The Camel Club

CHAPTER

54

REUBEN LIFTED KATE AND Adelphia over the fence and then joined the other Camel Club members there. As terrified people ran screaming past them, they took a moment to catch their breaths and collect their wits.

“My God,” a very pale Kate said, looking around frantically for Alex Ford.

“It is horrible,” Adelphia moaned. “It is like Poland and Soviets.”

Stone was surveying the dedication grounds where the bodies of the fallen lay. The grass was red with the blood of the gunmen. The federal countersnipers had control of the situation and were now securing the area, moving from body to body, ensuring that the Arab terrorists were actually dead. However, even from the perimeter Stone could see that there was no life left in the lumps of flesh on the ground.

Every one of Captain Jack’s men lay dead; many of the fedayeen were burned beyond recognition.

They could all hear sirens in the distance. A few minutes later a fire engine appeared on the scene followed by several others. They quickly attacked the blazing cars with their hoses, and black smoke billowed into the air.

Stone continued to watch as the wreckage of the police cruiser was cleared so that the presidential motorcade, at least what was left of it, could start streaming out. Mrs. Brennan and the chief of staff were swept into the second Beast and whisked away. The bruised and battered governor of Pennsylvania had been recovered and driven off in a van.

Stone felt a big hand on his shoulder and turned to find Reuben staring at him.

“We should probably get the hell out of here,” he said. “Damn cops might start shooting stragglers and ask questions later.”

Stone looked puzzled. “Reuben, you grabbed one of the gunmen’s weapons. Did you notice anything unusual about it?”

Reuben thought for a moment. “Well, I didn’t want to hold on to it too long, or else my head would’ve probably been exploding too. But now that you mention it, it did feel kind of funny. Lighter than I would’ve thought.” He looked at Stone. “Why’d you ask that?”

Stone didn’t answer. He looked again at all the dead Arabs.

Seconds after Adnan had entered the hospital, he placed Brennan, who was still moaning continuously, on a gurney that he’d left just inside the front door. The gunfight outside had driven everyone inside the hospital away from the front entrance. Adnan saw a group of nurses, doctors and aides staring fearfully at him from farther down the hallway.

“What’s going on?” one of the doctors shouted as he edged forward.

Adnan didn’t respond to this query, but he did nod at the man who’d just appeared next to him. It was the hospital’s newest staff physician who’d earlier expressed concern about the need for security guards at Mercy Hospital.

“A wounded man,” the doctor called out. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Stay away from the front doors,” Adnan warned. “People are shooting.”

The doctor pulled a syringe from his pocket, uncapped it and injected the president in his arm; Brennan slipped into unconsciousness. Then the doctor placed a sheet over the president and strapped him to the gurney and pushed it down the side hallway. He got on the elevator there and took it down one floor to the basement. Adnan waited until this had happened and then turned back to the group of hospital personnel.

“Hey!” another doctor yelled at Adnan. “Who was that man on the gurney?” They now all started moving toward him.

Adnan reached inside his jacket, pulled out a gas mask, put it on and started walking toward the oncoming group. Then he pulled from his pocket what looked to be a grenade and held it up.

“Look out,” one of the nurses screamed as the group turned and ran in the other direction.

“Call the police,” another doctor yelled as she scrambled away.

An instant later Adnan reached the fourth tile across from the center of the nurse’s station and threw the cylinder against the wall. It exploded, and the hall was immediately filled with thick smoke that was driven in all directions by the hospital’s air circulation system. A split second before the smoke bomb went off, Adnan heard glass shattering, but he couldn’t see the source. He couldn’t know this was Alex Ford throwing himself through the glass doors, but the Arab knew he had to hurry. He turned back toward the front of the hospital and counted off his steps, navigating in the dark solely through memory from his constant practice. As he neared the front entrance, Adnan felt something bump his leg, but he kept going.

An instant later the timed explosive device he’d placed in the hospital’s electrical room went off. All power to the hospital was now gone; everything went dark.

Adnan made his turn, walked down the passageway, stopped at the exit door, opened it and went through. He grabbed a long metal bar that he’d earlier hidden behind a steam pipe and wedged it through the closed door’s push bar. Then he began to run.

As soon as the bomb went off and smoke filled the halls, Alex dropped to the floor and slithered forward on his belly. It was like being far underwater, and the fumes were making him gag. Then he bumped into something, and that something was flesh and bone. He made a grab for it, but then it was gone. He swiveled around and started heading the other way, following the sounds of the footsteps. They were measured, steady. How the hell could anyone be walking so calmly through this crap? And then it suddenly dawned on him: because that person had a mask. And the steady tread? The person was leading himself through the smoke by counting steps. Alex had practiced that very same tactic in the dark at the Secret Service’s Beltsville training facility.

Alex crawled forward as fast as he could. The footsteps suddenly grew fainter and he redoubled his efforts, whipping his body back and forth like a serpent closing in on its prey. Thankfully, the footfalls picked up again. He hit another hallway, turned and belly-crawled down it. He heard a door open and then close. He slithered faster, pushing himself to the right and feeling for the wall. When his hand hit metal, he reached up and grabbed the handle, but the door refused to open. He pulled his gun and shot at the door at waist level. One of the slugs hit the push bar, collapsing it, and the metal pole bar Adnan had wedged there fell free. He wrenched open the door and flung himself through. The smoke wasn’t as bad in here, but the power to the hospital had obviously gone out because there was no light.

Alex rose, found the handrail and made his way down the steps, slipping and sliding along the way. He missed an entire step and ended up in a heap at the bottom of the first flight of stairs. Bruised and bleeding, he picked himself up and kept going by using the rail the rest of the way down. His panic increasing, Alex started taking the steps two at a time before reaching the bottom and hustling down the hall. He burst out of the exit door right as Adnan was getting in the ambulance that was parked there. Alex suspected the president was in the back.

He didn’t even cry out a warning. Alex just opened fire, hitting Adnan in the arm. Adnan fired back, and Alex had to throw himself to the side, where he lost his footing and tumbled down a set of concrete stairs. He rose, got off another shot and took a round in return, right in his ribs, fired by Ahmed, who’d emerged from the driver side of the ambulance. Luckily, Ahmed’s small-caliber ordnance had zero chance of penetrating the latest-stage Kevlar that all Secret Service agents wore on protective detail. Still, it felt like Muhammad Ali had nailed him with his best punch, and Alex slumped down in pain just as another shot fired by Adnan, burned through the skin of his left arm.

The ambulance sped off, its sirens screaming, as Alex faltered after it on legs that were nearly dead. His chest killing him, his arm bleeding profusely and his lungs full of smoke, Alex finally dropped to his knees and fired at the ambulance, emptying his mag but failing to stop it. Then, he tried his wrist mic but it didn’t work. He realized the bullet that hit his arm must’ve also severed the wiring to his comm pack. The last thing he remembered before passing out was one final sight of the ambulance, and then it was gone.

And so was the president.

On his watch.

CHAPTER

55

GEORGE FRANKLIN PULLED HIS car into the driveway. He had come from the other side of Brennan, opposite where the ceremonial grounds were located, and he hadn’t had his radio on.

“Lori?” he called out. “Djamila?” He plunked his keys on the kitchen island and went through the house calling out again. He opened the door to the garage and was puzzled to see his wife’s convertible and the big Navigator SUV parked there.

Had they all gone out in Djamila’s van?

“Lori? Boys?”

He went upstairs, starting to become a little uneasy. When he opened the door to his bedroom, that unease turned to panic as he saw the phone lying on the floor, along with a torn-up sheet.

“Lori honey?”

He heard a sound from the closet. He rushed over and ripped the doors open and saw his bound wife. Lori’s eyes were not focusing well, but she did seem to be looking at him. He raced to her side and pulled her gag off.

“My God, Lori, what happened? Who did this?” he said frantically.

She mouthed the name but he couldn’t hear it.

“Who?”

She said softly, “Djamila. She has the boys.” And then Lori Franklin started sobbing as her husband held her.

The ambulance raced into the garage, and the doors shut behind it. Adnan and Ahmed jumped out of the ambulance, opened the back door and unloaded the president.

Djamila had already opened the back of the van and was standing next to the rear passenger door where she was trying to keep the boys calm. They were all upset, but fortunately, they were also too young to free themselves from their car seats.

Now Djamila raced to the rear of the van and pushed the button that was hidden in a crevice inside the interior there. The floor lifted up, revealing a compartment. It was lead- and copper-lined and cut into two shapes: one of a man in a fetal position and the other of a small cylindrical object. The shape of the man conformed to the measurements of President James Brennan, with an inch all around to spare.

Djamila stared at the young man who had stepped back to let the doctor, Adnan and the other man present lift Brennan from the gurney.

“Ahmed?” she said unbelievingly.

He looked at her.

“Ahmed. It is me, Djamila.” It was Ahmed, her Iranian poet; the one who had written down the exact date and time of his death, the young man who had given her so much good advice and also the young man she hoped to share paradise with.

However, there was now a look in his eyes that Djamila could not remember ever having seen, even when he was in his full oratorical fury. It frightened her.

“I do not know you,” he said bitterly. “Do not talk to me, woman.”

Djamila took a step back from him, her heart crushed at this response.

As Brennan was being transferred from the gurney to the van, Ahmed took a step toward the ambulance. Djamila saw him slip his hand inside the back of the ambulance but could not see what he was doing.

When he walked over to the others, Djamila came forward again.

“Ahmed, we were at the camps together in Pakistan. You must remember me.”

This time Ahmed didn’t bother to answer.

Djamila screamed as she saw a knife appear in Ahmed’s hand, its point aimed right at the president’s neck.

Adnan was faster and he slammed into Ahmed, knocking him down.

“You fool!” Ahmed screamed, getting to his feet as Adnan pointed his gun at him. “Do you realize who we have here?” He gestured to Brennan. “This is the American president. The king of evil. He has destroyed everything we have.”

“You will not kill him,” Adnan said.

“Listen to me,” Ahmed shouted. “We will never have this chance again. Can you not see that? The Americans will keep killing. They will kill us all with their tanks and planes. But we can kill him. That will destroy America.”

“No!” Adnan said fiercely.

“Why!” Ahmed cried. “Because of the plan?” he said derisively. “A plan devised by who, an American. We take orders from Americans, Adnan, do you not see that? This is all a plot. To kill us. I knew that. I have always known that. But now, now we take our revenge.” He held his knife up in the air. “We do it now.”

“I do not wish to kill you, Ahmed, but I will.”

“Then kill me!”

Ahmed rushed forward and Adnan fired.

Djamila screamed as Ahmed slumped to the floor of the garage with a single shot to the center of his chest. Adnan put the gun back in his holster and pushed Ahmed’s body out of the way. The tears slipped down Djamila’s cheek as she stared at her dead poet.

The other men now worked away calmly, as though a cockroach had been killed in front of them instead of a man. Brennan was placed in the compartment, an oxygen tank in the other cutout space. The doctor fitted a mask over Brennan’s face and turned on the feed line.

Adnan closed the compartment and turned to the sobbing Djamila.

“He did know me,” she said haltingly between sobs. “That was my Ahmed.”

Adnan’s response was a hard slap to her face. This startled Djamila so badly that she stopped crying.

“Now get in your van,” Adnan said firmly, “and do your job.”

Without another word Djamila did exactly as he said. The garage door flew back up, and the van raced out.

Adnan looked at the other two men and nodded at Ahmed’s body. They picked it up and placed it in the oil pit while Adnan wrapped up his bleeding arm where Alex had shot him.

Adnan had suspected that Ahmed would try something. He’d been keeping a close watch on him ever since they loaded the president into the ambulance. Still, it had been a close call.

Seconds later the three climbed into the ambulance, where Adnan became the patient, with the doctor presiding over him and the third man driving. This was the original plan of escape and would have also included Ahmed.

Despite this cover, however, Adnan knew they’d been seen at the hospital, and now he had a gunshot wound. They would not make it through the roadblocks. Yet they would make a fine decoy. And then very soon after that it would be over. Adnan gazed at the doctor, a man of fifty, and understood from his look that he knew this to be the case too. Adnan closed his eyes and held his wounded arm. The pain was not bad; he’d had far worse. It was just one more scar to add to what he already had. However, this time Adnan sensed it would be the last scar for him. He had no plans to rot in an American jail or let the Americans electrocute him like some animal.

After the apartment building had been cleared except for the snipers, the lawmen had launched multiple RPGs into the sixth-floor apartment. Only then were the two gunmen finally silenced after the most intensive gun battle Pennsylvania had seen since Gettysburg. When the apartment was stormed, the shooters were both found dead, but only after having fired all of their M-50 ammo and thousands of rounds from their overheated machine guns, which were now both sizzling to the touch.

The hospital was evacuated, and Alex Ford was discovered lying bleeding on the asphalt. When he was revived, he told them what he’d seen, and an APB went out on the ambulance.

Djamila ran into a roadblock barely five minutes outside of Brennan. There were three cars in front of her, and the police were making people get out of their vehicles.

She glanced back at the boys. The baby had fallen asleep, but the other two boys were still crying hard, and Djamila too felt tears sliding down her cheeks again.

Ahmed said he did not know her. He had told her not to talk to him. Ahmed had been killed right in front of her. He had tried to stab the man. He’d gone against the plan and been killed for that. And yet what hurt her most of all were his words: “I do not know you.” His hatred had consumed him, crushing the poet’s heart in its grip. That was the only way Djamila could make herself understand what had happened.

She was brought back from these thoughts by a tapping on her window. It was the police. She rolled down her window, and the howls of the children reached the ears of the officers.

“Damn, lady, are those kids okay?”

“They are scared,” Djamila said, launching into her prepared speech. “I am scared too. There are sirens and police and people running and screaming. I have just come from downtown, and people they are screaming everywhere. It is mad; the world has gone mad. I take children to their home. I am nanny,” she added, probably unnecessarily. She started to sob, which made the kids cry even harder. This woke the baby up, and he added his powerful lungs to the crisis.

“Okay, okay,” the officer said. “We’ll make this real fast.” He nodded to his men. They looked through the van and underneath it. They were searching inches from where the president lay unconscious. However, he might as well have been invisible, and the police were quite anxious to move on to another car. From the putrid smells coming from the backseat, all three boys had gone to the bathroom.

The officers slammed the doors shut. “Good luck,” one of them said to Djamila, and waved her on.

A minute later, after repeated attempts, George Franklin finally got through on the flooded 911 line and reported what had happened, giving a description of Djamila, the boys and the van. However, Djamila was on the way to her rendezvous spot long before this message was relayed to the field.

Ten minutes later the black chopper soared over the devastated dedication grounds and landed in the parking lot. One of the doors opened, and Tom Hemingway stepped out and hustled over to Carter Gray, who stood talking to some federal agents.

Hemingway said, “My God, sir, we were on our way back from New York when we heard. Is the president still alive?”

Gray’s eyes had regained their focus and his mind its priorities. “The president, we have just learned, has been kidnapped,” Gray said. “I need to get back to Washington as soon as possible.”

A minute later the chopper lifted into the air and headed south.

CHAPTER

56

DJAMILA SLOWLY DROVE BACK from the rendezvous point toward the Franklins’ house. The transfer of the president from her van to his final transportation out of the area had gone very smoothly, taking barely a minute. She had the radio on to drown out the sounds of the boys from the back and also to find out what the news stations were reporting. The airwaves were filled with the breaking events, although the commentators were not making much sense. There were reports of many dead, but right now it seemed that the country, which had been watching the event on TV, was focusing on the fact that the president had been rushed to the hospital. They would soon find the truth far different.

So engrossed was Djamila in her thoughts that she failed to notice the police cruiser closing in on her from behind. She finally looked in the rearview mirror when the flashing roof lights caught her attention. She could hear a loud voice coming from one of the cars as the police talked to her through their PA system.

“Pull the van over and get out immediately!”

She didn’t pull the van over, and she had no intention of getting out immediately. Instead, she accelerated slightly.

In the lead cruiser the officers eyed each other. “Looks like she’s still got the kids in there with her.”

The other cop nodded. “We can box her in and try to talk her out.”

“Yeah, but if she doesn’t come out? Call in a sniper unit, pronto.”

“I don’t think there’s any left. Hell, we haven’t had a single murder here in over four years, and in one day we have an attack on the president and some crazy nanny kidnapping her employer’s kids.”

A half mile farther up the road another police cruiser blocked the way. Djamila saw this and pulled off the asphalt and drove across the grass. The cruisers were about to follow but then stopped as Djamila turned the van around so it was facing back toward the road. She unfastened her seat belt and climbed into the backseat.

“What the hell’s she doing?” one of the cops said. “You think she’s gonna hurt those kids?”

“Who knows? What’s the status of the sniper?”

“I took it as a really bad sign when the dispatcher laughed when I asked for one.”

“There’s no way we can chance a shot with those kids in there.”

“So what do we do?”

“Look! The side door of the van’s opening.”

They watched as an arm appeared and the baby was set on the ground still in its car seat. Next the two older boys were likewise deposited on the ground.

“I don’t get this,” the cop in the passenger seat said.

“If she makes one move to run them over, you take out her tires and I’ll try for a head shot through the windshield,” the other replied.

The men climbed out of their cruiser; one had his pistol out, the other held a pump shotgun.

However, Djamila had no intention of hurting the children. She glanced at them each in turn as she settled back in the driver’s seat. She even waved to the oldest boy.

“Bye-bye, Timmy,” she said through the window. “Bye-bye, you naughty little boy.”

“Nana,” was all the tearful boy said back as he waved his hand at her.

As much as Djamila had disliked Lori Franklin, she was relieved she hadn’t had to kill the woman. Children needed their mothers. Yes, children needed their mothers.

She took a moment to write something down on a piece of paper that she pulled from her purse. She folded it carefully and then gripped it in her hand.

She put the van in gear, started rolling forward and pulled back onto the road.

Another police cruiser had joined the hunt now. Djamila headed toward the two policemen who were standing outside their cruiser.

“Stop the car!” one of them said over his portable PA.

Djamila didn’t stop. She accelerated.

“Stop the car now or we’ll open fire!” Both officers aimed their weapons. One cruiser closed in on the rear of the van while the other cruiser broke off and got the boys safely in their car.

“Shoot the tires out,” one of the cops said as Djamila bore down on them.

They both fired and took out the front tires. Still, Djamila kept coming. She gunned the motor, and the van hobbled along at a fair clip on the shredded wheels.

“Stop the van!” the cop yelled again through his PA.

The cops behind the van shot out Djamila’s rear tires, and still she rolled on. The van was weaving and lurching but was still headed directly for the two policemen.

“She’s crazy!” one of the cops cried out. “She’s gonna run us down.”

“Stop the car! Now!” the cop shouted again. “Or we will open fire on you!”

Inside the van, Djamila didn’t even hear him. She was chanting over and over in Arabic, “I bear witness that there is no God but God.” For an instant, as she hurtled forward, her thoughts careened to a young man named Ahmed who didn’t know her, despite having captured her heart. Ahmed, her poet, who was dead, and surely now in paradise.

Djamila thought of the Prophet Muhammad climbing the miraj, or ladder, that fateful night, until he reached the Farthest Mosque, the hallowed “seventh heaven.” It was the promised paradise and it would be so beautiful. Far better than anything here on earth.

She pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and the crippled van shot forward.

The shotgun and pistol roared together. The van’s windshield exploded inward.

The vehicle immediately weaved off the road onto the grass and hit a tree.

The van’s horn started blaring. The cops rushed over to it and cautiously opened the driver’s door. Djamila’s bloodied head was resting against the steering wheel, her eyes open but no longer seeing. As the officers stepped back, a piece of paper floated out of the van. One of them stooped and picked it up.

“What’s it say?” the other asked. “Suicide note?”

He looked at it, shrugged and handed it to his colleague. “I don’t read Chinese.”

It was actually Arabic. Djamila had written something down.

It was the date and exact time of her death.

CHAPTER

57

CARTER GRAY SAID NOTHING IN the chopper ride back to Washington. Hemingway didn’t attempt to break into the man’s thoughts; he had quite enough of his own.

They landed at NIC, and Gray climbed out of the chopper.

“Do you want to go home, sir?” Hemingway asked.

Gray looked at him incredulously. “The president is missing. I have work to do.”

He walked into NIC headquarters as the chopper lifted off again. Hemingway spoke into his headset to the pilot.

Tyler Reinke confirmed this command and they headed west.

Hemingway glanced down at the floor of the chopper. In the cargo hold a foot under him, President James Brennan was sleeping peacefully.

Within a few hours even the most remote parts of the world knew at least some of the details of what had happened in the small town of Brennan, Pennsylvania.

The Secret Service had immediately implemented its continuity of government plan, securing all persons in the chain of command down to the secretary of state. The vice president, Ben Hamilton, had assumed the duties of the chief executive in accordance with the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the first time it had been invoked in response to a kidnapped president.

And the newly installed acting president was not a happy man.

Hamilton had verbally eviscerated the director of the Secret Service. Next he’d summoned the heads of every intelligence agency to the White House and took them to task for having been so totally oblivious to an operation that had clearly taken enormous planning and manpower. It was well known that the VP had presidential aspirations. He obviously thought that, aside from the damage the kidnapping had caused the country, it was probably not beneficial to him to assume the top spot in this way.

Then he ordered Carter Gray to come to the Oval Office that night.

By all accounts, Gray handled the tirade thrown his way in stride. When Hamilton finished, Gray calmly asked him if he could now go about the business of finding the president and returning him safely. His new boss’s response, according to the sources who’d heard it through the very thick walls, was not printable in any newspaper.

At Kate’s invitation Adelphia and the Camel Club reconvened back at her carriage house on their return from Brennan. Adelphia still carried a horrified look. Kate gave her some water and a cold cloth, but the woman just sat there staring down at her hands and slowly shaking her head.

Kate said, “Alex is okay, but I haven’t been able to see him, only talk to him on the phone for a few minutes.”

“I’m sure he’s being debriefed,” Reuben replied. “He was right in the middle of it all. He might’ve seen something that could help.”

“What did we all see that might be useful?” Stone asked.

“A lot of shooting, people dying and cars on fire,” Caleb listed.

“And the president being carried away,” Milton added.

“But there was something wrong with him before that,” Caleb said. “I saw it on the big TV. He was clutching his chest.”

“Heart attack?” Reuben suggested.

“Possibly,” Stone said.

“Well, it was Arabs shooting,” Reuben added. “I grabbed one of their guns before the man got shot.”

“It was definitely a coordinated attack,” Stone commented. “Even with all the chaos, that was clear to see. Shooters and then men setting themselves on fire, and then more shooters. In structured bursts of directed fire.”

“At least the presidential limo was able to get away,” Kate added. “Even if the president ended up being kidnapped.”

“Yes, but the perpetrators probably intended that the limo escape,” Stone said. “After cutting it off from the rest of the motorcade.” He looked over at Milton, who was frantically typing away on his laptop. “Anything new, Milton?”

“Only that the president is confirmed missing, and there was a tremendous gun battle outside of Mercy Hospital in Brennan.”

“Mercy Hospital,” Stone said thoughtfully. “If the president was ill, they must’ve taken him to the hospital. That would have been standard procedure.”

“And they set fire to the ambulance,” Kate said.

“Also part of the plan,” Stone replied.

Caleb looked at all of them. “So what now?”

“We really need to talk to Alex. He needs to look at that film,” Kate said.

“I’m sure he’s pretty busy right now,” Reuben commented.

“I’ll go and see him as soon as he’s home,” Kate said. “I know he’ll want to help.”

Stone, however, didn’t look nearly as confident as she did.

At Secret Service headquarters the crisis room was abuzz. Although the FBI was officially handling the investigation, the Service was not about to back down on this case.

Alex Ford, his arm bandaged, his bruised ribs wrapped with tape and his lungs still feeling like they’d been charcoaled, had been debriefed for the tenth time and was, in turn, being caught up on recent developments.

“We’ve got the hospital security guard,” said the Secret Service’s director, Wayne Martin. “The two other men in the ambulance were killed after a gun battle, but we got the bastard.”

“And the president?” Alex asked anxiously.

Martin said, “No sign of him. We think he was transferred to another vehicle. A woman named Djamila Saelem may have been involved. She worked as a nanny for a couple named Franklin. She tied up Mrs. Franklin and took the kids. Later she released the kids but was killed by the responding officers when she tried to run them down.”

“What’s the connection to the president?” another agent asked.

“We think she used the kids to get through the roadblocks. A nanny with three screaming babies is not really high on the suspect list.”

“I’m still not getting it,” the same agent commented.

“When the officers inspected the van she was driving, a secret compartment was found in the rear. It was copper- and lead-lined with an outline of a man’s body roughly the size of the president’s cut into it, plus space for an oxygen tank that was later recovered. Mrs. Franklin said the nanny was highly upset when she was told that Mrs. Franklin had changed her plans and was going to the dedication event with her sons. That would’ve thrown a big monkey wrench in their plan, so Franklin had to be taken out.”

“Has he talked?” Alex asked. “The security guard, I mean.”

“The FBI has taken over that line of inquiry,” Martin said bitterly. “But his prints were run through the system and came back with zip.”

“Sir, that guy is no rookie. I can’t believe this is his first op,” Alex said.

Martin said, “Agreed, but I guess he never got caught before.”

Alex then asked the question he’d been dreading. “How many are dead, sir?”

Martin looked at him strangely. “Counting the dedication grounds and what happened in town, twenty-one terrorists were killed.”

“I mean what about our guys?”

Martin glanced around the room at the other men and women there. “This is not public knowledge, and it won’t be until we can figure out what the hell’s going on.” He paused. “We had no casualties.”

Alex jumped up and looked at the man. “What the hell are you talking about? Guys were dropping all over the place. I was there. I saw them, damn it. Is this some kind of bullshit political spin? Because if it is, it stinks!”

“Just hold on, Ford,” Martin said. “I know you’re on heavy meds for the pain, but you don’t talk to me that way, son.”

Alex took a deep breath and sat back down. “Sir, we had casualties.”

“Our guys were shot, over twenty-five of them, plus about fifteen uniforms. And Dr. Bellamy.” Martin paused. “But they were shot with tranquilizer darts. They’ve all recovered. That’s why the shooters were able to get their weapons through the magnetometers. The guns and darts were made of composite materials with no metal.” He paused and then said, “None of what I’m telling you leaves this room.”

All the agents in the room looked at one another. Alex said slowly, “Tranquilizer guns? They weren’t firing tranquilizer darts at the hospital. Those were real bullets.”

“The snipers fired darts into the two other agents we found there. Then they held off the reinforcements with real ammo. However, despite having the high ground and one of the best sniper rifles on the market, they didn’t hit one damn person with live ammo. Eyewitnesses said the snipers only shot in the vicinity of our guys. They put up walls of fire in front of the hospital to keep our people away. That seems clear now. They apparently never took a kill shot, although our guys said there were plenty of opportunities for them to do so. I don’t claim to understand it, but those are the facts right now.”

Alex touched his wounded arm. “They used live ammo on me.”

“Congratulations, you were the only one. I guess they didn’t anticipate you being able to get into the hospital and mess up their plans.”

“I obviously didn’t mess them up enough.”

Martin eyed him closely. “You did as much as any agent could’ve.”

Alex didn’t acknowledge this compliment.

Martin continued. “The plan obviously was to funnel the president to the hospital without his normal security contingent. They knew our procedures and methodology well, and used them against us. We think the fact they didn’t harm any of the security forces may bode well for the president. They could have killed him easily.”

“So they’ll hold him for ransom, and not just money,” another agent said.

“That’s the probable scenario,” Martin conceded. “God only knows what they’re going to ask for.”

“But why go to all the trouble of not killing us, sir?” Alex asked in exasperation. “I mean that’s what these guys do, they kill. Look at 9/11, the USS Cole, Grand Central. And they were slaughtered in the process. It makes no sense.”

“Agreed, it makes no sense. We seem to be in new territory here.” Martin picked up a remote and pointed it at a large-screen plasma TV hanging from the wall. “We just got this video feed in. I want everyone to sit here and watch this thing. Anybody sees something that strikes ’em funny, sound off.”

The TV came to life, and Alex watched as the horrific events at Brennan unfolded.

They viewed it three times, and while a few agents had some comments, nothing jumped out at them. It was clear that the terrorists had been very organized and very disciplined.

“They took the ambulance out and Dr. Bellamy too so we’d have to take the president directly to the hospital for treatment,” Martin said. “Then they used a tractor-trailer and a downed water tower to block off reinforcements. Pretty damn clever. Lucky we weren’t facing these guys when Reagan got shot. He got to the hospital with a handful of guys. Somebody waiting there would’ve had a pretty easy target. Which means we’re going to have to change how we do things from now on.”

“But the president was looking ill,” Alex said. “I remember seeing him grab at his chest. When we got to the hospital, he told me he was dying. I checked his pulse. It seemed okay but I’m no doctor.”

“The hospital staff said a doctor at the hospital injected him with something and he went unconscious,” Martin added.

“They couldn’t just count on him becoming ill and going to Mercy Hospital,” Alex said. “They had to make that happen at the ceremony.”

“Right, but we don’t know how they did it.”

Another agent spoke up. “Maybe he was hit with a dart that made him sick.”

“That’s possible. And the dart guns don’t make a lot of noise, but no one saw a gun until the first volley of fire took place. We’ve gone over that film a hundred times. At no time does the president flinch or otherwise show that he’s been shot with anything. Even with a dart gun you’re going to have a physical reaction upon impact.”

At that moment Jerry Sykes came in holding a paper. “This just in, sir.”

Martin read it and then looked up at his crew. “The hospital in Brennan has reported five people who came to the hospital complaining of respiratory problems and heart attack symptoms. They sent us a rundown of the people’s descriptions and other details. They’re all being treated, but tests show there’s nothing wrong with them.”

“Some sort of biological agent might’ve been released in the air,” Sykes suggested.

“And only hit the president and a few others? That’s a mighty ineffective agent,” Martin said skeptically.

Alex’s gaze was on the TV screen. “Were the five people who went to the hospital a National Guardsman, two older men, a young woman and an elderly woman?”

Martin looked up from the file. “How in the hell did you know that?”

In response, Alex pointed to the screen. “Back up and run that sequence in slow motion.”

They all watched as Brennan started shaking hands along the rope line.

“Okay, stop right there,” Alex cried out.

Martin froze the playback.

“Look at the man’s hand,” Alex said, pointing to the National Guardsman’s prosthetic device.

“It’s a fake hand, Ford,” Sykes said. “A couple of the agents on the line noticed it.”

“Right, I saw him too,” Alex said. “He shakes with his right hand, which is artificial. And you’ll see Brennan shaking five more hands before he went down. Now roll the tape.”

The National Guardsman saluted the president.

“Stop it right there,” Alex said. “See, he saluted with his left hand. Or left hook. One hand and one hook?”

“So maybe he’s waiting to get the other one done,” Martin said impatiently.

“But why shake with your right and salute with your left?”

Sykes said, “I’m left-handed, but most people are right-handed. So I always shake with my right, but I sometimes salute with my left. So what?”

Martin said, “Okay, anybody else see anything?”

Alex kept studying the hand. “Can you zoom in on the guy’s hand?”

Martin and Sykes looked at him crossly.

“Just humor me, guys,” Alex said. “It’s not like anybody else here is spotting anything.”

Martin hit the zoom button until the prosthetic hand nearly filled the screen.

“Check that out,” Alex said, pointing.

“Check what out?” Martin exclaimed.

“The moisture on the guy’s palm.”

Sykes looked at Alex quizzically. “That’s sweat. It was a warm day, Alex.”

“Right. It was a warm day. But artificial hands don’t sweat.”

“Holy shit!” Martin yelled as he stared at the screen.

As the men were leaving a little later, Martin stopped Alex.

“Ford, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a damn hero actually.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Alex said. “And neither do I.”

CHAPTER

58

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS HAD passed, and a panicked America continued to wait for word on its missing president. The National Guardsman’s address had been tracked down, but he was long gone by the time they got there. The other sickened people at the hospital were found to be suffering from a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that was absorbed through the skin. Tests showed that it caused heart-attack-like symptoms, partial paralysis and feelings of imminent doom. The hospital had to call in CIA scientists and technicians to help identify the substance. The CIA quickly informed everyone that it had never used the drug on anyone, but the enemies of America certainly had, the bastards. The good news, however, was that the drug was not fatal, and its effects could be counteracted quite easily by existing medications. It appeared the substance had been transferred when the infected president shook hands with five more people standing in the rope line.

Another body had been found in a garage in downtown Brennan. Alex identified the man as the one driving the ambulance at the hospital. The garage was owned by an American businessman; however, no trace of him could be found. The ballistics report showed that the bullet removed from the dead man was fired from the same gun that had wounded Alex. The bullet had glanced off the Secret Service agent’s arm and embedded itself in a wooden railing. That coupled with the proximity of the garage to the hospital indicated strongly that the switch from the ambulance to Djamila Saelem’s van had taken place at the garage. The president had obviously been transferred from the van to something else, perhaps another vehicle, and then slipped out of the area.

Acting President Hamilton had spoken several times to the American people to reassure them that the country was stable and its leadership running smoothly, and that whoever had done this terrible thing would be severely punished. He demanded that whatever terrorist group had kidnapped James Brennan return him at once, unharmed, or the United States’ retaliation for the brutal act would be nothing short of annihilation for both the perpetrators and any countries aiding them.

However, the kidnapping had clearly stunned the United States. The financial markets had plummeted; people were afraid to leave their homes; the country had come to a standstill. It didn’t help matters that some Muslim extremists were calling upon the kidnappers to kill Brennan if he wasn’t already dead and show his body to the world.

The armed forces and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) were at DEFCON level 2, only the second time SAC had been placed on that level, the other being the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Even the events of 9/11 had only pushed the DEFCON level to 3. Military experts warned that depending on how things developed, the DEFCON level might very well go to 1, the highest. Then all bets were off.

The intelligence sector was doing all it could to identify the kidnappers. Diplomatic inquiries were also put out to all quarters. And the Pentagon was itching for a target on which to use its high-tech weaponry.

In a conversation with a senator on the Armed Services Committee, a three-star general said, “We’re through dicking around with these people. No more boots on the ground for them to shoot at. Just missiles through the air. They can kiss their asses good-bye this time.”

The senator did not disagree with him.

Already heightened tensions between the Islamic world and America were ratcheted ever higher. Although no terrorist organization had claimed responsibility, every slain terrorist in Brennan was an Arab. Astonishingly, their prints and other information had been run through NIC’s vast, comprehensive system and nothing had come back. It was unthinkable that the U.S. intelligence community had not a single byte of information about any of these perpetrators, but that indeed seemed to be the case.

Right now most people were not concentrating on that anomaly. They simply wanted their president back. And they wanted answers as to how this could have occurred in the first place.

Late in the evening on the day following the kidnapping Kate Adams knocked on the front door of Alex Ford’s house in Manassas after having called him repeated times without success.

Kate heard the soulful tunes of a guitar coming from somewhere inside. Those sounds stopped, and she listened as footsteps grew closer to the door.

“Yeah?”

“Alex, it’s Kate.”

Alex opened the door. He was unshaven and his hair a mess. He was wearing torn jeans, a dirty T-shirt and no shoes. His eyes were bloodshot, and Kate smelled alcohol on his breath. He was holding a black acoustic guitar in his right hand.

“You never returned my calls. I was really worried,” she said.

“Sorry, I’ve been busy,” he said curtly.

She stared at the instrument in his hand and then at the bandage on his arm. “How can you be playing guitar with a gunshot wound in your arm?”

“Who needs a sling when you have Jack Daniel’s?”

“Can I come in?”

He shrugged, stepped back and closed the door behind her.

“I’m surprised your house isn’t surrounded by media trucks.”

“They haven’t released my name. I’m just the unidentified Secret Service agent who screwed up and let someone kidnap the president.”

He led her into a small family room, and they sat down. The room had very little furniture. In fact, Kate thought, it was so barren that it almost looked like someone was either moving in or moving out. The only thing out of the ordinary was hundreds of shot glasses on one shelf.

“I have a shot glass from every place I visited while on protection detail.” She turned to find his gaze on her. “Not much to show after all those years, is it?” he said.

There was an awkward silence until he said, “You want something to drink?”

“Nothing as strong as what you’re having.”

He rose and came back a minute later with a glass of Coke on ice.

“No Jack, right?” she said warily.

“Nope, I’m actually fresh out. Funny, I had a whole bottle yesterday.”

“So that’s the plan? Stay here and drink yourself to death while you play Johnny Cash ballads?”

“It’s a plan,” he said dully.

“Not a very good one.”

“You have a better idea?”

“You promised to meet with Oliver and the others.”

“Oh, right, the Camera Club,” he said absently.

“No, the Camel Club.”

“Whatever,” he said, and started strumming on his guitar.

Kate glanced around the room, and her gaze came to rest on a photo. She picked it up. The man in the picture was very tall and lean with a weathered face and a huge black pompadour slicked back to an exaggerated degree. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and he was holding a guitar.

She glanced at Alex, who was watching her closely. “Your father?”

“The one and only Freddy ‘Hot Rod’ Ford,” he said.

“He doesn’t really look like Johnny Cash.”

“I know. More like Hank Williams, Sr.”

She put the photo back down and looked around.

“Not much of a life, is it?” he said.

Kate turned and saw Alex watching her.

“Being a Secret Service agent doesn’t mix really well with a home life,” he said.

She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not after you for your money.”

“Good thing.”

She sat back down, sipped her Coke and said, “You need to meet with Oliver, Alex. Remember, a woman has been kidnapped.”

“Then call in the FBI, although I think they’re tied up on another kidnapping right now.”

“They want you.”

He pointed to himself. “Look at me, Kate. If your sister were missing, would you really want me handling the case?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit!”

“Please, Alex, will you meet with them?”

“No, I won’t!”

“Why not!”

“I don’t owe you or anyone else a damn explanation!”

She set down her glass and stood. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She turned to leave, but he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her back toward him.

“I screwed up, Kate,” he said simply. “I didn’t do my job.”

“It wasn’t your fault. They almost killed you.”

“No, they suckered me like I was a rookie. This Middle Eastern security guard just happens to stroll out of the hospital? And he just offers to risk his life to help me, and I let the son of a bitch walk away with the president of the United States?”

“You didn’t let him walk away. You figured out what they were up to.”

“Yeah, about sixty seconds too late, and in my job that doesn’t cut it.” He leaned against the wall. “You remember what Clint Hill, Kennedy’s Secret Service guy, told me?”

“That you didn’t want to be like him. Because he’d lost his president.”

“That’s right,” Alex said. “And now I know exactly what the man meant.”

CHAPTER

59

CARTER GRAY HAD BARELY SLEPT since Brennan disappeared, yet the NIC chief had little to show for his efforts. Thirty-six hours after the president had been kidnapped, he was sitting at a conference table at NIC. Across from him, shackled to a chair with two burly guards hovering nearby, was a man answering only to the name Farid Shah, which matched his official documents. Gray knew that it was all phony and had managed to wrest control of Shah from the FBI, based mainly on the fact that he had considerable dirt on the FBI director.

“Farid Shah from India,” Gray said. “But you’re not Indian.”

“My father was Indian, my mother was Saudi. I took after her,” the prisoner said quietly. His wounded arm was taped to his side. They were not going to allow him to wear a sling, since it would also make a very effective suicide tool.

“A Hindu marries a Muslim?”

“Out of a billion people you’d be surprised how much it happens.”

“And how exactly did you get from India to America?”

“America, it’s the land of opportunity,” he answered vaguely.

“Are Muslims now recruiting Hindus as terrorists?”

“I am a practicing Muslim. I’m sure you’ve watched me perform my salat in my cell, haven’t you?”

“You know, Mr. Shah, you look familiar to me.”

“I’ve found that to most Americans all of us look alike.”

“I’m not most Americans. And how exactly did you get your job as a security guard at the hospital?”

The prisoner looked down at his hands and said nothing.

“And who are these people?” Gray asked as he spread out the photos on the table. “Are these your family?” No reply.

“They were found in your apartment, so presumably, you know who they are. It’s interesting. On the backs of each photo are dates written in Arabic. They appear to be the dates of birth and death and also some other information.” Gray held up one photo of a teenage boy. “This says he was sixteen when he died. It also says he was killed during the Iran-Iraq war. Was he your brother? Which side of the war was he on? Which side were you on?”

Gray didn’t wait for an answer that he knew wasn’t coming. He picked up another photo, this one of a woman. “It says she was killed in what is written as the ‘first American invasion of Iraq.’ I’m assuming you’re referring to Persian Gulf One, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the United States came to Kuwait’s aid. Was she your wife? Did you fight for Saddam Hussein?” Again, nothing.

Gray picked up one more picture, that of a teenage girl. He turned it around and read, “‘Killed in second American invasion of Iraq.’ Was this your daughter?” The prisoner was still studying his hands. “You’ve lost all these people, your family and friends in war and insurrection; Muslim against Muslim and then Muslim against American. Is that what this is all about?” Gray leaned in closer. “Is this all about revenge?”

Gray slowly collected the photos and nodded to the guards. As he rose to leave, Gray said to the prisoner, “I’ll be back very soon. And then you will tell me everything.”

The following morning, responding to news rumors, the nation was finally told that during the kidnapping of President Brennan the terrorists had used tranquilizer guns. These resulted in no deaths to any American, although numerous people suffered injuries when the crowd stampeded at the dedication ceremony. The confirmed killing of twenty-one Arabs had the world shaking its collective head. The New York Times headline put the issue succinctly: “Suicide Killers Who Kill Only Themselves?” A commentary in the Washington Post wondered if it was due to the fact that real guns would have been detected by the magnetometers. Yet no one could explain why the snipers at the hospital also used tranquilizer guns.

The New York Post put it most bluntly with its headline: “What in the Hell Is Going On?”

Violence was spreading into the streets across America and the world. Clearly, it was only a matter of time before something major happened.

On that very same morning the White House absorbed more stunning news. Each of the major American television networks had received a heads-up from Al Jazeera that it was about to release a ransom note from the kidnappers that had just been delivered to the Arab news network. There were stunning revelations contained in the note, representatives of Al Jazeera claimed. No one, not even the acting president, would be given an advance copy of the ransom demand. Apparently, the kidnappers wanted the government to find out at the same time as the rest of its citizenry.

Acting President Hamilton’s response to this, if it had been on live TV, would’ve required a number of bleep-overs and an official FCC rebuke for on-air profanity. Yet what could he do? Hamilton assembled his cabinet, advisers and military commanders to watch the announcement.

“How the hell do we even know if these people have Brennan? This could all be a load of crap,” the national security adviser warned.

“Exactly,” the secretary of defense, Joe Decker, echoed. He was well respected as a cabinet member who did his homework and played the political games to the fullest. He also had the reputation of a man unafraid to pull the trigger when it came to unleashing America’s military juggernaut. Decker had been an iron man in Brennan’s administration, and Hamilton was relying heavily on him during this crisis.

Hamilton withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket. “This was forwarded to the White House a few minutes ago from the networks. It accompanied the demand letter.”

“What is it, sir?” Decker asked.

“They say it’s the nuclear codes that President Brennan was carrying with him. We’ll need to confirm that they’re accurate. Obviously, the codes are no longer valid.”

Two minutes later, after a quick consultation and a confirming phone call, Defense Secretary Decker glumly looked around the room. “They’re the ones.”

The other men and women in the room stared downward, avoiding eye contact with each other. They were all thinking the same thing. Whatever the kidnappers were asking for would almost undoubtedly be something the U.S. could not agree to. And that, unfortunately, would seal the fate of James Brennan.

A grizzled news anchor appeared on the plasma screen mounted on the wall. Hamilton, putting words to the unspoken thoughts of those gathered around him, said, “I swear to God, if those bastards film the beheading of Jim Brennan, there won’t be one building left standing over there.”

The veteran news anchor appeared upset but quickly started reading. First, America and the rest of the world had to recognize Islam as a great religion and give it the respect it deserved. Second, for every dollar given by the U.S. to either Israel or Egypt a dollar had to be given to Palestine for economic development. Third, there must be a complete withdrawal of all allied troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, although U.N. troops could remain. Fourth, all allied military bases in Afghanistan must be removed. Fifth, all private foreign oil interests in the Middle East must be turned over to the country where such oil interests were located, including the oil pipeline running through Afghanistan. Sixth, any foreign businesses operating in the Middle East must be majority-owned by Arabs, and must reinvest all their profits in the region for the next two decades to help build infrastructure and create jobs. Seventh, there must be agreement by the United States and its allies that they would not invade another sovereign nation unless specifically attacked by that nation’s military or unless there was credible evidence of such nation’s support of a terrorist attack against the U.S. or its allies. Eighth, the United States must refrain from using its powerful military to reshape the world in its image and must respect the diverse cultures in the Middle East. Ninth, there must be an acknowledgment that many problems in the Middle East were the result of the West’s misguided foreign policies and colonial exploitation, and that a widespread dialogue must be initiated on how best to move forward.

As this list was read off, the mood in the room at the White House darkened even more. A general exclaimed, “Same old crap! I’m a little disappointed they weren’t more creative.”

“We can’t bow to blackmail,” Hamilton said. He looked around the room for confirmation.

“Absolutely not,” the NSA agreed.

“Clearly we can’t,” Secretary Decker added forcefully.

Around the table people started scribbling notes on the appropriate spin for this chain of events. Meanwhile, the generals and admirals huddled in a corner sketching out a military response.

The secretary of state, Andrea Mayes, spoke up. “Wait a minute, people. Damn it, let’s not just write Jim Brennan off.” She was a close friend of the kidnapped president.

The Pentagon group looked at her in utter disbelief.

One of them snapped, “Do you really believe that they’re just going to hand him back to us?”

There were eruptions around the table; then a very loud voice boomed out. Everyone’s attention was directed to Carter Gray, who sat at one end of the table. Though his aura of invincibility had been substantially damaged, he could still command respect.

“Perhaps,” Gray said, motioning to the TV, “we should listen to the rest.”

The room grew silent.

“This is a new section,” the TV anchor said, holding the paper tightly. He cleared his throat and began reading. “Civilized countries that unilaterally spread their will with bullets and bombs are terrorists and have no right to deny other countries the same privilege. When you lead with the sword, you often die by it.” The anchor paused again. “Now we come to the most bizarre part of this message, although, quite frankly, what has happened thus far is the most incredible series of events that I have seen in my thirty-two years of covering the news.” He paused a third time, as though to give the moment the substantial gravitas it deserved.

“Damn it,” Secretary Decker roared. “Just tell us, for God’s sake!”

The anchor started reading again. “Whether or not these demands are met, one week from today President James Brennan will be released unharmed, left at a safe location, and the appropriate authorities will be contacted immediately to retrieve him. However, we ask the world to take these demands with the utmost seriousness if we are ever to truly have Salaam.” The anchor added hastily, “That means ‘peace’ in Arabic.”

The White House group simply stared at the TV, shock and awe all over their faces.

“What the hell did he just say?” Hamilton asked.

Gray answered in a clear voice, “He said that even if the demands are not met, President Brennan will be released unharmed.”

“Bullshit!” Decker yelled. “Do they think we’re all idiots?”

Gray thought, No, I don’t believe they think you’re all idiots.

“This is preposterous,” Decker said angrily. “What I want to know is where they recruited the people to pull this off.”

Gray looked at him disdainfully. “There are over one billion Muslims on this earth. Muslims follow their faith fervently and do what is asked of them without question. So do you really think that it would be that difficult to find fewer than two dozen of them willing to sacrifice their lives under these circumstances? Do you?” he asked again. “We’re fighting a war against these people, Joe. If you don’t even know your enemy, I respectfully suggest that the Defense Department is not the best fit for your capabilities.”

“Where the hell do you get off—” Decker began, but Gray snapped, “The question we should be asking ourselves is, who planned the scheme? Because I seriously doubt it was any terrorist organization of which I’m aware. That means there’s someone else out there. Someone else we have to find if we’re to have any chance of getting the president back alive.”

CHAPTER

60

AFTER THE STUNNING DEMAND, Carter Gray had gone back to work with renewed purpose. The files at NIC contained no record of Farid Shah, so Gray had mulled where next to search. The FBI had its AFIS criminal files, yet Gray was almost certain the name Farid Shah would not be found there. One did not assume a false name with a criminal record attached to it. And as Gray had predicted, a search in the AFIS database also turned up negative.

Next Gray hopped a chopper to Brennan, Pennsylvania. A temporary morgue had been set up there, and Gray examined all of the bodies. The corpse of the doctor from Mercy Hospital looked familiar, but that was all. The problem was many of the photos NIC had in its terrorist files were anywhere from five to fifteen years old. People could change a lot in that amount of time. Gray then traveled to the dedication grounds, the garage, the hospital and finally the apartment building where the snipers had kept the police at bay. Nothing occurred to the NIC chief except his ability to marvel at the terrorists’ intricate planning. Who had set this in motion? Who?

On the chopper ride home he pulled out the photos he’d taken from Shah’s apartment. A sudden thought occurred to him. The chopper was redirected to Langley.

When he arrived, Gray gave the photos and also a mug shot of Farid Shah to the DCI and asked him to make immediate inquiries to try to identify any of them.

Late that evening, back at his office, Gray received a phone call from Langley.

They had turned up an Arab informant who thought he recognized one of the people in the photos. It was the young girl. She was the daughter of someone the informant had fought with in Iraq, first as part of an underground movement against Saddam Hussein and then against the American occupation. When the informant saw Shah’s mug shot, he identified it immediately, although the man’s appearance had changed drastically. He was the young girl’s father.

“What was the father’s name?” Gray asked impatiently.

“Adnan al-Rimi,” the CIA director said. “But that can’t be right. He’s dead.”

Gray acknowledged this, thanked the man and hung up. He immediately accessed the database, pulled up al-Rimi’s file photo and compared that picture with the current mug shot of the man calling himself Farid Shah. Though there was some likeness, even allowing for shaved hair and beard and weight changes, it was not the same man.

Gray sat back in his chair and dropped the photo on his desk. NIC’s database had been corrupted and photos and fingerprints altered. Patrick Johnson had been paid to do it and then killed. That all made sense now; yet where did it leave Carter Gray? He’d been fighting this whole damn war with flawed intelligence. It was far more than a disaster. It was the greatest professional setback Gray had ever experienced.

He walked outside and sat on the bench by the fountain. While Gray listened to the soothing water he stared up at the NIC facility, the greatest intelligence agency in the world. And right now he knew it was absolutely useless to him. This had been an inside job. His earlier suspicions about terrorists killing terrorists and then being “resurrected” had been confirmed. But who was the traitor? And how deep did the treachery go? Despite the vast resources at his disposal, Carter Gray was now very much alone.

Tom Hemingway sat on the concrete floor, his long legs folded under him. His eyes were closed and his pulse and breathing so slowed that it was not apparent at first glance that he was actually alive. When he rose, he moved fast down the hallway and entered another room. He unlocked a heavy door, passed through it, unlocked another one and went inside.

In a small enclosure, lying on a cot, her arms and legs chained to the wall, was Chastity Hayes. Her even breathing showed her to be asleep. Hemingway left Hayes and went to another room, where his other, far more important prisoner was also sleeping comfortably. Hemingway stood in the doorway and watched President Brennan for a while. And reflected on what had happened.

When everyone expected murderous violence, Hemingway had given the world restraint. When everyone anticipated that the stereotype of the fanatical Muslim would be repeated once more, he had thrown the world a curve of historic proportion. Yet it was not without precedent. Gandhi had changed an entire continent with nonviolence. Brutal segregationists in the American South had finally been beaten by sit-ins and peace marches. Turning the other cheek was Hemingway’s “new” way. He had no idea if it would work, but it was clearly worth a chance. Because without it, all he saw was the inevitable destruction of two worlds that he cared so much about. He was apparently ignoring the fact that what happened in Pennsylvania had terrorized thousands and injured hundreds, some critically.

Hemingway had agonized over how much to tell the Arabs about the mission. Would they follow orders if they knew not one of their enemy would perish? Yet finally, Hemingway had decided that if he was asking them to die for this cause, they should die fully informed. It was the right thing to do. So the men in Brennan, Pennsylvania, sacrificed their lives with the knowledge that their foes were safe. It was one of the most courageous acts Hemingway had ever witnessed.

Hemingway checked his watch. There would be another message delivered to the world shortly. It involved where the president would be returned. And this would be just as stunning as the last message.

Kate met with the Camel Club at Oliver Stone’s cottage and reported her failure with Alex Ford.

She said, “He blames himself for what happened to the president.”

“Having come to know him well over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Stone replied. “He’s a proud man who takes his work very seriously.”

“Too much pride is sometimes a bad thing,” Kate said.

“Well, we’re running out of time,” Milton said. He had his computer on and pointed to the screen. “It’s getting very ugly out there.” They all crowded around him, staring at the news flashing across the computer. Milton said, “Even with the demand note saying they’ll let Brennan go, the violence is getting out of control. Muslims are being beaten and killed by mobs all over the world. And the Muslims are retaliating. Five Americans were ambushed in Kuwait and beheaded. And Iraq has become totally destabilized again.”

Stone added, “And now even the more moderate Islamic elements are calling for the kidnappers holding Brennan to extract a heavy price for him from America.”

“One group is calling for the kidnappers to demand nuclear weapons in exchange for his return,” Caleb said. “My God, the whole world is collapsing. Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

Reuben raised a thick eyebrow at that naive comment. “The U.S. military is cocked and locked, just waiting for the word to go.”

“This might cause an all-out war with the Islamic world,” Caleb said.

“Some people might want war,” Stone said. Carter Gray might want that.

“What if the president is released . . . ,” Kate said.

“It might not matter,” Stone replied. “With the world so divided, all it could take is one single catalyst to set the final battle in place.”

“But if we can find out who did it?” Kate said.

“Us?” exclaimed Reuben. “We haven’t got a bloody chance in hell of doing that.”

“You’re wrong, Reuben,” Stone interjected sternly. They all looked at him. “Alex Ford once paid me a visit here; perhaps it’s time the Camel Club reciprocated.”

Carter Gray walked down the hallway of an isolated cell area at NIC. He nodded to the guards and the cell door slid open.

“Mr. al-Rimi,” Gray said triumphantly. “Shall we talk?”

There was no response from the burly prisoner who was lying on his bed, the covers over his head. Gray motioned to the guards.

The two men grabbed al-Rimi by the shoulders and attempted to haul him up.

“Oh, shit!” one of the guards exclaimed.

They let go of al-Rimi, and he fell to the concrete floor.

Gray rushed in and stared at the body. Loose strands of medical tape were sticking out of his mouth. He had taken it from his wounded arm, balled it up and crammed it into his mouth, suffocating himself under the cover of his blanket. His body was already cold.

Gray looked up at the video camera hanging in the corner and screamed, “A man chokes himself to death on medical tape, and you saw nothing! You idiots!”

He threw the file into Adnan al-Rimi’s cell. The photos cascaded over the body.

As he stalked off, the glazed eyes of the corpse seemed to follow each furious stride of the intelligence czar. If a dead man could’ve managed it, Adnan al-Rimi would certainly have been smiling.

A half hour later Gray’s chopper landed at the White House. He was not looking forward to this meeting with Acting President Hamilton. He decided to get the worst of it out of the way up front. Gray and Hamilton had never been close. Hamilton was an old political sidekick of Brennan, and he had been openly cool to the close relationship Brennan had with his intelligence chief. And it was still a sore point with Hamilton that the president asked Gray and not him to attend the event in Brennan. And yet that event had radically altered their professional relationship, giving Hamilton the upper hand. Gray assumed his new boss would look for any opening to sack him, and the NIC chief didn’t intend to give him such an opportunity.

He told Hamilton about a prisoner’s suicide, but without informing him of al-Rimi’s true identity. Gray intended to take that secret to his grave. “However, I think we’re making progress, sir,” he added.

Hamilton snapped, “How the hell do you figure that, Gray?” He held up an Islamic newspaper. “You read Arabic, don’t you?”

Gray translated the headline out loud: “They Are Finally Paying for Their Sins.”

Hamilton picked up another paper. “This one says, ‘Maybe Islam Can Turn the Other Cheek.’ That ran in a major Italian daily. And now, while our president is God knows where, the international press is intimating that this is somehow our fault.” He held up a long slip of paper. “In the last twenty minutes I’ve been informed that a Muslim cabdriver was pulled out of his vehicle in broad daylight in New York City and beaten to death. And you know what? He’d served six years in the army. Our army! And two Halliburton executives were snatched out of their hotel in Riyadh; their gutted bodies were found in an alley a half mile away with ‘Death to America’ written across their naked bodies. And that’s just the latest in about a dozen such incidents I’ve gotten today. The Pentagon’s waiting for me to tell them to nuke somebody and my intelligence folks are anything but intelligent it seems. We don’t have one damn lead as to where Jim Brennan is.” He stared at Gray, obviously itching to hear the man’s feeble response so he could pounce.

Ben Hamilton had seemingly aged four years in the brief time since the kidnapping. Gray had never known a president to come into the White House with dark hair and leave with anything less than gray. This was the most impossible occupation in history and, in the strange way the world worked, the most coveted.

Gray said, “Regardless of how this happened, and what the international media is saying about it, dogs don’t change their spots. When the inevitable happens, we’ll have the opening we need.”

Hamilton slammed his fist down on his desk. “I want Jim Brennan back alive! Your previous work for this country means squat to me. This happened on your watch, and I hold you fully accountable for it. The United States has been humiliated by a bunch of damn Arabs. Unless the president is returned safe and sound, you will no longer head this country’s intelligence community. Are we perfectly clear on that?”

“Absolutely,” Gray replied impassively. He knew this to be baseless rhetoric. There was no possible way the acting president could afford to fire his intelligence chief during such a crisis. “But let me point out that there is not one demand of the kidnappers that this country can seriously consider, given our current foreign policies. And we can’t wait one week for his release, not that I believe they will release him. The American people will not tolerate that. And the violence is only going to become worse in the meantime.”

Hamilton snapped, “Well, then I guess you’ll just have to find him on your own.”

Gray studied the man keenly. He sensed exactly what his adversary was thinking; politicians were all too transparent. Ben Hamilton had wanted this job more than anything. He had patiently paid his dues, waiting for Brennan to serve his two terms before it was his turn to wear the American Crown. Now he had the throne, yet could he do the job? In Gray’s mind it wasn’t even a close call. Ben Hamilton didn’t make even a worthy vice president.

The chief of staff suddenly burst into the room with a Secret Service agent hard on her heels. “Sir,” she exclaimed. “This is just in from Al Jazeera. The kidnappers have disclosed the location where the president will be released.”

“Where?” Gray snapped.

“Medina.”

Hamilton exclaimed, “Medina! How in the hell did they get Brennan out of the country and to Saudi Arabia?”

“Private plane and private airport,” Gray answered. “Not that difficult.”

Hamilton’s face flushed. “We spend billions on airport and border security, and they manage to sneak the damn president of the United States to the Middle East.” He stared at Gray as though he meant to fire him right that instant.

Gray spoke quickly. “It makes sense. Medina is the second holiest city in the Muslim world behind Mecca.”

Hamilton looked at his chief of staff. “Get in touch with the Saudis and tell them that Medina is going to be annexed by this country until we get Brennan back.” He eyed Gray. “I want every military and intelligence resource we have in the area focused there.”

“I’m on it, sir,” Gray said, rising from his chair. He wanted to get out of the room as fast as he could.

I serve at your pleasure, Gray thought as he fled the Oval Office.

CHAPTER

61

CAPTAIN JACK SAT BACK IN HIS chair and smiled with excellent reason. He had in his hand the password he needed to set his final plan into motion. Their captive had endured far more torture than had been anticipated, although his North Korean colleagues were very skilled at such exercises. Yet the man had finally broken; they all did eventually. Captain Jack read the Arabic words and smiled.

From a cloned phone that was not traceable to him he made one call. Speaking in fluent Arabic with well-honed inflections, he said what he needed to say and then used the precious password. This authenticated the source of Captain Jack’s statement to the party on the other line, and it would be immediately relayed to the world.

Captain Jack clicked off the phone and used his lighter to burn the piece of paper. If Tom Hemingway thought he had stunned the world, wait until it heard what his old friend had to say.

Secretary of Defense Joe Decker stared across the desk at Acting President Hamilton. They had just been informed of the latest statement issued through Al Jazeera. And they were furious.

“It’s our only choice, sir,” Decker said. “We simply don’t have the troops to deploy there, and frankly, even if we did, it might quickly turn into another Iraq. We have to avoid that at all costs. We can’t afford it.”

Andrea Mayes, the secretary of state, who’d been hovering in the back of the Oval Office, came forward. She was a tall, large-boned woman with graying hair. “What Secretary Decker is proposing is a direct violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, sir. We can’t do it.”

“Yes, we can,” Decker insisted.

“How?” Hamilton asked sternly.

“This country has made it clear that any use against it of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical or nuclear, would void the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty with regard to the offending country.”

“But Syria hasn’t attacked us,” Mayes exclaimed.

“The Sharia Group has just now claimed responsibility for kidnapping President Brennan. Sharia is based in and financed by Syria. Under the foreign policies outlined previously by this country, that means Syria has attacked us through the Sharia Group, and they used some chemical agent to abduct the president. And we have evidence that Syria has recently started up a WMD program. Now, even though Syria hasn’t used WMDs against us yet, the U.S. has no obligation to simply sit here and be attacked. Coupled with the fact that they’ve kidnapped our president and are now throwing that fact in our faces more than justifies our position.”

Mayes shook her head in disbelief. “Syria is not a threat to develop WMDs. They are a fractured nation of Kurds, Sunnis and religious minorities.”

“They are no friend of this country,” Decker shot back.

Mayes said, “They don’t want the chaos and violence they see in Iraq. Who would? And they don’t buy our democracy goal. We’re giving money to Libya because it dropped its nuke program; it’s still a dictatorship. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst offenders of human rights, and their record on women’s rights is atrocious. And yet we allow them the status of one of our greatest allies. How can we expect other Arab nations to take us seriously with such inconsistency in our foreign policies?”

She drew a quick breath before continuing. “The public in Syria is very aware of its government’s shortcomings and opposition groups are growing stronger there. The government repealed the death penalty for members of the Muslim Brotherhood. There are other positive signs pointing to freedom growing there, without a U.S. invasion. Their government will change but it will take time.” Mayes stopped speaking and looked at the president. “That’s what I’ve been telling Jim Brennan for four years. These things take time. We can’t just uproot a thousand-year-old culture overnight.”

Decker piped in, “Many of the dissident groups in Syria are leftist and communists. We don’t want to go down that road again.”

Hamilton looked at the director of Central Intelligence, who was sitting in front of the fireplace. “Are you on board with Joe’s opinion, Allan?”

The director said, “It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s close enough.”

“And there’s no reason to waste time going to the U.N. or building a coalition, sir,” Decker added quickly. “They have our president, and we need to get back in the driver’s seat. And this will put us there. Fast! And we can and should do it all alone.” Decker’s eyes blazed. “Damn it, sir, with all due respect, we are the world’s only superpower. I say we start acting like it.”

“And Jim Brennan?” Hamilton asked.

“If he’s still alive, and we all pray that he is, then this will probably be the only shot we have of getting him back.”

Hamilton mulled this over and finally said, “Okay, gentlemen. Call the networks and get me airtime immediately. I’m going to inform the public about this.” He turned to Decker. “God help us if we’re wrong, Joe.”

When Alex Ford opened his door, Adams and the Camel Club stared back at him.

“Oh, hell!” Alex began angrily.

Kate said, “Alex, please, we have to talk to you.”

Reuben added, “It’s bad, Agent Ford. Really bad.”

Alex said, “What are you talking about?”

Stone answered, “There have been some major developments.”

“What developments, Oliver?” Alex asked.

Kate cut in. “A terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. We heard about it on the drive over here.”

“The Sharia Group. It has clear ties to Syria,” Stone said.

“Where’s your TV?” Kate asked. “The president is coming on in two minutes.”

Alex led them inside and turned on his TV set. Ben Hamilton appeared on the screen a few minutes later looking very grave. He summed up the situation to the country and then said, “America is a generous nation. We have always been a people that reach out to others in need. We came to the aid of our friends during two world wars. Wars fought to keep the world free. There is no doubt that we are a good, honorable people who use our might benignly to spread freedom around the world. But we are also a nation that defends itself and strikes back when we have been attacked. Well, my fellow Americans, we have been attacked. And now the organization that has attacked us has shown itself. The Sharia Group has irrefutable ties to the nation of Syria, a country that has long been known to harbor terrorist groups operating against America and its allies.” He paused. “All American government personnel in Syria have been airlifted out. All other Americans known to be in Syria have been given early warning to leave the country immediately.

“The Sharia Group’s own ransom demand conceded that the United States has every right to defend itself when attacked and to also strike back against any nation that assisted in that attack. And America will not be dictated to by terrorists.” Here Hamilton gave a long pause. “Thus, my fellow Americans, the decision has been made by me, as your commander in chief, after consultation with the secretary of defense and the Pentagon.”

“Oh, shit,” Alex and Kate blurted out together, for they knew what was coming.

“We now make our demand of the kidnappers.” Hamilton paused again and squared his shoulders. “If President James H. Brennan is not returned to us safely within eight hours from this exact moment in time, I have instructed my military commanders to immediately thereafter launch a limited nuclear missile strike against Damascus, Syria. The only way in which Damascus will avoid such a fate is if our president is returned to his countrymen unharmed within the allotted time. If President Brennan is in Medina, then he can be turned over to the American embassy in Saudi Arabia, and the launch will be called off. I pray that the kidnappers will comply with our demand immediately. If not, may God have mercy on the people of Damascus. There will be no negotiations and no reprieves. Members of the Sharia Group, you said you would return our president to us unharmed. Do so in the time dictated by the United States, or Damascus will pay the price for your heinous crime.” Hamilton paused again. “God bless you, my fellow Americans, and may God bless the United States.”

As the president faded out, everyone in Alex’s living room sat motionless in their chairs, holding their breaths. It was a scene doubtless replicated in a hundred million homes around America, and across the world.

An anguished Kate looked over at Alex. “This could be the beginning of the end.”

“If it is, it is,” Stone said calmly. “But it will do us no good to sit around waiting for the mushroom cloud to appear over Damascus.”

“What the hell can we do, Oliver?” Alex asked.

“Find the president!” Stone snapped.

“How?” Alex shot back angrily. “He’s in Medina.”

“I don’t believe that and I hope you don’t either.” He looked at Milton. “Show him the DVD.”

Milton opened his laptop. “This is the video that was taken during the break-in at my house, Agent Ford.”

“What the hell does this have to do with anything?” Alex shouted. “We are going to launch a nuclear missile in eight hours. Don’t you understand that?”

“Look at the film, Alex,” Kate pleaded.

Alex finally threw up his hands and plopped down on the floor in front of the laptop.

“Damn,” he said a minute later. “That’s Tyler Reinke and Warren Peters. They’re from NIC.”

“I thought they were NIC employees,” Stone said.

“Why’d you think that?”

“Because they were also the ones who killed Patrick Johnson.”

Alex sat back, stunned. “Why would they have killed Johnson?”

“Because he was altering files at NIC. Making people seem dead who weren’t really dead. And I think someone was paying him a lot of money to do it, but Johnson got greedy or sloppy or both.”

“Let me get this straight. Johnson was altering files at NIC to make some people appear dead who really weren’t?”

Stone said, “We believe that these men were the ones used in Brennan, Pennsylvania. The newspapers said that not one of the Arabs killed there was in the NIC files. That is inconceivable. I think these men were human sterilized weapons, and they were used to kidnap President Brennan. When we searched Reinke’s home, we discovered that he’d invested a lot of borrowed money in expectation of the stock market plummeting, which it has now.”

“Are you saying this whole thing was about making money in the stock market?” Alex exclaimed.

“No, it’s much deeper than that,” Stone replied.

Alex looked at him. “Any idea who’s behind it?”

“Someone high up at NIC,” Stone ventured. “Higher than Reinke and Peters certainly.”

“Let me take another look at that video,” Alex said.

He watched once more as Reinke and then Peters appeared on the screen. Then he pointed at the image of the man in the black mask as he leveled the security guard. “He hit the guy pretty hard,” Alex noted. “He had to check his pulse to make sure he hadn’t killed him.”

Reuben suddenly put a finger up to his lips and motioned toward the window. The blind was drawn but the window was open. They all had heard it now: footsteps.

Alex eyed Stone, and the pair quickly reached a silent agreement. Stone motioned to Reuben to join the Secret Service agent. While the group talked as though they were all still there, Alex pulled his gun and silently opened the front door. He went left while Reuben went to the right and around the side of the house toward the rear.

A minute later they all heard screams and a struggle, and then silence. Then the front door opened and Alex marched in. Behind him Reuben was carrying someone.

Jackie Simpson didn’t look very happy.

CHAPTER

62

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING here, Jackie?” Alex demanded.

She glared at him. “I’ve been calling your house to see how you were doing, but you never called me back. So I came by tonight to see you, and I seem to have stumbled upon a conspiracy. What’s going on, Alex?”

Stone had not taken his gaze off Simpson. “We’re actually trying to figure out what’s going on at NIC.”

“I know, I heard that part. And that Reinke and Peters broke into someone’s house.” Simpson looked at Alex. “If you know something about the president being kidnapped, you have to take it to the Service. Alex, you could get into a lot of trouble for withholding that sort of information.”

Stone cut in. “I don’t believe that’s a good idea.”

Simpson stared at him contemptuously. “Who the hell are you?”

He held out his hand. “Oliver Stone.”

“Pardon me?” she said incredulously.

“His name’s Oliver Stone,” Alex interjected. “And these are his friends, Reuben, Milton and Caleb. You’ve already met Kate Adams.”

Stone said, “And you are Jackie Simpson, the only child of Senator Roger Simpson of Alabama, and the goddaughter of Carter Gray, the secretary of intelligence.”

“Is that a problem?” she asked coolly.

“Not at all. But going to the authorities at this stage would be a huge mistake, Agent Simpson”

“Listen, Oliver Stone or whatever your real name is, I can do anything I damn well please. I’m a cop, okay, and—”

“And you’re a very intelligent cop,” Stone broke in, gazing at her. “And because you are, I’m sure that you’ve already considered the obvious.”

Simpson rolled her eyes, but Stone continued to stare at her until she said, “And what might that be?”

“If we’re right and NIC’s files have been corrupted, the unfortunate result was that an army of terrorists was allowed to go to Brennan, Pennsylvania, and successfully kidnap the president. That does not bode well either for your godfather, who heads that agency, or your father, who oversees its operations as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I’m quite sure that you would not want to do anything to hurt them professionally. If you go to the authorities now, you could very well destroy both of their careers.”

All eyes were on Jackie Simpson as she and Stone engaged in a protracted stare-down. Finally, Simpson broke off and looked at Alex for help.

“Alex, what the hell is going on? What am I supposed to do here?”

“We’re trying to figure this all out, Jackie. Until we do, we can’t say anything, to anybody.”

Caleb looked at his watch. “We now have exactly seven hours and forty-one minutes to find Brennan and prevent a possible Armageddon.”

“Well, everybody ought to cross their fingers and toes, then,” Reuben said.

“Omigod!” Alex asserted. “Fingers!”

“What?” Kate exclaimed.

Alex snatched Milton’s computer and replayed the DVD. “There,” he said, pointing. “Right there, do you see that?”

They all looked confused because he wasn’t pointing at Reinke or Peters. He was pointing at the man in the mask who’d knocked out the security guard.

Stone looked at him puzzled. “All I see is a man in a mask, Alex. What else is there to see?”

He froze the screen and pointed with his finger. “This.”

They all squinted at the screen. Simpson said, “The security guard’s neck?”

Alex said, “No, the right hand on that neck. He took his glove off to check the guard’s pulse.”

Reuben shrugged. “Right. So what?”

Alex looked exasperated. “Look at that hand. Tell me you don’t recognize it.”

Kate said, “Recognize a hand? Are you serious?”

“Like I told you before, Kate, hands are my specialty. And I recognize that hand. It’s very distinctive with bolt-size knuckles, and fingers thicker than I’ve ever seen.” He hit another button, and the picture zoomed in on the hand. “And the thumbnail has a black spot the shape of a triangle in the upper left-hand corner. When I saw that earlier, I thought it was some weird tattoo.”

“Saw it earlier? What are you talking about? When did you see it earlier?”

“In the bar that night. When you introduced me to Tom Hemingway. And I saw it again when he met us at NIC.”

Kate stared at him openmouthed and then glanced at the screen. “You’re saying that’s Tom Hemingway’s hand?”

“There’s no doubt about it. To me hands are as good as fingerprints, Kate.”

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

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

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

“Me!” Kate exclaimed. “How?”

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

“That’s right.”

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

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

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

“That won’t be necessary,” Stone said

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

“Because I know that building very well.”

“Who is this guy!” Simpson exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then you’re not going,” she snapped.

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

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

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

CHAPTER

63

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decker instantly looked at his military aide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER

64

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reuben and Stone both handled their weapons expertly.

“Nam, three tours and then DIA,” Reuben said in response to a curious look from Alex. “I know my way around a pistol.”

“Good,” Alex said. He looked at Stone, who was checking his weapon.

“You all right with that, Oliver?”

“I’m fine,” Stone said quietly. Actually, he was terrified to have a gun in his hand after all these years.

“In case we get split up for any reason, everybody got a cell phone?” Alex asked.

“The signal probably won’t work well up here,” Reuben commented.

“And once we get inside the building, there won’t be any transmission possible,” Stone said. “The building was constructed with copper and lead shielding.”

“Great,” Alex said. “Okay, Oliver, lead the way.”

They headed into the woods.

“Does anyone have a problem with caves?” Stone asked as he halted the group at an entrance into the side of the mountain.

“I have a real problem with getting lost and dying in one,” Alex said.

“That won’t happen, but it does get a little snug in places.”

“How snug?” Reuben asked anxiously. “I’m not exactly a little guy.”

“You’ll be fine,” Stone reassured his friend.

Alex stared into the pitch-black hole. “Is this the entrance to the building?”

“It’s not one of the official entrances, but they’d be watching the official entrances, wouldn’t they?” Stone replied. “Okay, stay close to me.” He shone his light ahead and stepped inside.

Simpson was the last to enter, and she clearly wasn’t very happy about this turn of events. She glanced around behind her, shivered and followed the others inside.

It took them some time to navigate the curving passageways. In two spots they had to clear debris that had fallen down and blocked the way, and in several other locations they had to crawl through. Above them the ceiling creaked and groaned, prompting them to hurry along faster.

They reached a shaft that had rough foot- and handholds carved into the rock. Stone went first. When he reached the top, he shone his light on a wall of black rock. However, when he tapped it, the wall was hollow. He felt along the wall, then carefully pushed on it until the section started giving way. Alex clambered up and helped him, and soon the wall had been pushed back.

They all scrambled through the opening.

The wall they had pushed out was wooden, but painted on the back side to look like rock. The other side of the wall, the one inside the building, had a shelf attached to it. Stone popped the wall back into place.

Stone whispered, “Now, I think it would be wise for everyone to have their guns ready. We don’t know how close we might be to someone.”

As they walked along, they looked around at the immensity of the place. And it was as though they had stepped back in time forty years. There were even ashtrays built into the stainless-steel walls.

A few moments later loud noises echoed from somewhere, causing all except Stone to point their weapons in all directions.

“It’s only birds that have gotten in,” he explained. “That happened in the old days too.”

With those words Stone felt himself freeze. The old days. It sounded so innocuous, as though he were returning to his cherished alma mater for a reunion. This place had been his home for twelve months. A year of his life devoted 24/7 to learning the most precise and intricate ways to kill people. As a young man Oliver Stone had excelled in these surroundings and at that task. A Special Forces soldier, the transition to the CIA team had not been that difficult. He had traded one weapon for another, and his enemies became civilians who didn’t even know they were under attack. As a young man his successes in the field had made him a legend in the special ops world. As an older man he found it all too horrible to contemplate. He couldn’t believe that two such different men could inhabit the same body.

As they walked along, memories kept flooding back to Stone. Every new sighting, every fresh smell or distant sound, brought with it a recollection of past horrors. The others would all be looking to him to lead them, perhaps to save them. And yet he had never been trained to save anyone. The sweat broke over Stone’s forehead. He had brought three people he cared much about to die here. On Murder Mountain.

Reinke and Peters had driven to Murder Mountain after they’d heard Sharia’s claim that it had kidnapped Brennan, and then Acting President Hamilton’s televised demand. They left their car in a clearing and sprinted toward the woods. Passing through a narrow cleft in the trees, they reached another open area. Here a mass of fallen rock lay along with overgrown bushes. Picking their way around this barrier, a door was revealed when Peters drew aside a curtain of kudzu. Murder Mountain had been built right into the rock.

Peters lifted a small metal cover on the door, revealing a button and loudspeaker.

“It’s me and Tyler,” he said, talking into the loudspeaker. “Things are out of control. Hurry!”

Reinke put the metal sheet back down and stepped back. As the massive door clicked open, three figures leaped from behind a pile of fallen rock. Tyler Reinke and Warren Peters dropped to the ground, their throats garroted. Captain Jack walked out from behind the rock and stood over them. He nodded approvingly. Reinke and Peters hadn’t even been able to make a sound to warn their colleague inside.

A number of other men joined them and Captain Jack led them all into the building.

CHAPTER

65

CAPTAIN JACK BROUGHT WITH him eleven North Koreans with well-earned reputations as killers of considerable skill and ruthlessness. It had been relatively easy to get them into the United States posing as South Koreans as part of a technology fact-finding program. Asians coming into the country didn’t inspire near the scrutiny that Middle Easterners did.

However, despite his men’s murderous abilities, Captain Jack was also well aware of Tom Hemingway’s prowess, and he wisely chose to split up his crew keeping two men with him. Captain Jack had seen firsthand what Mr. Hemingway could do in a fight. Eight members of a Yemeni death squad had the misfortune of running into Hemingway while Captain Jack observed from a safe distance. It had been a slaughter. All eight Yemeni, each tough, hardened and armed, were dead within five minutes. Hemingway never even pulled his gun. He did it all with his hands and feet, moving with a speed, precision and power that Captain Jack — with all his world travels — had never before encountered.

By now Hemingway would realize that something was wrong, and he would be coming for them. Separating his men would allow Captain Jack to wear Hemingway down, to outflank and finally surround him. There would be no hand-to-hand fighting. They would simply pour bullets into Hemingway.

The ancient fluorescent lights overhead flickered and popped. Then a sudden flash of illumination caused Captain Jack and the North Koreans with him to cover their eyes.

The first thing Captain Jack saw when he drew his hand away from his eyes was a foot that seemed to come right out of the wall. There was a thud and a grunt, and he watched one of his men topple headfirst to the floor. An instant later the other North Korean was being propelled backward with such force that he collided with Captain Jack, and they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. His own training kicked in, and Captain Jack went flat to the floor, whipped his pistol around and fired an arc of shots in the direction of his assailant at the same time he drew out another pistol with his free hand. When the mag on his first gun emptied, he poured another line of shots from the second pistol in the same direction. However, his bullet struck nothing except wall.

Captain Jack got to his feet, his hands working at the same time to reload his weapons as he struggled to catch his breath. Despite all his experience in killing people, the swiftness and ferocity of the attack had staggered him. He noticed that both his men were still down.

Captain Jack used his foot to turn over the North Korean who’d slammed into him. The man’s throat had been crushed so flat that he could see the bumps of his spinal column poking through the skin. Captain Jack touched his own throat, knowing full well that Hemingway might have easily killed him too. He looked at the other North Korean. The man’s nose had been crushed, its cartilage driven into his brain. It looked like he’d taken a cannonball flush in the face.

“Jesus Christ,” Captain Jack muttered.

He called out nervously, “Tom?” Captain Jack paused and then called out again. “Tom? That was pretty impressive, dispatching two first-class warriors in a couple seconds.” There was no answer. “Tom, I think you know why we’re here. Let us have him, and we can all walk away. And if you’re thinking you’re going to get backup from Reinke and Peters, think again. You’ll find them at the front door with their throats cut. So it’s just you against all of us. You can’t kill us all.”

I certainly hope you can’t.

Captain Jack jogged in the direction of his other men. He hoped to God Hemingway hadn’t gotten to them yet. Despite his confident words, Captain Jack was now wishing he’d brought a lot more North Koreans with him.

In another room off the main corridor, Hemingway picked up a pair of crescent swords. He took a deep, meditative breath, turned and raced off. Murder Mountain would live up to its name tonight.

When the shouts of the men reached them, Alex and the others retreated into a room off the main hall.

“That wasn’t Hemingway’s voice,” Simpson said.

“No, but whoever it is, he knows Hemingway’s in here, and apparently, Tom just killed two of the guy’s men,” Alex said. “So if Hemingway is here, the president may be too.”

Stone checked his watch. “We have a little more than four hours to find out for sure.” He looked at each of them. “Okay, our best bet is to split up. That way if we’re ambushed, they can’t get all of us.”

Stone drew Alex aside. “This place has a number of training rooms that you need to be aware of.”

“Training rooms?” Alex asked nervously.

“There’s a firing range, a situation room similar to the FBI’s Hogan’s Alley, a maze and rooms of ‘truth’ and ‘patience.’”

“Truth and patience? What is this place, a damn monastery?”

Stone went on to explain that the training rooms were situated on either side of the main corridor, with two rooms on one side and three on the other. “You have to go through one room to get to the next, until you reach a set of stairs that lead to the lower-level holding cells. That’s probably where the president is.” Stone ended by saying, “Once you enter the training rooms, you have to go completely through them; there is no other exit.”

“I’m beginning to think none of us are ever going to exit this place,” Alex said gloomily.

Stone motioned behind them with his hand. “Because we came in through the storage area, which is closer to the start of the training rooms, that means we may actually be ahead of the man we heard, if he came in through the front entrance.”

Alex fingered his night-vision goggles, but they were useless in the light. He glanced behind him but saw no one.

Stone said, “Reuben and I will take the three rooms to the left, you and Agent Simpson take the two on the right. The doors only open the one way. So once you go into a room, the doors lock behind you. You can’t go back.”

“Of course not,” Alex replied sarcastically.

“Oh, Alex, I understand that Agent Simpson is a rookie agent, so, well . . . I feel responsible for everyone here, you see.”

“I’ll look after her, Oliver,” Alex replied, gazing at his friend curiously.

“Thank you. Now, there are some things you need to know about the rooms you’ll be going into. What I’m about to tell you, you need to follow to the letter. Understand?”

“You’re the guy, Oliver. Just tell me and it’s done.”

After Stone had finished talking with Alex, he led Reuben down the hall and reached the first door that was located off a side corridor, where the two men ducked inside.

As they scanned the dimly lit room, Stone whispered to Reuben, “This is the firing range.” This explanation was unnecessary as they gazed at the cubicles where the shooters would stand, and then at the other end where old, tattered targets with bullet-ridden paper silhouettes of men hung on the movable pulley system.

Stone said, “You go to the right and we’ll meet in the middle. Once we’ve cleared the room, the door out to the next room is over there.”

They parted, and Stone made his way cautiously down the left side of the firing range. He’d barely gone ten feet when the door to the firing range opened.

Stone immediately extinguished his light and crouched low, raised his pistol and forced himself to remain calm. It was nearly three decades since he had done this sort of thing. He looked up for an instant and thought he saw someone flit by, but it was difficult in the poor light to make out who. The last thing Stone wanted to do was shoot Reuben by mistake. And there was just enough light to make his night-vision goggles useless.

Footsteps crept closer, and Stone eased forward on his belly until he was at the very back of the firing range next to the targets. As the seconds passed by, Stone could feel a strange sensation overtaking him. Changes seemed to be taking place in his mind and body. His limbs were becoming fluid and his mind completely focused on survival. His entire existence was reduced to a fifty-by-fifty-square-foot badly lit firing range full of shadows, crevices, difficult shooting angles and hiding places. He moved a little farther to the left and touched something. He looked up and suddenly had an idea.

The man crouched as he moved to the right, a pistol in one hand and a throwing knife in the other. He thought he heard something but wasn’t sure. He cautiously stepped into one of the firing range target paths.

Seconds passed.

And then the North Korean was startled by a scream. He turned and saw the thing flying at him. He fired and his bullets ripped through it.

Stone fired an inch above the man’s muzzle flashes. There was a groan and the North Korean dropped to the floor. The “thing” that had flown at him was one of the paper targets. Stone had used a pull wire to initiate this diversion and screamed simultaneously, tricking the North Korean into firing and revealing his position.

Then there was a more prolonged silence until Stone heard Reuben’s voice. “Oliver, are you okay?”

A few moments later Reuben and Stone stood over the body after making sure the room was empty. Stone shone his light on the body. There were two bullet holes within a centimeter of each other, dead center of the man’s chest. Stone examined the man’s features, clothing and weaponry. “North Korean,” he deduced.

“What exactly did you do at the CIA?” Reuben asked as he looked at the twin bullet holes.

“I was officially called a destabilizer. It sounds far less offensive than what I actually was.”

The machine-gun bullets ripped through the door to the firing range; Reuben and Stone threw themselves to the floor.

The door burst open and a second man flew inside, still firing.

Stone managed to kick a leg out and trip the man, sending him sprawling and his machine gun flying out of his hands.

Reuben pounced on the much smaller man.

“Got ’im, Oliver,” Reuben cried out. Reuben wrapped his huge arms around the man and squeezed. “Not so tough without your gun.” Then Reuben cried out in pain as the man smashed his heel on top of Reuben’s foot. Reuben’s grip loosened a bit, which was the only opening the man needed. Two blows slammed into Reuben’s chin, then two more thunderous strikes knifed into his gut, and Reuben was on his knees gasping for air and spitting up blood. The man’s hand raised, the blade in it held in a killing position. It descended toward the back of Reuben’s neck.

The bullet hit him flush in the brain, and he dropped to his knees and then toppled to the floor.

Stone thrust the pistol back in his belt and ran over to his friend.

“Reuben?” he said shakily. “Reuben!”

“Damn, Oliver,” Reuben said slowly through his busted mouth. He rose on trembling legs. The two men looked at each other.

“What the hell are we doing here, Oliver?” Reuben said, wiping the blood away. “We’re way out of our league.”

Stone looked down at his trembling hands and felt the pain in his leg where he’d tripped the man. He’d killed two men tonight after not having killed anyone for nearly thirty years. Despite his brief feelings of his old training coming back, this was not like riding a bicycle. It was less about physical training and youthful strength and more about a mind-set that said it was okay to kill another human being by any means possible and for any reason. Stone had once been such a man. He no longer was. And yet he was trapped in a building that would very likely be his and his friends’ crypt if he didn’t continue to summon his old homicidal instincts.

“I’m sorry for bringing you here, Reuben. I’m very sorry.” Stone’s voice cracked as he said this.

Reuben put a big hand around his friend. “Hell, Oliver, if we gotta die, I’d rather go with you than anybody else I know. But we have to get back. I mean what would Caleb and Milton do without us?”

Alex and Simpson were in a large, dark room that smelled distinctly foul. They had not heard the shots from the firing range because it was insulated for sound. Using his night-vision goggles Alex was able to see that there was a narrow elevated passageway leading across the room that was reachable by a set of metal steps.

He whispered to Simpson, “I’ll go first, to make sure it’s okay. But cover me close,” he added.

“Why do you get to play hero?” she asked.

“Who says I’m playing hero? If I get in trouble, you better damn sure come bail me out, even if it means getting your ass shot up. Now, listen, when you go across that passageway, you stay right in the middle, okay? Do not step on the sides.”

“Why, what’ll happen?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out. Oliver just told me to stay smack in the middle, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Alex made his way cautiously up the stairs and then walked across the catwalk staying right in the middle and keeping low. He reached the other side, saw the door to the other room and called back softly.

“Okay, it’s clear, come on.”

Simpson hurried after him. As soon as she reached him, the entry door to the room opened and closed. Alex and Simpson instantly crouched low.

Alex studied the situation and then tapped Simpson on the shoulder and motioned to the exit door behind them and then indicated he was staying behind. As Simpson started off, Alex crouched on the edge of the catwalk, his pistol pointed straight ahead. He glanced back at Simpson and nodded. She opened the door and eased through. However, she made a slight noise, and this caused the other person in the room to hurry up the steps and onto the catwalk. Alex stepped forward and, unfortunately, to the side of the passageway. He heard a click, and the floor under him disappeared. He plummeted downward and landed in knee-deep, sludgy water. He heard another splash farther down the tank. The other guy had apparently fallen in too. It was now so black in here that Alex couldn’t even see himself, and his night-vision goggles had fallen off into the muck. Alex prayed his adversary didn’t have night-vision equipment, or he was dead.

A shot was fired, and the bullet clanged off the side of the tank far too close to Alex’s head. He crouched down, returned fire and then moved. He tried not to breathe in the stench of the shit he’d fallen into. The wound in his arm was hurting, his bruised ribs were aching like hell and his neck was on fire. Other than that, he was in great shape.

Alex had another problem besides these physical injuries. Because he was in knee-deep sludge, it was impossible to move without revealing his position. So Alex didn’t move. The problem was neither did the other man. This was turning into a battle of the first one to move dies. And now it occurred to Alex: This was the “patience” room that Stone had mentioned. After some minutes of standing still Alex realized he needed another strategy. He slowly reached out until his fingers touched the metal sides of the tank. Then he drew out his flashlight.

Alex suddenly jerked his torso to the side, and the knife sailed by him, clanged against the sides of the tank and fell into the water with a small splash. Alex didn’t fire his weapon, though, which was undoubtedly his opponent’s hope.

He hefted the flashlight in his hand, reached up and placed it carefully against the metal side of the tank. Its magnetized side instantly clamped securely there. Next Alex ducked down, and, stretching his arm as far as it would go, he placed his index finger on the flashlight’s power button. He readied his pistol, said a heartfelt prayer, pushed the button and whipped his hand back. The light blazed on, and a second later two shots hit it directly. Another instant and Alex’s own gun rang, and he let out a sigh of relief as he heard the body hit the water. Then someone was scrambling past overhead. How was that possible? There was no floor anymore. Then someone else raced by.

Alex jumped as high as he could, trying to reach a handhold to pull himself out. Twice he missed and fell into the water. The third time he was on target, pulled himself up and managed to jerk himself along the handrail to the next door and through it.

CHAPTER

66

STONE AND REUBEN LOOKED around what appeared to be a replica of famed Hogan’s Alley in Quantico, which the FBI used to train its agents for real-life scenarios. The Secret Service had a similar setup at their Beltsville training facility. This room had mock buildings, a phone booth, sidewalks and an intersection complete with traffic light. An old black sedan with rotted tires was parked on the street. It was as though they had suddenly stepped back in time.

Standing on the street were a number of mannequins — a couple of men, three women and some children. The paint on their faces had faded, and they were very grimy, but they still looked remarkably lifelike. Reuben noted that there were bullet holes in the heads of all of them.

Stone led Reuben behind one of the buildings. There were wooden staircases here leading up to landings at each of the cutout windows.

“This is where we’d do our sniper work,” Stone explained.

“Who were you training to kill?”

“You don’t want to know that,” Stone tersely answered before putting a finger up to his lips. Footsteps were heading their way. Stone pointed upward, toward one of the windows. They made their way quietly up and cautiously peered out.

Three North Koreans had entered the space. They moved as one well-trained unit, each taking turns covering the others as they searched the area.

Stone’s and Reuben’s fingers tightened on their pistol triggers. Stone eased forward and lined up a shot. The problem was the men were carrying MP-5 machine guns. If Stone and Reuben each took out one of the North Koreans, that would leave one left and their position revealed. And even with two pistols between them, it would not be an easy thing to beat an MP-5 in a pair of skilled hands.

“Holy shit!” Reuben exclaimed.

One of the North Koreans had just dropped to the ground with a knife stuck in the side of his neck. The other two instantly fired in the direction of where the knife had come. Then there was silence as the two North Koreans hurriedly moved forward, taking up cover behind the old car. With the backs of the North Koreans now to Stone and Reuben, the two Camel Club members could have taken out both of them. Yet when Reuben looked over questioningly, Stone shook his head. He wanted to see how this played out before they committed themselves.

One of the North Koreans drew an object from his jacket, pulled a pin and tossed it in the direction of the knife thrower.

Even though the grenade was not heading in their direction, Stone grabbed Reuben and pressed him to the floor of the landing they were on.

The explosion rocked the small space. When the noise abated and the smoke cleared somewhat, Stone and Reuben glanced up in time to see the North Koreans moving forward. Stone would have waited: It was still too smoky to see all that clearly.

An instant later, leaping out of this cover of smoke was a figure dressed all in black from head to foot. He moved with such incredible speed and agility that he appeared to be immune to the effects of gravity. A pair of crescent swords flashed at his sides like wings.

Using the swords, he struck the machine guns, knocking them out of the North Koreans’ hands. When they reached for their pistols, the swords sliced into their holsters, dropping them to the ground, where their assailant kicked them away. All this occurred in one blindingly fast series of motions.

Then the man stopped and stood between the pair of North Koreans. He very deliberately took off his black hood and placed the crescent swords on the floor.

Tom Hemingway eyed the men closely and then spoke to them in Korean.

“What’d he say?”

“Basically to surrender or die,” Stone answered, his gaze transfixed on the scene in front of them.

“Think they will?” Reuben whispered.

“No. They’re North Koreans. Their tolerance for pain and suffering is beyond most people’s comprehension.” As Stone stared at Hemingway, he thought to himself, And they’re going to need every ounce of that tolerance right now.

The North Koreans both assumed Tae Kwon Do stances. One made a quick feint with his foot that Hemingway didn’t even bother to respond to. He spoke again to them in Korean. They both shook their heads. The other launched a kick at Hemingway, who grabbed the man by the foot with one hand and, with a thrust of his arm, sent him sailing backward. He spoke again in Korean.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry to have to do this,’” Stone answered as Reuben looked at him questioningly.

Before they took another breath, Hemingway struck. His fist broke right through the feeble defense of one of his opponents and slammed directly into the man’s chest. Moving so fast it was actually difficult to follow with the naked eye, Hemingway whirled and delivered a crushing kick to the side of the man’s head.

Even from where they were hiding, Stone and Reuben could hear the snap of the man’s neck.

The other man ran across the street toward the car with Hemingway on his heels. When he whirled around, Hemingway saw the knife and leaped. The man threw the knife and it sliced into Hemingway’s arm, but he kept coming. The heel of his foot hit the North Korean directly on the chin, knocking him back against the car. Hemingway stopped and looked at the blood on his arm, then turned his attention back to the man.

“This ain’t going to be pretty,” Reuben said.

Hemingway’s first strike killed the man. Stone could see this from where he was crouched. He had never seen a blow that hard thrown by a human being. It was more like the raw power of a grizzly bear.

And yet Hemingway did not let the North Korean fall. He held him up against the car and kept striking away, in the head, in the chest and in the abdomen. He was hitting him with such force and astonishing speed that when Hemingway finally let go and the man slumped to the ground, Stone and Reuben could see that the car door behind him had been caved in.

Hemingway stepped back and took a deep breath as he surveyed the three dead men. As he went to pick up his swords, Stone took out his pistol and drew a bead on the back of Hemingway’s head. Suddenly, Hemingway stiffened, stood straight and slowly turned in the direction of where Stone and Reuben were hidden.

He stared up at the window. Although he couldn’t possibly see them, it was clear that Hemingway was aware of their presence.

As Hemingway stood there, apparently waiting for the bullet to come, Stone lowered his gun. Hemingway waited a few seconds, and then, in a blink, he was gone.

Simpson ran as fast as she could but was hopelessly disoriented. She finally stopped and looked around. She was in a maze. “Alex?” she cried out.

“Jackie!”

She ran toward his voice.

“Jackie, they’re in here somewhere. Watch yourself.”

She instantly stopped and knelt down, listening. All she could hear at first was her breathing. Then the sounds of footsteps, stealthy footsteps. She backed down the corridor, away from them. She held her pistol up, ready to fire

“Jackie?”

“Down here,” she called out.

Alex stuck his head around the corner and saw her. He quickly joined her.

She looked at his filthy clothes. “What the hell happened to you?”

He rubbed at the muck. “Don’t ask. Just don’t ever say I lack patience, or I’ll deck you.” He gazed behind him. “Two guys blew past me coming in here. Any sign of them?”

She shook her head. “So how do we get out of here?”

“It’s as simple as checking the floor.”

“What?”

Alex didn’t answer. He walked down the corridor and stopped where it intersected with another. He got on his knees and looked at the floor. “Damn, how about that?”

Simpson hurried forward and joined him.

“See?” He was pointing at a small dot in a crevice in the floor that was barely visible.

“A red dot,” Simpson said. “What does that tell us?”

“Which way to turn.”

“How?”

“You must be a landlubber.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning sailors know that red means port and port means left.” He turned left down the corridor, and they walked along until they reached another intersection. There they found another dot. This one was green.

“Green means starboard and starboard means—”

“Right,” Simpson finished for him.

They made their way through the corridor this way and soon found themselves at the end.

“Okay, how did you know about the dots?” Simpson demanded.

“Oliver told me.”

“So he really was here,” Simpson said slowly.

Alex stared at her. “I never doubted it.” He looked up ahead at the door at the far end of the hall. “Oliver said we only had two rooms on this side. That means through that door—”

“Is the president.”

“And Hemingway,” Alex added grimly.

“He is a federal agent, Alex, which means he might be on our side.”

“Jackie, listen to me. This guy is a traitor, and he can probably kill you with his pinkie. If you get a chance to shoot him, take it.”

“Alex!”

“No bullshit, Jackie. Just do it. Now come on.”

While Alex and Simpson were dashing through the maze, Stone and Reuben stepped into a room that had a hanging cage, chains on the wall, gurneys and trays of surgical instruments and what looked like an electric chair.

Stone stared at the latter device and drew a sharp breath. “They called this the room of truth. They used it to break you. The truth was they broke everybody eventually, me included.” He pointed to the chair. “They used too much electricity on one man that I trained with, and his heart stopped. They told his family he went missing overseas during a mission. He’s probably buried on Murder Mountain.”

“We might be too,” Reuben pointed out glumly.

“Let’s get on to the next room,” Stone said. “This one always made me sick.”

They had just started toward the exit when the door they had come through burst open.

“Run!” Stone shouted, throwing gunfire at the North Korean who had swept into the room. He fired back, and Stone had to hurl himself behind the electric chair.

Gunfire erupted on all sides of the room. A minute later while Stone was reloading as fast as he could, he heard Reuben yell out, “I’m hit! Oliver, I’m hit.”

“Reuben,” called out Stone as two shots whizzed by his head. He returned fire and ducked down. A clattering sound came from the left as though someone had overturned a tray of instruments; then came more noises of things being tossed around. Stone made a quick decision. He pointed his pistol at the ceiling lights and shot them all out.

In the darkness Stone put on his night-vision goggles, his gaze peering desperately through the gauzy green world the goggles created.

Where was Reuben? Where was he? Finally, Stone saw him lying on the floor behind an overturned gurney, holding his side. There was no sign of the North Korean. Stone kept sweeping the room with his gaze, finally stopping on one corner. Here gurneys and other medical equipment had been hastily stacked, forming a wall. The person had to be behind there. And then Stone’s gaze went upward, and he saw what had to be done. He laid on his back with his knees bent. He rested his gun between his knees and then clamped them together, which held the gun motionless. He lined up his target, exhaled all the air from his lungs and relaxed his muscles fully. It was as though all his training on how to kill someone had come effortlessly back to him, right when he needed it. Should I thank God or Satan?

In daylight the shot would’ve been simple. Looking into a world of green haze and knowing you had only one chance made the task far more complex.

He squeezed the trigger. The chain holding the cage, which rested right above where the North Korean was hiding, was cut neatly in two. And the one-ton cage fell.

Stone continued to watch, his pistol ready. What he saw next slightly sickened him, even though it had been his intent. The blood flowed under the gurneys and started pooling a few inches in front of this barrier.

Stone rose and made his way over to the corner. He cautiously peered over the wall of gurneys. Only a hand was visible from under the fallen cage. The man hadn’t even had time to scream. In Stone’s old world this would have been labeled a “perfect kill.”

“Oliver!” Reuben called out.

Stone turned and raced across the room to where Reuben sat against the wall, clutching his side. The knife was still in him, and blood had spread down his shirt and onto the floor.

“Shit, bastard got a lucky toss in. I’ll be okay. Had lots worse than this.” Reuben’s face, however, was ashen.

Stone ran to a set of shelves against the wall and threw them open. There were still bottles of ointment and tape and gauze stored there. He doubted the ointment would be any good, but the gauze and bandages were still in their sterilized wrappers. It would be cleaner than using Reuben’s shirt. He grabbed the supplies and headed back over to Reuben.

After bandaging him up, Stone helped him through the door into the next room.

As soon as they left the room, the door leading into the room of truth opened. Captain Jack cautiously peered in. He took a minute to search the space and then found his man under the cage.

Captain Jack said, “Okay, perhaps it’s time to live to fight another day. I’m sure the bloody North Koreans will understand.” He turned to retreat through the steel door but found that it wouldn’t open.

“I’d forgotten about that,” he muttered. He stood there wondering what to do. He checked his watch. Soon it wouldn’t matter.

CHAPTER

67

STONE AND REUBEN REACHED the lower level of the facility at about the same time as Alex and Simpson.

“So that makes nine Chinese dead,” Alex said after the two groups had compared notes.

“Actually, they’re North Koreans,” Stone corrected.

“North Koreans! What the hell are they doing involved in this?” Simpson asked.

Stone said, “I have no idea.” He pointed with his gun down the hallway. “But I do know that down there are the cells that were used to house ‘detainees’ for interrogation during my time here. Presumably, that’s where the president is.”

Alex checked his watch. “We’ve got three hours left,” he said urgently. “We’ve got to get the president, get out of here, grab a cell signal and call the Service. They’ll contact the White House and stop the launch.”

“Do you think there are any North Koreans left?” Simpson asked.

Alex said, “I saw two guys running past me when I was stuck in that tank. So—” He suddenly shouted, “Look out! Grenade!”

They scattered for cover as the object bounced down the stairs and landed near them. However, it wasn’t a grenade. It was a flash-bang, a device that stunned a person by using ear-piercing sound and blinding light. Members of the FBI’s hostage rescue team swore by its effectiveness. And it did its job this time. When it went off, all of them were instantly incapacitated.

Two North Koreans raced down the steps. They wore earplugs and so were unaffected by the sound of the explosion. They pointed their weapons at the helpless Alex and the others. Stone struggled to get to his feet, but he was so disoriented he couldn’t manage it. Simpson’s hands were over her ears, and she looked ready to pass out. Reuben lay crouched in the corner, clutching his side and breathing weakly.

One of the North Koreans shouted one word, in English this time. “Die!”

He moved his MP-5 shot selector to auto, and his hand slid to the trigger. He could empty his entire thirty-round mag in a few seconds.

And he would have too, if he’d still been alive. His spine snapped when the foot struck it from behind. He dropped to the floor. As he fell, his finger pushed back the trigger, and the machine gun emptied a few rounds right into the concrete floor. They ricocheted into the man, not that he felt them.

The other man tried to fire his gun at Hemingway, but Hemingway ripped the mag right off the stock, then crushed it against the man’s skull and finished him off with a vector strike to the liver, rupturing it. The man dropped to the floor with a thud.

Then Hemingway was gone.

As the effects of the flash-bang wore off, Alex struggled to his feet and helped Simpson up. Stone did the same with Reuben.

“Where did Hemingway go?” Stone asked.

Alex pointed down the hall. “That way. Through that door. I saw him right before he disappeared. I’m not sure how, because my head was exploding at the same time.”

They took a moment to eye the battered North Koreans.

“This guy is a freaking nightmare,” Alex exclaimed.

“He just saved our lives,” Simpson pointed out.

“Oh, yeah? Probably because he wants to kill us all by himself,” Alex shot back. “So what I told you still goes. Shoot to kill the bastard.”

Stone looked at his watch. “We’re running out of time.”

Hemingway stood alone at the end of the hall, the two cells holding the president and Chastity behind him. The prisoners were unconscious after he’d given them amnesic drugs with their dinner earlier. He didn’t believe they’d want to have any memory of what had happened to them.

As the door opened at the other end of the hall, Hemingway receded into the shadows.

Alex stepped through the doorway with the others and called out, “Hemingway, we’ve come for the president.”

Hemingway made not a sound.

“You might not know what’s happened, Tom,” Alex added. “The Sharia Group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. Right this instant the United States has a nuke aimed at Damascus. It’s going to launch in less than three hours unless the president is returned safely. That’s what Reinke and Peters were probably coming to tell you.”

Hemingway drew a quick breath but still said nothing.

“Tom, I’m being straight with you,” Alex continued. “The whole world is about to go up in flames. Every Muslim army and every terrorist organization in the world is gathering to attack the United States. We’re at DEFCON 1, Tom. DEFCON 1. You know what that means. Everything’s ready to blow.” Alex paused and then shouted, “We’ve got three hours, goddamn it, or six million people die!”

Finally, Hemingway stepped into the light.

“Why would the Sharia Group have claimed responsibility?” he asked warily.

“They didn’t, so I did it for them,” Captain Jack said as he darted through the doorway and pressed his gun against the side of Simpson’s head. He took her pistol and trained it on the others. “Now, drop your weapons, or you’ll get a nice view of this lady’s brains.”

The others hesitated for a moment, and then one by one Alex, Stone and the wounded Reuben dropped their guns.

“Damn, that’s the guy we heard earlier,” Reuben muttered to Stone, but his friend wasn’t listening. He was looking very intently at Captain Jack.

As Captain Jack’s gaze swept over them, it stopped and came back to Stone. Captain Jack’s brow creased. Then his attention was drawn to Hemingway, who said, “I thought we had an agreement.”

To Alex, Hemingway seemed coiled so tightly he looked as though he could have jumped clear into outer space.

“We did, Tom,” Captain Jack said pleasantly. “But then I got a better offer from the North Koreans. I told you I was only in this for the money. That was fair warning to you, mate, and don’t blame me if you didn’t pick up on it.”

Hemingway said, “Why? To start an American-Muslim war? What does that gain for North Korea?”

“I really don’t care. They paid my price.”

Alex said, “We’re going to drop a nuclear bomb on Damascus.”

Captain Jack looked at him disdainfully. “I worked for the Syrians for a while. They’re just as bloodthirsty as anyone else. It’s not like they don’t deserve it.”

“Six million people,” Alex said. “Including women and children.”

Captain Jack just shook his head wearily. “You’re really not getting my point, are you?”

“You’ve got dead North Koreans all over the place,” Hemingway said. “Do you really think your plan will work now?”

“I’ll have time to clean that all up, Tom. There’s an old mine shaft not too far from here. Perfect place to dump the bodies. Except for one. The world needs to see that one.”

“Brennan?”

“Have to finish the job.”

Stone spoke up. “So you’re intending on killing all of us?”

Captain Jack looked at him. “You seem very familiar to me.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I plan to kill each of you.” He glanced at Hemingway. “I did right by you, Tom. Look at what happened in Brennan. Worked to perfection.”

“It doesn’t work if the president ends up dead too,” Hemingway said flatly. “I’m supposed to return him unharmed. That’s what I said I was going to do.”

“If it’s money you want, the U.S. has a lot more than North Korea,” Simpson said.

Captain Jack shook his head. “Even I’m not that greedy. And I seriously doubt I’d get paid. I mean you are the biggest debtor country in the world.”

Captain Jack shot Hemingway with a glancing wound to the left leg. The man grimaced and dropped to his knees. Next Captain Jack shot him in the right arm.

“Stop, please!” Simpson screamed.

Captain Jack said, “I’m sorry to do this piecemeal, Tom, but I have no desire to have my neck crushed by you.”

Hemingway said between gritted teeth, “You might want to reconsider your plan.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because the cell doors are booby-trapped.”

“Then turn the devices off and open the doors.”

Hemingway shook his head.

“Then I’ll just start killing them one by one until you do.”

“You’re going to kill them anyway, so what does it matter?” Hemingway said.

“We’ll just see how long you can take the screams. Your only weakness is you’re just too damn civilized, Tom.”

Stone managed to catch Hemingway’s gaze and motioned with his eyes to something. Hemingway gave a barely perceptible nod.

Captain Jack pressed the gun tightly against Simpson’s temple and said, “Good-bye, whoever you are.”

“My name is John Carr,” Stone said quietly as he stepped forward. “You were right, we do know each other.”

Captain Jack lowered his pistol slightly. “John Carr,” he said in amazement as he looked Stone up and down. “My God, John, the years haven’t been kind to you.”

“You were a bastard traitor back then, and I see you still are.”

“I went out on my terms. I don’t think you can say the same,” Captain Jack sneered. His attention was fully on Stone now, so he didn’t notice Hemingway edging toward the wall.

Stone took another step forward, blocking Captain Jack’s line of sight to Hemingway. “Why don’t you kill me? You were always second best, so it’d be a thrill for you to take out the top man, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re still one cocky bastard,” Captain Jack growled.

“Unlike you, I earned the right to be. How did you screw up again? Oh, that’s right, you used the wrong barometric reading and you missed your target. They had to send me in a year later to do it right. Face it, you were a second-rate bungler.”

Captain Jack pointed his pistol at Stone’s forehead. “I won’t have to worry about barometric pressure this time.”

Hemingway leaped and hit the light switch, plunging them into darkness. Captain Jack fired. There were screams and shouts and scuffling and finally one horrific cry and then the sound of a body falling.

The lights came back on, and Captain Jack was lying on the floor, his guns gone. Stone was standing over him, holding a knife covered in blood, fabric and skin. He’d taken it from the room of truth.

“You bastard!” Captain Jack groaned as he grabbed his lower calves where Stone had cut him, immobilizing the man.

Captain Jack screamed, “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

“Because I didn’t have to,” Stone answered.

“Listen to me,” Captain Jack gasped. “Ten million dollars to each of you if you kill Brennan.” They all looked at him in disgust. “He’s just a man,” he screamed.

“If you don’t shut up,” Alex snapped, “I’ll kill you.”

Hemingway managed to lever himself up against the wall. “You have to take President Brennan and leave him at a certain spot, to finish this the right way.”

Alex looked at him in disbelief. “I don’t know what the hell your crazy motivations are, and I don’t care. You’ve left the entire world on the brink of war. So the only thing I’m doing is taking the president back where he belongs. And on the way we’re going to make a call and stop six million people from being incinerated because of what you did.” He pointed his gun at Hemingway. “Now you either open the cell door or I’ll kill you.”

Hemingway struggled to his feet. “I’m not a traitor to my country, no matter what you or anyone else might think. I did this for my country. I did this for my world.”

“Open the damn door!” Alex yelled. “Now!”

Hemingway took out a set of keys and unlocked one of the doors.

“I thought you said it was booby-trapped,” Captain Jack snarled.

“I lied,” Hemingway said.

Stone and Alex carried the unconscious president out and sat him up against a wall. They found Chastity and placed her on the floor next to him.

Alex pulled out his cell phone. “Damn it, I forgot there’s no signal in here, so we need to get out of here to call Washington and—”

A man’s voice interrupted. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

They all turned and stared at Carter Gray and six men holding machine guns.

CHAPTER

68

“THANK GOD,” SIMPSON SAID, stepping toward her godfather. However, Gray turned his attention to Hemingway.

“The president was in the chopper that you flew me home in, wasn’t he?” Gray clearly didn’t expect an answer, and Hemingway didn’t provide one. “You corrupted my files, assembled an army of dead men and kidnapped the president.” Gray shook his head.

“The president’s fine, Carter,” Simpson said. “He’s just drugged.”

Gray said, “Very good. Well, we’ll take over from here.” He motioned two of his men to go get the president.

“Wait!” Hemingway shouted. “He needs to be returned the way I planned! You can’t let all those people in Pennsylvania die in vain. They sacrificed themselves for a better world.”

Gray’s face screwed up. “You are insane!” He calmed and turned to Stone.

“Hello, John. I can’t tell you what a shock it’s been finding out you’re alive,” Gray continued. He glanced over at Captain Jack lying on the floor still clutching his bloodied legs. “Two old friends I believed to be dead. Resurrection seems to be a theme of the twenty-first century.”

“I wasn’t ready to die on your timetable, Carter,” Stone said.

Simpson looked between the two men. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Alex interjected. “Look, people, we’re running out of time. We have to notify the White House that we have the president back. They’ll stop the launch.”

Gray ignored this and said, “Jackie, I want you to step over here with me.”

“What?” she said. “Didn’t you hear Alex? We have to stop the launch.”

“When you and I leave here together, you are never to speak of anything you’ve seen or heard tonight. Do you understand?”

Simpson looked at the others. “I’m sure you can trust all of us not to reveal anything that would damage the country.”

“I’m not worried about the others, Jackie, just you.”

Stone looked at the woman. “You’re the only one leaving here alive, Agent Simpson.” He glanced at Gray. “And I believe that includes the president.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Simpson shouted. She looked at her godfather for reassurance, but the truth of what Stone had just said was instantly revealed in Gray’s features. She pointed at the unconscious Brennan. “This is the president of the United States!”

Gray said, “I’m aware of that. And there’s a man in the Oval Office right now who’s equally capable of running the country, which, unfortunately, isn’t saying much.”

Simpson stared at the men with Gray. “He’s going to kill the president. You have to stop him!”

“These men are all loyal only to me, otherwise they wouldn’t be here,” Gray answered.

She said pleadingly, “Six million people are going to die if we don’t make the call to the White House, Carter.”

“Six million Syrians,” Gray countered. “Do you know how many terrorist activities dear old Syria supports? And they’re the clearinghouse for virtually all the suicide bombers going into Iraq. We should have nuked the damn country years ago.”

Simpson looked at her godfather. “You’re insane.”

“This is bigger than any one man, Jackie,” Gray replied very calmly. “This is strictly a war of good versus evil, and we have to ensure that those two sides remain clearly defined. And to do so, sacrifices have to be made, for the good of all. Even the president is not above that. And to accomplish that the world has to believe that his kidnappers have killed him.” He paused and added, “I’m sure your father would have no problem with any of this.”

“Bullshit!” Simpson roared. “He’d be the first one to throw you in jail.”

“Step over here with me, Jackie,” Gray said with urgency. “Do it now.”

Simpson didn’t budge. “No. You’re going to just have to kill me too.”

“Please don’t force me to make that decision.”

Alex suddenly screamed out, “Gun!” He threw himself toward Brennan. But someone else was a little quicker.

The shot rang out, as people seemed to be moving in slow motion. There were screams and scuffling feet and the sound of metal hitting the floor. And then there was silence.

Jackie Simpson dropped first to her knees and then fell facedown on the cold cement floor. The bullet that would have hit Brennan was now embedded inside her heart. Gray screamed and stood over Captain Jack, who’d pulled a small pistol from his ankle holster and fired at the president. Yet Simpson had denied him his kill.

Alex knelt down and checked her pulse and then looked up and shook his head.

“Jackie!” Gray cried out as he looked at his dead goddaughter.

“Beth,” a stunned Oliver Stone whispered as he stared down at the woman.

Alex, who’d been the only one close enough to hear, looked at Stone. Beth?

Gray pointed his gun at Captain Jack, but Stone’s voice boomed out. “If you shoot him, you have no connection to the North Koreans’ plot to kill the president.”

Gray’s finger remained on the trigger, but he didn’t pull it.

Stone was visibly trembling and his eyes were tearing up as he said, “We’re going to take the president to Medina. To the place Mr. Hemingway tells us to.”

“That is not an option,” Gray barked.

“It is your only option, Carter,” Stone replied. “You can’t let millions of innocent people die for no reason.”

He whirled on Stone. “Innocent! Those devils took my family from me!” Gray shouted. “They took everything I ever cared about.”

“And my country did the same to me,” Stone answered.

Gray and Stone stared at each other while everyone looked on. Then Stone’s gaze went to Simpson’s body. “Just like you, I’ve now lost everything.” His voice trembled.

Gray’s gaze went from Simpson to Stone. “I can’t possibly take the president to Medina. There isn’t enough time.”

“I believe the Medina Mr. Hemingway has in mind is far closer,” Stone replied.

They all looked at Hemingway. “Do you have the chopper?” Hemingway asked Gray, who nodded. “Then you can make my Medina in less than two hours, well within the deadline.”

“If I agree why can’t I just call from the chopper and tell them I found him in whatever Medina you’re talking about?” Gray rejoined.

“Unless you actually go to the place, you won’t be able to answer all the questions about where he was found. The press and the country will want to know,” Hemingway answered. “In great detail.”

Stone looked at Gray. “You can even take credit for finding the president, Carter. You’ll be a national hero.”

“How exactly do I do that?” Gray retorted.

“You’re a smart man, you’ll figure it out on the chopper ride,” Stone replied.

Gray snapped, “This man stays with me.” He pointed at Captain Jack.

“I’m sure you’ll be successful in getting every last morsel of information from him,” Stone said confidently.

“And Hemingway too,” Gray added.

“Let’s go!” Alex barked.

As the others were heading out, Stone knelt down next to Simpson as Gray looked on. Stone touched the woman’s hair and then put her still-warm hand in his. He turned the hand over and looked at the crescent scar on the palm. It appeared remarkably the same as it had when she cut her hand all those years ago. He saw the scar when he picked up her change on the street that day. Tears slid down his cheeks. They were the tears of his nightmare, of losing his daughter in a dream. And now for real, which was immeasurably worse. He kissed her on the cheek.

Stone looked up at Gray, who just stood there, hands dangling uselessly at his sides. “You will make sure that her body is returned for proper burial,” Stone said firmly. Gray nodded dully. Then Stone walked past the man without another word.

Outside, they followed Gray’s men to a nearby clearing where the chopper sat.

The pilot leaned out. “Where are we headed?”

“To Medina,” Hemingway called out.

“What?” the pilot exclaimed.

“The address is in my shirt pocket,” Hemingway said.

One of the guards pulled out the piece of paper and read it. He shot Hemingway a glance. Stone had read the paper over the man’s shoulder. He’d been right.

Hemingway settled into his seat in the rear of the chopper. A split second later he head-butted the guard closest to him, shattering the man’s nose and right cheek. Then Hemingway kicked the seat in front of him with such force that it tore loose from its base and the guard sitting in it was thrown forward. In another instant Hemingway was running, wounded leg and all, toward the woods.

Alex raced after Hemingway as fast he could while tree limbs, bushes and vines ripped at him. The guy had been shot in the damn leg, and Alex couldn’t catch him? He heard a shout ahead and he increased his pace. He broke free of the trees and skidded to a stop just before he would have plummeted over the side. He was standing on the edge of a long fall. He couldn’t see what was at the bottom, but as he stood there listening, Alex thought he heard a splash. As other guards raced up to join him, he pointed down into the abyss and shook his head.

Tom Hemingway was gone.

CHAPTER

69

ACTING PRESIDENT BEN HAMILTON was watching the screen in the Oval Office as people hovered around. The film footage was grainy and jerky — all professional news-gathering services had already fled the country — yet clearly showed the complete chaos that now was Damascus. The roads were clogged with cars, the streets with desperate, terrified Syrians. It was reported that people were sprinting down the runway of the airport, trying to grab onto the last few planes that were taking off. Law and order had long since disappeared. People were merely trying to get away. And as the hours wound down and that hope vanished, things were turning very ugly.

Hamilton and his group watched the screen as parents ran down the streets carrying their children and screaming in terror while soldiers pushed through the panicked masses using bullhorns to tell the crowds to evacuate. Yet, with less than one hour left under the United States’ deadline, none of these people were going to survive. There was a jarring video segment of looters being beaten to death by angry citizens. Hamilton watched until he saw a group of small children become separated from their families and then being trampled underneath the fleeing crowds.

“Turn the damn thing off,” Hamilton ordered, and the screen instantly went dark.

Hamilton’s desk was covered with official pleas from all over the world begging him not to pull the trigger. Millions of Americans across the country were out in the streets, some in support of Hamilton’s decision, but most opposed. The White House switchboard had been overwhelmed.

Secretary of Defense Joe Decker sat down next to his commander in chief. Hamilton looked at him in desperation.

Perhaps sensing his boss’s wavering, Decker said, “Sir, I know that this is more pressure than a person should have to endure. And I know what the world is telling you. But if we back down now, we will lose all credibility with these people, and if that happens, then we’ve already lost.”

“I understand that, Joe,” Hamilton said slowly.

“There’s another development, sir.”

Hamilton stared wearily at him. “What?”

“There’re some very unusual atmospheric conditions occurring over the Atlantic right now. The navy reports that satellite communication with the Tennessee could well be compromised in a few minutes.”

“If that’s the case we shouldn’t launch the missile.”

Decker shook his head. “These conditions will have no effect on the launch. The D-5 has inertial guidance. It takes two star sightings after separation of the final rocket motor, then it’ll maneuver to optimal location to deploy the warheads for free fall onto the target. The problem is only with maintaining contact with the sub.”

“So what are you saying, Joe?” Hamilton asked.

“I’m strongly suggesting that we just get it over with before we lose contact.”

“What? Launch now?” Hamilton checked his watch. “There’s still fifty-two minutes left.”

“And what difference will that possibly make, Mr. President? If they were going to release him, they would’ve done so by now. In fact, this just gives the other side more time to plan how to strike back at us. And if we don’t do it now, the Tennessee might not be reachable.”

“Can’t we use another nuclear asset?”

“That sub is in the ideal place with the ideal ordnance to hit Damascus, and it’s prepped and ready to go. Our other subs in the Atlantic would face the same communications problems in any event.”

“Well, just tell the Tennessee to fire when the deadline ends unless they hear from us.”

“It doesn’t work that way with nukes, sir. For lots of reasons, it’s only when we tell them to launch that they launch. They don’t watch clocks. And we could scramble something else, but it likely would be past the deadline by the time it’s ready. And if we don’t fire the missile within the time frame we’ve set out, then we’ve lost all credibility, sir.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be from now on? We hit them; they hit us. What? Until we’re all gone?”

“With all due respect, sir, we have far more to hit them with than they do us. And I have every confidence that we will win in the end.”

Hamilton glanced up to see all gazes in the room upon him. May God have mercy on me. He said, “Get in touch with the Syrians first. Give them one last chance.” He put his head in his hands as everyone in the room looked down.

Suddenly, Andrea Mayes jumped up. “Wait! Please. Sir, why wouldn’t they give him back if they had him? Why would they let millions of their own people die?”

Decker snapped, “Because they’re terrorists. That’s how they think. And according to their faith, all those people will go right to paradise. And let’s not forget that they attacked us. They took our president. And right now he’s almost certainly dead. We have no choice. We have to strike back in a way that will leave no doubt as to this country’s resolve. Anything less will give them courage to escalate their attacks on us. And there’s no better way to do that than with a nuclear weapon. Japan only surrendered after we dropped two on them. It ended up saving millions of lives.”

He failed to mention that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had also killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and left both cities radioactive for decades.

Hamilton looked away, and the secretary of state slumped back in her chair.

Decker grabbed a secure phone and ordered the final demand be made to the Syrians and Sharia immediately. A few minutes later he had his answer.

Hamilton looked up. “Well?”

“The sanitized version is that God will strike us down for the evil we’re about to do,” Decker replied. “So am I authorized to contact Command Authority, sir?”

Hamilton suddenly looked indecisive. Mayes seized on this to say, “Mr. President, please think about what you’re about to do. If we annihilate Damascus there will never be peace. Never.”

Decker moved in front of her. “Mr. President, we don’t have peace now. And if you fail to carry through on your demand America will be robbed of all its power. To the world we will become a laughingstock, inept and emasculated. I know that you are not that kind of leader.” He paused and added firmly, “We have to do this.”

Hamilton rubbed his eyes, glanced at Mayes and then nodded at Decker. “Make the call.”

Hamilton stood and gazed out the window while Decker picked up another phone and gave the order to the National Command Authority, which instantly relayed it to the Tennessee. The mighty Trident missile would launch shortly thereafter, accelerating out of the water’s depths with such incomprehensible speed and force that a protective wall of gas would enclose it. As it passed through hundreds of feet of ocean depths, not even a single drop of water would touch its metal hide. At a cruising speed of fourteen thousand miles an hour, the Trident missile would hit Damascus less than thirty minutes after launch with the force of a thousand category 5 hurricanes all rolled into one. There would be nothing left.

At first the ringing phone didn’t register. Then slowly, Hamilton looked up. It was that phone. He raced over and snatched it up.

“Yes?”

His face paled and he grabbed at his side. Most in the room thought he was about to have some sort of attack.

“They have him,” he screamed to the room. “They have Brennan.” He whirled on Decker. “Call off the launch. Call it off!”

Decker quickly spoke into the other phone and ordered the Tennessee to stand down. However, the secretary of defense suddenly paled. “What? That can’t be.”

Everyone’s gaze was riveted on him.

Decker looked ashen-faced as he said, “The atmospheric conditions over the Atlantic have started disrupting satellite communications. The Tennessee acknowledged and confirmed the order to launch, but now Command Authority is having trouble contacting the sub again.”

Hamilton shouted at Decker, “I knew we should have waited the full eight hours. You idiot!”

Andrea Mayes said shakily, “Oh, my God.”

Hamilton grabbed the phone from Decker and roughly pushed the man out of the way. Into the phone he said, “This is Acting President Hamilton. You have to get in touch with that damn sub and tell them not to launch. I don’t care how you do it, just do it.” He held on to the edge of the Resolute Desk for support as his knees started to buckle and sweat glistened his brow.

A stricken-looking Decker stood holding his shoulder from where Hamilton had shoved him against the wall.

Hamilton yelled into the phone again, “Blow the goddamn sub out of the water if you have to.” He shrieked, “Just stop it! Stop it!”

Seconds ticked by, and not one breath could be heard in the Oval Office, because every last person was holding theirs. Finally, Hamilton replaced the phone receiver in its cradle and sank to his knees. He looked very close to passing out now.

Hamilton slowly looked up at his subordinates. “They stopped the launch,” he managed to say before staring directly at Decker. “With . . . one . . . damn . . . second to spare.”

There were no cheers in the Oval Office; all of them were frozen.

However, somewhere underneath the Atlantic Ocean 155 American sailors screamed in relieved joy.

The safe return of President James Brennan at an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Medina, Ohio, rocked the world yet again. The more than fourteen thousand American military and special operatives deployed to Medina in Saudi Arabia slipped away as quietly as possible. In the president’s pocket had been found a typed note that read simply: “From great sacrifice comes great opportunity.”

Franklin Hemingway had penned those words thirty years earlier, and his son could think of no better message to leave with the leader of the free world.

Carter Gray was hailed as a national hero for figuring out where Brennan was going to be released. While somewhat vague on the details, Gray explained that it was a combination of hard work, reliable informants and a lot of luck. “However, the kidnappers were true to their word,” he said. “Because the president was in Medina, only about seven thousand miles away from the one we thought it was.”

Gray had spent an emotional night with Senator Simpson and his wife, comforting them on the loss of their only child. The official version of what had happened, and the only one her parents had received as well, was that Jackie was the victim of a deadly carjacking while driving along Interstate 81 very late at night. There were no suspects, and Gray knew there would never be an arrest. The only other development was the unexplained disappearance of three NIC agents. Gray would take care of that too.

On a positive note Captain Jack had talked. And talked and talked. Carter Gray now had quite a lot of ammo to use against North Korea.

James Brennan triumphantly returned to the White House as huge crowds surrounding the area cheered. He gave televised remarks to the nation, thanking Carter Gray for his exemplary work, having no idea that the man had seriously contemplated killing him and blaming it on the Syrians. Brennan also thanked his beleaguered vice president for a job well done. Finally, he expressed his gratitude to the American people for being stalwart and true throughout the crisis.

They would never know that a mere second had been the margin of error in the commencement of a worldwide apocalypse. His chief of staff stood by beaming. With the crisis over, her attention had returned fully to the election. The latest polls showed Brennan with a historically high eighty-six percent approval rating. Barring something catastrophic her candidate would easily win the election and have four more years to build his legacy.

Brennan received a full briefing on all that had happened, but no one could shed light on who’d kidnapped him. It now appeared clear that neither the Sharia Group nor Syria had had anything to do with the abduction. In the colder light of reason the Sharia Group had no assets in the United States capable of having orchestrated such a scheme. The body of one of the group’s leaders had been found, and the man had obviously died of torture. And no one had explained how so many skilled Arabs could have infiltrated the United States with America’s intelligence sector having no record of any of them.

Damascus was still in shambles, but not nearly as bad as it would have been if the Trident had hit it. The Syrians and the rest of the Middle East were still understandably shell-shocked, but it seemed that with the world so close to the abyss people were looking at things with a more cooperative eye. It remained to be seen if this mood had permanence, though.

Vice President Hamilton had taken some time off from his official duties. Coming within a second of being the first American president since Harry Truman to order the use of a nuclear bomb was more pressure than any person should have to bear, and it had taken its toll on the man. However, Hamilton was expected to make a full recovery.

Brennan had been astonished to learn that the kidnappers had died nearly to a man while intentionally not inflicting any casualties on the United States. While he was still contemplating this stunning news, the president watched a recording of one of his favorite political roundtable shows that had been broadcast while he was still missing. Each of the four pundits on the show concluded that what was going on was a trick of some sort.

“And if the president is delivered back safely?” the moderator asked.

All of the pundits said that that would be another trick of some sort.

“With what goal in mind?” the moderator asked. “They sacrificed over twenty people. They could have killed the president quite easily at any time. And if they return him safely, what have they gained?”

“You have to understand, these people will stop at nothing,” one of the pundits declared. “First they tried killing us. But that didn’t work. We fought back and are winning the war on terror. So they’ve clearly changed tactics.”

“And now they’re trying the ploy of not killing us?” the bewildered moderator asked.

“Precisely,” the smug pundit answered.

Brennan had received a copy of the kidnappers’ demands and spent a long time in his private quarters going over them. He also reviewed with horror the details of how close the U.S. had come to launching a nuclear strike against a nation that, it turned out, was innocent of the alleged wrongdoing. While Brennan praised his vice president publicly, he was shocked when he learned how quickly Hamilton had been persuaded to authorize the use of nuclear weapons and how close he’d come to launching one. Brennan was now thinking seriously of other VP candidates.

He held lengthy meetings with his various experts in Muslim affairs and other Western leaders and spent long hours with his wife and family. He went to church several times in one week, perhaps seeking divine advice for the secular problems of humankind.

Now that the president was safely back, the international press started to report more openly about the kidnappers’ demands. Throughout the capitals of Europe, South America and Asia, people were actually focusing more on the substance of the demands, since, for once, they didn’t have an accompanying pile of human bodies and rubble to overshadow them.

Finally, Brennan called a meeting of his cabinet, his National Security Council and his top military advisers. There he brought up his abductors’ demands.

His national security adviser immediately protested. “Sir,” the NSA said, “it’s absurd. We can’t comply with any of them. It’s beyond preposterous.”

Secretary of Defense Decker spoke up. “Mr. President, to even consider those demands is a sign of weakness on behalf of this country.”

Brennan’s response was terse. “We came within seconds of killing six million people on what turned out to be deeply flawed evidence.”

“We didn’t start this thing. And there’s always risk involved,” Decker countered.

Brennan stared the man down. “We are the world’s sole remaining superpower. We have a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world. Even if others don’t show restraint, we have to!”

The way Brennan was looking at Decker, it was clear a new secretary of defense would be joining a new vice president in Brennan’s second administration.

Brennan pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. It was the note that had been found on him after the kidnapping. He read it to himself. “From great sacrifice comes great opportunity.” And as history had shown and Brennan well knew, great presidents were often created during such times.

He turned away from Joe Decker and his Pentagon folks and looked at Andrea Mayes, his secretary of state.

“I think it’s time we got to work,” President Brennan said.

CHAPTER

70

JACQUELINE SIMPSON WAS LAID TO rest in a private service at a cemetery in northern Virginia. In attendance were her grief-stricken parents, close family friends, political dignitaries, representatives of the Secret Service and her godfather, Carter Gray.

Nearby but hidden behind a copse of trees stood Oliver Stone, wearing a brand-new black suit and tie that his friends had purchased for him. As the minister spoke words of religious wisdom and comfort, Stone didn’t hear them. His gaze was transfixed on the coffin that held his daughter, Beth. He didn’t cry. He was having trouble deciding what he should feel. He was her father, but then again, he wasn’t. He had had her for three years; the Simpsons for the rest of her life. Simply from a time standpoint, he had little claim to be here. And yet he could not have stayed away.

When the ceremony was over and all the others had left, Stone emerged from his hiding place and walked down to the burial spot. The cemetery workers were about to lower the coffin into the hole in the ground, but Stone asked them to wait.

“Are you family?” one asked him.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m family.”

For twenty long minutes Stone knelt in front of the coffin, with one of his hands resting on its smooth, polished surface.

He finally rose on shaky legs, bent over and kissed the coffin, placing a single flower on top. It was a daisy.

“Good-bye, Beth,” he said quietly. “I love you.”

The Camel Club, Alex and Kate met at Stone’s cottage the following day. Reuben had been treated for his wounds, and the doctors had taken care of a couple of bothersome kidney stones at the same time. Chastity was fully recovered from her ordeal, something she had absolutely no memory of.

Alex brought with him the newspaper account of Jackie Simpson’s death. “She was a damn hero, and all she’ll be remembered for is being a victim of a carjacking,” he said bitterly.

Stone was sitting behind his desk. “You’re wrong. That’s not all she’ll be remembered for,” he said firmly.

Alex changed the subject. “It’s killing me that Carter Gray is now some national hero when he was going to murder the president. There has to be something we can do.”

Reuben said, “But if we go public, then everything else comes out. I’m not sure the country can handle that after everything that’s happened.”

Stone said quietly, “Carter Gray will be taken care of. I’ll personally see to that.”

They all looked at him curiously, but the man’s expression did not invite questions.

Reuben stood. “Okay, I think it’s time to make it official.” He cleared his throat. “I hereby call a special meeting of the Camel Club to order. Because of their exemplary work on behalf of the United States, and their invaluable assistance to the club, I move that we admit two new members: Agent Alex Ford and Kate Adams. Do I have a second?”

“Second,” said Milton and Caleb together.

“All in favor say aye!”

And the ayes carried.

Alex said, “Okay, I need to know something. Why the Camel Club?”

Stone answered, “Because camels have great stamina. They never give up.”

“That’s what Oliver says, but the real reason is this,” Reuben countered. “In the 1920s there was another Camel Club. And at each meeting of that club they would all raise their glasses and take a vow to oppose Prohibition to the last drop of whiskey. Now, that’s my kind of club.”

When the meeting broke up, Alex stayed behind to talk to Stone in private.

“So Oliver Stone is really John Carr,” he said.

“Was John Carr. He’s dead,” Stone said bluntly.

“Oliver, you told Carter Gray that your country had taken your family. What did you mean by that?”

Stone sat down behind his desk and fiddled with some papers lying there. “Let’s just say that I thought I’d finished my ‘duties’ for my country, but apparently, my country believed that my job was not one you ever walked away from.” He paused. “It’s the greatest regret of my life that my family suffered because of me.”