Hamza grabbed a Red Bull from his pack and walked back to Ibrahim.
“Here, drink Red Bull. Fall asleep, and you will never wake up to kill yourself and so many others. And keep your finger off the trigger until I say so.”
Ibrahim glared at him.
Emma turned away before Hamza started back to the front of the bus again. His hand was on the hilt of his knife.
Turning away didn’t save Emma from his attention. He stopped by her side and placed the tip of the blade under her chin, just like last time. He raised it up until she was staring at the ceiling, headlights streaking on the gray surface. Then he nicked her skin.
“Thank you,” he said to her. “You saved our mission. Allah has worked his will through Godless filth. As smart as I am, sometimes I do not understand His wisdom. How does it feel to be the savior of such divine intentions?”
She tried to speak, but moving her mouth made her feel the blade, which hurt horribly. Blood was already running down her neck again, warm as sweat.
“Speak.”
“Good. Good.” It was all she could think to say.
Tanesa was staring at Hamza’s back. Emma could just glimpse her caretaker out of the corner of her eye. But the other two “martyrs” were watching as well. Droopy-eyed, though. They looked like they could use some Red Bull.
Hamza backed away from Emma. “I’m saving you,” he said. “I’m saving you so I can offer you up to Allah at the right time. You will pay for the sins of your mother even as she is butchered alive.”
Emma had her hand on her chin. Her fingers were wet and sticky. She hated him so much it made her feel crazy. She’d never known hate like this. She could hardly sit still for it.
Tanesa also looked ready to leap.
A noise sounded outside by the fuel tank.
Hamza rushed to the door. “Fill it up!” he yelled. “You’re taking too long.”
The woman truck driver said something to him. Emma didn’t catch it, but she heard Hamza’s reply:
“Do it faster, or I will throw another body out there.”
The plan had been for Kalisa Harris to delay as much as might seem reasonable with the fuel delivery, but morning was still a few hours off. So now she would keep her headlights on the bus as long as she could to help the snipers with their night scopes. And she’d milk another minute or two topping off the tank with a blend containing just enough diesel to make it smell real. The rest was water — the bus would never move.
That was Washington’s decision: to make absolutely sure the bus never left the truck stop. First the bomb, and now the “fuel.” Kalisa had no quarrel with the call, but it made every moment that she could stall all the more precious, because who could say what Hamza and the others would do when the driver couldn’t get the bus started again?
She reached down to scratch her leg, a motion to cover the reassuring touch of her .45 semiautomatic.
Kalisa said a prayer. Not one prescribed by any church that she’d ever heard of, but the only one she could offer at that moment. She’d said it once before — in Cleveland.
Sweet Jesus, let me kill the bastards and save those kids. After that, You can do what You want with me.
With her heart and soul on the line, she didn’t stop to wonder how many times an agent could put herself in this kind of jeopardy and survive.
Seconds after Ruhi introduced himself, an explosion rocked the hallway. Six SEALs went down in a blinding instant. One of them lay bleeding from the neck, legs jerking. An assailant shot him in the head as she watched.
The detonation blew Lana into Ruhi, tumbling them both onto the couch. Lana, stunned, wasn’t sure she was alive until she heard shouting in Arabic. Gunfire filled the fifth floor.
Travis was at the doorway, shooting back with two of his men.
Thank God.
Then Travis and the man to his right were hit by a fusillade.
It sounded like an army out there. A thousand rounds a second. Lana looked around frantically for a way out. Only the window — shattered by gunfire — looked like a possibility.
The top floor.
She crawled to it anyway and peered out, expecting to be shot in the back any second. She saw a rusty six-inch pipe running up the length of the building.
When she turned to signal Ruhi, only Gabe was still standing; none of the other SEALs or Mabahith officers had survived. One of the latter had died with his handgun by his side. She grabbed it.
“Go!” Gabe yelled.
“Mancur, move!” she said.
Lana poured herself out the opening, grabbed the pipe, and pressed herself against the brick, fully expecting the bolts, also rusty, to rip loose. She heard a loud creak, but the pipe didn’t pull away.
She had thought she would climb down, but saw she was only about six feet from the flat roof and would likely be killed or taken prisoner if she dared a descent.
Jamming her knees into the brick, she clawed inches upward, making enough room for Ruhi.
He pressed up below her. “Use my head,” he gasped.
She did, pressing her foot down. Seized by strength and fear, she climbed toward the edge of the roof.
More gunfire, a harsh spate of it, and then heavy steps sounded in the room. Shouts. None in English. Gabe, she knew, was dead.
She reached up and grabbed the chiseled edge. Again, she stepped on Ruhi’s head, gaining inches more precious than air. She was up and over.
Immediately, she reached for him, grabbing his underarms to get him up.
As he rolled over the edge, she pulled the gun from her pants — a Browning Hi Power — and racked the slide. The Mabahith officer had never gotten off a shot.
Without a word, they crept away. Then, when she judged they were no longer above the room, she started running. So did Ruhi.
For their lives.
CHAPTER 22
Lana and Ruhi raced to the edge of the flat roof, which was bordered by a two-foot wall. Beyond it loomed a six-foot gap to the roof of the next building — and a five-story drop to the alley below.
“Can you make that?” she asked Ruhi, aiming her Browning back at the spot where they’d climbed up on the roof — exactly where she expected those killers to show up any second.
“I think so. What about you?” Like her, he sounded breathless.
She just nodded. It felt like all she could do, so shaken by witnessing the death squad slaughter of the men who had rescued her in Riyadh and protected her ever since.
They knew we were there. How? Who set us up?
No time for questions without immediate answers. “Go!” she urged Ruhi.
She sighted down the black barrel of her pistol at that spot on the roof, saw the gun shaking, and told herself to get a grip — in every sense.
Ruhi stood on the short wall. The tile felt firm beneath his feet, the distance doable. All this registered in an instant.
A standing long jump, he told himself. Six feet. You can do it. “Use your arms,” he remembered a gym teacher telling him. Sixth Grade Olympics. An intracity event. In the 1,500-meter run, Ruhi had won a silver.
No medal for the long jump.
He crouched and sprang out over the gap, thrusting his arms forward, driving himself as hard as he could.
He felt the bite of gravity in less than a second.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lana saw Ruhi’s legs go airborne, but most of her attention was back on where they’d hauled themselves up onto the roof. She was trying so hard to see into the sun that she was shocked when a door to what looked like a rooftop shed flew open forty feet away and a man in a turban peered out. She saw his rifle and knew she had but one chance to kill him. It lasted less than a blink — scarcely long enough for her to get off two shots. The second round tore into his head, killing him.