“Right.”
Salma thought for a moment. “If we can find them, it may be where they were keeping me…”
“I know where they were keeping you. But by now it’s swarming with angry slavers. I killed their chief and a few of them, but cockroaches like that always have a bunch more to fill in their shoes. There’s not much chance we can get in to look around. That, and it’s likely one of them took the drive to see what was on it. There weren’t any computers in their prison.” Jet shook her head. “So that part of all of this was a waste.”
“Maybe not. I had a chance to read some of the material. Enough to know the broad strokes. I already told headquarters most of it. They’ve gotten their hands on some Chinese nerve agent and are planning to release it in Europe and Israel. It’s something like the Russian stuff – Novichok – only worse. Aerosolized.”
“Do you know where they’re storing it?”
“No idea. It didn’t say. Or if it did, it wasn’t in the files I got a glimpse of.”
Jet looked up at the moon and couldn’t escape the sense that it was mocking her. She shook off the thought. “Let’s see how far the motorcycle will take us.”
“I know this area. There isn’t anything out here until we get closer to Sebha. Then there are some farms. But those are a long way from here. We were on the road, what, two, two and a half hours?”
“You’re lucky they didn’t drive any faster.” Jet eyed the Kalashnikov in Salma’s left hand and the two spare magazines in her right, a pistol stuck in the waist of the sweats, and looked to the truck. “Let’s see if they have anything useful in there.”
The two women walked to the vehicle and stared into the filthy cab, which was strewn with wrappers and trash. Jet smiled and reached for a handheld GPS unit that was resting on the center console. She regarded the screen and nodded. “There’s a waypoint another hundred klicks from here. That’s where they were headed.”
“Where?” Salma asked, puzzlement etched into her face.
“South of the only town down there.”
“Never been, but that’s just desert. There’s nothing there.”
“Not nothing. That’s where they were taking you. So that’s where Mounir’s holed up.”
Salma shrugged. “Strange. But nothing should surprise me anymore. Although…”
“What?” Jet asked.
“I overheard him talking. When I left Mounir, he was expecting Tariq, his terrorist god and the one who hatched the nerve-gas plan, to arrive at any moment. So it could be that’s where he went. Maybe Tariq has a camp in the desert. That’s about the only thing that makes sense. There’s nothing but sand there.”
“Not our problem right now. I’ll call in the coordinates to headquarters, and they can make a call on what to do. My job’s to get you safely home.”
“You’re not going to get a fight out of me over that.” Salma hoisted the AK. “I’m ready.”
“Follow me.”
The women walked to the motorcycle, and Jet removed one of the robes Leo had given her and handed it to Salma. “That will help keep you warm. It’s going to get a lot colder.”
“Believe me, I know. Weird how the desert can be blazing all day and then freezing at night.” Salma pulled the robe over her head and arranged her clothes underneath. “Perfect. So what now?”
Jet straddled the bike and depressed the starter button. The engine turned over and purred softly. “Climb on behind me.”
Salma did as asked, and Jet eased the motorcycle to the road and switched on the lights. She saw immediately that the gas situation was worse than she’d feared – it had been impossible to read the gauge in the dark, but now, illuminated, it was showing just above empty.
“What do you think?” Salma asked, peering over her shoulder.
“I hope those sandals are comfortable.”
“Compared to what I’ve been through, they’re like walking on clouds.”
“Good. Because they’re going to get a workout. With two of us to carry, this thing isn’t going to make it very far.”
Jet twisted the throttle and the bike rolled forward, leaving the truck and the dead men for the buzzards, the chill of the night suddenly colder as the magnitude of the challenge facing them sank in.
Chapter 23
Washington, D.C.
The meeting room where the joint chiefs of staff were gathered was hushed as a tall man with close-cropped gray hair and a wizened face gestured at a screen to his left. The members of the joint chiefs sat in stunned silence as the senior intelligence officer finished delivering his briefing. When the presentation concluded, he stood by the head of the table, the screen behind him now dark, and waited for the questions to begin.
“Let me get this straight. The Chinese sold some Libyan terrorists banned weapons?” asked Admiral Kinsey, the chief of staff of the Navy.
“Negative, sir. We can’t make that assumption. All we know is that the canisters were marked with Chinese script and are consistent with their bioweapons program. Beyond that, we’re guessing – although I’d say it’s highly unlikely this was officially sanctioned.”
“Then how the hell did they get their hands on it?”
“Unknown at this time.”
“It’s the damned North Koreans,” growled General Bishop, the chief of staff of the Army. “Has to be.”
The chairman of the joint chiefs frowned. “I think our friend here is saying not to jump to conclusions.”
“Correct,” the intelligence officer said. “All we know at this point is that there have been two releases of the agent, and both occurred in, or on a boat coming from, Libya.”
“And you have no idea how much more of this stuff is out there? Or who’s behind it?” General Williams, commandant of the Marine Corps, barked.
“Regrettably, no, sir. Our total G2 at this time is limited to intel coming from the attack site in Tripoli and from the Italian navy, which is working closely with our people. As to how much more there is, or where it’s stored, if there is more, or who’s behind this, we don’t have sufficient information yet. But we’re working on it.”
“What does that mean?” the chairman asked.
“It means we’re squeezing every contact, every informant we have, for anything that could answer the outstanding questions. But at this point we can’t make any definitive statements with any degree of confidence other than that a bioweapon threat appears to be in the hands of terrorists, who have yet to make any demands or identify themselves.”
General Williams shook his head. “Jesus. We’re relying on the Italian navy? You’ve got to be kidding.”
The admiral cut Williams off. “If we know it’s Chinese, why don’t we put the pressure on them to figure out how the terrorists got it?” He paused. “Seems like you find out who sold it to them, and you’re only a step away from finding them.”
The chairman nodded. “We’ve already sent for the ambassador. He’ll be with the Secretary of State this morning. Believe me, there will be pressure applied.”
“Which is unlikely to yield many, if any, results,” the intelligence officer said. “The Chinese are typically very tightlipped, and a scandal of this proportion…this is a banned agent. The fact that they even developed it violates a host of treaties, as well as international law. So they’re going to play dumb and circle the wagons. It’s possible we’ll never learn how it made it into terrorist hands. But make no mistake. This is the nightmare scenario we’ve feared for years – a WMD in terrorist hands.”
“More than one,” Kinsey corrected.
The chairman sighed and put both hands on the table. “Here’s where we are. The president was briefed just before we were. He’s approved a complete shutdown of Libya. Nothing moving in or out. We’re going to order warships into position to enforce a blockade, and we’ll have air support from our bases in the area, but it will take at least forty-eight to seventy-two hours to cover the entire coast.” He paused. “Unfortunately, as we all know, the borders in that
region are notoriously…labile. So sealing the land perimeter will be harder than the sea. We’re already working with Tunisia and Algeria to do so, and are in contact with Egypt, although our confidence level in their ability to lock down the border is minimal. The real problems are Chad, Sudan, and Niger. None are particularly friendly toward us, nor do they have any real kind of central command. And they lack the resources to do much.”
“If the terrorists want to gas half of Africa, that’s not our problem,” Kinsey snapped.
“Racist bastard,” Williams grumbled jokingly.
“Well, sir, I respectfully disagree,” the intelligence officer said. “We have personnel in all three countries that must be considered targets. Worse, if they were to ship the gas south once the vise starts to tighten to the north, it could make it to Europe, or here, by any number of routes. We all know Africa is the wild west.” He hesitated. “We’re preparing to cut off all internet and cell phone traffic in Libya. That will make it difficult to impossible to communicate, assuming whoever is behind this is still in-country.”
“The government’s agreed to that?”
“We didn’t ask. But they tend to do whatever the highest bidder tells them to. And we’re always the high bid.”
“The cost to the Libyans will be enormous. If nothing’s allowed in or out, and there’s effectively no communication…”
The intelligence officer shrugged. “Not my problem.”
“The humanitarian cost alone, if this stretches more than a few days, could be disastrous,” the chairman said. “We’ll have to go to the UN in a closed session and explain.”
“The plan is to communicate to all of our allies and alert them to the situation. They’ll cooperate, of course.”
Williams laughed grimly. “Seeing as they’ve rubber-stamped every one of our campaigns so far, in the face of a real threat, I’d say so.”
“The implications of the attack on the naval base in Tripoli are clear. That was a demonstration. It couldn’t have been anything else. Whoever is behind this wanted to fire a shot across the coalition’s bow and get our complete attention,” the intelligence officer said. “Which they have.”
“Why gas a bunch of refugees on some boat?”
“Perhaps I didn’t make it clear that the Italians believe that was an accident. The boat was transporting a canister to Italy. We believe the actual target was somewhere in Europe.”
“To what end?” Williams demanded.
The chairman sat back and took a long sip of black coffee. “What’s the goal of all terrorism? To instill fear. Imagine the public reaction if a highly toxic aerosolized nerve agent was released in the London Tube, or in the Paris Metro, or at a soccer match in Spain or Europe, or the opera house in Berlin. There are hundreds if not thousands of scenarios where thousands would die in the most gruesome manner possible. It would be the mother of all attacks, because we’d have no way of defending against more, since we don’t know who’s directing it or what their objective is or how much of the agent they actually have.”
“What are the odds that we have to contend with this on American soil?” Kinsey asked.
“Unknown at this time,” the chairman said, his expression sour. “But we have to assume the worst. We’re all familiar with the national security scenarios of biowarfare attacks, or EMPs, or suitcase nukes. Assume the worst of them: an unknown amount of this stuff is smuggled in from Mexico or Canada or on a freighter or as air cargo, and whoever is behind it wants to bag the biggest elephant there is. It would make 9-11 look like a Boy Scout outing.”
“Shouldn’t we seal the ports?” Williams demanded.
The chairman shook his head. “Too soon. Just as Libya will be devastated by the blockade, we’re also vulnerable. Imagine if everything just froze and nothing came into the country through official channels. It would be economically catastrophic.”
“Plus it wouldn’t work,” the intelligence officer pointed out. “Every day tons of cocaine and heroin and meth make it across the border, as do countless illegal immigrants. The truth is that anyone with a real will could easily get anything they wanted across the border through any of countless smuggling networks. Don’t even get me started on how impossible it would be to stop every high-speed boat in Florida from making the run from one of the islands, or for a small plane to land in the Louisiana Bayou or the Everglades with a load, much less how impossible it would be to stop something from coming in through one of the cartel tunnels.”
“Well, hell. So all this expensive security can’t stop a real threat?”
The intelligence officer smiled for the first time during the meeting. “We all know the purpose for it, and it has nothing to do with security. The only way to keep the population under control is to keep everyone afraid – of each other, of illegal immigrants, of Russia, of China, of terrorists, of North Korea, whatever. We’ve got three hundred fifty million guns floating around out there. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone wasn’t at each other’s throats or scared of their own shadow? They’d turn their attention on us and want to know what they’re getting for tens of trillions of their money siphoned off. So no, don’t expect the TSA or border patrol or customs to do anything meaningful. That’s never been their function.”
The frank assessment was permissible within the confines of the room. Everyone in the meeting understood that the Pentagon hadn’t performed its mandatory audit for decades, and when it finally was forced to, failed at a hundred percent rate. The DOD was a money-laundering mechanism with no accountability and no bottom, and all concerned understood its role, and theirs, in the scheme of things. There were predators and prey, and they were the predators pretending to be guarding the flock. Still, the statement made the chairman visibly uncomfortable, and he was quick to adjourn the meeting after agreeing to keep everyone appraised and to reconvene another briefing meeting that evening.
On the way out, he stopped the intelligence officer. “Can we have a word?”
The other men trooped out, leaving the pair alone. The officer raised an eyebrow in anticipation.
“Cool it on the telling it like it is, will you?” the chairman snarled.
“Everyone knows the score. What’s the point of pretenses in here?”
“It’s like knowing your girlfriend is cheating on you versus saying it out loud. As long as it’s not spoken, everyone can pretend. So just don’t rock the boat. We have enough on our plates as it is. This could send the entire world economy into a tailspin if the situation gets out of control. We don’t need any distractions.”
The officer held up his hands in defeat. “Very well. No more unvarnished truth. My apologies.”
He left, and the chairman watched him walk down the long hall with a bounce in his step, a man who knew all the secrets and slept well each night.
“God help us all,” he whispered, and took a deep breath. Hopefully the Italians would provide some sort of meaningful information shortly, because the bottom line from the meeting was that nobody knew anything of substance, and all they could do was wait for the next atrocity to occur.
And the chairman had been in the position long enough to know that playing defense was a losing strategy for anything but the short term.
Chapter 24
South of Sebha, Libya
The motorcycle engine sputtered before continuing to hum along, and then coughed again. Jet steered off the road just as the motor hacked like an asthmatic four times and shuddered to a stop.
“Party’s over,” she said, and Salma hopped off the seat.
Jet swung off the saddle and pushed the bike into the desert, and continued until the tires became mired in the loose sand and she couldn’t move it any more.
“Help me remove the saddlebags. We’ll need the water and the rest of the stuff,” Jet said, and she and Salma went to work on them.
“How far from Sebha do you figure we are?” Salma asked.
Jet did a quick calculation. “Maybe fifty, fifty-five k
ilometers. It’s going to be a long walk.”
Salma shrugged. “But it’s doable. I did almost triple that to get to Sebha.”
“Sure. But we can also expect Mounir to send someone to find out what happened and why you aren’t there. When he does, we’ll have pursuers. And the problem is that in sand, we’re going to leave tracks.”
“So we stay on the road.”
Jet shook her head. “Too risky. We’d be sitting ducks. And not just for Mounir. Two women alone in the middle of sex-slave central? Not a great idea.” Jet thought for a moment. “We can walk a little in the sand and then retrace our steps, using the same footprints, and move up the road some before getting off it again. There are patches of harder ground along the way. That will leave some false trails to throw them, and if we can find solid enough areas near the road where we don’t leave any tracks getting off the pavement, they may not be able to pick up the real trail because they’ll be looking for another one from the road.”
Salma nodded. “Worth a try. But it sounds like we’re racing the clock.”
“That’s right. So let’s be quick about it.”
The women walked a hundred meters through the sand and then painstakingly worked their way back to the road before shouldering the saddlebags and beginning their march north. Jet removed the sat phone from her bag and called Leo, who answered on the third ring, sounding half asleep.
“I’ve got her,” Jet said without preamble.
His tone changed to one of full alertness. “You do? Where are you?”
“We ran into some problems.” Jet gave him an abridged account of the men in the truck and the fate of the motorcycle.
“So you’re on foot?” Leo asked when she finished.
“Affirmative. And it’s just a matter of time until we have a hunting party after us. Now would be the time to pull a rabbit out of your hat. You were talking helos?”
“I’ll let headquarters know and see what they can field.”
Silence hissed on the line. “There’s another problem.”
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