Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (180 page)

Daliah pulled the blanket off her shoulders and tossed it to
the ground. 'I want to go on the helicopter with you.'

Najib looked at her without expression. 'No. You have
already gone through enough.'

She tightened her lips. 'I'm
not
going into the palace with
you! I just want to be on the helicopter when it lets you off
and picks you up again!'

His brows snapped together. 'It is out of the question,' he
told her firmly. 'It's far too risky. If anything should happen
to you now, then the entire mission will have been futile.'

She raised her chin resolutely. 'I'm going,' she said quietly.
'Just try to stop me.'

Chapter 27

In the helicopter, hovering just feet above the palace roof,
Najib shouted last-minute instructions at the pilot.

'Your watch is synchronized with mine. If I'm not back on
the roof in fourteen minutes, then you are to forget about
me and take off. Don't wait around a minute longer. The
explosives are set for fifteen minutes time. That gives you only
sixty seconds to get out of here.'

'But if you're not—'

'Then forget about me!' Najib reiterated. The sharpness of
his voice left no room for argument.

The pilot turned away. 'Yes, sir.'

Najib twisted in his seat and kissed Daliah.

'Come back to me in one piece,' she said in a strained whis
per.

He swung around to the open door and jumped out.

In the lush gardens on the southeastern side of the palace, the
Israeli captain hunkered down in the shrubbery, watching as
his explosives expert attached the packets of plastique to the pipeline. 'Set them for fifteen minutes,' he told the corporal.

The corporal nodded and set the miniaturized digital timers
and activated them by flipping a switch. A tiny red light glowed
on each. He looked at the captain. 'Fifteen minutes it is, sir,'
he said unnecessarily.

The captain nodded grimly. 'Then let's get the hell out of
here, Corporal.'

'Yes, sir!'

Together they jumped to their feet and took off. A fusillade
of gunfire from somewhere within the palace sprayed around them as they lunged through the flowerbeds and past a spray
ing fountain. Bits of earth flew up and danced all around them.

Just before they reached the path, a bullet grazed the cap
tain's right shoulder and spun him around.

'Damn!' he swore angrily, and dived to the ground. Keeping
his head down, he looked up for the source of the shots and
saw movement behind a series of tall first-floor windows some
thirty feet away. With knit brows he emptied an entire clip from his MAC-10 machine pistol and watched the sheets of
glass burst and rain down in shards. For an instant there was
silence. Then heads popped out from behind the now glassless
windows and streaks of return fire flashed and rattled.

He tightened his lips grimly. How many terrorists were in
that room, anyway? With al-Ameer making his way around
alone inside the palace . . . Not very good odds, the captain
thought. He reached for one of the firebombs hanging on his
belt. After tearing off its shield, he rose in a crouch and hurled
it at the gaping window with all his might and then threw
himself flat on the ground.

The explosion came with a thunderous roar. The window
frames burst out into the garden in almost lazy slow motion,
and chunks of masonry rained down. Inside the room a cloud of yellow-orange fire billowed up the walls. A screaming, flail
ing human torch staggered to the window and fell out.

'
There,' the captain muttered to himself. 'That should even
things out a little.'

Najib wished he could afford the luxury of searching the palace
methodically. Normally, it would have made sense to start on
the third floor and work his way down to the first, but the
palace was too huge and there were too many rooms and halls
and storage areas. A thorough search could take hours, and he did not have hours. He had less than fifteen minutes, and
those were running out fast. As it was, unless a major miracle
happened, this palace would be his tomb.

He moved swiftly, drawn by the sound of sporadic gunfire
and a rocking explosion from somewhere below. He would
check that out first. His instincts told him to disregard the
upper two levels and concentrate on the ground floor. That
was where all the activity seemed to be centred, and there
he might find Khalid and Hamid, and, if he was very lucky,
Abdullah as well. All three of them had to be
somewhere
in
this sprawling palace. But where?

He literally flew down the two flights of marble stairs from
the roof, raced down the endless marble corridors of the
second floor, tore across the mezzanine above the foyer, and
then jumped down the last set of stairs four at a time. The
octagonal fountain gurgled and sprayed with mocking aloof
ness.

Everywhere, signs of destruction met his eyes: shattered
glass, gaping walls, spent shell casings, smashed furnishings, and smouldering upholstery. The fires were spreading even
more swiftly than any of them had anticipated, fed as they
were by the sumptuous fabrics, acres of carpeting, and walls
sheathed in exotic woods. Even the normally fireproof marble
walls and floors could not contain them: too many flammable
building materials had been used. The Almoayyeds were
going to have quite a spectacular ruin on their hands.

He crossed from the foyer into the first of the three huge
adjoining rooms—the fifty-foot-long oval library—shielding his face from the heat with his forearm. The windows were
completely blown out, frames and all. The gently curving ceil
ing-high bookshelves tilted into the room at crazy angles, and
fires were everywhere. Piles of burning books, scorched tulip
wood tables, and overturned chairs gave evidence of a recent explosion. Two blackened bodies were sprawled on the floor.

He nodded to himself: So this was the explosion he'd heard when he was coming down the stairs—a firebomb.

Still shielding his face from the heat, he crossed into the next
room, a green-velvet-lined screening room with a semicircle of
green velvet armchairs facing a huge movie screen. He let his
arm drop. It was cooler in here, and miraculously, the room was untouched: the destruction had stopped just outside its
door. But it wouldn't remain that way for long.

He stopped for a moment, turned around, and stared back
at the burning library beyond. He frowned thoughtfully.
There was nothing in there except burning books, ruined fur
nishings, and fires raging everywhere, but he trusted his
instinct and returned to the library. He crept across the velvet
carpeting, flattening himself against the wall. His eyes flickered around the huge room. One second passed. Two. He
jumped back as a section of bookshelf tumbled over with a
crash, and a wild shower of sparks exploded to the ceiling.
No, there was nothing. He must have imagined whatever it
was that had caught his attention.

He was about to curse the waste of precious seconds and
head back into the screening room when a click froze him in
his tracks. Little chills lifted the hair at his neck. He knew that
sound only too well—a gun's hammer.

'Slowly put your weapon down,' a voice hissed harshly, and
something hard and menacing poked him brutally in the spine.
'This is no time to try any tricks.'

He bent over and laid his automatic on the floor then slowly
straightened back up.

'Kick it away from you.'

He gave the weapon a nudge with the toe of his boot, and
it spun across the marble.

'Raise your arms above your head and turn around slowly.'
The gun barrel left his back and he turned.

He and the two men behind him stared at one another.

'Khalid!' Najib said with a flood of relief. 'Hamid! Am I
ever glad to see you!'

Khalid lowered his automatic, exchanging grins with
Hamid.

Najib let his hands drop. 'You've both got to get out,' he
told them urgently. 'The helicopter will pick us up from the
roof. In only minutes, the whole palace is going to blow.
Listen—does either of you know where Abdullah is?'

'Ah, the traitorous triumvirate!' It was Abdullah's voice. 'I
am right here, to your left.'

The three of them froze.

A section of the tilting, burning bookcase had swung out
ward, and Abdullah and Ghazi stepped soundlessly out from
a concealed reading room. Both were armed with semi-
automatics, aimed right at them.

The timer digits were down to 7:56.

Najib heard the ear-splitting groan of a collapsing bookcase
at the far end of the blazing library, and he stared in morbid
fascination as a giant section of ceiling-high shelves tipped
away from the wall in slow motion and toppled inward, dump
ing tons of burning volumes to the floor. All around, the other
shelves were swaying precariously.

He pulled his gaze back to Abdullah. If his half-uncle had
even heard the crash, he gave no evidence of it. The madman
was in another world entirely, a world where he was omni
potent and the fears of ordinary mortals mattered not at all.
His messianic eyes had been on Khalid, and now they slid back
to Najib, the triumph in them merged with feral cunning. 'As
soon as the attack started, I suspected that the three of you
were behind it,' he was saying, 'and now it is proven. How convenient that you are all together. It will make punishing
you for your treachery so much easier. You swore an oath to
me, all three of you!' His eyebrows arched into a dark V, and
he laughed crazily. 'For breaking it, you will now die!'