SEVENTY-FOUR
Court and Zoya stood at the bottom of the stairs, their weapons pointed up at the mezzanine. While they did this, Zoya finally had a chance to place a call to Langley.
“Brewer.”
“It’s Anthem.”
“Iden check?”
“Screw that, Suzanne. Listen to me. Call Travers, tell him to spread his men out and approach on foot. If they aren’t in a cluster together, there is less chance the drones will attack them. Romantic is keeping the drones too high to pick out individual targets.”
“Got it.”
Zoya continued, “The ground floor seems to be clear of hostiles. The DDO and the ambo are in the office upstairs. The DDO is a hostage. Romantic is on the roof; Violator and I will secure the office from the outside. We can hit it if we have to, but we are assuming a barricade situation. We need Travers to blow the door to get in there if it all goes to shit.”
She hung up the phone, then looked to Court. “They could start shooting hostages at any moment.”
Movement out of the kitchen surprised them, and they spun around with their eyes glued to their weapons’ sights. Three figures, two men and a woman, appeared in the dim light. They all carried weapons but were wearing business attire.
“Hold fire,” Zoya said. “Friendlies.”
The three came closer, then lowered their weapons. They were all carrying Remington shotguns.
“Who are you guys?” the woman asked in American English.
“We’re with the DDO of CIA. He’s in the office with the ambo and a dozen others. Unknown number of hostiles.”
The woman cocked her head, but a tall man in his thirties spoke next. “The DDO is here?”
“You guys are DSS?” Court asked.
“That’s right.”
“Yeah. Hanley is here. We’re his security.” Just then, several shotgun blasts boomed on the roof. Court pointed up with his AK. “He’s with us, too.”
“Shit,” the other man said. “They are using some kind of UAVs to keep the cops back.”
Court looked to Zoya. “Whatever Mirza is doing, he doesn’t need a lot of time for it. This was a one-way trip, all the way.”
Zoya said, “We’ve got to get inside.”
The woman said, “We can help.”
Another boom of the shotgun on the roof, and then another loud explosion up there, as if a drone had hit the building.
“Romantic. How copy?” Zack asked, but there was no response.
Mirza looked at the American CIA man with utter contempt. “What do you want to tell me about my mission, Mr. Hanley?”
Hanley said, “I want to tell you that you are being played.”
“Being played? Playing a game?”
“No. You are being used. Your men are being used. Your country is being used.”
Mirza laughed a little.
Hanley continued. “How do you think it was that your master told you exactly where to come in this house to find the ambassador? Where the safe room was, where the cameras are? Because he’s been here. He’s an American ally.” Hanley laughed derisively. “Hell, the man running you now was trained by the CIA.”
The Iranian shrugged. “That does not surprise me. But our objectives are the same. I do not care about anything more than this.”
“That’s just it. Your objectives are not the same. Do you even know the identity of Tarik?”
“Of course I do.”
Hanley looked at him dubiously. “Sultan al-Habsi? The son of the crown prince of the UAE?”
It was clear to the American that the terrorist in front of him did not know this. Still, the young man played it cool. Said nothing.
Hanley added, “Al-Habsi wants Iran destroyed because he thinks it’s the only way his father will make him the crown prince before he dies of cancer.”
Mirza shook his head. “Always tricks with the CIA. Always tricks. Americans and Jews.”
“Jews?” Hanley said, “Let’s talk about the Jews. The UAE made peace with Israel. Do you know why?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because the UAE was worried the West wasn’t taking the threat posed by your people seriously enough. They wanted to partner up with the real anti-Iranians. With the UAE it’s all about the danger your nation poses to moderate Sunni nations. Oil states, specifically. Your cause is not his cause, you just think it is. You want this act tonight to strengthen Iran against the West. The truth is, it will lead to Iran being wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Hanley heard more shooting on the roof. Another explosion, louder, but farther away. This sounded to him like Hightower had tried to shoot down a drone but had been unsuccessful and it impacted with and detonated a police vehicle.
He continued telling Mirza what he knew. About Shrike Group, about al-Habsi giving the United States the intel it needed to kill the commander of Quds in Baghdad.
Mirza shook his head adamantly. “None of this matters. America won’t invade Iran. They saw what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Hanley laughed again. “And we saw what happened in Vietnam, and we still went into Iraq and Afghanistan, didn’t we? You think we learn from our mistakes? No, sir. We make them over and over again, sure that the next time is going to be different.” The big American shrugged. “And you know what? Maybe with Iran, we’ll be right. We’ll go in there and blow up enough shit to actually make a difference for once. Of course, you and I will be dead, so who gives a shit, but my bet is Shia expansion in the Middle East ends tonight. Just like your master envisioned.”
“My only master is Allah.”
“Bullshit! Sultan al-Habsi has his hand up your ass tonight, and he’s playing you like a sock puppet.”
Mirza was wild with rage; he took the butt of the short-barreled AK and bashed it into the fifty-eight-year-old’s forehead, dropping him hard to his knees. More blows battered Hanley’s head and back.
“Romantic? How copy?” Court asked over the net again.
A few seconds later he could hear Hightower coughing over his earpiece. Finally the man on the roof said, “I’m too old for this shit. I heard you guys. You want to try to hit the ambo’s office?”
“Can you help?” Court asked.
“Talk me to the location; I’ll come from the roof. Go through a window. All I have is a shotty with two shells remaining; I’m not going to fire near friendlies, but I can make some mischief for you.”
Court nodded at this. “We have three DSS agents here assisting. They can help us with the breach. Find a way to that window.” He paused, then spoke to Hanley. “Matt, if you can hear this, we need you to find a way to communicate with us. What we need is some intel on the layout and disposition inside.”
Hanley had been pulled back into the office, thrown on the floor, and kicked a few more times by Mirza. As he lay in the fetal position, his suit coat up around his head, blood covered his face, matted his hair. He looked like he was completely passive, barely conscious. Apparently in shock, he began muttering softly to himself.
While he was doing this, Mirza looked into the camera broadcasting into the panic room. “We kill the deputy director of the CIA first!”
Hanley seemed like he was out of it, mumbling through bloody lips like a madman. He spoke too softly for anyone in the room to understand the words.
Mirza said, “Put him up against the wall and shoot him!”
Two men grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, as he kept babbling to himself.
Outside the office, however, his murmuring voice was coming through garbled, but intelligible enough.
“Five hostiles. Two right of door, three left of door. Hostages directly in front of door. Door lightly barricaded.”
Zoya quickly conveyed all this to the DSS personnel. The DSS woman with the shotgun pointed her weapon against the lower hinge of the door, and the tall man in his thirties put his Remington against the upper hinge. The third man stacked up in front of Court and Zoya, with instructions to slam low against the door and clear the barricade with brute force while the DDO’s people flooded the room.
Zack asked over the commo link, “Countdown from five?”
Court said, “From five. Five, four—”
In the office, a beaten Matt Hanley was propped up against the wall next to the window. Mirza stood in front of him, his rifle in hand. “So, Mr. Hanley. In the end, your bravery saved no one at all.” Mirza smiled at this.
The big American pulled his shoulders back and stood erect. He smiled, as well. “It did have one effect, though.”
Mirza cocked his head. “What is that?”
“It bought us some time.”
Mirza raised his weapon to fire, and then the window shattered in front of him, just next to Hanley. Simultaneously, a pair of shotgun blasts blew the door off its hinges behind him, and then a man crashed into the room, pushing the bookcase out of the way with his momentum.
The five terrorists in the room spun towards the movement.
Zack Hightower crashed down onto the floor feetfirst, his suit coat off and his tie over his shoulder. Blood covered his right shirtsleeve. He had a rope in one hand and a Remington shotgun in the other, and he fired the big, powerful weapon one-handed, into the chest of a man near the door and hefting his weapon.
Another terrorist near the desk fired a round that missed Zack high, but Zoya moved into the room and went right, and she sent a burst of five 7.62 rounds into the man, splattering him against the wall.
Court dove over the falling bookshelf. In midair he fired at a man standing just outside the bathroom, killing him with a shot to the face.
Mirza opened fire at the doorway, hitting the DSS man who’d entered behind Zoya and spinning him onto his back, while the female DSS agent racked her shotgun and fired a blast at a Quds fighter near the bathroom.
Zack had chambered another shell; he pointed it at the last man standing across the room but found him too close to the cowering hostages to fire.
Court hit the ground hard after his dive over the bookshelf. Mirza had spun in his direction; he fired but missed just high.
Court returned Haz Mirza’s fire, hitting him twice in the chest with his short-barreled AK. The terrorist sprayed his own Kalashnikov into the ceiling as he fell.
Zoya moved over to Mirza, who was lying on his back, facing up, blood pouring from his chest and back. She kicked his weapon away from him and held hers between the man’s eyes.
Behind her, the female DSS agent shouted, “Clear!”
Hanley had been standing against the wall through it all. He now moved over to the dying Quds Force operative and knelt down. Through bloody lips, he said, “Too bad, Haz. We’ve known all along that you’ve been disavowed by Tehran. This will go down as a rogue band of crazies doing their own thing, and the world will forget about you in a couple of news cycles.”
Mirza’s eyes rolled up, his last breath came out through torn lungs, and he went still.
Hanley looked up at Zoya. “Think he caught that?”
She shrugged. “Who cares?”
Chris Travers and two of his men arrived moments after the raid. He looked disappointed that he’d missed the action. Zack said, “You know anything about drones, Travers? There are about a dozen of them hovering overhead.”
Travers waved away any concern. “They will land when their batteries die. They won’t detonate unless they have a target. I’ll make a call, keep the authorities back. I’ll recruit some civilians to help carry the wounded out up the street to ambulances.”
Hanley looked to the panic room and saw that the door had not opened. He figured that Sedgwick would probably stay in there till morning, and Hanley was happy about this. The last thing he felt like doing right now was getting yelled at by the U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Hanley walked with Zack, Zoya, and Court downstairs and out into the garden. “‘Thanks’ doesn’t quite cut it, but thanks.”
Zoya started to treat the DDO’s bloody face, but he waved her off.
Court said, “This is where you tell us to scram, isn’t it?”
Zoya understood. “We have to be gone before people from the Agency arrive.”
Hanley heaved his chest. “Zack’s arm is pretty torn up. You guys have a way to treat that if I say you can’t go to a local hospital?”
Court said, “I do. We’ll take care of Zack.”
“Good deal,” Hanley said, then pointed to Court. “I want to meet with you in the morning. Airport. Eight a.m.”
“Understood.”
Hanley turned and went back into the ambassador’s residence as Finkenstrasse filled with civilians carrying the wounded out of the ambassador’s residence. Above them, attack drones hovered, still searching in vain for moving vehicles to target in a radius around the residence.
Court pulled off his rifle and threw it on the ground, then picked up a pistol lying next to the hand of a dead German RSO officer. It was a Glock 19, and he made sure it was loaded before sticking it in his pants. The other two dropped their rifles, but there were no other handguns around, so they remained unarmed.
Court said, “Let’s get Zack patched up, and then we’ll go back to the safe house. I need a beer.”
“Same,” said Zack while putting pressure on the deepest part of the cut on his forearm. They began moving together down the garden towards the broken stone wall and their car parked in a gravel lot a block away.