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The sunlight coming through the building’s cracks was sufficient to illuminate the interior, but there wasn’t much to see. Rotting pews strewn across the floor, the remains of an altar, and piles of debris created by the structure’s slow collapse.
“Sir!” a man near the center called. “Here!”
Wilson ran to him and looked down at what he had found—a doused campfire. He crouched and held out a hand, feeling a jolt of excitement at the heat still emanating from it. The fire had recently been put out, explaining the water on the floor. But why was the pew next to it so wet? He ran a hand over the top and then did the same underneath. It came back stained with blood.
He bolted to his feet and drew his gun. “We’ve had recent activity in here. Talk to me. What are we seeing from the walls?”
“Be calm,” came the response from Nassar’s lead man. “We have no—”
His condescending response was drowned out by the shouts of two men standing next to a pile of debris in the northeast corner of the building. Wilson started in their direction but then stopped short when he saw the bodies. One still had the cord that had killed him wrapped around his neck. The other was far more gruesome. A machete had nearly cut his head in half and the handle was still jutting from the bridge of his nose.
Wilson stumbled back a few steps, suddenly very aware that he wasn’t a combat operative. He was an investigator with a talent for office politics. Starting to panic, he drew his sidearm for the first time in his career and started toward the main door. “Pull back. Bring whatever evidence you’ve found, but I want everyone back in the vehicles in one minute. We’re—”
A voice speaking rapid-fire Arabic came over the comm, followed by a response from Nassar’s commander, who no longer sounded so cocksure.
“What is it?” Wilson said. “What’s going on?”
Two men ran past him and out the door while another climbed into the balcony and took up a position near a broken window.
The voices in his earpiece became increasingly desperate and he found himself frozen. “What’s happening?” he screamed into the microphone on his headset. No one bothered to respond.
* * *
Rapp remained completely still, using only his eyes to track the men running along the west side of the church. He was sitting on a beam jutting thirty feet above the side courtyard. There was significant damage to this section of roof and he blended perfectly into the visual chaos.
Shouting was audible through the plastic sheet that kept rain from penetrating to the building’s interior. Mostly Arabic, but also an unintelligible African dialect and a panicked American voice that undoubtedly belonged to Joel Wilson.
According to Black and Azarov, the cars that made up Wilson’s motorcade were now empty and Nassar hadn’t appeared. The Saudi intelligence chief continued to prove that he was in no way stupid. While Wilson was blind to anything but revenge and transforming himself into the great American savior, Nassar apparently had no such delusions. Despite the fact that his life was very much hanging in the balance, he could still see clearly enough to be suspicious of the information on Claudia’s computer. Hats off to the terrorist son of a bitch.
“Here we go,” Black said over the comm. “Two pickups coming in hot. Most of Abdo’s spotters seem to be backing off, so the main force is going to be the men in those vehicles.”
“How many?” Rapp asked, dangling his feet over the edge of the roof to loosen his stiff right knee.
“Moving too fast to get an exact head count. You know the drill, though. Small trucks packed to the point that they’re damn near dragging the ground.”
“Copy that,” Rapp said.
“They’re moving out of my line of sight,” Black said. “Grisha? Are you picking them up?”
“Yes. I’d estimate twenty-three men, including the drivers. Assault rifles, mostly AKs. The front vehicle is swerving a bit. It doesn’t look like a mechanical problem. I’d guess that the driver’s impaired either by alcohol or drugs. ETA to the gate is fifteen seconds and they aren’t slowing down. It conceivable that they’re going to try to ram the doors.”
“What? No plate numbers?” Black said.
“They didn’t seem relevant,” Azarov responded, not picking up on the sarcasm.
“Mitch,” Donatella said. “I have eyes on you from the southwest. There’s no one in the courtyard below you. Can you climb down and get out the back? Kent can give you cover.”
“I might take you up on that, Donatella. But not quite yet.”
* * *
Joel Wilson heard the growing roar of an engine outside but couldn’t work out what that meant until a pickup crashed through the church’s front entrance. The doors were flung across the floor along with most of the men who had been riding in the bed. The FBI man froze, looking at the African soldiers strewn out in front of him. Some were dazed, some were getting to their feet, and others were either dead or unconscious. Had their brakes failed, or had they come through the doors on purpose? Who would do such a thing?
Successive bursts of automatic fire pulled him from his stupor, and he sprinted toward the back of the building, diving behind an overturned pew along the west wall. From around the side, he saw a second pickup come through the hole made by the first. The men in the back jumped out and began running in every direction, spraying rounds haphazardly in the general direction of Nassar’s men.
Wilson drew back farther behind the pew, unwilling to fire his weapon out of fear that it would give away his position. Who were these men? Had Rapp hired them? He’d referred to himself as “we” in the emails. Was this his team? A group of suicidal African mercenaries? Would a man famous for his precision—someone who almost always killed with a single shot to the head—work with people like this?
He dropped onto his back and peered out from beneath the bench. At least for now, Nassar’s men seemed to have the tactical advantage. They’d taken cover at strategic points around the church and were firing controlled bursts, in contrast to their attackers, who were shooting wildly from a run. Would it be enough of an advantage? They were outnumbered and there was no way to know if this was the entire opposing force. There could be hundreds of similar soldiers closing in from the courtyard. The image of the man with the machete in his head flashed through his mind and he fumbled for his satellite phone, dialing a private number the Saudi intelligence chief had given him.
