Court Gentry took the escalator up to the second floor of the mall, and then he walked directly to a rear entrance of the adjoining Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City. He wove through the back of the hotel until he came to the front lobby, and here he stepped up to the elevator bank.

He took the elevator to the fifth floor, where he walked down the hall to a corner suite and entered with a key card.

—

All eight operational Saudi assets arrived at the Ritz-Carlton just ten minutes later, which was only possible because the hotel was less than a half mile from their safe house. The men wore suits and ties, they came through the two entrances in groups of four, and they looked calm and casual, like businessmen returning from a day at a conference, as they split into four groups in the lobby.

Two men took the main stairs, two men took an elevator to a floor above Gentry’s hotel room, two men entered the Employees Only door and made their way to the service stairs, and two more men waited in the hall.

They all had suppressed Glock 17 pistols and combat knives, and they were all trained killers. At first their earbuds connected them to the director of their service, who had given them the kill order and the room number, but then he had to disconnect for a meeting, so now they just communicated softly to one another.

The team leader, a man named Cha, remained in the lobby with an asset named Jawad. He had the three ascending teams give a final “go check” and then he unleashed them on room 545.

—

Hani and Kimal moved up the stairs, climbing quickly with their weapons behind their backs. Up on the fourth floor of the stairwell they heard movement, so they raised their weapons, then spun around from the landing just below. There, a hunched-over middle-aged janitor with gray-blond hair mopped the floor, softly rapping along to the Kid Rock song in his headphones. He faced the opposite direction, so the two assets hid their pistols inside their coats and kept going up.

They stepped around the housekeeping cart and passed the hunched-over man without a glance as he continued his rap, and they ignored the words, concentrating on listening for sounds higher up, nearer to their target area.

Until then they both heard the man behind them speak in a loud, low voice. “I know you didn’t just track across my clean floor.”

The assets stood on the stairs above the janitor now. They spun back, looked down, and found themselves facing a large handgun with a larger silencer. Behind the weapon, where the janitor had been, now stood a surprisingly large man holding a mop in one hand and the pistol in the other.

—