A patriotic video montage of the late Vice President began, accompanied by a narration track that had clearly been prepared well in advance. The dead bolt on the living room door began to turn. The goon leaped up and positioned himself behind the door as it opened.
He put the gun down. It was only his boss, Elvir.
Elvir shut the door quickly behind him, opening it one last time to peek down the hallway and make sure he hadn’t been followed.
“Where’s Ali?” the goon demanded in Muskogee.
“It was a setup,” Elvir replied in his native Bosnian. He tossed his backpack onto the floor, unholstered a pistol from within his jacket and slumped into the lone armchair in the room.
“Where’s Ali?” the goon repeated.
Elvir shook his head. “He gave me no choice.”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” The goon smacked his forehead repeatedly. He sat, enveloping his little head in his huge hands for a moment. “Listen to me Elvir. I have a friend with a small plane. He can get us to Mexico, and from there, we can get back to Bosnia.”
Elvir shook his head. He switched back to Muskogee. “If we run, we’ll never get our money.”
“But how can we ever get the money now?”
Elvir looked at Angie and saw dollar signs. “They’ll be very interested in our guest here,” he explained.
Norman, Oklahoma
4:30 p.m. Central
They flew into the University of Oklahoma’s Westheimer Airport under dark, threatening skies. All commercial traffic had been suspended since the attacks, rendering the tiny airport deserted. There were no aircraft controllers in the tower to guide them in, nor were there landing strip personnel to meet the Cessna U-27A as it taxied off the runway.
A hard summer rain fell as Agents Carver and O’Keefe exited the little military turboprop. O’Keefe turned to help Nico out of the aircraft. He was cuffed at the wrists and dressed in street clothes that were a little baggy on his slight frame. They sprinted to the main building where, as expected, the lone rental car counter was unmanned.
Carver jumped the counter and searched behind it until he found a locked cabinet. One hard tug busted the flimsy lock, revealing the keys to twenty Ford economy cars attached to numbered key rings. “Lucky number?” he said to O’Keefe.
“Eleven.”
He chose the #11 key.
Fifteen minutes later they pulled up Cavalry Street in the blue rental car. “That’s it,” O’Keefe said, pointing to a modest two-bedroom Craftsman with faded blue shingles.
Carver parked the rental car a short distance down the street. He adjusted his rear view mirror and glanced at Nico, who sat in the back seat. He figured they had no reason to fear their white collar prisoner. But Nico was still a flight risk, and if this operation turned into a door-buster, or a shootout, they wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes on him.
Carver climbed into the back seat, flipped out a small blade from his pocketknife and cut into the fabric rooftop until he hit a piece of metal framing. He then cinched Nico’s right cuff around it, effectively locking him in the car. “Where’s the love?” Nico protested. “You can’t do this. It’s against the law to leave me in a car by myself.”
“Who’s going to stop me? Child Protective Services?”
The two agents cut diagonally across the front yard’s Kentucky Bluegrass lawn. “Door’s ajar,” O’Keefe said.
Carver put his hand on O’Keefe’s shoulder. His touch sent butterflies swarming in her belly. “Let me take point,” he told her.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m wearing Kevlar.”
Carver thunked his knuckles against something hard under his shirt. “I’m wearing armor. Besides, you have to let me be chivalrous once in a while.”
They drew their pistols and approached the front entry. Carver went in first and regarded the ancient-looking man with long gray hair and eyeglasses in the overstuffed armchair. “Professor Hitchiti?”
The old man didn’t answer. As O’Keefe cleared the other rooms, Carver drew closer and switched on a lamp.
A single bullet hole gaped on the Professor’s forehead. Flies buzzed in and out of the wound.
Fort Campbell
Eva sat in her office studying bond market reports that the Under-Secretary had faxed in from her home in rural Virginia. She had been able to establish contact with a half dozen members of her staff, most of whom were now working from home or coffee shops. The Joint Chiefs had ordered all Federal Agency Internet and VOIP networks shut down, citing security threats. The fact that military bases were conveniently unaffected wasn’t lost on her.
In the desk drawer sat a prescription for Ativan, an anti-depression and anti-anxiety drug that she had taken with some success after her husband’s death. The base pharmacy had graciously sent it over without a prescription. The fact that it was there was comforting. But she tried to think of it as a fire extinguisher, glass only to be broken in the event of an extreme emergency. Important decisions had to be made. Her judgment had to be sound. The question was whether her critical thinking skills were more effective with or without the pills.
Madsen appeared in the doorway. He was red-faced and slightly out of breath. “We just hit targets in Yemen,” he said without preamble.
Eva sat upright and ran both hands through her brunette hair. “We?” she said. “According to whom?”
“Rapture Run.” He tossed a memo onto the pine desktop. “The U.S.S. John McCain launched cruise missiles against Allied Jihad training camps. There’s an announcement going to the press as well.”
“Didn’t they get our intel report? We advised them last night that the tape couldn’t be authenticated as Allied Jihad!”
“They got the report. They just didn’t like what it said.”
Eva stood, paced once around the perimeter of her desk, then leaned over it and rested on her elbows. Despite her official role as Treasury Secretary, she was accustomed to having the President’s ear in every foreign policy situation. The fact that she was so far removed now, when the world was coming unglued, was unbearable. “Let’s get Rapture Run on the line,” she said.
Madsen shook his head. “They’re still not taking our calls. General Wainewright’s little assistant — what’s his name, Hammond? — he said ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’”
Rapture Run
General Wainewright sat behind a collapsible desk in Rapture Run’s Executive Quarters. It wasn’t exactly the Oval Office, but it was roughly three times as large as Dex Jackson’s quarters, complete with a full-size bed and private shower and satellite television feeding into three monitors.
Wainewright sat working on the Presidential Inauguration Speech. Lincoln’s opera glasses sat on the desk beside his computer. He heard footsteps in the corridor and reached instinctively for his sidearm. He never sat with his back to the door, nor did he stray more than an arm’s length from a loaded weapon. During the first Iraq war, after his tank battalion had crushed the Iraqis under the leadership of General Schwarzkopf, he had been celebrating with the officers one night when a psychotic tank commander — who had come unhinged at the sight of several charred Iraqi bodies — tossed a grenade into the tent, killing two of his colleagues. Wainewright had escaped with metal fragments in his thigh.
The lesson wasn’t lost on him. He knew that there might be some among his staff who were plotting to kill him even now. He carried his sidearm at all times. And Lincoln’s opera glasses. Always the glasses.
Corporal Hammond entered. He was ashen-faced and his waistline looked tinier than usual. “General,” he said, “I have something.”
“Shut the door.”
Hammond entered and closed the door behind him. The General pressed a button on his desk that frosted the glass.