But for the moment, Daoud was engulfed in a lake of fire. Only a madman would be out here alone. Only a pitiful soul — a man with absolutely nothing to lose — would take such risks, driving through a hellish landscape, risking death by an American smart bomb. Yet a magnet was drawing him forward. Senior Iraqi officials and Ba'ath party members and advisors had a standing— if covert — offer of safe refuge from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, son of the late president Hafez al-Assad, one of the most feared of all modern Arab dictators. So here he was, on the road to Damascus. He had come this far, and he could not go back.
Amidst the scorched earth of a forward Iraqi military outpost, he could see only charred bodies, melted wreckage, and utter carnage all around him. Now — here — staring out at this ghastly, incompreheasible vision of destruction, his eyes burned. His throat burned. His skin blistered as it baked. His filthy black T-shirt, covered in sand and dried blood and drenched in his own sweat, reeked with the stench of fear and fatigue. The heat was unbearable. He could smell the cooked flesh. He could taste the acrid smoke. But he could not breathe. He could not speak.
And then Daoud began to vomit. He vomited again and again and again, until he was down on his knees, doubled over in excruciating pain. His body convulsed in dry heaves, until he nearly collapsed, exhausted and dehydrated. His systems began to shut down. Yet he knew he could not stay out in the open. He had to keep focused. He had to keep moving. Or he would be hunted down and killed, and his vows would go unfulfilled.
Tariq handed out flashlights and clicked on his own.
He headed to the lobby of the Hotel Baghdad, motioning Bennett and McCoy to follow him closely and to guide Galishnikov and Sa'id, each of whom still wore the black hoods. Torrents of rain poured through a large gash in the left far wall, in what looked to be an old dining room. There were no tables or chairs in the room any longer, but shards of porcelain and glass dishes of some kind were scattered all over the wooden floor. It ap peared as though that corner of the building had been hit once by a mortar round or RPG and had never been repaired. Now it was wet, cold, and covered with mud.
The hotel's foyer and main lobby were around the corner from the dining room — damp, not soaked, but also quite cold. Bitter winter winds howled through the building, sending a chill down Bennett's spine, if no one else's. The place was eerie, to say the least. Bennett scanned the shadowy, cavernous rooms. Apparently built in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the hotel had once been quite beautiful and ornate. But everything about the place suggested it hadn't been used or inhabited in any way for at least a decade, if not more. A glass chandelier dangled overhead, barely connected to the ceiling by a fraying wire and completely covered with cobwebs and dust. Tattered old cloth-and-wood furniture lay scattered about the room — three couches, two coffee tables, and four overstuffed chairs whose stuffing had long ago disin tegrated.
An old Coca-Cola machine stood plugged in but not working in one corner. A stack of yellowed newspapers, all in Arabic, lay beside it. Badly mildewed Egyptian and Iraqi carpets covered sections of the floor, though several other large carpets were rolled up and leaning against the base of the once grand staircase that led up to a balcony on the second floor and then continued winding up to the third, fourth, and fifth floors above. Hideous green-and-yellow drapes covered all the windows and everything was covered in thick layers of dust and chunks of plaster falling from a damp, rotting ceiling.
Something inside Bennett wanted to explore a little with his flashlight and his Uzi. He wasn't entirely sure why. A few minutes before he'd been cursing the fact that he'd ever stepped into this godforsaken hellhole known as the Gaza Strip. Now, so long as no one was gunning for him, he suddenly had the urge to do a little exploring. Who knew what secrets this place might hold?
ELEVEN
Air France flight 1039 touched down in Mexico City.
A few minutes later, Nadir Sarukhi Hashemi disembarked with the other passengers and cleared through customs. Not with his given name, of course, and certainly not with his nom de guerre found anywhere on his passport. No one here knew him as the Viper. Nor did anyone here know that he was really a Palestinian.
He had no previous arrests, no outstanding warrants, no information of any kind on file with the Mexican authorities, Interpol, or the FBI. As far as the international law-enforcement system was concerned, Nadir Sarukhi Hashemi was "Mario Iabello," an Italian citizen, traveling on an Italian passport, a senior computer programmer working for Microsoft and in Mexico City for a small business management conference. They gave him no hassles. Indeed, they barely noticed him at all.
Nadir rented a Ford Taurus and drove to the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel and Towers, where he paid the valet with a crisp American fifty-dollar bill to park his car overnight. Next, he headed inside to reservations, then upstairs to a corner suite. He set up his laptop, checked his e-mails, and took a long hot shower. He watched the news from Gaza. The Americans were reeling. The world was stunned. The Israelis were preparing to move. It was going better than expected, and this was only the beginning.
One e-mail worried him, though. It was supposedly from "Antonio Cabrera," one of his Microsoft clients in Moscow. It was actually from Mohammed Jibril. The timetable had just been sped up. Rather than having a leisurely seven days to reach Atlanta and Savannah, he now had only four.
Nadir wasn't sure it was even possible. But what was he going to do, write back and say no?
It was 4:37 in the morning in Washington, 11:37 a.m. in Gaza.
Marine One touched down on the icy South Lawn as the freezing rains intensified and the National Weather Service began issuing severe winter storm warnings for the District of Columbia and most counties in Maryland and Virginia. A moment later, the backup chopper landed, as well, and Agent Sanchez breathed a sigh of relief.
"All units, Gambit is secure at the Ranch," Agent Sanchez said into her wrist-mounted microphone, once they were in the Oval Office and beginning to dry off.
Sanchez turned to the president, on the phone to the Residence to check in with his wife. The First Lady had been up for hours, tracking develop ments on television, getting regular updates from the Situation Room, and working the phones to alert family and friends to pray for the wounded and for the families of those who'd been killed.
"Mr. President, the vice president is on the way," Sanchez said, catching MacPherson's eye. "Where would you like everyone to gather?"
Bob Corsetti and Marsha Kirkpatrick entered into the room. A few sec onds later, Defense Secretary Trainor and Chuck Murray joined them.
The president told Sanchez to have the vice president meet them in the Situation Room in ten minutes. The rest of the group began going over a list of questions Corsetti had worked up. Had any of the DSS agents sur vived? Were Bennett and his team safe? How were they going to get them out? Should Murray hold a press conference? Should the president? What would they say? What could they say?
No one said a word.
Bennett felt sorry for his friends Galishnikov and Sa'id. They were busi nessmen, not criminals or commandos. They deserved better than this. They were used to the Plaza and the Ritz and the Waldorf Astoria. They were used to five-star hotels, not no-star hotels, and they certainly weren't used to being treated more like fugitives than like trusted allies, not since Galishnikov had emigrated to Israel, anyway. Still, neither had much of a choice, and they knew it, so they kept quiet.