Covert Action

11 The Settling of Accounts

There was little time for Steven and Garrett to talk during the flight. Once the Jet Ranger had cleared the mountains and began the descent into the Zambezi basin, the pilot raced along at no more than a hundred feet to stay under the Lusaka airport radar. A lot of smuggling went on between the two countries, which meant that a lot of bribes were paid to customs officials — and to air traffic controllers. They were making a border crossing without the benefit of having greased the right palm. The Bell helo had no terrain-following radar, but the pilot had a great deal of stick time with the 1st Special Operations Wing. He wore night vision goggles, which enabled him to race along, dodging the occasional structure or acacia tree, but it made for a very rough ride in the back. Both Steven and Garrett were tightly belted in. As they began to pick up the lights of Lusaka, the pilot straightened out and did his best to appear like a helicopter on a routine mission for some NGO.

“We’re going to set down at a small hospital. It’s not far from where we need to be, and they are accustomed to helos coming and going. But the helo will drop us and go. I need to get this bird back to the Jeki airstrip, refueled and ready to support AKR. They should be just about ready to come out of there.”

Garrett listened, but he was on the edge of his seat. He had all but forgotten about the events at the Makondo Hotel. When they did come to mind, he knew that AKR could handle them. And after all, AKR was in fact the ground commander. Right now, he wanted to be out of the helo and on the ground. “Who did you say was going to meet us?”

Steven put a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t say. I was just told that two men would be meeting us, and that they would take us to where they were holding Judy.”

“But who are they; how much do they know?”

“Relax,” Steven said in a reassuring tone. “From what I’ve been led to believe, they know enough to be able to help and not ask too many questions. Here.” He handed Garrett a Sig Sauer .45 and several loaded magazines. “Better leave the rifle on the helo.” Garrett pulled the slide of the pistol to chamber a round and thumbed the hammer drop to safe the weapon, all in a single fluid motion. He pushed the pistol into his belt at the small of his back and pulled his T-shirt over it.

The Jet Ranger came in hot, flared quickly, and neatly settled onto the pad. Garrett was off running to the sedan that was parked between the helo pad and the hospital. Steven, after a word with one of the pilots, was right behind him. There were two men in the sedan. The one in the passenger side was black; the man at the wheel, white. Large, serious-looking men, they both emerged from the car when the helo landed. As Garrett and Steven reached the car, the helo rose, and for a moment the area was enveloped in blowing dust. The aircraft cleared off very quickly and headed back, low and fast, to the east. In the silence of the retreating helo, Steven held out his hand to the black man.

“Ambassador, thank you for meeting us like this. I’m Steven Fagan. I’d like you to meet my colleague, Garrett Walker. Garrett, this is Ambassador Conrad.”

“Ambassador?” Garrett said dubiously.

“Mr. Fagan, Mr. Walker, my pleasure. And I’d like you to meet Luther Hallasey.”

Garrett noticed that both of them wore body armor vests, and both had sidearms. “Shall we get to the business at hand?” Conrad asked.

“Whoa, what’s going on here?” Garrett demanded. “This is not a diplomatic mission. This is a kidnapping. What do you think you’re doing?”

Conrad turned and face Garrett straight on. “Now you listen to me, Mr. Walker. This is a poor, sleepy African nation. I’m the ambassador here, the President’s representative. A few days ago I get a federal agent on my doorstep, telling me, and no one else, that some private army is going to launch an invasion from my nation into another sleepy African nation. She says it’s a matter of national security. Thinking this could have some negative consequences to my sleepy African nation, I have her discreetly watched by a local policeman I trust. And someone ends up bagging her. So what do I do now? It’s supposedly a national security issue, but I have no one to call but my boss, the Secretary of State. He tells me to mind my own business; he says the people who cooked this up have made their bed — let them lie in it. I’m ordered to tell no one and do nothing. Well, sir, no one kidnaps an American in my nation. I can’t call out the local constabulary, but I can and will do something about it.”

Garrett softened. “Sir, I didn’t know. And I do appreciate what you’ve done, probably more than you can imagine. You see, for me, this is personal. But why don’t you let Steven and me take it from here? This is our job.”

The driver who had come around the car to stand with his ambassador now spoke. “Look pal, maybe it’s personal for us as well.”

The ambassador intervened. “What Sergeant Hallasey means is that we have a personal stake in Agent Burks’s safety as well. And perhaps also in letting those up the line know that they shouldn’t keep those of us here on the country team in the dark. Now, the sergeant and I are going to go get Miss Burks. You may come along or not, as you please.” With that the ambassador climbed back into the front passenger seat.

“And don’t worry about the ambassador,” Hallasey added. “When he was in the Corps, he led the first recon team into Kuwait City. He’s a helluva marine. I know. I was his radioman.” He walked around the car and climbed behind the wheel.

Steven and Garrett looked at each other and shrugged. They climbed into the rear seat, and the car sped off. The African dawn was just making its way across the high Zambian plain to Lusaka.

At the Makondo Hotel, the sun would not clear the mountains for another hour or more, but it was now fully daylight. The Africans now guarding the main hotel building were extra vigilant, as they no longer had the advantage of seeing at night while their enemy couldn’t. Tomba and AKR crouched at the lobby door of the Makondo peering out. Inside, fifteen members of the clinical staff sat on the floor, facing the wall as they had been instructed, while a wary Mohammed Senagal kept an eye on them. A few had chanced a look behind them and received a kick in the kidneys from Senagal. Most sat quietly resigned, awaiting their fate. Many assumed they would be killed, and several were weeping softly. In the lounge, Wilson sat with his weapon on François Meno and Johann Mitchell. Meno, now encased in Rosenblatt’s black chem-bio suit, had his hands bound in front of him. Mitchell sat quietly, waiting for what might come next. Elvis Rosenblatt crossed the lobby under the weight of two packs — the test equipment he had brought, plus what notes and ledgers he could scavenge from the lab. He had also photographed everything with a small digital camera. When he reached AKR and Tomba, he slung the packs to the floor and dropped to one knee beside them.

“All set,” he said without preamble. “I have what I need, and I’ll want to take two of the scientists out with us — those two.” He pointed at Meno and Mitchell. “Will that be a problem?”

AKR looked to Tomba. “The men we lost. Will we take their bodies with us?”

Tomba shook his head. “We will bury them here, where they fell. It is our way. I will need a few minutes to make them ready. We will find a place in the earth for them nearby.”

“How about the guard force? Think they will give us a problem on the way out?”

“I doubt it,” Tomba replied. “Their leader is dead, and they have been scattered by the attack. The few survivors, if there are any, will watch us from well out in the bush. They will come back and scavenge the area and get away as best they can.”

AKR considered this and nodded, glancing at his watch. “Okay, our first bird will be here in a few minutes,” he said. To Tomba, “Start pulling the men back toward the helo pad and get your burying detail to work.” He knew he had fifteen men to extract from the area — that would be three loads by Jet Ranger. “Elvis, I want you to get the two scientists up to the helo pad. Take Wilson with you, and one other man that Tomba will assign to the first lift. The rest of us will finish up here, bury our dead, and be ready to leave as soon as the helos can get back for us.” Tomba and Rosenblatt nodded. “Very well, let’s make it happen.”

Tomba began to give instructions to the men out on the perimeter. Wilson and Rosenblatt escorted Meno and Mitchell to the helo pad. Per Rosenblatt’s instructions, Meno was bound, and a pillowcase covered his suit helmet; Mitchell walked free. Soon they heard the rotors of an inbound helicopter. The four of them, plus one of Tomba’s Africans from the perimeter, boarded the Jet Ranger and lifted away from the complex. The helo struggled but gradually gained altitude and transitional lift and flew down the valley, quickly reaching cruising speed. Soon it began to climb toward the mountains in the west.

AKR saw the helo off and ran back to the hotel lobby. “Get them outside and away from the building,” he said to Mohammad Senagal, and then set off to find Tomba.

Senagal began to herd the remaining medical staff outside and into the courtyard in front of the hotel, littered by the aftermath of battle. Two vehicles were still smoldering, beside the remains of a truck that had been dismembered by rocket fire. The bodies lying about the courtyard and access road were beginning to draw flies. There was the smell of burned rubber and death. Many of those filing from the hotel entrance recoiled from the scene, and a few tried to turn back, only to receive a blow to the ribs from Senagal. He drove them like sheep, making them line up under an acacia tree and kneel down. They were sure this courtyard was soon to become a killing ground. One man leapt to his feet and began to run down the drive, away from the hotel. Senagal took leisurely aim and put a bullet between his shoulder blades. Like all the M-4 rifles carried by the Africans, the rounds were APLP bullets. On impact, the bullet entered the man’s chest cavity and literally exploded his heart and lungs, opening a huge hole in his side. He was dead before he hit the ground. Those under the acacia tree watched in horror. Senagal lowered his rifle and turned to them.

“You will probably die soon enough, but there is no need to hasten the event. If any of you so much as gets to his feet, I will shoot you where you stand.”

No one moved.

In a stand of trees above the hotel, two of the Africans, stripped to the waist, dug furiously at an elongated pit. They were four feet into the rich, black soil, throwing shovels of dirt with the rhythm of two machines. Another kept watch with his rifle. Near the grave lay two forms, each wrapped in his sleeping blanket. A dark figure silently approached the two men at work.

“That is all we have time for, brothers,” Tomba said. “Put them to rest.”

The two men scrambled up from their work and helped Tomba ease the bodies into the hole. Saying nothing, they immediately began to shovel the soil back. Tomba turned to the man on guard duty. “When you have finished, fall back to the helo pad. We are soon to be gone.” The lone sentry nodded and returned to his security duties. Ten minutes later, the two gravediggers tossed aside their shovels and recovered their rifles and field equipment. The three moved off in the direction of the helo pad in a file, with good spacing between them.

AKR walked down the main corridor of the hotel, tossing thermite grenades into one room, then another. When he reached the main entrance, he lobbed the final two — one into the lounge, and another behind the reception desk. The explosions were not loud, but they hurled bits of molten white phosphorus everywhere, setting fire to all they touched. By the time he had cleared the entrance portico, the belly of the Makondo Hotel was burning furiously.

AKR was standing behind the line of scientists. They had been stripped to the waist and all were barefoot. Mohammed Senagal passed in front of them with a small canvas bag, into which they were ordered to turn out the contents of their pockets. When he reached the end of the line, he had a sack full of money, watches, wallets, and personal identification.

“The vehicles?” AKR said to Tomba.

“They have been taken care of.” While AKR had been firing the hotel, one of the other Africans had visited each car and truck not destroyed in the attack and put a small thermite charge on each engine block. All transport serving the compound had effectively been destroyed.

“Excellent. You and Mohammed head for the pad. I will be along in a moment.”

“We are not going to shoot them?” Senagal said, rifle at the ready. There was a murderous look on his face. He genuinely wanted to kill them; there was no doubt that it would give him pleasure.

Tomba put a hand on his shoulder. “We do as the Nkosi says. Come with me.” He led Senagal away. The faint beat of the second Jet Ranger could just be heard echoing down the valley.

“My men wanted to kill you here and now,” AKR told them, “but there has been enough death in this place for the moment. And simply shooting you would be too good for you. You are free to leave this place. Most of you will be taken soon enough by animals or the African heat, or by the angry relatives of those who died at your hands. Those of you who survive the walk out of here will carry the shame of what took place here for the rest of your miserable lives. God have mercy on you, because Africa and the Africans will not.”

Kelly-Rogers reached the helo pad as the Jet Ranger began to power up for takeoff. Aboard were five of the Africans, including Mohammed Senagal. Moments later they were airborne and hurtling down the valley. Tomba, AKR, and the three remaining Africans quickly filed out of the compound and began to climb back up the drainage away from the hotel. When a Jet Ranger was available to bring them out, they would find a mountain clearing where it could land. Twenty minutes later, they stopped on a ridgeline to look back. The hotel was now consumed in flames, and an angry pillar of smoke rose from the compound. They paused only for a moment before they were again on the move.

The miserable collection of men under the acacia tree watched the helo lift from the pad and disappear down the valley. So did a half dozen or so armed men well out in the bush, the remnants of the Renaud Scouts. They turned their attention to the ragged stream of white men that had begun to file away from the burning hotel and down the access road, wondering if they had anything of value on them.

This was probably Vadim Karpukhin’s last chance to learn what this girl knew. Time was running out. He had led his blindfolded prisoner into a small bath with a shower and tossed in a T-shirt and a pair of men’s jockey shorts. He told her that she had fifteen minutes to make herself clean. He knew from experience, especially in the interrogation of Western women, that they detested being dirty. He had learned that if you let them clean themselves up, especially after they had soiled themselves, the prospect of becoming dirty again caused them to crack. A little privacy and some hot water made them feel human again; then you took it away. But this was his last trick. If it didn’t work, then he was going to have to start hurting her. The prospect of that distressed him — not that he minded hurting people, and especially not this American female agent. It just meant that he was down to his last option. She might respond to pain, but then again, he had thought she would have broken by now. He stood outside the door and heard the water running. Then, moments later, he heard her singing in the shower. She was a tough one, all right.

Exactly eight minutes later, Karpukhin found the central water shutoff valve and cut the water to the bath. The act of stopping the water was part of reestablishing control. Time to get her back into a vulnerable position. When he opened the door, he expected to find her wet and wrapped in a towel, but she was dressed in the T-shirt and shorts. She had turned off the light, so he did not see her clearly. She exploded upon him out of the dark, screaming with rage. She had a long shard of mirrored glass wrapped in a towel, holding it like a knife. In her other hand she had a section of pipe. The force of her charge caught him off guard, and they both went down. He partially blocked the shard dagger, but not before she cut his cheek and sliced away part of his ear. It took both of his hands to fend off the deadly weapon. He twisted the hand with the blade with both his own, but she would not drop it. Then the first of the blows came from the pipe. It was a short piece of iron plumbing with the U-joint still attached, and she wielded it clumsily in her left hand. The first blow only mildly stunned Karpukhin, and he continued to fight for the makeshift knife. The second blow brought his eyes to hers, and he saw for the first time the terrible rage and determination in her face. Again and again she hit him. He relinquished his hold on the knife hand, vaguely knowing that he must somehow stop this incessant pounding to his head. He tried to bring up his arms to ward off the blows, but he was becoming addled, and movement was difficult. When he again caught her face, he saw that the rage was still there, but now it was accompanied by an expression of triumph. Then things grew dim, and finally dark.

While in the bathroom, Judy Burks had turned on the shower, rinsed off quickly, and then scrambled into the scanty clothes provided her. In the process, she took quick stock of her surroundings, looking for a way to arm herself. It had taken all her strength to move the locking threads on the sink trap, but it had come away and provided her with a rudimentary club. Wrapping the towel around her hand, she began to sing while she pounded at the mirror. It cracked long-ways, as she had hoped, and after sustaining some minor cuts to her fingers, she managed to extract a suitably long piece of the glass. When her captor cut the water to the shower and came for her, she was armed and ready. She gave no thought to the method of her attack; she knew only that she would rather fight and die than again submit to this man. So she had continued to hit him well after he had ceased to struggle. Only when she rose and stood over him did she realize that he wasn’t moving, and that his face was distorted and beginning to swell. There was blood coming from his nose and mouth, as well as from the partially severed ear and the gash on his cheek.

Suddenly the front door exploded inward, away from the lock and hinges, down flat on the hall floor. She whirled around to see two men surge through the opening, one black and one white. Others were behind them. Her first impulse was that these were associates of her captor, and they had come for her. She then recognized the familiar form in the jeans and T-shirt.

“Oh, Garrett! Garrett!” Her voice was high-pitched and girlish, not the scream of the Valkyrie that had half beaten her tormenter to death. She rushed to him, flinging her arms around his neck. He held her close to him while the other three men quickly moved past them, pistols drawn.

“Clear in back.”

“Bedroom clear.”

“Kitchen clear.”

They drew back to the hallway, where Judy still clung to Garrett. He safed the Sig and eased it back into his trousers. Then he gently peeled her away from him and guided her to a chair in the adjacent living room.

“Why don’t you let us have these for now?” Garrett said softly. He slipped the towel from her hand. It was bloody and still holding the shard of glass, now broken off to half its former length. Then he eased her fingers from the pipe and set it aside. As soon as she released the pipe, she reached desperately for his hand.

“You got here — you got here just in time,” she now babbled, somewhat in shock. “He was going to hurt me. Thank God you came. Thank God you got here in time.”

Sergeant Hallasey rose from the still form of Vadim Karpukhin and turned to Ambassador Conrad. “Yeah, thank God for him. He’s still breathing, but he needs to get to a hospital fast.”

Conrad looked at the battered man on the floor and then at the diminutive figure who had again flung herself into Garrett’s arms. “It’s a good thing we let her back into the embassy, Sarge. She might have come after us.”

Janet Brisco lit a cigarette from the half-inch butt of the previous one and watched as Cheetah tracked the second Jet Ranger away from the hotel. Dodds LeMaster controlled the camera with a joystick at his console. He followed the helo down the valley and saw it bank away to the northwest for the Zambezi; then he slewed the camera back to the hotel, now fully engulfed in flames. Whatever had been going on there was now gone forever. Then he began to watch over the five men toiling up the valley, searching around and in front of them for any sign of danger.

“Where’s our first bird from the target?” she said to LeMaster.

“It’s inbound; it should be here in about five minutes.”

“Good. After it lands with the first lift of our men, send it on to Lusaka. Tell them to refuel there and stand by for instructions from Steven and Garrett. As soon as the second one lands, get it back across the Zambezi for the last group.”

LeMaster raised the pilots and gave them instructions. He passed control of Cheetah to Bill Owens in the next van. With things winding down, he had to see about getting his systems shut down in preparation for leaving. Owens continued to watch over the five men still on the ground.

“The C-130?” Janet asked.

“On station and orbiting over Lake Malawi. It’s an hour away, no more.”

“Let’s get it here. I want it on the ground when Steven and Garrett get back, and the last helo returns from Zimbabwe.”

LeMaster passed the instructions along to the aircrew of the C-130J. The pilot checked in with the controller at Lilongwe Airport and requested permission for the Simpson Foundation aircraft to continue with its humanitarian mission. The flight was quickly cleared into Zambian airspace. As with all NGOs who flew regularly into southern African nations, the foundation regularly paid controllers a small fee to ensure that its aircraft encountered no delays as they went about their business.

“Keep an eye on things, Dodds,” Janet said, lighting yet another cigarette. “I’m going to meet this helo.”

The Jet Ranger set down a respectful forty yards from the vans, but it still sent a wave of dust across the vehicles and into the camp. As soon as the five passengers were on the ground, it rose and headed on northwest toward Lusaka. Brisco watched as two Africans escorted a solitary figure from the helo to an isolated piece of ground near the camp. He was in a black suit and had his hands bound in front of him. There was a pillowcase over his head. Elvis Rosenblatt approached with another white man in tow.

“How’d it go, Doctor?”

“I’m not sure. We destroyed the place, but there’s a good chance we got there too late to prevent the delivery of a dangerous pathogen. I’m afraid we’re a long way from being out of the woods on this one. You know we lost two men in the attack.”

“Yes. Are we bringing them out?”

“Tomba and his men are burying them there. This is Dr. Johann Mitchell. He was one of the clinical staff at the hotel, but he’s decided to help us with this problem. So far, his help has been invaluable.”

“Mr. Mitchell,” Janet said, regarding him cautiously.

“Miss Brisco, how soon can we be on our way out of here?” Rosenblatt asked.

“The men we lost,” Janet asked, ignoring his question, “I’d like to know their names.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” Then, seeing her anguish, he added, “I wish I did and could tell you. I only know they were killed in the assault. There were a lot of people killed at that place. Now, please, this is important. How soon can we leave?”

Janet Brisco looked at her watch. “With any luck, Steven and Garrett will be back here in an hour or so. The C-130 will be on the ground in fifty minutes. We can break camp quickly, and the vans can be loaded as soon as the transport arrives. But it will take another two hours to get a helo back for the last of the attack force. What’s the hurry? If we were too late, we’re too late. We are configured as an assault force. What can we do about it now?”

“Maybe nothing, but we have to try. I need to get that man to Paris as fast as I can,” he said, pointing to the solitary figure under guard with his head swathed in a pillowcase. “I don’t have time to explain right now, but trust me when I say that we may have a chance to get back some of what was created in that lab. Now, I’m given to understand that you have long-range private jets available. Is that right?”

“Well, yes, but I—”

“Then get your best and fastest plane here as soon as possible.”

“It certainly can’t land here.” She thought a moment. “Perhaps we can link up with it at another location. You say this is vital?”

“It’s life and death,” Rosenblatt said, “on a massive scale. Now, I need to get a call to the States. Can I do that from here?”

“See the fellow over there by that van?” LeMaster was folding up a portable dish antenna. “He can connect you to the pope if you need to talk to His Holiness.”

It was a very busy day for the Jeki airstrip. Thirty minutes later, the second Jet Ranger approached. It did not even touch down. Five bush fighters leapt from the hovering helo, which quickly returned in the direction in which it had come — one more load. Fifteen minutes after that, a big Hercules C-130J crabbed out of the sky at stall speed and squatted onto the end of the dirt strip. It immediately reversed the big Allison engines, taking most of the dirt strip to bring itself to a stop. There was dust everywhere. The aircraft taxied over and pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees to present its open bay to the camp. The loading ramp grinded down. By the time the two vans were driven aboard and chained to the deck of the transport, the first Jet Ranger had come over the horizon from the west and delivered three people to the dirt strip. It turned on the ground for a few minutes, then headed back to Lusaka. Garrett and Steven made their way over to the transport with Judy Burks between them. She was wearing a long nightgown under a T-shirt that was spotted with blood. Janet spotted them first and rushed over to Judy, putting a motherly arm around her.

“Just what the hell have you been doing to this girl!” she said, looking sharply from Garrett to Steven and back.

“It’s okay,” Judy said with a lopsided grin. “We had to kick a little butt.”

“Is that a fact? Well, let’s get you aboard and cleaned up a little.”

Steven Fagan left Judy Burks in the care of Garrett and Janet and went straight for Elvis Rosenblatt. He found him standing off to one side with another white man, talking quietly while the Africans helped break camp and load the transport. Steven glanced at a third figure who sat bound and blinded in a chem-bio suit. One of Tomba’s men, the one they called Wilson, stood nearby with his M-4 rifle at the ready. During the trip to Lusaka, Fagan had been kept apprised of events at the Makondo Hotel — the successful attack, the regrettable loss of the two Africans, and the two scientists brought out from the hotel. He also had a sketchy report from AKR that the Makondo Hotel was in fact a bio-weapons development site. What troubled him most was that a biological weapon might have already left the site and be in the hands of the wrong people. If that were the case, then all their efforts — the training, the planning, the diplomatic risks, the superb performance by their assault element — were for nothing. Whether or not that lethal cat was or was not irretrievably out of the bag was known only to Elvis Rosenblatt.

He called Rosenblatt off to one side and, in his typically polite and self-effacing manner, asked for an accounting of events at the Makondo. Rosenblatt, under Fagan’s mild, insistent gaze, complied. Fagan listened, interrupting occasionally to clarify a point or gently guide the doctor back to the central theme. When Rosenblatt finished, Fagan thanked him for his service and report. Moments later he was on his sat phone to Jim Watson.

Inside the belly of the big transport, Bill Owens still sat at his console in one of the control vans. While Owens and his van were being loaded, he and Cheetah guided a helo to a mountain clearing where five men waited. Once they were aboard the Jet Ranger, he gave Cheetah her instructions and released the UAV from her responsibilities in Zimbabwe. With a little more than half her fuel gone and nothing under her wings, she took a northerly heading and easily climbed back up to 60,000 feet. When she was in Malawian airspace, she called home.

In the Global Hawk control van at Kilimanjaro International, a controller suddenly noticed a blinking light on his console. It was from a transponder aboard Cheetah.

“Hey, Stan,” he said to the other tech. “Looks like our prodigal cat has returned to the pride.”

Stan came over and peered over the controller’s shoulder. “Where is she?”

“A long way off. She’s over Lake Malawi, almost into Mozambique airspace and heading our way.”

“I’d sure like to know where she’s been and what she’s been doing.”

“I don’t think she’s going to tell us, and we probably shouldn’t ask.”

“Probably not.”

As the last helo lifted away from the Jeki strip, the C-130 powered up and began to roll. Tomba and the last three Africans raced up the loading ramp as the transport turned for the downwind end of the runway. AKR leapt aboard, the last boots on the ground. The big Hercules used every bit of runway, power, and pilot skill to claw its way back into the air, turning north out over the muddy ribbon of the Zambezi River. Four hours later it touched down at Kilimanjaro, just ahead of a Gulfstream G550. The two aircraft couldn’t be more different. One was a blunt, hulking giant of pure utility, the other as sleek as a spaceship. Both had the logo of the Joseph Simpson Jr. Foundation blocked on their tails. Eight people deplaned from the Hercules and boarded the Gulfstream. One of them was dressed like an astronaut and seemed, to the Global Hawk technicians watching at a distance, to have his hands bound. Both aircraft immediately took off. Five hours later, Cheetah set down neatly onto the strip and demurely taxied over to the control van.

Armand Grummell often slept in the apartment that adjoined his office at the CIA headquarters building in Langley. It was a spartan studio arrangement with a single bed and shower. Whenever there was a potential crisis brewing, which recently seemed to be about every other week, Grummell liked to be near the building. It was not his agency’s elaborate information-gathering apparatus he needed to be close to, nor his organization’s extensive communications network. In a locked drawer of his very secure office was a small Rolodex that was simply referred to by his top aides as “the Director’s File.” In the Rolodex were perhaps three dozen cards, and each one held two entries. The first were the initials of an individual contact, and the second was a telephone number. The cards were changed as phone and contact numbers changed, but only occasionally was a new card added. The removal of a card usually meant the death or compromise of that individual.

Grummell had served as the Director of Central Intelligence for close to three decades. Administrations came and went, but Grummell stayed. During some changes of administration, his status changed from DCI to interim DCI while a suitable replacement was sought. But once the new president and his national security team compared the old spymaster with a new appointee, however qualified, he was quickly reinstated as Director. There were many reasons for this — competence, patriotism, loyalty, experience, devotion to duty, to name a few. But the Rolodex was one of them. The names and contacts in that reference file represented decades of personal trust and respect. They were not something easily handed off to a successor, nor did any replacement have such a resource. The Rolodex was sitting on the desk at Grummell’s elbow when Jim Watson came in. It was 5:30 A.M. on a Sunday morning, and Grummell, though freshly shaved and showered, was still in his bathrobe. It was obvious that he had been up for a while. Jim Watson himself had been at his desk for quite some time.

“So,” the older man began after Watson took one of the two chairs in front of his desk, “it would appear that we are a day late and perhaps a dollar short. Coffee?”

“That’d be great, sir.”

Grummell filled a mug and pushed it across the desk to Watson, then rewarmed his own.

“So bring me up to date.” The tone was soft, but commanding.

“The IFOR assault on the laboratory in Zimbabwe was an apparent success. But it seems the bio-weapon developed there, a particularly virulent and lethal form of smallpox, from what I’m told, was shipped from the lab only the day before. A corporate jet under lease by a Saudi multinational left Harare, landed in Nairobi, and discharged a single passenger. A passenger matching that description boarded a Kenya Airlines flight for Dubai and then took a Saudi Air flight to Riyadh. The flight arrived at King Khalid International Airport about a half hour ago. We can only assume that this biological weapon is now in the Saudi capital.”

Grummell was silent for several moments. “And the IFOR contingent?”

“Most of them are on their way to Diego Garcia, where they will break down their equipment and return to Hawaii. But Steven Fagan and some members of his team, along with the two scientists from the lab in Zimbabwe, are headed for Paris. As I understand it, they are tracking a lead there. Apparently one of the scientists who helped develop this pox is a French national.”

Grummell began to thumb through his Rolodex, then picked up the receiver to one of his desk phones. Very seldom when he made one of these calls was someone else allowed in the room. Watson rose to leave, but Grummell waved him back to his seat. Grummell greeted the person on the other end in Arabic, then switched to English.

“Saeed, we have a problem — a very serious problem. This problem has just arrived in your country, so in a sense, it’s also your problem, at least for now. I think it will take both of us working together if we hope to resolve it. Let me explain.” Grummell spoke for several minutes and then listened without speaking to the short reply. Then a coldness Watson had never heard came into Grummell’s voice. “How sure are we? Sure enough that I will ask my president to place Saudi Arabia under a no-fly restriction. That means all commercial or military aircraft attempting to leave Saudi airspace will be turned around or shot down.” Again another pause. “I think that is very wise…. Thank you, Saeed…. Good-bye.”

Grummell replaced the phone, and looked across the desk to Watson. “He says he will do what he can. I believe him, but only time will tell. And now, I had best bring the White House up-to-date. I’m not sure the President will be keen on imposing a no-fly zone on the Arabian Peninsula,” Grummell mused, and Watson thought he detected a slight twinkle in the old spymaster’s eye, “but our friend Saeed Al-Qahtani seems to think he might. Thank you for staying with this, Jim.” Watson again rose to leave, and this time Grummell did not try to stop him. “Keep me apprised of events in Paris.”

“Yes, sir, and thank you, sir.”

In a well-appointed office in Riyadh, a man in traditional Arab dress set aside his Havana cigar and quickly made two phone calls. One resulted in the closing of King Khalid International Airport. It was not the first time that the airport just five miles north of Riyadh had been shut down due to a bomb threat. The other placed him on the calendar for a thirty-minute meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah that evening.

Al-Qahtani’s quick action produced immediate results of a sort. Within minutes, security police were swarming over the airport. Only two people on the flight from Dubai had connected from Nairobi. One was an African diplomat whose papers were in perfect order. The other was a businessman who was stopped as he tried to leave the airport by taxi. When questioned, he proudly admitted that while he was not Al Qaeda, he supported Al Qaeda. And yes, he had brought a briefcase from Harare to Riyadh. He told them that per his instructions, he had set the case down next to the baggage claim and walked away. When the police raced there to find it, there was no case to be found.

When Pavel Zelinkow rose the following day, he was of two minds. He knew that he had delivered on his end of the contract and that the toxin for which he had been contracted had been produced and also delivered. A terse message left on one of his voice mails confirmed that. Technically, he was in compliance with his contract and had earned his fee. He also knew that there were any number of loose ends, and a man in his business did not live with loose ends. His contacts in Africa had gone silent, and any pursuit of information there, or in Iran or Saudi Arabia for that matter, would only invite attention to himself. Nothing was to be gained by asking questions. He could only guess that something, somewhere, had gone wrong. Late last evening he had placed a call to Boris Zhirinon. This old mentor, in so many words, said that he had asked an old colleague to go to Africa to look into the matter. But Zhirinon had heard nothing from the man in several days, and feared the worst. This did nothing to assuage Zelinkow’s apprehension about the loose ends.

Bank transfers, even large ones, are overnight transactions. Since yesterday was Sunday, as well as the day he made delivery, he would not know if the funds, per his instructions, had been paid to his account until the following day, Tuesday, though authorization should have been given on Sunday. His only leverage to ensure payment was that he too could be a loose end, and those who had employed him would want him to quietly disappear with his funds. He would know tomorrow. Meanwhile, it was going to be a long day. Carefully sipping his morning espresso, he again went over it in his mind and again decided that his only option was to wait; nothing could be gained by further inquiries. He pushed himself from the table and retired to his bath. There he shaved, showered, and put on freshly pressed slacks, shirt, a tweed jacket, and comfortable shoes. He next called for a car to take him to the Colosseum. For Zelinkow, the only way to deal with uncertainty and apprehension was to surround himself with art. He would have preferred to lose himself in one or two of the many art galleries in Rome. But since Rome art galleries are closed on Mondays, he would have to content himself with ruins. This, he hoped, was not a portent of his fortunes.

The flight from Kilimanjaro International to Paris was about 4,300 miles, which made for close to eight hours of air time. Because of the limited services available at the Kilimanjaro airport, they had to stop in Cairo for fuel. They were finally over the Mediterranean just a little before midnight. Fortunately the Gulfstream G550 is a very comfortable aircraft. At $35 million a copy, it should be. The organization had two of them, one registered to the Joseph Simpson Jr. Foundation and the other to Guardian Systems International. The one that raced across northern Africa for the Mediterranean belonged to the foundation. Aboard were Garrett, Steven, Janet Brisco, Judy Burks, Elvis Rosenblatt, AKR, Johann Mitchell, and a bound and hooded François Meno. Even if Meno had not been confined to the crew galley, there would still have been plenty of room in the plush sixteen-passenger aircraft.

Settled side by side in a pair of tucked-leather seats, Garrett and Judy both immediately fell asleep. He was still in jeans and T-shirt. The crew on the C-130 had found Judy a small pair of overalls, and had dressed and bandaged the cuts on her hands. Janet had cleaned her up a bit with alcohol swabs and gauze pads. They looked like a longshoreman and his daughter taking a nap together. Rosenblatt had stretched out on the four-place divan and fallen asleep as well; AKR had done the same, simply flaking out alongside him in the aisle. Dodds LeMaster had immediately found the computer workstation, logged on, and gone to work. There was something bothering him and he could not rest until he had the answer. Steven and Janet talked quietly at a small table, relishing a spinach quiche with toast and jam after close to three days of MREs. Mitchell kept to himself and sat staring out the window. Meno, on Rosenblatt’s instructions, was kept isolated and hooded, sealed inside the chem-bio suit.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I don’t believe it,” he said chuckling aloud. “I simply don’t believe it.”

This mild outburst from the normally taciturn Dodds LeMaster caused both Steven and Janet to push back from their food and join him at his workstation.

“What have you got?” Janet asked, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“I think I might have him.”

“Him?” Steven asked, looking to Janet, who raised her eyebrows in conjecture.

“The guy who’s behind all this, or at least the one who has been giving all the orders.” Now he had their full attention. “You see, encrypted cell phones are very hard to decipher, not impossible but very, very hard. It takes a great deal of computer power, massive amounts. A lot more than we have in our organization. So I tapped into the NSA data bank. They probably have the most capable computing engine on the planet. We’ve taped all the calls made to and from that makeshift lab in Zimbabwe, hoping that someone would make a mistake or give us something that would allow us to break the encryption algorithm. Usually, if you can get a known piece of information or component of the conversation, then the computers can take that known bit of data and use it to defeat the encryption and break the code.”

“And you’ve done that?” Steven queried.

“I’ve done nothing, but he made a mistake. On one of the calls, before the ciphering clicked in, we picked up the name of Poulenc. Just an accommodation name, I thought — one chosen at random. Most covert operators who have to deal with multiple clandestine contacts use aliases. They choose them at random and change them frequently. But this one had an indulgence.” LeMaster paused, and permitted himself a triumphant smile. “Classical French music.”

“French music?”

“Exactly. Poulenc was not chosen at random. Francis Poulenc was an eighteenth-century French composer. When I ran the encrypted cell phone intercepts against a listing of French composers and arrangers, I came up with several more names — Drouet, Boulez, Frémaux, Baudo, among others. All are French orchestral or operatic luminaries. Their names recur in the cell phone intercepts. These names, when matched with the recorded calls, provided the computers with enough data to begin to decipher the encrypted intercepts. It’ll take a little more time; the NSA computers are grinding away as we speak, but we can read their mail. It will be after the fact, but we will know what they said.”

“Excellent work, Dodds,” Steven said. “Absolutely superb. Do you have any idea where this French music lover lives?”

“I do,” LeMaster said, wreathed in smiles. “Rome.”

Steven took a seat next to LeMaster, and they began to talk about how to use this information to their advantage. Janet worked her way through the aisle of the Gulfstream, waking people up. They were due into Charles de Gaulle Airport in a few hours. There were calls to be made and planning that had to be done if they were to execute what Elvis Rosenblatt had in mind.

The office, while exquisitely furnished, was not as opulent as the anteroom or the rest of the palace. Saeed bin Abdullah Al-Qahtani, head of security for all of Saudi Arabia, was admitted that evening to a private meeting with the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. King Fahd had been ailing for so long that Abdullah had become the defacto monarch. He listened carefully as Al-Qahtani relayed the details of his conversation with Armand Grummell and the events at the airport. All air traffic in Saudi Arabia had been grounded. When Al-Qahtani finished, the crown prince rose from his desk and walked to the window, which opened to a magnificent view of an immaculately tended courtyard, bathed in artificial light. He did not feel the need to tell Al-Qahtani of his private conversation with the American president. If Grummell had been direct with the Saudi security chief, the President had been downright blunt with the crown prince. America would not tolerate another catastrophe that involved Saudi Arabia or Saudi Arabian nationals. In spite of Grummell’s doubts, the President had declared a no-fly zone over the entire Arabian Peninsula until the pathogen that came into the country had been recovered. If it was not recovered, and this pandemic reached America, the United States would consider it an act of war. The President did not need to remind the crown prince how quickly the American Third Army could be in Riyadh. He turned to Al-Qahtani.

“Place the city, indeed the entire nation, under martial law. You will do everything in your power to find and recover this disease and anyone who may be infected with it. If you do not, the kingdom will cease to exist. Now go, and keep me informed of your progress.”

When he stepped into the anteroom, General Saleh Ali Al-Mohayya, chief of staff of the army and, in effect, the head of the Saudi military, was waiting for him. He and Al-Mohayya were rivals; at best they treated each other with suspicion bordering on contempt. Nonetheless, Al-Mohayya rose when he entered the room and stood at attention.

“My forces stand at your command.”

“Thank you,” Saeed replied politely. “Please come with me.”

It took Judy Burks four calls, two to the Bureau and two to the American Embassy in Paris, before she was finally given his cell phone. She had rung his residence several times, but the calls had gone straight to the answering machine. Even then she had to call the cell twice before he picked up.

“Who the hell is this? Do you realize what time it is?”

Judy, who had no watch, looked up at the eight clocks on the bulkhead that led to the cockpit of the Gulfstream. “Wait a minute, I can do this.” She found the one labeled “Paris.” “Okay, got it; it’s a quarter of two. That sound about right?”

“Who in the hell is this?”

“C’mon, Walter, you don’t recognize my voice?”

The voice did in fact sound familiar. Special Agent Walter O’Hara was the FBI liaison officer to the French Gendarmerie Nationale, a job he detested; he hated the French. A little more than a year ago he had participated in the raid of a residence in Villefranche, supposedly the home of a man connected to Hezbollah. This man, he later learned, was a Russian-born, naturalized French citizen who had orchestrated the theft of two nuclear weapons from Pakistan. The information given to him, which he had passed along to the French, was gold-plated. Only a bungled raid by Les Unités d’ Intervention, the French national SWAT team, allowed this master terrorist to escape.

“Agent Burks?”

“You do remember.” She turned to Garrett. “He remembers me.” Back to O’Hara. “Walter, how’d you like to do me and the Bureau a big favor and save the free world, all at the same time?”

“Just what exactly do you want?” he asked dubiously.

“We’ll be landing in a Gulfstream at Charles de Gaulle in about two hours. I want you to meet us with a nine-passenger van. We need to skip customs, and we want no questions asked about the aircraft or the people on board. Then we need to make a trip to a villa about two hours outside of Paris.”

“Uh, Agent Burks, this sounds like something that has to be cleared through the Director; it will take his intervention to make this happen. The French are wired pretty tight right now, and they don’t like taking orders from a lowly liaison officer.”

“Tell me about it,” she replied. “I just spoke with the executive director. It’s being done as we speak.”

“So — so what do you need me for?”

“Walter, we need someone we can trust. We need you to drive the van.”

“No gendarmerie along on this one?”

“No gendarmerie.”

“See you when you get on the ground.”

It was with no small degree of relief that Al-Qahtani was able to tell his crown prince that they had been successful in finding the mysterious briefcase, along with three of the fifteen syringes carried into the country. This had come just twenty hours after the flight from Dubai had landed. Now he waited at his desk for his call to Armand Grummell to be put through.

The search of Riyadh and the outlying areas had been unprecedented and overwhelming. It involved the local police, the local and national security services, and the army. Never before had there been such a concentration of force, and never before had they taken a search into holy places. The Saudi Army and the security services had looked for terrorists before, but the searches were limited because of the sway the fundamentalist clerics held over the people. This time there was no such restraint. Mosques and madrassas, normally exempt from this kind of scrutiny, were thoroughly searched. It was in the basement of the latter, near al-Jubaylah, that they found an Al Qaeda cell, the syringes, and twelve young men. They had taken their first step toward martyrdom; the twelve had all allowed themselves to be injected with the deadly serum. Per their instructions, the army unit that found them immediately called for the Saudi medical team assembled for that purpose. The area was cordoned off by a Special Security Forces national guard unit, and medically quarantined.

Al-Qahtani’s call went through. “Yes, Mr. Grummell, we were successful — completely successful.” Grummell asked for the details, and Al-Qahtani told him all they had done. Then Grummell told him what he wanted. Al-Qahtani lifted his eyebrows. “You say a team of epidemiologists and a special operations security element from the United States will be landing in Riyadh within the hour? Mr. Grummell, it is not within my power to authorize this…. They are talking as we speak…. I see…. Well, then, with the authorization of the crown prince, I will see they get everything they need…. No, Mr. Grummell, thank you for helping us to avert an unpleasant situation…. And you, sir, good-bye.”

Moments later, Crown Prince Abdullah sent for him. He had just spoken with the President of the United States.

Just after dawn, the nine-passenger Dodge van, with eight passengers and the driver, pulled up to a small villa near Le Chatelet-en-Brie. It was an embassy vehicle O’Hara had borrowed from the Marine guard force, but with no official markings. The two-story stone house was dark and appeared empty. Meno claimed to have no key, so they had to break in. The oak door was stout, and it took both AKR and Garrett together to force the lock. Once inside, they made a quick search of the home. The housekeeper who came twice a week would not be there today, or so Meno claimed.

“So we wait?” Steven asked.

“We wait,” Rosenblatt replied.

They wandered about the generous living areas and the well-appointed library, which was filled mostly with medical texts. Janet and Judy went to the kitchen to see what they could find to eat. They soon returned with tea and a plate of bread and cheese. François Meno was still in the chem-bio suit, but the pillowcase had been removed. His face shield was smeared and dirty, but he could now see. He sat by the window in the foyer, still bound, not taking his eyes from the driveway. About ten o’clock, a FedEx truck pulled into the drive. Meno was immediately on his feet.

“I better handle this,” O’Hara said. “Keep him quiet.” He handed Meno off to Garrett and stepped outside to meet the deliveryman.

“Package for Dr. François Meno,” she said. The FedEx deliveryman was a woman.

“He’s not available at present,” O’Hara said in horrible French. “I’ll sign for it.”

“May I see some identification, s’il vous plait.”

O’Hara showed her his FBI credential, which meant nothing, and his Gendarmerie Nationale ID, which did. She gave him the standard French shrug and handed him a clipboard. He signed, and she handed over the package.

They all gathered in the dining room and watched while Elvis Rosenblatt carefully opened the package. Garrett kept a firm hold on Meno. Neatly packed inside were a half dozen ampoules of clear liquid.

“So this is it?” Rosenblatt asked.

“Yes, yes, that’s it. Now you must let me have it. There’s no time to lose!” Meno was becoming excited, fogging his faceplate. “Please! I’ve done all you asked!” Dancing before him were the death throes of the men and women who died in the soundproof cells at the Makondo Hotel.

“You’re sure this vaccine is effective?”

“Damn you. Why would I lie? Give it to me! There are syringes in my office upstairs. Please hurry!”

“Okay,” Rosenblatt said lightly, “I believe you.”

Rosenblatt rose and walked around the table to Meno. He unsnapped the locking mechanism on the helmet, twisted it an eighth of a turn, and lifted it from his head. The smell that came from the confined reaches of the suit were overpowering.

“Wh — what are you doing?” Meno fully expected them to keep him in the protective garment and inject him with the vaccine through the fabric of the suit. “What is this?”

Johann Mitchell had not spoken a dozen words since they left Africa, but he spoke now. “We had no remaining pathogen in the lab. All of it had in fact been destroyed, as you had so ordered. You then claimed to have a vaccine. It was Doctor Rosenblatt who had the idea to scare you sufficiently so that you would lead us to it.” For the first time in a long while, Mitchell actually smiled. “And so you did.”

“You are a brilliant virologist, Meno,” Rosenblatt observed, “but you’re also a chicken-shit. Thanks for the vaccine.”

Garrett Walker, like the rest of the IFOR contingent in the villa dining room, was as shocked as Meno to learn that Rosenblatt was running a bluff. So shocked that when Meno bolted for Rosenblatt, he slipped from Garrett’s grasp. Rosenblatt was ready. The right hand wasn’t thrown that hard, but Meno ran straight into it. It caught him square in the face, giving him a broken nose to go with his broken teeth. He went down like a sack of sand.

In the stunned silence that followed, they all stared at Elvis. AKR spoke first.

“Why, you sonova—”

“Hey,” Rosenblatt said, holding up his hands, one of them sporting a bruised knuckle. “You guys have to keep your secrets; Johann and I had to keep ours.”