Parker’s eyesight blurred slightly. The night-vision goggles made it hard to read. He ran a finger along a line of Arabic scrawls, seeing the characters that translated, at least loosely, into the term “sleeper cell.” Hizb ut-Tahrir had agents already inside the United States, waiting for orders. It had long been known in the intelligence community that Al Qaeda had agents in the U.S. Many of them had been identified, and the FBI and Homeland Security kept tabs on them as best they could without tipping off the agents that their identities were known.
But as far as Parker knew—and admittedly, he could be behind the curve on this—the Powers That Be were unaware that Hizb ut-Tahrir agents were already in the country. This was important stuff, especially considering what that crazy sheikh was planning for them to do. Parker stuffed the handful of papers inside his jacket. He had to get out with these and pass them on to his superiors, no matter what else happened. Somebody had to warn the folks back home.
The sudden burst of automatic-weapons fire somewhere close by made him jerk his head up. He saw Odie backing up the staircase and shooting at a figure below. The young California transplant reached the top of the stairs and stumbled, sitting down hard. Odie twisted around and yelled in English, “Get out of here, dude! Now!”
Parker saw the bloodstains on Odie’s clothes. They were black through the goggles. He took a step toward his partner as Odie tossed a grenade down the stairs. The blast stopped the shooting.
Odie turned to him again and motioned weakly toward the windows. “Courtyard’s clear, and the C-4’s planted. Get out while you can, Brad.”
“We’re both getting out,” Parker insisted. “I’ll call for choppers—”
“I’m hit too bad for that, and I think some of them are still alive down below. They’ll be comin’ up the stairs in a second. I’ll hold ’em off—”
A cough wracked Odie, and blood gushed from his mouth.
“Go on, man,” he half-whispered. “I don’t know if you found any good intel, but if you did, you gotta get it out of here.”
Parker had found some good intel, all right. Vital intel. And Odie was right—it had to be extracted.
But that meant leaving a man behind, and doing that went against every instinct in Parker’s body.
“Damn it, Odie—” Parker began as he took another step toward his partner.
The firing from below began again. Odie swung the muzzle of his rifle from side to side and sprayed lead down the stairs as he shouted, “Burn in hell, you pricks!”
Then he went over backward as more slugs ripped into his body.
Parker knew he had no choice. He opened the window and started climbing out. He glanced back to see that Odie had been able to push himself upright again, even as badly wounded as he was, and was still firing at the enemy.
That image was burned into Parker’s brain as he dropped the dozen feet or so to the ground.
He was running as soon as his boots hit the sand. He’d been forced to leave behind a lot of documents that might have proven to be important in the ongoing battle against terrorism. But he had the most important paper of all, the notes detailing the latest and most heinous plot hatched by the bastards since 9/11.
Bodies of the tribal fighters were sprawled everywhere, along with the dead homicidal-maniacs-in-training, as Odie had called them. It looked to Parker like the two sides had pretty much wiped each other out. Unfortunately, a few of the terrorists had survived. They were the ones who had killed Odie—and now they spilled out of the building Parker had just left, giving chase as he sprinted toward the gates.
There were only four of them, he told himself. He could stop and fight. But with the information he was carrying, getting away was more important, even if it went against the grain. He darted around the truck that had been used to crash through the gates.
As he did, he was hit. The blow felt like a giant hand slapping him in the side. He spun out of control, hit the ground, rolled over a couple of times. As he came back up on his knees, he told himself to ignore the fiery pain in his side and squeezed the rifle’s trigger. Set on full auto, it spewed death at the onrushing terrorists. Two of them were knocked backward. Another stumbled forward a few steps before falling on his face. But the fourth man kept coming.
Parker’s rifle ran dry.
There was no time to slap another mag into the weapon. The only break Parker caught was that the other guy’s gun was out of bullets, too. The jihadist flung it aside and jerked a knife from behind the sash around his waist. Parker grabbed the guy’s wrist in both hands as the blade slashed at him. The terrorist’s momentum carried him into Parker, and the collision sent both of them to the ground.
From there on out, it was a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle. Mano a mano, Parker told himself crazily as more thoughts of El Borak came back to him. He hung on for dear life with one hand and used the other to slam a hammer fist into the guy’s head. A heave of Parker’s body sent the terrorist toppling to the side. Parker lunged after him, still hanging on the wrist of the guy’s knife hand, twisting his arm, forcing it down…
The man let out a sharp, short cry, then a long sigh as his knife went into his own chest. Parker bore down and buried the blade as deep as he could. The terrorist’s head fell back. Parker had seen enough men die to know that the guy was done for.
He left the knife where it was and struggled to his feet. His hand went to his side to check the wound, but surprisingly, he didn’t find any blood. When he reached into his jacket, he pulled out fragments of his radio.
Well, he couldn’t call any choppers in to extract him now, he thought. The radio had saved his life by stopping the bullet. The impact had been enough to knock him down and hurt like hell, but the slug hadn’t penetrated.
It might have doomed him anyway, though, since he was a hell of a long way from anywhere, with no transportation but his own two feet. He would have to make his way back to what passed for civilization in this backwater country on his own.
But at least no one would be chasing him. As he looked around, he seemed to be the only person left alive in the compound. In the nearby village, the inhabitants would be cowering in their beds, waiting to see if the shooting was going to start again.
Maybe he could find another truck that was in running order, Parker thought as he reloaded his rifle. Lord knows the one they had used to bust in here was shot all to hell.
He broke into a stumbling run that steadied somewhat as he loped off into the darkness. He hoped it wouldn’t take him too long to contact his superiors. The intel he carried had to be passed on to the proper people ASAP.
Parker hoped it wasn’t already too late.
The American never looked back, so he failed to see one of the wounded men inside the compound lift his head. Ibn bin Suleiman hurt terribly, but he didn’t think he was so badly wounded that he would see paradise this day. Still, he would have welcomed death—if it had not been for the fact that the American might have discovered what was being planned for that nation of infidels. Suleiman had meant to shred those notes, but he hadn’t gotten to them yet when the dogs burst in…
He pushed himself to his feet. He had heard one of the Americans say something about C-4. That was an explosive, Suleiman knew. He was quite familiar with it, in fact, having taught scores of young men how to blow themselves up with it, along with as many of the godless as possible. Suleiman knew now that he had to get out of here. He had to warn his friends that their plan might have been discovered. And if possible, he had to stop that American and make sure that he didn’t tell anyone about what had been planned here.
Suleiman