by Graham Brown
“And how will it be any different if I help you?” he said. The question was spat at her with venom, but she sensed there was at least a hint of honesty in it. How would it be different?
“Lives will be spared,” she said. “Millions of lives. Maybe billions.”
“And my family in La Courneuve?”
“I can’t promise you it will be better,” she said. “But it won’t be worse. At least your mother will still have a son.”
“I will not tell you,” he insisted.
She sensed it slipping away.
“There’s nothing to be gained from this,” she said, feeling desperate now. “No riches, immortality, or fame. Only punishment.”
“There is no God to punish me,” he said.
“Maybe some believe that,” she said, “but you don’t. You have to believe in God to be angry with Him. You hate Him for what He’s given you, but you believe He’s out there.”
“I don’t,” he insisted.
Now he looked away and Danielle knew this was the moment. She had to make him speak or he would retreat back into the shell of Scindo, the false persona that protected him, and they’d never break him in time, no matter what they did.
“Even if that’s the case, you’re still at the end,” she said. “My friends will find us. They’ll take me in chains and they’ll take you somewhere that will seem like the darkest pit of hell. And I promise you, Yousef, they will not stop until they have made you speak every last secret you hold.”
“I will not talk.”
“You will,” she said, pitifully. “If not to me, to them. They’ll break you and you’ll hate yourself for being broken. And you will have nothing left.”
He looked up at her.
“And what do you have left?” He finally sounded as sad as her.
“I have myself, Yousef. I did what was right in trying to save you.”
She saw him quiver and look down. The drugs, the lack of sleep, the mental strain, she hoped it had weakened him enough.
“Please,” she asked quietly.
He gazed at the floor.
“Please.”
He did not look up, but staring at the ground, as if in a trance, he finally spoke.
“There’s an island,” he said.
“Where?”
“Out there,” he said, still looking at the ground but nodding toward the south and the Persian Gulf. “There are buildings there, bombed and full of holes. A ship, a freighter I think, it sits on the rocks. That is where they took me.”
He swayed back and forth but still did not look up.
“They must have taken your friend there.”
“Does the island have a name?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Yousef, please. I can stop them,” she said. “But you have to tell me.”
“I hope you stop them,” he mumbled. “It is only an hour by boat. But I don’t know if it even has a name. There are lots of birds there.”
She took a breath. She hoped it was the truth, and she sensed it was the truth. If there was an island with a bombed-out ship beached on the rocks at its edge, one satellite pass would find it. And if they could find it, the terror could be stopped.
“They have missiles,” Yousef said. “I saw them. They are for the virus.”
A chill shot through her as she heard this news. The cult had everything they needed. But it had been only seventeen hours. There was a chance. “Thank you,” she said.
Yousef did not respond. He just stared at the ground. She saw tears hit the floor.
“I’ve done things …,” he said, sounding broken inside.
“We all have,” she told him. He looked up.
“I am a traitor to everyone,” he said, tears filling his eyes and a panic of sorts growing over him. “I wish you would kill me.”
Her heart felt for him, despite all he’d been a part of, despite everything he’d probably done. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty. He seemed as much a victim as anyone else.
“You don’t deserve to die,” she said.
“They will mock me,” he said, shaking.
She reached out and touched his face, wiping away some of the tears. He was sobbing, breaking down. He looked up, unending tears streaming over his face.
“They will say: Here is the traitor. Here is Scindo. He rejected the Almighty and then betrayed those who took him in.”
“No,” she said firmly.
“They will,” he insisted.
“No,” she repeated. “They will say Here is Yousef Kazim. Who in his darkest hour rejected the devil and gave the world a chance at life.”
He gazed at her with wide eyes, as if some hope had come back within him. He continued to sob but he said no more.
Several minutes later, Yousef’s cries had ceased, the numbness had returned, and she allowed him, still cuffed, to lie down and finally sleep.
She walked out of the small room, shutting what was left of the door behind her. She continued across the work bay to where she’d parked the car.
A figure stood beside it.
“Did he tell you?” Hawker asked quietly.
She nodded, thankful but exhausted. “Sorry about shooting you,” she said.
He rubbed his shoulder. “It worked. But don’t ever let those riot police tell you rubber bullets don’t hurt.”
“Blood pack was a nice touch.”
“Almost dropped it,” he said.
She nodded, but felt almost emotionless after all that had happened.
“I’ll bring him back to the house,” she said. “I don’t want him to see you.”
There were many reasons for that. Strategically, it made sense to keep the lie going. But mostly she didn’t want Yousef to feel he’d been tricked. He had made an honorable choice, an almost impossible choice. She wanted him to feel whatever goodness might come from what he’d done.
Hawker nodded.
“He’s not evil,” she said. “He just fell.”
“We all fall,” Hawker said.
He seemed to understand. It was one of the things that Danielle found most refreshing in him. He was filled with arrogance at times and self-righteousness, but it was balanced by pity. He could look at the fallen and see himself.
CHAPTER 48
With dusk settling over the Middle East, Danielle sat in the left front seat of a maroon powerboat as it skimmed across the glassy surface of the Persian Gulf. To her right, Hawker’s friend Keegan piloted the craft, while Hawker sat behind them, studying an image on the laptop computer that had been downloaded from the NRI mainframe. The body armor and the AR-15s they’d taken into the desert rested beside him on the bench seat.
A mile ahead she saw the outline of a crude carrier heading their way. The ship rode high in the water, its tanks empty.
“Stay clear of the channel,” she said. “Don’t want to be confused for suicide bombers.”
“Right,” Keegan said. “Any idea where we’re going yet?”
“South,” she said.
“I figured that,” he said, “since we’d need wheels to go north from where we were.”
She moved back to where Hawker was and sat down beside him.
“What do you think?”
He turned the laptop toward her. She’d studied the image briefly when it arrived, but since it would likely come down to planning an assault on the island, she figured Hawker was more qualified to look at it.
“This image came from an NSA satellite?” he asked.
“A pass this morning,” she said. “Caught the island in the sweep, but it wasn’t the target, so the information isn’t as detailed as I’d like.”
“The buildings are all on the south side,” he said. “What isn’t blackened and burned looks abandoned.”
Danielle zoomed in on the island. It couldn’t have been more than an eighth of a mile across. On one side there were bundles of mangled pipes and what looked like pumping equipment. A few control buildings and a he
licopter landing platform built out over the water looked shot full of holes and falling apart. A four-hundred-foot vessel lay against the west edge of the island. It was difficult to tell if it was docked or had been run aground.
“Looks like what Yousef described,” she said.
“It also looks abandoned.”
“I believe he told me the truth as he knew it,” she said. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t clear out once they got Sonia or the seeds.”
Hawker nodded. “I believe he told you the truth, too. Do we have an infrared scan?”
“Not on this pass,” she said, then glanced at her watch. “But the second pass should have gone over a few minutes ago. We’ll know if there is activity there any minute now.”
Thirty seconds later the satellite phone lit up. Danielle grabbed it.
For a second all she heard was the buffeting of the wind, caught in her own transceiver’s microphone. She turned to the side, sheltering the phone. Moore’s voice came through.
“Danielle?”
“Go ahead, Arnold.”
“Where are you right now?”
“We’re out in the Gulf, heading due south. Do you have the latest pass?”
“We do,” Moore said. “NSA confirms heat sources from the stranded freighter and some of the other structures. That island should be dark but it’s not.”
About as she’d expected. It was good news. “So this is probably the right place.”
“Seems to be,” Moore said.
There was a shortness in his voice that she didn’t like. As if he was waiting to drop some bad news.
“Where do we meet up with the assault team?” she asked.
“Danielle …”
“We could trail them in,” she said. “Or we could go in with them. Either way they’re going to need our help to confirm what we’re looking for.”
“There’s not going to be an assault team,” Moore said.
That was odd. They’d been preparing one an hour ago.
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re not raiding the place.”
“Why?” she asked.
“That rock is in Iranian waters,” Moore reminded her. “It’s been in dispute between Iran and Iraq for decades. The damage you see was done all the way back in ’86. No one’s touched it since.”
“So?” she said. “What does that have to do with us? Surely we’re not letting Iranians deal with it.”
“Yes,” he said sarcastically, “everyone here is eager to tell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the weapon of mass destruction he’s always wanted is just waiting for him a few miles off his coast.”
“Then what are we doing?” she asked. “If there’s no assault team, and we’re not going to involve the Iranians …”
“The navy’s going to hit the island with a spread of Tomahawks,” Moore said. “It’s a presidential order.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes from now.”
She took a breath. “What about the hostages?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Obviously they’ll be lost if they’re on-site.”
Silence rang on the line and Danielle glanced over at Hawker. He could hear every word. He hadn’t reacted, almost as if he suspected it would go this way.
She felt for him. She understood why the president would make the decision Moore had attributed to him, and sentiment was not going to override that. But there were logical reasons not to blindly obliterate the island.
“What if the cult isn’t there?” she said. “What if these are just some squatters? We’re going to end up thinking we’ve saved the world only to get sucker-punched one day.”
“We can establish that after the fact.”
“After you blow the island to hell?” she said. “Do you think there will be enough left to establish anything? Do you think the Iranians are going to say, ‘Hey, go ahead put some inspectors on our island, why not? Nice of you to blow it up for us in the first place’?”
Moore responded with evidence. “The freighter wasn’t there six months ago,” he said. “We’ve tracked it to an undisclosed buyer in Singapore. It was dumped for scrap. It should be in pieces somewhere getting melted down, not jammed up on the beach of an Iranian island in the Gulf. This is the site, we’re sure of it. And after what we’ve learned no one’s taking any chances.”
Danielle knew he was right, but she could only think of the heartbreak, and not just Hawker’s.
“The virus Ranga created can be used for good,” she said. “You know that. It could lead to all kinds of treatments, things that are just theoretical right now. You destroy that ship, you destroy the research.”
“Better than a worldwide catastrophe,” he said.
“And if they have another base?”
He hesitated.
“Come on, Arnold. There’s a reason the CDC keeps anthrax and smallpox and other nasty germs on hand, because we need to research them and understand them in case something happens. This ship is our only chance to get ahold of 951 and the Eden virus. Our only chance to understand them. You blow it to ashes and the next time we see a virus like this, it’ll be too late for everyone.”
“Danielle, I know all this,” Moore said, sounding exhausted. “I’ve spent the last hour making the same arguments to the president and his staff, but one concern overrides all the others. According to your prisoner they have missiles. Unless they’re extremely short-range that puts Kuwait, southern Iraq, and most of the Gulf in the red zone. One missile, one dispersal, and it’s all over.”
The weight of the truth pressed her down like a heavy stone on grass. She felt spent, exhausted, defeated. She couldn’t even think of another argument.
After days of fighting with Hawker, Moore, and Yousef, after traveling from Washington to Croatia to Paris to Beirut and then Iraq, she had nothing left, especially since she knew Moore was right.
Moore sensed it. “I appreciate everything you and Hawker have done,” he said. “But direct from the president, you’re both to stand down.”
The buffeting sound returned. It took all she had to speak another word. “Anything else?”
“Please tell Hawker I’m sorry,” Moore said.
“I will,” she said, and then she clicked off and Moore was gone.
On the speeding boat in the Persian Gulf, she placed the phone down and turned to Hawker.
“You don’t even have to say it,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him.
“They do what they have to,” he said, sounding oddly at peace with the order.
She could guess why. “You’re still going in,” she said.
He nodded.
“Then I’m going with you.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “It’s not your fight.”
“Your fight is my fight,” she said. “Besides, this is my job. They bomb that place to hell without any idea what’s there and we’ll never know if we’ve dodged a bullet or if it just hasn’t been fired yet.”
Hawker nodded, then looked past her. “Keegan, you want us to drop you over the side with a life jacket or two?”
Keegan looked back from the helm as if Hawker had lost his mind. “You know I can’t bloody well swim,” he said.
“You grew up on an island,” Hawker replied. “You were a Royal Marine. Last I heard marine means something to do with the water.”
“What can I tell you,” Keegan said. “Standards were lower back then. Besides, the chance to violate Iranian sovereignty for a second time in two days absolutely intrigues me. I don’t think it’s ever been done. We could be legends. I could retire, put on fifty kilos and still get free pints at every pub in London if I had that feather in my cap.”
Hawker chuckled and squinted into the distance. “So it’s the three of us against whatever they have waiting.” He turned back to her. “How many guys do you think they have?”
Danielle exhaled. “Knowing our luck, at least a hundred or so.”
The absurdity of it brought a smile to Hawker’s face. He began to laugh. Keegan did, too. And Danielle joined in, giggling at her own joke.
“Poor bastards,” Keegan said. “They don’t stand a chance.”
CHAPTER 49
Having given the order, Arnold Moore waited. With his eyes closed, and his tie long gone, he tried to relax. News would come eventually. Whether good or bad, it would come. He didn’t have to go looking for it now.
He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock. Fourteen minutes remained until the air strike. In the silence and the dark, each second seemed like an eternity.
The phone rang, startling him. He focused on the small glowing numerals above the keypad and recognized Danielle’s coding.
He hit the speaker button.
“We’re a mile from the island,” she said, before he could utter a word. “We see no activity.”
Moore leaned forward. “What the hell are you doing, Danielle?”
“I’m sorry, Arnold,” she said. “But we’re going in.”
He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Then again he almost expected it.
“We’ll be on the island in less than a minute,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Goddamn it!” he shouted. “Don’t do this, Danielle! It’s suicide. It’s a violation of—”
She cut him off. “Once upon a time, you violated every rule, order, and directive you’d been given to come get me. You turned to Hawker when no one else would help. I’m not letting him down now that it’s our turn.”
She spoke calmly, with certainty, and Moore felt his throat tighten. He had no response that could stand the light of scrutiny. He’d done exactly what she’d said. He also knew there was no way for this to end well.
“We have some weapons,” she said. “We’ll do what we can to take them by surprise. But …”
“But what?”
“We’ve been one step behind this whole time and if this goes sideways and we disappear … then by all means, please obliterate that island as planned.”
Moore’s heart churned inside him. He was proud of her resolve and filled with fear for the outcome. The simple fact was he couldn’t stop her. The truth was, he didn’t know if he wanted to.
