He was frustrated with himself not only because of the precious minutes he was wasting chasing after old computer codes, but because he had been so terribly wrong about Khalil and Salman. “Bad, bad, bad dog,” he muttered. He wished his wife were here. She would understand his frustration, and help him through it.
The apartment door burst open, and he heard Liz and Todd racing down the hall, but he was almost there with the right computer line so he didn’t look up.
Suddenly Liz was over his shoulder. “Did you shut it off?” she demanded, out of breath.
Todd grabbed the binoculars and went to the window.
“I’m on it,” Rencke told her.
“Did you call the fire department?”
“Not until I find the right line—” Rencke said. Then it came up: the cross-reference that isolated Scott Place off Thirty-second “I got it. Call them.”
Elizabeth dialed 911. “How long will it take?” she asked Rencke.
“I don’t know. Thirty seconds, maybe longer.”
“Do it,” Liz said. “I want to report a fire,” she told the emergency operator.
Rencke highlighted the line and hit Enter. Soon power to the entire block would shut down; then it would be up to Mac.
“It’s the Middle East Center for Advanced Studies,” Elizabeth said. “Just off Thirty-second Street in Georgetown. Scott Place.” She went over to the window. “Anything yet?” she asked her husband.
“Nothing,” Todd said.
“There’s not much smoke, but there are a lot of people who might be trapped inside, so hurry,” she told the operator. She broke the connection and speed-dialed another number. “Call our guys at the embassy and get them over here,” she told Rencke. “I’m calling the Bureau. And get DC Metro too.”
“I’m on it,” Rencke said. He speed-dialed The Watch, which was the operations center over at Langley. When the shit started hitting the fan, they would need all the help they could get.
And all the witnesses.
SEVENTY-THREE
There were no bottles left in Yarnell’s old wine cellar, but the racks that had held several thousand different vintages in a climate-controlled environment were still in rows and columns like shelves in a library. The four-inch-thick, solid oak door had held up well under the small Semtex charge, but the modern electronic lock had not.
McGarvey’s ears were still ringing from what he figured was a flash-bang grenade that had gone off about halfway up the corridor. He’d been last through the door into the old wine cellar behind Katy and the prince, so he had taken the brunt of the blast. But for the moment they were safe here.
“What’s he trying to do?” Salman demanded, shrilly. “Kill us all?” He wasn’t so arrogant now.
“That’s exactly what he means to do,” McGarvey said. Katy had stumbled when he shoved her through the open door, and he had to help her to her feet. She was shaky on her legs, and she held her gut with one hand while steadying herself against her husband with the other.
“If you mean to get us out of here, darling, right now would be as good a time as any,” she said.
McGarvey was frightened. “Is it the baby?”
She looked up at him, her eyes round and bright in the dim light from the corridor. She appeared frail and vulnerable. She nodded. “Maybe,” she said. “He hit me in the stomach, and I was bleeding for a while.”
For a second he was almost as afraid for his own sanity as he was for Katy and the baby. Afraid that he would do something in a stupid rage that would get them all killed. But he’d never lost his head before, and it wasn’t about to happen now. This was no longer only about Khalil.
He and Katy were on one side of the open door, while Salman was crouched in the darkness on the other side. “You stupid American bastard,” the prince said, his voice low, menacing. He looked like a wild animal ready to spring. “You brought this down on yourself. You all did.” He took a quick look out into the corridor.
“Go out there and he’ll kill you,” McGarvey warned.
“It’s never been personal. But with you it’s different. Ever since you disgraced Osama and blasphemed the name of Allah.”
“Al-Quaida wants to get rid of your government, and yet you people help them,” McGarvey said.
“You don’t get it,” Salman practically shouted. “The Arabian Peninsula is for Arabians. Not infidels.”
“Then tell us to leave.”
“Not until the oil is gone,” Khalil shouted from the end of the corridor.
McGarvey grabbed Katy’s arm and fell back with her, away from the doorway, shielding her with his body an instant before Khalil sprayed the corridor with automatic weapon fire. Bullets slammed through the empty wine racks, ricocheting off the concrete walls, fragments flying everywhere.
McGarvey was hit low in the left shoulder. He grunted with the shock of impact.
“Kirk, my God, you’re hit,” Katy cried.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, urgently. He shoved her away and went to the doorway, where he stuck his gun around the corner and fired six shots into the corridor before he pulled back. He ejected the spent magazine, slapped another in its place, and cycled the slide.
Salman was watching him, wide-eyed.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Khalil taunted. He fired a second short burst, but then the lights went out, plunging them into nearly complete darkness.
The basement was utterly silent for just a moment, until something moved across from McGarvey. It was Salman.
“It’s me,” he shouted. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Don’t do it,” McGarvey shouted, but it was too late. The light was too dim to see anything, but he heard the prince bolting out the door and into the corridor.
Khalil let him get only a few steps outside the wine cellar before he fired. Salman’s body was flung back into the wine cellar, crashing into one of the wine racks.
McGarvey immediately stuck his gun around the door frame and fired four shots as fast as he could pull them off. He thought he heard a muffled cry of pain, but he couldn’t be sure.
“One down, two to go.” Khalil’s voice came out of the darkness. “Unless, of course, you want to send your wife out. It’ll just be you and me. I promise I won’t hurt her — again.”
McGarvey figured that the terrorist was in one of the rooms off the corridor, out of the line of fire. “Turn the lights back on, and I’ll send her out,” he called.
Katy whimpered something, but he reached back with his free hand and touched her cheek. She quieted immediately.
“I didn’t turn the lights—” Khalil cut himself off in midsentence. He had made a mistake.
McGarvey seized on it immediately. Otto was across the street. He had sent a message. Liz was probably over there too. She would have been the one to figure out his plan of escape, which depended for its success on Darby Yarnell’s paranoia about his wine collection. The man had installed not only climate-control equipment down here, but he had also installed an alarm system.
And a fire suppression system. Sprinklers.
McGarvey thought he heard a siren very faintly, but it was there. If the fire department had already been called, they wouldn’t come inside unless an alarm in the building went off.
He reached around the door frame, fired off a couple of shots, then grabbed Katy and hauled her farther away from the door.
Khalil did not return the fire.
McGarvey took out his cigarette lighter, lit the flame, and held it up toward the ceiling, providing a small circle of light.
Katy was alarmed. “What are you doing?” she demanded. Her eyes darted to the doorway. “He can see us.”