Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

In the living room, Bryan slammed in his last magazine and peered out at the front of the house one last time. Both shooters were taking cover. He couldn’t stay behind that overturned table much longer — they’d rush him sooner or later. His shoulder was hurting more now, the wound quickly getting colder, the blood loss starting to hit his head.

He had to make a move.

He leaned out, saw some movement, and squeezed off several careful rounds before scuttling, fast and low, towards the doorway the others had disappeared through. He spotted the shooter from outside glancing in and slammed a couple of shots his way as he reached the doorway.

He dived into it and rushed towards the back of the house. He reached the stairs just as Kirkwood and Mia did, coming back from the kitchen. Not a good sign — he was planning to follow them out the back of the house.

He saw Mia glance upwards, then yell, “This way.”

Urgent orders in Arabic erupted in the front of the house, and the shooter he hadn’t wounded came after him. Bryan took cover on the stairs, counted down a few seconds to himself, and bolted out, blasting the man with a chest hit that dropped him like a piece of blubber.

That was when the first of the three bullets struck him in the back.

Mia had barely taken the first few risers, Kirkwood charging up close behind her, when a small volley of bullets crunched into the walls of the narrow hallway below all around Bryan. She looked down to see the Australian take cover and return fire, only to be struck in the back seconds later by a shooter who had followed them in through the kitchen.

She felt a spasm of horror deep within her at the sight of the man’s body collapsing to the floor as the bullets plowed into him, but steeled herself and willed her legs to keep going. She bounded up the narrow steps feverishly, Kirkwood following, and quickly reached the first floor. The stairs continued to another level.

“Keep going,” Kirkwood yelled, but she was already on her way up, completely at the mercy of her overworked instincts.

Another flight of stairs and she’d reached a wooden, horizontal trapdoor with an old latch that, mercifully, wasn’t locked. She pushed against it, flung the door open and rocketed up, and found herself on the flat roof of the house. Kirkwood clambered up after her before slamming the trapdoor back shut, but there was no lock on it from the outside, and nothing heavy to block it with.

Kirkwood scanned the roof, found a piece of rusted metal rebar, and jammed it through the latches on the door. It would hold, but not for long.

Mia spun around, her eyes scrutinizing the small, whitewashed space, hoping for a miracle. A big pigeon coop occupied the center, by the trapdoor. She strode around it, her nerves overwhelmed, her mind racing to process her options, which turned out to be nonexistent: The house was freestanding, surrounded by streets and passages on all sides.

There was nowhere for them to go.

Corben watched as Omar, gun drawn, surveyed the front living room before yanking him in like a dog on a leash and rushing through the house with him.

He spotted the wounded shooter by the doorway and crossed over to him in a few quick strides. He was slunk down, huddled against the wall, and looked as if he wasn’t doing too well. The body of the second shooter to go in lay by his feet. Omar took cover beside the open door and yelled down the hallway, asking for updates. A voice yelled back that someone called Rudwaan was dead — one of the two shooters Omar had dispatched to the back of the house, either the third member of his hit team or one of the drivers who’d met them — but that the other hired gun had been killed and that the American and the girl had gone upstairs.

Omar glared angrily, then dragged Corben out by his neck and slipped deeper into the house. They met up with the surviving shooter who’d come in through the back. The body of Kirkwood’s other hired gun was all bent up at the foot of the stairs, messy with blood.

Omar looked up, thought for a nanosecond, and turned to Corben. He brought his handgun up and shoved its nozzle under Corben’s chin. His eyes burned into him, the fury seething out of every pockmark in his scarred face.

Corben didn’t flinch. He either died here, now, or he’d have a chance.

The hakeem’s man barked to his man to stay with Corben and watch him, then rushed up the stairs after Kirkwood and Mia.

Kirkwood and Mia moved around the roof in a daze, trying to divine some kind of escape, flicking anxious glances from the low parapet surrounding them to the trapdoor and back.

They’d gone all the way around the edge of the house and were back where they started.

The shooters would soon be there.

They had to do something.

Kirkwood headed for the side with the narrowest gap separating it from the next house and called out for Mia to follow him. They reached it and stood by its edge. It was a six-foot gap to the next flat roof, that of the bazaar, which was long and had many protrusions they could use for cover.

But it was a six-foot leap over a three-story chasm that led down to the narrow cobbled passage below.

“Can you jump it?” he asked Mia, his voice frantic, his eyes darting back at the trapdoor, expecting it to fling open any second.

“Are you nuts?” she shot back.

“You can do it,” he insisted.

“I’m not jumping this.”

Loud thrashes against the trapdoor rattled them.

Kirkwood’s eyes lasered into Mia’s. “You can do this,” he yelled fiercely. “You have to do it.”

Another jarring burst against the trapdoor. It creaked open, its hinges juddering. It wouldn’t last much longer.

Mia looked at the bazaar’s roof, then back at Kirkwood.

“Jump over, and I’ll throw you the book. Don’t wait for me. Just go. Make your way to one of our embassies, insist on speaking with an ambassador, only with an ambassador, do you understand?”

She seemed to be looking into him, her mind swamped by a flurry of questions and emotions.

The trapdoor thudded again.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Who are you? Why should I trust you?”

The questions were like spears through his heart. He felt a wild grief and a raging fury take possession of him at the same time. “Because I was with your mother in that chamber in Al-Hillah,” he told her.

A look of utter mystification washed over her face.

“Because I’m pretty sure I’m your father,” he added desperately, feeling as if his soul had been sucked out of his body there and then.

Another loud thump and this time, the trapdoor gave.

Kirkwood and Mia both turned in tandem as the pockmarked killer burst out of the opening and clambered onto the roof.

“Go now!” Kirkwood ordered her.

Mia looked down to the dark passage below, raised her glance to the man who had just told her he was her father, and nodded. She was too numb to speak, her mind submerged under a deluge of questions. She simply took a few steps back, charged forward, and flung herself into the air.

The ordeal lasted less than a breath as her legs flailed in the air in big, rotating sweeps before she tumbled heavily onto the roof of the bazaar, rolling on its dust-swept surface. She righted herself and sprang back to her feet, her teeth rattling and her head spinning from the harsh landing, and rushed back to the parapet.

Kirkwood stood there, his face breaking into a radiant smile of relief as he saw her straighten up unscathed.

A shadow was rushing up behind him. The same pockmarked man she’d seen in Beirut each time the madness started. He had a gun in his hand.