Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [99]
On the ground floor they retrieved their shoes and proceeded to the end of the hallway where they found the door al-Fihri claimed led to the basement. Casey reached out and tried to open it, but it was locked.
She stood back and signaled Cooper, who stepped forward, checked the door for any sort of alarm, and then pulled out a lockpick gun. Within seconds, she had the dead bolt taken care of. Nodding at Casey, she stepped away from the door, replaced the lockpick tool beneath her burqa and readied her weapon.
Casey grabbed hold of the door handle and counted down quietly from three. When she said “Go” and opened the door, they followed her into the stairwell and down the stairs.
Their presence on the stairs was greeted with a string of sharp words spoken in Arabic. A young man, no more than twenty-two years old, with a Glock placed on the prayer mat in front of him, demanded to know what they were doing.
“Salam, salam,” peace, repeated Casey in the traditional Muslim greeting as she continued down the stairs toward him.
The man was nervous. The women didn’t belong there.
Had he not had a weapon sitting right in front of him, Casey would have transitioned to her Taser, but her primary duty was to protect her life and those of her teammates.
Don’t go for the gun, she begged him under her breath, but he did. It was a bad decision and the last one the young man would ever make.
Casey fired two suppressed rounds from beneath her burqa, both striking him in the face. It was a very difficult shot, especially having to aim down a set of stairs and firing from behind clothing.
The young man was still alive as they reached the last step, but barely. Pulling out her MP5, she popped him twice, just above the bridge of his nose, finishing the job.
“Contact,” she said over the radio. “Tango down.”
The man had collapsed on his prayer mat and Cooper and Ericsson used it to drag him underneath the stairs before the blood soaked through and stained the floor. Once they had him stashed they all removed their burqas. There was a distinct chemical odor in the air.
With Rodriguez covering the door at the top of the stairs, they got ready to clear the rest of the basement.
The fact that they had encountered an armed man told them two things. Not everyone had gone upstairs for morning prayers, and there was something down here someone felt very serious about protecting. Judging by the odor, whoever was down here wasn’t preparing cookies for the mosque bake sale.
The hallway ran the length of the building above with four doors along each side. The amplified voice of the imam radiated down through the ceiling and vibrated the dusty light fixtures above them.
Casey withdrew a special device with a long piece of fiber-optic cable from her pocket. She hit pay dirt with the very first door. Slipping the cable beneath it and raising the unit to her eye, she saw a makeshift lab, complete with long tables, jammed with glass jars, soldering guns, nylon bags of some sort, and stacks of discarded electronic equipment. She signaled for the team not to move. Beyond the tables, she could see at least six men, prostrated on prayer rugs.
Pulling the cable back out from under the door, she turned to her teammates and drew a quick diagram on the floor.
The room appeared to run the entire length of the building on its south side. It must have been subdivided into offices or separate storerooms at some point as it had four doors leading into it. Casey planned to use this feature to their advantage.
Moving down the hallway, so she could get a good look at the men from the front, she positioned herself near the last door and fed the cable only partway beneath it.
She noticed that the voice of the imam above was even louder here and figured there must be speakers in this basement room, just as there had been in the women’s prayer hall.
Once again, she counted six men, all of whom had weapons with them on their prayer mats. At the very end, furthest