by Gary Haynes
As he walked over to the bed Tom saw half a dozen tubes coming out of Jennings, including an IV drip. He guessed the poor guy was lucky to be alive. When he reached him, he was lying flat with an expressionless face, a bloated dull-red-and-yellowish bruise on his left cheek like a piece of ripped plum. The top of his head had been bandaged, his hair shaved.
“Lyric?” he asked, as soon as he registered Tom’s face.
“She’s still missing.”
“Goddamnit!”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her before the day is out,” Tom said, lying. There was no point in making Jennings feel worse than he already did.
“You think?”
“Sure.”
“Thank God.”
“You’ll be here for a few days,” Tom said. “Then we’ll get you home.”
“You gotta gum? I gave up the smokes five years since. I still get the urge, especially after getting shot in the head. And this pillow’s as lumpy as hell and smells like it’s had guinea pigs nesting in it.”
“I’ll be sure to get you a new one. What’s the diagnosis?” Tom asked, handing Jennings a stick of gum.
“The doc told me that the chances of surviving a head shot are about five per cent. And of those who live, only one in ten escapes suffering permanent disability. A bullet likes to rattle around in the skull, turning the brain into scrambled eggs, according to him. It’s a miracle, Tom, beating those odds. But they can’t operate. It’s too dangerous. Guess I’ll have to carry it around as a souvenir.”
“That’s good to hear. I think,” Tom said, glad that Jennings was taking it so well.
“It hurt like hell, Tom. Like a goddamned mustang mistook my head for a rattlesnake.” Jennings winced, as if reacting to the initial impact. “How does it look?”
“Like that mustang had a grudge,” Tom said, trying to keep the mood light.
“I collapsed. The sky turned red. Thought I was dying. I thought I was dying, Tom. And I don’t mind telling you, I was terrified.”
Yeah, too good to be true, Tom thought. He could see that Jennings was getting upset. It was a natural reaction. He knew that people who’d sustained head injuries, or sometimes just had their noses broken, often suffered severe depression soon afterwards. But at least the headshot had turned out to be better than a round in the leg or shoulder, where massive blood vessels were situated. In Nigeria, he’d watched a man bleed out in less than five minutes after being shot in the upper thigh. A medic had told him the femoral artery, which lay close to the surface of the skin, had been severed, and had retracted back up into the pelvis. And the shoulder housed a ball-and-socket joint that was all but inoperable if it got pulverised by a bullet.
Tom put his hand on Jennings’s forearm. “It’ll be all right. Trust me.”
“Who were they?”
“We don’t know for certain. But you did your job.”
“The hell I did. I got shot and Lyric has been kidnapped by a bunch of psycho Islamic terrorists, the way I see it. We lost some good people, too. Becky was a fine woman. It’s a goddamned disaster,” he said, using his palm to wipe his eyes dry.
Tom sucked his bottom lip, nodding. “There’s a CIA guy outside if you need anything.”
“He should be looking for her. It’s a waste of resources. Nobody gives a shit about me. You think someone’s gonna creep up the fire escape and smother me with a pillow, or inject poison into one of these tubes?”
“No, I don’t. Now get some rest.”
He grabbed Tom’s wrist. “Find her, Tom. Just find her.”
“I made a promise to her. I will keep it.”
“And kill them. Kill them for murdering our own and doing this.”
Tom smiled, weakly. “Rest. Then home.”
He patted Jennings on the arm and left.
“He’ll be fine, thanks for asking,” Tom said to the CIA guy, just wanting to take it all out on someone, but regretting it instantly afterwards.
The CIA man remained silent. Just stared hard. Tom guessed he didn’t even have the kudos to rouse a response any more. Besides, often people who said nothing said a helluva lot; all of it derogatory.
He’d been told to return to the embassy where, no doubt, he would be subjected to the second of many frame-by-frame debriefings on what had gone so badly wrong. As he reached the fire door at the end of the corridor he shoved it open. He stopped at the top of the stairs and sank down, engulfed by a sense of guilt and failure that had no hope of personal resolution, and not for the first time.
Involuntarily, he saw his mother’s face. He’d broken a promise to her, too.
10.
The car had taken a series of tight curves before slowing down to maybe fifteen miles an hour. Linda guessed she’d been in the car for an hour or more. She’d heard sirens and people shouting and screaming at first, but now there was just the sound of the radio. Her captors still hadn’t spoken a word. No contact, either, save for the boots on her neck and ankles, as if they were restraining a bad-tempered dog.
The car stopped and the music died, but the engine remained ticking over. She heard what sounded like a chain being drawn across metal, the creaking of a door opening. The car moved forward slowly before coming to a halt once more, but this time the engine was switched off. The boots were removed from her neck and ankles. She felt the plasticuffs restraint on her lower shins being cut, and was manhandled out of the rear footwell. The cramp in her legs made her wobble at first, but strong hands grasped her upper arms, helping her to stand upright.
Apart from her pantyhose, her feet were bare, and as she inched over the gravel the edges dug into her heels. No one spoke. The hood still covered her head. Will they kill me now? she thought, the gag preventing her from pleading for her life even if she’d succumbed to the urge. She decided not to struggle, to maintain her dignity and continue to comply, just as Tom had told her to. Then she thought that that was a pathetic thought. What choice do I have?
She sensed she was going to retch, but gulped a couple of times and the bile eased back down her slender throat. If I get out of this, things will change, she thought. I will spend more time with John and the girls. Maybe retire from public life and take up a teaching post at a university. She realized then that she had to tell herself these things, because the alternative was to start to go ever so slightly mad.
She was led a few steps forward before her hands were cut free, and she rotated her wrists to help the blood flow freely there. A hand clasped her left wrist, and moved it to something cold and smooth, which she realized was a handrail. An arm linked hers, and she was led down a flight of steps. Underground, she thought. Dear God, why are they taking me underground?
At the bottom of the steps, she heard the same sounds of a chain being removed and a door opening, the crunch of more footsteps on gravel. A tug of her arm prompted her to move again, and she realized that she was going inside, because the sun had stopped beating on her head. It was cool now, a smell redolent of blocked drains.
She went through three more doors, hearing the hinges creak and the doors shut behind her. She suddenly sensed that her feet were moving across something that felt like tiles. Yes, tiles, she thought, feeling the line of grout with her toes as she shuffled along.
Finally, she was held still.
When the hood was removed and she registered the contents of the room, tears welled in her eyes.
11.
In the Situation Room at the White House, the President of the United States, the fifty-year-old Robert Simmons, a Nebraskan with the lean body of a marathon runner and swept-back greying hair, had already convened a meeting. He sat on a swivel chair at the head of a mahogany table surrounded by two tiers of curved computer terminals. The pensive faces of the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC – and Deputy Director Houseman peered out from separate flat-panel videoconference screens.
Those members of the National Security Council who’d been in DC, including the Secretary of D
efense, the National Security Advisor and the vice president, had joined the commander-in-chief here. It was 03:05 in the capital and everyone present had been woken from their sleep as soon as the crisis had begun.
The basement room was an intelligence management centre used to conduct secure communications. The president watched a CNN news report on a TV monitor, showing the aftermath of the secretary’s abduction in Islamabad, the dishevelled female reporter’s voice cracking with emotion as she spoke. She stood in front of a chaotic scene: black smoke belched from the remnants of a building, the blaze being tackled by three fire crews. The LED lights of ambulances and police cars flickered. Sirens wailed. The dead and injured were still being carried away on stretchers. People were crying and shouting, while others simply sat on the kerb, dazed and bloodied.
“The Pakistan military, which formed a provisional government after a bloodless coup eleven months ago, are blaming the Leopards of Islam, the Pakistani Shia terrorist organization, for the attack and the kidnapping of the US Secretary of State, Linda Carlyle,” the reporter said. “The Leopards, who carried out an assassination attempt on the Pakistani President in Washington DC on March 10th this year, killing thirty people in the capital, have remained silent. But a source at the US Embassy here in Islamabad has revealed that a threat against the secretary’s life was made to the embassy by a man claiming to represent the Leopards less than two hours before this latest outrage. There is mounting speculation that the secretary may have been kidnapped in order to facilitate the release of twelve Pakistani men alleged to have taken part in the March 10th atrocity, who are currently in US protective custody at an unspecified location prior to their trial for multiple counts of murder and the attempt on the Pakistani President’s life.”
“Turn it off, Angie,” the president said.
The flat-screen cut to black.
“God only knows what she’s suffering,” he said.
“I hate to say this, Mr President, but she could be dead already,” the Secretary of Defense said, preferring to be formal in such circumstances, the fingers of his right hand propping up his ample head as he rested his elbow on the table.
“Don’t you think I know that, Jack; and how the hell did that reporter know the secretary received a death threat this morning?”
“The caller spoke to the switchboard operator, Mr President,” Deputy Director Houseman said, his hard features filling the screen, highlighting the mottling on his cheeks and hawk’s nose.
“I’m aware of that also. Find out for sure. What are the chances the Leopards are to blame?”
“Without any intelligence reports to go on, I’d say about sixty per cent, sir,” Houseman replied.
“They’d do it just to humiliate us. I don’t want the Bureau of Diplomatic Security dealing with this. The CIA will assume operational control. I will personally oversee matters from here.”
“Mr President, the White House is on high alert, but I’d prefer it if you boarded Air Force One, at least for the next few hours,” the secretary said, shuffling uneasily in his chair now, his forty-eight-inch waist spilling over his pants.
“That isn’t going to happen, Jack,” the president replied.
The secretary rubbed his flabby neck before shaking his head.
“I want the Joint Chief and the Under-Secretary back home today. I want the embassy closed in forty-eight hours. Is that clear, Bill?”
“Understood, Mr President,” Houseman said from the screen.
“Closing the embassy might not be the best move,” the secretary said.
“I don’t want another US citizen killed over there. The DS has taken a beating. The country will be seeing quite enough coffins draped in the flag. Quite enough.”
The president took soundings from each of the assembled group. At this stage, no one was able to come up with a coherent plan. Any plan, in fact.
“We have replays, Mr President,” a defence advisor said, sitting in the second row of chairs behind the table. “On terminal two.”
The president and the others watched in silence as the images of the kidnapping unfolded. The smoke obscured the view as it was intended to. The drone operators, fully trained pilots at Creech Air Force Base, had focused on the secretary being bundled down the alley. But the Pakistani police helicopter exploding into a white flash hadn’t helped, and in any event it was impossible to make out which of the five cars that had sped off from underneath the overhangs and awnings had been used to carry her.
“They parked there purposely. They knew we’d have Linda covered,” the Secretary of Defense said.
The president knew that drones could track insurgents with lasers to pinpoint them for pursuing Special Forces on the ground. But one of the few times he’d felt the multibillion-dollar technology would earn its keep, it had been rendered useless by a simple yet very effective diversionary tactic.
“Goddamn it, Jack. This is awful. I want everyone we have on this. Everyone, do you understand?”
“All leave has been cancelled for the FBI at the Hoover Building until further notice. The CIA at Langley and the NSA at Fort Meade, too,” he replied.
“Mr President,” Houseman said.
“Yes, Bill.”
“I should point out that we have no evidence to date that the secretary was taken in a car. She could’ve disappeared into one of the buildings. The cars coulda been decoys.”
“Either way, find her. Just find her,” the president said. “I want thirty-minute progress reports for the next twelve hours. And I mean progress.”
“Yes, Mr President,” Houseman said, his voice sombre.
The room fell silent again. The president stood up, followed by the assembled men and women. “I think we should pray now,” he said, bowing his head, knowing the Secretary of State was a deeply religious woman.
Truth be told, he didn’t know what else to say at this juncture. But he felt that a moment of reflection would, at least, assist a sharpening of minds. A resolve to follow every possible lead, legal or otherwise.
12.
Tom was slumped forward in a grey, blow-moulded plastic chair. His head was in his hands, his elbows resting on a Formica table centimetres from an untouched cup of coffee. The interview room at the embassy was no more than twice the size of a suit closet; stuffy and windowless.
He’d been questioned by a fresh-faced counterterrorism agent who’d looked as if he’d belonged to a college fraternity for tiddlywinks. Tom recounted the attack outside the hospital, sucking in air to calm himself. The kid repeated the questions too often for his liking, as if he were trying to trip him up. Tom didn’t have anything to hide. What he’d done was standard procedure, although he felt sick to his stomach. If the lead agent had to neutralize a threat, the support agents took his or her place. He’d acted professionally at all times, even though he’d failed. But when the kid had said that he’d recommend a psychological report be obtained, Tom had felt like punching the wall.
After the debriefing, he’d cleaned up in a restroom as best he’d been able. He’d put ointment on his forehead to heal the splinter wound, and checked his multiple bruises, which were deep-red blemishes covering a quarter of his body. He’d noticed that his angular features had hardened, the long shifts and many time-zone changes ageing him. But there was something else in the olive-skinned reflection that stared back from the restroom mirror: guilt at escaping almost without injury. He’d learned that all of the MSD agents were dead or seriously wounded. A total of twenty-three locals had died, another sixty-eight needing surgery of some sort. A third of the Pakistani police deployed there had died also.
Apart from the carnage, the secretary’s GPS tracking devices weren’t working. She could be anywhere, and as yet no one had a clue. He didn’t even know if she was still alive. No ransom demand had been made. Jennings had been right. It was a disaster.
After changing into a sports jacket and fawn-coloured slacks, he’d returned to the interview room as ordered.
&nb
sp; Still slouched in the chair, he awaited another round of questions. He fingered a small wooden Buddha he kept in his breast pocket. It wasn’t a good-luck charm, but rather the symbol of a personal philosophy he’d cultivated over time.
Get it together, he thought. Just get it together and take it from there. He resolved to stop being so maudlin and see if at least he could do something positive to help find her. No, scratch that, he thought. I have to find her. He’d made a promise and he wasn’t going to renege on it. But how? In truth, he had no idea where to start. Then it struck him. The guy he’d shot on the roof had to have been found and recovered. If he was still alive, that might be something. And the two people who assaulted him might have been found by now. He’d been told that the man had escaped in the confusion. He already knew the woman had. But they were known. They were on a list.
He heard the door open. A man with massive hands sat in the chair opposite him, struggled to get comfortable in the confined space.
“They build this place for midgets?” he said.
Tom looked up. It was Dan Crane, a near-legendary CIA operative. Crane smiled, the skin on his wide face crinkling around his robin’s-egg-blue eyes.
“You look like shit,” he said.
“You don’t want to know what I feel like.”
“I can guess.”
Tom had come across Crane when he had spent two years in New Delhi, protecting the US embassy eight years ago. He’d seen him a couple of times since; once in DC and another at Langley when he’d been guarding the secretary. Crane had a reputation for sardonic humour of the un-PC variety, but he knew the Middle East and South Asia better than anyone else in the agency. He spoke five languages and had an encyclopaedic mind. He’d been held hostage by Hezbollah for three months back in the late eighties. He still had the remnants of scars on his neck and hands, off-white blemishes that looked like skin grafts. Tom didn’t want to think about where else he might have scars. His fame had been assured after he’d overseen the analysts who’d pinpointed bin Laden in Abbottabad. That also meant that he could get away with a lot of things that for others would’ve led to a reprimand, or worse. Crane was an offbeat kind of guy to say the least.