Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

He was brought out of his thoughts by the tour guide walking toward a long hallway, past an incongruous picture of Tom Cruise hanging on the outside of the Burj Khalifa for some movie.

He nodded at the aides with him and followed, finally reaching two double-decker elevators after several minutes. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid pointed at the one to the right, leaving the remainder of the straphangers to ride up in the elevator to the left.

The Ghost exited the elevator’s maintenance room on the 125th floor and saw two females dressed in Burj Khalifa uniforms scurrying down the hallway, animatedly talking. When they were abreast, he asked what the excitement was about.

“They’re here. His Highness is here with the American. They’ll be on top shortly.”

He thanked them and headed in the opposite direction, toward the service elevator. Four minutes later, he exited in the basement. He paused for a second, listening for anyone else working. Hearing nothing, he jogged to the radar brake array for the observation elevators.

He used a stepladder to place the WiFi repeater as high as possible into the left elevator shaft, giving it the greatest possible chance of hitting the network. He turned it on, watched the lights go from red to green, and returned to the bottom.

He placed a WiFi sniffer he’d purchased near the detonator. He smiled when he saw four out of six bars. He turned on the detonator, holding his breath. The light flashed red, then went to green. It was armed.

He moved to the right elevator shaft and powered its detonator. It flashed red, then began to blink red and green over and over again. He was unsure what that meant, but knew it wasn’t good. He placed the sniffer next to the detonator and saw he had no WiFi signal.

So much for the advertisement on the box about the repeater range. The shaft itself was blocking the signal.

He held the sniffer at eye level and walked slowly toward the repeater, feeling the press of time. In three steps he had a single bar. Five more steps and it went to three bars. When he reached the wall between the two elevators he saw four bars. Good enough to trigger. He somehow needed to get the detonator to this wall.

He glanced around the room, looking for loose wire. He saw paint buckets, spare pieces of crown molding, and a tarp, but nothing remotely that he could use. Frustrated, he ran to the keypad for the door leading outside. It was encased in metal, with the wiring running up the wall inside a pipe.

No good. He wondered where the entourage was located. If they were already on the observation deck. If they weren’t about to trigger the explosives, with him standing next to them.

To the left of the keypad was a speaker. Presumably an intercom that allowed communication to other maintenance personnel inside the building. It had no apparent wiring leading to it, meaning the wiring was behind the speaker and ran inside the wall. He found a flat piece of scrap metal and jammed it under the plate. He levered the speaker away from the wall, pulling out a mess of spaghetti.

Not wanting to shock himself, he identified the power line, then the wire used to transmit from the speaker. He separated the two, then gave a hard yank to the speaker wire, drawing out three feet. He began pulling hand over hand until he had no slack.

He glanced back at the elevator shaft. Still not enough.

He looped the wire around his hands and jerked with all of his might, the wire slicing into the fleshy part of his palm. He tried a second time and fell backward as the anchor gave way.

Several minutes later, he had the detonator separated from the explosives by about thirty meters of speaker wire. He affixed the detonator to the wall between the elevators and powered it up. He saw the flash of red, then a steady green. He wiped his brow and hurried to the exit door.

He swiped Hamid’s key card, opened the door, and took the stairs up two at a time. He slowed as his head crested the top of the stairwell. He surveyed the drive to the mall parking garage and froze, his stomach clenching.

The black man he had tried to kill was walking toward him, another man at his side.

Knuckles shut off the van and pointed at the hooded man from the souk. “We going to leave him behind like we did Lucas?”

Getting Jennifer’s voice mail one more time, I stabbed the keypad and hung up. “No. You’re going back to the hotel. I can’t get Jennifer. Something’s wrong. Get over to the hotel and find her.”

He started to say something, and my phone rang. I stabbed the call button and heard Blaine. Dammit. Where is she? I listened, then said, “We’re there now, and I can see limos roped off. What the hell’s going on? Why did they come here?”

On the other end of the phone, Blaine said, “Pike, we didn’t get to them in time. We had too many layers to go through to get the phone number. We have it now, but it goes straight to voice mail.”

“Call someone else. There are three limousines here. Someone’s got their phone on.”

“They all go to voice mail. We don’t know why. Maybe the building is shielding the signal or something, but the bottom line is we didn’t get the warning to them.”

So much for doing this slow and methodical.

“How long are they going to be in there?”

“Less than ten minutes on the upper deck. The clock’s ticking right now. What’re your courses of action?”

“Shit, sir, I have no idea what trap he’s built. He’s been all over the damn building planting explosives. It’s going to take time to get to the maintenance room on the upper floors. It’s above the observation deck. On top of that, he apparently placed explosives in the basement as well.”

Blaine said, “What can I do? What do you need?”

“I need someone to tell them to stay out of the damn elevators!”

I calmed down and continued. “I’d like to target the Ghost because I’m sure he’s going to command detonate whatever he’s got, but we don’t know where he is. I have no doubt he’s around here, but I can’t waste the time looking. Second COA is to enter the building and see if we can render safe whatever trap he’s laid, but it’s the basement only. I have no idea if that’ll be enough. Brett and Decoy are headed there right now.”

“What’s the risk to the force? Can you protect them?”

I watched Brett and Decoy cross the street, both carrying a small duffel bag full of tools. “No,” I said, “there’s no way I can mitigate the risk without the Ghost.”

Blaine said something else, but I was no longer listening. A man with a Burj Khalifa maintenance uniform had just popped out of the bushes. Wearing thick glasses. Right next to the basement entrance.

The Ghost ducked back into the stairwell, considering his options. Clearly, it was no coincidence that the black man was here. It was because of the envoy. The only mystery was how they’d penetrated his plan. They hadn’t followed him here, or he would have been interrupted installing the phone numbers and arming the detonators.

It must be the building itself. They don’t know I’m here.

They weren’t looking for him. They were looking for his trap. He couldn’t let them explore for any length of time. He hadn’t placed any booby traps around his explosives, and they could be disarmed fairly easily.

He thought about hiding in the basement and attacking them, but didn’t like the odds. Two on one would be hard to pull off. Somehow, he had to prevent them from entering the basement. But he had nothing. No way to distract them. No means of pulling them from their goal.

Except for myself.

It hit home that he would be irresistible bait. They were following me earlier. They know what I look like. He could prevent them from stopping the attack, but he would be caught. Chained and tortured, then killed. He wouldn’t be able to utilize his false jihadi website group to claim credit. Wouldn’t be able to put the Palestinian cause on the world stage. He would be walking to his death.