The bodyguard landed on the road and went to one knee, swinging the compact subgun around. From half a dozen directions AKMS assault rifles opened up in a brutal symphony. The bodyguard came apart like a grenade exploding and his submachine was shattered as his hands were torn from his wrists.
“Wipe your camera! Wipe your camera!” Najafi screamed at the leader.
Ayub didn’t know why Najafi was so excited as the feed from six other cameras showed the scene well enough. On the leader’s screen the Hezbollah assassin followed the frantic order of the brigadier general and wiped his screen clear. Smoke was billowing around them as the hit squad collapsed on the breach point into the target vehicle.
Ayub’s eyes flickered to the tactical display clock on the wall next to the bank of television screens. Fifty-eight seconds had passed since the initiation of the ambush. The Hezbollah attackers were performing ahead of schedule.
What happened next was ugly.
The big, rough men came out of the car with Michael Suleiman between them. He tried to struggle and they pounded him brutally with fists until he was battered and dazed. The team leader struck him once in the face with the smoking muzzle of his AKMS, tearing the Lebanese politician’s nose as the kidnappers dropped him to the ground. One of the men came down with a knee on Suleiman’s back, causing the parliamentary leader to scream out in pain.
As a plastic zip tie was tightened around Suleiman’s wrists, the man’s seven-year-old son came charging out of the ruined vehicle to protect his father. Ephraim Suleiman’s young face was twisted in anger, and tears formed tracks down his cheeks as he sprang on the closest Hezbollah killer.
The Iranian-trained terrorist backhanded the boy and the child went tumbling backward. The explosives trooper stepped into the foreground and brought up his AKMS.
CHAPTER TWO
Suleiman screamed in protest, but his cry was cut off by the banging clatter of the Kalashnikov on full auto. The boy’s body came apart in chunks of flesh and gouts of blood and most of him ended up spread across the rear bumper and trunk of the limo.
There was a scream so shrill and frantic it cut through the roar of the weapons, and the Hezbollah team leader’s camera snapped back toward the breach point on the limo. Suha Suleiman, looking disheveled and battered, clawed her way out of the swirling smoke inside the limo passenger compartment. Behind her the shell-shocked face of her daughter, Taraneh, stared out blankly.
Suha screeched again as she saw the pitiful pile that was all that remained of her son. She opened her mouth and her beautiful face twisted into a mask of hurt and confusion in marked contrast to the tiny mirror image at her side, who simply stared at the trussed-up image of her father on the road.
“Finish it,” Najafi said into the microphone, and this time his voice was a giggle.
No one on the team hesitated. The terrorists turned their weapons on the wife and daughter of a known Israeli sympathizer. They fired. Michael Suleiman screamed. Green tracer rounds knifed through the roiling smoke. Colonel Ayub felt his heart lurch so painfully in his chest he thought he’d torn it. The woman and girl were punched backward into the vehicle. Suleiman screamed again, but it was only the beginning of the screaming he would do this day.
Brigadier General Najafi moved his finger over and hit the button on the intercom system for the plane, putting him instantly in touch with the pilots of the C-130.
“The package is acquired,” he said. “Put the plane down.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot answered.
Behind Najafi, Colonel Ayub found his eyes once again drawn to the expensive attaché sitting on the table next to his commander. He thought about what it held. He closed his eyes.
The plane made its descending approach.
THE BIG CARGO PLANE landed on an improved runway controlled by a pro-Iranian Shiite militia. The pilot deftly leveled out and brought the massive bird down on the mile-long runway. As soon as the wheels hit the tarmac the load master in the cavernous bay initiated the cargo-acquisition procedures and the ramp began to lower even as the plane continued to taxi down the runway.
The Hezbollah hit team’s Toyota Sequoia raced out from between two hangars and onto the runway. The ramp lowered into position just a few short inches above the pavement and the SUV, with Michael Suleiman trussed up inside, ran up on the platform.
The vehicle driver gunned the Sequoia up onto the platform and drove it straight into the cargo bay of the lumbering C-130, which was large enough to hold five more just like it. Once the SUV was inside, the load master alerted the pilot and began closing the ramp. Instantly the cargo plane’s mammoth Allison Turbine engines changed pitch and began racing.
Instead of holding down the speed the pilot applied full throttle, and almost immediately the blunt nose of the airplane began to lift. Inside the cargo hold the snatch team waited for takeoff and watched the load master, now in a jump chair, for the all clear to exit their vehicles.
Inside the TOC both Najafi and Ayub surveyed the hold through a video feed, Najafi calmly smoking while his subordinate stood mute and sweating.
Engines screaming, the C-130 completed its stump-and-jump running landing and left Lebanese soil, heading out to the west toward the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean Ocean.
As the plane began a smooth ascent, the load master nodded to the Hezbollah agents in the Sequoia. They sprang into action as Najafi came out and stood on the scaffolding leading up to the TOC’s door. Ayub remained in the chamber, studiously avoiding looking at either the attaché case or the dentist chair. It took a considerable amount of willpower.
Outside the door he heard Najafi taunt the prisoner.
“Ah, Michael, so good to see you again,” Najafi said. He looked imperiously down from his perch at the top of the scaffolding. In his mind he was Xerxes surveying the beating of an insolent slave at the hands of his Immortals. The Hezbollah thugs jerked the Lebanese parliamentary member from the back of the SUV. His face was purple and black and swollen. Bloody drool hung in ropes from split lips, and he looked up at Najafi with the dull eyes of a wounded animal.
He tried to speak as he was carried up the steps by the masked gunmen but could only manage to gag. His hands and feet had been secured behind him with white plastic zip ties and his business suit had been torn and splattered with blood. He could only manage mewling sounds as he was shoved through the TOC’s door and thrown roughly into the dentist’s chair.
While the Hezbollah gunners cut the man loose from his restraints and then locked him into the chair, Najafi fitted his impeccable suit jacket on a hanger, then hung that from a hook on the wall. He maintained a calm, playful manner as he donned a blue apron and a pair of black rubber gloves.
“I know we’ve had our difference, Michael,” he purred. “That whole public denouncement of my diplomatic mission as nothing more than a political destabilization operation by Ansar-al-Mahdi was, in particular, quite hurtful—conveyed as it was on your parliamentary floor, in front of television cameras.”
Behind the men, Colonel Ayub took an unconscious step backward as Najafi donned a cotton surgical mask and a pair of clear plastic safety glasses. He came up hard against the cold metal wall of the TOC. He could feel the vibration of the plane through the wall as it climbed toward a thirty-thousand-foot ceiling. The Hezbollah agents were inscrutable observers behind their masks, their weapons still reeking of cordite from their recent use.
“Despite that…unpleasantness,” Najafi continued, “I was so sorry to hear about the loss of your family, Michael. These are unfortunate times. The Koran tells us to turn to Allah and the words of the Prophet in times of trouble.” Najafi stopped, regarded the battered Lebanese secured to the chair in front of him. “But you don’t follow the teachings of the Koran, do you, Michael? You worship this Jesus Christ, like some American lapdog.”
“You murdered my family!” Suleiman screamed. “Killer! You disgusting animal!”
The bruised man pushed up against his restraints, disfigured face twisted into rage. His eyes, almost swollen shut, blazed with hate and anger until they were bright points of light. Bloody spittle flew from split lips over broken teeth, and the veins of his neck stood out in sharp relief, like rivers.
Najafi ignored the outburst. He calmly walked over to his attaché case where it sat on the table and undid the gold relief clasps. The springs were tight and the snap of their release was clearly audible despite Michael Suleiman’s inarticulate screaming. Suleiman’s snarls turned to choking gags behind Najafi and, up against the wall, Colonel Ayub closed his eyes.
Najafi reached into his expensive leather attaché case. The Bosch eighteen-volt high-torque impact wrench was a cordless power drill. Michael Suleiman fell silent as Najafi turned around with the 9.5-inch device in his hands. The power tool was blue with the trigger and brand name printed in a brilliant red. The flat battery pack was secured to the bottom of the drill’s pistol grip like a magazine in a handgun. The drill bit was itself five inches long, grooved like a rifle barrel and colored a dull graphite-gray that seemed to absorb light.
Grinning, Najafi depressed the trigger. The 2.4 Ah batteries surged power at 1,900 RPM, generating 350 foot pounds of torque as specially designed cooling rods absorbed the heat generated by use.
“What could you possibly want from me?” Suleiman begged. “What could I possibly know?”
Najafi released the trigger and watched the drill spin down. His sneer was spread across his face as he called over his shoulder to the visibly pale Ayub. “Why do they always think it’s about information?”
Chuckling to himself, Najafi turned back toward the helpless Suleiman. “Michael, I already know everything I need to know. There are no secrets in Beirut I do not already possess.”
Najafi stepped forward and touched the hard metal of the drill against Suleiman’s left leg. The power tool rested on his vastus medialis, the teardrop-shaped muscle of the quadriceps located next to the kneecap. His gloved finger rested lightly on the red trigger of the cordless drill.
“Then why?” Suleiman asked, his voice a moan. “Just kill me. You murdered my family. I’ve suffered enough.”
“I say when you’ve suffered enough!” Najafi suddenly screamed. His face was a grossly animated mask of anger.
The drill screamed as the leader of Ansar-al-Mahdi pulled the trigger and pushed downward. The powerful industrial drill bit easily into Michael Suleiman’s flesh, burning through skin and tearing into muscle fiber as if they were paper. Scarlet blood splashed as the prisoner screamed, streaking Najafi’s pale blue apron and marking his safety glasses with beads of crimson.
Najafi wore a maniacal grin as he pulled the drill free then plunged it down into Suleiman’s leg again four more times in rapid succession. Colonel Ayub felt his gorge rising as he tried to look away, but the tortured man’s screams drew his eyes despite himself. Blood spilled into the seat of the dentist’s chair and puddled on the floor of the TOC.
Suddenly a satellite phone positioned on the table below the POV cam monitors came to life. Najafi straightened, lips pursed as he let the spinning drill power down. Michael Suleiman’s head sagged on his neck.
“Always with the interruptions,” Najafi snarled. “Always whenever I’m really starting to make progress on a project I am interrupted.”
The phone beeped loudly again.
Najafi sighed, almost theatrically. He turned around and walked toward the table. He stopped, looking down at the heavy power tool he still held in his hands. He turned back toward the helpless and bleeding Suleiman.