by Vince Flynn
“What city?”
“I will tell you when I have my deal.”
“All right,” Nash said as he stood. “Give me a few minutes to get the director on the phone.” Nash could feel his heart racing. This could be big, but it would have to be handled with great care. There were too many factions in Washington. Too many people who would be more than happy to screw it up.
CHAPTER 11
THREE Humvees rolled up to the Hilton and came to a slow stop. General Garrison stared past the thick bulletproof glass of his vehicle at the two Humvees that were already there. He muttered something to himself and then cautiously got out of his vehicle and began to circle the two Humvees. This was only the fifth time Garrison had visited the facility in the nine months he’d been running the base. He was of the mind-set that, as far as his air force was concerned, nothing good could come from this place. The capture of the two high-value targets and the subsequent visit by the three senators had proven that.
Garrison had not spent four years at one of the world’s premier military colleges to be a jailer. He was lauded by his peers as a logistical genius and had proven that he had a knack for moving pieces on the chessboard. That was why he was here, to keep the planes and supplies moving, to push the flight crews and the ground crews, to run an air base. Not to run a jail. Foreign fighters, terrorists, interrogations…in Garrison’s mind that was the stuff the army should be handling, or better yet, the CIA. Put them up in the mountains somewhere. Out of sight. Out of mind.
None of that mattered now, of course; the senators had changed the entire dynamic, had made both their public statements and private threats. Garrison had let the little kiss-ass Leland show them around. Everything was going smoothly on his base, just the way he liked it, and then this confluence of events conspired to make his job infinitely more complicated than it needed to be. There wasn’t a CO in the armed forces who liked the idea of one, let alone three, opportunistic politicians poking around their command. Ultimately, they never cared about all the things that worked. They cared only about what didn’t work, and that meant they were looking for a scandal. Now, through no choice of his own, his career rested on the proper treatment of two men who did not evoke much sympathy from the young men and women who would be guarding them.
Garrison studied the two Humvees that according to rumor had been driven here by members of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. There weren’t many things in the air force that could make Garrison nervous, but OSI guys were one of them. Any way he tried to slice it, nothing good could come from the OSI’s showing up at his base unannounced and in the middle of the night. To make matters worse, they had come straight to this building that housed a problem waiting to happen.
Leland placed his hand on the hood of one of the vehicles and announced, “It’s still warm.”
Garrison looked at the door.
“I think they’ve been here going on an hour, sir.”
Part of Garrison thought if he simply went back to bed they would be gone in the morning, and he could play dumb about the entire thing. Maybe even make a few calls to the Pentagon and ask why the OSI guys were poking around his base. As much as he’d like to do that, though, it was too risky. He had to think about those senators. The woman, Barbara Lonsdale, was a real ballbuster. The thought occurred to him that she might be the reason why the OSI was here.
Garrison turned slowly to Leland, “You think your friend Senator Lonsdale sent these guys over here to keep an eye on us?”
Leland looked back in the direction of the flight line and then replied, “I don’t think so, sir. As chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee it is more likely that she would have sent the FBI.”
“Yeah…but she also sits on Armed Services.” Garrison studied the big warehouse off to his right. The only damn thing in the building was the two prisoners. Maybe, he thought, they’re here to transfer them to a different facility. The OSI was after all part of air force security.
In a hopeful voice, Leland said, “Maybe they’re getting ready to transfer the prisoners.”
“If that is the case,” Garrison replied, “I sure would like to think they’d notify the base commander.” The thought pissed Garrison off. He took command very seriously. This was his base, and ultimately, he was responsible for everything that happened within the fence. Garrison pointed to the door of the building and said, “Let’s go. There’s only one way to deal with this.”
Garrison, Leland, and eight air force security officers entered the outer building through a three-foot-wide steel door. Once inside they walked across the warehouse to a separate, smaller building that was the Hilton. Leland used his security card and code to get past the next door, and the group filed into the small lobby. With no one in sight, Garrison continued down the hallway past two offices and entered a larger room that contained the duty desk, some tables, and two people that Garrison didn’t notice because he couldn’t take his eyes off the two flat-screen TVs directly across from him. The prisoners were not asleep in their cells.
Garrison saw Mohammad al-Haq sitting alone in the one room. He looked relaxed and in roughly the same condition as when he’d last seen him. But in the other room a man in an air force uniform was questioning Abu Haggani, who looked horrible. Garrison stepped closer to the monitors and felt his chest tighten. He saw the blood on the prisoner’s face and his worst fears were realized. Someone under his command had beaten the prisoner. Some eighteen-year-old, no doubt. Some kid who’d made it in because the air force had lowered its recruiting standards. None of that mattered, of course. Special Investigations was on-site and sooner or later they would put the CO in their sights.
Garrison was in a bit of shock. All of his sacrifice, his years of hard work, was about to go right down the drain. His thoughts turned to that idiot woman who had been in charge of Abu Ghraib. She had failed her command in the most miserable way. Garrison felt the unfairness. He had never asked for any of this. He had made it clear to his superiors that the CIA should be running the facility, not the military. The air force should not be in the business of guarding these animals, he thought. His job was to keep this lifeline open and running smoothly, to supply the troops and evacuate the wounded.
He remembered the senators and his mood sank again. That ball-busting senator would drag his ass before her committee and humiliate him in front of an ungrateful nation. All of his hard work, all of his sacrifice would be destroyed because of some juvenile airman who couldn’t practice a little restraint.
Up on the screen, the air force investigator who was talking to the bloodied Haggani suddenly reached out and grabbed him by the throat. Garrison was trying to comprehend just what in the hell was going on when Leland stepped forward.
“Sir,” Leland said as he concentrated on the screen, “there’s something familiar about that man…I think I’ve seen him before…back during my first tour.”
Garrison was less concerned with who the man was and more concerned with why he was choking a restrained prisoner. Nothing he was seeing made any sense.
Leland watched the screen intently, waited for the man in the air force BDUs to give him more than a profile. Suddenly the man turned and pointed at the camera. Leland finally got the look he’d been waiting for. His eyes narrowed at first and then opened wide. He could barely contain his excitement. “Sir, that man is not OSI!”
Garrison looked at his aide like he was speaking Latin.
“Sir, he’s CIA. I know he is. A few years back when I was on my first tour here they were talking about him. He’s some interrogation specialist.”
“CIA,” Garrison repeated in a skeptical voice. He turned to the screen. Looked at the blood, thought of the choking and the man’s actions, and it all suddenly made sense. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
Garrison thought of the implications. CIA operatives dressed in air force uniforms, beating prisoners. What were they going to do, simply leave him with the mess in the morn
ing? Have him try to explain why these guys had had the shit kicked out of them? Garrison was getting madder by the second. He personally had no ax to grind with the CIA, but this was ridiculous.
“Sir,” Leland said, “would you like me to arrest him?”
Garrison thought of the drama that could come of this if it was ever made public. Again, nothing good could come of it. Reluctantly, he nodded, and gave Leland the order to put the man in custody.
CHAPTER 12
RAPP didn’t spend a lot of time questioning the civility of what he was doing. Civility was for people living in cities with law and order. This was asymmetrical warfare, where one side, due to political pressure, was playing by the old set of rules, while the other side played by no rules at all. It was a down-and-dirty street fight, with knives and guns and hands and teeth and anything else that could be brought to bear. Washington didn’t want to recognize that obvious fact, so Rapp made his peace with it. He didn’t like it, couldn’t really even understand how they thought, but he was done fighting them. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, so he, and a select few like Nash, ventured out and risked it all to try to stop the enemy from another spectacular strike like 9/11.
There’d been a few politicians who’d pulled him aside and thanked him for his actions. Told him to keep it up and make sure we don’t get hit again. “Do whatever it takes,” they would say, and then they’d go on TV and decry Guantánamo, the rendition program, and detainee treatment in general. Sure, there were a few wise old men in Washington who understood what they were up against. Men who realized someone had to be willing to climb down into the gutter with this scum and slug it out. One-hundred-million-dollar fighter planes and billion-dollar aircraft carriers were great for the heavy lifting. Five-million-dollar tanks came in very handy in a fight, but against an enemy that refused to put on a uniform and refused to meet you on the field of battle, they went only so far. Eventually someone had to reach out and wrap their hands around the throat of the enemy and pick apart their network.
At the moment, Rapp was trying to do just that. With his left hand he tightened his grip around Haggani’s larynx and forced his head back. He looked down into the man’s deep brown eyes and searched for some hint of his mental state. He’d done this more times than he could count, and had found he could usually get a pretty good sense of how things would go. Most showed outright fear, a few looked back with the crazed eyes of someone who had serious mental issues, there were even a couple whose eyes reminded him of Charles Manson’s—that wide-open “I see right through you into the essence of your soul” look of a zealot high on his beliefs. Those guys were the worst. They screamed and thrashed like some toddler throwing a completely irrational temper tantrum. They were so bad you wanted to beat them just to shut them up.
The eyes gave him a clue, but you never knew with these guys. Some of them folded at the first hint of violence—tried to talk their way out of it. Which was fine with Rapp. The more they talked the easier it was to catch them in their lies. Like a python squeezing the air out of its prey, he would strip away the deceptions until the subject’s only chance at life, a lung full of air, was the truth.
Rapp stared intently at Haggani’s eyes, searching for a clue. It took only a few seconds for him to categorize what he saw, and it wasn’t good. Rapp wanted to swear out loud, but knew he couldn’t let Haggani see his frustration. He recognized the look in Haggani’s eyes. It was an expression of absolute conviction. There wasn’t a drop of fear in either orb. It would take weeks to break him. Rapp’s grip eased for a second, and he thought of calling everything off, cleaning Haggani up, and throwing him back in his cell. They could focus on al-Haq, and then possibly later on arrange to have Haggani transferred to a more discreet location where an entire team could work on him.
But maybe, Rapp thought, just maybe I can bait him into making a few mistakes. Rapp increased the pressure, his fingers digging into the taut tendons of Haggani’s neck. “I know about your plan.” Rapp searched his eyes for a flicker of recognition. “We’ve intercepted both cells. They’ve told us everything. You’ve failed yet again.” Rapp saw something, an acknowledgment that his words had stirred something in Haggani’s limited brain. Rapp eased his grip just enough so the man could reply.
“You know nothing,” Haggani said in a hoarse voice. “You will never stop us. For every warrior you strike down another will take his place.”
Rapp casually released his grip. The important thing was to keep him talking. “You guys blew your load on nine-eleven. You got lucky. You caught us with our guard down, but what have you done since?”
“Madrid and London, and there will be many more.”
“Madrid and London,” Rapp scoffed. “You might have got the Spaniards to blink, but all you did was piss off the Brits.”
“The entire West is afraid of us.”
“The West thinks you’re a bunch of cowards. You intentionally kill innocent people because you’re too big of a pussy to take on our troops. You’re a coward, Abu.”
“You know nothing.”
“What do you say I take those handcuffs off, and you and I find out just how tough you are?”
Haggani considered the offer and looked across the room at the thick man who had bound him to his chair. He looked back at Rapp and said, “He will join in on your behalf.”
“I don’t need any help. Not against some baby-killing little pussy like you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Rapp laughed and circled around the table. “Just like I said, you’re a coward. You blow up schools where you know little kids can’t fight back. You attack office buildings where innocent men and women are simply trying to make a living.”
“There are no innocents in the West.”
“If that’s true, why haven’t you hit us again? All you had was nine-eleven. You haven’t done jack shit since then.”
“We have killed over fifty thousand of your soldiers.”
All Rapp could do was laugh at the outrageous number. He had come across this before. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban loved to exaggerate their successes. “You haven’t even killed five thousand, and you know it. You guys are getting your asses kicked. One by one we keep picking you off. Your leadership is in shambles, you’re living in caves, and your recruiting is way down. People are tired of sending their boys off to die at your incompetent hands.”
“You know nothing.”
“Educate me, then. Tell me about all your successes.”
“You will see soon enough.”
Rapp saw what he was looking for. He moved quickly to Haggani’s side and leaned in close. “We know all about the third cell. Your little butt-buddy Mohammad is across the hall right now giving us all the details.”
Rapp saw the anger flash in Haggani’s eyes. Saw the registration of betrayal as he realized a weaker man was putting everything in jeopardy. Rapp also knew what was going to happen next, having baited others in the same way. The lips pursed, the cheeks sucked in slightly, and then just as Haggani was poised to let loose a gob of spit, Rapp’s right hand shot forward. The flattened hand and curled knuckles struck the larynx like a battering ram. Haggani gasped, his open mouth filled with spit, his eyes bulging from his head as his body absorbed the shock. He was frozen for a moment and then fell forward, gasping for air.
“The teams have been dispatched,” Rapp whispered in his ear. “Within twenty-four hours they will be in our possession, and you will have failed yet again. Did you really think the plan would work? Did you really think we would allow you to just walk into our country and…?”
Rapp was in mid-sentence when the door opened. He turned to see four sizable men with black Air Force Security Forces patches on their shoulders filing into the interrogation room. Rapp looked to the man with the most stripes on his collar and snapped, “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Excuse me, sir,” the man said, “would you please step out into the hallway? The general would like to s
peak to you.”
Rapp eyeballed the man from head to toe and then looked the others over. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Sergeant.”
In a less-than-commanding voice the man persisted. “The general would like to see you now, sir.”
Rapp glanced down at the prisoner and then back up at the senior master sergeant. “You tell the general to cool his fucking heels, or I’ll get Secretary of Defense England on the phone and make sure the general spends the rest of his career in a missile silo in the middle of Bum Fuck, North Dakota.” Rapp watched him look toward the door and then back at him. He was on the fence. “Sergeant, I suggest you get your ass out of here right now, or I’ll make sure you accompany the general on his new assignment.”
The sergeant had been in a lot of tricky spots during his thirteen years with the air force, but this one took the cake. An up-and-coming one-star was out in the other room. The guy had been running the base for less than two months, and had made it really clear that he believed in the old axiom that shit rolled downhill. Now he was staring at the very man that general had told him to arrest—a colonel wearing an Air Force Office of Special Investigations unit patch, who was threatening to call the secretary of defense himself. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy looked like he might literally rip his head off if he didn’t exit the room and do so on the double. Not liking the lay of the land, the sergeant decided to pull a tactical retreat to the hallway.
CHAPTER 13
THIS was a moment to be savored, Nash thought to himself. Like most jobs, his was filled with frustration, boredom, and all kinds of tedious bullshit, and recently, more political correctness than was healthy for an organization tasked with penetrating perhaps the most politically incorrect group of men on the planet. But occasionally there were flashes of excitement, of brilliance, when it all came together to mesh in an unqualified success. Moments when all your hard work and personal sacrifice paid off. Where you rolled the dice and broke the house, and felt like you were actually pushing the boulder back up the hill.