The Caliphate André Gallo (list of ebook readers TXT) 📖

side. His AK-47 up to his shoulder and finger on the trigger, Steve slipped through the door without having to touch it. Shouting voices erupted in what sounded to Steve like a loud conversation. He motioned Kella to his side.

    “What are they saying?”

     “They want the lights back on.”

     Although it was midday, light from the outside didn’t penetrate very far beyond the few windows. The three of them had emerged in another office. Yubba motioned to follow him. He opened the door slowly to reveal an external wall on the left. One of Hussein’s men was standing on a desk he apparently had placed there and was pointing his gun out a window that was about ten feet off the floor.

     While his gun still pointed toward possible targets outside, his eyes followed the door’s movement on his left. He quickly tried to move his gun into firing position when he saw Steve appear behind Yubba. But Steve already had his AK-47 pointed toward him. He fired and four 7.62-millimeter caliber bullets penetrated the Salafist’s chest. The almost-simultaneous blows hammered him against the wall. He fell off the desk to the floor.

     Steve’s mind registered that he had killed another human being. But his dominant feeling was that of great danger. The man he had shot could easily have killed them both.

     He pulled Kella after him, moving to the right, paralleling the side toward which the Salafist had been pointing his gun. Now the other gunmen were alerted. They would assume a breach by the Israelis.

     “Hurry,” he said.

     They moved out quickly and kneeled at an intersection of two corridors formed by seven-foot-high dividers. He told Kella, “Call to the Tuaregs in Tamasheq. Tell them who we are.”

     Kella shouted, “Izem and all of you other Udalan fighters. Now is the time to revolt against the Arab master, the poisoners of wells. Kill them now. Do not die for somebody else’s cause. Stay with the Arabs and die. Join me and choose freedom. I will get you out of here alive.”

     They waited in silence. Steve said, “Repeat your message, and then let’s move quickly.”

     Before she could say anything, Yubba shouted it out.

     Steve heard footsteps and voices in front of them, so he pulled Kella into the first office cubicle, where they kneeled awkwardly behind a desk. The footsteps drew closer.

     They saw Izem go past their hiding place running in a crouch. In a loud whisper, Kella called out in Tamasheq, “Izem, in here.” In a few seconds Izem joined them.

     Suddenly a loud Arab voice from farther down the corridor shouted, “This is Majid. The hostages escaped. Al Khalil is insane with rage. The hostages are our ticket out of here. They must be up here. Boulos! Gamal! Join me at the top of the stairs and help me find them!”

     “Now I know where they are,” Izem said. “Stay here. The stairs are very close.”

     He pointed with the muzzle of his gun. He took the AK-47 from Steve and gave it back to Yubba. He and Yubba headed in Majid’s direction.

     They heard voices and footsteps. Then gunfire erupted, stopped for a fraction of a second, and erupted again. The sound was badly absorbed and resounded throughout the warehouse building. It also sounded extremely close. Kella looked at Steve. He stood up in a crouch and moved out of the cubicle, with his AK-47 out front.

***

Al Khalil was downstairs in his de facto office. He held Abdul, who was kneeling in front of him, by the hair. “How long have you been a CIA spy?”

     “Never, never! May Allah curse me if I lie! Izem came to help the hostages. It’s the Tuaregs. They are all spies. They are all infidels. They only made believe they are Muslim warriors. Izem liberated the Americans, not me. I could do nothing.”

     Al Khalil pointed a pistol at Abdul’s face.

     “You lie. You and Izem worked together, didn’t you?”

     Abdul held is hands, palms up, toward al Khalil.

     “No, no!”

     Still holding Abdul by the hair, al Khalil moved the muzzle of the pistol closer and closer to the man’s right eye, his finger tightened on the trigger. In desperation, Abdul grabbed the gun. The gun went off as he tried to push it aside. The bullet punched him in the neck. Al Khalil released his hair and Abdul fell forward. He looked at him a second before firing another shot into the back of his head.

***

Izem and Yubba appeared in front of Steve. Izem said, “Majid, Boulos, and Gamal are gone to their Paradise.”

     Then he called his Tuareg brethren in Tamasheq. Within five minutes, after some gunfire, during which Kella kept a firm hold on Steve’s arm, three men appeared. They spoke with Izem.

     “We just lost one of ours. Hussein and several men are on the roof, and there are the men guarding the scientists, and al Khalil’s guards, about fifteen-to-twenty fighters.”

     There was another conversation among the Tuaregs, which Kella translated for Steve.

     “The Israelis have a secret weapon downstairs. With it, al Khalil is going to first threaten the Muslim world with a warning shot against two cities, and then, unless all submit, he plans to obliterate the population of some Arab capitals.”

     Steve took a deep, steadying breath.

    “Let’s go downstairs. We have to stop him.”

***

As the Shaldag and Hussein’s men battled for control of the roof on the western side of the building, Habib and the Amitais switched the nuclear power piped in from the Soreq Nuclear Center, from the commercial grid, providing electricity to surrounding towns, to exclusive military use of the center. The energy coursed to three lasers hooked up in series, using a triple-lens system. The