Don Pendleton - Promise To Defend

“You are an agent of the CIA.”

In spite of herself, Kendall tensed. Her mind raced as she tried to figure out how he knew this and how she should respond. Other than the ambassador, no one else knew of her role here. She’d played her part to the hilt, or so she’d thought. Did he really know something or was this a game the bastard playing?

She laughed nervously. “CIA? I’m with the State Department. I’m a public-information officer. I write press releases and talk to reporters. I have nothing to do with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“I hear otherwise.”

“You’ve heard wrong. Ask anyone here. They’ll tell you otherwise.”

“Excellent idea,” he said. The man looked past her. Nodding at one of the men behind her, he said, “Go get the ambassador.”

She spent several minutes standing in front of the terrorist, his gaze cold and unreadable, pushing against her like an unseen force. Relief washed over her momentarily when the door flung open, grabbing the seated man’s attention. The sense of relief immediately dissolved when Ambassador Bruce Hughes tumbled through the doorway, shoved forward by one of his captors. A sick feeling twisted at Kendall’s gut as she watched the man, hands tied behind his back, struggle to come to his feet. A tall man with long hair and a patchy beard rewarded Hughes for his efforts by striking him repeatedly in the kidneys and spine with a rifle butt. Kendall winced in sympathetic pain as she watched the red-faced man struggle to regain his breath. Kendall felt anger burn hot through her skin as she witnessed the cruelty.

“What the hell do you want?” Hughes asked.

“What do you know of this woman?” Jasim asked.

Hughes’s eyes rolled up at Kendall, caught her gaze. She felt an urge to look away from his reddened, pained expression. But she tightened her lips into a bloodless line and forced herself to hold his gaze.

“She’s our PIO,” Hughes said. “Didn’t she tell you that?”

“What she told me and what I believe are two different things,” Jasim said. Fisting his side arm, he raised it and leveled it at Hughes. Kendall opened her mouth, but the weapon cracked once, the sound causing her words to catch in her throat. A 9 mm round drilled into the floor next to the ambassador’s face. A moment later the stench of human excrement filled the room.

“The ambassador seems to have fallen for your lie,” Jasim said through clenched teeth. “I’m not so stupid. Are you CIA or not? Give me the wrong answer and I’ll kill him. Then I move on to the next hostage.”

Kendall felt her resolve drain away. She looked downcast. “Yes, I’m CIA.”

“And there’s a tunnel leading into the embassy. Is that correct? Look at me.”

Kendall felt anger and frustration constrict her throat. She looked at Jasim, saw the stony expression on his face. She knew at that moment there’d be no negotiating with this son of a bitch. His next words only verified it.

“For every minute that passes without a satisfactory answer, I will kill a hostage, starting with the ambassador.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible, “there’s a tunnel.”

Jasim holstered his weapon and leaned back in his chair. He looked at the two terrorists flanking Kendall and barked orders to them in Arabic. She understood every word.

“I want that door found and wired with explosives. I want anyone coming through it killed.”

“As you wish,” one of the men said as he grabbed Kendall by the arm and spun her around.

CLAD HEAD-TO-TOE in black, Rafael Encizo crept through the blackness of the alley, a crossbow held steady and sure in his grip.

His nose unconsciously wrinkled against the stench of rancid meat and vegetables emanating from a nearby trash can. Dropping into a crouch, he set the crossbow at his feet, rolled up his sleeve and checked the illuminated dial of his diving watch. It was 9:05 p.m. He rolled his sleeve back down, obscuring the watch. Another sixty seconds and things would get very interesting indeed.

Grabbing his crossbow, he remained in a crouch, but moved to the alley’s mouth. The stifling heat barely registered with him. He was accustomed to such temperatures and, in fact, found them more comfortable than the cool evenings that sometimes prevailed in Virginia at Stony Man Farm.

He returned his attention to the problem at hand. Peering around the edge of the building, he stared at the embassy grounds and saw a pair of men, each carrying an AK-47, walking the grounds.

He felt a new rush of anger as he watched them swagger through the compound, faces obscured by scarves. They walked in the open, apparently unafraid, while they held innocent people inside, terrorizing them and the free world as they held the hostages.

Calvin James’s voice sounded in his earpiece.

“Rafe?”

“Go.”

“I’m in position. You?”

“Affirmative.”

“Fifteen seconds until they cut the power.”

“Then it all goes by the numbers, my friend.”

“Swift and silent.”

“Damn straight.”

The radio went silent. Encizo waited another moment until streetlights and the large halogen spotlights illuminating the embassy winked out, plunging the compound into darkness. When they did, he slid his NVGs down over his eyes, crept out from the alley and darted for the embassy grounds.

In less than a minute he came to rest a few yards from the fence, his approach obscured by the hip-high concrete walls used to stop truck and car bombers from hurtling into the compound. Chancing a look over the barrier, he peered through the gate and spotted a pair of terrorists separating from each other and sweeping the muzzles of their assault rifles over the horizon as they evaluated the power outage. Rising from behind the barrier only as much as necessary, Encizo locked the crossbow’s sights on the nearer terrorist and triggered the weapon. The shaft drilled into the man’s throat. Gurgling, stumbling backward, the man’s weapon fell from his hands as he grabbed for the bolt protruding from his throat. A moment later life left his body and he folded in on himself.

Staying low, Encizo turned at the waist and loaded another bolt. Upon seeing his comrade suddenly pitch to the ground, the other terrorist dropped to a crouch and fanned his AK-47 over the horizon, his free hand scrambling for a cellular telephone. Encizo triggered the crossbow. An instant later the terrorist froze as a bolt jutted from his ribs, the razor-sharp tip tearing through his heart. Even as his corpse pitched toward the ground, power returned to the embassy compound, probably thanks to the emergency generators. External lights kicked back on, flooding the grounds with white as lights winked back on inside the main building.

Encizo checked his watch: 9:07 p.m.

Right on time.

“Two down, Cal,” he whispered into his throat mike. “Status?”

A moment passed without reply. Another second—this one more agonized—came and went, too.

“Cal? Cal?” Encizo whispered again, this time more urgently. All that filled the silence was the plummeting sensation in his stomach. Before he could utter another word, gunshots rang out from within the compound.

San Diego, California

Carl Lyons checked the load in his .357 Colt Python, then returned the revolver to shoulder leather. Scowling, he stared at the nondescript building across the street from him and watched for the black Mercedes coupe he hoped would come soon. He leaned his left shoulder against the exterior wall of a convenience store and checked his watch for the fourth time in three minutes.

“You think that son of a bitch knows?” he growled into his throat mike.

“Negative,” Blancanales replied. “You’re just getting impatient.”