by Gary Haynes
He asked Lester to meet him at Boston Logan airport in 5.5 hours, if he could, stating that he was on a scheduled flight from Kabul. The email also stated that he needed a Taser, plasticuffs, steel bracelets, duct tape, an MP4 player and a remote lock-up near Harvard. A rental car, too. He requested that Lester emailed back either way, pointing out that it was real important.
Allowing for boarding and the thirteen-hour flight, it would be 20:00 local time when he reached stateside, Kabul being eight and a half hours ahead of Boston time. And when he did, he would have just over forty-one hours to find her. Less than two days.
Sipping the bland coffee, he felt that he was missing something. Something that had happened on the morning the secretary had been taken. He started to piece the events together, his mind focusing on the man who’d fired the Stinger. He picked up his smartphone again and went online, scanning web pages on Islamic customs.
He was interrupted twenty minutes later by the flashing inbox indicator. He checked his email. It was Lester.
I’m in New York. Sure I will man.
Tom grinned. He was one person he could rely on. Besides, Lester owed him. He’d dragged his battered body from a heap of rubble after the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, had been bombed in 1998. Lester had been a young jarhead, Tom a rookie agent. Afterward, he’d said that Tom’s constant encouragement had given him hope as he’d lain in the darkness. And that that was a gift.
Hope.
With his head resting against the back of the cabin seat en route to Boston, Tom wondered what kind of hope the secretary had right now. She was a remarkable woman, he thought. By his reckoning, she deserved to be the first woman president. A good, family woman, too. A devoted mother.
Maybe it was the tiredness or the after-effects of the adrenalin dumps, but his thoughts kept wandering. He saw his own mother in his mind’s eye, a woman who had been beautiful but for whom a life of stress and poverty had taken its toll. By the time he was sixteen, she looked old, her teeth nicotine stained, her eyes heavy with bags. Her once thick, lustrous hair was dull and ridden with split-ends. What little money she had from working the reception at a local machine shop went on heating and food.
The last time he’d seen her, he’d convinced her to go to the grocery store to buy eggs and bacon, because they had nothing in the fridge or cupboards for lunch, save tins of weak soup, which, for a hungry teenager, hadn’t been exactly appetizing. Tom’s granddaddy had taught him to drive the previous summer, and had spent the equivalent of three months’ pension on a twelve-year-old Buick, which the old man had made roadworthy over a period of six weeks. Tom promised his mother he’d pick her up in it after he’d changed the oil. But when he’d finished, a high school buddy had come by, and he’d gone fishing with him instead.
Forcing himself back to the present, he asked the flight attendant for an English copy of the Qur’an and, after it was handed to him, he began checking the references he had seen online.
Two hours later, the Holy Book fell from his hands as he drifted into a deep sleep. But he’d found what he’d wanted.
44.
The president had only left the Situation Room to snatch a few hours’ sleep and had changed into slacks and a fresh shirt, the relatively mundane affairs of state being carried out by the vice president, aided by the White House chief of staff. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else. But he would have to get back to work soon. Besides, the narrow oblong room was beginning to feel like a tomb and he was becoming increasingly convinced that the secretary, whom he had known personally for eight years, wasn’t going to be found.
He sipped at a cup of coffee, his eighth of the day, and nodded to Jack, the Secretary of Defense, who’d sat by his side for the duration. The president was a pragmatic and determined politician, a man who’d put himself through law school after being a probation officer in a tough neighbourhood for over a decade, but he couldn’t have felt any worse if his younger sister had been taken.
“I should have never let her go,” he said, rubbing his tired eyes.
“You don’t build relationships by talking down a chunk of plastic, Bob. You can’t blame yourself. Linda knew the risks.”
“Yeah. But we never think they will materialize, do we, Jack?”
“Guess not.”
“If the worst happens, the Iranians will have to pay the price. You realize that, don’t you?”
Jack nodded, resolutely.
A couple of minutes later, there was a single knock at the door. It was opened by a black-suited Secret Service agent, the spiralling wire from his clear earpiece disappearing behind his protruding neck muscle to his collar. The White House chief counterterrorism advisor, Martin Rosenberg, a sixty-three-year-old with a Romanesque nose and narrow shoulders, walked through, his soft brown eyes catching the president’s gaze and holding it.
“We have a lead, Mr President.”
“Thank God,” the president said, stiffening up.
“Deputy Director Houseman is on a secure video link from Kabul. I’ve liaised with the Director briefly already. He said it’s your call,” Rosenberg said, referring to the head of the CIA.
Rosenberg walked over to the table, picked up a remote and aimed it at the third flat-screen to the left of the secretary. The screen blinked open. Houseman’s face almost filled it, his eyes dark-rimmed, his skin sallow.
“Give me the good news, Bill,” the president said.
“One of our assets in Islamabad, Mr President. I have reason to believe that Lyric is being held at an old, abandoned watchtower just south of Karachi. On the coast.”
“What reason?” the secretary asked, his tone inquisitorial.
“One hundred thousand of them, Mr Secretary,” Houseman said, referring to the amount of dollars that’d been paid for the intel.
“You pay that amount, a man will swear he saw Elvis serving fries at his local Burger King,” the secretary said, dismissively.
The president saw that the old warhorse on the screen could barely conceal his contempt for Jack. He knew Bill had never cared for the Defense Secretary. Jack had a tendency to make his point in such a manner that didn’t court friendship.
“How sure of this are you, Bill?” he asked.
“He ain’t let us down before, sir.”
“So what do we do?”
“We have the Carrier Strike Group in the Strait of Hormuz,” Houseman said, referring to the waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. “But there ain’t any Special Forces on board.”
The president knew the aircraft carriers were there due to the Iranian crisis. In particular, their threat to close the major oil route if the US went to war. He turned to Jack, said, “Where’s the nearest Special Forces’ detachment?”
“Yemen, sir.”
“Yemen, huh.”
“I got eight CIA paramilitaries in Karachi, Mr President,” Houseman said.
“And why’s that?”
On screen, Houseman looked a little taken aback. “Since Lyric was kidnapped, we got over a hundred in Pakistan, Mr President. And the ones in Karachi are good men. The best.”
“Jack?” the president asked.
The secretary craned his neck forward. “I’m not sure.” He sniffed. “Could be riskier than sending astronauts to Mars.”
The president knew that she could be moved repeatedly. It could be his only chance to get her out. He knew, too, that although the plan to rescue her in the Upper Kurram Valley had been put together swiftly, the short timeframe imposed by the Leopards since then demanded an even faster response.
“What do you mean by could be, Jack? And I don’t want a bullshit answer based on your dislike for CIA paramilitaries. You got me?” he said, the lack of sleep and constant tension making his patience wane.
Jack nodded. “Yes, Mr President.” He cleared his throat. “If Deputy Director Houseman says they’re good men, I’ll go with that in the circumstances.”
The president rubbed the back of his he
ad. “Do it, Bill,” he said.
45.
At Boston Logan International Airport’s Terminal E, Tom headed for the lower-level arrivals hall, carrying his leather holdall. He felt better for the long sleep he’d had. He didn’t usually sleep well on planes, but he’d been exhausted. He was looking forward to seeing Lester. The guy could put a smile on a rock face. He bought a spare disposable cell and went to a restroom to check underneath the bandage on his neck. The wound had stopped bleeding and it didn’t look too bad, and the fleck from the splinter on his forehead had almost healed. But the bruises on his body still appeared savage.
After he’d walked back into the hall, he saw Lester standing by an advertising board wearing jeans, hiking boots and a dark-blue windbreaker. He looked fit and muscular, his hair shaved. As Tom walked over, he could see Lester register that it was him, and his friend’s slim face broke into a wide grin. They shook hands.
“Man, it’s good to see you, Tom,” he said, taking the holdall.
“You, too, buddy. Appreciate you coming.”
“That was some shit over there. Anything broken?”
“We can talk about it later. I need to get to Cambridge,” Tom said, holding back that he was going to pay a visit to a student called Mahmood at Harvard University.
“Massachusetts or Maryland?”
“Massachusetts.”
“Good, cuz that ain’t far.”
They walked past the hall’s restaurants and gift stores, out into the vapour light of the airport’s exterior. It was an overcast evening, already dark. The lot was directly across from the terminal, where Lester had said his black VW van was parked. After they’d clambered in, Lester drove out of the lot. As they entered the Sumner Tunnel, beneath Boston Harbour, he put on his sat-nav. It was 20:12 and a frail mist hung in the air like gossamer.
“You ready to tell me what happened?” Lester asked.
Tom filled him in on the details he felt it appropriate to disclose, basically recounting what had happened outside the hospital, including the body count, but leaving out everything after the cars had sped away along the alley. The events that had happened afterwards were, he considered, classified. But in truth, he simply hadn’t figured them out in his own head yet. Besides, at this stage, Lester didn’t need to know more. If and when he did, he would tell him.
“As far as you’re concerned, I’m just hiring your services like anyone else.”
“Yeah, but it’s got to do with the secretary, ain’t it?” Lester said, taking a left onto Cambridge Street.
“It has. I got a hunch, Lester, no more than that, and a lead of sorts. You okay to help me out for the next couple days?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“And I need you to put a small team together. But you have to work fast for obvious reasons. Anyone you can spare right away?” Tom asked.
Lester glanced at him. “You got something in mind, brother?”
“Nope. But I want all options available if my lead comes good.”
“All my people are freelance. I just hire them on a need-to basis. It’s cheaper and I don’t have to put up with nobody bitching about the lack of healthcare.”
“How about Johnny Silver?” Tom said, referring to an ex-DS agent he had introduced to Lester a few years back.
“They’re looking to give him a lethal injection up in Nebraska. He popped a cap in an off-duty cop he mistook for an armed robber he was chasing down for some bail bondsman.”
“Goddamnit. Poor Johnny. Anyone else we both know who ain’t in jail?”
Lester pursed his lips. “I see Skip Howard around, but he’s into salad now.”
Tom shot Lester a puzzled look. “Salad? That street talk for drugs?”
“Nah. Lettuce and shit. He loves the earth, or so he says. Calls it his mother, though his mother lives in a trailer park in Idaho. Anyways, he wouldn’t raise his hand to anyone no more. Skip thinks he’s a hippy. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s fifty years too late.”
Tom grinned, nodding. “Just do what you can, huh? But I only want people with a sound background. No third-rate mercs or amateur adrenalin junkies.” Now he was stateside, he figured he could be picky.
“Talking of which, we got a tail,” Lester said, peering into the rear-view.
“You sure?” Tom asked, checking the side-view.
“Damn right, I’m sure. A big white Lexus SUV. It had blackouts, it’d be a regular pimp wagon. Been following us all the way from Logan. Though he thinks he’s a sneaky mother.”
Tom thought about it. Maybe Crane had put a tail on him, just to be sure.
“Now if we was in DC,” Lester said, “I could lose him no problem. But up here in Disney World for smartasses, I doubt it. That’s why I got Davina giving me directions on the sat-nav.”
“Davina?”
“That ain’t her real name. I made it up,” Lester said.
“You don’t say.”
“And the shadow?”
“Let him stay where he is,” Tom said.
Figuring it was best to find out who it was, why he was following them and what he knew, Tom took out his smartphone. He hadn’t noticed anyone onboard the flight from Kabul who’d looked like a shadow. It was weird, he had to admit. Unnerving, too. He spent a minute looking at satellite imagery, checking for nearby non-residential areas.
“There’s a reservoir and park called Fresh Pond a few miles away. We’ll take him there.” Tom leaned over and programmed Davina.
Fresh Pond was a hundred-and-sixty-acre kettle-hole lake, with a further one hundred and fifty acres of surrounding forest and wetland. It fitted the bill.
“He still following us?”
“He is. At a distance. You strapped?” Lester asked.
“I just got off a schedule flight from Kabul. What do you think?”
“I got our favourites under your seat.”
Tom put his hand underneath the seat, felt a bundle and took out an oily rag. As he unwrapped it he saw a pair of SIG Sauer P229s. He took one out, weighing it in his palm.
“It’s too heavy for a 9mm.”
“.357 SIG,” Lester said.
“Nice. But that’s a bigger kick and muzzle blast.”
“Yeah, but no one’s gonna stay upright, either. Besides, I got suppressors, too. And it’s a DAK. That’s a 6.5lbs trigger pull, not 10lbs. Standard-issue for the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Thanks for telling me. But we ain’t going on a killing spree,” Tom said.
Cutting through Harvard University with the Yard on their left, they headed for Concorde Avenue, which led all the way to Fresh Pond.
“He’s getting closer.”
“Just the one guy?” Tom asked.
“Yep. Unless he’s got a shy friend lying on the back seat. He’s wearing shades with a ball cap pulled down low. Who the hell wears shades in the evening, ‘cept ageing rock stars?”
46.
Linda saw the door open and the same man in the ski mask entered, leaving the door ajar. She lay on the floor mattress dressed in the burqa, her breathing audible. He held out a plastic bottle of water.
“Take it,” he said.
She struggled up and inched over the flagstones, her right hand seemingly lost among the folds of the burqa. As she reached him she took the bottle limply with her left hand. A second later, she stumbled, losing her grip on the bottle, which bounced on the hard floor before lying flat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, weakly. “I feel so light-headed.”
She wavered, her head swaying, but remained upright. He went to steady her, but she flinched and he stepped back.
“Would you?” she said, gesturing towards the bottle.
He grunted something in response, but bent down low to pick up the bottle. It was then she thrust her right hand out of the armhole in the burqa, and hit him over the head sharply with the loose table leg that she’d yanked off before wedging the table back into the corner of the wall. He groaned like a ghost,
teetered for what seemed like seconds, but finally collapsed sideways, the back of his mask becoming wet with blood.
She put her hand to her veiled mouth, struggled to remain calm. She thought about hitting him again, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Stepping over him instead, she peered into the low-ceilinged corridor outside. As far as she could tell, no one was there. Dropping the table leg, she ran from the room as swiftly as the restrictive garment would allow. The walls of the dark corridor were mossy and cobweb-ridden, the air cool and damp. She stopped, moved her head around, her peripheral vision impaired. But the corridor was empty.
Halfway down, she saw a large wooden door to the left, a chink of light just visible underneath it. She tried the circular iron handle. It was unlocked. Opening it, she felt both exhilarated and scared as a rush of adrenalin kicked in. She would keep the burqa on until she reached safety. She would find a cab or public payphone, and then she would be rescued.
Outside, the early-morning sun blinded her, despite the veil. Shielding her eyes, she saw a walled courtyard. In the centre of the wall was an archway, the path beneath leading to what she hoped would be the surrounding landscape. She heard waves breaking loudly to her right, and smelled the salt from the sea spray as it drifted down. As if God deemed it appropriate at this moment to give her a sign of hope, she heard voices, and, although they were faint, she made out English but no Urdu.
She felt that she had been saved, either because a deal had been struck, which hadn’t involved huge sums of money or the release of the Leopards in the States, or because a Special Forces team had found her. This is it, she told herself. Freedom. Home. Family. As she ran towards the archway, she saw a group of white men appear, wearing military fatigues, with sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders. She thought the lead man was an American soldier, judging by his appearance. He was broad-shouldered and clean-shaven, with short brown hair and hardened features. Registering her, he beckoned her over with his hand. She tore the veil from her face and rushed towards them. But as she got to the lead man he grabbed her by the arm roughly. She struggled to break free, her heart sinking.
