“And what about you, Persian,” Hijjar asked, shifting his gaze to Rostami, “do you intend to martyr yourself as well?”
Rostami suppressed the urge to grimace. “Not on this engagement,” he said. “I still have much left to do in this lifetime in service to Allah.”
Hijjar nodded and turned his attention back to al-Mahajer. “Tactically speaking, your men are ready. I will leave it up to you to decide when they are mentally and emotionally prepared. But I must caution you, don’t wait too long, because this is a mobile camp. I rotate the personnel through four different locations. Our next rotation is in three days. You can come with us if you need more time, but you can’t stay here.”
“Tomorrow they face their final test. Each warrior must wear a vest for twelve hours. The detonators will be deactivated, but they won’t know that,” al-Mahajer said. “Assuming they pass the test, we will be ready to mobilize into Mexico the following day.”
“Very well,” Hijjar said, and as he turned to leave, he added, “but next time you are planning on killing someone, please do the courtesy of letting me know.”
Hijjar ducked out of the tent and disappeared.
Rostami felt his mood begin to sour. Al-Mahajer was even more dangerous and unpredictable than he’d first recognized. After he’d served his purpose, was the Syrian planning on putting a bullet in his brain when he wasn’t looking? How much impiety would al-Mahajer tolerate from a Rafidhi before it warranted a death sentence? How many loose ends did he plan to snip? Rostami had no intention of finding out. As soon as they were safely in Mexicali and linked up with the Zetas, he would say good-bye to al-Mahajer and the Islamic State. His orders were to get al-Mahajer and his team into the United States. There was no reason that he had to make the underground crossing into America. He would direct his sleeper agents to rendezvous with the ISIS radical and his team in California and arrange lodging and transportation for the terrorist duos en route to their respective target cities. He would watch the carnage on television from the safety and comfort of his flat in Tehran.
“It’s time,” Rostami said, feeling better having made his decision.
“Time for what?” al-Mahajer asked.
Pulling his encrypted satellite phone from his pocket, he said, “To prepare for your imminent arrival in the United States.”
CHAPTER 18
University of Nebraska Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska
October 25, 1615 Local Time
“Professor Shirazi,” a girl’s voice called from behind him. “Professor Shirazi, I was hoping I could talk to you for a minute.”
Professor Keyvan Shirazi stopped and waited for Amber Conner, one of his top undergraduate pupils, to catch up. “Of course, Amber, I’m heading to my office right now. What’s on your mind?”
“I love bioinformatics, you know that, right?” she began.
He smiled at her. “Which is one of the reasons I encouraged you to apply to our graduate program here, at UNO, instead of leaving us for, oh, I don’t know, God forbid Kansas University.”
Amber laughed, but her body language told him she was nervous.
“What’s the matter, Amber?” he said.
“I took the MCAT.”
“Nothing wrong with that. How did you do?”
“I did well,” she said, screwing up her face in adorable coed consternation. “Really well.”
“Superior achievement is nothing to be ashamed of. I would have expected nothing less,” he said, reaching for the door to his office. He turned the knob, and ushered her in with a wave of his hand.
“But now I have a problem,” she said, taking a seat opposite his desk.
“What’s that?”
“My parents,” she said. “Now, they want me to go to medical school instead of pursuing a PhD in biomedical informatics.”
He eased himself into the plush leather chair behind his desk. “Are they paying?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Money is always relevant, Amber, and anyone that tells you otherwise is being disingenuous.”
She thought for moment and then said, “Our deal was that they would pay for college and anything beyond that would be my responsibility.”
“Then I think the decision is simple, you—”
His desk phone rang, interrupting him midsentence. He looked at the caller ID displayed, but he did not recognize the number. He did, however, recognize the area code: New York City.
“Excuse me a moment. I should probably take this.”
“Do you need me to leave, Professor?”
“No, it’s okay. Just a moment.” He picked up the receiver and said, “Professor Shirazi.”
He heard a series of clicks on the line, and then an unfamiliar male voice said, “Is this Professor Keyvan Shirazi living on 13262 Willow Lane, Omaha, Nebraska 68124?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m calling to inform you that your mortgage refinancing package has been approved. Congratulations. You will receive a packet of material in the mail in three to five business days. Please be sure to read the supplied information carefully, and retain it for your records. Thank you for doing business with PTM Bank and Trust.”
The line went dead.
The Suren Circle had just been activated.
Despite being seated, he suddenly felt light-headed, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. He hung up the receiver, his hand trembling as he did.
“Are you okay, Professor?” Amber asked, leaning forward, looking concerned.
He forced a smile. “Everything is fine, but if it’s all right with you, can we table this conversation for another time?”
“Of course,” she said, grabbing her messenger bag and standing.
“Thank you,” he said. “But I would leave you with this advice: Follow your heart. Follow your passion. As you set out on your life’s journey, don’t beholden yourself to other people’s priorities or wishes, because the end result is invariably disappointment for all parties.”
“Thank you, Professor Shirazi. I’ll remember that,” she said with a nod and left.
A wave of mania washed over him. He wanted to scream; he wanted to cry; he wanted to run far away as fast as he could. It didn’t make sense. Why, after nearly two decades of silence, was he being called upon now?
What do they want? What must I do?
He quickly gathered his things, locked his office door, and walked as fast as his legs would carry him to his Honda Pilot parked in his reserved faculty spot. Time slipped, and when he came out of his fugue he was pulling into the three-car garage of his suburban home. His wife, Delilah, was standing in the doorway waiting for him, dressed in her hospital scrubs. Like him, she had been called at work. Like him, she had dropped everything and come straight home, executing protocol they had last discussed so very, very long ago.
He turned off the engine, stepped out of the SUV, and met his wife’s gaze. She had the strangest look on her face. She almost looked . . .
Excited.
“What are our orders?” she asked as he approached, her cheeks flushed.
“They gave the activation sequence, but nothing else. Instructions will follow.”
“I was beginning to think this day would never come,” she said, walking with him into their newly remodeled kitchen.
Her enthusiasm only intensified his anxiety. He had expected her to be frightened. He had expected that he would have to comfort her and had imagined that in consoling her he might find his own calm. But this reaction? The look in her eyes gave him gooseflesh, and suddenly, he almost couldn’t recognize the woman standing in front of him.
She grabbed him and pressed her pelvis against his; her breathing was growing heavy. It’d been years since she’d . . .
“Take me,” she breathed in his ear. “Right here, right now.”
But it felt wrong.
It was time to immure his true feelings and play along. He had no choice, because for the first time in his li
fe, he didn’t trust his wife.
CHAPTER 19
Ember Hangar
Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, Newport News, Virginia
October 25, 1410 Local Time
Dempsey waited patiently while the yellow tow vehicle hooked up to the nose gear of the Falcon. He waited for the click, and then the jolt, as the tug took control. The aircraft doors were still shut, and the cabin air was flowing anemically on auxiliary power, making the passenger compartment stuffy and warm. Normally, he would be agitated, like a caged tiger pacing and pining to escape his cage, but not today. Today, he was Zen. Today, he had decided to give himself a free pass and let somebody else carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.
That somebody was Levi Harel.
It wasn’t that Dempsey was happy to learn that Hezbollah, the Islamic State, and VEVAK might be collaborating on a tunnel into Israel to launch terror attacks; it was simply a relief that this particular plot wasn’t directed at his homeland. This time, al-Mahajer wasn’t targeting his people. If Harel asked for Ember’s direct support, he’d hop on the next flight to Tel Aviv without complaint. He’d crawl down whatever shithole they asked him to and trade bullets with the enemy. But helping safeguard Israel wasn’t the same burden as being responsible for stopping the next attack on American soil.
Jarvis once told him that Harry Truman kept a placard on this desk in the Oval Office, containing the phrase he had made famous: THE BUCK STOPS HERE. Dempsey knew the idiom, of course, but he’d never known its origin until that moment. A few days later, he’d noticed a simple plaque hanging on the wall behind Jarvis’s desk. It read: FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T, FOR THOSE WHO WON’T, AND FOR THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY . . . Below the text was an engraved image of Ember’s logo: a fiery eagle rising like a phoenix from the ashes, clutching a Trident beneath a single star. The message was simple, poignant, powerful. It was the leader’s creed: I will decide, I will act, I will be accountable, even when no one else will. This was the motto of Ember. It came from Jarvis; he exhaled it. And the longer Dempsey breathed the same air, the more he metabolized his boss’s mantle of leadership. Stopping these crazy bastards was his job, his duty, his burden . . . just not today.
Thank God, not today.
Once the Falcon was inside the hangar, Smith finally opened the cabin doors. A precaution against anyone watching via satellite from space, he liked to say. As far as Dempsey was concerned, if the bad guys were watching this location from space then their cover was already blown and therefore Ember was fucked. When he was a Tier One SEAL, their philosophy had been to hide in plain sight. In Dempsey’s experience, the more secretive one tried to be, the more attention one drew to oneself. Unfortunately, trying to explain this logic to the Counter Intelligence guys in black organizations was a Sisyphean endeavor, so he’d stopped trying to push that particular boulder uphill long ago. Smith’s idiosyncrasy about deplaning inside the hangar was pointless to argue about.
He yawned, stretched, got out of the comfortable leather captain’s chair. When he stepped out into the hangar, the first thing he noticed was that the Boeing was back.
Good.
“I’m making a coffee run over to the terminal building,” Mendez said, greeting the group of weary disembarked. “Anybody want anything?”
“What have you been up to while we were gone?” Dempsey asked. He liked the former Marine and knew Mendez was eager to get down range, but sometimes the spook business needed a small footprint—or was even done solo—something Dempsey and, he supposed, a team-oriented Marine both needed to get used to.
“Training,” Mendez said with a shrug. “We had another day and a half at the Farm, thanks to the boss.”
“Time on the range, I hope,” Dempsey growled. Then he added with a smile, “You shoot like a Marine.”
“I’ll take that as the compliment I’m sure it was meant to be,” Mendez said with a big—and well-rested—grin. “So, you want coffee or not?”
Dempsey grimaced. He wanted to say no, but some caffeine would help chase the cobwebs away. His body didn’t know what the hell time zone it was. He’d flown from Iraq to Virginia to Europe and back to Virginia in a seventy-two-hour window; his internal clock was all out of whack. To top it off, he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink on the transatlantic flight home. For some reason, he was worrying about shit he never used to worry about before: Simon Adamo’s integration into the team; whether the CIA guys in Poland were going to complain to the DNI; whether he’d made a good impression on Levi Harel; and the raven-haired female Mossad agent, Elinor, whom he found himself strangely drawn to. What the hell was wrong with him?
“No takers? Seriously?” Mendez said, throwing his hands up in mock surprise. “C’mon, JD, you look like you really need it.”
“Fine, I’ll have the usual,” Dempsey said.
“One large, sweet-ass sissy coffee for the SEAL—Check,” Mendez said with a grin.
“Make it two,” Grimes said.
“Three,” said Smith.
“All right then, sissy coffees all round,” Mendez said and was out the door. Dempsey felt a hand on his shoulder and stifled a yawn.
“Hanging in there, old man?” Smith said.
“Five by,” Dempsey said. “I’m guessing the Skipper wants to debrief?”
“Take thirty minutes,” Smith said. “Grab a shower and a change of clothes. No rush.”
“Are you politely telling me that I stink?”
“You’re a bit ripe, my friend.”
“All right.” Dempsey laughed. “Too many years in the suck, I can’t smell the difference anymore . . . Do me a favor, don’t let Chip or Dale steal my coffee when Mendez gets back.”
Minutes later he had his forehead pressed against the wall of a shower stall in the bunkroom. He let the hot water run down his back, and he must have fallen asleep standing up, because next thing he knew he was jerking awake from the Romeo dream. He shook off the imagery of his teammate getting blown to pieces—the same dream that had been haunting him for a week—and reached for the soap.
“Jesus,” he mumbled. “Nodding off in the shower, now that’s a first.”
After scrubbing clean, he twisted the handle to cold for a few seconds to jolt his body back to life before stepping out of the shower. He quickly toweled off and made his way to the small bunkroom, kicked the door open, and unzipped his large black go-bag. He fished out a pair of cargo pants, a gray T-shirt, and his camp shoes. While he was putting on his shoes, his phone chimed with a notification. He glanced down at the screen. Kate Kemper has updated her status. Curiosity piqued, he swiped to open his Facebook app.
Jake swam in his first swim meet yesterday. He finished third out of sixteen boys in his very first race! That’s him in lane two. The coach says he’s a natural.
The post included a picture of a swimming pool with eight boys racing freestyle, captured in midchurn. So far, the entry had accumulated fourteen likes. Grinning with pride, he scrolled down through the comments:
Way to go Jake! —Aubry B
His dad would be proud! —Diane Stein
He looks like a future SEAL in the making. —April Rousch
“What are you doing?” a hard voice said behind him.
Dempsey looked back over his shoulder to find Smith standing in the bunkroom doorway, holding two cups of coffee and staring at Dempsey’s phone. “Procrastinating,” he said, clicking the screen off.
With a grave face, Smith said, “You can’t go there, bro.”
He thought about playing the denial game, but what was the point. Smith had busted him; why pretend otherwise? “I know.”
“You can never go back. Why torture yourself?”
He blew air through his teeth. “Because . . . because I can’t help myself.”
Smith sat down on the bunk next to Dempsey. “I never had what you had. When Jarvis found me, I was still married to the Team and wanted to just win the war—not knowing that was impossible wit
hout guys like Jarvis. I never married, had no kids. All I walked away from was my Team, and that was hard enough. I can’t pretend to know how it feels to walk away from a wife and kid, but before I could embrace this life, I had to say good-bye to the old one. I know it might seem harmless, but Facebook is an umbilical cord keeping you tied to them.”
Dempsey nodded. “It’s kinda ridiculous. I was the guy who hated Facebook. But now . . .” He smiled. “I just learned that Jake joined a swim team, bro. Jake, the kid who spent ten hours a day in front of the TV playing World of Warcraft, is suddenly working his ass off in the pool. He came in third in his first race. I’m so proud of the kid. All our friends posted congratulatory comments.”
“You mean Kate’s friends,” Smith corrected.
“Yeah,” he snorted. “Kate’s friends.”
“I’m not sure if you’re catfishing or if you created a ghost account, but this is a nonstarter. Jack Kemper is dead, and John Dempsey doesn’t exist. I hate to be that guy, but you gotta check this shit.”
“I think you’ve made your point.”
“Good,” Smith said, then forced a smile. “Here, take your coffee, grumpy.”
Dempsey walked in silence with Smith to the TOC. Grimes, Adamo, and Mendez were already gathered. He dropped into a black chair next to Mendez. “Thanks for this,” he said, lifting his cup.
“No problem,” Mendez answered and was about to add something when Jarvis came in the door beside the monitors.
Jarvis took a seat, folded his hands on the table, and looked at Dempsey. “Impressions and takeaways?”
Before Dempsey could open his mouth, Adamo spoke up. “I’d be happy to. My impression is that this organization is out of control. And my takeaway is that Ember has taken two steps back from what the CIA has evolved into over the past fourteen years prosecuting terrorists.”
War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2) Page 15
