by Jack Mars
“Psych ward?” Luke said.
Dunn sighed. It was the sigh of a man who had been running for a long time, only to find out he had ended up exactly where he started. It was the sigh of a man who had pushed a large boulder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down again. He didn’t speak for a long moment.
“My last SEAL deployment was top secret. Mogadishu. It was very hot, and I got hurt. I prefer not to talk about that. I came back to the States. Hadn’t talked to my mom in about eight or nine years. I left home when I was seventeen. My childhood was a mess. But I had become somebody, somebody I was proud of. I thought maybe I could reconnect with her, show her the man I had become. I looked her up, and she was…
“Well, she was dead. She was dead, man. Lung cancer. She chain smoked from as far back as I can remember. Nobody had told me she was dying. There was nobody to tell me. So I never got a chance to talk to her, show her… you know.”
He sighed again.
“Things got weird after that. I don’t remember everything. One morning I woke up in the VA. If I’m honest, it was the right place for me at the time.” He laughed. “And it was the right place a couple more times after that.”
Luke absorbed everything the man was saying. There was no way to confirm these answers, but to Luke, they didn’t sound rehearsed. This was an elite soldier, someone who had done and seen too much. He was broken, and the only part that seemed to work was his ability to kill people. To an outsider, his judgment might seem poor. To Luke, it seemed that Dunn recognized he couldn’t be part of civil society anymore, so he sent himself to place where he was free to be… whatever this was that he had become.
“You barely made it through Hell Week at BUD/S,” he said. Hell Week was the toughest physical and mental challenge of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training. It was one of the most grueling training regimens imaginable, and only one-third of candidates made it through. “You almost didn’t become a SEAL at all.”
Dunn nodded. “Yeah. That’s true. I broke my ankle on the night of Day Four. A log had gotten loose, ended up in the surf and it hit my leg. I didn’t know it was broken until I got X-rays afterward, but I knew it hurt like hell. It was a hairline fracture. Sometimes I just couldn’t run anymore. I couldn’t put weight on it. I would bounce forward on one leg. It was a nightmare. Guys were pulling for me—that’s the only way I made it. It’s a competitive thing, but guys at the top, the Honor Man, the other ones who know they’re in, they see you toughing something out, and they want you. They would scream at me. Punch me. Force me to keep going. Go, Dunn. Make this. And by God, I did. I made it.”
He glanced over at Ed. “It was the real thing. You can talk to my LPO. He’ll confirm every word of that.”
Dunn looked in the rearview mirror again.
“Got any more?” he said to Luke.
Luke shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”
Then Dunn smiled.
“Then is it okay if we go kill Boko Haram now?”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
7:55 p.m. West Africa Time (1:55 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Sambisa Forest
Borno State, Nigeria
Border with Chad
Red sparks flew in the night.
The great steel box sat in the middle of the field. Fifty yards to its west, the squad of Boko Haram lounged, waiting. Some squatted on the ground, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly. Some leaned against the old military truck.
Fifty yards to the east of the box, on the Chad side of the border, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb waited. As Yisrael looked at them, he felt maybe there were closer to two hundred. They had machine-gun-mounted trucks, troop transports, and helicopters. They made a convincing army. If Yisrael didn’t know better, he would almost think he was dealing with the Chadian military. Perhaps he was. Perhaps Al-Qaeda had subsumed the country of Chad into itself.
There was no mingling among the two groups of militants. This was a disappointment to Yisrael. Clearly, Rajan had ordered his men not to fraternize with their brothers in Allah. The level of mistrust was a shame.
One day, should God will it, they would work it out.
A group of men in uniform surrounded the box itself. They set up rigs with two tanks—one for oxygen and one for fuel. Two of the men wore helmets and dark frog-like welding goggles. They worked with blowtorches to cut open the box. Their work was tedious. It seemed to be taking all night. They had cut along the top and down the sides—the edges there were ragged and still glowing orange.
Now two men kneeled on the ground, one cutting from the left, one from the right, moving toward each other. The rest of the group waited around, apparently to make sure the steel panel didn’t fall on top of the men when the final cut was made.
Yisrael could hardly complain about the delay. There was ten million dollars at stake, and no one had yet seen what was inside the box. Maybe the box was an imposter, a fake, foisted upon him by Eddie the pirate? It seemed unlikely.
But impossible? No.
A momentary anger rose inside him. If Eddie had done this, Yisrael would personally disembowel him while he was still alive.
The sparking blowtorches had nearly met in the middle of the box.
“The moment of truth,” Rajan Muhammad said.
Yisrael nodded. “Yes. Praise God.” During the long wait, he had almost forgotten Rajan was standing there behind him.
One of the workers stepped away from the box, allowing the last man to finish the cutting. In a moment, he was done. He rose to his feet and quickly darted away. The other men worked with steel bars and pried the panel forward. It leaned… leaned… then fell to the ground with a hollow, muffled boom. The box was open.
A floodlight turned on, directed at the contents.
All around Yisrael, men murmured. It took him a moment to focus his eyes on it. The device appeared to be black. It was a tube, standing upright, with a wide, flat, rectangular base at the bottom. Some sort of electronic wiring ran to a control box protruding from one side. There was another wide area at the top, not flat, and more of a disc shape.
The impression the device gave was of some sort of large, misshapen barbell. It did not look like a bomb or a missile, at least not of any kind Yisrael had ever seen.
“Is this correct?” Yisrael said.
“Oh yes,” Rajan said. “It is exactly what we prayed for.”
“God is great,” Yisrael said simply, and in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Yes,” Rajan said.
Yisrael began to turn toward Rajan. “It seems like a good time to complete the—”
As he turned, he caught a glimmer of light, a reflection, from something in Rajan’s large hand. It moved quickly. Suddenly Rajan’s hand was against Yisrael’s chest. A sharp pain appeared there. The man had a knife!
Rajan’s other hand moved behind Yisrael’s back. It pulled him close.
The knife plunged into Yisrael’s chest again. It went in dip, to the hilt, then ripped downward, cutting him open. He could not move. The pain was too much. In and out the knife plunged now, like a machine, in and out, in and out, in and out.
“Guh,” Yisrael heard himself say.
In and out, the knife went, in and out.
Yisrael expected an argument over the price, perhaps, but this? This betrayal?
His body was frozen, impaled by the pain, but his mind still worked. Thoughts and images flowed like water. It occurred to him that Rajan was an accomplished knife fighter—he must have done time in the hellish prisons of the Middle East. Yisrael’s first wife appeared, Ojo, her pretty face, when they were young together. Poor, but romantic times. Their children. All of his children, standing in a happy group.
How many children did Yisrael have now? He wasn’t quite sure himself. The slave girls—one couldn’t always know whose children they bore.
In and out. In and out.
He sank to his knees.
“Die, pig,” Rajan said. “Allah’s judg
ment awaits you.”
Rajan’s strong hand pushed Yisrael rudely to the soft mass of ground. Yisrael rolled over onto his stomach, the pain a form of ecstasy. Perhaps he planned to crawl away, back to his men. To continue the fight? To escape? He didn’t know.
Suddenly, there was gunfire.
Yisrael lifted his head enough to see. Automatic fire had erupted from the heavy machine guns behind him, lighting up the night. Across the field, the shadows of his men jittered and danced and fell to pieces, cut down by rounds powerful enough to rip elephants in half.
A few of the men must have somehow survived the first volley. They returned fire. The muzzle flashes and the sound of their AK-47s seemed somehow puny and hopeless.
A new, longer burst answered from the Chadian machine guns. The roar was deafening. The flashes were like lightning, briefly turning night into day. When it ended, for a long moment there was no sound.
Then there was talk and even laughter. Boots stepped past Yisrael’s head. Men moved through the dim light.
A single gunshot rang out.
CRACK!
Then another.
They were finishing off the last of the survivors with shots to the head.
Yisrael was fading, but still alive. He saw a large forklift drive to the open steel box, and slowly, carefully, life the device and begin to bring it out.
Yisrael gasped. There must be fluid in his lungs. He felt like a drowning man.
“Still breathing, Yisrael?” a voice said.
Yisrael cast a baleful eye toward the voice. Rajan loomed above him. He pointed a pistol at Yisrael’s face.
“Don’t worry. I will send you home now.”
Yisrael tried to speak. “Raj…”
But the muzzle flash was the last thing he saw.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
2:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington, DC
This interview was what they called a friendly.
The interviewer was Casey McDougal of CNN, and the show was Beltway Watch. It came on at 10 p.m. and was fun, a little more lighthearted than other political shows. “Like Baywatch without the bikinis,” Casey would sometimes intone in a serious voice during the ads.
The show was good to Susan, and Susan was good to them. On a normal night, they might expect two million viewers. On a night like tonight—an exclusive with the President, after a terrorist attack? Three times, maybe four times, that number. This interview was a gift.
Susan sat in a high-backed chair in the sitting area. Just across from her was Casey McDougal, her high-backed chair pulled close. The tall window curtains were closed to control the lighting. It was an intimate setting. Casey was a tiny little person, blonde, late thirties, very spunky. Susan was rather small herself, but Casey reminded her of a wood nymph, or maybe Tinkerbell.
Susan and Casey were both mic’ed. Three cameramen worked different static angles on tripods. An additional boom microphone hung above their heads. A still photographer, a young woman with dyed white hair shaved close to her scalp, and no fewer than six cameras hanging from her, moved around the room taking promotional shots. She worked with zoom lenses and stayed far away from the action. All the same, Susan was aware of her presence.
A couple of producers from the network hovered near the edges of the room with Kat Lopez, the new White House Communications Director Eve Chandler, and three Secret Service officers. Eve was young and didn’t have her head on straight quite yet. It seemed like the hard hits and the speed of the game in the big leagues were a little bit more than she was ready for. Susan liked her, and hoped she was going to make it.
The interview itself was going just fine. Casey moved through exactly the type of softball questions Susan was expecting.
“Tell us what you know and remember about Congressman Jack Butterfield.”
“What do you want to say to the American people at a time like this?”
“What steps are we taking to find out who perpetrated this crime, and to make sure nothing like this happens again?”
“You’ve led us through some hard times. And it’s been starting to seem like there’s light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Now this. How do you feel, as the leader of the free world, when terrorists strike and so many innocent people die?”
Each pitch came in slow and high, like a big fat grapefruit, and one by one Susan knocked them out of the park. The interview was getting long in the tooth, and Susan was expecting an easy finisher, a few pleasantries with Casey, and then Eve and Kat could see these folks out. Susan needed about an hour of downtime before she could face the Situation Room again, and the self-righteous posse in there out for Luke Stone’s head.
Casey glanced at one of her producers and nodded.
Let’s wrap it up, Susan imagined was the message.
“We’ve been hearing that the plane crash in Egypt was part of a larger plot, and as horrible as it was, may in fact only have been a decoy, and a prelude to a much worse attack on the mainland United States. What intelligence do you have that—”
“Oh?” Susan said. “Where have you been hearing that?”
“Sources,” Casey McDougal said, her face a bit strained. “Sources in government. Sources in your own administration. We’re hearing that behind the scenes, it’s a bit of a mad scramble to discover what—”
“Okay, cut!” Kat Lopez shouted from the sidelines. “Cut! Cut. That’s enough.”
Then she was there, long legs and body in a dark blue pinstripe suit, right in the middle of the shot.
“This interview is over.”
She looked at one of the producers, a bald-headed, slightly overweight man, whose face had just gone crimson.
“What the hell was that, Burt?”
“It’s a fair question, Kat. Are you in charge here? Are you the Communications Director?”
Now Eve Chandler’s face went crimson, just like Burt’s.
“Last I checked, your job was to schedule appointments, not wreck interviews.”
“You wrecked the interview, Burt. And if you run with that last bit, I swear to God you’ll be begging for access. You won’t even get in the building. Not you, not Casey, none of you.”
It was a funny thing about Kat Lopez. She was quiet and calm, until she wasn’t. No one thought of her as a pushover, certainly. But her demeanor lulled people into a false sense of security. And when her bite came, no one was quite ready for it.
She looked at the Secret Service men. “Let’s get these people out of here. The interview is over.”
Casey McDougal touched Susan on the knee.
“I love you, Susan,” she said. “I love what you’re doing. I don’t know what Burt’s problem is. He wants the show to be a little more hard-hitting, I guess. But I know him—he actually hates controversy. He won’t use that messy part at the end.”
She paused, as if an idea was suddenly occurring to her. “Hey, I was thinking that next time, we should do a piece on Presidential fashion, makeup, and fitness tips. You’re probably the busiest woman on Earth. People want to know how you hold it together.”
“I would enjoy that,” Susan said. “Though I’m sure there are lots of women who are busier than I am. Anyway, maybe when things settle down a little.”
Casey nodded. “Of course.”
After they were gone, Susan moved to the sofa. She kicked off her shoes, put her hands on top of her head, and sighed.
Kat was still here, standing with her hand on one of the chairs.
“I need coffee,” Susan said.
Kat nodded. “I anticipated that. Catering is on their way with a pot of Peet’s and some little finger desserts.”
“Nice,” Susan said. “How’s Eve doing?”
Kat shrugged. “She’s fine. She’s learning. I don’t think they teach Throwing People Out 101 at Columbia. She was at the National Science Foundation until a month ago. It’s pretty chummy over there. She’ll get a handle on this. O
r she won’t.”
Susan paused, took a few deep breaths. There was only one way to say this, so she said it.
“We’ve got a leaker, Kat.”
Kat nodded. “Don’t I know it?”
“We need to get that tamped down. There’s been a lot of rumors and innuendo flying around here. There was disagreement about this Nigeria mission Luke Stone is on. You know the story. You were there. If it ever got out that an agent was insubordinate, or that we’ve sent covert operators into Nigeria…”
Susan didn’t say it, but the awkward truth hung in the air between them: Or that the President was having a relationship with said agent…
“You don’t have to tell me,” Kat said. “I killed that interview to send a message—we don’t respond to leaks. Now I’m going to find the leaker. And when I do, I’m going to string him up by—”
A knock came at the door. A Secret Service man opened it, and a catering person came in with a rolling cart. The coffee was here.
This day was long, and getting longer. Coffee was Susan’s lifeline. Stone had slipped away from his arrest and disappeared nearly six hours ago, with no word from him since. That little episode had apparently emboldened someone to leak sensitive internal deliberations to the press. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but Stone had put her in an awkward position.
He was liable to put himself in that position as well. What else was likely to come out? What else had already been leaked?
“Stone!” she wanted to shout. “Where are you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
10:15 p.m. West Africa Time (4:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Deep Inside Sambisa Forest
Borno State, Nigeria
The night was dark and deep.
It was a slow go. They had ditched the jeep more than an hour ago. They had barely spoken since then, communicating instead with taps, hand gestures, and eye movements.