‘Yes, it can be,’ replied Lara, the Press Secretary, checking her schedule. ‘I’ll ask the Vice-President to cover the remaining two.’
‘Thank you,’ he sighed. He was worn out, the worry for his daughter leaving a hollow inside so great he felt paper-thin. With trepidation, he made his way down to the ground floor of the West Wing. So far there’d been no success in locating her, or Connor, and he was beginning to despair. But, as he entered the Situation Room, Dirk strode over to him, a victorious gleam in his eye.
‘Mr President, I’ve some good news. We’ve found them!’
President Mendez was suddenly alert, all tiredness blasted away. ‘Where?’
‘Yemen,’ replied Karen, calling up a satellite map of the Middle Eastern country on the central monitor. ‘A private plane flew out of Stafford Airport just two hours after the attacks. The official documentation stated the destination as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But a trace of its flight path shows the plane actually landing in neighbouring Yemen.’
‘The digital trail also ends there,’ stated Dirk. ‘There were multiple relay servers and spoofed identities, but the email appears to have originated from the capital city of Sana’a. This was confirmed by Colonel Black’s surveillance operative.’
Colonel Black now stepped forward. Even though Bugsy had been the first to trace the email, he let this fact pass. There were far more important matters than point scoring against the Secret Service Director. ‘My team also scrubbed the video’s audio track and identified a “Call to Prayer” sounding in the background.’ The colonel replayed the short piece of enhanced recording over the Situation Room’s speakers and an echoing chant, barely audible above the hiss and general noise of the video, filled the room. ‘This particular one is quite distinctive to the region.’
President Mendez nodded. ‘So where exactly do you suspect my daughter is being held?’
‘CIA have eyes on the ground there,’ explained Karen. ‘They report there’s been increased activity at a location on the outskirts of the city.’
An aerial view of an arid plain and mud-brick city zoomed in to a large building surrounded by a walled compound. The real-time satellite feed revealed four figures patrolling the perimeter.
‘I’ve a Navy SEAL unit stationed just off the coast of Yemen,’ announced General Shaw. ‘They can be at the target within twenty minutes by attack helicopter.’
‘How certain are you my daughter’s there?’ asked President Mendez, studying the aerial shot of the building intently, not daring to let hope enter his heart just yet.
‘We can’t be one hundred per cent,’ admitted Dirk, ‘but all the indications are strong. An infra-red satellite scan indicated people inside and there were a few suspicious cold spots within the building too.’
George interrupted. ‘Shouldn’t we allow time for a negotiated release? We’ve still five hours left. That’s surely our best chance of recovering your daughter unharmed.’
‘The secretary of state made our position crystal clear on that,’ reminded Karen. ‘The US Government cannot be seen to negotiate with terrorists. Besides, there’s no guarantee they’ll honour their side of a deal anyway.’
‘More hostages are killed during rescue attempts than from execution by their captors,’ George noted. ‘We should wait this out.’
‘Mr President, if we don’t move now, we may never get another opportunity,’ urged General Shaw.
President Mendez held up his hand, asking for silence. ‘What’s the mission’s probability of success?’
General Shaw swallowed uncomfortably. ‘I won’t lie to you. Intelligence estimates a fifty–fifty chance. But this is our best hope of rescuing her.’
President Mendez closed his eyes, feeling weighed down by an almost impossible decision – he was literally gambling with his daughter’s life.
‘The odds are improved by Connor’s presence, though,’ stated Colonel Black. ‘He’ll stand by her side and do all that’s necessary to protect her.’
President Mendez considered this, recalling how his own life had been saved by Connor’s father. Opening his eyes, he finally declared, ‘It’s a high-risk strategy, but it’s a measure of my desperation. General Shaw, you have my GO for the mission.’
The two Black Hawk helicopters swooped low over the desert ridges, phantoms against the moonless sky. The six-man Navy SEAL unit, split equally between the two choppers, remained silent and focused, checking their equipment for a final time.
‘One minute out,’ the pilot called through their earpieces.
Lieutenant Webber, ‘point man’ for the operation, clicked off the safety on his assault rifle. Like the other soldiers in his unit, he knew what was at stake and had trained all his life for just such a mission.
In the green glow of his night-vision goggles, the shadowy outline of the compound came into view. He spotted the ghostly face of a sentry peering into the night, hunting for the source of the thudding blades. As they made their final approach, Webber targeted his laser gunsight on the man’s head and squeezed the trigger. A split second later the man dropped lifeless to the ground.
Another sentry appeared and fired his AK47 blindly in their direction. A crack-shot from the other Black Hawk took the man out. The two remaining sentries fled their posts and sprinted for the main building. Webber brought them both down a few metres from the doorway. But he had no doubt the alarm had already been raised. His squad now had little more than a minute to locate and extract the hostages – any longer and it would be too late.
As soon as they’d cleared the compound wall, the SEALs fast-roped from the hovering helicopters to the ground below. Touching down on the hard-packed earth, amid swirls of dust, they unclipped themselves and dashed to the central building. A set of metal double doors served as the entrance, but they’d been locked from the inside.
Kneeling by the doorway, Webber waited a few precious seconds while one of his team, a large man from the Bronx nicknamed Sparky, attached an explosive charge.
‘Clear!’ barked the soldier, retreating a step and shielding his face.
The device detonated, flinging the metal doors back on their hinges. They banged like temple gongs, the blast echoing around the dusty compound. Inside, the building was cloaked in darkness, but the soldiers’ night-vision gear revealed a long empty corridor with doors opening off on either side.
As point man, Webber took the lead.
Suddenly there was an eruption of gunfire. Bullets whizzed past, narrowly missing Webber as he dived into the shelter of a doorway. He and his men returned fire.
‘Stairwell!’ shouted one of the SEALs.
Webber had line of sight and sprayed the landing with 7.62 calibre rounds. A robed man tumbled down the staircase and landed in a bloody heap on the corridor floor.
A turbaned head then peered out from a room on the far right and immediately disappeared back inside as a hail of bullets raked the corridor wall. Ceasing fire, Sparky hurled a ‘flashbang’ through the open doorway. The stun grenade went off, blinding light and a concussive blast incapacitating the occupant within. Aware they might need the man alive, one of the SEALs cuffed him while the rest of the unit swept the other rooms.
The ground floor was clear; no sign of the hostages.
But under the staircase they found an iron gateway and a set of steps leading downwards. Dividing into two teams, one SEAL unit headed for the upper floor to subdue any remaining hostiles, while Sparky blew the lock on the gate.