by Marc Cameron
Closing the distance now, Coronet held the cosh in his left hand and the blade in his right. Bludgeoning was a gross motor skill. The bladework needed to be more precise, ensuring he could evade the inevitable spray of blood.
Unfortunately for the hapless policeman, Coronet already knew where he was going. Dazid’s destination was the Talk and Text café down the street. It was the location of the next NFC tag. He’d guessed correctly that the policeman would want to keep his distance and would likely remain across the street near the canal while he summoned backup. Considering the army of law enforcement at the night market, it would not take long for help to arrive. Coronet would have to act without hesitation. Which was fine. He’d done this before and knew the entire process would not take long.
Coronet moved quickly, hopping the guardrail that ran adjacent to the canal and moving into the shadow of the trees at the same moment the policeman stepped over the rail, still focused on Dazid Ishmael.
Padding up quickly but quietly, he struck as the policeman raised the mobile, utilizing the canvas bludgeon in the same manner OSS commandos employed brass knuckles to stun opponents in advance of a dagger attack during World War Two. The canvas-and-gravel cosh impacted the man’s left temple with a sickening thud, causing him to drop his phone and stumble forward a half-step. This put one leg slightly in front of the other, opening a gap for Coronet. His blade flicked back and forth quickly inside the man’s legs just above the knees, slicing at least one, and probably both, of his femoral arteries. Coronet struck him again before his stunned brain could work out what had happened. The policeman stumbled sideways, weakening quickly. Coronet gave him a solid shove, careful not to soil himself with the man’s blood, pushing him into the canal. The canvas cosh and the paring knife followed him in.
Coronet cried for help at the same moment the man splashed, pointing into the shadows as bystanders rushed to help. Instead of moving closer with the crowd, he melted backward, letting the press of people swallow him up and hide his movements until he was across the street in front of the Talk and Text, where passersby were just realizing something was going on at the canal.
Taking one of the NFC stickers out of his pocket, he held it up by way of identification as he approached Dazid Ishmael.
The terrorist looked up at him, confused. Then his hand dropped into the pocket of his shorts.
Coronet raised both hands. “You had company,” he whispered. “Off-duty PNP.”
“Okay,” Dazid said, still suspicious. “Did you bring the money?”
Coronet nodded at the NFC tag between his fingers. “Half the account number is right here. My associate has the remainder of the number.”
“Wise.”
Dazid glanced toward the back of the café.
Coronet shook his head. “There was only one policeman and he did not make a call. We should go out the front as if nothing is wrong.”
And with that, Coronet made contact with one of the most dangerous terrorists in the Philippines.
The provocateur glanced at the date on his Rolex. He would not read about the Abu Sayyaf operation for several days, but his previous assignment would be in the papers by tomorrow morning.
13
Jack Ryan didn’t exactly hate the concept of a photo op. He was not, however, in love with the photo portion of the op. Even before he’d been dragged by the scruff of his neck into the presidency, Ryan had long believed that a chief reason the commander in chief went gray or bald was the constant stress of being “on.” Photos with the President, whoever he—or she—happened to be, hung on walls and sat on mantels for decades. Ryan was self-aware enough to realize he was the personification of the stereotypical corduroy-wearing history professor. Still, he was comfortable in his own skin, and if kids from Mrs. Palmer’s eighth-grade national champion Project Citizen team didn’t like that he had a slight cowlick, well, there wasn’t much he could do about that.
Besides, this was a team of middle-school kids who’d excelled at civics. He couldn’t think of a better group to admit into the Oval Office for a meet-and-greet. They were intelligent and far more relaxed than Ryan had been the first time he’d come to the White House. Five-minute photo ops gave just enough time for the scheduling staff to usher in the students, Ryan to shake each hand and repeat back their names, and then maneuver everyone into place for a photo with him in front of or behind the Resolute desk. Staffers were already stepping forward to lead out the group as the photographer lowered his camera. Today Ryan caused the poor staffer from scheduling to screw up his face as if he’d been shot, when he interrupted the flow by asking Mrs. Palmer a question. Ryan gave him the “presidential eye,” which was an unspoken order to realign priorities with the boss, and then turned back to Mrs. Palmer. He was about to ask a follow-up question when Arnie van Damm stuck his head in. The look on his face said Ryan’s own priorities were about to shift as well.
Ryan’s gut churned by the time the last student left and van Damm shut the door. The chief of staff had been around the block enough times that there was very little that bothered him. Most bad news came with a knowing pat on the back and a confident reminder that things would “get better.” Not today. Today he was stricken, which meant someone had died.
Ryan eyed his friend.
“What is it?”
“Corporal Wesley Farnsworth of Shreveport, Louisiana, was killed in action three hours ago forty kilometers south of N’Djamena, Chad.”
Ryan took a seat in front of the fireplace, motioning for van Damm to do the same. It didn’t matter how many of these notifications he received, his first assumption was always that something had happened to Jack Junior. The revelation that it had not filled him with instant relief—and shame for feeling that way.
He shook his head. “Africa.” Then closed his eyes and gave a resigned nod. “Africa.”
Van Damm sighed. “Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion of the 7th Infantry, rotated into N’Djamena a month ago to assist Chadian forces in furtherance of the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership.”
“Boko Haram, then,” Ryan said.
The chief of staff rubbed a hand over his bald head. “It looks that way, Jack. Burgess is on his way over right now to give you a more thorough briefing, but for now, it sounds as though Farnsworth was leading one of three fire teams training members of the Chadian Army in reconnaissance and patrol tactics. Thirty Boko Haram attacked an oil-drilling operation outside Koudjiwai, just south of our guys’ position.”
“A Chinese oil platform?” Much of southwestern Chad was designated a Chinese Oil Exploration Zone.
“That’s correct,” van Damm said. “Australian security personnel at the drill site were seriously outgunned and put an emergency call into the Chadian authorities for assistance at the first sign of an attack.” The CoS shrugged. “Men were dying, the government asked for help, and our guys were close. Exigent circumstances.”
Ryan took a deep breath, seething.
Van Damm shook his head. “Damn shame,” he said. “One of ours died protecting Chinese—”
“Stop it!” Ryan pointed a finger at his chief of staff. “It’s a damn shame that Corporal Farnsworth died. Period. I do not give a shit about the ethnicity of the lives he was trying to save.”
“Of course, you’re right, Mr. President,” van Damm said. “I don’t mean to minimize this young man’s death in any way.”
Ryan turned in his chair, looking toward the windows and the Rose Garden. “I know you don’t,” he said, already moving on. “To what end, Arnie? Why does Boko Haram attack an oil platform? Crude oil is worthless as fuel and impossible to transport if you need to move quickly, as they would have to do after something like this. Why not hit a refinery? At least there’s something there they can use. Was it payday or something?”
Van Damm shook his head. “I’m afraid there is an answer to that question, Jack, but you’re no
t going to like it. The platoon sergeant overseeing the fire teams swears that our soldiers were lured in.”
Ryan turned to face his friend, sitting up straighter.
“Lured in?”
“He says the Boko Haram forces were strong enough to completely overwhelm the much smaller security team at the drill site but only engaged with enough force to make them call for support.”
“Who knew our soldiers were nearby?”
Van Damm let out a deep breath. “OPSEC is fine on our end, but the Chadian Army colonel likes to give interviews about the cooperative efforts.”
“So Boko Haram would know we were going to be there.”
“Virtually everyone with a radio knew the Chadian Army was going to be training in that area. It’s not uncommon to let the tribal chiefs know in advance. We’ve warned them, but it still happens. It doesn’t take much to figure out that if we’re in country, our guys will be with the army when they train.”
“So it was a setup?”
Van Damm nodded. “The platoon sergeant feels sure American personnel were the real target. His CO believes him enough to kick the sentiment up the chain of command.”
China again, Ryan thought, but he didn’t have to say it.
14
Magdalena Rojas pulled her small knees to her bony chest and held her hands over her ears. She clenched her eyes shut, took small breaths, trying to block out the stench of fear and death. There were other girls in the room. Six of them. There had been nine when Magdalena arrived, each chained by the ankle to a metal eyebolt fixed to a five-gallon bucket filled with concrete. The buckets allowed the girls to move around, dragging them from the thin mattresses at one end of the windowless room to the other, where there were more five-gallon buckets to use as toilets. Magdalena’s ankles had been so small, Lupe had been afraid she’d slip out of the regular leg irons. In a fit of red-faced frustration, the cruel woman had smacked her across the buttocks with Ratón, the bull-penis whip, and stormed out. She returned a few moments later with a pair of handcuffs. They were too tight, but Lupe locked them down anyway, hooking the free side to the leg irons and the bucket of concrete. Magdalena’s foot began to turn purple and swell before the woman left the room.
Four of those original girls were gone—dragged through the big red door at the other end of the wide room. Lupe brought in a new girl a short time later—through the normal-sized door. Girls never came in through the red one, they only went out.
The new girl was tall, with broad shoulders, and had many freckles on her nose. Magdalena thought she must have been new because her blond hair was still full and shiny. Apart from hope, healthy hair was always the first thing to go. The other five girls sat in one form of stupor or another, but the new one caught Magdalena’s eye and wanted to talk as soon as Lupe left. She sat with her back to the wall, knees up, wearing the same kind of thin black gown that they all wore—and nothing else.
She tugged at the chain around her ankle, sliding it back and forth over the lip of the plastic bucket as if in dismay at her situation.
“My name . . . Teodora,” she said in accented English.
“Magdalena.” She attempted a smile, but under the circumstances managed nothing but a passive look.
The blond girl gave a thoughtful nod. “In my country . . . I know girl with same name.”
Magdalena looked away. She felt sorry for this chatty thing who obviously had not been around enough for her hope to be crushed completely. “Where is your country?”
“Montenegro,” Teodora said, sniffing back a tear. “It is very long from here.” She stared at Magdalena. “Do you know Montenegro?”
Magdalena admitted that she did not.
“I was to have work as nanny.” The girl’s shoulders began to shake. Her breath came in ragged, gasping sobs. “Now . . . I am . . . pris . . . on . . . er.”
“I know.” Magdalena reached to touch the girl’s arm. Everything had been stripped away from her as well, but she could still offer kindness—if only for a moment. “If we do what they say, they might not hurt us as bad.”
It was a lie but, Magdalena hoped, a comforting one.
The blond girl turned to look at her, still sobbing. “The man who . . . who . . . had me before . . . I come here, he tell me they make us girls to fight sometimes.”
Magdalena shivered. She’d heard no mention of fighting. She’d never been in a fight in her life, not even with her sisters.
Teodora cleared her throat. Her hair hung down over her face like a curtain. “He say we fight to death. For the cameras.”
Magdalena’s words caught hard in her chest.
“I can’t . . .” She shook her head. “I do not think that is true.”
Teodora coughed, clearing her throat. “The man say it is true.” She sniffed back the tears and sat up straighter as she composed herself. Blue eyes played up and down Magdalena. “If is true, I hope I fight you. You are small. You no problem for me to break.”
Magdalena withdrew her hand and dragged her bucket across the room. She would learn, someday, that letting down her guard brought nothing but pain.
Pain, in one form or another, had been a constant companion since her father had died and her mother had told her to “open her kitchen.” At first the hurt had been in her heart. She’d never been her mother’s favorite. This she knew. But even in a culture where daughters often opened their kitchens to help the family, it should have been her choice. Her father had once beaten a boy who had just looked at her. He would never have suggested she do such things. Her mother, on the other hand, had said she might even learn to enjoy her work. That was a joke. She’d learned to endure the searing pain, the ache of the illnesses that were a foregone conclusion when you slept with upward of twenty different men a week. The act itself was painful enough, but the men were all so much bigger than her that it was nearly always brutal—even when the men pretended they were being nice. Her back and shoulders suffered wrenching injuries she would surely carry for the rest of her life. But even that pain she’d learned to push to the back of her mind.
She’d thought her life was bad in Costa Rica. It had taken her several days to realize that her own mother had sold her to the man named Dorian. At that point, a numbness had crept over her that left her feeling like a cardboard cutout of her former self. A spark of something inside her kept her acting the way men wanted her to act. It was just enough to keep the men who owned her from killing her—for a time, at least. If a girl gave up completely in this business, she was thrown away in short order. Men wanted a doll, but they wanted a live doll, not one who just lay there. There was a fine line between acting spirited and showing belligerence. Parrot’s belt taught his girls exactly where that line was. Some girls never learned. Parrot was more than happy to keep teaching them, sometimes beating them to within an inch of their lives. But at least he knew when to stop.
Before Parrot, Magdalena had seen girls bleed to death—or get infections so they passed out and then never woke up. Some girls got too much dope in their systems and had such bad fits they cracked their teeth. Parrot was always pissed when that happened. Girls were like cows to him. He didn’t get paid when one of them died or ruined her teeth.
Yes, Magdalena had seen a lot of horrible things in her thirteen years—sights that would have probably killed another girl her age. But the babbling cries of despair that washed under the big red door said this was far, far worse.
And then, as if thinking about it made it so, the red door creaked open and Lupe walked in, shutting it quickly behind her. The horrible woman wore her customary tube top and cutoff jeans that were so short the pockets hung down past the frayed fabric. A ring of dark purple bruises encircled her neck, testifying to the fact that even a bottom bitch was not immune to the brutality of the man who ran her life. The tattoo of a grim reaper covered the inside of her left thigh. The flesh of her right was a
dorned with the skeletal figure of La Santa Muerte, a patron saint of narco traffickers, and, Magdalena had discovered, traffickers in human cargo as well.
Brandishing the whip back and forth with the whistling flourish of a swordfighter, Lupe took a moment to look from shattered girl to shattered girl. Everyone cringed at the noise. Each of them had felt the sting of the awful rawhide whip. Teodora began to wail, leaning forward to cover her face. Lupe struck her hard across the back, warning her to shut up. At length, the woman’s black eyes settled on Magdalena. She skulked across the room, towering above the trembling girl while she prodded her with Ratón.
Lupe cocked her head to one side, a show of counterfeit pity. Magdalena could smell the seething contempt as the woman stood over her. “Come, little one.” She hooked a finger toward the big, red door. “It is your turn.”
15
Dr. Ann Miller perched on the edge of a smooth leather chair and shot a glance at the clunky digital watch that dwarfed her slender arm. The black plastic monstrosity was waterproof and practical in the woods, but it looked incredibly out of place among the three women and one man working at their desks in the smallish White House office. The guy was young—probably still in college and rumpled in appearance—but the women were dressed to the nines in stylish blouses and elegant if sparse jewelry—not a clunky watch among them. Compared to them, Miller may as well have been wearing a bathrobe. Her Kühl khaki slacks and oversized buffalo-plaid wool shirt were perfect for a canoe trip on the Shenandoah—but now she just looked ridiculous.
Hired by the Central Intelligence Agency for her uncanny ability to recognize and recall patterns, Miller didn’t work at Langley or even Liberty Crossing, home of the director of national intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center. Her office was in a satellite location, hiding in plain sight. The other tenants of the nondescript building just off Twelfth Street in Crystal City certainly guessed she was with some government agency—probably because they were from some other government agency. That’s the way it was in the shadow of the Pentagon. It was better than Langley, though. Her office had easy access to the Crystal City underground, where she and her other mathematician buddies could walk when the weather got crummy—and far enough away from all the bosses that she could dress down on Friday, something she was seriously regretting at the moment.
