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Lonsdale suddenly reached out and slapped him across the face. “He was my best friend.”
Aabad looked up in shock and in a more pleading voice said, “I am an American citizen. I have a right to see my attorney.”
“If you are an American citizen, then you are a traitor,” Lonsdale hissed, “and I will do everything in my power to see that you are executed.”
Rapp, who was still standing by the door, thought he heard a noise. He looked to Nash and they exchanged a quick glance. The noise came again. It was distant. Muffled.
“Are those gunshots?” Nash asked.
Rapp was about to open the door, when there was a much louder noise. The room shook just slightly. The one thing about combat was, you only had to go through it once and you were left with the sound, feel, and smell of battle for the rest of your life. Rapp had been in more than his fair share of dustups. He looked over at Nash, his face showing a deep concern. “I think that was a hand grenade.”
“I think you’re right,” Nash agreed.
Rapp reached for the door and asked Nash, “Do you have any flex cuffs on you?”
“No.”
Rapp opened the door, his primal instincts screaming that something bad was on the way. He glanced at the big screen and wondered briefly if the rumble of noises had come from some audio that they had just obtained. Without warning, the main door to the Operations Center was blown open. A split second later, a man dressed in full SWAT gear stepped through the cloud of dust and debris, his weapon raised. He pointed it straight ahead where the two Secret Service agents who had delivered Lonsdale happened to be standing with their arms tentatively raised in the air. Without provocation the man in the SWAT gear shot both agents in the head.
Rapp flinched as his brain tried to reconcile the irreconcilable. A second and third man in SWAT gear followed the first man through the door and began shooting analysts who were diving to get out of the way. Rapp’s left hand was already wrapped around the hilt of his gun. With the rifle shots ringing out from below, Rapp turned to Nash and screamed, “Knock him out!”
At the sound of rifle shots, Nash was already reaching for his gun. He’d been in combat with Rapp before and trusted him completely. He drew the heavy .40-cal from his holster and cracked Aabad across the temple with the weapon. The man fell out of his chair and tumbled to the floor.
“Senator,” Rapp yelled, “get in that far corner and stay there!”
Nash joined Rapp at the door. Both men had their guns drawn, and as they looked down at the floor, they watched the lead man in the line stop and look over his shoulder. He raised his right fist up in the air and paused for a moment. A final shooter joined the line, making it six total. The lead man motioned forward with his hand and the group began to move as one, shuffling forward into the room, unleashing a torrent of bullets. They were in a textbook raid line. Rapp and Nash had watched the drill hundreds of times. The first man is responsible for the first slice of pie immediately in front of the group. The second man takes the next slice on the left, and the third man takes the first slice on the right. They alternate their way back to the sixth man, who is responsible for all six.
The entire group opened fire, but it wasn’t the undisciplined fire of poorly trained insurgents shooting from the hip. These guys were firing only one or two rounds at a time.
“It’s got to be them,” Rapp yelled.
“Let’s take them out!” Nash shouted back, and began to move.
Rapp held him back. “They’ve got body armor on.” He surveyed the situation. The men were moving roughly from right to left in front of their position. If they started taking shots at them from up here, they’d be lucky to get two or three before the others returned fire. With almost no cover, the rifles would shred them.
“I want you to crawl up to the edge of the balcony and sight in the first guy. That’s their weak point. You drop him, and I can run right down their throat.”
“You’re going to charge them.” Nash was shaking his head. “That’s fucking crazy.”
Rapp ignored him. He could see it all in his mind’s eye. Lifting his right elbow up, he tapped his own side and said, “Put the first one into his helmet and then aim for the weak spot in his body armor. Right here on his side.” Rapp pushed Nash toward the floor and then got into a crouch and ran along the wall.
Nash crawled to the edge of the balcony, mumbling to himself. In the middle of something like this, there wasn’t enough time to question and dissect a plan. You simply had to go with it and hope it worked. He wedged himself up against one of the vertical supports and leveled his sight on the first man.
Off to his left he heard Rapp scream, “Now.” Nash placed his sight square on the man’s helmet and squeezed off his first round. The muzzle jumped an inch and came right back down. Nash lowered his aim a touch and squeezed off another round. He was going to zipper this guy right down his left side. After his fourth shot the sight came down and the guy was crumbling to the floor. Nash went to sight in the second guy and found himself staring straight down the hot muzzle of an M-4 rifle.
Rapp bounded down the steps two at time. There was only one way to do this, and it wasn’t complicated. It was a full-on blitz, and it was the last thing these guys would expect. Rapp hit the floor and charged forward at a near full sprint, his left hand extended with his Glock leveled right down the axis of the shooters. He knew Nash was doing his job, because the lead guy was looking to his left instead of straight ahead. Rapp closed in with lightning speed. At fifteen feet he squeezed off his first round, hitting the lead man in his goggles.
The second man was turned to the side and looking up. From ten feet away Rapp sent a round into his exposed throat. The third guy sensed the motion and was beginning to turn on him, but while he could swivel his head to face the threat almost immediately, he had a harder time bringing his muzzle to bear. Rapp shot him from six feet away, right in the bridge of his nose. He stepped over the first guy as he shot the fourth guy twice in the neck and then the fifth guy in face.
The sixth and last guy had his back to him. Rapp saw him reaching into his vest with his right hand for a fresh magazine, oblivious to
the fact that the rest of his line had fallen. Stepping over the next two bodies, Rapp grabbed the back of the guy’s vest, stuffed the muzzle of the 9mm Glock into the man’s lower back, and shot him twice through the spine.
CHAPTER 73
THE only thing Farid noticed before it happened was that, for a split second, it seemed as if everything had gone strangely quiet. The initial push into the building had gone perfectly. He’d taken out the three security guards at the turnstiles and led the team straight to the staircase, where he flipped positions and provided rear security. He fell slightly behind on their climb to the sixth floor when he had to stop and kill two women and a man who had stumbled upon them. By the time he reached the lobby on the sixth floor, the ribbon charges had already been placed on the cipher lock. Hauling seventy-eight pounds of gear plus yourself up six flights of stairs was no easy thing, but they could rest in paradise. In a few minutes it would all be over.
They knew their prize lay in the big room on the other side of the door. Karim had estimated that somewhere between two hundred and three hundred men and women would be in the Operations Center managing the crisis, trying to find out who was behind the attacks and coordinated the collection of evidence. Karim said they would represent the heart and soul of America’s satanic war on Islam. It may have seemed as if it was the American military who doggedly pursued them with unmanned aerial drones through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they were merely the instruments. These people were the thinkers, the trackers, the investigators. Their collective wealth of knowledge was America’s greatest asset in their war. They had more planes and tanks than they could ever throw into a hundred battles. If they lost one, they simply put another into service. That would not be the case with these people. It would take America years to replace them, and it would give al-Qaeda the time they needed to rebuild.
