10:20 A.M.
FLOOR 18
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Sayyari awoke in pain, knowing he’d been shot. He was awakened by shouting from Mansour. Sayyari stood up and put his hand against the wall, going toward the noise.
He came to the suite entrance and saw the American president strapped to a chair, and next to him Andreas, on the ground. Before he went in, Sayyari looked through a seam in the doorframe. Sayyari made out Mansour clutching a submachine gun aimed at Dellenbaugh.
Suddenly, a blast of unmuted gunfire rattled the room. Sayyari looked right. A man was standing in the doorway, holding a pistol. His eyes traced the direction of his aim and saw Mansour on the floor, hit in the neck. Then Andreas stabbed the other soldier.
Sayyari felt for a weapon but he didn’t have one on him.
His brothers were on the floor, one shot dead, one stabbed to death, and Andreas was lifting Dellenbaugh onto his shoulder.
Sayyari let Dewey retrieve the president, remaining ducked behind the door. He was too weak to try to take Andreas by force. There was nothing he could do.
Andreas was extracting the American president. The video of an American president being beheaded on live television was now no longer a possibility. Even killing him was now gone … or was it?
He waited and followed Andreas, the gunman who killed Mansour, and Dellenbaugh, staying out of sight. After the elevator doors shut, he watched where they were going. The lights climbed. Andreas was taking the president to the roof.
The entire world would be watching.
It wasn’t the original plan—but it was perhaps even better. What the entire world would be watching would not be Dellenbaugh’s beheading. Instead, the President of the United States would be shot from the sky. His rescue would be interrupted in the cruelest of ways.
Sayyari gathered his strength and pulled himself to his feet. He went back and found his rifle. He made his way back to the elevator and pressed “39.” When he reached the roof, he stayed tucked into the side of the elevator, his finger on the Door Open button. When he heard no one, he skulked silently out of the elevator and took a knee behind a partial wall, out of sight, watching. He could see Andreas and Dellenbaugh at the edge of the helipad as wind buffeted the air. The distinct electric rotor slash of an approaching helicopter was unmistakable. He saw a sleek black helicopter weaving up through smoke and dust, within a steel-and-glass canyon, in between buildings.
The helicopter came in for a fast landing. Andreas carried the president the last few steps and a blond woman emerged and opened a door to the cabin. He watched as Andreas loaded the president into the helicopter. The female climbed back in just as the rotors on the chopper began to churn furiously. Sayyari checked his optics and placed his finger against the trigger, wondering why they were paused. Then the other American emerged from a door to his left and started running to the waiting helicopter. It was the man who’d killed Mansour.
Sayyari aimed at the running figure, fired, missed, then fired again, this time ripping a bullet into his chest. Sayyari turned back to the chopper, but it lifted quickly up and gashed right and down, out of range.