Catherine connected the dots. “Al-Kazaz gave the image to the Israelis.” She looked at the Saudi in the chair across from her. “Which means you knew Hawthorn was a Mossad agent the entire time. The whole damn thing was a setup.”
Carmichael roared, “Goddammit, Kaz! No!”
Court said, “Denny, you were wrong before. Kaz wasn’t your man in al Qaeda. He wasn’t your man in Saudi intelligence. You were his man in the CIA. He ran you. He still does.”
Denny’s hands were bound behind the chair, but he looked like he might try to kill the man tied next to him with only his gnashing teeth.
Kaz surprised everyone in the room with a slight smile. He turned to Denny, on his left. “I ran you for years when I worked inside AQ. Giving you enough information to solidify me as a source, to make me look good, and passing disinformation when it suited Saudi interests. I fed you intelligence that I knew would go straight to your friend Manny Aurbach at Mossad. You believed it all because I’d proven myself. And Manny believed it all because it came from you, and he never knew I existed.”
Denny said, “I’m going to kill you.”
Kaz laughed now. “No, you won’t.” He pointed his forehead at Gentry. “This man will do the honors. You and I will die tonight, but I can die in peace, because although my scheme was discovered at the end, my efforts succeeded for many years. I can be proud of my service to my kingdom.” He laughed again, more cruelly this time. “You, Denny, will die knowing you failed your country.”
Denny Carmichael turned to Catherine King. “I did not know. You have to believe me. Whatever happens to me, you can’t report that I did anything to hurt the CIA.”
King said, “You were next in line to become director. If you had succeeded in killing Six, as you tried so hard to do, then al-Kazaz would have been able to manipulate the director of the CIA.”
It was a statement, and Denny had no reply to it.
Kaz was about to speak again, but the lights in the conference room went off suddenly, shrouding the scene in darkness.
76
Five seconds after cutting power to the south wing of Alexandria Eight, Dakota spoke into his helmet-mounted headset. “Breach!”
The explosive ordnance expert on the team depressed the detonator, and a breaching charge on the wall just to the left of the steel double doors blew. A large water bladder covering the outside of the charge tamped the explosion, both keeping the men outside the wall safe from the backblast, as well as pushing the majority of the explosive power into the fortified wall.
Within seconds of the explosion the first two JSOC operators had their weapons through the oval-shaped hole in the wall. While they covered ahead, two more operators climbed through, took a knee in the hallway, and searched for targets in prearranged geometries of fire. The hallway was pitch-black, but both of these operators, as well as all the other men on the team, wore GPNVG-18s, state-of-the art night vision goggles that rendered the darkness before them in varying hues of green in a wide, ninety-seven-degree panoramic view.
Assaulters five and six were through the breach an instant later, and they moved down to the far end of the hallway to the small door that led straight to Denny’s office. They set a small breaching charge on the lock of the door, planning to enter and then take the other exit out of the office. They would then move up the small hall past the attic stairs and into the conference room.
Seven and eight moved straight between the cordon of armed men covering all angles, and these two ran to the wall just left of the conference room doors. One man carried a large shield-looking device in his hand, and he shoved it against the wall, affixing it with pre-placed adhesive. This large breaching charge was also backstopped with a water barrier, but it was designed to minimize the inward blast, so that hostages inside would not be injured.
Nine and ten, Dakota and Harley, moved into the hallway last. They each set two more small charges wide of the first two, both at shoulder height. These would blow small holes in the wall, creating gun ports so operators could cover the assaulters moving into the main breach.
While one operator connected the det cord to all three charges on the wall, the other men moved wide of the area, lined up in two stacks, one on each side, and prepared to execute the dynamic entry.
—
When the lights went out, Catherine King could not understand why Court Gentry sat calmly in his chair for several seconds, apparently sending a text message. And when the explosion in the hallway rocked the room and Catherine King screamed in shock, Denny Carmichael could not understand why Gentry cut him free from his bindings. It was too dark in the room to see any faces, but Denny wondered if Gentry was afraid of the attack to come and had some plan that involved Denny being ambulatory.