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RAPP CLOSED THE main door to the bedroom and studied the body for a second. It was no good trying to hide it. Aziz would know his man was missing and would immediately deduce that he had been killed. There had to be another way. Rapp grew impatient as he stood over the dead terrorist, racking his brain for a way out of the mess. After searching the dead man’s discarded clothes for information, it came to him. Rapp grabbed the terrorist’s knife from the pile of clothes, and he hoisted the body back on to the bed, laying the dead man on his stomach.
With the terrorist’s own knife, Rapp stabbed him three times in the upper back. Rapp was careful not to use all of his strength, only sending an inch or two of the knife into the flesh. After pausing for a second, Rapp flipped the dead man over and stabbed him three times in the chest and twice in the neck. Blood was beginning to flow freely over the white sheets. For the finishing touch, he sliced the man’s forearms and hands to make it look as if he had tried to block the blows.
Rapp took several steps back and looked at the body. He checked the area in front of him and around his feet to make sure none of the blood had gotten on his boots, and then he pulled the body off the bed and onto the floor again. With the bedspread already disheveled and blood all over the sheets, it just might work.
RAGIB BOUNDED UP the last step and looked down the long hallway. He knew the president’s bedroom was on the left. He had visited it last night. Ragib smiled to himself while he thought of the fun he’d had with the blond. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but this one would be different. She had already shown some tenacity. Ragib just hoped that she wouldn’t be beaten to a bloody pulp by the time he got there. He was a little early, and with any luck he would be able to hear Abu Hasan’s moans of ecstasy. The bearded terrorist walked down the hallway, his AK-74 at his side and a look of anticipation on his face.
RAPP GRABBED THE pile of clothes and began to go through them again. In the combat vest he found a radio and held it up to his ear. There was no traffic at the moment. He was tempted to take it, but that would tip Aziz off. If the radio was gone, they would change frequencies and they would also begin to wonder if the woman had acted alone.
Rapp studied the device. It was made by a French company he knew little about. He placed the radio back where he’d found it and checked his watch. Four minutes and twenty-three seconds had passed. Rapp was standing over the body when he felt an almost indiscernible tremor. Someone was coming down the hall. He drew his gun and bounded across the room to the closet. Just as he closed the closet door, he saw the main door to the bedroom begin to open. Rapp stood at the door for only a second and then cautiously retreated into the stash room, closing and bolting the door behind him.
BACK IN THE control room at Langley, Irene Kennedy had given up trying to raise Rapp on the radio. Instead she sat with everyone else in total silence and watched the events unfold. No one spoke. They all watched, riveted by the real-life drama unfolding on the one small monitor. At first no one knew what Rapp was doing when he began to stab the man who already lay dead on the floor. Then people began to catch on.
General Flood turned to Stansfield and said, “Damn, that kid thinks on his feet.”
Before Stansfield could reply, Rapp had bolted across the room and into the closet. Almost simultaneously, the bedroom door was opened and a man in green combat fatigues stood silhouetted by the hallway light.
Everyone watched as the man walked across the room and suddenly snapped up his gun from his side, spinning three hundred sixty degrees. Next, the lights came on, and then a series of excited calls over the radio.
25
WASHINGTON, D.C., WAS a city, a federal district, and most notably, the capital of the United States of America. The originally square geographic area was located at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and was bordered by Maryland on three sides and Virginia to the southwest. Founded in 1790 and originally called the Federal City and District of Columbia, after Christopher Columbus, the city was later renamed by Congress for the nation’s first president. Because the city’s four corners pointed in the four directions of the compass, it was conveniently split up into quadrants.
The southeast quadrant was by far the most economically deprived. The heart of the area was the neighborhood of Anacostia. This violent portion of Washington accounted for more than half of the city’s annual murders and was literally a war zone in the shadow of the nation’s Capitol.
On the top floor of a rat-infested tenement building in the heart of Anacostia, a man with bleached white hair and a fresh set of tattoos worked diligently as the clock approached midnight. The building was largely deserted, except for some drug addicts who used the lower floors to trade sex, stolen property, and sometimes even cash for their moodaltering chemical of choice. The building had been chosen by the group because the police rarely patrolled the area, out of fear for their own safety.
In the grungy apartment on the fifth floor the windows had been covered with three-quarter-inch plywood—the sturdy boards bolted into the window frames making them impossible to kick in. The door had also been reinforced with two-by-fours and plywood, and a series of new locks had been installed. Inside the room two motion sensors, mounted in opposite corners, had ensured the room’s integrity for almost two weeks.
Rafique Aziz had ordered the white-haired man sitting on the folding chair to find the safe house almost five months ago, but Aziz had been adamant about waiting until the last possible moment to set it up. They did not want to attract too much attention. The man sitting in the dirty apartment was Salim Rusan, the same man who, for the last six months, had been an inconspicuous bellman at the Washington Hotel, the same man who had taken aim with his SVD sniper rifle at the Secret Service just yesterday.
Rusan was no longer an inconspicuous individual. Thanks to the FBI, his employee photo from the hotel had been splashed all over television and every newspaper in the country. That was why Rusan had not seen daylight since walking into this apartment the morning before last. It had all been predicted by Aziz. The group’s leader had been explicit about every detail before the raid on the White House, and that is why he had given Rusan only two ten-round magazines. Aziz had other plans for Rusan, and he wanted him far away from the White House when the police and the FBI showed up.
After Rusan had fired all twenty of his rounds, he had left the Soviet-made sniping rifle right there on the balcony overlooking the White House and fled the building by a staircase. When he made it to the street, he proceeded two blocks to the Metro Center stop at Twelfth and F Street and caught the first southbound train. Ten minutes later he was walking through the slums of Anacostia, his hotel uniform replaced with a Chicago Bulls hat and a leather jacket.
Everything had been waiting for Rusan when he arrived. The copious amount of rat droppings and cobwebs had been cleaned up, and the apartment was stocked with everything he needed. Most of the supplies had been bought at the REI store in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia. It was paid for in cash. The recreational equipment included a cot, a sleeping bag, several folding chairs, two tables, and some cooking equipment, all of it designed for campers. A battery-powered generator purred in the corner and provided juice for a small TV, a radio, a police scanner, and several lights. Two red Coleman coolers contained enough food and water to last him at least five days, but he doubted he would use all of it. Tomorrow morning he would venture back out into public and sow the seeds for a special surprise.
Rusan looked at his watch and then the cot. He had done everything Aziz had told him to do. He had shaved off his entire beard, with the exception of his mustache and goatee. With a pair of clippers, he had buzzed his hair to within a half inch of his scalp and then bleached it until it was white. Next came the bleaching of the facial hair and eyebrows and then the pierced right ear. That was the difficult part, working backward in the mirror and then trying to stop the blood after he had shoved the needle through the earlobe. The finishing touch was a series of fake tattoos, the most conspicuous, an upside-down pink triangle on his right biceps with the words “Queer Nation” emblazoned underneath. Rusan was not completely comfortable with the disguise. He hated homosexuals, but it had not been his idea; it was Aziz’s. And when Aziz gave an order, it was best to follow it.
Rusan had one task to perform before he left the apartment in the morning. Looking at his watch, he debated whether he should take care of it now or get some sleep first. As he fingered the blocks of explosive Semtex and the box of detonators sitting on the other side of the table, he decided to wait until morning. He would sleep better knowing the bombs were unarmed.
RAFIQUE AZIZ AND Muammar Bengazi walked up the main staircase of the mansion. Aziz was furious. They had been lucky enough to take the White House without losing a single man, and now, when he was within twenty-four hours of achieving his ultimate goal, he had lost a valuable man due to outright stupidity. Momentum was something that Aziz was acutely aware of. The batt
lefields of history are littered with the corpses of soldiers whose commanders failed to notice the crucial role it plays in every conflict. Bengazi walked a half a step behind, ashamed that one of his men had been foolish enough to get killed by a woman.
When they reached the second floor of the mansion, Aziz and Bengazi proceeded directly across the hall and into the president’s bedroom. Every light in the room was on. Aziz walked to the other side of the bed and looked down at the bloody naked body. Ragib, the man who had found his slain comrade, was standing on the other side of the body, his radio in one hand and his assault rifle in the other. He started to speak, but Aziz raised his hand and silenced him. The leader of the group said nothing for a long while as his eyes took inventory of the scene.
After several minutes, Aziz looked up. The expression on his face was one of controlled anger. In a curt tone, he asked, “What in the hell happened?”
Ragib nervously began to recount the events, content that for now Aziz hadn’t executed him. Ragib told him how Abu Hasan had knocked the woman out and dragged her from the room. He gave his leader the details of what he had found and what little he knew about the woman.
When Ragib was done, Aziz looked at the body for a second and then at the nervous man standing before him. No bad deed was to go unpunished. Examples had to be made; fear had to be maintained. With no warning whatsoever, Aziz brought his hand up and slapped Ragib across the face.
Ragib held his ground, offering his chin for another blow. Although he was stronger and bigger than Aziz, he feared his leader deeply. Fighting back or blocking the blow was not a consideration.
Taking the muzzle of his MP-5, Aziz shoved it under Ragib’s chin and backed him up until he was pinned against the wall. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you for your stupidity.”
“I have no excuse.” Ragib kept his voice calm, knowing that any sign of fear or disrespect could end his life instantly. “I deserve to die. I was stupid.”
