Enemy at the Gates

by Vince Flynn

  “Come on, Nick. You know as well as I do that the day they set foot in one of those villages, Auma’s going to hear about it. And he’s a persistent son of a bitch.”

  “You could provide security.”

  “It’s not that easy. Those villages are wide open, they’re surrounded by dense jungle, and Auma has no problem with losing as many people as he needs to to get what he wants. That’s not a great combination.”

  “And if they’re willing to take the risk?”

  “That’s noble and all, but it’s not just their risk, is it? While they’re getting lifted out in one of your luxury helicopters, my guys will be getting their asses shot off.”

  Ward nodded thoughtfully, but didn’t respond.

  “Look, Nick. I’m not as much of a Cro-Magnon as you think. I understand how important that research is. Once we’re satisfied with the security here, we’ll look at our options down there. Maybe some quick, random hits. In and out in an hour with air support and a reasonable ground force. That’d give Chism enough time to take a few samples and make some house calls.”

  Ward reached out with his beer and clinked it against Rapp’s own. “Thanks, Mitch.”

  22

  MUHAMMAD Singh had spent his adult life as a contractor for Saudi intelligence, doing a job no one in the government was willing to touch. After a strict Islamic education and a youthful tryst with al-Qaeda, he’d been hired to be the Kingdom’s liaison with the complex web of Islamic terrorist groups throughout the world. When the royals needed to secretly coordinate with al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and myriad others, he was their man.

  In the beginning, it was work he’d been proud to perform. The Saudi government was making fools of the Americans, using the trillions of dollars they paid for oil to hire jihadists to kill them. It never ceased to amaze Singh how willing the Americans were to look away when their oil supply hung in the balance. Cash transfers to terrorist groups, the killing of their troops around the world, 9/11, the royalty’s continued support of radical madrassas. None of it mattered. The Americans would sell their own daughters into slavery for a few precious drops of what lay beneath the Saudi desert.

  Over the past few years, though, the landscape had begun to change. At first, it was almost imperceptible. Slight shifts in the focus of his clandestine meetings. Additional buffers between him and real power. The work that had once been for the glory of God had been corrupted to nourish the greed of a handful of men. The young royals who had recently come into power cared nothing about what their country had once been. They knew nothing of hardship and the comfort of Allah’s blessing. Instead, they took their comfort from palaces, Western whores, and bottles of forbidden liquor that cost more than many of their subjects earned in a year. Islam was just a convenience to them. Like Christianity in the West, it was something to be played at when useful. If there was anything that could surpass the Americans’ thirst for oil, it was the Saudi royalty’s thirst for wealth and power.

  The scent of the forest around Singh began to change as he continued forward. Rotting vegetation and blooming flowers were slowly overcome by something very different. Sweat and excrement. Sex and rotting flesh.

  Gideon Auma had rejected every offer of a civilized location for their meeting, insisting that Singh come to him in the jungle. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, of course. Auma continued to survive the ire of the entire world based on shrewdness and caution.

  The foliage began to thin, and his young guide put away his machete. The stench intensified to the point that Singh felt compelled to cover his nose and mouth with his hand. Discarded human figures appeared on either side of the poorly defined trail, strewn randomly and in various stages of decomposition. Later, they were secured to trees with barbed wire or nailed to makeshift crosses erected in the soft earth.

  Singh felt a revulsion that he hadn’t suffered even in the most decadent of ISIS camps. At least ISIS maintained the pretense of remaining faithful to Allah. Gideon Auma adopted any and all belief systems that suited him. Above it all, though, was the man himself. God’s representative on earth.

  They weaved through the looming Christian symbols, watched by the empty eye sockets of the corpses hanging from them. After a few hundred meters more, they passed from the realm of the dead to the realm of the living. Haggard girls, stolen from surrounding villages and now existing as sex slaves, scurried for cover. He imagined that their bodies, filthy, scarred, and broken, would soon end up with the others at the perimeter of the encampment.

  Many of Auma’s youthful army appeared to be intoxicated, though it was impossible to know with what. They watched him from the trees like the girls had. Like the corpses had. With curiosity. With indifference. With rage. But none dared approach or even meet his eye. None had the ability to act on their own or think for themselves. For some, those were skills that had been beaten out of them. For others, they were skills they’d never acquired. Only serving Gideon Auma mattered. Their god.

  The clearing they finally entered wasn’t really a clearing at all—just a place where the ground cover had been torn away and the canopy had been woven together in a way that would hinder a search from the air. Singh’s guide signaled for him to wait and then disappeared into the trees.

  He stood motionless near a stone altar dried with blood and fitted with chains that suggested the sacrifices performed there weren’t limited to animals. After more than half an hour, the Great Man appeared from a cave to the north. He was wearing fatigues that were somewhat more complete and in better condition than those of his followers. His beard was patchy and his hair a bit wild where it escaped a camouflage cap. The skin around his vaguely glassy eyes was dark and surprisingly undamaged.

  Weak cheers erupted from his followers as he approached and offered Singh his hand. Not to shake, though. In a way reminiscent of the pope offering his ring to be kissed. Trying to strike a balance between further insulting God and ending up on one of the crosses he’d passed, Singh took the man’s hand and bowed his head over it. The gesture seemed to be sufficiently reverential because a moment later the cult leader spoke.

  “What message do you bring from your masters?”

  Singh was only a messenger and he would do his best to disappear into that role. An irrelevant little man unworthy of Gideon Auma’s notice. And more important, unworthy of his fury.

  “They are concerned with David Chism’s escape.”

  Auma’s expression remained impassive, though it was likely that there was quite a bit more lurking behind that façade. He’d made commitments that depended on Chism’s ransom and now those promises of reward and victory had been dispersed to the wind. Hardly in keeping with his image.

  “God didn’t will it,” he said finally.

  “Indeed,” Singh responded. “Perhaps he wants you for greater things.”

  That seemed to awaken some interest in the man. “What?”

  “We believe there is an opportunity to kidnap Nicholas Ward himself. The ransom for Chism would have been millions. But for Ward? It would be billions.”

  Auma shook his head. “No one knows where his compound is and even if we did it would be difficult to access and heavily secured.”

  Singh retrieved a manilla envelope from his backpack and opened it. “Is this what you need?”

  Auma began leafing through the laminated pages. Maps. Diagrams. Overhead photos. Even schematics and electrical diagrams of their early warning system.

  “Our experts suggest that the defenses to the east are particularly weak and they’ve discovered a way to defeat Ward’s electronics. A relatively small force—perhaps as few as fifty men—could breach his defenses and overrun the compound with minimal casualties.”

  Auma studied what he’d been given. “Where did you get this?”

  “From the highest levels.”

  A very human excitement began to bleed through the African’s messianic façade. “And you’re confident all of this is accurate?”

  “More th
an confident. My masters guarantee it.” Singh fell silent for a moment, but then decided to press. “Imagine, your worship. Imagine what you could do with a billion dollars. What weapons you could buy. What followers you could attract. Uganda would be yours. And then Congo and beyond. You would be the most powerful man in Africa. Its savior.”

  His eyes turned reflective, almost mirrorlike in the fading afternoon light. “What do you want in return?”

  “We want David Chism dead.”

  “And Ward?”

  “The same if feasible.”

  “His people aren’t stupid, and neither am I,” Auma said. “They’re not going to just give me a billion dollars without guarantees.”

  Indeed, he was not stupid. It was another thing that Singh had noted in his long career. Never mistake insanity for a lack of intelligence. More than once, his survival had turned on him being able to make that distinction.

  “As long as Chism dies, we understand that it may be necessary for Ward to survive. But we trust that the man you return will no longer be the one the world knows today. And that he never will be again.”

  23

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  USA

  “FIFTEEN tons?” Irene Kennedy said, reaching for the cup of tea on her desk. “Impressive.”

  Mike Nash nodded. “One of the biggest drug seizures in Italy’s history.”

  ISIS had been in decline for some time now, discovering that holding and governing territory was quite a bit harder than pillaging and murder. Now, with much of their leadership dead, they were transforming into just another bloodthirsty drug cartel.

  “Our take on this is that it’s business as usual and not some kind of resurgence?”

  “That’s the general consensus. They’re still holding on to a little of their political and religious veneer in Syria, but it seems like they’re more interested in using the country as a base for their drug operations than a new caliphate. So, basically, that slow train wreck is now sinking in the mud.”

  She glanced at a printed agenda on her desk. “Next up is the potential bioweapons factory in North Korea.”

  “Yeah, we just got in some new satellite photos. Definitely not operational and our people are starting to question whether it ever will be.”

  “Saber rattling?”

  “There’s a good chance. Those assholes will do anything for attention.”

  “Not our attention, though. China seems to be pulling back their support. They have better places to concentrate their resources.”

  “Agreed. More and more, China’s about giving Kim just enough to keep his head above water.”

  It was a fair analysis in Kennedy’s estimation. Chinese leadership despised instability, which prevented them from pulling out entirely. But as a rising world power, their relationship with Pyongyang was becoming an embarrassing relic.

  “And that’s it,” her second-in-command said with the grin that had helped make him such a star inside the beltway. “Things have stayed at a slow simmer a lot longer than I thought it would.”

  “The calm after the storm,” Kennedy agreed. The collapse of America’s power grid, even though it lasted a relatively short time, had shaken the world to its core. The desire and resources to cause trouble were still in short supply. That wouldn’t last forever, though. It never did.

  “Even the Russian trolls have backed off. What do you think, Irene? Have we finally put the fear of god into that prick Boris Utkin?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “No? You think he’s sitting back planning something?”

  “I think he’s sitting back watching.”

  “Watching what?”

  “Anthony and Catherine Cook. I’ve met Utkin a number of times and I can tell you that he’s genuinely confused by why anyone would want to live in a democracy. He sees it as chaos for the man on the street and stifling for the born rulers like him.”

  Nash leaned back in his chair and stretched the familiar kink in his back. A souvenir from a bomb blast in Afghanistan. “And you think he might see the Cooks as sharing that worldview?”

  “It’s a possibility. What about you? What do you think?”

  “Honestly? I think democracy’s tricky. We’ve seen that over and over again when we’ve tried to export it. And even organic movements like the Arab Spring tend to fall flat on their faces. I thought we were particularly good at it, though. And why not? We don’t just learn it from birth. In a way, it’s baked into us. With obvious exceptions, our ancestors took a lot of risks for the opportunity to breathe free.”

  “You said thought. That you thought we were particularly good at it. Past tense.”

  “Democracy has always been messy, but now it seems to be going beyond that. Chaos is too strong a word, but we may be moving in that direction. And faster than I would have guessed.” He shook his head in irritation. “I wish I could send everyone in America to live under the dictatorship in Turkmenistan. Or to spend a little time in a New Delhi slum. Maybe they’d gain a little perspective about how good they have it. But I can’t. So instead, they’ll listen to politicians tell them how they’re getting screwed. Or the media telling them about all the things that can kill them. Or some YouTube influencer showing off their fake idyllic life. Where’s it all leading?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kennedy said.

  “Me too, but I’m starting to get glimpses of possible futures that didn’t exist only a few years ago. I can see our democracy collapsing into something that more resembles what they have in Moscow. I can see states actually trying to secede again. And what’s weird is that I can see those things happening in our lifetime. Think how much this country’s changed in the last five years. The last ten. And it seems like it’s accelerating. Where will we be at the end of the next decade?”

  “But what side of all that is Anthony Cook on?”

  Nash laughed. “I know you don’t like him, but he’s actually not that bad. He’s thinking about the future in a way that maybe no president has had to. He doesn’t seem particularly happy about it, though. I imagine he wants four years of smooth sailing, to get reelected, and to build a nice library. But the way I see it—and probably the way he sees it—he doesn’t have that luxury. Wrong place. Wrong time.”

  Kennedy nodded slowly, warming her hands on the teacup. Not really an answer, but at this point maybe there wasn’t one. Or maybe there was, and she just couldn’t find it. She was pulling back too much. Counting on Mike Nash to run too much interference. She needed either to do this job to the best of her ability or to step aside.

  “Contact the Chinese,” she said finally. “I want to talk to them about the North Korean facility. Over the phone if possible, face-to-face if necessary. Even if this is just a feint by the Korean leadership, it’s crossing the line. But if it’s real, then we need to decide how far we’re willing to go to head it off.”

  “Will do,” Nash said, gathering his things. “And on another subject. Have you heard anything out of Mitch lately?”

  “I haven’t. My understanding is that Scott’s still in Uganda but I’m not sure where Mitch is. I assume back home.”

  A lie, but she wasn’t sure whether she should say more. Rapp and Nash had known each other for years. If he wanted to know where his old friend was, he could pick up a phone.

  “That Chism guy seems next level. I’m glad that they got him and his people out.”

  “Someone had to.”

  “Yeah,” Nash said, slipping his file portfolio under his arm. “Cook made a mess of that. Hopefully, trying to put an operation like that together himself was just a rookie mistake. I’d hate for him to turn out to be one of those politicians who thinks getting elected makes them the world expert on every subject under the sun.”

  Kennedy just nodded, wondering if either of those explanations fit. Cook was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. Nor was he particularly tolerant of failure. Given those two observations, it was hard not to wonder if
he’d really wanted Chism rescued. Certainly, there was no love lost between him and Nicholas Ward. Was it possible that he was that petty? Would he let people die just to burn someone who hadn’t supported his political rise?

  She watched Nash leave and then spun her chair to look out the large windows behind her desk. The sprawling campus represented an incredible amount of power. Thinking about what it could become under the wrong leadership was terrifying. It would be so easy to turn the Agency against the very American people it was meant to serve. All that would have to happen is for the definition of “enemy of the state” to drift to “enemy of the administration.”

  She thought about how effective East Germany’s Stasi had been at controlling their citizens with capabilities that seemed so quaint now. Hardwired listening stations. Film cameras. Handwritten transcriptions and warehouses full of paper files. This, compared to high-definition video cameras, GPS tracking, and artificial intelligence capable of combing through millions of hours of cell phone conversations and terabytes of email.

  The question that had consumed her predecessors—that of what was possible—had become almost irrelevant. Everything was possible now. The challenge was resisting the temptation to use the tools that were right at her fingertips.

  Would the next occupant of this office be as prudent? What about the one after that? And after that? No matter how she turned the question over in her mind, she always came to the same answer.

  No.

  24

  NORTH OF MBARARA

  UGANDA

  RAPP glanced at the glow of his watch and read the time: 8 p.m. The darkness was almost as deep as the boredom.

  The airplane hangar sixty miles southeast of Nicholas Ward’s compound was in danger of becoming his permanent home. One he shared with a single Learjet and twelve mercenaries drawn from all around the world. None were from Coleman’s core team, but all were top operators the SEAL had worked with in the past.

  The sound of the jungle that surrounded the structure was inaudible through the walls, or maybe it was just overpowered by the snoring of the men scattered along its edges. Footsteps sounded on the metal roof and he instinctively turned his attention upward. The men on it were hooking up a few additional solar panels to power exterior surveillance equipment.