A split second later, McCoy was out of the limousine, helping Tariq open the back doors. Together, Bennett, Tariq, and McCoy moved Donny Man-cuso's body into the back of the van and covered him with a sheet. Then, apologizing to Sa'id and Galishnikov that the place where they were going next they were not authorized to see, McCoy handed black cloth hoods to both men, and directed them to move quickly into the van. McCoy then asked Bennett to guide the two older men and make sure they got there safely while Tariq got into the VW's driver's seat and cranked up the heat for his shivering guests.
With a nickname like the Batmobile, Bennett was half hoping for some kind of state-of-the-art spy vehicle right out of a Hollywood special-effects shop. But as he glanced around at the shabby interior, it quickly became clear that nothing could have been further from the truth. The VW had no bulletproof shields, no front-mounted machine guns. It had no ejector seat or night-vision front windshield. There was no satellite dish on the roof, or racks of high-tech weaponry to play with. It was just an ugly old van, strewn with recent Arabic newspapers, empty soda cans, a rather generous supply of cigarette ashes, and four new passengers, all of whom felt hunted and alone.
Galishnikov and Sa'id stayed low in the back, unable to see a thing even
if they'd been allowed to. Bennett got in the front passenger seat. His eyes were riveted on McCoy, still outside. She was gathering all the weapons, ammunition, and electronics gear she could and transferring them from the limousine to the van. She popped the limo's trunk and opened a steel box. Bennett saw her grab several small objects, stuff them in her pockets, and then back away several yards from the car. Then she gave Tariq a signal and h revved the VWs engine.
Bennett glanced back down the road. No one was approaching, but time had to be running out. What in the world was McCoy up to?
Let's go, let's do it!" Sanchez yelled.
"You got it, ma'am — we're out of here," the pilot shouted back over the thwap, thwap, thwap of the rotors and the chopper's three-thousand-horsepower engines.
MacPherson knew full well Marine One was virtually impregnable. It bore stunning array of cutting-edge combat avionics — all of which were highly classified — including protections against the electromagnetic pulse of a nu-clear blast and against attacks by multiple surface-to-air missiles. But it wasn't missiles that gave him pause. It was the ice building up on the rotors. Nev ertheless, he saw the pilot give the thumbs-up to the ground crew, and the Sikorsky Sea King lifted off and headed northwest.
McCoy held up her right hand. Five, four, three, two, one.
She plunged her left hand into one of her pockets, pulled out what looked like a hand grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the open side door of the limo. Then a second. Then a third. Then she jumped into the side door of the van and slammed it shut. Tariq floored it and they were gone.
Perhaps they weren't typical grenades. Perhaps they were on a timer or a delay of some sort. Bennett had no idea. Nor did he ask He was just grateful that the VW was picking up speed. It had opened up i distance of at least a few hundred yards. Then they heard it. The first explosion blew out the limousine's windows. It blew off the doors and the roof. It sent glass and shrapnel flying in every direction. A fraction of a second later came the second explosion, louder than the first. This one engulfed Snapshot in a fireball that could be seen for miles.
Flames roared from the chassis, from the engine block, as billows of thick smoke poured into the sky. Tariq braked hard and span the VW hard to die left, down a side street and out of visual range of Snapshot. Then came the third explosion, louder than either of the other two. It shattered windows a block and a half away. They could hear it echo up and down the coast.
McCoy didn't look back. She fiddled with her wireless radio gear and tried to connect with the DSS agents still pinned down. Nothing. She kept switch ing frequencies. Still nothing.
"Snapshot to DSS agents. Snapshot to DSS agents. Please respond. I repeat, please respond. Can you hear me?"
She strained to pick up even the slightest sound. There was nothing but static and hiss. McCoy feared the worst. Was it really possible that the entire protective detail from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security
had been captured or killed? Were they so badly wounded that they were unable to respond to her messages? How could that really be true? What about the undercover guys? Why weren't they responding? She'd covered every frequency. So had the Black Tower command center. But the fact remained — no one was responding, and there could only be one reason why.
Tariq turned down another side street, then raced into an alleyway.
He screeched to a halt behind an abandoned five-story, boarded-up hotel known as the Hotel Baghdad. A broken neon sign out front read Vacancy in Arabic and in English, though all of the letters were long since burnt out. They could hear the wail of approaching sirens. They could see crowds of young men running for the beach road to see if the Americans had finally been caught and killed. But in the rush for safety, what Tariq didn't see— but should have — was the fifteen-year-old boy in the fourth-floor window of the apartment building across the street. He was peering out at them from behind some tattered blue curtains. He was holding a cell phone, and he was dialing.
TEN
The earth poured forth fire, as the demons below found their way of escape.
It was noon, but there was no sun. It was winter, but it was not cold. Into the thick, black, midday sky climbed the howling, raging, deafening firestorms. Up, up into the darkness — thirty, forty stories high — shot the flames of fury.
Daoud Juma was no longer twenty-six. No longer was he commander of Saddam's fedayeen. No longer was he on the run, escaping a wounded, occupied Baghdad in a stolen French Renault — packed with dozens of cans of extra fuel, bottles of water, and boxes of food and ether supplies — racing west toward the border of Syria, surrounded by oil well fires, burning wild and deadly.
In his mind, in his heart, Daoud was suddenly back in the desert sands of Kuwait. His thoughts raced back in time, to April of 1991. He was a child, just seven years old, and he was standing over the charred bodies of his mother and father. His eyes began welling up with tears and he began to weep. Through his tears he was staring out at hundreds of oil well fires, Saddam Hussein's parting gift to the people of Kuwait and her neighbors.
At over 2,200 degrees, the great furnaces were quickly turning the desert sands into glass. They consumed more than 5 million barrels of oil a day, and already the infernos had been raging for nearly a month.
In an instant, in the blink of an eye, Daoud was transported back to the nightmare of his youth. Not so long ago, he and his family had all been together, peaceful and content. They lived a sparse but decent life. His father managed oil wells along the Iraqi border, not far from Basra. His mother raised him and wrote letters to Daoud's three older brothers, conscripted into the military. Then came August 2, 1990—the beginning of Saddam Hus sein's "liberation" of Kuwait. Then came January 16, 1991—the beginning of the air war, the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. Then, early in the morning of February 24, 1991—the thirty-eighth day of the bombing cam paign — came the start of the one-hundred-hour ground war. The Americans and their allies invaded. They polluted the Iraqi motherland, and in retali ation Iraqi forces set fire to more than six hundred Kuwaiti oil wells, and changed Daoud Juma's destiny forever.