To the Death am-10 Read online

  He slipped the safety harness on and fastened it tightly, attaching it to the second line with the rock-climbers’ clips which he could adjust on the way down, playing out the line. And then he waited for Shakira’s call.

  In the meantime, over at the castle, the police were trying to make up for lost time. They sent a detail to the Marine commando headquarters and checked every man who had gone over the wall. Everyone was present, every man still had his rifle, and every rifle was empty, having fired only blanks. The police stationed officers at every door, and they began to search people as they left the Tattoo.

  Finally they had the CO summon the guard and conduct a roll call of the men who had been on duty. There was, of course, one missing, a 23-year-old Scots guardsman who had been armed with an SA80 semi-automatic, loaded.

  This was a rifle with the precise same bullets that had been fired at the U.S. admiral and killed the provost. At 11:30 P.M., the police decided they had a suspect — a missing suspect, but still a suspect.

  They posted a further guard detail on the Cavendish Hotel, with men again on duty on the sixteenth floor. Arnold’s four-man bodyguard team was still working, and Rick elected to stay close to the admirals and their wives.

  Right now they were having supper in the hotel grill, and no one felt like going to bed after the narrow escape from death Arnold had suffered.

  “Jesus, Rick, you saved my life,” he said. “Guess I owe you and Ramshawe together.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, sir,” replied the ex-SEAL. “It was an honor to carry out my duty.”

  “I guess I’m getting too old for these front-line politics,” said the admiral. “And I think I might be getting stupid as well.”

  “I’d find that very hard to accept,” said Sir Iain.

  “Even if you took into consideration the very obvious truth, that young Jimmy Ramshawe has been trying to warn me for more than a month that this trip was a truly godawful idea?”

  “But, Arnie,” protested Annie MacLean, “you can’t react to every wild theory that someone comes up with.”

  “No. I guess that’s why I insisted on coming. It was as if I thought I could outsmart whoever these goddamned assassins were, no matter what the facts were telling me. Or at least were telling Ramshawe. I wasn’t listening.”

  “It’s often the way with very clever people,” said Sir Iain. “They get so accustomed to being right, when everyone else is barking up the wrong tree, they end up thinking they can shape events just by their own intellect.”

  “I think it’s sometimes called megalomania,” interjected Kathy, smiling for the first time in several hours. “Right now, I think I’m having a nervous breakdown. Because whoever opened fire on Arnie is still out there.”

  Rick Hunter looked grim. He had shed his yellow police jacket, and it was currently lying on the banquette next to Kathy, covering up his CAR-15 rifle.

  “He is still out there,” agreed the former SEAL. “And I’m assuming he’s still armed. We need to be very careful. I’ve called home, and the president has sent the 747 to pick us up at Edinburgh airport first thing tomorrow. we’re out of here, sir, no ifs, ands, or buts. Pushing your luck is one thing — but this is crazy.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was thirty-five minutes after midnight. “It’s around 7:30 in Washington,” he said. “The boss said they’d be in the air from Andrews a half hour ago.”

  “What time do we cast off tomorrow morning?” asked Admiral Morgan.

  “They expect to refuel Air Force One at 7 A.M.,” replied Rick. “I guess we’ll get on board around 7:30. Leave here at 6:30.”

  “Better get the hotel to give us a shout around five,” said Arnie.

  “No need, sir. I won’t be sleeping,” said Rick. “Not until they shut the door of that aircraft and take off for the U.S. of A.”

  “Well, I’m going to try to sleep,” murmured Kathy. “But I’m so tired, and so on edge, I expect it will be impossible. It’s not every day someone tries to blow your husband’s head off. But I’m kinda getting used to it.”

  Everyone laughed. Nervously. And Rick summoned the two policemen standing inside the grill room doorway to step forward. Arnold’s four bodyguards, sitting at the next table, were also on their feet.

  Flanked by his protectors, Admiral Morgan made his way out to the lobby, with Rick leading the way, his rifle now openly in the firing position. Sir Iain, Annie, and Kathy walked behind Arnold, with the two policemen bringing up the rear, weapons drawn.

  All eleven of them stepped into the elevator, and all eleven stepped out at the sixteenth floor. They walked in convoy down to room 168, where two more policemen were on duty. The security men went in first, swept the rooms for intruders, pronounced them “clean,” and signaled for everyone to come in at last.

  Rick announced that he would be on permanent duty and would like two of the bodyguards with him at all times. Al Thompson volunteered to share the first watch, and Rick detailed two policemen to stand guard in the corridor throughout the night.

  Admiral MacLean, who had been subconsciously concerned that all this was giving Scotland one hell of a bad name, suggested that everyone gather for a farewell nightcap in the drawing room. “Who knows when we will all be together again?” he smiled.

  Two of the policemen now went off duty and left the suite, walking along the corridor to the elevator. Neither of them was concerned by a maid pushing a trolley, about forty feet ahead of them. And neither of them saw her put a cell phone to her ear, which caused a soft ringtone high on the roof of the hotel.

  Ravi was ready. His lines were clipped, harness tight, rifle loaded and ready. His balaclava was pulled down. He wore goggles, and he edged his way to the 180-foot precipice of the hotel roof.

  Carefully he tested the lines, pulling on them hard, ensuring that they could take the strain; and then, for the second time this night, he leaned back and prepared to descend. He began slowly to abseil down the wall, until he was right above the line of windows on the sixteenth floor.

  Right here he adjusted his clips, giving himself another six feet on both lines. Now poised high above Princes Street, he released the safety catch on the SA80, and said a final prayer to his God.

  Admiral MacLean was just pouring four glasses of Scotland’s finest, when Ravi, with a massive double-footed kick, launched himself, temporarily, into space, backward, until his lines stretched tight to the horizontal. At which point, gravity took over, and Ravi plummeted downward and inward.

  He hit the windowpane with the soles of both boots and obliterated the glass. The huge force of his body weight carried him through to the window ledge, and his rifle was already spitting bullets.

  Ravi could see Admiral Morgan, and he had eyes for no other. He rammed down his finger on the trigger, aiming straight at Arnold. The first bullet ripped into the admiral’s shoulder, and a stain of blood seeped through his shirt.

  And in that split second, Commander Rick Hunter swiveled and opened fire, pumping a line of 5.56-millimeter shells straight into the head of General Ravi Rashood, killing him instantly. Slowly he dropped his rifle and flopped backward through the window from whence he had come. His lines held fast, and the body of the Hamas C-in-C swung theatrically above Princes Street, steadily dripping blood on anyone who happened to be passing sixteen floors below.

  The two policemen on duty outside the suite had now rushed inside, and Arnold’s wound was being wrapped in towels from the bathroom. Rick insisted that Arnie rest on the bed while he, so often the medic on his SEAL teams, took a look at it, mostly to make sure the bullet was not still in the admiral’s shoulder.

  Arnold hung tough. “It’s bullshit,” he confirmed. “Stupid fucker couldn’t even shoot straight. No wonder he kept missing. Anyway, who the hell is he?”

  At which point there was a gentle tap on the door, and a voice said “Room service.”

  “Come in,” snapped the policeman, who at the time was fetching more towels. But Rick Hunter
, suddenly remembering his instructions to the front desk, looked up just in time to see a service cart, laden with food covered with a white tablecloth, being pushed through the door.

  “STOP!” he yelled. “GET OUT — RIGHT OUT! RIGHT NOW!”

  But the service cart kept coming, and the good-looking, dark-haired maid from along the corridor kept pushing. She made it into the room, and then slid her right hand under the tablecloth, and when it emerged it was gripping the deadly Austrian revolver provided by Prenjit Kumar.

  No one noticed, except Rick Hunter. And Shakira never had time to take aim at Admiral Morgan. Rick blew her away, studding her perfect face with a line of bullets that knocked her backward into the corridor, blood pumping from her head.

  “JESUS CHRIST!” bellowed Arnold Morgan. “THIS IS LIKE THE FUCKING WILD WEST!”

  By now there were about twenty more policemen thundering along the corridor. Squad cars, blue lights flashing, sirens howling, were pulling up outside the hotel’s main entrance. Lady MacLean had almost fainted with terror, and Kathy Morgan, as white as the tablecloth, was holding Arnold’s hand while her husband griped and moaned about too much fuss being made about a small incident.

  It was after two o’clock when the room was restored almost to normal. The body of Ravi was hauled back onto the roof, and once more his lines held fast. They wheeled Shakira out on a hospital gurney, and the police summoned a doctor and three nurses from nearby Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to tend Arnold’s mercifully superficial wound.

  “I’d prefer you to be treated in the hotel,” the chief superintendent told America’s former national security adviser. “I just have a feeling that if you step outside the door, another bloody gun battle might break out.”

  Admiral Morgan chuckled and said, gruffly, “Words of appreciation don’t come naturally to me. But I would like to say ‘thank you’ for everything you all have done for me. I’ve been a very stubborn old man, and I’ve put a lot of good people in great danger.”

  “For the last time,” responded Kathy. “Because you, Arnold Morgan, are retired — no more advising, no more telling presidents what to do. Your service to your country is over. That’s if you want to stay married.”

  EPILOGUE

  0730 Wednesday 8 August Edinburgh Airport

  Air Force One was refueled. The stairway was in place, and the Royal Navy staff car pulled up twenty yards away. Admiral Morgan, with his arm around Kathy, stepped out and climbed the steps to the giant presidential aircraft, right behind Commander Hunter. The four American agents were already on board.

  The huge door was immediately closed and the Boeing 747 that bore the Presidential Seal of the United States of America began to push back, ready to taxi down to the end of the runway.

  Little was yet known about the identity of the two would-be assassins, but the communications officer was instructed to stand by for information from the Lothian and Border Police in Edinburgh.

  Somewhat poignantly, they were thirty thousand feet above West Cork at around 9 A.M. when the coded communiqué came through:

  Dead assassin identified as Major Ray Kerman, deserted from Great Britain’s Special Air Service eight years ago. Dead hotel maid believed to be his Palestinian wife, Shakira Rashood. Search of her luggage, in Kerman’s room, revealed five different passports, one of them American in the name of Carla Martin. Both the deceased are believed to have been Islamic extremists operating on behalf of the terrorist organization, Hamas.”

  “Goddamned towelheads,” growled Arnold Morgan.

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