Caroline uttered a gasp but then choked down the vicious pain. You’ve given birth three times, she told herself. Don’t give this sadist the satisfaction.
“Look what you’ve done!” Caleb yelled at the shotgunner, who held the broken gun by its foregrip. The man managed to finger the trigger, despite the damage, and pointed it menacingly at Caroline.
“Eeeeaaaahhh!” Christopher cried out again, unable to take the pain of his own wound. This was horror he had no way of understanding.
“Force suplex,” Jeremy said.
The words popped out of his mouth involuntarily, like a burp or hiccup. They sounded ridiculous in the context of all this suffering. Force suplex was a child’s game, something he and Maddy had shared in moments of laughter and love.
“Force suplex?” the little girl asked. Tears had spilled out of her eyes despite all her courage, but she wiped them away with the back of her hand. Maddy may have been a little girl, but she was her daddy’s girl and that meant a genetic predisposition for action.
“Hell ya!” the third-grade terror cried out.
Caleb was too surprised by the outburst to react as Maddy left her feet two body lengths from the shotgunner and flew through the air like a WWE professional. The impact of her sixty-pound physique barely moved the shotgunner, but that wasn’t the point.
Jeremy seized on the distraction. Standing to Caleb’s right, he got a full step before the one-eyed thug knew what was coming. Jeremy’s vengeful right fist caught the albino squarely on the chin and crumpled him to the floor.
BOOM!
The shotgunner fired a warning shot against the wall, spewing shrapnel into Caroline and Christopher. More screaming, more blood, more confusion. He worked the pump action, frantically trying to deal with the lack of a stock, the now deliriously violent Maddy, and, most important, the stunningly swift actions of an HRT operator trained in “immediate action” drills.
BOOM!
A second gunshot bounced off the wall, but this time it was from Jeremy. He lay on the floor with Caleb’s pistol in one outstretched hand. Smoke drifted up from the barrel. Blood and shattered bone dripped down the fifth course of concrete block where the shotgunner’s head had fractured against it.
“You’re too late,” someone said. The words sounded distant through the screaming and the echo of gunfire and the adrenaline and the pain. It was Caleb.
Jeremy turned the pistol on him.
“Not hardly,” the HRT operator said. He knew exactly what he had to do. Despite the fact that the white pirate had been the first to gain his knees, there was no debating who had control.
NO ONE DENIED Jordan Mitchell access to anything.
“All right, you’ve got my attention,” he said, fixing Sirad in a stare that left no room for equivocation. They stood in the women’s bathroom, a one-stall closet lined with stainless steel and jade Ecuadorean tile. “Now what is this secret you think you can keep from me?”
“I told you, Mr. Mitchell—this is not something I can share at this point. You’re going to have to trust me.”
Mitchell caught his reflection in the vanity mirror. He looked composed considering the situation, but stress had begun to show around his eyes.
“Let’s look back on our professional relationship these past two years, shall we?” he asked, watching her in reflection. “You came to Borders Atlantic as a promising junior executive, but that was just a cover. Your real role was to work as a CIA NOC—a government-trained con artist hell-bent on infiltrating not just foreign governments but the very corporation that hired you.”
Mitchell paused to give her a chance to respond, but she crossed her arms to listen.
“I brought in the top experts in the field of deception,” he said. “Polygraphers, voice stress analysts, profilers—and you made them all look like fools.”
Sirad actually started to laugh.
“So I’m a good liar,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons you value me, isn’t it? The only problem is that I may be too good. That’s why you have kept me away from important assignments this past year. You wanted to find a way to test me, to see if you could build a framework of allegiance . . . something that would give you a measure of control.”
This time, Mitchell was the one who listened.
“And you were right,” she continued. “I understand the game better than I did that night in the War Room when you strapped me to a table and poured seltzer down my throat. I know, now, what you really want from me, and I am willing to give it.”
Sirad, a master seductress who had almost forgotten what it felt like to make the kill, moved close to the one human being alive who could prove himself better. She leaned in to whisper in his ear.
“I know what you’re up to,” she said. “I know about Jafar al Tayar, and I know the stakes. You taught me the art of the duel and the difference between honor and victory.”
“And?” Mitchell asked. He felt a chill run through his body. This woman was about to show herself worthy of everything he had once imagined.
Sirad touched his cheek with hers. She lingered there long enough for Mitchell to drink in her scent, to feel the heat of her breast, to taste the fruits of what he had planted and nurtured and grown.
“And it’s time to face off at ten paces. I’ve got that big English horse pistol in my hand,” she barely spoke. “Can’t you hear the hammer cocking?”
JEREMY WOULD HAVE a lifetime to debate the justification of what he had to do next. Unable to walk and with a clock running on Colonel Ellis’s Megiddo project, he decided to work his interrogation of Caleb in full view of his family. There was no way around it, he decided. They’d suffered unspeakable trauma already. What were a few more screams?
BOOM!
The first bullet took out Caleb’s right knee. Jeremy held the muzzle against the patella, knowing that the contact shot would muffle the blast and spare his children’s already tormented ears.
“Who is Jafar al Tayar?” Jeremy asked.
Caleb laughed out loud. The pain changed his expression but not in ways Jeremy expected. The albino enjoyed it.
BOOM!
The second round took out his other knee.
Jeremy asked again and got the same reaction. Blood spurted out of the ragged holes, arterial spurts that both men knew would kill within minutes.
BOOM!
The third bullet shattered Caleb’s left elbow. He lay on the floor now, immobilized with horrible wounds.
“Who is Jafar al Tayar?” Jeremy demanded. He had never believed himself capable of torture, but then life had changed many perceptions in the past year.
“You can’t stop them,” Caleb said. The words slithered out of his mouth, and life spilled with them as blood pooled around the terribly injured man. His mind began to cloud. “It’s too deep. Too . . .”
Jeremy knew there was no point in arguing. Pain would not work against this man, but there had to be something. There were just moments before the murderous freak bled to death, taking the secrets of the Megiddo project with him.
“Phineas priest,” the FBI agent suddenly whispered. How could he have overlooked something so obvious?
Jeremy raced around the cluttered basement until he found what he needed: a razor-edged box cutter.
“Who is Jafar al Tayar?” Jeremy demanded. He reached down with his left hand and pulled Caleb’s good eyelid away from the pink and white flesh beneath it.
“No!” the albino managed to gasp. He understood what his last moments held and that there was no way into heaven without the symbol of his service to God on earth.
“I need a name,” Jeremy said.
He pulled the skin fold tight and pressed his blade against it.
“The president,” Caleb said in a voice too soft to hear clearly.
Jeremy leaned close and demanded it again.
“It’s the president who will save you.” Caleb shuddered.
Jeremy twisted the blade and took the eyelid anyway.
/>
Fuck him, he thought. This man had no business anywhere but hell.
XXI
Saturday, 19 February
07:07 GMT
HMX-1, airborne over Washington DC
“SO WHY DO they call that the football?” the president asked. He sat in the back of a CH-53E, one of fourteen HMX-1 “white side” airframes regularly tasked with executive airlifts. Beside him sat a navy captain with a black leather case, which unlike assertions of popular folklore was not chained to her wrist.
“President Kennedy came up with the idea during the Cuban missile crisis, but Eisenhower was the first to have direct access, sir,” the captain said. She was a pretty blonde in dress whites, duty rigid yet personable. “The story goes that JFK was playing a touch football game in Hyannis when Bobby ran into one of their military aides. The attorney general dropped the ball, and the president joked that his brother juggled it like it was radioactive. After the game, Bobby joked that this was a nuclear football the president could never drop. The name stuck.”
“Interesting,” Venable said. He had been shown the contents of the suitcase but only briefly, during transition instruction by the White House Military Office. Inside the mysterious box lay a “black book” containing launch options as outlined in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP-04), emergency action message “go codes,” an emergency procedures White House booklet that listed suitable “off-sites,” and a secure telephone. The White House Communications Agency had just added a Quantis cell.
“FEMA wants you to remain airborne for the first twelve hours after the strike,” Chase said, leaning toward the commander in chief. General Oshinski sat opposite them, alongside Havelock. “We’ll circle Midwestern states and land at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado if conditions permit.”
The president nodded his head.
“What about targeting options?”
“We have identified four remote villages in the southern quarter,” the general told him. “Low population density, poor communications, Sunni hotbed. We can sell it as al Qaeda.”
“What about the Intrepid?”
“Just cleared the straits of Yemen,” Havelock answered. “The War Room says they’ll have launch standoff in about two hours.”
“Good.” Venable nodded. “That will give everyone time to stand up to war footing at Raven Rock and Site Seven. I assume the vice president has come up to speed on COG protocols?”
He smiled gruffly, pleased with his new grasp of acronyms and esoteric terms of art.
“That’s our understanding,” Havelock responded. He looked out a side window at two other identical Marine Corps choppers flying in loose formation. They were decoys, he knew, designed to throw off attempts to shoot down their slow-moving and very visible “high value” target. One in three struck him as poor odds.
“David,” Chase spoke up. “I think we need to talk about your decision here.” The helicopter’s interior was noisy but secure from eavesdropping. “We still don’t have irrefutable evidence that the Saudis are behind this. There are several options available to us that fall short of nuclear weapons.”
It was a losing argument, she knew, but one she felt compelled to make.
“This country is at war,” Venable countered. “And my sworn duty as commander in chief is to protect it from all enemies foreign and domestic.” He stared directly at the black suitcase, imagining what it would feel like to order it opened. “The only way we are going to stop further bloodshed is by sending a clear message.”
“But a message to whom?” she asked. “To an Arab world that already thinks we’re a threat to their very existence? This will only spur more resentment among moderate states. Saudi Arabia has been an ally, someone we . . .”
“I think you’re going to want to hear this before digging your heels in,” Havelock interrupted. The national security advisor closed his bifold cell phone. “DOE has detected high levels of radiation inside the White House, Capitol, and several other downtown buildings. DHS thinks it is a contamination of the public water supply.”
“My God,” Venable muttered. “The Louisville isotopes.”
“Closed-system contamination,” Havelock agreed. “Our worst fear.”
Everyone in the chopper understood the implications. Every drop of water, from the Oval Office lavatory to FBI drinking fountains to showers in the Senate locker room had been poisoned. Terrorists had turned the nation’s capital into a ghost town.
“How soon can we get airborne?” the president asked. His face glowed furious red.
“They’re standing by with turbines spinning,” Havelock said. “Twelve minutes.”
“I want Great Britain, Russia, China, and NATO on the line as soon as we go wheels up,” Venable demanded. “We launch as soon as the Intrepid gets into position.”
“FREEZE, ASSHOLE!”
Jeremy had heard the upstairs door burst open and heavy footsteps storming through the house. He at first thought it had to be more of Ellis’s Cell Six members, but there were too many of them.
“Police!” another voice shouted as flashlight beams shined down the stairs. A team of black-suited SWAT officers flowed down after them.
Jeremy dropped his gun and pushed his hands over his head, anticipating their tactics. They would key on weapons, assuming that anyone with a gun deserved killing.
“FBI!” Jeremy yelled. “I’m FBI!”
This seemed to cause a stutter step among the first two men in line, but not for long. The five-member team moved lightning quick to secure Caroline and the kids while knocking Jeremy to the floor and wrenching his hands behind his back.
“Holy shit,” Jeremy heard one of the men say. It had to be a grisly sight. Caleb had bled out in a gallon-wide pool. The shotgunner’s brains were splattered against the wall. Caroline lay almost naked, bound in an unnatural contortion. Patrick and Christopher huddled beside her, sobbing and moaning in torment.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong,” Jeremy tried to argue. “I’m an undercover FBI agent, and this is my family.”
“Shut the fuck up,” one of the SWAT members yelled. “We know you’re the one who drove that concrete truck.”
Another operator searched Jeremy for weapons then pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket. “This says his name is Walker,” he called out, reading Jeremy’s undercover license.
“That’s my undercover ID!” Jeremy tried to explain. One of the men pressed his knee into the back of Jeremy’s neck and wrenched his wrists up between his shoulder blades. It hurt so badly, he briefly forgot about his leg.
“Save your breath, asshole,” the man who had cuffed him said. “My wife was on the Hill when your fucking bomb went off.”
Patrick began to howl again, and one of the other officers tried to comfort him.
“It’s OK, darlin’,” he said. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”
“Bravo Two to CP, we need EMS with ALS,” another man radioed. He reached down and re-covered Caroline with the ragged shirt.
“Don’t you hurt my daddy!” Maddy yelled. She seemed to have rebounded quickly from the shock of another violent entry.
“Easy, darlin’,” the team leader tried to calm her. “We’re not hurtin’ nobody.”
“I need to reach the vice president,” Jeremy pleaded. “We don’t have time to . . .”
Before he could finish, another two-man team descended the cellar stairs.
“It’s Ansar, no doubt about it,” one of them advised. “You should see what we found upstairs: audiotapes, C-4, weapons, maps . . . the whole nine yards.”
“Holy shit,” the other said, aping an earlier observation. “What the hell happened down here?”
“I’m telling you . . . ,” Jeremy tried to explain, but the man kneeling on his neck choked off further words.
“I don’t know,” the team leader said. “But we’re sure as hell going to find out. Get the woman and kids to a hospital. Then take this piece of shit to
Meade. We’ll see what he’s got to say with a cattle prod up his ass.”
JORDAN MITCHELL HAD always considered variability his greatest enemy. It was the common lament of a control freak, he knew, but that didn’t change his compulsion for order.
“Where are they?” he asked.
Trask pointed to a PowerPoint time line off to their left.
“Just touched down at Andrews,” the chief of staff replied. “Kneecap is fueled and ready. Airspace is closed. They’ll go with a vertical takeoff.”
“They can do that?” Mitchell asked. Despite the crushing array of issues confronting him, the aerobatic abilities of a Boeing 747 suddenly seemed the most interesting.
“Yes,” Trask said. “Bush did it right after 9/ 11.”
“Got them!” Sirad spoke up. She sat at a terminal, alone.
Mitchell peered over her shoulder.
“Keystroke or voice transcripts?” he asked.
“Neither.” Sirad pointed to a page of jumbled numbers, letters, and symbols. “This is the launch-code verification framework at Raven Rock. Even though WHCA handles all voice and data transmission, the NSA is responsible for verifying any attempt to use the football.”
“Explain.”
Sirad typed rapidly at the keyboard. She had done her homework well.
“As a fail-safe measure, the NSA changes launch codes—called gold codes—daily. These changes are wired via a secure Web-based conduit called DSNET3 to the White House, the Pentagon, Strategic Air Command, and through burst comms to the Navy’s TACAMO communications aircraft.”
“This is their site you’re looking at?”
“Not their site, their data stream,” Sirad said. “We’re tapped directly into the transmission conduit linking the National Command Authority—in this case, the president aboard Air Force One—and the Pentagon.”
“Giving us immediate notification of any order to fire,” Mitchell responded.
“More than that,” Sirad said. “We have the ability to intercept. The NSA conduit has an automatic verification response fail-safe. The system is designed to ask for a redundant command, just like when you delete something on your computer. We can intercept the second response before it gets through. Think of it as having a pair of vise grips at one end of a garden hose.”
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