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All Rapp could do was laugh at the outrageous number. He had come across this before. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban loved to exaggerate their successes. “You haven’t even killed five thousand, and you know it. You guys are getting your asses kicked. One by one we keep picking you off. Your leadership is in shambles, you’re living in caves, and your recruiting is way down. People are tired of sending their boys off to die at your incompetent hands.”
“You know nothing.”
“Educate me, then. Tell me about all your successes.”
“You will see soon enough.”
Rapp saw what he was looking for. He moved quickly to Haggani’s side and leaned in close. “We know all about the third cell. Your little butt-buddy Mohammad is across the hall right now giving us all the details.”
Rapp saw the anger flash in Haggani’s eyes. Saw the registration of betrayal as he realized a weaker man was putting everything in jeopardy. Rapp also knew what was going to happen next, having baited others in the same way. The lips pursed, the cheeks sucked in slightly, and then just as Haggani was poised to let loose a gob of spit, Rapp’s right hand shot forward. The flattened hand and curled knuckles struck the larynx like a battering ram. Haggani gasped, his open mouth filled with spit, his eyes bulging from his head as his body absorbed the shock. He was frozen for a moment and then fell forward, gasping for air.
“The teams have been dispatched,” Rapp whispered in his ear. “Within twenty-four hours they will be in our possession, and you will have failed yet again. Did you really think the plan would work? Did you really think we would allow you to just walk into our country and…?”
Rapp was in mid-sentence when the door opened. He turned to see four sizable men with black Air Force Security Forces patches on their shoulders filing into the interrogation room. Rapp looked to the man with the most stripes on his collar and snapped, “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Excuse me, sir,” the man said, “would you please step out into the hallway? The general would like to s
peak to you.”
Rapp eyeballed the man from head to toe and then looked the others over. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Sergeant.”
In a less-than-commanding voice the man persisted. “The general would like to see you now, sir.”
Rapp glanced down at the prisoner and then back up at the senior master sergeant. “You tell the general to cool his fucking heels, or I’ll get Secretary of Defense England on the phone and make sure the general spends the rest of his career in a missile silo in the middle of Bum Fuck, North Dakota.” Rapp watched him look toward the door and then back at him. He was on the fence. “Sergeant, I suggest you get your ass out of here right now, or I’ll make sure you accompany the general on his new assignment.”
The sergeant had been in a lot of tricky spots during his thirteen years with the air force, but this one took the cake. An up-and-coming one-star was out in the other room. The guy had been running the base for less than two months, and had made it really clear that he believed in the old axiom that shit rolled downhill. Now he was staring at the very man that general had told him to arrest—a colonel wearing an Air Force Office of Special Investigations unit patch, who was threatening to call the secretary of defense himself. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy looked like he might literally rip his head off if he didn’t exit the room and do so on the double. Not liking the lay of the land, the sergeant decided to pull a tactical retreat to the hallway.
CHAPTER 13
THIS was a moment to be savored, Nash thought to himself. Like most jobs, his was filled with frustration, boredom, and all kinds of tedious bullshit, and recently, more political correctness than was healthy for an organization tasked with penetrating perhaps the most politically incorrect group of men on the planet. But occasionally there were flashes of excitement, of brilliance, when it all came together to mesh in an unqualified success. Moments when all your hard work and personal sacrifice paid off. Where you rolled the dice and broke the house, and felt like you were actually pushing the boulder back up the hill.
Nash had experienced a lot of highs in his life. A Pennsylvania state football championship his junior year in high school, a wrestling title his senior year, falling in love with his wife, the births of his children, becoming an officer in the Marine Corps, successfully leading his men in battle, and countless other things. None of it compared, though, to the high-stakes game he now played. The stakes had never been so big, the challenge never so great. The big picture was pretty straightforward; keep America and her allies safe from the likes of Haggani and al-Haq. How they went about doing that was where it got complicated. There were those like Rapp who made no bones that the best way to accomplish their goal was to kill every last one of them. Keep killing until they were all gone, or they no longer had the will to fight.
Nash sympathized with Rapp. He knew someone had to have that attitude. Someone had to be willing to go toe-to-toe with these guys and beat them at their own game. Make them flinch, keep them up at night wondering when a bomb was going to fall on their heads or a team of commandos was going to sneak up on them and cut every last man’s throat. It had all been done, and it had kept the enemy off balance. It had not been localized to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, though. European, Middle Eastern, and Asian financiers had been targeted. Most had taken the warning, but a few who had chosen not to listen had fallen victim to tragic, accidental deaths. The same went for the arms merchants, the pimps of war. They knew the risky game they played by supplying the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but the allure was too much. Many had been killed and many more would forfeit their lives before it was over.
Nash would never admit it to his wife or friends, but there was no bigger rush, no bigger thrill, than when they took down one of the high-value targets. He’d helped arrest a few and killed just one, but it was the highest high he’d ever been on. It felt like all of his life’s victories rolled into one. Everything had been set to take the target down in the Pakistani border town of Chaman. He and Rapp had worked through unofficial channels, bribing Pakistani Intelligence officials left and right until they had located the man. They were operating with a small team of only six men, all of them trained shooters. The target got spooked as Rapp and two others came through the front door of the building. Nash was in back, alone, when the guy came flying out the door, a big, ugly AK-47 in his hands, ready to blow away anyone who tried to stop him. Nash stood in the shadows of a doorway, and as the man ran by he extended his silenced gun and sent a single hollow-point 9mm round into the back of his head. The man took a few more steps, his body running on autopilot, and then collapsed, skidding to a stop on his own face.
This time it was different in several ways. The most obvious was that Langley knew what they were doing. In Chaman they were operating on their own without a net. This was a victory they could share with the Hill. It was something the politicians could celebrate. They had captured a few people as important as al-Haq, but none of them had ever willingly cooperated. He had to work to squeeze every drop out of them, and even then the information they provided had to be treated with suspicion. Al-Haq was coming over without a fight. Sure, there had been a few threats, but no one had laid a hand on him.
Nash’s boss, Rob Ridley, was thrilled. He had given Nash the green light to proceed, while he got Kennedy to sign off on it and provide some type of legal assurance to al-Haq. Nash told Ridley of his idea to get al-Haq to go public. Get him to tell the world how al-Qaeda and the Taliban had strayed from the path. Ridley loved it. “If they could find a way to get his family out,” Nash told him, “I think he would do it in a heartbeat.”
“One success at a time,” had been Ridley’s comment before he congratulated Nash and told him he’d get back to him within the hour. Nash hung up the phone and checked his watch. He’d been gone less than five minutes. He didn’t want to rush this, didn’t want to seem too eager. He paced back and forth in the small office, calming himself and thinking of how he would play his hand when he went back into the room. He still had all the cards, and while he had General Dostum around, he should use him for leverage. Nash decided he’d push al-Haq a bit harder. He thought the earliest they’d have the assurance from Kennedy would be an hour. Probably two.
Nash thought of ways to push him. Tell him the big hitters in D.C. didn’t believe him, he thought to himself. Tell him the other two cells had been debriefed and hadn’t said a word about a third cell. That was a lie, of course. They had, and there was other disturbing stuff floating around out there, murmurs on the World Wide Web that something big was coming. Nash believed al-Haq, but for now he would make him think the deal was in jeopardy.
Nash checked his watch again and took a couple of deep breaths to try and ease off the natural high he was on. He yanked open the office door, set his jaw in a more grim position, and started down the hallway. As he stepped into the big observation room, he found himself staring at the backs of a group of men who were not supposed to be there. Up on one of the screens Rapp was yelling at a couple of MPs.
Nash turned nervously to his right and found Marcus Dumond, the young CIA hacker, looking like he was about to crawl under the desk.
Just then he heard General Garrison, the base commander, growl, “Did he just say Secretary of Defense England?”
“He did, sir,” the younger officer next to him replied.
“You’d better be right about this, Leland. If that man isn’t CIA and you get me in hot water with the secretary of defense, you are going to be shoveling shit for the rest of your tour.”
Nash felt his stomach turn, and thought to himself, These guys could screw this thing up real quick. How in the hell are we going to talk our way out of this? The very next thing he thought of was damage control. Dumond had been recording the sessions. The last thing they needed to do was hand over proof of their crimes.
Everyone else in the room was so intent on the TV showing the interrogation room that Nash saw an opportunity. He looked down at Dumond, pointed at his small external drive, and then jerked his head toward the hallway behind him. Dumond nodded, grabbed the drive, and quietly stood. As he passed by Nash, the general must have noticed the movement, because he began to turn around. Nash stepped forward quickly to block the general’s view and distract him.
