Transfer of Power

AZIZ PEEKED AROUND the corner to see bengazi was coming. The gunfire had stopped, and he took it as a bad sign.

The Americans would have silenced weapons, and if he could not hear shots, that meant Ragib and Bengazi had been overpowered.

The Americans would be arriving shortly.

Looking at his pager, he smiled. The Americans were in for a big surprise. The pager had gone into countdown mode. The system was foolproof. He had designed and tested it himself.

With the laptop jammed, the pagers didn't receive their codes.

Now they were in countdown mode, and in sixteen seconds they would start to blow.

The green fatigues were off. Underneath them Aziz had been wearing black coveralls similar to those worn by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. The black assault vest he wore over it had FBI printed in yellow across the back. The plan was a long shot, but in the confusion created by the bombs going off, it just might work. The Secret Service MP-5 submachine gun, the black gas mask he would put on once the explosions occurred, the coveralls—they would all help him blend in.

Aziz looked around the corner again, expecting to see members of the Hostage Rescue Team working their way down the hall. There was no one.

It was completely silent. He checked the pager one last time and pulled his gas mask down.

The first explosion was a rumble in the distance. It was followed by a quick succession of explosions, each one getting a little louder. The building began to shake, dust and plaster started to fall from the ceiling, the lights fluttered several times and then failed completely.

All of the sudden a huge blast came from the left, where the entrance to the Treasury tu

Aziz pushed himself up, spitting the dust from his mouth and shaking it from his hair. His hearing had been rendered useless from the explosion.

Commanding himself to get up, he stood and found the small flashlight in his assault vest. Aziz turned it on and tried to regain his sense of direction. The air was thick with dust and smoke, preventing him from seeing more than five feet in any direction.

He was pretty sure the tu

Breathing through the gas mask was difficult. It didn't give him oxygen; it just helped filter the dust and smoke from the air. Carrying the woman was proving to be more tiring than he had anticipated. He stopped for a moment to gather himself.

The dust started to settle, and his breathing became slightly easier.

The visibility grew better with each passing step, and it motivated him to pick up the pace.

All of the sudden he was out of the tu

Aziz did not want to have to use the weapon unless he had to.

They were trying to talk to him as he continued forward, but they were not pointing their weapons at him. When Aziz was within several feet, he yelled through his gas mask, "Ambulance! I have to get her to an ambulance!"

One of the men grabbed him by the arm and started to jog with him up the ramp. As they stepped out from under the covered part of the Treasury garage, they were hit with the rain.

The man kept trying to talk to Aziz.

Finally, Aziz yelled, "I'm deaf from the explosions! I can't hear a thing!"

When they reached the top of the ramp, a stream of fire trucks raced past them and onto the south grounds of the White House. Aziz turned to the left and started jogging. Dead ahead on the other side of Fifteenth Street was where Salim was supposed to be. Emergency vehicles were lined up, their lights flashing in the pouring rain. Every second counted.

Aziz pressed on. He desperately wanted to take the gas mask off, but it was too big a risk to show his face.

When they reached the intersection of Fifteenth Street and Hamilton, just a half a block away from the White House, another explosion occurred. The circular lid on the concrete trash receptacle across the street shot up in the air almost fifty feet and then came spi

The few people that were out in the deluge were now ru

Aziz continued through the rain. The man that had been with him stayed behind, fearing more explosions, which Aziz assumed, if Salim had done his job, were occurring all around the area.

Aziz made it across the street and ran down the sidewalk.

He couldn't take the mask any longer. It was too hard to breathe, and it was fogging up. He yanked the mask up onto his forehead and took his first real breath of air in minutes. It felt incredible in his burning lungs. Aziz pressed on, looking in the windows of the ambulances for a white head of hair. As he neared the end of the row of vehicles, he began to worry that Salim had abandoned him, but there, in the last ambulance, he spotted him.

Aziz ran around the back and pulled open the doors. He quickly climbed in and dropped the woman on the gurney.

Before the door was shut, he yelled, "Get us the hell out of here!"

Salim threw? the vehicle into reverse and hit the emergency lights on the roof. He spun the wheel and yanked it into drive, stepping on the gas. The wheels spun for a moment on the rain-soaked street and then caught. Salim hit. the siren as the ambulance raced forward. The police at the next intersection hustled to move the barricades just in time for the ambulance to pass through.

VICE PRESIDENT BAXTER had just finished bawling out Dallas King. Less than thirty minutes earlier, Baxter had been blindsided by the information that President Hayes was no longer out of the loop and that he himself was no longer in charge. After being humiliated like never before in his life, Baxter had gotten off the phone and started screaming at Dallas King. The vice president went into a tirade, blaming his chief of staff for the entire mess, belaboring the point that he should never have listened to a word of King's advice.

King had taken the verbal beating without a fight. Secretly he was relieved. Baxter not becoming president wouldn't end his career, but Abu Hasan making it out of the White House and telling his story to the FBI or media would.

"With Hayes back in charge, the odds were a raid would be ordered.

King let his boss vent until there was nothing left and then turned the tables. Methodically, he made his case, pointing out that they had saved the lives of twenty-five people and had sacrificed what? Some money that wasn't even theirs and some sanctions that weren't even working. King stressed to Baxter that there was no way they could have played it any better. And then in an attempt to help bolster his boss's ego. King proclaimed that history would judge his three days as president as some of the most difficult ever served by the nation's chief executive. That history would remember him as someone who put the lives of Americans above money and a failed foreign policy.

"Remember, it ain't over till it's over." King was building strength in his position With each passing minute, he could see that he was getting to Baxter. King paced back and forth in front of the desk, and then suddenly stopped.

"This is perfect.