“Those Ulysses guys, they shoot first and run credentials later. Know what I mean? Better to play it safe.”
“Hector, the reason I called…I had a disturbing incident in the NMCC. Just after the attacks. After that we were evacuated from our offices and I’m unable to get onto the network. My entire address book is on that network. I haven’t been able to get hold of anyone. The Director’s still not taking my calls.”
“Join the club,” Rios said. “It’s chaos right now. Agencies are pretty much not doing anything, and that’s across the board. So much for disaster preparedness.”
“So, about the NMCC…The Joint Chiefs were talking about commanding from someplace called Rapture Run.”
Rios looked over Ellis’ shoulder. “Uh, your sister…”
“I rent the back bedroom out to her. She’s back there now. I made her promise to wear her noise-cancelling headphones until after you left.”
Rios smiled. “Never heard of Rapture Run. Probably just a new codename for Site R.”
“That wasn’t all. General Wainewright said — I’m trying to remember the exact words — something like the ‘chain of command is not intact.’”
Rios’ expression did not change, but his voice shifted lower. “What else did the General say?”
“They were suppressing casualty information.”
Rios considered this for a moment. “Back to the chain of command. It might not mean what you think it means. A chain of command can be considered less than intact just because communications have broken down.”
She smiled at him. “You lead the President’s personal detail. Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s going on.”
“Look,” he said, “Truth is I didn’t get back to Washington until a few hours ago. The President put me on special assignment. I’m out of the loop.”
“What was the assignment?”
Rios smiled. He liked Haley. He had always liked her. He wanted to tell her — to tell someone, anyone — that he had gunned down two would-be assassins and saved Eva Hudson’s life. And he wanted to tell her that he had not heard from First Team since Sunday morning, and that he had no idea what was going on, and that the President might be dead, and that it scared the hell out of him.
Instead, he would have to make small talk. “Your furniture,” he said as his eyes turned to the living room. “It’s…well…”
“Beneath me,” Ellis said. “I know. I’m saving my money. That’s why I live with my sister, in case you were wondering.”
“What are you saving for?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m going to go now.”
“A boat,” she said. She waited for a reaction, but Rios only listened. “I’d like to quit my job and sail around the world.”
“I saw the books.”
“I’m taking lessons every Saturday.”
“So come with me tonight,” Rios said, an invitation that surprised even him. “I live down at the marina.”
“What?”
“Serious. I live on a boat. A sailboat.”
“Shut up.”
“A thirty-two footer. Are you in?”
“What?”
“You should come with me. What are you gonna do here? You’re locked out of your office. Locked out of the network. It’s not like you’re going to get anything done.” He checked his watch. “Those Ulysses patrols are starting in just a few minutes. So what’s it gonna be? Another night at home with the sister, or a night with ex-Jacksonville Jaguar first round draft pick Hector Rios?”
He blushed, embarrassed by the fact that he had just used his status as an ex-NFL player to seduce Ellis. It wasn’t his style. But maybe it was a sign of how badly he wanted her.
She stared at him for a moment. Sizing him up. The former football player. She had never been with anyone like him. And there had never been a week like this. It was like the world was coming to an end. Or at least her world. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done something just because. Just for her.
She got up from the table. She took a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the rack. She grabbed her keys, already imagining the rhythm of the gentle marina waves lapping up against the hull.
Baltimore
The apartment had taken on the permanent odor of mushroom soup and baked beans. They had eaten the combo for every meal, and Angie had come to dread the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen. But maybe the fact that they were feeding her meant they weren’t going to kill her after all.
Elvir came to her with yet another helping. “Hungry?” he asked her.
She nodded wearily. Then she smiled — not because she liked him, but because she thought that he might be less willing to kill her if she was nice. To her surprise, he held a container of honey vanilla yogurt. “This is the good kind,” he said as he opened it. “No corn syrup.”
He spooned some into her mouth. She swallowed. He pushed another bite toward her, but she moved her head aside and spoke. “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “You were trying to kill us. So why didn’t you let me drown?”
He contemplated his words carefully before speaking. He spooned more of the yogurt into her mouth and said, “I am fully trained on the Stinger missile. Trust me, Misses Jackson. Had I wanted to kill you and your family, my aim would have been true.”
PART III
“The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.”
Assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
Baltimore Outskirts
Tuesday 4:45 a.m. Eastern
Two Maryland National Guardsmen stood next to an eight-wheeled Stryker fighting vehicle. Three hundred feet of razor wire and a few construction barricades stretched across the six-lane interstate leading into Baltimore. Less than 60 feet away, the remains of a Chevy pickup truck burned. They had blown it up an hour earlier.
Two stray dogs chewed a foot that had been blown off the driver near the debris. One of the construction signs flashed TURN BACK — CURFEW STRICTLY ENFORCED.
A set of headlights appeared in the distance. The sight of the burning truck had warded off every single approaching vehicle since they had attacked it around midnight. But this one — a black Humvee — came within fifty yards before it eventually stopped.
The two guardsmen squinted as Chris Abrams stepped out of the Hummer. His arms were raised above his head. The sun was rising in the east, but the half-light made it twice as hard to see. One of the guardsmen switched on the spotlight, and they saw Abrams’ closely cropped head and his Ulysses uniform. He was clutching an ID card.
They kept their guns on Abrams even as he drew close and they could see his battle fatigues.
“La Familia?” one of the guardsmen said, meaning Ulysses.
“Yep,” Abrams said. “Joint Ops called us into Baltimore. You wanna see the orders?”
He handed over his ID and manufactured travel authorization. The guardsmen passed it between them although they scarcely examined it. “Look how ripped he is,” one of the guardsmen said in astonished Spanish. “Even his head is ripped!”
Unfortunately for the guardsmen, Abrams understood Spanish perfectly. His head was not in fact “ripped,” at least not in the traditional sense. Facial wasting, a side effect of his particular strain of HIV, caused his body fat to be improperly distributed. Abrams was incredibly self-conscious about it, as he was often falsely accused of being on steroids. Some years ago, he’d even undergone painful collagen injections to beef up his facial features, but the improvements were only fleeting.
Abrams was not the name he had been born with, but it was the name his employer had given him. For the past few years he had inhabited Christian Merrill Abrams so completely that, for the most part, he had forgotten that he had once been known as Henry and had been a prison guard in a small Wyoming town. After racking up too much debt, he had left his family for a year to make a hundred thousand dollars working for Blackwater, the American contract militia that had become so notorious on the streets of Baghdad.