THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM INAUGURATION DAY download the book from Amazon for $3.99 Najah Mansour was on the run. He was sweating profusely as the Beirut sun beat down mercilessly on this hot, humid August morning. It was not even nine a.m. and the temperature was already above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The humidity hovering around the 100 percent mark made his cotton shirt stick to his body, but that was the least of his troubles right now. Najah Mansour knew he would be dead before the next sunset unless he managed to get out of the country within the next few hours. But that seemed an insurmountable task, with those who were after him already watching Beirut International Airport and the Beirut Port. By now they certainly had people looking for him at the two main border crossing points between Lebanon and Syria, and assuming he somehow managed to get past them into Syria, they could get to him there, too. The only way out, he believed, the only way to save his life was to get to the relative safety of a U.S. embassy car and be driven inside the embassy, then get onto a helicopter that would take him either straight to Cyprus or to one of the U.S. Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers, one of which is constantly on patrol in the Eastern Mediterranean, along with the usual accompanying task force of battleships, cruisers, and detachment of U.S. Marines. But chances were those who wanted him dead also had people on the roads approaching the embassy. His only chance to stay alive was to use the information he had stumbled upon as collateral. What he had learned was more than explosive. He would give the Americans just enough information to whet their appetites and get him out of the country; then he would give them the rest. After all, his information was priceless. It concerned the life of the president of the United States of America. Mansour darted into the underground parking lot of what was once the luxurious Piccadilly Cinema, just off Beirut’s fashionable Hamra Street. The darkness of the vast underground complex was soothing, if for no other reason than it was about ten degrees cooler than the outside. He hid behind a parked car and waited, trying to catch his breath. No one followed him in. That was reassuring, somewhat. He pressed the button illuminating the digital readout on his wristwatch, covering the watch with his hand so as to minimize the light protruding from the watch. In as dark a place as this vast underground complex, the light from his watch might be seen from afar, giving his position away. It was only nine-fifty-five a.m. It would be another two hours before the man from the American embassy, the man he knew as Paul Henry, would arrive. Two long and interminable hours to go, in which every minute would seem like an hour and every hour as would feel as long as a day.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 19:29:31 +0000
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