"Freeze, asshole!"
Haddad was facing the altar, his back to the entrance of the room. The AK lay inches from his right hand.
They'll question me. Water board me. Sooner or later I'll tell them what I know.
He began to recite the Shahada, the prayer of acceptance and surrender.
"In the name of Allah, the magnificent… "
Haddad grabbed the rifle and started to turn. Nick and Selena and Ronnie and Lamont all fired at the same time. The bullets ripped through him, spraying blood and bone and tissue over the altar and the wall behind. The box flew out of his hand as his body was driven back against the altar. The AK dropped from lifeless fingers. He fell against the altar and slipped to the floor.
"Stupid," Lamont said.
Selena walked over to the box and picked it up. It felt warm in her hands.
"The altar was moved," Nick said. "There's a space under it."
"I think this was in it," Selena held up the box.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"What else could it be?" Selena said. "The Grail must be inside."
"Open it up. Let's see," Ronnie said.
Selena turned the box around in her hands.
"I don't see any way to do it."
"We'll figure it out later," Nick said. "We need to get out of here. It will be light soon."
"Let me search this guy before we go," Lamont said.
He went to Haddad's body and started going through his clothes. There was nothing except a well used pocket copy of the Koran, a scrap of paper and some Syrian and Iraqi currency. Lamont pocketed the items.
"Done."
Nick looked at Haddad's face.
"I'll be damned. This is the guy Stephanie showed us. Our spymaster."
"Looks like his spying days are over," Lamont said.
"Time to boogie," Nick said. "Selena, you take care of that box."
They followed the passage back to the library, stepped over the bodies of the students and climbed back to the surface. It was still dark. A fire had started nearby from the shelling. Whatever was burning threw enough light to make the night vision units useless.
Nick stood by the open trap door and called for extraction.
"Spooky One, Bird Boy."
"Copy, Bird Boy. Ready to fly?"
"Affirmative."
"Copy that, I have your location. Out."
"Spooky One?" Selena asked. "Bird Boy?"
"It wasn't me that thought it up. You can thank Hood."
An artillery shell landed nearby. In the brief light of the explosion, Lamont saw shadowy figures moving toward the church. They had weapons.
"We've got company," he said. "Looks like a dozen or so. They're armed."
"I thought this was too easy," Ronnie said.
"Coming here?" Nick asked.
"Looks like it. I don't think they want to borrow a book."
Nick looked around. The only way out was through the side door they'd used to enter.
"We make a break for it, they'll see us."
"They have to come through that door, just like we did," Ronnie said.
"Yeah. Better hope they don't have an RPG with them."
CHAPTER 55
The back wall of the building was still intact and would protect them from behind. They retreated part of the way into the church and formed a line facing the doorway where the rebels had to enter. Broken masonry gave them some cover from rifle fire. It wouldn't protect them from grenades or from an RPG. They crouched behind the fallen stones, waiting.
Nick lay next to Selena. "Don't shoot until most of them have made it through the door. You see someone with anything more than a rifle, take him down first."
Selena's mouth was dry. She waited, breathing to slow down the adrenaline pumping through her.
A man with a cloth sweatband wrapped around his head came through the doorway, crouching low and swiveling his head from side to side. He had an AK. He said something over his shoulder and three more men followed him in. They moved toward the open entrance to the stairs and stopped. Selena aimed at the one nearest the opening. She felt Nick's hand on her arm and looked over at him. He shook his head.
Not yet.
Five more men came through the door. The first four stood in a group arguing about something. Nick waited but no one else came in.
"Now," he said.
Selena opened fire. She was aware of the others shooting. The night lit with flashes from the guns.
The hail of fire took down all four men by the trap door. The others dove for cover. In seconds, the sound of AK's mixed with the coughing of the MP7s. One of the rebels lifted his rifle over the rock he was hiding behind and fired blindly, spraying bullets in their direction. Selena shot off his hand. She could hear him screaming over the sound of the guns.
She'd never been in a firefight like this. Hundreds of rounds struck the rubble around her, sending chips of rock and masonry flying everywhere. Her gun locked open. She ducked down, ejected and jammed in another magazine, cocked the gun and waited for a lull in the shooting before she looked again.
She was looking at the wrong end of an RPG launcher.
"RPG!" she yelled.
The grenade screamed over her head and impacted against the back of the church, blowing a large opening in the wall. Selena raised up and shot the man with the launcher. It was a temporary reprieve. Someone else would pick it up.
It was only a question of time before more rebels came or they ran out of ammo. Either way they were cooked if they stayed where they were.
Ronnie crawled over to him.
"This is not good, Kemo Sabe."
"Yeah. We'll go out through that back wall. Once we're in the street, we can keep them busy until our ride gets here. Ronnie, Selena, you go first. Lamont and I will cover you. Once you're through, keep them off our six."
The volume of fire coming at them increased and then fell away.
Reloading, Selena thought.
"Go," Nick said. He and Lamont raised up and began laying down fire.
Selena jumped up with Ronnie and ran in a crouch toward the opening blasted out of the back wall. She tripped and went down hard, rolled and came up again several steps behind Ronnie. He reached the opening, went through and then began firing over her head. She made it to the wall and through and moved to the other side.
She looked around the edge of the opening and began shooting at the piles of debris shielding the rebels. Nick and Lamont broke cover and ran toward them. She fired over their heads and prayed they'd make it. Rounds from the rebel guns were whistling through the opening and chipping stone from around it. Nick had almost reached her when he was hit and went down. He stumbled to his feet and made it the rest of the way.
"I'm all right. Glanced off the armor."
He took out his radio.
"Spooky One, this is Bird Boy. The LZ is hot, say again, LZ is hot."
"Copy, Bird Boy. ETA two minutes."
"Moving now. Out."
Behind the church was a street lined with the shattered trunks of trees. They were in a neighborhood of shops and cafés. Across the way was the remains of a two-story high shopping mall. The concrete façade was pockmarked and chipped, the big display windows long gone, but the building was still intact.
"In there," Nick said. "The roof's flat, it's perfect."
They ran across the street. Bullets kicked up pieces of pavement around their feet. They made it through into the building. Behind them, men were shouting.
Ahead of them an escalator led upward. They ran up the silent steps. The second floor was strewn with the remains of displays from the shops lining the sides of the mall. Several broken mannequins leaned in grotesque angles through the shattered windows of a clothing store. Glass crunched under their feet. The night sky showed through gaping holes in the roof.