by Jack Mars
“Nigel. Nigel Say—”
“Stop right there. Nigel is good enough. So tell me, Nigel. You seem to have zero useful combat experience or training, and you don’t have much fight in you anyway. You’re just a decoy and obviously an expendable. Why would a nobody like you know something like that?”
“I’m in a great deal of pain,” Nigel said. “I’m going to need medical attention.”
Ed laughed.
Luke smiled and shook his head. “Nigel, you don’t need medical attention. You’re not even alive unless I say you are. You died in that firefight back there. Do you understand what I’m telling you? My friend and I need information. The possibility that you might have some is the only reason you’re breathing right now.”
Nigel stared into Luke’s eyes. Nigel’s face was crimped with pain. Nigel had jumped into the deep end of the pool without ever learning to swim.
“People talk,” he said. “They’re not supposed to, but they do.”
“Rumors,” Ed said.
“Rumors, yes. But rumors coming straight from the top.”
“And why would they send the warheads to Russia?” Luke said. “Last I checked, ISIS hates Russia.”
The kid nodded crazily. “Oh, they do. They do. And that’s why. They’re going to sneak the missiles into Russia, and launch them at Russia from inside the country. Who can the bloody Russians attack after that? They got bombed from inside their own territory. It’s genius, man. It’s brilliant.”
“How do they plan to get them in there?”
Nigel shook his head. “I don’t know the details. I’m sorry. That’s all I have.”
Luke stood. He had to admit it made a certain amount of sense. If it was true, that was a problem. They had gone the wrong way. It was a bad call on Swann’s part, but there was more to it than that. Trudy was gone, they had a neophyte doing intel, and Luke was distracted by Becca’s health. Swann and Ed were on loan from other jobs. This team was not the well-oiled machine it used to be.
Now he and Ed were in Syria, shot down by the Russians, in running firefights with ISIS, out of communication with Swann, and with no clear way back out again. Luke shook his head. Maybe he should have turned this job down.
“Hey, man,” Ed said. “Look what we have here.”
Out on the wharf, a tall black van had pulled up. The windows were blacked. There were three satellite dishes on its roof. Across the side, the white letters TV were spray painted in characters four feet high.
“The news has arrived,” Luke said. “Well, at least we can get a call out. Ed, give me a hand with this guy, will you?”
“Wait! No, just leave me here.”
Luke shook his head. “Can’t leave you with the guns. You’re the enemy, remember? What if you started shooting at us? That wouldn’t do, would it?”
They each grabbed Nigel under an arm and dragged him out into the road. He screamed in pain the whole time. They dropped him in the dust near the van. By now, two men had emerged from inside.
One of them had long hair and wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt with a heavy black equipment vest over it. Like the truck, the vest had the big white letters TV written in masking tape on the front and back. He looked like he was in his early thirties. He had a video camera on his shoulder, and a boom mike contraption in his hand. The other was a handsome guy in his twenties, wearing khaki pants and a dark blue windbreaker.
He smiled.
“Hello, what’s going on here?” He sounded like an American. “Look at that fire! Is that your handiwork?”
“TV,” Luke said. “Who are you guys with?”
“We’re independent, but we work for everybody. We’re just about the only westerners on the ground down here. CNN and FOX don’t like their people getting killed. Those guys tend to report the war from someplace nice.”
“We need to call Washington, DC,” Luke said. “Can you do that?”
The guy looked at Luke and Ed. He glanced at the shivering wreck on the ground at their feet.
“You guys Special Forces? Navy SEALs?”
Luke nodded. “Something like that.”
“They send you in here to look for the missing American?”
Luke stared at the guy. “I don’t know anything about a missing American.”
He might have stared a little too hard, because the reporter put his hands up.
“Hey, I just figured American commandos in ISIS-held territory… you know. We heard a couple of choppers got shot down last night. We’ve been out scrounging around for them this morning. And we found you instead. I just figured maybe you guys were looking for him. You’re probably not going to find him. ISIS has him, but they wouldn’t bring him here. They’ve just about lost their grip on this town.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. An American spy. Bobby, what’s that guy’s name?”
Bobby the cameraman checked a small handheld device pinned to his vest. He sighed as he scrolled through some web pages.
“Name? Uh… let me see.”
Then he found it.
He looked up.
“His name is Mark Swann.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
1:05 a.m.
The White House Residence, Washington, DC
The phone was ringing.
Susan nearly jumped out of skin. She had been dreaming, one of many dreams she’d had about flying recently. Just flying, not in an airplane, or on a magic carpet, just herself as though she were a superhero. She had been flying close to a mountain, scraping the knuckles of her right hand along the edge of it.
It was dark in the room. She was sprawled across the king bed by herself. By the time she’d gotten back from her call with Putin, Tommy Zales had moved on to greener pastures. It was probably for the best. She’d been crazy to invite him here.
Would you really have slept with him?
“I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that I’m lonely. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s good-looking.”
She looked at the phone. It had gone silent. A red light on it was blinking. It wasn’t even that late. She’d only been asleep for an hour.
Abruptly, it started ringing again. She picked up the receiver.
“Hi.”
“Susan, it’s Kurt. Did I wake you?”
“What do you think?”
“We’ve got a new problem.”
“No surprise there.”
“Will you meet me in the Oval Office?”
“Of course. What else am I doing right now?”
Slowly, she got dressed. Within a few minutes, she was prowling the darkened colonnade, headed to the West Wing. Two Secret Service kept a respectful distance behind her. When she entered the office, Kurt Kimball and Kat Lopez were in the sitting area, waiting for her. They were wearing the same clothes she’d seen them in hours ago. Kurt had a dark five o’clock shadow growing across his face. For a second, she imagined him, as bald as he was, with a thick beard. Kind of like a reverse Chia pet.
Kat’s eyes had black half-circles beneath them.
“Why are you two still here? Don’t you have homes?”
“Susan, I’ll get right to the point,” Kurt said. “A video has been released online within the past hour. We need you to watch it.”
Susan sat in one of the high-backed chairs. Kurt had a laptop computer on the coffee table. He turned it around to face her and pressed play.
The video was shot outside. It showed what looked like the ruins of a large building. Steel girders leaned diagonally, near shredded masonry. In the foreground, a man with long blond hair wore an orange jumpsuit. He was on his knees, and his arms were tied behind his back. Looming behind him on piles of rubble were five men wearing black hoods. Four of the men brandished rifles. The fifth held a large scythe or scimitar, similar to a machete. Behind the men, there was a black flag with white lettering in Arabic.
“Oh my God, is that—”
“Yes, the data analyst from Agent Stone’s
team. Swann.”
“My name is Mark Swann,” the man in the video said. He squinted at something off-screen, as though he was reading from a prepared statement.
“I work for the National Security Agency of the United States. In other words, I am a spy for the Crusaders. I am in league with the Jews, the Satanists, the apostates, and the enemies of Allah wherever I find them. We spread false histories. We fill the people’s heads with lies. My efforts have directly resulted in the deaths of many thousands of innocent women and children, believers all across the Islamic world.”
Swann’s voice seemed to hitch in his throat, and his eyes watered.
“I have been condemned to death by the defenders of the true faith. I cannot dispute this ruling, for it is”—he hesitated, stumbled over the words—“fair and just. I regret the life I have led, which has brought me to this dismal end. I regret the actions I have taken which have hurt so many. I am abject in my remorse, and I go to this fate urging others not to follow my path.”
Now Swann clearly was crying. He looked straight at the camera.
“I love you, Mom.”
The screen went black.
Susan was quiet for a long moment. “What do we do?”
Kurt shook his head. “There’s not much we can do. We’ve never successfully rescued a prisoner held by ISIS. There’s often a lapse in time between when these first videos are made, and when the death sentence is carried out, but… we don’t have the people on the ground. We have analysts matching the data in that video against previous videos and known places where ISIS holds prisoners. If we can determine a location, there may be a chance. It’s a race against time, but one that so far has always proven futile.”
“Do we know where Stone is?” Susan said.
“We don’t. Still missing inside Syria. About all we have right now is Stone’s intel person, Mika Dolan. She’s very young, and apparently is having what I would call, for lack of a better term, a nervous breakdown.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s in a hotel room in Adana. She was with Swann last night, and has no idea what happened to him. Fighting ramped back up in Turkey early this morning. Adana is one of the hot spots. She is terrified. My aide Amy is in touch with her, and believes that she is no longer capable of functioning independently, and is probably a liability in the field. I think we need to extract her from the hotel, get her back to the military base, and bring her home.”
Susan nodded. “Okay. We can do that at least. Get her out of there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
7:30 a.m. Eastern European Time (1:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
Adana, Turkey
Her mind was racing. It flitted from one thing to the next like a butterfly, but never landed anywhere for more than a few seconds.
“Yes, I’m almost packed,” Mika said into her phone mic. “I don’t even care. If I forget something, I’ll leave it behind. I just need to get out of here, somewhere safe.”
She was stuffing her clothes into a suitcase. They fit fine before, but now she couldn’t close the damn thing. She didn’t have time to fold everything just so. She had to get out of here.
She didn’t want to be a spy anymore. She didn’t want to be law enforcement officer. If she made it back to the United States, she didn’t know if she would ever go back to her job at the FBI. They had put her on loan to Luke Stone? What did that even mean?
Three men had died in Syria. That helicopter crash… Swann had shot down another helicopter. Now Swann was gone, kidnapped. He had been here in the room when she went to sleep last night. And when she woke up, he was gone. Just… gone. Of course she knew what had happened to him. She had seen the video—half the world had seen it by now.
They were going to kill him.
“Mika, you can’t leave anything behind,” Amy said into her ear. “Do you understand me? You have to breathe deeply, try to calm down, and pack everything up. You have to take it all with you. You are handling classified materials. There may be evidence on Swann’s computer equipment. The analysts are going to want to—”
“I can’t do it!” Mika screamed. “I can’t do it, Amy. I have to get out of here.”
Everything about this hotel suite was malevolent now. There were killers lurking behind every corner, inside of every shadow. Every single light in the suite was on, and it was broad daylight outside.
“Mika! Get hold of yourself. There are some elementary things that you have to do. If you can’t do them… I can’t help you. You’re going to lose your job.”
Amy was crazy. Mika realized that now. She always spoke in that serious tone of voice. Everything was just so important. She was over there, safe and sound in Washington, DC. She was an aide to the National Security Adviser. She worked at the White House, ate in nice restaurants, took a car service home to her place in Georgetown every night. She lived inside a bubble.
“Lose my job? Lose my job? Do you really think I care about that? I’m going to lose my life. They’re going to kill me, Amy. They’re going to kill Swann, and they’re going to kill me.”
Amy sighed, and in her sigh, Mika heard the devastating performance report in its entirety. Agent was loaned to the Secret Service Special Response Team for a classified overseas assignment. Agent failed to perform tasks as assigned. Agent failed to meet responsibilities in a stressful environment. Agent was repatriated before operation was completed. Recommendation: Termination of Employment.
“Okay,” Amy said. “Listen to me. All non-combat flights are grounded at this moment, including helicopter flights. All right? So you can’t go back to the base the way you came. We’re sending an armored car for you. There will be a motorcade of three cars—the other two will have armed American contractors in them, providing security.”
“Why are the flights grounded?” Mika said.
“There are rebel anti-aircraft guns in the vicinity.”
Mika froze. This was never going to end. “How am I going to get home?”
“You’re going to wait on the base until the guns have been cleared from the area, then you’re going to get on the next flight to Germany. From there, you’ll catch a connection home.”
Now Mika sighed. Okay. A sudden realization hit her. There was something going on. Some mystical force was at work, trapping her in place. It was out of her hands. Maybe the force would let her go, or maybe it would kill her. But there was nothing she could do about it. She was helpless, and for some reason, being helpless made her feel a little better.
“Okay,” she said.
“I can send contractors up to your room to escort you down and help carry everything, but I need you to pack up all everything before they get there. They’re not going to have classified clearance, and we can’t have them sorting through classified materials.”
“Fine,” Mika said. “Don’t worry. I’ll pack everything. I’ll wait for their knock.”
“Good girl,” Amy said. “That’s my girl. Fifteen minutes, all right?”
Mika nodded. “Got it.”
Now she felt more placid. She took her time, packing in an orderly fashion. She closed Swann’s computer—since she had found his instant message exchange, she’d been afraid to touch it. His other computers were already closed, and it was a simple matter to put them in their cases. She managed to close her suitcase and gather her equipment together.
A heavy knock came at the door.
She went to it and opened it without thinking, expecting two big military men to come bustling in.
A woman stood there. She had long curly dark hair and blue eyes. Mika couldn’t tell any more about her than that. She wore a hijab over her head, and a veil over her face that obscured everything but her eyes. A conservative black abaya wrap covered her entire body to her wrists and her ankles. The abaya had an elaborate multi-colored print across the front.
“Mika?”
Mika almost couldn’t answer. Was it an assassin? “Yes,” she said, resigned to her fate. It did
n’t even occur to her to slam the door. “I’m Mika.”
“I’m a friend of Luke Stone,” the woman said. “When you see him, give him this for me, will you?”
Despite the clothes, the woman’s voice was that of an American. She held a black hard drive in her outstretched hand. Mika took it absently.
“What is it?”
The woman seemed to smile, but there was no humor in it. The eyes watched Mika. “It’s something he’ll want to see. It’s encrypted. So when he needs to open it, ask him if he remembers his old friend’s number. Okay?”
“Ask him if…”
“Yes. Does he remember his old friend’s number?”
“His old friend’s number,” Mika repeated.
The woman nodded. “Good. Please remember that. What do you want to ask him?”
“If he remembers his old friend’s number,” Mika said automatically.
“That’s right. Does he remember his old friend’s number. It’s very important.”
Down the hall, the elevator made a tone, suggesting it was on its way. The woman turned, and glanced at it.
“Gotta go,” she said.
An instant later, she was gone. To Mika, it seemed almost if she had evaporated, but really what she had done was leave the other way and enter the stairwell. A moment later, a warm tone sounded and the elevator opened. Two big American men came out of it, dressed neck to toes in combat fatigues, Oakley sunglasses perched on their crew-cut heads.
“Mika!” one of them said. “We just came from the air base. It’s a little hot between here and there today. Ready for the ride of your life?”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
7:40 a.m. Mediterranean Time (1:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
Jalmeh, Syria
“They took the man’s glasses away,” Ed Newsam said.
Luke and Ed had just watched Mark Swann, arms tied and in an orange jumpsuit, tell his mom that he loved her. The reporter held a small tablet computer in front of them as the screen went dark.