Robert Tanenbaum: Counterplay

Jon Ellis walked up. “We got a crisis going on over here, Jaxon,” he said.

Jaxon gave Ellis a funny look. “This is Butch Karp’s son, Giancarlo. He says Lucy was using sign language before she came out of the cathedral. He thinks she’s still a hostage and was trying to give us an indication of how to find her.”

Ellis scoffed. “Come on, that’s crazy.”

“Is it?” Jaxon asked. He strode over to Denton. “Hey, Bill, would you get your guys to check on that ambulance that was taking Hodges and Lucy to the hospital.”

Denton got on the radio, then turned around and shrugged. “The ambulance isn’t responding,” he said. “It never arrived.”

Jaxon whirled expecting to see Ellis. But the man had disappeared. He turned back to Denton. “We need to find that ambulance,” he said. “I think Hodges is wrong.”

“Wrong? As in a bad guy?” Denton asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know how he pulled it off,” Jaxon said. “But I think if we find Hodges, we’ll find Kane, and he’s got Lucy and Clay Fulton with him.”

Jaxon ran the clues through his head again. Annoy Satan? Baker? Field? But just then the sound of gunfire erupted in the cathedral.

“Go, go, go!” Denton shouted into his microphone and immediately the NYPD and FBI SWAT teams surrounding the cathedral rushed for the entrances.

Inside the cathedral, two different women fought to keep their emotions in check. As she made her demands for the television audience, Samira Azzam had battled back tears. This was to be the best day of her life when she and the woman she loved would sacrifice themselves for the ultimate triumph of Islam.

When Kane left the building, she’d felt an enormous burden lifted from her shoulders. Never again would any man touch her. She turned to Ajmaani and smiled. “It is time, my darling,” she said. But Ajmaani had walked up to her shaking her head.

“Perhaps for you, my little warrior,” she said, kissing her on the cheeks. “But I have other duties. I will be leaving now for a part of the building that has not been booby-trapped.”

Azzam had looked at her for a moment before comprehending what her lover was saying. “You intend to let them capture you?” she asked, aghast.

“Only for the moment,” Ajmaani nee Nadya Malovo replied. “I will be ‘exchanged’ later. Perhaps, if you wish, you could also survive this day with me.”

Hot, angry tears flooded Azzam’s eyes. Once again, she’d been betrayed. She considered killing Ajmaani, who turned and walked toward the back of the cathedral. But even as she pointed her gun, she could not pull the trigger. Instead, she’d allowed the hatred to boil up in her as she began to make her demands.

Across the dais from Azzam, Marlene had taken as much inaction as she could stand. It had taken every bit of willpower not to do something when the initial attack took place, and even more when her daughter and husband were assaulted. But she’d known that if she moved, she would have died without accomplishing anything. Her heart told her to defend her family. But her mind knew that if there was any way to save the Pope and the two thousand others in the cathedral, it had to take precedence.

Still, she also knew that Azzam was building toward the big moment. Soon she would have to take action and most likely die in vain. Jojola had once told her that a warrior wasn’t someone who weighed whether he would survive the battle or not. “A warrior takes the necessary action on behalf of others, regardless of the consequences to himself,” he’d said. “This sets him free to be a perfect weapon.”

Marlene felt a hot tear spring to her eye. Several times over the past weeks, her mind had played tricks on her. She’d see a face in a crowd and start to cry out, “John Jojola!” But the face wouldn’t be there when she looked again. Or from a distance…or when the lighting was unsure…she’d see some old bum walking away with that curious, bowlegged gait that her friend had. But she could never quite catch up and had finally quit trying, realizing that her mind was seeing what she wanted to see.

I wish I could see you here, now, John, she thought. You were the perfect warrior, and we need you. But I guess we’ll have to settle for me.

The moment arrived when Azzam motioned for the big male terrorist to again take his place behind the Pope with his knife. Azzam was almost shrieking now as she began to read off a list of “crimes” committed by Christians against Muslims. Marlene had no idea where Yvgeny and Tran were, but she locked eyes with Alejandro and nodded. It was now or never.

Just then, a large priest with a scarred face-the one she’d seen have words with Kane as he was leaving-stepped forward and grabbed the terrorist behind the Pope in a bear hug, pulling him back and away from the pontiff.

Distracted, Azzam pointed her gun and shot the big priest whose treachery had brought her so close to the glorious martyrdom she sought. At the same time, Marlene pushed through the crowd of nuns and began to sprint for the terrorist leader.

One of Azzam’s men shouted a warning and pointed behind her. Azzam whirled to confront the danger and was surprised to see that a nun had been moved to action. She was used to hostages going to the slaughter like sheep. She shouted at the assassin who was disengaging himself from the mortally wounded priest. “Kill the Pope!”

The man moved to carry out the command, but suddenly the top half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood, gray matter, and shattered bone. The sound of the.50-caliber sniper’s rifle stunned hostages and hostage takers long enough for FBI sniper K. C. Chalk to slam another bullet home and shoot a terrorist who was drawing a bead on the nun charging the female leader of the group.

Like Marlene, Chalk had sat quietly in the back of the cathedral biding his time. Earlier, Jaxon had asked him to quietly find a spot in the cathedral with his rifle “just in case.” The odd part of the request was to do it without letting the other security detail know he was doing it. So he’d disassembled the rifle and stashed it in a briefcase, which he’d hidden beneath the pew in front of him. With the help of hostages on either side of him who kept watch, he’d slowly reassembled the rifle, then kept it on the floor until the moment presented itself.

Chalk had almost gone for it the first time the terrorist put his knife to the Pope’s throat, but held off. This time, he had been sure that it was now or never, so in one well-rehearsed move, he’d stood and blown the head off the Pope’s assailant. He would have liked to kill the woman leader-chop off the head and the serpent dies-but other hostages had jumped to their feet and he couldn’t get a clear shot so he’d taken the second man.

Any moment he expected to feel a bullet from the two terrorists behind him. He heard one shot and then another, but neither was directed at him. Instead, the second shot took out the terrorist over to his side who’d turned to find him in the panicking crowd. Chalk glanced behind and saw a small Asian priest with one of the terrorist’s rifles taking aim at another. Sometimes one finds friends in the oddest places, Chalk thought as he turned and sought another target himself.

Tran, too, had waited, pretending to be a somewhat crippled, older priest as he worked his way toward the terrorist nearest to him. When the sniper stood and Marlene began her sprint, his target raised his rifle to shoot and so never saw him coming. Tran knocked the rifle up so that the bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling. He ripped the gun away with one hand and with the other delivered a killing atemi blow to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. Without pausing, Tran raised the rifle and shot his target’s partner, who seemed confused by the sudden turn of events.