Sixteen minutes.
They started toward four. The first attacker was silent, dressed in gray. He came out of the shadows with something dark in his right hand. Nick shot him. The MP-5 shattered the silence of the confined space. The body tumbled past them down the stairs.
"They know we're here now. Move."
Floor five. The doors opened before they reached the landing. Three more men came out, firing into the stairwell. Pistols, not knives. The assassins had gone modern.
Selena couldn't get a clear shot. The stairwell filled with concrete chips and fragments of metal. Above her, Nick and Ronnie fired. She smelled cordite and heated brass. She reached the landing. Bodies lay on the cement. Her steps made footprints in blood.
She heard Monroe behind her. They ran up the stairs.
At the seventh floor they left three more dead. Selena's legs ached by the time they reached the eleventh floor and the next attack. This time, it came from below. Monroe crouched on the steps and fired down the stairwell. Selena saw figures below, muzzle flashes. She fired. She kept firing. Someone toppled backwards. She reached for a magazine.
A shot and Monroe went down, headfirst on the steps. She heard shots above. A figure leapt over Monroe and came straight at her. She threw the gun at him and he was on her. Kick to the leg, she blocked, parried with a stiff armed strike, landed, felt a blow to her kidney, countered with a forearm strike, felt her left arm go numb from a hard blow to her neck, drove her right fist up under his ribcage to strike at the heart.
The man went down, convulsing.
Selena ignored him. She bent and felt Monroe's neck for a pulse. Erratic. Still alive. Unconscious. Her arm tingled as feeling flowed back in. She picked up her MP-5 and inserted a new magazine. She worked the bolt and breathed.
Ready.
Her pulse hammered. She was wired, like being plugged into a high power line. Above her it was suddenly quiet.
"Selena. Lucas."
Nick's voice. She yelled up the stairs. "Monroe's hit and down. I'm coming up."
She stepped over bodies on the stairs. They were at the twelfth floor. Nick looked at his watch.
Seven minutes.
"We'll come back for him. Get ready."
They crowded to the side. Nick pulled the door open. The opposite wall exploded with dust and fragments of concrete. Nick and Ronnie reached around the door and cut loose. The air filled with shiny brass casings bouncing end over end.
Selena entered the Zone.
Sound became a muffled background murmur. She watched the empty shells erupt from the guns, twisting through the air in slow motion. Everything moved as if she were underwater. She ducked and rolled through the door, under the lethal stream of bullets from the hall. She could almost see the bullets in the air, almost feel them drift by. She rolled to the side of the hallway. She brought up her MP-5 and shot two men with machine pistols. She watched them lift backwards as her rounds struck. They drifted slowly through the air. They landed sprawled in a crumpled heap.
Time sped up again. She stood.
Five minutes.
"Which door?" Nick looked at the hall. It was papered in a bland pattern of pale yellow. It was carpeted and lit along the walls. The carpet was a vague blue. The lights were fake art deco. Doors stretched along both sides.
"Past them." Selena nodded at the men she'd shot. "It has to be past them"
Nick's ear was on fire. They ran past the bodies. A door opened. A man stepped out, a pistol in his hand. Ronnie put three rounds in his chest. The pistol flew into the air. The man fell back into the doorway.
Nick stepped over him into the room. A tall man in a black robe stood in front of a green metal footlocker. Behind him, the New York skyline shone in shifting patches of sunlight streaming through the clouds. The man had a sword in his right hand.
Hassan-i-Sabbah laughed.
"Too late. Now you will burn in hell."
He lunged and brought the blade down in a sweeping arc, slicing across Carter's armor. Nick grappled Sabbah's arm. He could smell Sabbah's foul breath, his unwashed body. Behind him, Ronnie started forward.
Nick ripped the sword free and brought it across in a roundhouse swing. The heavy blade bit into Sabbah's neck and kept on going. The head flew away. Blood fountained high in the air, splattered the room, misted the window, painted the ceiling. Painted Nick.
Sabbah's corpse crumpled. Nick wiped blood from his face. He looked at his watch.
One minute, fifty-nine seconds.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Elizabeth waited. Her screen displayed the wiring diagram for the WD-54 portable bomb. Static crackled in her headset.
"Director. I'm looking at the bomb. One minute, fifty and counting. What do I do?"
"There are five wires. Red, black, green, yellow and blue. Do you see them?"
"Yeah, I see them. I also see four more. Green, green, orange and black. They look new."
"There aren't supposed to be more than five."
"They must have wired in a backup. One minute, twenty-one seconds."
"Cut the blue and the red at the same time."
"Roger. Blue and red. Cutting." Elizabeth held her breath.
"Any change?"
"Negative. One minute, four seconds."
"Can you see the power source?"
"Looks like a motorcycle battery. Red and black and green wires."
"Don't cut the negative leads. That will set it off. Cut the positive lead, Probably red."
"Red and green. Forty-eight seconds."
"Cut both at once."
"Cutting."
Nick held his knife against the wires and prayed. He cut. The readout continued.
"No effect. Twenty-three seconds."
"Nick…"
"I'm cutting them all." There was a brief pause. "No effect. Twelve seconds."
"Nick."
"Goodbye, Director." Then he said, "Five."
Selena stood frozen in the middle of the room. She wasn't conscious of the blood pooling at her feet from Sabbah's headless corpse. She didn't hear the confused shouts in the hall.
"Four."
All she could hear was Nick counting down.
"Three."
Nick thought what an idiot he'd been. He looked at Selena. Their eyes met and locked. He should have told her how he felt about her, that he loved her, and now there wasn't any time left for that.
"Two."
Selena could see it. Maybe he'd never said the words, but she could see it. Feel it. Something wrenched at her heart, sadness for what might have been.
"One."
There was the sudden sound of a relay closing, the click of metal against metal.
No one moved. No one breathed. Nothing happened.
"A dud," Nick said. "The damn thing's a dud." He laughed. He laughed harder, tears running down his face. "A fucking dud."
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Events couldn't be covered up. The President had left the UN in a hell of a hurry right before his scheduled speech. Reporters and network helicopters listening to the police bands had converged on the apartment complex within minutes. The tabloids were splashed with pictures of body bags being carried from the building.
Everyone had seen the video of Sabbah with the sword. No terrorist since Bin Laden had gotten so much exposure. When his death was announced, all anyone knew was that Sabbah had been killed in the midst of a bomb plot aimed at the President and the world leaders at the UN. There was no mention that the bomb was nuclear. No one would ever know Manhattan had almost been vaporized, or that the bomb had been made in America.
Iran accused the United States of an elaborate plot to discredit Islam. Al-Qaeda vowed vengeance. But most of Islam wasn't buying Jihad or longing for Judgement Day. Most of Islam wanted to live their lives in peace. Islamic groups and nations across the world denounced Hassan-i-Sabbah as a madman who had perverted the teachings of the Qur'an.