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“For Leland?”
“Yes.”
“But he doesn’t want to cooperate.”
“I don’t give a shit if he wants to cooperate. I’ll compel his ass to cooperate.”
“But you need him to get the ball rolling.”
“What I need is a couple of hard-nosed special agents to sit him down and get him to make a statement. Where’s Rapp?”
“He’s on his way back from Afghanistan. I don’t know when he’s supposed to land.”
“One of the CIA planes?”
“I think so. Leland said Ridley went over to pick him up and they left the base this afternoon.”
“Ridley is involved in this too?” asked an excited Lonsdale. “Oh, this is just fantastic.” Lonsdale wrote down a few more names and then made a big circle around Rapp’s. “What about Nash? Wasn’t he just over there?”
“I’m not sure. Leland didn’t mention him.”
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Lonsdale tapped her pen and took a long drag. After a good ten seconds she said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to find out when Rapp’s plane is due to land. Then I want you to get Wade over here. We’ll put him out on point for this. As the DOJ’s chief civil liberties officer he’ll be able to find out who the FBI has at that base and he can order them to track down Leland and take a statement from him. We’ll take that statement and give it to Judge…” Lonsdale began snapping her fingers. “Who would be a good judge?”
“Broeder. Extremely liberal. He’ll love the opportunity to get involved in something like this.”
“Good. We’ll use him, but we have to keep this really quiet.”
“You run the Judiciary Committee. Trust me, Broeder will play ball with us.”
“And we’ll keep this tight. You, me, Kline, Broeder, and only one staffer. Get Kline over here immediately.”
“Right away.” Wassen had already stepped over to another phone and was asking one of the people in the outer office to get him Wade Kline.
Lonsdale spun her chair around and looked out the window. She was grinning ear to ear. She could see it all unfolding in her mind’s eye. She’d move quietly tonight and then in the morning she would hold a press conference with Kline and drop the bomb on an unsuspecting Washington. Her fellow chairmen on Intel and Armed Services would be furious, but what could they do but get behind her and second everything she would say? This had the potential to be one of the biggest scandals this town had ever seen. It was one for the history books. She’d been warning the president and her colleagues about the CIA for years, and no one had listened. Now they would have to.
CHAPTER 34
CUBA
KARIM stood near the tailgate of one of the pickup trucks and watched as the last of the cocaine was loaded onto the two speedboats. On the flight from the Triple Frontier to Cuba they had stopped in Venezuela to refuel. There, the men got rid of their jungle fatigues and were given civilian clothes. The rifles were stripped down and packed away but the pistols were kept and shoved into the waistbands of jeans and khaki pants.
Karim half expected that when they landed in Cuba their plane would be surrounded, the drugs seized, and they’d be thrown in some hot, humid jail where they would rot for years. Hakim had repeatedly reassured him that everything would be fine. Aiding drug trafficking was a way for the Cuban military to both supplement their dismal pay and stick it to the Americans. Hakim had carefully plotted every step of the journey. He’d spent nearly a half year flying around the region, meeting the right people and gauging whom he could trust. Never did he discuss Islam or the jihad. This was about drugs, something that the United States was far more tolerant of than Islam.
Karim stayed away from the soldiers who had met them at the airport and ordered his men to do likewise. They could all speak Spanish to a varying degree, but nowhere near as well as Hakim, who was fluent in the language. There were ten of the soldiers. All Cuban army. An officer and nine enlisted men. They were heavily armed, but Hakim had warned him in advance not to be worried. That was simply the way of the Cubans. They carried AK-47s around like most people carried a cell phone. Most of them weren’t even loaded. The entire thing made Karim extremely nervous. For a man who was used to being in control, who had to be in control, this was the worst part of the journey. He had to simply trust and leave it to fate.
Hakim and the Cuban officer were smiling and laughing about something. Karim assumed it was that the man now had in his possession three times more cocaine than he had originally been told he would. The officer’s take of ten percent was now worth more than a million dollars if he could unload it through the right channels. Hakim had played it perfectly. Every step of the way he had told these people that he was an advance man for a drug cartel which was looking for new trade routes to get drugs into the United States. If they knew this was a onetime deal, Hakim feared they would simply take the drugs and throw them in jail or worse. Hakim talked a big game. He told them they were not interested in a onetime deal. They were looking for partners who could help them build their business. They were going to test several routes and then begin running shipments every two to three weeks. With those kinds of numbers, any man who was not grounded in his religion would be tempted.
The Cuban officer and Hakim were now saying good-bye. Karim watched as his old friend reached out and hugged the man, kissing him once on each cheek, and then announcing for all to hear, “Viva la Revolución!”
The rest of the Cuban contingent repeated the chant and shook their rifles in the air. Hakim took a moment to thank the rest of the soldiers. Clasping an arm here and shaking a hand there, he went down the line flashing his infectious smile and looking each man in the eye.
Karim had always been in awe of his childhood friend’s ability to charm virtually anyone who crossed his path. He was a chameleon, capable of socializing with wretches and princes alike. He was never idle and always interested in what other people were doing and how they got from point A to point B. How they made their laundry business work, how they had become a professor, how they’d started their construction business, how they took care of their fishing boat, how they became a bond trader…the list went on and on. If it weren’t for their years of loyalty, Karim would have probably been threatened by the ease with which Hakim walked through life, but he wasn’t.
Their loyalty to each other stemmed from having been childhood friends. A healthy competition that had grown into a deep respect. It also helped that Hakim was one of Karim’s biggest believers. Always the better student and his equal athletically, Karim was looked up to by Hakim. It was Hakim who was the first to believe that Karim had a destiny that would make him a historic figure in the fight to save Islam from yet another assault from the West. As teens they had dreamed of greatness. They had dissected what was good and what was wrong with the various jihad groups and they had set their own course.
Hakim had been the one to first suggest setting up their own network. Both men had grown suspicious of all the infighting between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The infighting was disgusting, and they both feared that it had led to various factions intentionally sabotaging their brothers by leaking information to the Americans. Karim had not liked the idea of sending Hakim off on his own to explore other options, but his old friend had been his usual persistent self. After Zawahiri had saddled him with his moronic nephew, Karim decided he could with good conscience turn Hakim loose.
