Cody's Army (10 page)

“Do not worry, Abdel,” Farouk assured the other. “Flight 766 from Athens
will
be hijacked this morning. Blood
will
flow. Allah’s will be done.”

At that moment the door burst inward as if flung by a battering ram, startling both men, who had not expected such an entrance.

They whirled toward the doorway, Farouk bringing up the reassembled Uzi, holding his fire.

Tahia and Hallah rushed in bearing Ali between them, one of Ali’s arms draped over each of them as they supported him into
the room while Najib held the door open.

Farouk’s heart leaped into his throat and he could not speak for a moment as he realized with shock that his brother was badly
wounded and bleeding.

“What’s this?” Abdel demanded. “What has gone wrong?”

Farouk rushed toward his brother.

Rallis told his driver to brake the unmarked police car to the curb across the street and three buildings away from where
the van had disappeared into the alleyway at midblock.

They had followed the van without detection all the way from the Acropolis.

Or so it seemed.

Giorgios, seated beside him, seemed to read his mind.

“It could be a trap, Inspector. I’ve a feeling it may take more to fool these boys than tracking them from a distance without
being spotted. They could be suckering us in.”

Rallis nodded to the dash radio, not taking his eyes from the entrance of that alley.

“Call in backup. I don’t want them jumping our net this time. This time we’ve got them, the Hassan brothers and Khaled and
all the rest. Call the others in, and hurry.”

Giorgios obeyed, breathily summoning assistance from the other unmarked cars that had more or less accompanied Rallis and
Giorgios, assisting in tailing the van by picking up the track while Rallis and Giorgios had shifted over a few blocks parallel
before resuming the track for his final distance.

When the van began its approach to this seedy waterfront area district, Rallis had felt certain he was tracking these rats
directly to their hole.

He only wished he knew what it was that he was so hot on the trail of.

The world’s most wanted terrorist gang, yes. But what were they up to?

Whatever it was, he hoped it would end here, in the next few minutes when they closed in.

Something told him time was already running out.

Giorgios replaced the mike hookup to the dash radio.

“They’ll be here in two minutes.”

Rallis unholstered his pistol and unlatched his door.

“We can’t wait that long.”

Giorgios unleathered his pistol, but he looked uncertain.

“We don’t know how many are in there, Inspector.”

“And they’re dealing with a wounded man,” Rallis grunted. “They’ll be confused, upset. We’ve got surprise working for us.
Come on. Something’s in the wind and it won’t wait.”

Giorgios left the car with him. Together, the two of them darted across the inky shadows of the street.

* * *

Tahia did not know which hurt the most, watching Ali die right before her eyes or seeing the agony in Farouk’s expression
as he helped her and Hallah carry Ali to the couch.

Ali coughed again and more pink bubbles burst at the corners of his mouth.

“A…trap,” he gasped unevenly to Farouk. “The police…waiting for us—”

His voice tapered off and he doubled over into a fit of convulsive, death-rattle coughing.

Farouk, perched on the arm of the couch with an arm around his brother, looked at the others in frustration and anger.

“Trap?” he repeated. “Who would do such a thing?”

Abdel remained standing back somewhat, with an air of cool, removed detachment as if observing the scene with only mild interest.
Tahia, though, could see that his eyes were marble cold, reptilian, and calculating as ever.

“Only the six of us knew of the rendevous with Christus,” he noted without inflection, gazing from face to face of those around
the wounded man.

“My brother is above suspicion,” snapped Farouk. “As am I, as are you, Abdel; as should we all be.”

Ali forced himself to speak from the couch, a weakening gurgle. He gripped his brother’s arm.

“Tahia,” he rasped to his brother. “She is…of us.”

“And that is good enough for me,” nodded Farouk to Abdel.

Tahia felt she must say something, when she sensed Farouk and Abdel centering their speculative glare on Hallah and Najib.

“Halla fought valiantly,” she told them. “We would all be dead or in police custody if not for Hallah.”

Hallah remained standing on the far side of the couch from Abdel and Farouk. The youth stood with is back straight, returning
their glare, his fingertips lingering near the front of his open jacket and the .38 pistol holstered there.

“Thanks, Tahia,” he said, “but I can take care of myself. I’m not your traitor, may Allah damn your eyes,” he snarled at Farouk
and Abdel, “and I’ll kill the man who says I am.”

“Relax, my headstrong young one,” Abdel purred smoothly. “No, you are not the informer among us.”

His eyes turned to Najib, who pulled back from the couch as the eyes of everyone there, including the wounded man, fell upon
him.

“
No
, it was not I!” Najib cried out, his voice rising with each word. “I could not have led the police anywhere! I have never
been to this house before right now, you know this to be true!”

Farouk nodded slowly, picking up the chain of accusation.

“Which is why the police did not close in on us here,” he intoned grimly. “You did know the arms pickup. They intended to
force Ali to tell where we were.”

“No, I tell you,
nol”
Najib’s cry became a pleading whine. “It was not I! I am loyal!”

“It could be no other way,” Abdel glowered with an air of finality. He reached toward a shoulder-holstered pistol beneath
his jacket, his gaze centered unblinkingly on Najib. “We have been dealing with Christus for years. He did not cross us. This
is your first mission, Najib. You have made it your last.”

Najib saw what was coming and knew there was no place to run. He stumbled back a few paces until his back was against the
wall and the whine in his throat climbed into a scream. “Please, no…Allah forgive me…I’m sorry!”

Abdel yanked out his pistol, attaining a straight-armed target acquisition with one smooth motion as he triggered a round
from a West German 9mm P-38 that cored Najib Yaqub’s forehead, splashing brains, blood, and skull fragments mural-like across
the wall behind him.

Khaled holstered his pistol before Yaqub’s body collapsed to a messy heap in the corner.

“I would have preferred his death to be more befitting a traitor,” Abdel commented almost conversationally. “That is, particularly
slow and humiliating, but…,” he shrugged slightly, “… we have no time to spare.”

Tahia tore her eyes from the sight of Najib’s gory corpse, now shivering as if from an intense chill. She felt faint. Reality
was unraveling all about her.

There came shouting, then automatic gunfire from downstairs, at the door to the alleyway.

Khaled unholstered his pistol again.

“Police,” he snapped above the clatter of weapons from below.

A three-man defense team had been set up on the building’s first level.

Hallah crossed to the door of the room and slammed it shut; then he tilted a wooden chair against the door handle.

“That won’t hold the swine for long,” he breathed.

Tahia could tell he was enjoying himself like a boy playing at a game.

Abdel moved to a throw rug across the room before an archway. He kicked the rug aside to reveal a trapdoor. He knelt and flipped
the door open.

“Let’s go,” he snarled. “We can still carry out the mission! We will have less firepower, the weapons we carry now, but we
can still take over an airplane. We cannot turn back now.”

Tahia rushed to the couch to join Farouk in starting to help Ali to his feet.

“We’ll make it,” she breathed fiercely in Ali’s ear as she came to him, some of his blood smearing across her cheek.

Ali shook his head weakly.

“No…no, leave me…I’m finished anyway…I can hold them off…give me my gun, that’s all I ask… I’ll die as a warrior should …”

“No!” Tahia shrieked. “Farouk,” she beseeched, “tell him he must come with us.”

Farouk shook his head, no, solemnly. He pressed his lips to his brother’s forehead once, holding Ali tightly to him, then
he pulled away from his brother and stood.

“No, Ali is right.” He took Tahia by the arm and brought her to her feet. “Come. Abdel is right, too. The mission must come
first. You know that, Tahia. There is no other way for us.’

The gunfire ceased from outside and downstairs.

Tahia knew what she had to do, much as it hurt to do it.

She placed Ali’s Beretta in his limp right hand.

“Farewell, my love,” she whispered softly, “until Paradise.”

Rallis poked his head cautiously around the bullet-riddled doorway.

The bit of burnt cordite irritated his eyes and nostrils as he gazed in on the sight of three bodies sprawled in and around
a narrow companionway with an archway leading to the darkened ground floor of this house.

A stairway reached up to the second level and a trail of glistening pools of blood showed in an unbroken trail up those stairs
to a closed door at the top. Giorgios, looking nervous and scared, joined Rallis just outside the doorway.

“Cover me,” Rallis instructed.

He left his cover and started up the stairs hurriedly, his eyes and pistol scanning the hazy shadows.

Abdel closed the trapdoor after them, cutting off all light except for a finger of penlight which he pointed ahead of them.
He and Tahia and Farouk hustled down the narrow stairs of the hidden passageway.

“This house is owned by our organization,” Abdel explained to Tahia’s unasked question. “This passageway will take us to a
basement connected to the building next door.”

Tahia’s heart hammered against her rib cage.

They ran down the steps, their rapid breathing and footfalls seemingly magnified inside her ears by the nearly suffocating
closeness of the walls and the low ceiling of this passageway.

Then sounds of gunfire could be heard popping off with a removed, distant sound from behind several walls away, and each report
stabbed like a burning knife into Tahia’s guts. She stopped.

“We must go back! Oh, Ali—”

Farouk grabbed her arm, urging her onward.

“Ali does what he must. So must we.
Hurry,
Tahia. We fight on
for
Ali. Nothing must stop us!”

The words of her lover’s brother ignited something inside Tahia that overcame the sorrow she felt.

“And
nothing
will stop us,” she told Farouk.

The gunfire from upstairs stopped.

Abdel was so far ahead, he was not in sight.

Tahia choked back the sobs and tears she wanted to unleash. She and Farouk hurried to catch up with Abdel, to get away from
there.

Rallis stood up from the floor of the room, cautious and slow even though he had convinced himself in the preceding heartbeats
that he was alone in this second-floor level of the house except for two dead men, a wafting haze of gunsmoke, and the receded
echoes of the brief, blistering exchange of gunfire that came after he had kicked in the door of the room while bullets had
zipped out at him from inside. Barely missing him, the ammo had been fired by the man he had recognized instantly as Ali Hassan.

The terrorist had appeared moments from death, propping himself up on a couch, firing at Rallis; and some of Hassan’s bullets
might have scored their mark, Rallis realized, except for the pain blurring Ali’s vision.

Now, Ali Hassan was dead, as dead as the second man sprawled in the far corner of the room, who took a bit more scrutiny,
because much of his face was blown away, before Rallis was sure that this was most likely the informant who had brought Rallis
into this in the first place; the man’s treachery had obviously been discovered and was rewarded by the others before they
fled.

Rallis heard voices and activity from the bottom of the stairs. He crossed to see Giorgios being joined down there by others
in police uniform, the men moving with extreme caution as they commenced searching the first-floor level of this house.

“Have the neighborhood cordoned off,” Rallis instructed from the top of the stairs.

Giorgios looked relieved that he had survived this firefight.

“What of the others?”

“Gone, except for two,” Rallis grunted. “There must be a hidden passage somewhere in this building. We’ll find it, but I fear
we’ve lost them.”

Giorgios nodded and went back outside as the others saw to the cleanup below.

Rallis stepped back into the room, holstering his pistol. All of this killing, he told himself, all of this work, and only
two dead terrorists to show for it.

He cursed no one in particular and everyone and everything in general.

He could hear some of the other men coming upstairs to join him. He began feeling along the walls for the exit the terrorists
must have used.

Today was a failure and he knew nothing could change that. The terrorist unit commanded by Farouk Hassan and Abdel Khaled
was running free with their weapons and their hate and their coldbloodedness, and that meant trouble for someone, somewhere,
very soon.

Farouk Hassan’s terrorist team had been blocked from attaining the weaponry they preferred, but his reading of Farouk told
Rallis that the terrorists would continue with their mission, whatever it was, despite the loss of Najib and Farouk’s own
brother. Standard terrorist procedure meant that the men downstairs, the security unit, were local Athens people supplied
only as a precaution. The core of Hassan’s force was now minus two, but Rallis had no doubt Farouk would continue.

Rallis knew it was out of his hands now.

There was nothing more he could do.

It would happen soon—whatever
it
proved to be—and then he would learn about it along with the rest of the world when the media blazed headlines of another
atrocity, and more spilled innocent blood …