Insight into the extent of Speers’ political awareness wasn’t the only interesting thing that happened that night. He recalled walking O’Keefe back to the subway stop that night. He commented that the Chief of Staff had a dangerously free-ranging, undisciplined mind for someone in such a powerful position. O’Keefe, herself quite drunk, came to Speers’ defense, saying that he was only stating what everyone already knew — that the President was losing his grip on power, and if he didn’t step gracefully aside, Congress was going to do something about it. They began to argue. O’Keefe called him a narrow-minded puritan. He called her unpatriotic. She shouted something back. But by now he wasn’t listening. He was too consumed with how beautiful she was. He couldn’t stop watching her mouth.
He kissed her. She kissed him back. Regret instantly washed over him. He broke their embrace as O’Keefe gazed up at him with a mischievous spunk that only her ex-boyfriends had known.
“Look, Meagan…” It was the first and only time he had ever used her first name.
“No,” she scolded him. “No first names. That’s rule number one.”
“Rules?” he said, laughing. “You’re making up rules now?”
“We have to maintain professional distance,” she teased. Then she kissed him again.
“Last subway’s coming. You should get home.”
“You should come with me.”
He grinned. “We should be good.”
“I’ll be good. I swear.”
“That’s not what I mean. If we’re going to slip, let it be when you’re sober. And trapped in a government car on a stakeout somewhere.”
“Surveillance sex?” she said, bursting into hysterics. “You want surveillance sex?”
“No. I’ve just got a thing for cars. Government cars. That’s how patriotic I am.”
She kissed him and backed away, slowly, giving him one last wave before heading down the escalator at Foggy Bottom Station. Carver’s soul felt a little lighter that night. He actually felt giddy.
But by morning the feeling had given way to regret. He had cheated himself out of a rare chance to feel intimate with someone. Something he had needed for far too long.
Now he finished his run, slowing to a walk for the last lap around the track. He didn’t bother to stretch. He put his suit back on and walked across the grass to the makeshift barracks to see if O’Keefe was awake yet.
The memory of the night at the subway station filled him with a kind of music. All these weeks later, he could still taste her mouth on his. I could slip, he told himself. I could slip right now. The sky is falling, the world is coming undone, and I could slip.
But back at the barracks, he found her sitting upright on her cot, holding her phone to her ear. O’Keefe’s mind was on business. She signed off brusquely and hung up.
“That was the Bureau,” she said gruffly. “They found evidence in Faruq Ahmed’s home linking him to six other Allied Jihad cells in four cities. They’re making arrests right now.”
Carver’s pulse quickened. This was unexpected. Nico’s assertion about the tape rang true with him. He didn’t believe Ahmed was who he said he was. And all those assassinations weren’t just the work of some crafty terrorist cells. There had to be an insider. “I need to see the evidence.”
“That’s what I said. They’re saying our security clearance isn’t high enough.”
“What? The wolf is at the door, and they’re going to quibble about security clearances?”
She nodded. “They found another body. Some cop at a drag strip outside Monroe. They’re saying Ahmed was practicing there. They figure the cop was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He sat down on his cot and thought for a moment. “They want us to back off, don’t they?”
“Those weren’t his exact words.”
“We’re resuming our end of this investigation. Screw the Bureau. We only answer to Julian now.”
Rooftop, Baltimore, Maryland
5:45 A.M.
Elvir sat atop a five-story brownstone office building, watching McAlister Park through the scope of a sniper rifle. There were thunderheads on the horizon. He was sweating. It was too damn early to be this damn hot.
He spotted Ali. His partner wore a white cap and came across the street to enter the park’s green space. Elvir switched his phone on and talked into the receiver fixed in Ali’s ear. “Twenty meters at two o’clock. See the van?”
“Got it,” Ali replied.
“Just get the money. If they invite you to go with them, walk away. Don’t say anything. I’ve got you covered.”
Ali went to the van and knocked on the door. It opened. A man in a black jump suit and sunglasses sat inside. Elvir could hear the man’s voice through Ali’s Bluetooth. He sounded white.
“This won’t do,” he said. “We hand the money off to Elvir directly. Take us to him.”
“No,” Ali said. “I get the money here and now. That is the deal.”
Elvir found the man’s face in the scope of his rifle. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had a jarhead haircut. He had big horse’s teeth. “Why don’t we go get some breakfast?” the man asked Ali. “Somewhere we can negotiate.”
Just as Elvir has instructed, Ali turned to walk away, but the man grabbed him around the neck from behind and shoved a gun into his face. The click of the gun’s safety switch releasing was audible over the radio.
“Tell me where Elvir is. I’ll make you rich. Or you can die. Your choice.”
Elvir put pressure on the trigger of his sniper rifle, but he hesitated. Killing the man meant they might never see the last payment. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two more men get up from park benches and walk towards the van. Why hadn’t he spotted them before?
Ali saw them too. “Okay, okay,” he said. He was cracking. And they hadn’t even hurt him yet.
No, Elvir thought. No, Ali. Don’t make me do this. Just stay still long enough for me to pick these guys off.
Elvir found the man’s face again in the rifle scope. His finger found the rifle’s trigger. “It’s an apartment,” he heard Ali say. “Third floor.”
There was no alternative now. He moved the scope one-eighth inch to the left. That was all it took to put Ali’s chest in the scope’s crosshairs. “I forgive you.” He took the shot, blowing a hole through Ali’s right lung. The armor-piercing bullet went straight through Ali’s slight 130-pound frame and into his attacker and through the van, lodging into one of the park’s mighty oak trees.
Elvir’s second shot missed. He repositioned for a third, trying to target one of the other goons, but the familiar flash of an enemy muzzle stopped him. He ducked just as returning fire blew brick fragments into his eyes. The former Army sniper scrambled away from the roof’s edge, temporarily blinded, retracing his steps to the fire escape on the other side of the brownstone.
Fort Campbell
Carver hated meetings. Or at least the kind that he and O’Keefe had just been summoned to. It was always the same. A bunch of Washington bureaucrats wanted thousands of case hours boiled down into a 60-second oral report and a 200-page written report that would never be read. On the basis of that, the bureaucrats would make a decision that would affect the fate of the operation. Nine times out of ten, they ended up killing it.
Eva Hudson was the new sheriff in town, and it seemed that she wanted to get her mitts on Carver’s investigation. There was no way that was going to happen. Julian Speers and the President had requested that the operation stay off-the-grid, and it was going to stay there until they said otherwise.
He and O’Keefe made their way down the hallway toward Colonel Madsen’s conference room. They had spent all morning going over Nico’s assessment of the Muskogee translations. The news wasn’t good. They were dealing with a bunch of nameless suspects that had been careful not to give up their locations or contacts in any of their transmissions. Carver felt strongly that the key was finding the language geek who had taught them Muskogee in the first place. It wasn’t like Muskogee experts were a dime a dozen.