To the Death am-10 Page 45

  Two police officers escorted Sir Iain and Annie, Arnold and Kathy, and the four bodyguards to the sixteenth floor of the hotel, where there was just one maid on duty, using a noisy vacuum cleaner at the beginning of their corridor.

  She looked up as the party approached and said quietly, “I’m sorry about this — we were running very late today. I’ll be finished in two minutes.”

  One of the policemen replied, “Okay, lassie. No problem.” Shakira, in the middle of her dinner break, carried on cleaning the carpet diligently.

  They reached the door of the big suite, marked 170–172, and the four bodyguards entered first, moving swiftly between the rooms, checking cupboards and bathrooms. When they went through the open connecting door to Rick’s room, they found the big SEAL commander with his feet up, reading the racing pages of The Scotsman.

  “Hello, sir,” said Al Thompson. “Taking it easy for a while?”

  “Trying to,” said Rick. “Everyone here?”

  “Yup,” replied Al. “We’re just checking out the area. We’ll have two men outside the door at all times. We’re all staying on this floor.”

  “Sounds good,” said Rick. “How about tonight, when the admiral takes the salute at the Tattoo?”

  “We’ll all be over there, sir. I was going to ask you about deployment. I’ll station the guys wherever you want.”

  “Okay, let’s get everyone settled, and then you and I can take a look at this map of the castle. I guess you’ll want the guys on station by around 8 P.M. Admiral Morgan wants to be there at ten minutes before nine, just before the start.”

  “I’ll leave one man with him permanently, and there’ll be six cops, plus a military escort, to walk him and Mrs. Morgan to their seats.”

  “That ought to do it,” said Rick. “But I’ll tell you something, Al. That darned castle’s a big place, and most of it’s going to be in darkness. The security’s red-hot, as you’d expect, but the place gives me the goddamned creeps.”

  Al Thompson laughed. “We’ll be all right, sir. I’ll see you in a minute.”

  Rick could hear the two admirals and their wives moving in. He heard the luggage arrive on a trolley outside in the corridor. Then Arnold popped his head around the corner and said, “Hi, Rick. How was it last night? Good display?”

  Rick stood up. “Admiral,” he said, “it was fantastic. So much tradition, and marvelously well-done.”

  “Was it mostly music?”

  “I guess it was. But there were fabulous displays by the troops, and Russian Cossacks dancing, and God knows what else. The military bands were great, pipes, drums, and bagpipes. I’m really looking forward to seeing it again.”

  “Don’t forget about me, for chrissakes!” chuckled Arnold, before he disappeared next door. “I’d sure hate to get shot while you’re dancing the fucking Highland fling or whatever the hell they call it.”

  “No chance of that, sir. I’m all over it.”

  “See you later, pal,” said Arnie as he left.

  At 7:30, a general evacuation of the sixteenth floor began. Al Thompson left for the castle with two of his men, all three of them armed, by special permission of MI-5 and the Lothian Police Force. They were accompanied by four police officers, men who had been on duty at the Inveraray house.

  Forty-five minutes later, the MacLeans and the Morgans left with one bodyguard and Rick Hunter, who was now in his full police uniform, his CAR-15 automatic rifle loaded with a thirty-round magazine and slung over his shoulder. Four police officers met them at the elevator, and they all stepped on board.

  The doors slid silently shut and the elevator began its descent. Thus no one saw the same maid, carrying a small inexpensive seaman’s bag, use a master key to open the door up to the roof. Sixteen floors below, the maintenance chief had not yet missed his key.

  Meanwhile, over at the castle, high on the west side, General Ravi Rashood was in hiding. He had been there since mid-afternoon, sitting quietly behind a low wall, out of sight of the security team responsible for moving out the paying visitors before 6:30 in preparation for the evening.

  He was situated in one of the loneliest parts of the battlements, and had no intention of moving until the light began to fail. When it did, at around 8:15, he reached for his combat knife, which, as ever, was tucked into his belt in the small of his back. He waited until the guards had passed, and then moved quickly to the high wall of what he now regarded as his operational center.

  Way above him was a powerful light, a temporary fixture, designed to illuminate the entire area. Tonight it would not function. The electric wire that fed it was fixed loosely to the stonework, and Ravi severed it swiftly. Then he slipped unobtrusively back to his hideout, unseen and unobserved. It was growing darker now, especially in this area on the high west side, where there was no light.

  For their short journey to the castle, Lady MacLean and her party traveled in a big black Royal Navy staff car. There was a police car in the lead, and another right behind, in which the bodyguard and Rick were traveling.

  They turned right off Princes Street, into the side streets of Old Town, and arrived at the castle on time at ten minutes before nine. The military escort from the Scots Guards was in place as the car drew up, and Admiral Morgan and Kathy were led up to the Royal Box with Sir Iain and Annie walking right behind them.

  Rick Hunter, his rifle still slung over his shoulder, walked between the two couples, and four Scottish policemen followed. Arnold’s four personal bodyguards now closed in and positioned themselves strategically close to the front row as the two admirals took their seats in the center of the VIP line.

  By now, the Royal Box was filling up. The provost of Edinburgh University and his wife sat directly behind the admirals, flanked by the chief superintendent of the Lothian Police and the commanding officer of 42 Commando, which would again present their display. Another ten city and military dignitaries filled the remainder of the seats.

  At this time, just before the Tattoo began, Ravi was just above the new barracks, standing back, out of sight in the shadows. He was still there when the massed bands opened the evening’s proceedings with, in Admiral Morgan’s honor, “The Fanfare to the United States Navy,” specially composed by the conductor of the Royal Marine Bands for the occasion.

  Ravi was not, however, interested in the music. He was concerned only with the guards who were in position along the walls, on this night of the Tattoo’s most rigorous security alert ever.

  He was unarmed, except for his knife and a small but weighty glass paperweight, which he carried in his jacket pocket. He was dressed as a perfectly normal tourist, except for his shoes. well, boots, which were black and laced high beneath his dark gray trousers.

  Ravi was waiting for the guards to send for tea, a procedure he had watched four times on the previous night. The complete guard detail was four men, but every half hour they met, high up on the western ramparts. And that was when one of them walked down to fetch four cups of tea from the military canteen, set up temporarily next to the old hospital buildings.

  And now he waited, watching for the single soldier to break away and begin the walk down to the canteen. The Tattoo had been running for exactly fifteen minutes when the four guards came together. They chatted for two or three minutes, and then one of them turned around and began to stride down the hill, into the now-darkest area of the castle.

  The soldier was humming along with the music when Ravi burst out of the shadows like a panther, running toward his prey, coming in from the left, but from the back. He swung back his right arm and, with a stupendous display of strength, smashed the paperweight into the guard’s head — right into the brain’s critical nerve center behind the ear.

  The heavy glass weight obliterated the protective skull bone, and the young man, who had only yesterday informed the Hamas chief that his rifle was indeed loaded with live bullets, crumbled to the ground. Stone dead.

  Ravi, working in almost complete darkness thanks to the mi
ssing light, ripped off the man’s combat jacket, undid the belt, and tore off the loose trousers. He grabbed the man’s rifle and his woolly hat. Then he lifted the guard under the armpits and heaved him straight over the wall. It was a fifty-foot drop to the rocks and undergrowth that would surely obscure the body until well into the morning. Ravi heard the twigs snap as the Scots guardsman thudded into bushes.

  Ravi raced back into the shadows with his new combat kit, and pulled it on over his street clothes, making certain that his combat boots, purchased in a local army surplus store, could now be plainly seen.

  He pulled on his leather driving gloves and set off on the twenty-minute walk down to the Half-Moon Battery where the Marine commandoes were setting up their abseil ropes for their daredevil descent to the Esplanade. Ravi did not join them. Instead he hung back, with his rifle slung over his shoulder like a backwoodsman, or indeed an SAS officer going into combat.

  The minutes passed and the military displays continued to rousing applause. And then over the loudspeaker came the words—There will now be a demonstration by the commandos of 42 Royal Marine, who will display their versatile skills and efficiency in the capture of a fortified enemy stronghold — Ladies and Gentlemen — the Marines in action!

  The lights in the stadium were dulled, and lancing spotlights lit up the high walls above the west end of the Esplanade. Every eye in the grandstand was on the rampart that circled the Half-Moon Battery. It was just possible to see, in the spotlights, the ropes snaking out over the battlements, down the first sixty-foot-high sheer stone wall to the flat rocky promontory. Then there were more ropes over the lower wall, dropping down over the buildings onto the Esplanade.

  Ravi stayed back in the shadows, when suddenly there was movement. The first four commandoes ran for the battlements, and, on the word of the commander, grabbed the ropes with their gloved hands, swung backward over the wall, and dug in with their boots. Then they leaned back and pushed out, dropping down, down, down with each kick off the stone surface, the rope sliding expertly through their grips.

  It was a breathtaking example of high-caliber soldiering as, four by four, the men bounced down the wall, crossed the rocks at top speed, then abseiled down the last section to the ground. Back at the top, Ravi waited. The formations were slightly more ragged now, simply because some of the troops had been faster than others, and the ropes supported uneven numbers across the battery wall as each man descended.

  There were only six men left up there in the darkness, and Ravi suddenly emerged from the shadows and ran in toward the battlements with the others. He had selected his rope and arrived simultaneously with two others.

  “Righto, mate, after you,” one of them snapped, barely looking at the Hamas chief.

  And Ravi grabbed the rope. He’d done this a hundred times in the SAS and, perhaps more expert than all these young commandoes, he swung over the battlements and bounced his way down, backward, the way a trained Special Forces officer is expected to complete this discipline.

  Seconds later, he was on the rocks, running over to the last descent and abseiling onto the Esplanade. In front of him, the troops were lining up on the ground. Ravi moved back against the wall. There were essentially two differences between him and the rest. He was not lying flat on the ground, and his standard issue SA80 semi-automatic rifle was loaded with live ammunition, as opposed to the blanks the demonstration team would fire.

  The last two men were down, and the subdued backlighting up ahead on the Royal Box was still silhouetting Admiral Morgan, sitting in the front row, four seats from the left. The VIPs were standing now, applauding the breathtaking display. Ravi could see Admiral Morgan, with Sir Iain to his right and Kathy in her green linen suit to his left.

  Commander Rick Hunter was standing away to the right, on the end of the front row, when the first line of Marines opened fire into the air, demonstrating their opening assault on the enemy.

  Rick’s mind raced. He had always hated this darkened castle, with his man plainly visible out in front. A thousand instincts honed on the battlefield with his brave and beloved SEALs crowded into his thoughts. He braced himself for the attack, thinking only that this stadium was right now in darkness, and men were firing rifles and he could not see them, and he had no idea who was shooting at what.

  Ravi Rashood, two hundred yards away, steadied himself on the wall, and, from out of the night, he aimed his SA80 directly at Admiral Arnold Morgan’s chest.

  He held his breath and pressed the trigger. But Rick was about a hundredth of a second faster. He bounded two strides forward and launched himself sideways across the front of the Royal Box. He hit Arnold Morgan with a full-blooded rugby tackle that flattened the great man to the floor. They hit Kathy on the way down and flattened her too. Rick tried desperately to protect the admiral, raising himself and instinctively covering Morgan’s body with his own.

  Women screamed. The gunfire continued. The police ran in to break up what looked like a fight between two Americans. And as the guns were finally silenced, everyone stood up and dusted themselves off.

  No one spoke, but Arnold and Rick could see a line of 5.56mm bullets studded into the back of Arnold’s seat. Directly behind, the provost of Edinburgh University, covered in blood, was slumped dead in his chair.

  Rick helped Kathy to her feet. Neither she nor Arnold was hurt, but they were both very shaken. Arnold stared in disbelief at the bullets lodged in his chair. The police called for an ambulance, and the main lights came on. An announcement was made that owing to an unfortunate incident, the remainder of the Tattoo had been called off because of the suspected murder of the provost of Edinburgh University.

  The 10,000-strong crowd was told to leave in an orderly manner and that either their tickets would be renewed or their money refunded.

  And down behind the left-hand grandstand, in the dark, under the seats, Ravi was tearing off his army clothes and returning to civilian life. As suspected by Commander Hunter, he had bolted through that gap between the grandstand and the back wall. And now he dumped the trousers, jacket, and hat into a trashcan and walked out with everyone else, taking a circuitous route around to Princes Street. For the moment, he abandoned the Audi and walked back to the Cavendish, wearing his suede jacket, with the short-barreled rifle tucked underneath, half down his trousers, out of sight.

  He had missed for the second time, and he knew it. He had seen the schemozzle in the front row of the Royal Box, seen the admiral go down just as he had fired. For a split second he’d thought the bullet had hit home, but Special Forces commanders have an instinct about these things. And in his heart he knew he’d missed the admiral.

  The important thing, however, was that he was still free, on the loose and able to fight another day. Except that, in this particular case, it would be this day. He said hello to the doorman and headed straight up to his room, hoping to hell Shakira would contact him and finalize their arrangements.

  It was after 10:30 now, and Shakira took half an hour to call. Ravi answered the phone and she just said, “They are all arriving. I’ll be down.”

  Two minutes later she let herself into the room, having just seen Admiral Morgan and his wife, and having ascertained that, again, her husband had missed the target for which they had both strived for so long.

  “Darling,” she said, “can we go home now? Let’s just get away. We have the car, we can make it.”

  Ravi shook his head. “This is not a military mission,” he said. “This is the sacred work of Allah. I cannot abandon it. I would burn in hell if I did that. We must complete what we began.”

  “But why? We’ve both tried so hard. Maybe this is not meant to be. Why can’t we just go?”

  Again, Ravi shook his head. “Is everything ready on the roof?” he asked. “Yes, but I don’t want you to go.”

  “Can’t you see that I must?” And Ravi’s voice began to rise. “I have to kill him. He is the enemy of my people, the attack dog of the West, the sworn foe of the Pr
ophet, the scourge of our armies. The admiral must die by my hand. ”

  Ravi was shouting now, and Shakira was frightened someone would hear. Worse yet, she was afraid of Ravi now, afraid he had lost all sense of reason.

  “Go,” he commanded her. “GO! And do the bidding of Allah, as I must. Now GO!”

  He watched her walk through the door, and minutes later he followed her along the corridor to the fire escape. He took with him a balaclava and goggles he had bought in the same army surplus store where he purchased his boots.

  He climbed the stone steps, fourteen floors, to the stairwell of the sixteenth. He was standing inside the door Shakira had opened earlier that evening. The last short flight of stone steps led to the roof. Ravi checked his watch; three minutes later, Shakira came in.

  Ravi told her they were each precious messengers of Allah, and that this task tonight might be the last time they would see each other on this earth. They would, however, be united in the arms of Allah, who would surely welcome two of his finest Holy Warriors into everlasting paradise.

  “Besides,” he added in conclusion, “there is nothing here for us any more. Nowhere to go, to live. We’d be hiding for all the days of our lives. Tonight Allah will decide for us.”

  He put his arms around her and held her close. Together they’d risked everything for the Jihad, and now there seemed to be nothing left. For a while, Ravi had considered that Admiral Morgan was the one trapped in a corner. And that may have been true, but the corner he and Shakira were in was slower and more deadly.

  He kissed her good-bye and said quietly, “Shakira, you know what to do. And if I can make this work tonight, we will still have a chance to escape. If I can’t, we’ve had many wonderful years together, and Allah will unite us soon.”

  And with that, General Rashood climbed the stone steps to the roof, and there, standing hidden in the shadow of the air-conditioning unit, was the seaman’s bag containing the dock lines and the harness. He fixed the ends around a thick water pipe which was cemented into the wall, and ran them both through their shackles.