Patrick Robinson - To The Death

Silently they moved through the deserted rooms. All empty. Too empty. Someone had wiped out everything. At first sight, there was not a trace that anyone had ever been there, and Colonel Abdullah stood gazing out of the window, muttering to himself, “These were real professionals.”

For in his honed, alert, and instinctive terrorist soul, he sensed he was in the right place, enjoying a perfect view of the gaping hole where once there had been a house, right across Bab Touma Street.

Quietly, he drew back the curtains. Very slightly. They were made of brand-new material, too good for an old slum of a place like this. And then he peeped through the space between them, thinking to himself how little he would have liked that, even if the room was dark. Anyone looking out of the old Rashood residence could have seen the telltale gap. And perhaps wondered who was up there, spying. Especially if they were trained security guards.

And then Colonel Hassad Abdullah spotted a flaw in the obviously new curtain material. Not so much a flaw, actually: a hole, very deliberately cut. And not just one hole. Two of them, about four inches apart.

He poked his fingers through, and tried to look through, out across the street. But the holes were too wide apart. Hmmm, he thought, perhaps just right for binoculars.

They searched for another half hour, but Jerry had been thorough. There was indeed nothing to discover. This had been a ruthlessly planned, most daring and savage attack on the commander in chief. Hamas, in their bloodthirsty and vengeful creed, were vowed and determined to catch, and execute, whoever had been responsible.

But all Colonel Hassad Abdullah had to show for his investigation were two small holes in the curtains. And in his opinion, that was quite sufficient.

Because that apartment had confirmed a great deal. First of all, the place had been rented for only one month. Second, the other apartment on the top floor had been purchased by the same people, and was now for sale. The real estate agent had provided at least that.

Third, it was the perfect observation post. Those three facts alone suggested that the attempt on General Rashood’s life had been conducted by a professional organization, almost certainly state-sponsored. The newly cut curtains, the sheer size of the explosion, the perfection of the cleanup. It was all carried out with absolute professionalism.

This was no murder attempt by a bunch of hoodlums. This was military. And that really narrowed it all down. Because in all the world, General Rashood had only two copper-bottomed, grudge-bearing, rich, relentless enemies-the United States of America, and Israel ’s Mossad. No one else could possibly hate like them.

In the city of Gaza where the High Command of Hamas was ensconced, the first minister, Commodore Tariq Fahd, was already following the case along those lines. And he had a set of circumstances that were leading him ever onward.

He called a meeting at the secret underground situation room in the house where Ravi and Shakira lived. Colonel Abdullah was back from Damascus; his second in command, Major Faisal Sabah, was in the city; and two other senior Hamas councillors, Ahmed Alaam and Ali al-Fayed, were also summoned.

They gathered together at 10 A.M. on Wednesday, February 15, six jihadist warriors, plus Shakira, who would, if required, kill her Western opponents without mercy.

There were no chairs in the room, just a table. They sat beneath plain whitewashed walls on big colored cushions set upon the sandy floor. There was no window in the room, but there was a stone air vent which led outside into the garden. Lengths of four-inch-thick wood had been carved into elaborate double doors, beyond which were four armed guards.

Commodore Tariq Fahd greeted everyone, and the house servants came in with pots of Turkish coffee, served in plain glasses set into silver holders. They also brought two trays of the sugared, almond-flavored pastries that are so favored in that part of the world.

“It is, of course, obvious now, certainly to all of us, that someone has tried, very determinedly, to execute our commander in chief. Thankfully, we are all able to welcome him and Shakira here today, and to swear, by the blood of the Prophet, vengeance upon these enemies.”

He hesitated for a moment and sipped his coffee. “I should like, if I may, to outline the sequence of events that I believe will lead us to an inevitable conclusion. I should add that I am using only known facts rather than any form of supposition.

“Therefore, I will begin in the small hours of January 15, when we know beyond any doubt that our brother Ramon Salman made a call of confirmation to our command headquarters on Sharia Bab Touma. General Rashood himself took the call and was informed the attack on the Boston airport was a go.” General Rashood nodded in agreement.

“A few hours later,” continued Commodore Fahd, “that attack was foiled, principally because our senior operations man somehow allowed the briefcase carrying the explosive to fall into the hands of a policeman.

“We were then delivered two terrible blows. Our second field operator was shot dead by the Boston police, and the injured Reza Aghani was taken into police custody. We know he went into Massachusetts General Hospital, but from there we are ill-informed.

“Our lawyers say Aghani was almost immediately removed from the United States judicial system. Which most certainly means he was transferred to a military interrogation center. In the opinion of our lawyers, that most certainly means Guantánamo Bay, given the enormity of his potential crime.

“For the purpose of this meeting, we will assume he reached Cuba by January 18. And then, in a very bizarre twist of fate, the New York police picked up Ramon Salman in the Houston Street apartment within a day of that happening. He too was removed from the U.S. justice system, and that much is definite. We have no proof he was also transported to Guantánamo Bay, but our American lawyers say he almost certainly was.

“So we may assume that by January 23, after three days of torture and brutal U.S. interrogation, Ramon Salman may have told them what they wanted to know.”

Commodore Tariq Fahd paused theatrically, and then said, “Four days later, installed in the house directly opposite General Rashood’s residence on Bab Touma, there is a hit team which makes a thoroughly professional attempt on his life, murdering his guards first, in the classic manner of trained Special Forces.”

Colonel Abdullah turned to Ravi and said, “How good were your guards? Are you surprised they were dispensed with so efficiently?”

The terrorist C-in-C looked pensive. Shakira stood up and walked to a table and poured more coffee for her husband. “On reflection, Colonel,” he said, “I am extremely surprised. One of those two guards had fought with me at the Nimrod Jail, and you may remember him yourself. He was the one in the hood, the one who hit the gatehouse, blew away the guards, and smashed the communications system. He was top-class.”

“Of course,” said the commodore, “it’s always easier to succeed when you have the element of surprise on your side. At the jail, the man in the hood had every advantage. Not so on Sharia Bab Touma, hah?”

“Correct,” replied Ravi. “Nonetheless, it remains difficult to imagine how my highly trained bodyguards could have succumbed so quickly to an outside attack.”

“The men who killed the guards were either Israeli or American,” said the commodore. “Of that we can be certain. I do not think the Americans would have moved Special Forces into Damascus so quickly. But I accept they might have.”

General Rashood added, “Whoever it was had all the skills of U.S. Navy SEALs. It was either them or the Mossad. No one else.”