With a click, it was armed.
Khan held up his arm. “Then you will die with me.”
Jake was squeezing the trigger, ready to blow the man to Hell, when he saw the suicide vest. He couldn’t shoot now. The only thing stopping the detonator from activating was the pressure from Khan’s finger. If Jake took the shot, Khan’s finger would relax, the spring-activated switch would push forward triggering the detonator, and the vest would explode. At a distance of thirty feet, Jake might survive the blast, but the men coming down the stairwell would die.
A suicide vest could do a great deal of damage to people, especially when it’s been loaded with shrapnel…nails, pellets, glass. But what it couldn’t do was bring down the museum and, based on the small size of the vest, wouldn’t do much structural damage to the basement. Jake had already ensured the safety of those above, what few remained. He played it through in his mind, after his phone call, the entire area would have been cordoned off and everyone — men, women, and the thousands of children — herded far enough into Central Park to remain clear of danger in the event Jake failed to stop Khan.
But now he had to figure out how to get out of the subbasement alive. The pendulum had swung and Khan held the upper hand.
For the moment.
Jake didn’t know what type of squad was on the other side of the exit door. It could be New York City beat cops, or a SWAT team. He hoped it was a team trained to contain this type of situation. But, whoever it was, he was glad they were here. It gave him the distraction he needed. Khan was preoccupied with whoever was in the stairwell and retreated toward the center of the basement.
Jake took advantage of the situation and backtracked through the dark corridors, working his way through a maze of boilers, water tanks, air handlers, generators, and diesel fuel tanks until he spotted Khan sitting against the wire cage of the electrical service area. Khan chanted something Jake couldn’t understand, but he knew its meaning. Not a good sign. Jake realized Khan had resigned to die.
Khan held the dead-man’s switch in his injured right hand and his pistol in his left hand resting it on his injured leg. Jake aimed his weapon at Khan. This time the terrorist could not get away. A penance had to be paid for all the lives he took. The people in Paris. The two young women he dumped into the sea. Khan wasn't just ruthless, he was evil.
The squad stormed through the exit door.
All hell broke loose.
CHAPTER 72
It took three hours for the rescue workers to find Jake. He was pinned beneath a water storage tank that was blown off its supports from the shock wave of the blast. He was alive. Considering how close he was to Khan when the New York City SWAT team unleashed a hailstorm of bullets, he was lucky.
After the first barrage of bullets, he dove to the basement floor behind a double-wall of solid concrete blocks used to support the water tank. The blast was almost immediate, toppling the tank and wedging him between it and the wall…unconscious from the concussion wave.
Two SWAT members were killed from head trauma, the rest suffered the same injury as Jake, temporary deafness and disorientation. The same effect as a flash-bang in confined quarters.
While he lay there waiting for the first responders to dig through the rubble, locate him, move the tank, and pull him free, he could think of only one thing.
Ian Collins.
Unfinished business.
Jake had gone rogue and left Bentley out of the loop until the last minute. Off the reservation as he heard it described many times. His phone call wasn’t well received by Bentley. The director said nothing except he’d handle the evacuation. The tone in his voice relayed his dismay with the situation. But as Wiley reminded him the last time they spoke, Jake didn’t take orders from Bentley.
He’d successfully completed the mission, but by whose measure? Bentley’s mission was to capture Khan and put him through rigorous interrogation in an attempt to get at the terrorists further up the al Qaeda food chain. Wiley wanted Khan dead, his note to Jake was clear. Wiley told Jake on the first day that the number one priority in his business was to meet the objective. The how didn’t matter.
Jake had followed Wiley’s instructions. Even though he didn’t technically kill him, Khan was dead — a failed martyr on a failed mission. But he still felt an allegiance to the CIA director. Bentley had been the one who had taken him under his wing. Not once, but twice. The first time while Jake was a naval intelligence officer on the USS Mount Whitney. Bentley had recruited Jake to work directly under him at the Pentagon. The second time just seven months ago when Jake’s world turned upside down in Savannah, Bentley recruited him to go after the man he thought, they all thought, had killed Beth. Now the truth had been revealed, Ian Collins was the killer. And Ian Collins would pay with his life because now it was personal.
The New York City Fire Department used a pneumatic jack to push the tank away from the concrete wall and pulled Jake to freedom. The dust from the explosion had caked his clothes and face with a powder white dust. He’d cupped his undershirt over his nose to help filter the air until the sediment settled to the basement floor. FDNY tried to put him on a gurney but Jake refused.
One of the firemen told Jake they didn’t know he was in the basement until Senator Richard Boden sent them back down with instructions not to come back up until they’d found him. Seems Boden might have had a change of heart since the funeral.
Smacking his gum, Boden greeted Jake on the loading dock while armies of reporters from the media waited outside for them to appear.
“I’m not going to do it.” Jake wiped the dirt from around his face. “I work in the Clandestine Service. The last thing Director Bentley needs is for you to make a public spectacle and expose the identity of one of his operatives.”
Boden frowned. “Mr. Pendleton, you’re not even supposed to be in this country. As a matter of fact, this wasn’t even CIA jurisdiction. So you have a choice to make. One, you can walk outside with me and become a real American hero—”
“Or what, you’ll have your goons haul me off?”
“Or two, you can kiss your CIA job goodbye. As a matter of fact, I’ll make it my personal business to make sure you never work in this country again.”
Jake saw through the senator’s ulterior motive. He didn’t have a change of heart, it was election year and the voters were only days away from going to the polls. A feather in his cap at this eleventh hour would cinch his reelection.
“Senator? You know, the way I see it is like this. I’m going to walk out of here and you’re not going to do a damn thing about it. Because if you so much as think about it, I will go to the press and explain how if you had had your way, I would be in jail and the museum would be in total ruin, thousands of innocent children and one dumbass senator would be dead. Now get the hell out of my way or you can kiss your reelection goodbye.”
CHAPTER 73
Jake studied the historic landmark as the limousine approached the north entrance. Bentley had casually mentioned he and Wiley would be here for a meeting, which was good, Jake wanted to talk to both men.
This was his first visit to The Greenbrier, but he was familiar with the resort’s history, as were all Annapolis graduates. Beneath the resort was a massive underground bunker that, during the Cold War, was meant to serve as an emergency shelter for the United States Congress. Although never used for that purpose, the bunker was readied, maintained, and staffed for more than thirty years for the government in the event of a national or international crisis. If that had occurred, the property would have been conveyed to government use and would’ve become the emergency location for the legislative branch thus allowing the United States government to continue uninterrupted operation.