Emma screamed for help. Hamza was still trying to pull himself across the driver’s seat to grab the backpack nuclear bomb. Despite her intense shoulder pain, she clung to his back, with her hands now wrapped around his throat, trying to choke him. Then she remembered Tanesa tearing at his eyes and scratched as hard as she could. But he squeezed them shut and kept inching away, so she jammed her legs against the big tire, once more trying to drag him out of the truck.
In seconds, she heard boots on pavement. Looking back, she spied soldiers about fifty yards away racing toward her. But here, in the midst of violent struggle, she watched Hamza snag a strap on the backpack nuclear bomb and start to pull it toward him.
She drove her knees into the truck wheel so hard that she might have bent steel. With a shriek, she dragged him out. But the backpack bomb came with him.
Hamza fell on her — with the bomb. She searched frantically for the trigger and saw that it had fallen aside like a loose belt. They both lunged for it. Hamza grabbed the tubular conduit that contained the wiring. But before he could pull the actual trigger to himself and set off the explosion, she threw herself on the device, then curled her body around it — like the soldier in the old war movie who saved his buddies by hurling himself onto a hand grenade.
She felt Hamza claw her arms as he tried to tear them loose. And then the son of a bitch bit her shoulder, right where he’d stabbed her with the nail file. She screamed, wanting nothing more than to unpeel her body to try to stop the pain, but she knew she could not do that, no matter what. Hold on, she pleaded with herself, but the agony was so intense that she didn’t know if she could stand another second.
And then she felt Hamza torn away from her by the soldiers. She looked up and saw his eyes on her, her own blood dripping from his mouth.
One of the soldiers yelled, “Don’t move, Emma. Not a muscle.”
Her shoulder throbbed. Blood ran down her arm. But more than anything else, she felt the trigger lodged in her hand.
“Emma, if you can hear me, just wiggle a foot,” the soldier said in a calmer voice.
She did.
“That’s good. Stay super still. We need to disarm the bomb. Can you stay still for us?”
Crying, she wiggled her foot once more.
Ahmed handed Ruhi a semiautomatic pistol. Not a Glock, like he’d trained with on the Farm, but when Ruhi racked the slide the motion felt familiar. Ahmed now had Lana’s computer strapped across his chest, bandolier style.
Ruhi was the last to head down the three-foot-high ventilation shaft that his cousin had identified as the only means of access to the cyberattack center. There was no way they could enter from the ceiling, not as an invasion force, and no tactical advantage in doing so.
The shaft angled downward, but not sharply, prompting whispered speculation from Candace that it might also have been intended as an emergency exit. She was directly in front of him in the black chador. If she spied chadors when they entered, she would keep it on.
From that point on the two remained silent, moving behind the combined forces of Saudi intelligence and the Mabahith. They were the officers who could be spared with a full-scale takeover of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh still under way — and a possible insurrection by the Saudi “street.”
Ruhi heard only the brush of clothing and shoes on the metal floor. To make sure he didn’t spill forward as he crawled, he pressed his back against the roof of the shaft, as did the others. It offered a degree of control as they continued their descent.
What worried him most was the absence of a plan beyond Omar’s parting words: “Go in firing at anyone who’s armed or resisting. We have no idea how many people are down there. Just don’t shoot Lana Elkins, and try not to damage their computers. That’s not how we’re going to shut them down.”
Then he’d eyed each of them in the shadows of the community center and added, “No matter how many of us die, we must get Elkins on their network as fast as possible. At that point, our job is done and hers begins.”
When Omar had spoken, Candace squeezed Ruhi’s hand. Not to ease his fear, he thought, but to encourage him. He’d never been in battle. Never served in any branch of the military. He supposed what she’d done was called camaraderie. He’d squeezed her back, nodding. For him a far greater feeling was in play.
Now he spotted light at the end of the shaft and noticed air sweeping over him for the first time. It came alive on the beads of sweat that dotted his forehead.
The man at the front of their column quietly set a small explosive on the ventilation shaft cover. Seconds later, the device blew up, and they surged into a brightly lit room. The men in front of Candace and Ruhi threw flash grenades, blinding those nearby for several seconds. His own ears felt rocked, stunned senseless, but he heard the overpowering rage of gunfire erupt immediately.
Momentum alone swept Ruhi forward. He felt himself shaking and saw that Candace still wore the chador.
As soon as he exited the shaft, he had to crawl over one of the first men to have braved the cavern. He lay on the floor, eyes open on the ceiling but lifeless. Then, as Ruhi crawled along — guns firing all around him — he passed a wounded man groaning loudly.
Candace, still in front of him, was shooting an M4 carbine that she’d been issued by Omar. Ruhi watched her kill three mujahedeen, then two unarmed Asian computer operators who proved foolish enough to rush her. The chador would disguise her no longer in that part of the cavern.
She and the others were fanning out, targeting shooters who had hunkered down around the cavern, as if digging in for a long firefight.
Ruhi knew there was no time for that. He saw Candace brashly force her way past several more Asian men and women who were cowering under their desks. None threatened her. Maybe they had seen what she had done moments ago. But Ruhi watched them closely as he sneaked up on them. And good that he did: One of the men stood and raised a pistol to shoot Candace from behind. Ruhi gunned him down. Then, without having to think he kept his weapon raised, aiming left and right at the group as he had at the life-size targets at the Farm.
None of the others attempted to retrieve the dead man’s gun. Ruhi grabbed it and forced them facedown on the floor. They didn’t resist. He knew he should probably kill them — one had already tried to shoot Candace in the back — but couldn’t.
Around him, the gunfire continued unabated, and more flash grenades turned the nerve center into a thunderous sky. Then Ruhi spied a man in a turban squirming along the floor toward tall screens in the middle of the cavern.
Ruhi crawled no more than five feet before the jihadist spotted him and raised his rifle. Ruhi fired twice, missing him. Fired again. Missed again, though the bullet might have hit someone, because he heard a man scream the very next instant.
Bullets from the jihadist’s rifle flew right by him, so close they sounded like bees buzzing around his head. He threw himself onto his elbows and aimed. As another bullet seemed to part his hair, he fired three more times. The man slumped. With the shadows and screaming, Ruhi had no way of knowing if he’d hit his target or if someone else had shot him.
Now he heard more cries and flash grenades. The uproar was deafening. He looked around. Omar and Ahmed’s men were on the move. Ruhi saw clusters of cyberwarriors clinging to one another or hiding abjectly. They might have been stone-cold killers with a keyboard, but few appeared ready for this kind of combat.
Candace spotted a jihadist crawling under desks, dragging Lana toward a Korean man who was protected by two guards. Their leader, she presumed. Candace couldn’t imagine that Lana Elkins’s life would be spared if these cyberwarriors thought they were about to be defeated.