by Brad Thor
The last time he had spoken with his employer, who was known to him only as Akrep, or the Scorpion, the man had been enraged. He had chastised the assassin for moving too slowly with the kills and somehow knew, as he always seemed to know everything, that the last scientist had disappeared. Once more, Alomari questioned the benefit of ever having gotten involved with such a man.
True, Alomari specialized in killing for hire, but his targets had always been the obvious enemies of Islam. The only comfort he took in this assignment was that the Scorpion himself was a true believer and had pledged his life in service of the faith.
His faith notwithstanding, the Scorpion was known for being absolutely ruthless. Even bin Laden, a man not frightened by anyone, was said to conduct himself toward the Scorpion with an amazing degree of respect and admiration. It was even hinted that al-Qaeda had been the Scorpion’s idea, hatched in the mountains of Afghanistan with bin Laden during the great holy war against the Soviets.
In the end, Alomari held no illusions about why he had taken the assignment—he needed the money; or more importantly, al-Qaeda needed the money. With bin Laden cut off from a significant portion of his funds and forced into hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, the al-Qaeda organization was starved for cash. While the cell in Madrid might have sold drugs to keep themselves afloat and finance their spectacular train bombings, there were plenty of other good Muslim members of the organization who would not stoop to such a thing, and Alomari was one of them. He had had no choice but to take the Scorpion’s assignment.
It had been months since he had last been able to make contact with his mentor. Bin Laden was constantly on the move, and he expected his followers to be able to think on their own and make their own decisions. He couldn’t be expected to hold their hands like children. Throughout the grueling assignment, Alomari had tried to remind himself to be thankful. The Scorpion could have selected any number of other assassins to do this job. Alomari knew that bin Laden had played some part in recommending him, and that only made him feel doubly guilty for having failed. At first, it had seemed as if Allah himself was smiling down upon him by handing him this assignment. But he had no idea why Allah would want to halt his progress when he was so close to closing out his list and collecting his much-needed money.
The Scorpion was someone Alomari had never met face-to-face. They had only spoken by telephone. Any actual face-to-face contact was always through his second, a man named Gökhan Celik. As Alomari watched Celik enter the taverna and make his way toward the table, he slid his hand along the outside of his sport coat, just to reassure himself that the ultra-compact Taurus PT-111 pistol was still there. He cared little for whatever relationship existed between bin Laden and the Scorpion; he was taking no chances, not even with this wiry shadow of a man who was the Scorpion’s second.
Gökhan Celik was seventy-five years old if he was a day, with a pair of narrow, dark eyes and a long pointed nose that floated above a set of terrible teeth. The man was devoid of any chin, and as a result, his face seemed to be only an extension of an otherwise twig-thin neck.
Despite his appearance, Alomari knew the man was brilliant. It was said that Celik had been the Scorpion’s counselor since he was a teen, and almost everything the Scorpion had learned, he had learned from Gökhan Celik. In other words, Celik was not a man to be underestimated either.
Dressed in a chic linen suit, Celik could have been any aging Greek businessman out for an early, run-of-the-mill business lunch with a colleague, except that Celik was no Greek and this was no run-of-the-mill luncheon. Celik had come to pink-slip one of the world’s deadliest assassins.
Ever affected by his mother’s cultured influence on his upbringing, Alomari asked his guest if he cared for something to eat or drink before they began.
Celik looked at him and replied, “Let’s not waste any more time, Khalid. You know why I’m here.”
“To discuss the remaining scientist.”
“No. That subject is no longer open for discussion. I’m here to dismiss you. You’re fired.”
“Fired?”
“Of course you can keep the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar deposit you were paid, but that’s all you are going to receive.”
“But that doesn’t begin to even cover my expenses.”
“Too bad. You knew the deal when you took it—all the items on the list were to be taken care of. You failed.”
Alomari had suspected that this was the reason Celik had demanded the meeting, but true to his Arab heritage, he haggled desperately for a few moments in an attempt to keep the assignment alive.
“The contract is canceled, and that’s final,” said Celik as he placed his gnarled hands on the table and rose from his chair. “I thought we owed it to you to tell you in person.”
That was the least they owed him, and if nothing else, it should have been the Scorpion himself sitting across from him, but Alomari let it slide. “I can still finish the assignment, “He said. “There’s still time.”
“No, there isn’t, and this has gone far beyond your capabilities.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? I mean that if you had acted faster, maybe you would have gotten to Tokay before he talked.”
“He talked? To whom?”
“That’s what we’re going to have to find out. Now, we not only need to locate and silence Tokay, but we also need to silence anyone else he may have talked to. But we’re going to do that without you. Consider yourself lucky that your ineptitude isn’t getting you silenced as well.”
Alomari was seething, and subconsciously his hand began to move for his pistol. When he realized what he was doing, he tried to calm himself. Not here. Not now. It must be someplace else, away from witnesses.
As Gökhan Celik left the taverna, the assassin came to the conclusion that the Scorpion had made a very grave error in underestimating him. For that, Gökhan Celik was going to lose his life. The key would be in making it look like an accident, but accidents were the al-Qaeda operative’s specialty.
An hour later, his anger only partially cooled, Khalid Alomari crossed the lobby of the most elegant hotel in Athens, the Grande Bretagne. He was disgusted not only with how the Scorpion conducted business but also with how he protected, or more appropriately didn’t protect, his people. Gökhan Celik was supposed to be the man’s most important lieutenant, but the Scorpion allowed him to stay, unguarded, in the same suite of the same hotel every time he came to Athens. The Scorpion’s reputation might frighten most of the people who knew him, but it didn’t frighten Khalid Alomari, especially when so much money was on the line.
“How dare you?” demanded Celik as Alomari forced his way into the suite and knocked the old man to the floor.
“I want to know everything you know about Emir Tokay and who he was talking to before he disappeared.”
“You’ve already been told that’s no longer any of your concern.”
“You should have paid me what you owe me, Gökhan.”
“What do we owe you? You failed. We owe you nothing.”
“It was a small price compared to what it’s going to cost you now.”
“What do you mean, what it’s going to cost us now?”
“We both know that Emir Tokay has knowledge you don’t want anyone else to have. I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m going to sell him back to the Scorpion at ten times what you should have paid me,” replied the assassin as he slammed his foot down into the old man’s hip and heard the bone snap like dry kindling.
“You are a dead man!” howled Celik.
“Everyone must die,” replied Alomari, “but not all of us get to choose when. Answer my question and I will let you live. Who was Emir talking to before he disappeared?”
Celik spat at the pants leg of his attacker. “I will see you dead. Do you understand me? Do you know what Akrep will do to you?”
Alomari shook the spit from his trouser leg and said, “You have cheated me
out of what is rightfully mine. Do you just expect me to slink away? I will give you one last chance to answer my question. What do you know about Tokay?”
Celik glared at the man in defiance.
“You should have known I wouldn’t give up, Gökhan. Things will only get worse from here. If you do not answer me, I will track down your daughter and your grandchildren, and they will be next. I am a man of my word. You know I will do it. Even if it takes me the next five years of my life, I will not stop until I have visited upon them deaths more horrible than any you can possibly imagine.”
Celik’s body was trembling.
“What will it be, Gökhan?”
“Akrep will know you did this.”
“I don’t think so,” said Alomari as he withdrew an empty hypodermic syringe from his sport coat pocket. “Embolisms are quite regrettable, but not uncommon in men of your age. Our friend the Scorpion may have his suspicions, but with the fall you took that broke your hip, I don’t think they will trouble him for too long.”
“You will be punished for this,” moaned Celik.
“As you will have Allah’s ear in Paradise before I do, I am certain you will do all you can to make that so. In the meantime, it is not too late for you to save your family.”
Celik didn’t need any further convincing to know the man was telling the truth. The assassin’s reputation was assurance enough.
EIGHTEEN
T HE W HITE H OUSE
W ASHINGTON , DC
N EXT DAY
T he president stood staring through the glass doors of the Oval Office onto the Rose Garden and said, “I couldn’t be more serious. I want this entire thing to go away, Chuck. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. Believe me, we all want it to go away, but just wishing isn’t going to make it happen. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Not now.”
“I don’t care about putting it back in the goddamn bottle,” snapped Rutledge as he turned to face his chief of staff. “I just don’t want some self-aggrandizing senator forwarding her career by pulling the mask off of one of the good guys. After everything he’s given to his country, forcing Scot Harvath to wear a scarlet letter is not only unfair, it’s just plain wrong.”
“With all due respect, sir,” replied Charles Anderson, “it’s not Harvath she wants wearing that scarlet letter. It’s you.”
The president turned away from the doors and walked back over behind his desk. “Then why doesn’t she come after me?”
“She is coming after you, Jack. This is how it’s done. You know that.”
“Well, the way it’s done stinks.”
“I’ll second that,” agreed Anderson.
“You don’t ruin good people who this country depends on. If she wants me, she should come get me.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her that when she gets here. If you have any compromising photographs of yourself that you’d like to hand over to me now, maybe I could get her to agree to a trade.”
The president appeared to smile, but it could have very well been only a grimace as he mentally moved on to his next topic. “What do we have from the Joint Chiefs and USAMRIID?”
Anderson removed a briefing report from the folder in front of him and said, “It’s not good. USAMRIID has cultured the illness, but it seems resistant to everything they’re throwing at it. They’ve got representatives from the CDC and the Mayo Clinic’s exotic disease department working with them now, but they’ve yet to make any progress. At least it’s still contained to that one incident in Asalaam.”
“For now,” replied the president, “and that’s only because for the moment it suits the purposes of whoever’s behind this thing. What’s our state of readiness if it makes an appearance here?”
Anderson referred back to his briefing report and replied, “First responders are going to be primary care physicians and hospital emergency rooms. We’ve put out a bulletin via the Healthwatch system to report any cases involving the symptoms we’re aware of to their local public health department. Those departments will report back to a crisis center at the Department of Homeland Security. The key is being able to contain any outbreak as quickly as possible.”
“What do we do if we can’t contain it?”
Anderson tried to calm the president. “Let’s worry about that if and when it happens.”
“Chuck, you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. They may have finally been able to come up with the biggest stick on the playground. A stick that spares only the most faithful to their beliefs.”
“Which makes us confident there has got to be a way around it—a way to be immunized against it.”
Rutledge wanted to share his chief of staff’s optimism, but he’d always been one to prepare for the worst and then, and only then, hope for the best. “If we can’t contain it and we can’t immunize against it, what then?”
“USAMRIID is still developing scenarios.”
“Let’s cut to the chase. What are we talking about worst case?”
The president’s chief of staff was reluctant to answer, but he had little choice. “Worst case, we initiate the Campfire protocol to guarantee we stop this thing dead in its tracks.”
The color drained from Rutledge’s face. “Making me the first U.S. president to ever authorize a thermonuclear strike on his own soil and against his own people.”
NINETEEN
L ONDON
J illian Alcott, chemistry teacher at London’s prestigious Abbey College, carefully picked her way through the swollen puddles along Notting Hill’s Pembridge Road. Arriving at the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, the five-foot-eight redhead with deep green eyes and high cheekbones politely but firmly shouldered her way through the crowd that had gathered at the entrance to take shelter from the storm. After collapsing her distinctive Burberry umbrella and giving it her customary three firm snaps to rid it of any residual rainwater, she tucked it beneath her left arm and removed her Tube pass from her wallet.
Though Jillian was in fine physical condition and could have easily walked the distance, saving time by cutting through Kensington Gardens, the weather was just too disagreeable for her. Ever since she was a small child, she had never liked thunderstorms.
Jillian was seven years old when her parents left her alone with her grandmother to drive inland to sell some of their livestock. It was a late Friday afternoon, and the weather began to kick up half an hour after her parents had left. She stared out the front windows of their little stone house at the enormous white caps forming on the ever-darkening Celtic Sea. Her grandmother pulled out all of her board games and they played every one of them in an effort to take Jillian’s mind off the storm raging outside. Jillian tried her absolute hardest to be brave, but with each booming knell of thunder the house shook, and she was certain the next would send the tiny structure toppling over the nearby cliffs and into the sea.
Jillian’s grandmother tried everything to calm the little girl, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, she decided to draw Jillian a hot bath and infuse it with lavender.
With the bath drawn, Jillian’s grandmother was just about to put her in when another flash of lightning blazed and all of the power in the house went out. A roaring clap of thunder followed that shook the small dwelling and rattled the windows so hard the glass seemed poised to fall out of its panes.
Jillian’s grandmother left her in the bathroom for just a moment while she went to search for candles, but she never came back.
The little girl used her hand to feel along the wall and guide her toward the kitchen. Floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and every cold brass doorknob she touched along the way sent chills racing up her spine. When she finally made it into the kitchen, she immediately sensed that something was wrong.
She called out softly to her grandmother but received no response. The candles were in a drawer on the far side of the room, but Jillian was afraid to cross the kitchen in the dark. Something inside her tol
d her not to move. She waited and waited until another flash of lightning came, and when it did, she had the shock of her seven-year-old life. Lying on the floor was her gran. Apparently, she had tripped in the dark and in her fall had hit her head on the kitchen table. Upon seeing the pool of blood that was quickly covering the floor, Jillian screamed and ran.
She dashed into the front hall and picked up the telephone to call the police. If there is an emergency, always call the police first, her parents had told her. Jillian picked up the phone, ready to dial the number she had learned by heart, but the phone was dead.
Still in her pajamas, Jillian thought only of her gran. Grabbing her mac from the front closet, she quickly pulled it on, followed by her bright red Wellington-style boots. When she opened the front door, she was greeted by an enormous burst of wind that almost pushed her back inside. The little girl had no choice; she had to get help.
Through the storm, Jillian ran the mile and a half down their muddy road to the junction only to find that it had been washed out. She was trapped. There was no way she could cross the torrent of flood-water. There was no way she could get to the neighbors, or anyone else for that matter. There was no way she could get help. There was nothing she could do but return to the house.
When she did, she realized she would have to tend to her grand-mother. Mustering her courage, she reentered the kitchen and found a towel, intending to begin by cleaning the blood from her gran’s head wound. As she approached, though, she realized her grandmother wasn’t moving. There wasn’t even the rhythmic heave and fall of her chest as she took in air. Jillian crept closer and, placing her hand alongside her grandmother’s cold flesh, realized that she was gone.
The storm raged for two more days. Seven-year-old Jillian couldn’t bring herself to remain inside with the body of her dead grandmother lying in the kitchen, so she stayed in the barn, keeping warm beneath a pile of horse blankets. When the police finally did arrive, she wondered how they had even known she needed help.
