Hard Target (53 page)

Uzi’s glance fell to Aksel’s eyes. They said nothing, if not agreement with Hakim’s statement. Uzi did not bother defending himself, did not bother explaining that she looked vastly different from the grainy intelligence photo he had seen of her so many years ago. He stole a look at her masked conspirator— the man was letting the scene play out and presented no immediate threat. Uzi turned back to Hakim. “Your problem’s with me. Let him go.”

“You! The man who killed my brother—

you think you can order me around?” She pressed her submachine gun against Aksel’s temple. “Would it hurt you to see his brains blown out, Uzi? Would it?”

“I didn’t kill your brother, Hakim. Your own man killed him. His bullet ricocheted. I was pinned down and couldn’t get off a shot.”

“Liar.”

“Ask the Director General. He saw my report. If I’d killed Ahmed, there’d be no reason to say I didn’t. I fucked up the op. If I’d said I killed Ahmed, I would’ve looked a whole lot better.”

“He already told me what happened. Haven’t you, Gideon?” She looked at Aksel and smiled out of the left side of her mouth, then turned back to Uzi. “Years ago he told me what happened.”

Uzi’s brow furrowed.
Why is she calling him by his first name? Why would he have told her anything?
“What are you talking about?” He looked to Gideon for confirmation. But the man averted his eyes.

With her free hand, Hakim yanked on the knot holding Aksel’s gag in place, then tossed the rag to the ground. “Tell him, Gideon. Tell him who I worked for.”

Aksel kept his eyes on the ground and said nothing.

“I worked for Mossad,” Hakim said. “Just like you. Just like Ahmed. Yes, my brother was on Mossad’s payroll the whole time he lived in Egypt. Both of us recruited by your friend here. A fact that remains hidden from everyone at Mossad even to this day. When you were sent to kill my brother, it was because Gideon discovered Ahmed was a double agent who’d given him bogus information. Ahmed was playing him. And it cost two agents their lives.

“Mossad was still in trouble after several high profile fuck-ups, and Gideon Aksel—brought in to ‘save the day’—was going to take the heat if the new prime minister found out his grand master had been duped.” Hakim looked at Aksel, drew back, and spit in his face. “My brother would never betray his allegiance to the Palestinian people.”

The director general leaned away in disgust.

No. She’s lying.
“Gideon?”

Aksel still would not look at him.

Uzi faced Hakim. “You killed an innocent woman...a sweet little girl.” He swallowed hard, fighting to keep his composure. “You’re a woman, how could you have done that?”

“Their lives were unimportant. You killed my brother. It was my right to take revenge, to give you the same pain you gave me. Relentless emotional pain, tortured forever.”

Uzi felt tears filling his eyes but fought back the emotion. “I told you, I didn’t kill your brother!”

“Deny it all you want. But I saw the mission reports. Gideon showed me the classified file. He told me he was sorry for what had happened and wanted to set the record straight, that you were acting on your own.”

Uzi looked at Gideon. “That’s bullshit. Our mission was to take out Ahmed and his cell before they could bomb the Knesset. About the only thing I’m guilty of is not following orders. I couldn’t believe Ahmed would do such a thing. I liked him, I wanted to give him a chance to explain.” Uzi stopped himself, realizing that his assumption as to why Maya and Dena had been murdered was incorrect.
It wasn’t the terrorist who escaped who lied about the ricochet killing Ahmed. It was Gideon. He told Hakim I shot her brother.

“Why, Gideon? Do you realize what you did?”

Aksel looked up at Uzi with war-weary eyes. “It was a price that had to be paid, Uzi. It took me two years to clean up Mossad’s reputation and restore its credibility; even countries we’re supposedly at peace with give terrorists safe harbor, weapons, and money to attack us. You know that. An effective Mossad is essential to Israel’s survival.” He sighed, looked down, and then lifted his chin. “We made a mistake. I made a mistake. Recruiting Hakim and her brother... It was a fatal error. My fatal error. The only one I’ve ever made.”

“You needed a scapegoat,” Uzi said. “So you pinned it on me, falsified the mission reports.”

“I never intended for her to kill your family, Uzi. I never meant for that to happen. For that, I
am
sorry. But what I did, I did for the survival of our country.” He turned to face Hakim, the barrel of her gun jabbing him in the bloodied portion of his temple. “Uzi didn’t kill your brother.”

“He’s a Jew,” Hakim spat. “A Zionist. That makes him guilty. Whether he killed Ahmed or not, it doesn’t matter. He deserves what I did to him. And you deserve what I’m going to do to you.”

Uzi’s arms were still extending the gun out in front of him. “You got your revenge, Hakim. But this is a different time, a different place. This is where it ends. Drop your weapon.”

1:51 PM

9 minutes remaining

Basement stairwell

Hay-Adams Hotel

Troy Rodman leaned against the wall, his physique, black tunic, and assault gear leaving the ignorant bystander no doubt that he was some sort of Special Forces operative. Headset firmly atop his shaven scalp and the boom mike an inch from his lips, he stood outside the basement stairwell listening to the goings on thirty feet away and around the bend.

It had taken him longer than he would’ve liked to make it down from the roof after DeSantos’s call, as he had to take one floor at a time, checking for gunmen or booby traps—making sure he got to the scene in one piece. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he arrived riddled with bullet holes and an extra pound of lead in his body.

He wished he had a fiber optic camera that snaked ninety degrees to his right so he could see the position of the hallway occupants. But he wasn’t equipped for battle. He was on-site support, and his orders were to travel light—which meant stripped down gear. Enough for barebones recon and assisting SWAT, if necessary.

But SWAT, HRT, and Secret Service were occupied: they had less than ten minutes to find the explosives, evacuate the building, and look after the safety of the roomful of dignitaries. And that meant Rodman was on his own.

He fished through his pouch and pulled out a small dental mirror—the low-tech equivalent of a fiber optic camera—and knelt down low. He moved the device into position, taking care not to catch light and cause a flare—because that’s when the shooting would start. And as much as he loved his MP-5 submachine gun, there were too many people around to start letting the lead fly.

But what he saw in the reflection was not good. The director general sandwiched between two well-armed mercenaries, with Uzi at one end of the corridor and himself at the other, in each other’s line of fire.

Rodman withdrew the mirror and remained quiet, listening to the conversation, waiting for his window of opportunity to open. Because if all went south, it didn’t really matter who was in the way, since rounds would be zipping about in all directions. The odds of anyone coming out alive were not high.

He checked his MP-5, brought it into position, and focused on what Uzi was saying: “...This is where it ends. Drop your weapon.”

1:53 PM

7 minutes remaining

Basement corridor

Hay-Adams Hotel

“Drop my weapon?” Hakim asked. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Uzi. I don’t surrender. To anyone, let alone to you.”

Alpha Zulu checked his pocket watch. “We’re running out of time,” he said firmly to Hakim. He glanced over his shoulder toward the stairwell that led to the hotel’s side exit. “We’ve gotta go. Now.” He grabbed Aksel’s arm and pulled him backwards.

“Police! Don’t move!”

In one motion, Zulu turned and opened fire in the direction of the voice. He hit the man, but he wasn’t sure where, because the cop—or whatever he was—was firing too, and Zulu hit the ground hard, his Kevlar vest absorbing most of the rounds.

The corridor was an echoing mass of confusion, scattering bodies, and cacophonous submachine gun clatter. Zulu saw the gunman go down and slide back behind the corner—which was fortunate, because Zulu’s magazine was empty. He tried reaching the spare in his pocket, but stinging pain in his left arm and leg prevented him from retrieving it.

He craned his neck, hoping to see Hakim—but heard the elevator doors closing, and he figured she had left him there to die. The firing had ceased, but he had to get out of there. More Feds would be arriving any second.

He rolled onto his injured side and began crawling along the tile floor, hoping to reach the exit, where he could make it to the street. After that, he wasn’t sure where he would go. But he needed to go somewhere, because even if the cops didn’t come running, remaining where he was meant instant death.

In less than five minutes.

UZI SAW RODMAN’S HEAD a split second before his body appeared in the corridor, followed by the MP-5 muzzle and Rodman’s resonant voice. And then the ski-masked man’s submachine gun fire muted everything around him.

Uzi’s first instinct was to grab Aksel and get him to the ground. But an errant round had struck Aksel somewhere, and the hefty man dropped to the ground on his own. Uzi crawled forward and tried to shield the director general’s body, but a row of rounds struck the tile directly in front of him and drove Uzi back. He fired at the moving target—the ski-masked terrorist—and scored several direct hits to the body.

But as Uzi swung his S&W toward Hakim, she ducked behind closing elevator doors. He got to his feet and saw her colleague crawling toward the stairwell. Uzi kicked away the assault rifle, sending it clattering across the slick floor. He shoved the barrel of his handgun against the back of the man’s head. “Give me a reason to send you where you sent my friend.”

Uzi made his point, because his prisoner did not even twitch a muscle. Uzi rooted out a self-locking flexcuff, then yanked his prisoner’s hands behind his back. As he ratcheted the restraint down tight, the man jerked back in pain, and a silver pocket watch fell out of his pocket. Uzi shoved it back into the man’s pants, and then moved past Aksel’s prone body. The director general was still alive—Uzi felt it more than knew it—but he had to get to Hakim. He couldn’t let her get away.

“Rodman,” Uzi called out. “You okay?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Fine.” Uzi glanced up at the elevator. The indicator light above the doors showed it heading toward the fourth floor. “Coming around. Hold your fire.”

Uzi moved toward the staircase. Rodman was leaning against the wall, an MP-5 clasped in his left hand, tracking Uzi as he appeared around the bend. Uzi immediately noted a blood-soaked tourniquet twisted about the operative’s thigh.

“Go get her,” Rodman said.

“Get Aksel out of here, bomb’s going off in—”

“Goddamn it, Uzi— Go get her!”

Uzi turned and sprinted up the stairs.

UZI WAS MAKING EXCEPTIONAL TIME, but tired as he hit the sixth-floor landing. He slipped on the slick gunmetal gray slate steps and thought about stopping and going back down and getting out of the building before it exploded. Hakim had nowhere to go but up—yet he had no way of knowing if she’d gotten out on one of the floors or if she’d taken the elevator to the roof.

Doubting he would be able to find her before the building came down, he questioned the wisdom of continuing. But his promise to Rudnick smacked him across the face. He had to go on.

His instincts told him Hakim would avoid the lobby because there would be armed agents there on the lookout for her. If she had gotten off at one of the floors, there was no way out of the hotel. But if she made it to the roof, she might be able to cross to the adjacent building.

Knowing Hakim, alternate escape routes would have been plotted out ahead of time.

Gotta be the roof.

Grabbing the black wrought iron staircase railing for leverage, he rounded the eighth floor landing and headed up toward the metal fire door.

Sweat blanketing his torso and face, his breathing labored, he burst forward onto the rooftop. The cold wind burned his dry throat.

Weapon out in front of him, he stepped onto the long, rectangular patio, which extended thirty feet ahead to his right and was bounded by the same iron railing that ran the length of the staircase.

Ahead of him: 16th Street, Lafayette Park, the White House. The Explosives Ordinance Disposal truck was no doubt parked below on 16th, alongside scores of Metro PD and Federal Protective Service cruisers.

She wouldn’t be at this end of the building—no fire escapes or adjacent buildings.

Uzi jogged right, past a doorway that led to the elevator, then slowed and swept his weapon from side to side, expecting the building to start shaking and collapsing beneath his feet.

Movement— Off to his right. Hakim—by the edge, facing away from him, on a graveled area of the roof. He swiveled his S&W toward her—and realized he had no idea how many rounds he’d fired in the basement. Were there any left in the magazine? Was there even one left in the chamber? So much commotion, so many bullets flying, it was all a jumble. As he inched toward her, he had to accept that he had no way of knowing what he had left—without ejecting the clip, which he was not about to do.

Hakim must have heard the crunch of his heel against the hard surface, because she spun, settling the red laser targeting beam of her assault rifle dead square on Uzi’s chest. Between them stood only a two-foot-high wrought-iron fence.

“So it’s come down to this,” she said with the confidence of someone who knew she was in complete control.

“You’ve killed three people that were very dear to me, Hakim. As well as countless others.”

“Countless? I know exactly how many I’ve killed in my lifetime.”

“That can’t go unpunished.”

“An eye for an eye, Uzi?”

He shook his head slowly. “You’re going to stand trial for your crimes.” He realized that with the laser burning a hole where his heart lay, and wearing no Kevlar vest, he was talking tough without the power to back it up. And with the building due to explode, she wouldn’t waste any more time with him. She wasn’t going to chance the possibility that he would—again—survive the blast.