pathetic, Rielly thought to herself. Her father had always said people show their true colors in a crisis, and Alexander had shown his. It was yellow.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone new enter the room, and she glanced up at the man, careful to keep her head down. Rielly had not seen this one before. He looked different from the others. He was wearing the same green fatigues, but his hair was well styled and he lacked any facial hair. Rielly noted that the man was actually quite handsome.
That was when it hit her. It was the same man that Russ Piper had introduced her to. A Prince somebody or other. Oh, my God, Rielly thought. Where is Russ? With her head down Rielly scanned the mass of people, looking for her parents’ friend. Piper was nowhere in sight, and she could not remember seeing him since this morning.
Rielly scrutinized the man again. This man was the leader. It was obvious by how the others spoke to him and looked at him. When this supposed prince had entered the room, the other three terrorists had done everything short of snapping off salutes. The bald terrorist, who Rielly had originally thought was the leader, entered the room and approached the prince. He began whispering in the leader’s ear, and Rielly instantly noticed a change in the prince’s eyes.
RAFIQUE AZIZ STOOD with a demeanor that looked to be teetering between confidence and rage. As Muammar Bengazi whispered in his ear, the scales began to tilt in favor of rage. Aziz had known this moment would come. The fact that he had already played it out in his mind a hundred times would not take away from his performance.
Bengazi finished relaying to his friend the information that had been requested. Without hesitation, Aziz yelled, “Where?”
Bengazi pointed to a hostage sitting near the edge of the group, and then followed Aziz as he walked briskly toward the man. Aziz stopped five feet from a man in a white shirt and loosened tie. Pointing to the man, Aziz asked Bengazi, “Him?” Bengazi nodded.
Aziz looked down at the man and commanded, “Stand!” The man did as he was told and rose to a height several inches taller than Aziz. The man looked to be in his early to mid fifties with short brown-and-gray hair. In a voice loud enough to make sure everyone heard him, Aziz asked, “You have a request?”
“Ah,” the man started out somewhat nervously, “we have a pregnant woman in the group, and several other people who are older. I had asked . . . ah . . . your man”—the White House employee pointed to Bengazi—“if we could get some blankets and food for . . .”
Aziz cut him off with a loud, “No!”
The man took a quarter of a step back. “But”—he gestured with an open hand to a woman on the floor—“she’s pregnant.”
