His heart was a mallet, thick and heavy. His arms trembled slightly. He had taken mandatory weapons training, but he had never shot at anyone before. He wouldn’t fire to kill. Not at first. But there was no guarantee he wouldn’t have to. He’d been the Mayor of Los Angeles and a banker. He’d signed on at Op-Center for a think-tank-type desk job. Crisis management, not wallowing in blood.
Well, things freakin’ change, Hood, he pep-talked to himself as he took a slow breath. Either you fire if necessary, or your family attends a funeral. He leaned into the hallway and looked at the soldiers walking toward the reception room. He had the framework of a plan. First, to find out if he could communicate with these people. Second, to see how they’d react to a challenge.
“Do any of you speak English?” Hood asked.
The soldiers stopped. They were nearly twenty feet from the reception room, about three-dozen yards from him. Without turning around, the leader said something to a man behind him. The man stepped forward.
“I speak English,” said the man. “Who are you?”
“An American guest of the President,” Hood replied. “I just spoke with the commander of the presidential guard by phone. He’s asked that all loyal forces meet him in the north gallery at once.”
The man translated for the leader. The leader gave an order to a man behind him. Two soldiers left the group and went back the way they’d come.
He’s got to check, Hood thought, but he’s not using his field radio. If there are presidential guards out there, this man doesn’t want them to know he’s here.
As the two men trotted around a corner, the leader issued a new order. The group split up again. The leader and four men continued toward the reception area while three men moved toward Hood. Their weapons were in their hands. They weren’t coming to rescue him. The question was, did they intend to take the men hostage or kill them? They had already taken several lives in a failed effort to assassinate the President. And they’d killed all the men in this booth. Even if they were taking prisoners, which Hood doubted, he didn’t want to subject his country, his family, himself, or the men in the other room to an extended hostage ordeal. As Mike Rodgers had once put it, “In the long run, that’s just a different way to die.”
Hood hugged the automatic rifle to his waist, the magazine resting along his thigh. Aiming the barrel low, he swung into the corridor and fired at the floor just in front of the group’s leader. Hood was startled as casings flew at him from the ejection port, but he continued to hold the trigger. The men down the hall retreated. The three men, who were coming toward the security room threw themselves against the wall, behind a large bronze horse, and returned fire.
Hood stopped firing and ducked back behind the jamb. His knuckles were bone-white around the pistol grip. His breathing was fast and his heart was hammering harder than before. The men down the hall also stopped firing. The automatic rifle felt light, nearly empty. Hood picked the bloody pistol up off the floor and checked the magazine. It was about one-third empty. He had seven or eight shots.
Hood knew that there wasn’t much time. He’d have to go back into the hallway and fire again, this time aiming higher. He checked the monitor. The leader and his group were hanging back. They’d been joined by a ragtag group of Syrians with guns. The leaders of both groups were conferring. Hood knew that if he waited any longer he’d fall to sheer force of numbers.
He sidled up to the jamb and held both guns facing up. He didn’t feel like John Wayne or Burt Lancaster or Gary Cooper. He was just a frightened diplomat with guns.
One who’s responsible for the lives of men trapped down the hallway. He listened. He heard no movement outside. Holding his breath this time, he dropped both guns hiphigh and swung into the hallway.
And stopped as a soldier stepped right into his face and shoved a pistol barrel up under his chin.
FIFTY
Tuesday, 3:37 p.m.,
the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon
Before joining Striker, Sergeant Chick Grey had been Corporal Grey of the elite counterterrorist Delta Force. He’d been a private when he’d first reported for training at Fort Bragg. But Grey’s two specialties had enabled him to climb the ratings ladder to private first class and then corporal in a matter of months.
His first skill was in HALO operations—high-altitude, low-opening parachute jumps. As his commander at Bragg had put it when recommending Grey’s boost from private to PFC, “The man can fly.” Grey had the ability to pull his ripcord lower and land more accurately than any soldier in Delta history. He attributed that to having a rare sensitivity to air currents. He believed that also helped with his second skill.
Grey’s second skill was marksmanship. As the late Lieutenant Colonel Charles Squires had written when insisting that Mike Rodgers recruit him for Striker, “Corporal Grey is not only a sharpshooter, General. He could put a bullet clean through one of your bull’s-eyes.” The report didn’t note that Grey could also go without blinking for as long as necessary. He’d developed that ability when he realized that all it took was the blink of an eye to miss the “keyhole,” as he called it. The instant when your target was in perfect position for a takedown.
A few seconds before, perched in a treetop, Grey had been staring through the twelve-power Redfield telescope mounted on top of his Remington 7.62 mm M401 sniping rifle. It had been twenty-odd seconds since he’d blinked. Twenty-odd seconds since the terrorist had walked from the cave holding a gun to the head of Mary Rose Mohalley. Twenty-odd seconds since Colonel Brett August had told him to take the subject out at will. During that time, Grey had not only watched everything that transpired, he’d also listened carefully through earphones plugged into a six-inch-diameter parabolic dish. The clip-on dish had been attached to a branch beside him and provided clear audio from the area surrounding the idle ROC.
There is an instant in every hostage situation when a marksman makes an emotional rather than just a professional commitment to doing what must be done. A life must be taken in order to rescue a hostage. It isn’t a point of no return; hostage situations are fluid and one must always be ready to stand down. But it is a form of peacemaking with oneself. If the guilty party doesn’t die—swiftly, painlessly—an innocent one may. That realization is black and white. It comes without passing judgment on the larger matter, the merits of the terrorist’s cause. At that point, an almost supernatural calm comes over the marksman. Those last seconds before firing are moments of cold and frightening efficiency. The first seconds afterward are moments of equally dispassionate acceptance with just a hint of professional pride.
Sergeant Grey waited until the gunman had uttered the last number of his count before firing. His single shot struck the terrorist in the left temple. The man jerked hard to the right on impact, twisted slightly, and then dropped to his back. His blood sprayed out over the ledge and then poured with him as he fell. When the man’s arms went limp, Mary Rose fell to her knees. No one rushed out to claim her. A moment later, someone began clambering up the slope. Grey didn’t wait to see the outcome.
Privates David George and Terrence Newmeyer were standing under the tree. The instant’the terrorist went down, Sergeant Grey lowered the dish and headphones to Private George, handed his rifle to Private Newmeyer, and climbed down. As he stowed his gear, Sergeant Grey felt only one thing. That there was still a lot to be done.
The three men joined Colonel August and the others. The Strikers had left their vehicles a quarter mile back so the engines would not be heard. Two Strikers had remained behind to protect the FAVs and motorcycles, while the others had moved forward through the tops of the close-growing trees. They’d executed an infrared scan and hadn’t detected sentries, so the off-ground route served a double purpose. First, it would keep them from tripping any mines that guarded the cave. Second, if the ROC were working, the reading would indicate that something was moving in the trees—though at this distance the Kurds might think they were some of the flocking vultures that were indigenous to the region.
For the three minutes that Sergeant Grey had been in the tree, Colonel August and Corporal Pat Prementine had been using field glasses to watch what was happening on the ledge approximately three hundred yards away. The other eleven Strikers had been gathered in a tight group behind them. When Sergeant Grey arrived with the two privates, the group absorbed them without seeming to expand.