Read Support and Defend Online
Authors: Tom Clancy,Mark Greaney
Support and Defend (4 page)
He rushed to the attacker, drove a fist to the man’s midsection, and then tried an elbow to the face that glanced off and did no damage.
The armed man tried to back away to raise his gun again, but he was blocked by the island in the middle of the room.
Dom threw another punch at the man’s torso. It connected, but now the attacker managed to get around the edge of the island and back up and away.
Caruso flung a rolling pin from the island at the figure in the dark, striking him in the chest and knocking him back on his heels into the refrigerator on the far side of the room.
He knew he’d bought himself no more than a second, so he fell back into the pantry now, onto the man with the knife in his ribs. Dom grabbed the Uzi, spun it around, pulling the dying man by the sling around his neck, managing to get the gun out in front of him at hip level. He squeezed the trigger. Flame filled the pantry and the kitchen as he fired fully automatic, a long burst toward the space the armed man by the refrigerator occupied. Sizzling ejected cartridges bounced off cans of vegetables in the pantry and then rained back down on Caruso, singeing his bare torso, but he kept firing. He’d spent the past two hours in near total darkness, so the sustained flash of the short-barreled weapon felt to his eyes as if he had been enveloped by the sun. He could see nothing of his target, so he kept the gun up and the trigger pressed and the bullets spraying until the weapon emptied.
Dom’s eyes were completely whited out by the muzzle flash, he rubbed them with his free hand, and he shook his head in a futile attempt to battle the ringing in his ears. It took him a moment to find the target through his burning pupils, but he was happy to see the masked man lying dead on his back on the floor.
Dom knew he had to get upstairs to help Arik, and he also knew he needed a loaded firearm to do it, so he started to kneel down to take the Uzi from the dead man, but just as he did so, another man burst through the kitchen door.
This man wore no mask, he was clean-shaven, young, and he looked wild-eyed and terrified. But he was close, contact distance to Caruso, who was kneeling with his back against the kitchen counter.
Caruso rose and punched the man in the midsection with his empty hand, and his fist slammed into a surprising hardness there. It felt like the intruder was wearing a chest rig of ammunition for a rifle under his jacket, presumably as a way to keep it hidden from view.
Dom punched again with his other fist, but he didn’t make the same mistake twice. This time he went for the young man’s face, striking him in the jaw and knocking him back onto the island in the center of the little kitchen.
Dom knelt quickly, scooped up the Uzi, and fired a single round into the forehead of the man lying on the island. The machine pistol barked in his hand and the room lit with the flash, then all was dark and silent again. He started to run for the hallway to the staircase, but he stopped himself, turned, and looked back at the dead man.
It only now just registered. This man had carried no weapon, but he’d worn something heavy and solid on his chest.
Why the hell would he have a chest rack full of Uzi mags if he didn’t have an Uzi?
Dom rushed back to the body, ripped open the zipped windbreaker, and then backed away suddenly, slamming his hips into the kitchen counter behind him.
In front of him in the dim light lay a dead man wearing a suicide vest. Long, fat rows of explosives had been stitched into gray canvas. Loose wires crisscrossed the entire apparatus.
A gasp passed Caruso’s lips. “Arik.”
W
HILE DOMINIC HAD BEEN
fighting for his life downstairs, Arik Yacoby had been doing exactly the same in the upstairs hallway. The man who’d jumped him from behind was now dead, his neck, jaw, and skull a wreck of shattered bones. Yacoby was hurt, too, his lips and nose dripped blood, but he pushed away the pain and exertion of the fight in the tight
space, and he felt around to find the Uzi in the dark. He grabbed it with his left hand.
Behind him, his wife screamed in Hebrew. “Arik!
Neshek!
”
Gun!
Yacoby dove to the floor of the hallway, spinning as he dropped, and he landed on his back as a burst of fire from his bedroom sent supersonic lead up the hall in his direction. The rounds went over him, he was flat on his back holding the tiny machine pistol pointed between his bare feet and up the hall. He focused on the flash and, careful to fire only aimed semiautomatic rounds from the fully automatic weapon to avoid hitting his family, he shot at the light.
He felt his own Uzi being ripped out of his hands, and realized a round from the gunman up the hall had struck his weapon and knocked it away, probably damaging it as well. But the gunfire from his bedroom ceased and, through the ringing in his ears, Arik thought he heard the unmistakable sound of a micro-Uzi hitting and bouncing on the wooden floor.
Below him, he heard ferocious fighting. A long spray of automatic rounds, the cries of a man and the crash of bodies, but his mind was on his bedroom and what he would find there.
He leapt to his feet and ran for his family.
D
OMINIC
C
ARUSO SPRINTED INTO
the living room, heading for the stairs. As he passed the open front door he looked to the ground, expecting to see the first man he’d taken down in the engagement with the thrown paring knife. But the ground in front of the door was empty. Caruso spun into the stairwell, hoping against hope the man with the knife in his chest was not now heading upstairs,
and
wearing a suicide vest.
The stairwell was clear. Dom began taking the steps three at a time. As he climbed he shouted, “Arik! Bomb vest!”
Y
ACOBY HAD MADE IT
into his bedroom, where he found his wife tied to a chair in the center of the room, her tousled hair hanging into her face. She looked up at him in the dark.
“The kids are hiding in the linen closet. They’re fine.” She gestured with her head toward the en suite bathroom near where he stood.
Arik was relieved that his family was alive, but he needed to get downstairs to help his student. He knelt down to grab the micro-Uzi on the floor next to the dead man.
As he knelt he heard a noise behind him. He looked over his shoulder up the dim hallway, and saw a young, clean-shaven man staggering toward him. Through the faint glow from the moonlight coming from the bathroom, Arik could see a knife protruding from the man’s upper-left chest, but still he managed to move quickly. Arik spun toward the man, raising his gun as he did so.
From the staircase behind the man he heard a scream from D, his American student: “Arik! Bomb vest!”
Yacoby had put the sights on the center of the man’s chest, but knowing he was wearing a vest changed everything. He shifted his aim to the man’s head as fast as he could and, while doing so, he shouted, “Hanna!”
D
OMINIC HAD ALMOST MADE
it up to the second floor when a wave of light and heat engulfed him from above. His brain registered the fact he was airborne, he felt weightless for a moment, and now the incredible noise overtook him. He knew he was falling backward; his bare back made glancing contact with the wooden staircase and his legs flew up above him, and he did a reverse somersault and continued his roll all the way down, crashing chest-first through the wooden banister and then flipping to the ground floor, where the back of his head slammed down on the teak floorboards.
Stunned by the impact, it took him seconds to regain an understanding of where he was and what was happening. He choked on smoke and his eyes burned, but he pushed away the pain and focused on getting back in the fight.
He squinted in the thickening black air and pulled himself up to his feet, then moved toward the staircase again, but his legs gave out and he dropped onto the lower steps. As he tried to pull himself upward by his arms he looked up and saw roaring flames pouring out of the first floor, and above the flames, the night sky.
It looked as if the entire roof of the stairwell and hallway had been blown from the bungalow in the explosion.
Dom slid back to the floor, collapsed unconscious onto his back, fingers of black smoke enveloping his prostrate body.
C
ARUSO AWOKE TO JOLTS
of pain and waves of nausea, convincing him only after significant delay that he had not burned to death.
He opened his eyes, looked down, and found himself in a hospital bed. This wasn’t the first time he’d regained consciousness since passing out in Arik Yacoby’s burning home, but each time he only managed to lift his head, to catch a quick glimpse of the ambulance or the hospital hallway or the room he was in, and then drop his head back before drifting off again.
He didn’t know if this process had been going on for a couple hours or for a couple weeks.
As his eyes cleared a little more he realized a doctor was standing at his bedside. A dark-skinned Indian with gray hair and a youthful face, the doctor wore scrubs, not a white coat. He took Dom’s pulse, placing his fingers on Dom’s left wrist while he checked his watch. When he finished he looked up at Dom’s face and seemed surprised to find his patient looking back at him.
“Well, hello, sir. I’m surprised to see you awake. You are still under sedation.”
To Dom, the doctor’s lilt sounded almost musical, but he wondered if this was just the effect of the drugs in his system.
The Indian began listing a litany of injuries. “You have suffered a slight concussion. Not serious, but expect headaches for a few days. Maybe weeks.” He looked down at his clipboard. “Otherwise, bruises and cuts, mostly. A few significant. Eleven stitches on your forearm. A small piece of shrapnel from the bomb, we suspect, but it passed all the way through, so we don’t know for sure. A puncture to your right pectoral. It was a metal screw. We got it out. Not deep. We’ve cleaned you up, shouldn’t be an infection, but you’ll want to watch those injuries. There is significant bruising across your—”
The patient interrupted the doctor. “The Yacobys?”
The doctor did not answer him directly. He only stepped to the side, revealing to Dominic the presence of another man in the room, sitting on a cheap recliner by the door with his legs crossed. He was middle-aged, with slicked-back black hair and a full mustache, and he wore a dark suit and tie.
“Hello, John.”
Caruso did not reply.
“John Doe. That is your name.” He eyed the American with an expressionless, almost tired face. “Unless you would like to give me another. No? John Rambo, perhaps?”
“Who are you?”
“I am Detective Constable Naidu.” He stood up. “And I am here to ask you some questions.”
“The Yacobys?”
Naibu shook his head back and forth; there was an obvious lack of sensitivity in the gesture. “Dead.”
Dom closed his eyes and shook his head. “No.”
“Yes,” he corrected. “All four of them. Along with seven others at the scene. Nearly a dozen dead bodies, and you, my young American friend, were the only survivor.” He leaned forward with eyebrows raised. “Miraculous, wouldn’t you agree?”
Dominic didn’t answer. His mind was on the Yacobys.
Dar. Moshe.
“You were pulled out of the burning building by neighbors, at great personal risk to themselves. You did not ask who saved you, but I thought you would care to know.”
Caruso stared off into space.
Arik. Hanna.
“We know from the neighbors you were a guest in the home of the Yacobys, they saw you coming and going, but you had no identification on you when you were found. They said they thought you were American, and by your accent, I agree. But that is all I have. If there was anything in the home . . . passport, visa, U.S. driver’s license. It was burned in the fire.”
Caruso fought the images in his head, did his best to push them away just as he did his best to ignore the pounding headache that grew with each word out of Naidu’s mouth. The sedation seemed to be wearing off by the second.
“I need to make a phone call.”
“And
I
need
you
to answer my questions. Why would anyone want to kill your friend and his family? On his visa he said his occupation was personal trainer. His wife was a yoga instructor.”
Dom did not answer. His forearm stung under the dressing now.
Naidu raised his voice. “Who was Arik Yacoby?”
“He was my martial-arts instructor. That’s all.”
“Pakistani terrorists do not often go to such great lengths to kill martial-arts instructors.”
“They were Pakistani?”
Naidu looked at Caruso with genuine surprise. “This is India. Who else would they be?”
Caruso laid his head back on his pillow. This was to be a hostile interview, that much was clear. And Dom was not in the mood. “I have no idea. I’m not the detective constable. If I were you, I’d look into the dairy truck parked at the end of the street.”
Naidu replied, “I have already taken care of that. The woman who drove it is being sought. She has left the village, but we will find her.”
Caruso looked around the hospital room, then said, “Pretty sure she’s not in here.”
“You are more interesting to me than she is.”
Dom closed his eyes. “Then I’d say your investigation is fucked.”
Naidu ignored the insult, and instead he looked down at his notepad. “Let’s not waste time with games. We know Yacoby was a former member of the IDF. If he was something more, I need you to tell me.”
“Something more?”
“Was he a Jew spy?”
Dom fought to control his urge to rail at Naidu. Instead, he said. “I want to make a phone call. I will not say anything else until I do.”
Naidu’s jaw flexed. Slowly he said, “You don’t want to find out who is responsible for your friends’ deaths?”
Nothing from the man on the bed.
“You show no respect for our investigation, but perhaps you should. You are not a suspect. We know you fought against the attackers. The blood of one of the men found in the kitchen was all over your hands. I am not going to charge you with murder for that, you might be pleased to know.”
Dom rolled his eyes. He wasn’t thinking about the implications for himself.
“I just want you to help me understand why they came for Arik Yacoby.”
“I can’t help you. I don’t know.”
Naidu sighed. “Pakistani terrorists. The threat of nuclear war. New conflict with China. Crime. Corruption. Disease. You don’t think my nation has enough problems without Jews coming to our shores and encouraging new enemies?”
“Do I get my phone call or do you want an international incident when I leave?”
“You get a phone call when I say you get a phone call. You leave when I say you leave.”
“Do you always treat guests to your country with such warmth?”
Naidu laughed. “I am not from the tourism bureau, Mr. John Doe. Maybe you can arrange an elephant ride with them when you get out of prison, but I am here to extract information from you.”
Prison?
Naidu was flailing. Dom knew most everything there was to know about interrogation tactics—he’d been trained by the FBI, after all. He could tell there was something missing from the detective constable’s bluster. The bark was there, but Dom sensed no bite.
He smiled thinly. “I can hear it in your voice. You are bluffing. You don’t have the authority to do a damn thing to me.”
Naidu deflated a little. Though he kept his chin up and his voice strong, Dom saw weakness in his eyes. After a long staring contest, Naidu broke his gaze. “I would like to keep you here. You would open your mouth, eventually, I promise you this. But someone thinks you are important. A plane has arrived from the United States. My superiors have ordered me to put you on it as soon as you are fit for travel.”
With that, Caruso threw off the sheets and kicked his legs out over the side of the bed. He began sitting up, but he’d only flexed his abdominals when he recoiled in pain. It felt as if all his ribs had been broken or, at least, very badly bruised.
He dropped back flat on the bed.
The detective constable cracked a slow smile as he noticed the young American’s agony. He stood and walked to the door, then turned back, still with a smile only half hidden under his mustache.
He said, “Forgive me, John Doe. In this situation, I must find my satisfaction in the little things.”