Camel Club 01 - The Camel Club

by David Baldacci

  Simpson said, “I think Alex is right. I believe that is Hemingway’s hand.”

  Stone ventured, “So this Hemingway may have kidnapped the president? Why?”

  “Who the hell knows!” Alex exclaimed. “But I think we might be able to figure out where they’re holding him. And Kate might have the answer.”

  “Me!” Kate exclaimed. “How?”

  “You mentioned that you and Hemingway were working on a project together.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If I recall correctly, you said it involved an old building.”

  She said slowly, “Right, near Washington, Virginia. I think it used to be a CIA asset, but it’s been abandoned a long time. NIC wanted to use it as an interrogation facility for foreign detainees, but with all the problems at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and the Salt Pit, DOJ is nixing it. Why?”

  “Because I think that’s where they may be holding President Brennan. Tell me everything you recall about it.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Stone said

  They all looked at him. “Why not?” Alex asked.

  “Because I know that building very well.”

  “Who is this guy!” Simpson exclaimed.

  “Shut up, Jackie,” Alex snapped. “Oliver, you really know where this place is?”

  “There’s only one old CIA building in that part of Virginia.”

  “Alex,” Simpson protested, “you’re not actually buying any of this, are you?”

  Alex ignored her. “Can you get me there, Oliver?”

  “Yes. But are you sure you want to go?”

  “The president was kidnapped on my watch, so I have to do everything I can to get him back safely.”

  “It won’t be easy. Not only is it well hidden, it’s designed such that a very small force inside can hold back a very large force outside indefinitely.”

  “What the hell kind of place is it?” Reuben asked.

  “It was a CIA training facility for very . . . special operatives.”

  Alex checked his watch. “Washington, Virginia. If we start now, we can be there in about two hours.”

  “Longer than that actually,” Stone said. “The facility is a bit off the beaten path.”

  “Why can’t we call in the FBI?” Milton asked.

  Stone shook his head. “We have no idea how high the corruption goes. This fellow Hemingway may have spies everywhere who could tip him off.”

  “And we have no idea if the president is even there,” Alex added. “It’s just a hunch. We can’t waste their time leading them on what might be a wild-goose chase. We’re on a nuke missile countdown, for God’s sake.”

  Kate said, “Well, I have a van. We can all go in that.”

  Alex looked at her. “Forget it. You’re not coming, Kate!”

  “Then you’re not going,” she snapped.

  Stone interjected, “You can’t go, Kate, and neither can Caleb and Milton.” They all looked at him and started to erupt in protest all over again, but he held up his hand. “This facility’s unofficial name was Murder Mountain, and it’s an apt title.” He paused. “I’ll take Alex and Reuben there, but no one else.”

  Alex added, “And three people might be able to get up there unnoticed.”

  “Four,” Simpson said. They all turned to look at her. “Make that four people.” She stared defiantly at Alex. “I’m a Secret Service agent too.”

  CHAPTER

  63

  THE NUCLEAR-POWERED SUBMARINE Tennessee had been given the unenviable task of launching the missile strike against Damascus. The 560-foot-long, nearly 17,000-ton Ohio-class nuclear submarine was based in Kings Bay, Georgia, along with the rest of the Atlantic ballistic missile sub fleet. Ohio-class nuclear submarines were the most powerful weapons in the United States military. Using its full complement of multiple warhead missiles, just one sub could obliterate any nation on the face of the earth with a single strike.

  The Tennessee was currently parked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of feet down, although it could have hit Damascus with one of its latest-generation Trident II D-5 missiles while sitting in its East Coast home port. Each D-5 cost nearly $30 million, stood forty-four feet long, weighed over sixty tons and had a maximum range of twelve thousand kilometers with a reduced payload. Capable of Mach 20, the D-5 was ten times faster than the Concorde, and no military jet in the world could come anywhere close to matching its speed.

  Only a single D-5 would be launched at Damascus, yet that was misleading as to the actual firepower being unleashed. The long-range D-5 configuration contained six MK 5 independent reentry vehicles, each one carrying a W-88 475-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. By comparison a single W-88 warhead far exceeded the combined explosive power of every bomb used in every war in history, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II.

  While the 155 sailors on board the Tennessee had been at sea for four weeks, the crew was well aware of current events. The sailors knew what they had been ordered to do, and every one of them intended to carry out that order to the letter, even if most of them harbored secret fears about what path this would lead the world down. They stared at their computer screens and went over again and again the launch procedures that might very well send the world into a titanic war. It was quite heady stuff for a group whose average age was twenty-two.

  Meanwhile, in the first hour since Hamilton had appeared on TV, the Arab world had united fully behind its sister nation. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan were desperately trying to convince America to change its mind. While the city of Damascus was being evacuated, military commanders and political leaders of other Muslim countries were conferencing on how best to respond if an American missile struck Syria. Middle Eastern terrorist organizations everywhere had called for an all-out jihad against the United States if Damascus was hit. Across much of the Middle East the leaders of these groups began planning their retaliations.

  If a missile did strike Syria, the devastation would be far beyond anything the world had ever experienced before. Damascus was one of the most densely populated cities on the planet with over 6 million residents. It would only be possible for a minuscule percentage of its citizens to escape to safety in the allotted time. All others would simply disappear in the nuclear flashpoint as a mushroom cloud of radiation rose into the air before descending onto the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

  Syria and the Sharia Group had immediately and vigorously disclaimed responsibility for the kidnapping. However, this explanation was not widely believed in Western circles. The Sharia Group had become far more active in terrorism over the last year. And the person making the call to Al Jazeera had used the complex password assigned to Sharia by the Arab network for authentication purposes. This password was constantly changed and was known only to a few highly placed leaders of the terrorist organization. Statements from the Sharia Group that one of its leaders who knew the current password had been missing for two weeks largely fell on deaf ears.

  The United Nations had called on America to step down from its intention of launching a nuclear missile, and all other members of the U.N. Security Council had reiterated this demand through emergency diplomatic channels.

  To all these pleas the United States’ reply was the same: It was all up to the kidnappers. All they had to do was return James Brennan unharmed, which was what they said they were going to do anyway, and the Syrians could live. The only difference was the U.S. was now dictating the timetable of the return of the president.

  Israel was on the highest alert. Its leaders well knew that the country would be one of the first targets of an Islamic counterattack. And Syria was close enough to Israel that the issue of nuclear fallout caused the Israeli prime minister to contact Acting President Hamilton for clarification on the matter. Its vital Golan Heights water sources weren’t that far from the target zone. The government in Beirut also contacted Washington, since Damascus was close to Lebanon’s border.
Washington’s terse reply was the same to both countries: “Take all precautions you deem necessary.”

  Back at the White House, Acting President Hamilton sat in the Oval Office with Defense Secretary Decker, his military commanders, the National Security Council, Secretary of State Mayes and a few other members of his cabinet. Carter Gray was conspicuously absent from the group.

  The momentous decision to launch nuclear weapons was clearly weighing on Hamilton; his skin pale and his face drawn, the man looked terminally ill. He sipped on bottled water to alleviate the acid burning through his stomach, while his generals and admirals conversed with each other in low voices.

  Decker left one of these groups and walked over to Hamilton. “Sir, I understand the enormity of your decision, but I want you to know that we have more than enough capability to do this.”

  “I’m not worried about your hitting the damn city, Joe. I’m worried about what happens after that.”

  “Syria has been aiding terrorists for a long time. Damascus is full of former Baathist heavyweights just biding their time before attempting a coup in Iraq. It’s well known that mosques in Damascus are recruiting stations for mujahideen. And Syrian militia are all over the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. It’s time we drew a hard line in the sand with them. It’s the same domino theory as spreading democracy in the Middle East by starting with Iraq. We make an example of the Syrians, then everyone else follows suit.”

  “Yes, but what about the radiation fallout?” Hamilton asked.

  “There will be some certainly. But where Damascus is situated, we believe that it will be somewhat contained.”

  Hamilton finished his water and threw the bottle in the wastebasket. “Fallout somewhat contained. I’m glad you believe that, Joe.”

  “Mr. President, you made the right decision. We could not allow this to happen without retaliation. That would empower these people to do even more. It has to stop. And deploying more troops would only stretch our military beyond the breaking point and allow the Syrians to successfully fight us guerrilla-style just like the Iraqis are doing. Besides, when they realize we’re not bluffing, they’ll release the president. We won’t have to launch.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Hamilton stood and stared out the window. “How much time left?”

  Decker instantly looked at his military aide.

  “Six hours eleven minutes thirty-six seconds,” the aide promptly replied as he studied the laptop in front of him.

  “Any more word from the Sharia Group?” Hamilton asked.

  “Only that they don’t have the president,” Andrea Mayes said. The secretary of state came over and stood next to her boss. “And what if they’re telling the truth, Mr. President? What if they don’t have him? Maybe someone is trying to lay the blame on Syria in hopes that we’d do exactly as we are doing.”

  Decker interjected, “I’ll grant you that even though authentication passwords are changed by Al Jazeera regularly, there is the possibility that someone else might have gotten access to it. But the person calling in the information had intimate details of the kidnapping that only the perpetrators would’ve known. Any terrorist organization that pulled off something like this would want the world to know. Historically, their strategy has never been to lay the responsibility off on another group. The only difference is the Sharia Group never expected us to use the nuclear card. That’s why they’re backtracking now and disclaiming culpability. The bastards have him, all right!”

  Hamilton stared at Decker. “But if they don’t, and we level Damascus?” Hamilton shook his head, turned back around and stared into the darkness of an otherwise beautiful late summer night in Washington, D.C. From the streets of the city thousands of voices screamed back at him in protest. The chants of “No nukes” managed to pierce even the thick walls of the White House, as the citizens of the U.S. made their opinion very clear to their leadership. Yet once the nuclear threat had been made, it could not be withdrawn, Hamilton understood. Otherwise America’s trillion-dollar nuclear arsenal would instantly become worthless.

  Instead of going to the White House and participating in what he considered a useless “death watch” for 6 million Syrians who were on the precipice of extinction, Carter Gray had remained at NIC headquarters. He stopped at Patrick Johnson’s empty cubicle and stared at the blank computer screen. Glitches and computer crashes. And presto, living, breathing terrorists were placed neatly into their digital graves. He sat in Johnson’s chair and surveyed the room. The picture of his fiancée, Anne Jeffries, was still on the desk. He picked it up and studied it. A nice-looking woman, Gray thought. She would find someone else to spend her life with. Johnson, from what he’d determined, was highly competent at his job but possessed the personality of a slug. He had certainly not concocted this scheme. It truly was an unbelievable thought, Gray mused. Someone at America’s premier intelligence agency had orchestrated the use of a group of supposedly dead Muslims to kidnap the president of the United States. And now the world was on the brink of global jihad.

  Gray had had the databases checked thoroughly. There were no electronic tracks showing who might have altered the files. That was not surprising, considering Johnson’s expertise and the fact that he helped create the database and spent his days troubleshooting the system. He well knew how to hide what he’d done. Yet who got him to do it in the first place and paid him well, judging by his expensive home and cars? And Gray pondered something else. Where was the president? It had to be somewhere relatively close by. Despite what he’d said to Hamilton on the subject, Gray did not believe for one moment that James Brennan was in Medina, Saudi Arabia. No Muslim would take a Christian there.

  He thought back to the day Jackie Simpson and that other agent came to NIC. They were accompanied by two of his men. Reynolds? No, Reinke. The tall, lean one. The other one was shorter and thicker. Peters. That’s right. Hemingway told him that they’d been assigned to look into the Johnson homicide. Gray picked up a phone and asked for the whereabouts of these two agents. The answer was surprising. They had not reported for duty tonight. He made another query. This surprised him even more, and then he wondered why he hadn’t asked that particular question before now.

  Gray was told that Tom Hemingway had assigned the pair to investigate the death of Patrick Johnson. At least Gray knew where Hemingway was. He’d been dispatched to the Middle East under deep cover soon after the kidnapping to see what he could find out. Hemingway had volunteered for the mission. Yet, there was no way to communicate with him. They had to wait for him to contact them. Wait for him to contact them.

  Gray put his hand in the biometric reader on Johnson’s desk, instantly giving him access to the dead man’s computer. Gray typed in a command and the result was very swift. Tom Hemingway had accessed Johnson’s computer. When Gray looked at the time stamp of when this occurred, he concluded it was when Hemingway met with Simpson and Alex. And yet something puzzled Gray greatly. Hemingway was not supposed to have access to Johnson’s computer, or any of the other data supervisors’.

  Gray slowly rose from the chair. He was too old for this job. He was not up to it anymore. The truth had been dancing in front of his eyes this whole time. Gray’s next question was an obvious one. Where? The answer to that query came almost immediately.

  Gray picked up the phone again and ordered his chopper readied immediately and then called up a team of his most loyal field operatives. He bolted from Johnson’s office and jogged down the halls of NIC.

  Gray didn’t need fancy databases to guide him to the truth. His gut was screaming the answer at him, and his gut had rarely led him down the wrong path.

  CHAPTER

  64

  THEY WERE IN ALEX’S CROWN Vic heading southwest on Route 29. Alex and Stone were in the front while Simpson and Reuben rode in the back. Alex glanced sideways at his companion. Here the Secret Service agent was, heading toward a possible showdown with a man who masterminded the kidnapping of a United States president. His “rescue
team” consisted of a rookie Secret Service agent and a big guy pushing sixty whom Adelphia called Shifty Pants. And then there was the man named Oliver Stone, who worked in a cemetery, leading them all to a place called Murder Mountain. And to top it off, if they failed, the world might very well be toast. Alex sighed. We’re all dead.

  About thirty-five minutes after they’d branched off from Route 29 onto Highway 211, they entered the small town of Washington, Virginia, the seat of Rappahannock County. From there, Stone gave intricate instructions and they rose into the mountains, soon leaving any semblance of civilization behind as asphalt roads turned to gravel and then to dirt. It was difficult to believe they were a little over two hours away from the nation’s capital and not that far east of the confluence of busy Interstates 81 and 66.

  Simpson said from the backseat, “So what is this Murder Mountain place?”

  Stone glanced at her with a bemused expression and then looked out the windshield. “Take the next right, Alex, and then pull off the road.”

  “Road!” Alex said in frustration. “What road? I haven’t seen a real road for about twenty miles. My suspension’s shot.”

  They were in the midst of the mountains now, and the only thing that looked back at them from out of the darkness was thick forest.

  Stone glanced back at Simpson. “As I said before, Murder Mountain was a training facility for special operatives of the CIA.”

  “I know that’s what you said. What I want to know is, why do you call it Murder Mountain?”

  “Well, the short answer to that is they weren’t being trained to be nice to people.”

  Simpson snorted. “So you’re saying a U.S. government agency was training murderers? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Stone pointed up ahead. “Pull the car over there, Alex. We’re going to have to walk now.”

  Alex obeyed this instruction, unclipped his magnetized flashlight from the doorpost of the Crown Vic, went around to the trunk and started passing out equipment. This included guns and night-vision gear.