“What do you mean?”
“Think about it — we’d be trying to delay him, trying to stall when the aircraft lands at Gitmo. Anything to keep them on the ground without rousing their suspicions. But he’s taken all that away from us. He’s going to execute a hostage every twenty minutes no matter what we do. Every twenty minutes until KSM is safely airborne.”
“They’re going to give him up, if it comes to that.”
Harry snorted. “Then everyone dies. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. Never have — even Hancock knows better than to start now.”
The look in Altmann’s eyes told him something different.
“What do you know?”
The older agent didn’t back down an inch, favoring him with a look made of steel. “You are still operating under my authorization, Nichols. Giving you authority to lead the assault on the theatre didn’t serve to extend your jurisdiction over the entire operation.”
He ran a hand over the stubble of his beard, his gaze darting around the casino — taking in the perimeter the LVMPD had established near the entrance to the theatre itself, officers with patrol rifles leveled holding the line. “And since I’m going to be leading the assault…if D.C. has another agenda in all this, I need to know about it.”
Altmann hesitated for a long moment before responding. “I could see it in the President’s eyes when he spoke of ‘other options.’ If time runs out, they will release Khaled Sheikh Mohammed.”
“Fools…” Harry murmured bitterly. Insulated in their own petty little world of bribery, blackmail, and backroom deals, the politicians couldn’t begin to comprehend an enemy who couldn’t be negotiated with. An enemy for whom the martyr’s death was the ultimate victory. “I want the LVMPD to seal down that perimeter out there, make it airtight. Get their snipers into the high ground — on the roofs of the surrounding resorts. Keep anyone else from slipping in under the wire.”
“Already in progress.”
He paused. “And if we’re dealing with soman…we need a way to treat it. The Agency trains with military-grade equipment, auto-injectors designed for the purpose.”
“What are you thinking?”
“The flyboys at Nellis might have a supply on-hand. They’d be the closest.”
“I’ll get a man out there. And in the meantime?”
“We get eyes and ears back in the theatre.”
“Where could this plane be coming from, general?” Hancock looked up over the rim of his glasses, staring up at the screen on the wall of the Situation Room. The figure of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs filled the screen, a trim white-haired man in his early sixties. His floral Hawaiian shirt was an incongruous touch, the most informal Hancock had ever seen him in all of his years in office. A well-deserved vacation interrupted.
There was a slight satellite delay before General Neil Rosenberg responded. “Almost anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, Mr. President. Perhaps even someplace as far away as Cape Verde or the Canaries, depending on the airframe. The terrorists have apparently demanded that we refuel the plane while it’s on the ground at Guantanamo, so…”
“It could mean they don’t have the range for a round trip,” the Marine Corps commandant added from his seat just down the table from the President.
“I concur, General Nealen — that is the most likely interpretation. Or it could simply be a ruse.”
Hancock cleared his throat, making an exasperated gesture. “So…what are your recommendations, gentlemen?”
On-screen, the figure of General Rosenberg could be seen to shake his head. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists, Mr. President — that’s been the policy of the United States for decades.”
The President snarled an obscenity. “We’ve never faced this situation before, and everyone here knows it. They’ve brought down an airliner over an American city — if they did it once, they can probably do it again. And the carnage if a rescue attempt goes wrong…I have to decide whether I can even afford to take that risk.”
“What are you saying, Mr. President?” Cahill asked from across the conference table, using his title once again in the presence of the generals.
“I’m saying that freeing Khaled Sheikh Mohammed in exchange for the lives of the hostages not only is on the table — it may be the most viable option available to us.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” Gilpin murmured, the words calming her. She cradled her aide’s body in her arms, brushing the young woman’s hair back from her ashen face.
“Shut up!” one of the terrorists snapped, speaking in clear, almost unaccented English — young eyes glaring out from behind his mask.
“I will fear no evil,” she continued, staring him in the eye. “Thy rod and Thy staff, they—”
His rifle butt slammed into her collarbone with a sickening crunch, numbing pain shooting through her.
She bit her tongue, the metallic taste of blood pervading her mouth as she struggled not to cry out. Dimly, as if through a fog, she heard someone cry out, a familiar voice, sobbing in terror. Pleading for his life.
“Please, please…no.”
Gilpin opened her eyes to see the figure of a young man kneeling in front of the terrorists. Lucas…was it? She could have cursed herself in that moment for forgetting his name. Still in college, he had manned the phone banks for her through the final weeks of the campaign, putting in twelve-hour days. Don’t thank me. This is our country…
Gilad Cohen could see it all from where he knelt, across the platform — among the second group of hostages. They had separated he and Gilpin when they emerged from the backstage, throwing her down beside her wounded aide and kicking the congresswoman in the stomach as she lay there.
Protect her. But how? His weapon was gone, along with the headset he had used to communicate with the remnants of his security team.
He glanced up the steps of the theatre — seeing one of his men laying dead there perhaps fifteen feet up, his body still draped over one of the seats. Where he had fallen.
His suit jacket was stained with his own blood and gaping open, revealing the butt of his sidearm tucked just within.
Fifteen feet. Cohen took another look at the terrorists as they moved back and forth. He’d be dead before he could reach it…and even if he could — even if he got off a shot, to what end? He couldn’t tell whether they were wearing suicide vests, but the bombs between his group and Gilpin’s were proof enough of what would happen if he acted in haste.
A quick death. Perhaps it would be more merciful that way, than one by one, begging for their lives.
“Until the meddling of the Zionists is at an end, until America’s imperialism has been defeated,” he heard the terrorists’ leader declaim, looking into the lens of the camera, “…your people will continue to die.”
The gun came up…
“Do you have daylight yet?” It was a whisper, nothing more — Thomas’s voice coming over his earpiece.
“Negative,” Harry replied, watching the small screen in his hands. Placing the camera would be the tricky part, keeping it out of sight of the terrorists while securing a good view of their positions.
The Bellagio’s security team had assured them that the maze of lighting in the theatre’s ceiling would be more than enough to keep it hidden.
“Harry, I’m picking up on some transmissions coming from the theatre.” Carol’s voice, from the Bellagio’s underground security center where he had dispatched her. “It sounds as if Tarik Abdul Muhammad is using two-way radio to communicate with his team. I’m going to see if we can intercept the transmissions and figure out what he’s saying. Fort Meade is monitoring for outbound calls, with Langley in the loop on that.”