The Camel Club (Camel Club 1)

Stone didn’t answer. He looked again at all the dead Arabs.

Seconds after Adnan had entered the hospital, he placed Brennan, who was still moaning continuously, on a gurney that he’d left just inside the front door. The gunfight outside had driven everyone inside the hospital away from the front entrance. Adnan saw a group of nurses, doctors and aides staring fearfully at him from farther down the hallway.

“What’s going on?” one of the doctors shouted as he edged forward.

Adnan didn’t respond to this query, but he did nod at the man who’d just appeared next to him. It was the hospital’s newest staff physician who’d earlier expressed concern about the need for security guards at Mercy Hospital.

“A wounded man,” the doctor called out. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Stay away from the front doors,” Adnan warned. “People are shooting.”

The doctor pulled a syringe from his pocket, uncapped it and injected the president in his arm; Brennan slipped into unconsciousness. Then the doctor placed a sheet over the president and strapped him to the gurney and pushed it down the side hallway. He got on the elevator there and took it down one floor to the basement. Adnan waited until this had happened and then turned back to the group of hospital personnel.

“Hey!” another doctor yelled at Adnan. “Who was that man on the gurney?” They now all started moving toward him.

Adnan reached inside his jacket, pulled out a gas mask, put it on and started walking toward the oncoming group. Then he pulled from his pocket what looked to be a grenade and held it up.

“Look out,” one of the nurses screamed as the group turned and ran in the other direction.

“Call the police,” another doctor yelled as she scrambled away.

An instant later Adnan reached the fourth tile across from the center of the nurse’s station and threw the cylinder against the wall. It exploded, and the hall was immediately filled with thick smoke that was driven in all directions by the hospital’s air circulation system. A split second before the smoke bomb went off, Adnan heard glass shattering, but he couldn’t see the source. He couldn’t know this was Alex Ford throwing himself through the glass doors, but the Arab knew he had to hurry. He turned back toward the front of the hospital and counted off his steps, navigating in the dark solely through memory from his constant practice. As he neared the front entrance, Adnan felt something bump his leg, but he kept going.

An instant later the timed explosive device he’d placed in the hospital’s electrical room went off. All power to the hospital was now gone; everything went dark.

Adnan made his turn, walked down the passageway, stopped at the exit door, opened it and went through. He grabbed a long metal bar that he’d earlier hidden behind a steam pipe and wedged it through the closed door’s push bar. Then he began to run.

As soon as the bomb went off and smoke filled the halls, Alex dropped to the floor and slithered forward on his belly. It was like being far underwater, and the fumes were making him gag. Then he bumped into something, and that something was flesh and bone. He made a grab for it, but then it was gone. He swiveled around and started heading the other way, following the sounds of the footsteps. They were measured, steady. How the hell could anyone be walking so calmly through this crap? And then it suddenly dawned on him: because that person had a mask. And the steady tread? The person was leading himself through the smoke by counting steps. Alex had practiced that very same tactic in the dark at the Secret Service’s Beltsville training facility.

Alex crawled forward as fast as he could. The footsteps suddenly grew fainter and he redoubled his efforts, whipping his body back and forth like a serpent closing in on its prey. Thankfully, the footfalls picked up again. He hit another hallway, turned and belly-crawled down it. He heard a door open and then close. He slithered faster, pushing himself to the right and feeling for the wall. When his hand hit metal, he reached up and grabbed the handle, but the door refused to open. He pulled his gun and shot at the door at waist level. One of the slugs hit the push bar, collapsing it, and the metal pole bar Adnan had wedged there fell free. He wrenched open the door and flung himself through. The smoke wasn’t as bad in here, but the power to the hospital had obviously gone out because there was no light.

Alex rose, found the handrail and made his way down the steps, slipping and sliding along the way. He missed an entire step and ended up in a heap at the bottom of the first flight of stairs. Bruised and bleeding, he picked himself up and kept going by using the rail the rest of the way down. His panic increasing, Alex started taking the steps two at a time before reaching the bottom and hustling down the hall. He burst out of the exit door right as Adnan was getting in the ambulance that was parked there. Alex suspected the president was in the back.

He didn’t even cry out a warning. Alex just opened fire, hitting Adnan in the arm. Adnan fired back, and Alex had to throw himself to the side, where he lost his footing and tumbled down a set of concrete stairs. He rose, got off another shot and took a round in return, right in his ribs, fired by Ahmed, who’d emerged from the driver side of the ambulance. Luckily, Ahmed’s small-caliber ordnance had zero chance of penetrating the latest-stage Kevlar that all Secret Service agents wore on protective detail. Still, it felt like Muhammad Ali had nailed him with his best punch, and Alex slumped down in pain just as another shot fired by Adnan, burned through the skin of his left arm.

The ambulance sped off, its sirens screaming, as Alex faltered after it on legs that were nearly dead. His chest killing him, his arm bleeding profusely and his lungs full of smoke, Alex finally dropped to his knees and fired at the ambulance, emptying his mag but failing to stop it. Then, he tried his wrist mic but it didn’t work. He realized the bullet that hit his arm must’ve also severed the wiring to his comm pack. The last thing he remembered before passing out was one final sight of the ambulance, and then it was gone.

And so was the president.

On his watch.

CHAPTER

55

GEORGE FRANKLIN PULLED HIS car into the driveway. He had come from the other side of Brennan, opposite where the ceremonial grounds were located, and he hadn’t had his radio on.

“Lori?” he called out. “Djamila?” He plunked his keys on the kitchen island and went through the house calling out again. He opened the door to the garage and was puzzled to see his wife’s convertible and the big Navigator SUV parked there.

Had they all gone out in Djamila’s van?

“Lori? Boys?”

He went upstairs, starting to become a little uneasy. When he opened the door to his bedroom, that unease turned to panic as he saw the phone lying on the floor, along with a torn-up sheet.

“Lori honey?”

He heard a sound from the closet. He rushed over and ripped the doors open and saw his bound wife. Lori’s eyes were not focusing well, but

she did seem to be looking at him. He raced to her side and pulled her gag off.

“My God, Lori, what happened? Who did this?” he said frantically.

She mouthed the name but he couldn’t hear it.

“Who?”

She said softly, “Djamila. She has the boys.” And then Lori Franklin started sobbing as her husband held her.

The ambulance raced into the garage, and the doors shut behind it. Adnan and Ahmed jumped out of the ambulance, opened the back door and unloaded the president.

Djamila had already opened the back of the van and was standing next to the rear passenger door where she was trying to keep the boys calm. They were all upset, but fortunately, they were also too young to free themselves from their car seats.

Now Djamila raced to the rear of the van and pushed the button that was hidden in a crevice inside the interior there. The floor lifted up, revealing a compartment. It was lead- and copper-lined and cut into two shapes: one of a man in a fetal position and the other of a small cylindrical object. The shape of the man conformed to the measurements of President James Brennan, with an inch all around to spare.

Djamila stared at the young man who had stepped back to let the doctor, Adnan and the other man present lift Brennan from the gurney.

“Ahmed?” she said unbelievingly.

He looked at her.

“Ahmed. It is me, Djamila.” It was Ahmed, her Iranian poet; the one who had written down the exact date and time of his death, the young man who had given her so much good advice and also the young man she hoped to share paradise with.

However, there was now a look in his eyes that Djamila could not