Cameron felt his heartbeat increase as adrenaline rushed through his system. He signaled Marie to get down and hide behind the dresser next to the windows. She complied. Then he slowly extended his hand and unlocked the door. The latching mechanism snapped.
Staccato gunfire burst through the wooden door. Cameron jumped back and rolled next to Marie.
“Don’t move!” he screamed while training the 9-mm pistol on the large hole in the center of the still-closed door.
Just as suddenly as it had started, the firing stopped. A second of silence, quickly followed by screams coming from nearby rooms. Cameron didn’t flinch. He focused on the door and kept the forward and rear sights of the Beretta perfectly lined up with the center of the hole. Nothing.
He looked at Marie. She was shuddering, her green eyes wide open, her lips quivering.
“Calm down and don’t move. As long as—” A pear-shaped object flew through the hole in the door and skittered across the floor
Grenade!
Instinctively. Cameron embraced Marie and rolled toward the other side of the room. It went off. Cameron heard the loud blast. He closed his eyes and waited for the shrapnel, but it never came. He opened his eyes and found himself blinded by thick smoke. Marie coughed. Cameron’s eyes stung. The Beretta! His hands fumbled over the worn carpet. Nothing. He heard footsteps approaching.
“Quick, follow me!”
“I can’t see! Oh, God, my eyes, they…”
Ignoring her cries, Cameron grabbed her right wrist and pulled her behind him. He got up and raced for the window. He reached it, crawled on the windowsill, and inhaled deeply. Through tears he spotted a thick copper pipe running vertically next to the window. Cameron grabbed it firmly with his left hand.
“Put both arms around my shoulders! Quick!”
“I can’t see, my eyes…” The footsteps had stopped.
“Dammit! Do it!” He felt her embrace from behind.
“On the count of three hold on tight and wrap your legs around my waist got it?”
“Yes I—”
“One — two — three!” Cameron brought his right hand around and grabbed the pipe as he jumped off the sill with Marie pressed to his back.
He heard the door kicked open.
The strain on his arms became nearly unbearable. He began to slide down to the street as fast as he could, knowing that it would not take their attacker more than a few seconds to realize how they had escaped.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
Cameron looked toward the street and spotted the old lady from the hotel counter screaming at the top of her lungs by the front door.
“Shit!”
Several pedestrians came from both sides of the block and gathered around the hotel. Cameron looked up toward the window and spotted a gray-haired man with a gray beard looking straight at them.
“Hang on.” Cameron said. He instantly felt Marie’s grip tighten.
Cameron loosened his hold on the pipe and rapidly slid the last ten feet before crashing against the sidewalk. Marie let go on impact, and they both rolled over on the wet pavement. His right shoulder stung as he slammed against the bumper of a parked car, but he forced himself to look back up toward the window. The bearded man had disappeared.
In a blur, he noticed three youngsters gathering around Marie, who appeared unconscious a few feet away. Cameron got up. There was no time to spare. Any second now the gunman would come running out of the hotel.
“Allez-vous en!” Cameron shouted to the startled trio, and shoved them aside as he bent down and pressed the middle and index fingers of his left hand against Marie’s left wrist. Cameron felt a pulse. He quickly lifted her slim body, hung it over his left shoulder, and raced up the street. The kids stood aside as Cameron kicked his legs, struggling to put some distance between him and the assailant. The wind swirled his short thin hair. Marie’s weight quickly became more noticeable. His shoulder burned. So did his legs. He ignored it all and kept running.
“Wait! Wait!”
Cameron glanced back and spotted the bearded man standing by the entrance to the hotel waving them back. Cameron ignored him and turned the corner. He continued down that street and turned left into a dark alley.
CHAPTER TWO
COUNTDOWN
After two exhaustive hours going over the proper responses to possible media questions, Kessler left the briefing room and headed for his quarters. With his body and mind totally drained, he could not care less about the press at that moment. The vision of a warm bed filled his mind, and he used what little energy he had left to propel himself down the long and narrow dim-lit hall. He spotted his room at the other end.
Nearly asleep on his feet, Kessler made his way along the dark, glossy-tiled surface. Retrieving his key, he inserted it in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open.
Inside the air felt warm and stagnant, but that didn’t matter to Kessler. He shifted his gaze to the only object that was important to him, the bed next to the windows on the other side of the spacious room. He approached it, untied his shoes, kicked them off, and lay down. Then he frowned, got up, reached for the AC window unit above the bed, and turned it on. The rush of cool air caressed his face, quickly drying the perspiration that dripped from his creased forehead. Now he could sleep.
He lay on his back and closed his eyes. It didn’t take much time before he began to drift away. He inhaled deeply and relaxed. His heartbeat decreased and his breathing steadied.
“Hey, Mike. You in there?”
Kessler started at the sudden intrusion. He shook his head. “It’s not locked. Come in!”
The door inched forward. Behind it stood his Texan pilot over six feet tall and nearly two hundred pounds, wearing his sunglasses. Ray-Bans. Air Force pilots always wore Ray-Bans.
“Ready to eat?”
“Give me a minute to rest,” Kessler responded.
“What did you think about the briefing?” Jones closed the door behind him, grabbed a chair from beside the metal desk, spun it around, set it next to the bed, and straddled it like a horse. Kessler smiled wearily. “I couldn’t give a damn about that press conference right now. I’m drained. If NASA wants us to fly on schedule they better slow down the pace. Say, did you go see the doctor this morning?”
“Yep.”
“And? What did he have to say about your knee?” He noticed the smile disappear from Jones’s face.
“No problems.”
“Glad to hear that. For a while I thought NASA was going to assign another pilot for the mission.”
Jones had been shot down during an F-111B sortie over Iraq years before. An Air Force E-3A Sentry AWACS had detected a pair of Iraqi MiG-23s headed for the two-seater F-111B strategic bombers as they returned to Saudi Arabia. Due to lack of Air Force fighters nearby, Kessler and his wingman were called in for cover, but when his wingman experienced hydraulic failure, only Kessler could comply with the request. Kessler turned to intercept, but his RIO (Radio Intercept Officer) had trouble with his radar and could not get a good vector to the F-111s from the AWACS crew. After a frustrating two minutes, Kessler managed to intercept and destroy the two MiGs, but not before one of the MiGs had opened fire on Jones’s plane. A shell pierced the fuselage of Jones’s strategic bomber and exploded inside the cockpit, instantly killing Jones’s navigator. The blast set Jones’s legs ablaze as shrapnel tore into him. Only Jones’s disciplined reaction — grabbing a fire extinguisher and dousing his blazing flight suit — saved his life. He then managed to eject.