More ISI men in the hallway fired into the elevator now. Ryan was pinned by the dead man, but Caruso had dropped low to the floor and was engaging targets. He caught a half glimpse of General Rehan running away, up the hall in the opposite direction of Embling’s apartment, but he had to focus on the men shooting at him and Jack. He shot another of the general’s security detail, hitting the man in the lower abdomen, and with another three-round volley he chased the remaining men out of his line of fire, sending them up the hallway, where they disappeared into the stairwell near Embling’s flat.
Rehan had already headed into the stairwell, presumably to another floor to take an elevator down.
“Get this big motherfucker off me!” Ryan shouted.
Dom helped roll the dead man over, and immediately he saw blood on Jack’s face. “Are you hit?”
Jack ignored the crack he had taken to his right eye and instead reached down to his leg. He’d felt a round brush him there as it passed a fraction of an inch from his knee. He found the hole in his pants, reached inside it, and felt around for blood. When his fingers came back clean he said, “I’m good. Let’s go!” And they took off toward Embling’s apartment, afraid of what they might find.
Inside, Dominic and Jack ran to al Darkur. The Pakistani major was having no luck trying to cut his cuffs off with a small piece of glass. Caruso pulled out a folding knife and made short work of the plastic restraints, and he and Ryan helped Mohammed up to his feet.
“Where is Embling?” Ryan had to shout it over the ringing in his ears after the gunfire in the hallway.
Al Darkur shook his head. “Rehan killed him.”
That sank in for just a moment before Caruso grabbed al Darkur by the arm and said, “You are coming with us.”
“Of course.”
Dom waved to the chopper, and Hicks peeled his borrowed helo away, heading off with Chavez in the backseat.
Alarms sounded in the hallway here on the 108th floor, but the elevators were still in service. Mohammed, Jack, and Dom had no doubt there would be police in the elevators by now, but no one could have ascended more than a couple dozen floors of stairs since the shooting started, so all three ran to the stairwell and began heading down. They descended eighteen flights in three minutes of frantic running and leaping. Once down to the ninetieth floor they boarded an elevator with a few Middle Eastern businessmen who were slow to evacuate, complaining they had not smelled smoke and doubted there was any real fire. But al Darkur’s bruised face, Ryan’s bloody eye and nose, and the sopping sweat on the faces of all three of the men shocked the Middle Easterners.
When one of the men lifted his camera phoneӀon to take a photo of al Darkur, Dom Caruso snatched the device from the man’s hand. Another made to shove Dom back, but Ryan drew his pistol and waved the men back against the wall.
As the elevator dropped at forty-five miles an hour, the Pakistani major and the two American operatives pulled the phones from all three men, stomped them with their heels, and then stopped the carriage on the tenth floor. Here they ordered the men off, and then hit the button for the lower of two basement parking garages.
Fifteen minutes later, they walked out of the parking exit and into the sunlight. There the three men melted in with the crowd; they passed police and firefighters and other first responders rushing into the building, and headed out into the hot afternoon streets to find a taxi.
While Jack, Dom, and al Darkur raced to the airport, Chavez had Hicks drop him off in a parking lot near the beach. Hicks returned alone to the airport, and Ding took a taxi back to the Kempinski to break down all the surveillance equipment in the bungalow.
Their operation against Rehan here in Dubai was compromised, and that was putting it mildly. There would be no way the three men could go back to the bungalow and wait for Rehan to return; the heat would be turned up too high after the massive shootout. There would be bodies on the evening news in a city that did not have much in the way of crime, and the comings and goings of all foreigners would face tighter scrutiny. Ding had instructed Hicks to call Captain Reid and have the Gulfstream ready to go asap, but Chavez wouldn’t be on it himself. He’d need a few hours to clean up all traces of their activities at the Kempinski, and he’d just have to find another way out of the country after that.
Hicks landed the chopper right where he’d picked it up, then met Sherman at the bottom of the stairs to the Gulfstream. She’d given the man working the desk at the FBO ten thousand euros when he’d come looking for the missing helicopter, and she felt reasonably certain he’d keep his mouth shut until they were wheels-up.
Once Jack, Dom, and Mohammed arrived in their taxi, they boarded the plane, and Helen Reid called the tower to let them know they were ready to execute their flight plan.
Their customs departure had been taken care of by Ms. Sherman, with the help of another ten thousand euros.
They flew Mohammed al Darkur to Istanbul. He would make his own way back to Peshawar. They all agreed it would be dangerous for him to return to his home country. If Rehan was willing to take a step as big as his Dubai attack, there was no question he would work to have al Darkur killed as soon as the major returned. But Mohammed assured the Americans he knew a place where he could lie low, away from the elements of the ISI that were plotting against the civilian leadership. He also promised them he would find where Sam Driscoll was being kept and report back as soon as possible.
58
Four days after returning from Dubai, Jack Ryan Jr. had an appointment that he could not cancel. It was November 6, Election Day, and Jack headed up to Baltimore in the late morning to be with his family.
Jack Ryan Sr. headed down to his local polling place in the morning with Cathy, surrounded by reporters. After that he returned home to spend the day with his family, with plans to head down to the Marriott Waterfront to give his acceptance speech that evening.
Or his concession speech, depending on the results in a few key battleground states.
The Clark controversy had hurt him, there was no denying this. Every show from 60 Minutes to Entertainment Tonight had found an angle on the story, and every talking head on the news had something to say about it. Ryan took the high road throughout the last few weeks of his campaign, he’d made his statements regarding his friend, and he’d done his best to frame the story as a political attack on him, Jack Ryan, and not honest justice.
This worked with his base, and it swayed some undecided. But the unanswered questions as to the actual relationship between Jack Ryan and the mysterious man on the run from the government tipped many undecided toward Edward Kealty. The media framed the Ryan — Clark relationship as if the latter were the personal assassin for the former.
And whatever one could say about President Kealty, there was certainly no chance he possessed that particular skeleton in his closet.
When Jack Junior arrived at his parents’ house in the early afternoon, he drove through the security cordon, and a few members of the press took a picture of the yellow Hummer with Jack behind the wheel, but his windows were tinted and he wore aviator sunglasses.
When he came in through the kitchen he saw his dad standing there, alone in his shirtsleeves.