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“I feel like you’re giving up too easily, Irene. You almost sound okay with this.”

“I’m not giving up, but there’s blood in the water and I’ve made more than my share of enemies in Washington. It would be stupid for me to go to this meeting unprepared for the president to ask me to step down.”

“Who then?”

“You’re too controversial and I assume you wouldn’t take the job anyway.”

“I’d rather put a gun in my mouth.”

“Then Mike Nash.”

Rapp didn’t respond, instead leaning back in his chair and staring past Kennedy through the window behind her.

“He’s the American hero you insisted on making him, Mitch. Any politician who takes a stand against him will run a serious public relations risk.”

While Rapp wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea, Kennedy was likely right. Nash had the resume, and despite a tendency toward moral paralysis, he was no coward. When it came time for things to get bloody, he could be counted on to be there.

“Mike wouldn’t be permanent and I don’t think he or anyone in Washington would want him to be,” Kennedy continued. “The goal here is to put someone in my chair who can keep the politicians off your back long enough for you to resolve the Rickman problem.”

Rapp still didn’t respond.

“Mitch? I need you to say something. If you can’t work with him—technically for him—you have to tell me who you’d prefer.”

“Fine.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I might have to knock him on his ass a couple of times, but I can work with him.”

“For him,” she repeated.

“I said fine.”

She was visibly relieved. “Like I said, I hope it won’t come to that, but we have to be ready.”

“Yeah,” Rapp said, trying to swallow his anger. Putting Irene Kennedy out on the street with everything that was going on would be unimaginably stupid. The problem was that unimaginably stupid had become a job requirement in Washington.

CHAPTER 44

CENTRAL AFGHANISTAN

IT was good to be out of the city.

The air blowing through the missing door was still hot despite the sunset fiftee

n minutes before. Dust rising from the road swirled inside the cab, attacking Fahran Hotaki’s eyes and working its way into his mouth, but it didn’t bother him. In fact, he found it strangely nostalgic. A reminder of his life before the war. Of days spent tending livestock and raising children.

He had no photos of his village or his family. Cameras, as well as phones and computers, had been of little use to him then. They’d become part of his life only after he’d joined the fighting.

Living a life cut off from the outside world was appealing in so many ways. The unchanging rhythm of it, the intimate familiarity with everything that made up his universe. He’d known nothing of economic swings, the Internet, or nuclear weapons. Nothing of tensions between nations, pandemics, or environmental disasters. There had been only him, his people, and the vast, empty land around them.

It was a level of simplicity that should have been easy to preserve—one that would make his country of little interest to outside forces. For some reason, though, Afghanistan could never just retreat into its primitive, insular culture.

Would-be conquerors had come in seemingly endless waves since the dawn of history. In his lifetime, Afghanistan had endured the Russians, the Taliban, countless foreign terrorist groups, and now the Americans.

Why would Allah not let this rocky corner of the planet exist in peace? Why must there be constant tests of His people’s faith? How many horrors would God force them to suffer before He was convinced of their devotion?

“Allahu akbar,” Hotaki said over the whistle of the wind. His growing habit of questioning the god he would be meeting later that night was the height of arrogance. Still, he hoped there would be some kind of explanation. He wanted so badly to understand.

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