“Ms. Ward,” the woman said, uncrossing her long legs and rising to her feet. “Please have a seat.” She indicated the chair across the table from hers. “I apologize for such short notice.” Galena’s sharp glance toward the commander had Mallory wondering who exactly had called this meeting.
Mallory sat and then adjusted Benji on her lap. Tugging at the sleeves of his little jacket, she dropped it into the diaper bag at her feet.
He was a quiet baby, prematurely taken from his mother’s womb in a grizzly scene Mallory wouldn’t soon—if ever—forget. She hoped they wouldn’t be here long enough for Benji to get tired or hungry during this major disruption to his routine.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Mallory forced herself to make eye contact, first with Galena and then the commander. “Nash,” she whispered, reading it on their faces with a sinking sensation in the pit of her gut. “He’s escaped.”
She didn’t know why escape was the first thought that popped into her head. But as a Navy SEAL trained in escape and evasion, Nash certainly had the skills. If anyone could break out of a military prison, he could.
“Not yet.” The commander sauntered over to the table. “But he will. With your help.”
The absurdity of his statement took a moment to sink in.
“Like hell I will.” Only a cold-blooded killer could do what Nash had done to his pregnant wife. “Not in this or any other lifetime will I be helping that man escape—”
Galena leaned across the table. “Mallory... May I call you Mallory?” She continued without waiting for the consent, which Mallory would have given gladly. “Kenneth Nash can serve a higher purpose than any death sentence handed down to him.”
Mallory wasn’t so sure about that. She didn’t necessarily believe in capital punishment. But if anyone deserved to pay the ultimate price, Nash did.
“To put it bluntly,” the commander interrupted, “we’re proposing a mission few men are even qualified to undertake. You’re aware, of course, that Nash is half Syrian—on his mother’s side. He has the looks and the know-how for a deep-cover op to infiltrate al-Ayman.” She knew al-Ayman to be a terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda.
“What are you suggesting?” She looked from one to the other.
Galena cleared her throat. “The president has reviewed the case and is prepared to offer Kenneth Nash a full pardon for the murder of his wife, your sister, in exchange for certain, shall we say—services. What you need to understand, Mallory, is that he’d be a free man. And we need you to be comfortable with that.”
Mallory smoothed a hand over her nephew’s dark head. “You’ve got to be kidding.” A presidential pardon? So much for the president getting her vote of confidence. “There must be other men, loyal Americans of Middle Eastern descent—”
“None with Lieutenant Commander Nash’s background and training who are already serving a prison sentence.” The commander had a grim certainty about him Mallory found disconcerting. “We’re proposing a move to Gitmo under an assumed name. He’d be so deep undercover not even the marines guarding him would know his true identity.”
“His main objective would be to gather intel from the detainees held at the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” Galena clarified. “Specifically the youngest son of Mullah Kahn. Mullah, also known as the Cobra, is the head of the al-Ayman terrorist network. His son, Bari Kahn, was captured last year, right here in California. Additionally, Nash would be tasked with finding security leaks within our own system.”
Mallory shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “And if he’s caught—”
“If he’s caught by either side,” the commander said with emphasis, “he’d be a marked man.”
That shouldn’t bother her as much as it did.
She shouldn’t care.
She didn’t care.
Galena directed a sharp glance at the commander. “Or he may come out of all this unscathed.” The NCIS agent drummed a pen on a pad, a sign of restlessness Mallory wouldn’t have associated with the woman. Perhaps she had her own reservations and was just as uncomfortable with the situation as Mallory. “Detainees in Cuba won’t be held forever. There’s plenty of public outcry as U.S. involvement in the war comes to a close, and when the last prisoners are released or transferred to other countries, as many have been already, Nash will be among them.”
“You’d let him go? Just like that?”
“Gitmo is no cakewalk.” The commander crossed his arms. “Even if he were to go free, you’re not in any danger, Ms. Ward,” he said with the unwavering confidence of his rank. “I strongly believe in Lieutenant Commander Nash’s innocence.”
He might believe it. She might even want to believe it. But she’d seen what she’d seen. And Mallory’s testimony had convicted the man, for crying out loud—what was to stop him from coming after her?
Or Benji?
There was no doubt in her mind Nash would come after his son.
She felt it with bone-chilling certainty.
Mallory stared out of focus at the two-way mirror. As if looking at it through a haze of raw emotions would allow her to see more clearly. That’s when she felt it, the eerie sensation of being watched.
Of course, there was someone behind the glass, watching them. She took a deep, shuddering breath and held Benji tighter. “Are you saying this assignment somehow hinges on my approval?”
She fixed her gaze on the commander this time. He shifted his to Galena as if this condition was a point of contention between them. “No,” he said, returning his attention to her.
“Then why am I here, sir?” Benji shoved a pudgy fist into his mouth. “Why are we here?”
Galena stepped in and answered for him. “We can’t just waltz a high-profile prisoner like Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Nash out the front gate of a federal prison.”
Mallory sensed the commander’s growing impatience with this conversation.
He hunkered down eye level to her nephew and allowed Benji to grab his thumb as he cupped the baby’s chubby cheek. Benji immediately became intent on bringing that masculine digit to his mouth like a new teething toy. She knew the commander was a new father himself and wondered what he really thought of this whole mess.
“We’re taking Nash out of here in a body bag,” he said. “Stone-cold dead. Kenneth Nash will no longer exist.”
He’d said it with such finality as he lifted his gaze toward hers that Mallory shivered and turned away from the glimpse of resignation behind the man’s eyes. Was that supposed to make her feel guilty?
“We’re going to fake his suicide.” Galena straightened in her seat. “We didn’t want you caught off guard. There will likely be renewed interest in your sister’s case as well as press coverage. We need you to keep a low profile for the next few days.”
“Out of sight, out of mind.” Mallory shook her head in disbelief.
The commander gently disengaged himself from the baby’s grasp and pushed to his feet with his mask securely in place. “We weighed in heavily against telling you anything, Ms Ward.”
“So why did you?” She glanced at the two-way mirror again.
“Frankly, Nash’s odds of survival are better on death row,” the commander said. “He may be a free man, but he won’t be free. And he won’t be Kenneth Nash.” His firm mouth held a grim line. “There’s no reason for you to be afraid. Should he survive this operation, Lieutenant Commander Nash has agreed to no contact with you or his son. Ever.”
He might want to believe there was no real danger to her or the baby, but the pounding in her chest told Mallory otherwise. She choked back a laugh as she looked the commander in the eye. “A lot of good a restraining order did my sister.”
He didn’t balk at her accusation. The facts were irrefutable.
At the time,
Mallory had tried to talk her sister out of filing the protection order. The marriage had never been volatile. But Cara had kicked Nash out of their off-base housing for reasons that were still unclear to everyone, except perhaps Nash, and he wasn’t talking. He’d left without incident but had later returned drunk and dismal. Mallory had to drive him back to the bachelor pad where he was staying with friends.
Even then, she’d been on his side.
But the next morning Cara had insisted on filing a restraining order to keep him away. Mallory thought the whole separation ridiculous. Yet Cara was dead before Nash had even been served the papers—which proved, only too late, Cara had reason to fear him.
“Nash has made one stipulation,” the commander said.
“Just one?” She might have known.
“He wanted to see you and the baby one last time.”
“Seriously?” She jerked her head toward the mirror. “He’s behind that glass, isn’t he? That’s why you really brought us here?”
“He’s not asking—”
“What does he want?” She pushed to her feet with her nephew in her arms and faced off with her own reflection. “Forgiveness? Forget it!”
“To say goodbye, Ms. Ward. The man just wants to say goodbye to his son.”
Protected by that pane of glass, she put on her bravest facade and continued to stand there as tears pricked behind her eyes. She would not cry.
How had the boy her sister had dated since high school become the man who’d murdered her? No tears. Not for him.
She’d cried them all for Cara. Her best friend and big sister.
Gone forever.
“Fine. I want to see him, too,” she demanded. “I want him to look me in the eye as he begs for his get-out-of-jail-free card,” she hissed at the mirror.
“That’s not what’s happening here.”
“Even I know he has a better than average chance of survival, Commander—freedom. Anyway, why tell me any of this? What’s to stop me from going to the press?” Mallory knowingly put more than just her career on the line with that threat.
The commander’s demeanor changed in an instant. “That would be ill advised, Ms. Ward. I don’t think I need to remind you that this conversation is highly sensitive.”
Sensitive, meaning classified!
Every government agency out there—no matter what its initials—needed a deep-cover operative of Middle Eastern descent, more than they needed another homogenized desk jockey with unruly red hair and freckles like her.
Mallory scoffed at his words. “I’m not very good at keeping secrets.”
A muscle twitched in the commander’s jaw. Mallory clamped down on her back teeth to keep from saying something she shouldn’t. Tension filled the room as they squared off against each other.
“If you promise to keep quiet, Mallory, then Kenneth will sign over custody of his son to you—right here, right now, today. Plus, he trusts you.” Galena’s words broke through strained nerves and forced Mallory to look in her direction. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all.”
Her ex-brother-in-law had no reason to trust her. He had to hate her as much as she hated him. But maybe this highly irregular request for her presence and then Benji’s was finally starting to make sense.
She wouldn’t be surprised to find the proposed undercover op was Nash’s idea. Something he and the commander had concocted and then taken up the chain of command, maybe even directly to the secretary of the navy, who’d taken it all the way up the chain to the President of the United States.
The president who’d pardoned her sister’s murderer.
She might just have to change her whole party affiliation.
“I want to see him now,” she demanded a second time as Benji began to fuss.
The commander nodded to whomever watched them from behind that plated glass. Mallory bounced Benji on her hip to keep her trembling body under control. A few pulse pounding heartbeats later the door opened.
A marine guard ushered Nash into the room with his hands and legs shackled.
Mallory forced herself to look at him—at the stranger he’d become. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him at his court-martial. The prison uniform hung on his lanky frame and washed out his olive complexion.
The dark stubble on his head and clean-shaven face brought out the high cheekbones and the prominent nose descended from the nomadic princes of the Lost Tribes of Israel. But he’d always be that boy from Brooklyn, New York, to her. Just as he’d been the day he moved into their Denver neighborhood.
That distinctive New York boroughs accent had set him apart more than his mixed heritage. She remembered him as being street tough and smart—an irresistible combination for most teenage girls. She’d been younger than Cara by almost four years and halfway in love with “Kenny” Nash herself by the time she was twelve.
Her unrequited crush had evolved into something much less painful over the years and they’d become fast friends, family.
He’d lost that accent somewhere along the way. But not that edge.
Though she hated to admit it, even he would have a hard time pulling off a mission of this magnitude. Yet somehow she knew he would.
Fluent in half a dozen Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Tigrinya, Nash had carried a double major in political science and theology while at Harvard. He’d graduated from the prestigious university with honors, and a B.S.D.—Bull Shit Degree, as he liked to call it—before joining the navy.
The navy had seemed like such an odd career choice for him at the time. And her sister had been less than thrilled to have her fiancé and future husband join the military.
Mal distinctly remembered their father saying the military was a good choice for a young man with political aspirations, although Mal just couldn’t see Nash as a politician. She thought his enlistment had more to do with the fact that his father had been a marine—either that or a restless desire to see the world. Nash had an insatiable curiosity with world religions and religious artifacts. He even went on to earn his master’s in education while in the service.
For a long time she’d held on to the romantic notion that he was more Indiana Jones than Navy SEAL.
Part scholar, part mystery. Passionate in his thinking.
She also knew better than most not to argue politics or religion with him.
Christian, Muslim, Jew. As far as she was concerned, a person’s religious beliefs and practices were his own business. But in some parts of the world, the distinction could get a person killed. This was why his mother’s family had fled Syria for Israel, and then later America, when his mother was a young girl.
Nash’s dark brown eyes remained sharp and focused on her. The chains rattled one last time as he settled against the wall.
Benji swiveled toward the sound. Resting his small head against her shoulder, he shoved a sloppy fist into his mouth as he stared without recognition at the man who’d brought him into the world.
Nash stood with his head high and met Mallory’s hate-filled glare before shifting his attention toward the son he’d delivered by cutting open his wife’s womb. Cara had died before help arrived. But was she dead before he’d slaughtered her?
That question haunted Mallory to this day.
The autopsy had been inconclusive at best. Medical experts testified to both scenarios, depending on their allegiance to the prosecution or the defense.
There were those who’d called Nash’s extreme measures heroic. He was a Navy SEAL, trained to assess and react in critical situations without hesitation. Then there was the fact that his actions were criminal.
He might have been EMT trained, but he was not a surgeon.
Hero or killer? He’d saved his son’s life either way.
A traumatized fetus couldn’t survi
ve more than four minutes without oxygen from its mother. So if Nash’s story was to be believed, less than four minutes separated him from the real murderer. But his account of those two hundred and forty seconds was as muddy as his defense.
Regardless of how Cara wound up on the floor fighting for her life, Mal believed Nash sealed her sister’s fate with his knife.
Why didn’t he just continue CPR? Especially after she arrived and could have helped. Only Nash knew his real motive for sending her outside for a phone he knew she wouldn’t be able to find because he’d had it on him all along.
Records indicated he’d actually dialed 911 before she did. So there was no reason to even send her outside, except...
To save his son’s life? Or to cover up his even more heinous crime?
Or both.
The pinch near the corner of his mouth might have gone unnoticed if Mallory hadn’t been searching for a reaction from him.
“Take a good look,” she spat. “Because it’s your last.”
Until that moment, there’d been some niggling doubt that maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was innocent. She wanted to believe with her whole heart he’d fought off a one-armed man like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Because for as long as she could remember, Nash had been her real-life action hero.
But maybe there was no one-armed man. What there was, though, were telltale scratches on Nash’s face, his skin cells under Cara’s nails, and his partial prints on the phone cord that had been ripped out of the wall and then wrapped around Cara’s neck.
No forced entry, nothing missing.
Cara had trusted her killer.
Mallory wouldn’t trust Nash again if her life depended on it. If there was still such a thing as a firing squad, she’d volunteer to be the one and only shooter. She’d riddle his body with bullets just to watch him bleed. She wanted revenge, vengeance. Not freedom for her sister’s murderer.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice provided the death penalty as possible punishment for fifteen offenses, most of which had to occur during wartime. All nine men at present on death row had been convicted of premeditated murder or felony murder. The president had the power to commute a death sentence to life, and no service member could be executed without the personally signed order from the Commander in Chief.
The SEAL's Special Mission Page 2