by Jason Kasper
Nizar had been monitoring the radio in their captured ISIS truck, even sending a few hopeful transmissions in an attempt to procure some intel.
But the radio remained silent; the enemy knew their frequency had been compromised, and there was no way to tell how many were hidden throughout the city or otherwise proceeding alongside their cargo, currently dispersed across a fleet of civilian vehicles that had long since departed.
Leaving David’s side, Cancer moved to one of their captured ISIS trucks and climbed aboard, stripping the black flag from its mast. He bundled the fabric and carried it away, probably for later hanging as a team room trophy. Though what they’d make of this chapter of their team history in the aftermath, Worthy wasn’t sure. On one hand, they’d overcome incredible odds in making it this far, continually improvising to stay on the trail from the moment they’d discovered the rockets.
On the other, their best efforts had fallen far short of recovering them.
Now they’d been relegated to consolidating their defensive perimeter, assembling in open view for the imminent link-up with the special operations soldiers who’d be arriving at any second.
Reilly approached him and asked, “You still feeling all right? Any changes to vision?”
Worthy shook his head. “No, I’m fine. That grenade rang my bell pretty good is all. Spent most of the fight drooling on myself.”
Cancer reappeared, speaking over his shoulder. “Learn to take a grenade blast like a man, Racegun.”
Reilly looked irritated at this comment, but Worthy just nodded and said, “Yeah, I gotta work on that.” He knew that Cancer had dragged him to safety, and the crusty sniper seemed compelled to rectify that momentary glimpse of his humanity by assuring everyone as quickly as possible that he was, indeed, still dead inside.
Then Reilly continued, “You start getting dizzy, seeing stars, feeling nauseous, and I want you to tell me right away.”
“I will, but so far I’m good to go.”
This was half-true, at least. He did feel nauseous, his stomach deeply unsettled as if he’d vomit at any moment. But his vision was clear, and upon testing the reflexes of his hands, he found that his motor control had returned in full. He could still fight, and that was all that mattered.
Besides, he was more concerned with his team leader.
David was as emotionally unstable as Worthy had ever seen him. One minute he seemed totally composed, conversing with the team as if it was business as usual, a normal day at the office. The next, he’d lapse into a stony silence, or begin pacing restlessly, or stop to stare at Elias’s body.
Right now, he was doing the latter.
Worthy stepped beside David and said, “What do you make of your family’s names in the CP?”
David spat into the dirt.
“It makes exactly as much sense as any of the rest of it. We’ve got a Uyghur-dissident-turned-Muslim-extremist who made his way to Syria, decides to attack the US instead of China, and then picks a nondescript college town in central Virginia for his effort. The record of my family is just one more ridiculous thing added to the shitshow.”
He fell silent as a radio transmission came over their team frequency.
“Suicide, this is Zombie Three Three. 27 Eagles prepared to make entry.”
David huffed a frustrated sigh and transmitted back, “Come on in. Try not to shoot the five gringos and a Syrian standing here like assholes.”
Ending his transmission, he spoke to his team.
“All right, boys, get ’em up.”
Cancer whispered, “God, this is so undignified.”
The men raised their arms over their heads in unison, leaving their rifles slung and pointed downward. Granted, the guys waiting outside the compound were literal and figurative grandmasters of hostage rescue and thus highly unlikely to shoot anyone who didn’t require it—but the team wasn’t taking any chances.
The shooters utilized the gate entrance and vehicle pathways to make a simultaneous, and silent, entry.
The operators’ movements were poetry, an expert choreography of synchronized motion as their formations dissolved into two-man elements that began clearing every facet of the compound perimeter as quickly as Worthy could process the sight.
A pair of operators approached the team, and Worthy could tell by the long radio antenna emerging from the second man’s assault pack that the first was the commander.
His suspicion was confirmed when the lead operator stopped before them and announced, “Taylor, troop commander.”
David stepped forward and spoke unenthusiastically. “David. Team lead. Have any trouble finding the place?”
Taylor smiled. “What do you got so far?”
David pulled a notepad and consulted it.
“Thirteen rockets found in the remaining cars. With four destroyed earlier, that leaves 635 at large.”
Ian corrected him. “633.”
“633,” David echoed, then pointed to the door on the far building. “Command post is in there, just follow the smell of smoke. We consolidated all the intel we could, but there’s not much left.”
Worthy saw that Reilly had turned into a tactical lecher, shamelessly examining the operator’s equipment.
And to be fair, that equipment was pretty badass—seeing Tier One guys in full kit was like seeing your first Playboy in fifth grade: an awe-invoking experience that you would never, ever forget.
Taylor was saying, “We’ll get it all sped to the rear for analysis, and—”
He was interrupted by Reilly, who jabbed a bloodstained finger at a pouch on the man’s gear.
“Are those the GPNVG-18s?”
“Hell yeah,” Taylor said. “Why, what are you guys wearing for night vision?”
Reilly cut his eyes to Cancer. “We gotta talk to Duchess about this bullshit.”
The operator nodded. “Seriously. Agency can afford it.”
David asked, “How’d you guys make out at Sepaya?”
“We gave better than we got. Didn’t lose anyone, and that’s something. How’d you all hold up?”
“Shit, man. You’re looking at it.”
The man’s eyes swept across the team—every member filthy beyond recognition, eyes hollow after twenty-five hours awake, with over half that time spent in continual combat engagements. Then he looked across the objective, strewn with dead bodies between the remaining cars, and gave a nod of understanding.
Then he said, “My orders are to escort your team to a chopper for transport to FOB Presley for follow-on movement back to the States.”
“Bullshit,” David shot back. “We need to cross-load ammunition from your men and stay in the fight. I’ve got four shooters plus myself and a local guide who can accompany you to find this cargo before it’s gone.”
“Sorry, brother. We’re full-up on shooters.”
David’s expression fell into a deadpan stare normally reserved for the moments before a fistfight. Cancer stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Suicide, it’s over.”
David spun and marched over to an operator closing on Elias’s body to search it.
“Get away from him,” David yelled. “He’s one of ours.”
The soldier stopped to let David approach the body. Worthy watched David kneel before Elias, seemingly in a moment of prayer.
But that wasn’t David’s style, Worthy knew, and he saw his team leader instead pat down the dead intelligence agent’s pockets, reaching inside one and standing once he’d recovered the contents.
His prize was Elias’s lighter and pack of Marlboros, and David put a cigarette between his lips before lighting it.
Ian took a step to Worthy’s side, asking in disbelief, “He’s smoking?”
“Yup.”
“Shit,” Ian remarked. “It’s going to be a long flight home.”
30
Duchess sat before the photographs of her family, stomach knotted with the burden of doing what she despised most: waitin
g. For her last two hours in the OPCEN, she wanted nothing more than a mug of tea.
Now that she was back in her office with a freshly brewed cup, she couldn’t stand the thought of drinking it.
Instead she tried to savor the most respite she’d had since the mission began—the silence of her office, devoid of the radio chatter of ground troops and contractors and pilots, free of the constant updates on the status of UAVs and transport aircraft.
None of that mattered at present. She’d updated Gossweiler’s office with the outcome of the failed raid along with the presidential threat and had heard nothing in response. Meanwhile, an alphabet soup of governmental agencies was combing through the roster of people with access to the president’s schedule, looking for connections that could signify a traitor in the ranks.
Now it was a waiting game; everyone had been informed of the rockets, every sensor and agent had their ear to the ground, waiting for the slightest indication to emerge. Military assets had been stood up and forward deployed, aircraft fueled and ready to whisk them into a seizure operation at a moment’s notice.
But so far, nothing had come over the net—not the slightest whisper of intercepted communications, not a single report from a field source, not a notable surveillance aircraft snapshot of a bullet-riddled vehicle traveling among the hundreds traversing the highways north toward the Turkish border.
When her phone finally rang, Duchess snatched the receiver immediately, prepared to run back to the OPCEN.
“Status?” she asked.
“No updates on the cargo, ma’am,” a man replied without urgency. “But the team made it back to FOB Presley—I’ve got the team leader for you on the red line.”
She felt her shoulders fall as she fixed her gaze on the picture of her son.
“Put him through.”
“Stand by.”
Duchess heard a click over the line, then a faint background static that preceded David Rivers’s voice.
“We could have stayed in the fight.”
Great introduction, she thought. Seven words into the conversation and he’d already pissed her off.
“That’s not your call to make, and there is no fight. The last shots fired in anger were from your team, and even if that wasn’t the case, it’s time for you to come home.”
“How appropriate,” he quipped, “because my home is exactly what I’m concerned about.”
She sighed. “The FBI protective details have been shadowing your team’s next of kin for almost two hours. There have been zero suspicious indicators. Would you prefer we force them all into protective custody?”
“Yeah, that’d go over real well considering we’re officially on a milk run in Jordan right now. You think it’s easy to sustain a marriage while working for you? It’s not. Not all of us have as much practice at lying as your organization does, though I dare say I’m catching up. What have you found out?”
Duchess gritted her teeth, thinking that if she were speaking to any normal subordinate, she’d fire them on the spot. But as much as she hated to admit it, she understood David’s frustration. She’d seen the preliminary photographs of the intelligence he found, and her first reaction was that if her family’s names had been on the paper, she wouldn’t have responded much differently than he did.
And that’s exactly what she sought to deal with now.
She said, “We have identified the target of the terrorist attack.”
“Which is?”
Duchess felt a mirthless smile cross her lips. The presidential visit to Monticello with the Indian president still hadn’t been officially announced, and David was the last person who needed to know about that particular item on the itinerary.
“You don’t need to know.”
“I’m the first person who needs to know. Do you have any idea what it took for us to follow the cargo? You think you can find a team who’d deliver what we did, go right ahead and hire them. Until then, don’t keep me in the dark when it’s my family on the line—especially when this leak could have come from your fucking office.”
“You want to accuse me of something,” she fired back, “then come right out and say it. But you’ve got a lot of nerve talking to me like that after I put my head on the chopping block for your team more times than I care to count since you identified the rockets. So you could start by showing me a modicum of respect, particularly after your little stunt with the logistician—jumped off a building and escaped my ass.”
He remained silent, and Duchess took a breath to steady her anger before continuing, “What you do need to know is that the terrorist attack would generate a large number of casualties, and because of the target location, survivors would be taken to the University Hospital. We suspect your wife’s and daughter’s names originated from Laila’s employee records. That doesn’t mean they were targeted individually—it means the entire hospital was targeted for a second attack, designed to kill survivors from the first.”
She paused then, allowing the information to sink in. The truth she couldn’t say was that the casualty count probably didn’t matter to Bari Khan—if the rocket strike didn’t kill the US and Indian presidents outright, he intended to ensure his victory by detonating a bomb at the exact location both men would be taken to for extensive medical treatment.
And if he did kill them outright, the University Hospital would simply be the icing on the cake.
David replied, “So what’s being done to stop this?”
“We’re covering every possible port and border crossing. Coalition partners have been informed, and we’ve spun up multinational intelligence assets at the highest levels.”
“The ‘highest levels,’ huh? Sounds like this is a pretty important target BK is going after.”
“Any threat to our citizens represents an important target.”
“What about Nizar? He was in as much danger as any of us, and—”
Duchess cut him off. “Not that you asked my permission before committing Agency assets to a relocation, but I will honor that agreement. Nizar and his family will be relocated to a state of his choosing.”
After a pause, David said, “Thank you.”
“There’s a bigger team at play here. You guys dodge bullets, yes. But those of us supporting you have to negotiate a political minefield, myself included. And all that matters right now is finding the cargo.”
“What about my men?”
Duchess leaned back in her chair, deciding how to frame her message.
“You’ll fly home on the first bird back to the States. That wasn’t my call, but I’d make the same choice if it was.”
“We can refit and go back out—”
“After which,” she cut him off again, “you will be on an extended hiatus in recognition of your outstanding service over the course of this mission.”
“A hiatus,” he repeated. “Sounds suspiciously like ‘fired.’”
She felt her neck flush with heat. David was fired, of course, and within a week’s time, so was she. But there was no reason to say that to a man in his current emotional state. She’d allow him the dignity of bringing his team stateside, let them turn in their equipment and return home before locking them out of their facility for good.
By then she’d be handing over control of Project Longwing to some Gossweiler-appointed successor, and the great game would be over—along with her career.
She said noncommittally, “Think of it more like R&R.”
“I’ll be sure to manage as much rest and relaxation as I can with the knowledge that there’s a terrorist plot in my hometown.”
“That terrorist plot,” she said firmly, “is being dismantled as we speak. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
“By all means,” David said.
She opened her mouth to reply, but heard the line go dead.
That kid is a real asshole, she thought as the feeling of nausea returned to her stomach.
Duchess hung up the receiver, then set her e
lbows atop the desk and watched the phone as she waited for it to ring again.
31
Forward Operating Base Presley, Syria
Ian paced the conference room, his mind racing in an attempt to piece this thing together while his team sat around a single foldout table covered in empty beverage cans and food trays.
Ever since their arrival by helicopter twenty minutes earlier, the Delta Force operators had been about as courteous as possible and provided all the food, protein shakes, and energy drinks the team cared to consume, along with access to their showers and latrine. They’d even assigned two escorts to take Nizar to the dining facility on base before leading the team to this conference room where they could have some privacy and taking David to their OPCEN so he could speak with Duchess.
While the team waited for David to return, they’d been debating any possible connection between Bari Khan and their team leader’s wife and daughter.
But not even Ian could unravel that mystery, and the conversation had since devolved into speculation about the location of the terrorist attack.
From his position on a foldout chair against the far wall, Reilly said, “You know what? I forgot about this, but Clancy wrote about a terrorist attack in Charlottesville.”
Cancer asked, “Who?”
“Tom Clancy. Let me think, must have been…” He snapped his fingers. “The Teeth of the Tiger. That’s the book. A group of terrorists guns down a bunch of people at a mall in Charlottesville—not his finest novel, but when you start your career with The Hunt for Red October, you can pretty much do whatever you want.”
“Let me guess,” Cancer said dryly, “his hero gets to meet the president.”
“Jack Ryan becomes the president, motherfucker. And his son—”
Ian said testily, “Can we get back on track? We’ve discussed the possibilities of an electrical substation, the logistician being misinformed, all the big venues in Charlottesville, and the chance that the town is a decoy for the real attack location.”
Reilly added, “Don’t forget the date and location being for cargo transfer, not an attack. Elias’s idea, may he rest in peace.”
