by Vince Flynn
Mike Nash got a huge kick out of this little kid’s determination. He pushed the door open another foot and waited to be seen.
Charlie caught the movement and looked over the top rail with his big brown eyes. A huge smile spread across the baby’s face. He sprang up on his toes, threw out his arms, and squealed, “Dada. Dada.”
Mike Nash brimmed with unbridled love. He hadn’t seen the little fella in a week. He crossed the small nursery, grabbed Charlie under his outstretched arms, lifted him up, and brought him in tight. Nash kissed him on his shiny, red cheek and then went to work on his neck. Charlie giggled and then squealed with laughter.
“Good morning, Chuck,” Nash said in a whisper. “Did you miss me?”
Charlie took his two pudgy hands, slapped his father’s face with surprising force, and then tried to grab as much skin as possible. Nash broke free by shaking his head and then started snapping his teeth at Charlie’s fingers. Charlie pulled his hands back and squealed in delight.
Nash placed him on the changing table, unzipped the boy’s pajamas, and with the efficiency of a Marine gunnery sergeant field stripping an M-16, went to work. A fresh diaper was unfurled and put in place. The tabs on the puffy diaper were simultaneously pulled back, but before it was yanked free, Nash grabbed a washcloth to place over Charlie’s groin in case he decided to hose down the nursery. He’d learned that lesson the hard way with Charlie’s oldest brother. Nash tossed the used one in the diaper pail, gave the boy the once-over with a wet wipe, and then secured the new diaper.
The two headed downstairs, with Charlie clutching his father’s neck. Nash stopped at the front door and looked out the small window. He tried to remember if he’d heard anything last night about the weather. This traveling from one continent to another could really confuse you. He’d gotten home late and all of the kids were asleep. Unfortunately, they’d grown so comfortable with his coming and going that none of them bothered to wait up. Nash punched in the security code and turned off the alarm. He cracked the front door and peeked outside. The air was humid for a change. It looked as if spring had finally arrived.
CHAPTER 20
BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN
RAPP lay on his bunk and stared up at the ceiling. They’d taken away his uniform and given him an orange jumpsuit just like the ones worn by the other prisoners. He took it all in stride. He’d been in far worse situations. It would do him no good to start ranting and raving and demanding that he be treated with more dignity. The truth was that he found it humorous that they had chosen to put him in the very same facility that housed Haggani and al-Haq. Rapp figured this was the only place they had where they could keep him isolated until Washington weighed in on the unique situation. The main prison was filled with hundreds of combatants and terrorists. Putting Rapp in with that group was almost unimaginable, but that dimwitted captain had actually suggested they do just that. Fortunately, General Garrison seemed to have a decent amount of common sense and intervened.
This thing was going to get kicked up to the highest levels in Washington, and his allies on the Hill would be indignant that they had treated Rapp no better than a common terrorist. His stint at the prison was at two days and running. He knew because he still had his watch. They’d ordered him to hand it over, but he declined. After a brief discussion the four guards who were processing him decided it wasn’t worth the fight. They’d already seen what he’d done to one of the prisoners as well as Captain Leland, and since they liked neither the spitting terrorist nor Captain Leland they decided to cut him some slack. He’d been brought six meals and expected his seventh any minute. The food was nothing great, but it wasn’t bad. It sure the hell was better than anything these guys were eating up in the mountains.
So far the only real surprise was that no one had shown up to bail him out. He figured it must have been the time change and the fact that it had happened over the weekend. Whatever the case, Rapp knew they would be coming soon. He’d be dragged back to Washington, and then the real show would start. The solitude had given him plenty of time to figure it out. To think about each person, what they would say and how he would meet it all head-on. It was time. They had been running from this fight for far too long. The amount of time, energy, and money they spent trying to hide what they were doing from their own government was ridiculous.
Rapp heard the metallic click of the lock on the door being released and sat up, thinking his next meal had arrived. When the door opened he saw the familiar face of Rob Ridley. The deputy director of the National Clandestine Service looked at Rapp with a combination of amusement and concern.
“You’ve really done it this time, my friend.”
“Could you have taken any longer?” Rapp asked in return.
Ridley held up his camera phone and said, “Don’t move. I need to record this moment for my personal archives.”
Rapp made an obscene gesture and said, “I’m glad you can find some humor in it.”
Ridley dragged a chair into the small cell and closed the door. “It’s not every day I get to see my idol in prison orange.”
All Rapp could do was smile at Ridley and shake his head. It was good to see him, but he wasn’t about to tell him that. “Seriously, where in the hell have you been?”
Ridley sat and let out a long sigh. “This is a complicated situation, Mitch.”
Rapp took the fact that his friend closed the door as a bad sign. “So some prick wants to keep me in here and show me a lesson?”
“Kind of. Here, I brought something for you.” Ridley handed Rapp a paper bag.
Rapp took it and looked inside. He pulled out a worn leather baseball glove, a baseball, and a copy of Mein Kampf. “What the hell is this?”
Ridley was known as one of the biggest pranksters in the agency, which had endeared him to many. He flashed Rapp his signature boyish grin and said, “I just thought I’d help put you in the mood. You know, The Great Escape with Steve McQueen. You, stuck here in the cooler…playing catch against the wall…reading Adolf Hitler’s autobiography. I just thought I’d help get you in the right frame of mind, since you might be here for a while.”
“You’re a dandy.” Rapp laughed while he put on the glove and began pounding the ball into the old mitt. “Great movie, by the way.”
“One of the best.” Ridley held up his phone for Rapp to see and then gave him a wink.
Good, Rapp thought. He carried the same phone. It would emit a ten-foot umbrella of white noise and render the cell’s listening devices useless. The cells were wired to record everything. It would stand to reason that since he was a U.S. citizen anything he said would not be admissible in court, but that was a pretty low threshold, considering what they were about to discuss.
“Seriously,” Rapp said, “what took so long?”
“There’ve been some complications.”
“Such as?”
“Such as you hitting a United States Air Force officer and almost breaking his wrist.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rapp groaned.
“Did you have to hit him?”
“I didn’t hit him.”
“Really,” Ridley said in a tone of disbelief. “How did he get the shiner?”
“He fell.”
“Come on.”
“Seriously…he tried to pull his gun on me.”
“And?”
Rapp stopped pounding the ball into the mitt. Stopped moving entirely. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious. Some of this we have a shot at fixing, but you striking this guy has caused quite a stir.”
“I didn’t strike him. He went to draw his gun.” Rapp shrugged. “I felt it was excessive force.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It wasn’t the only reason, but I sure as hell don’t like guns being pointed at me. Especially by some snot-nosed little prick like that.”
“Fair enough. That’s basically what I told them, but this captain is making a big stink out
of it. Any other reasons why you may have done it? Just between you and me.”
“Of course…he was getting ready to call the MPs in and send them to arrest the others. I needed to buy a little more time for the others to get away, and I didn’t hit him. He was bringing his gun around on me, I grabbed it, twisted it free, and in the process, he fell and hit his head on a chair.”
“I had a chance to talk to the base commander in private.”
“General Garrison.”
“Yeah…he pretty much corroborates what you just said, but this captain is…” Ridley stopped and rolled his eyes.
“A little puss, is what he is. I should have broken his fucking jaw.”
Ridley moaned. “That type of attitude is not going to help.” Ridley leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. “I think if you make a heartfelt apology to the captain we could probably get him to drop this whole thing.”
“Hell no.”
“Don’t be unreasonable.”
“I’m willing to face the music. I told you that before I came over here. It’s time to force this issue.”
“That’s fine, and Irene agrees, but this stuff about you hitting an officer isn’t going to play well with the very people we need to support you.”
“Yeah…well, have you met him yet?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I can see where he might bug some people.”
Rapp frowned. “The guy is a prick with a capital P.”
“And he has a huge shiner and is wearing a sling, and if he ends up in front of one of the committees wearing his service dress uniform, he is going to garner a boatload of sympathy from the exact people we are counting on for support.”
Rapp drove the ball into the mitt a few more times and then asked, “So what do you want me to do?”
“You know what I want you to do.”
“Crap.”
“It’s not that hard. Just shake his hand and say you’re sorry. We’ve explained to him that you have a very colorful history and even intimated that the president owes you a few favors. That he would more than likely look favorably on someone who was willing to help him out in such a delicate situation.”
“Who’s the we?”
“Stephen Roemer, special assistant to the secretary of defense.”
Rapp thought about his options for a moment and then swore. “If this kid cops an attitude…”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t. The important thing is that we get you out of here so we can get moving on the other stuff. There’s still going to be an investigation and hearings and God only knows what else. Now, if you don’t want to apologize…you can sit in this cell for the next month or so while a bunch of lawyers decide your fate.”
“Hell no.”
“Then do it.”
“Fine.”
“Make it sincere, Mitch. We need you back in D.C.”
“I said fine,” Rapp growled.
Ridley reached into the bag next to the chair and pulled out a khaki flight suit. “As much as I’d love to see you have to walk around in your prison garb, I think it might send the wrong message.”
“I thought you said I might have to stay in here for a while?”
“That was before you agreed to play nice. Now, hurry up and put those on. You have to apologize, and then we have a plane to catch.”
CHAPTER 21
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NASH lived in North Arlington not far from Marymount University. The neighborhood was upscale but not obnoxious. The lots were mostly a quarter to a half acre in size, and the homes were all north of a million bucks but south of two. The neighborhood was a compromise. She wanted more. He wanted less. It was a constant point of friction in their marriage. He’d been raised with very little money, and she’d been raised with tons. He made a decent wage working for the CIA, but it paled in comparison to the seven-figure income she pulled in as a partner in one of D.C.’s top public relations firms. They were from different worlds. Vastly different worlds, but they were fiercely loyal to each other.
Nash looked up and down the tree-lined street. Other than the neighbor’s sprinkler clicking away, it was pretty quiet. Not a single car was parked on the street, which Nash liked. In his world every car was a possible bomb. He scanned the nearby bushes, and then walked down the front sidewalk where three newspapers were strewn about. He retrieved all of them and headed back inside, closing and locking the door.
Charlie was deposited in his high chair and strapped in. Nash hit the start button on the coffeemaker, and then grabbed a box of Cheerios from the pantry. He poured some onto the tray of the high chair and watched Charlie begin to work on his fine motor skills. Next, he filled a bottle of milk, nuked it for thirty seconds, and handed it off to his son. He then grabbed a jar of the puréed gourmet baby food that his wife insisted on buying. He popped the top, looked at the paste, and cringed. He was convinced that these expensive little jars were the reason Charlie’s poops were so pungent.
Nash turned on the TV, sat down, and looked at the three newspapers still rolled up and sitting on the table. He was afraid to open them out of fear that he would see Rapp’s name on the front page, and he decided to put it off until he was done feeding Charlie. Nash shoved a spoonful of the green and brown paste into Charlie’s mouth. The kid ate it without protest. Nash filled up another spoonful, smelled it, made a pinched face, and said, “Yuck.”
Charlie scrunched up his little face and parroted his father, “Yuck.”
“That’s right, buddy.” Nash shoved the spoon into his kid’s mouth.
A female anchor had been droning on in the background about the news. Nash hadn’t heard a word she’d said until she uttered the acronym of his employer. He turned his attention away from Charlie to the TV, and in the process almost fed Charlie’s left eye a spoonful of squash and peas.
“The Washington Post,” the woman announced, “is reporting that for the last year the CIA has been secretly conducting a domestic spying operation without the knowledge of the FBI, the Department of Justice, or its oversight committees on Capitol Hill. It is unclear at this point what role the White House may have played in the domestic spy scandal. The story says that the CIA has specifically targeted Muslim leaders, clerics, mosques, and charitable organizations in a half dozen cities across the United States for more than a year now.”
“Fuck,” Nash blurted out as he reached for his copy of the Washington Post. Right about the time he found the front-page headline, he heard his son parrot him. Nash paused, waited a moment, and looked at Charlie, hoping he’d misheard him.
Charlie took a pull off his bottle, sighed, looked at his father as if he was bored and said, “Fuck.”
Nash grabbed Charlie by the hand and said, “No, little buddy. That’s a bad word.”
Despite Nash’s efforts, Charlie said the word again.
Any other morning Nash would probably be laughing, but he heard his wife stirring upstairs. If she came down and heard her little angel swearing like a Marine she would flip. He put on his most stern face, pointed at Charlie, and said, “Bad word.”
Charlie frowned, pointed right back at his father, and said, “No.” A moment passed and then he repeated the four-letter word, but this time with more vigor.
Nash heard his wife coming down the stairs and began to panic. Grabbing the spoon off the table, he quickly scooped it into the baby jar and shoved the food into Charlie’s mouth just as he was beginning to utter his new favorite word again.
Maggie Nash entered the kitchen wearing a loose white robe, her raven black hair cascading past her shoulders. She headed straight for Charlie and kissed him on the forehead. Charlie started squirming with excitement and tried to speak, but Nash was right there with another load of puréed squash and peas.
Maggie grabbed a bottle of lotion off the counter, poured some into her hands, and began to rub it over the scars on her husband’s back. She tilted her head to the side and threw back her hair. �
��About last night,” she said cautiously, “I don’t want you to overthink the whole thing.” She worked the lotion into his muscular shoulders and added, “It’s not uncommon.”
Nash frowned and mumbled, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“It’s all the stress of your job, honey. It’s normal for men to…”
“Please,” Nash cut her off. “Not in front of the baby.”
She took a step back. Placed her right hand on her hip. “The baby can barely say Mommy and Daddy. I don’t think he’s about to blurt out ‘erectile dysfunction.’”
Nash winced at the mention of the medical condition. This was just like his wife. She’d want to talk about this over and over until they’d looked at it from every possible angle, and then she’d want him to talk to a shrink. But he was fine. He’d been with Maggie for fifteen years and not once had he failed to rise to the occasion. He tensed and said, “We are not going to talk about this.”
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped.
“Don’t what?” he barked back.
“Act like your father.” She gave his shoulder a shove. “I’m not going to watch you die of a heart attack before you reach fifty because you’re too macho to talk about your problems!”
“You need to relax.”
“I’m not the one who has a hard time relaxing.” She turned and started for the other side of the kitchen. “You proved that last night.” As she yanked open the cupboard in search of a mug, she began her sermon on Nash’s father.
He’d heard it many times. Maggie had loved him. Thought he was a great man, but it sure did suck that his grandkids never got to know him. Nash was debating whether to sit there and take it or fight back, when Maggie yanked the coffeepot out of its cradle a little too forcefully, catching the filter basket, and swinging it into the open position. Since the machine was not done brewing, the basket was brimming with hot, muddy coffee. The sludge sloshed over the edge onto the white marble counter, the floor, and Maggie’s white robe.