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

open lobby toward a corridor. The Israelis stopped and fired a few shots toward the Salafists to keep them from rushing them. Al Khalil’s men rushed their position as soon as the firing stopped. The two men were running down the corridor seeking the temporary safety of the next turn, but the Salafists won the foot race and gunned them down. When the attackers reached them, one was already dead. The other had chest wounds and would not live long.

     Hussein told one of his men, “We’re going to finish clearing this floor. You stay here and find out where the rest of them are. We’re looking for a door that will take us downstairs. Kill him after you’re done.”

     Hussein first made sure there were no other live occupants on the ground floor. Then he told four of his men, “Go back to the front gate and hold off the first responders, whoever they are. They might be firemen or they might be assault troops. It’s important that you slow them down. We need time to find out where everyone is, where the real work of this place is done. Then withdraw back here. You have your radio.”

     Turning to another squad of men, he instructed, “Find defensive positions around the building. Keep me informed.”

     He instructed the rest to go look for locked doors.

     “The most secure-looking door is probably the one we want.”

    They found two doors with numeric keypads. Al Khalil ordered the wounded man brought to the door and asked him, “Where does this go?”

     The bloody employee mumbled, “It’s just a closet; nothing in there.”

     Al Khalil took the Beretta 38 from his holster and shot the man in the left foot. He said, “I’ll give you another chance. I don’t have time for your heroics. Where is the entrance to the underground? Is there an elevator, stairs?”

     The man implored, “The door is behind you and to the right. It’s in the back of an office marked ‘Director.’”

     “Carry him,” said al Khalil. “He’s coming to the door with us.”

     They quickly found the director’s office. Behind an imposing desk was a door leading to a small private bathroom. In the bathroom was another door with an electronic pad.

    “What’s the combination?” Tariq asked.

     “I don’t know. I’ve never gone down there. I’m not authorized.”

     He was a tanned, middle-aged man in overalls and ankle-high leather shoes. His fingers were short and thick, his fingernails stained by soil.

     “You’re staying alive as long as you’re willing to help us,” Al Khalil said. “If that’s all you have to say, you’re on your way to your heathen hell.”

     He raised his pistol.

     “Wait! Yoram was allowed to go down there. But he’s dead and the combination won’t work unless the thumb print is first verified,” he pointed to the pad which had a two-by-four-inch black plastic screen beside the numeric box.

     Tariq ordered, “Go look into Yoram’s pockets. No, bring him here. We’ll need his thumb.”

     In a few minutes, Yoram’s body was on the director’s desk, the blood from his shirt staining the wooden surface. Yoram had been a thin man, balding, in a white shirt. His dead eyes stared at his killers from under stylish rectangular glasses. One of the fighters handed Tariq an address book, which he looked through. On the last blank page were a series of prices in shekels. They were added and the sum was a six-digit number.

     Now they could all hear firing outside. Hussein guessed that the first counterforce had arrived and had tried to come down the main access road.

     With the sound of machine gun bursts in the background, al Khalil had one of his men stand the body up so that he could press the dead man’s right thumb against the vertical screen. Then he punched the six numbers in the order of the sum derived from the address book. He tried the handle but the door didn’t open. He reapplied the corpse’s thumb against the screen and tried the series of numbers backward. A green light went on.

     “Get the body out of the way, and get ready,” Hussein ordered.

     He pulled on the handle and stepped back for two of his men to fire into the opening. He had the door open about three feet when a blast from the other side of the door blew it completely open, knocking two men off their feet and killing the man closest to the door.

     Hussein said, “Booby-trapped, in case the combination was obtained under torture.”

     He took charge and went through the doorway first and ran down the stairs to his left. His men followed. Looking for other booby traps, they reached the bottom where Hussein saw another door down a narrow corridor. He told one of his men to fire at the lock, which had little effect. Another one placed Semtex against the hinges and the lock below the handle, and blew the door.

     Hussein again rushed through the opening, staying low. His men followed on the run and, with guns raised, spread into the rooms on the right and left. They found twenty-two men and women lying face down in a large room equipped with several rows of computer terminals that faced a twenty-by-thirty-foot electronic map of the Middle East. Tehran and several other locations in Iran, Mecca and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and Damascus in Syria were lit in red, with all the other capitals in green.

***

Last to go downstairs after the takeover of the building were Steve and Kella. They were marched first into the large, general-purpose computer center, which reminded Steve of a visit to the Houston Space Center, and then into a small side room that contained the building’s fuse boxes, spare computers, and computer boards.