“Umarov, my friend, are you in doubt?” Yousef moved next to his leader while holding his palms out, facing the warmth of the fire. “Have you ever heard of the doomsday principle?”
Yousef knew the answer. The man could barely read.
“No.”
“There is a probability that mankind will become extinct. That only a finite number of humans will ever exist.”
“Yes?”
“It is our duty, we must…” Yousef poked the fire as though putting a blade under the ribcage of his enemy. “We must make sure that the last man standing be a true Muslim. That is our duty.” He paused as he continued to push the stick into the glowing embers of the pit. “This American giant must suffer a deep and severe wound. Only this will bring him down.”
CHAPTER 52
Tranthan stared at the print of the photograph. The technician had blown it up to a full eight by eleven, a color photo of Maggie O’Donald. The only item on the flash drive had been this single photograph.
“A fucking photo?”
Was this her idea of a joke?
Many thoughts entered his mind as he sat in the dark of his office. Only the brass and crystal table lamp lit the room. Tranthan held the photo directly under the lamp.
There she is, standing, smiling, as if her world would never fall in.
She stood beside her desk in Qatar, in front of the library shelves crowding her space, only a short reach from her chair.
A dead end.
Tranthan lit a cigarette and leaned backward in his chair, watching the smoke drift upward.
What’s the downside?
He reached for the telephone on his desk. He squeezed the receiver in the notch of his shoulder, holding the cigarette in his hand as he used the other to pull open the main drawer and start searching through business cards. He went through several before coming to the right one.
Tranthan shifted the telephone to his left and, while ashes fell from the cigarette in his hand, he dialed the number on the card.
The phone rang only once.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“This is Robert Tranthan at the CIA. I need to talk to Agent Tom Pope.”
“Sir, can I take a message?” The young female voice sounded inexperienced.
“No.”
“Sir?”
“Just tell Agent Pope it’s Robert Tranthan.”
The voice hesitated for only a second.
“Yes, sir.”
“Agent Pope?”
“Yes, Mr. Tranthan.”
After a painful quiet, Tranthan spoke. “I have something for you.”
“What?’
“I’m scanning it now — check your e-mail.”
A minute later Tom Pope was looking at a photograph of Maggie O’Donald. His first impression was how exceptional she looked. In addition to her striking beauty, she had a slight smile on her face, a devilish smirk.
“Maggie O’Donald.”
Tom Pope knew who she was. In another stack on his desk, Pope had surveillance photos of several of Robert Tranthan’s visits to Bethesda. The Bureau’s report on her death also lay somewhere on Pope’s desk.
Pope grunted affirmatively into the phone.
“You know she died yesterday.”
“I do.”
“She was our field agent in Qatar.”
“I know all this, Mr. Tranthan. Is there a reason you’re sharing a picture of her?”
“She had this photo stored in a highly encrypted flash drive. Just the photo. Nothing else.”
“All right.” Pope pulled a pad of paper close to him and started to sketch on it. He wrote the word Doha in the center and drew a circle around it. In another circle he wrote Op Officer and drew a line to the circle in the center.
“It means something.”
“Mm-hmm. What are you thinking that might be?”
“It may be a message to me, or to someone else.”
“Really? What kind of message?”
“I–I don’t know.”
For some reason, Tom Pope got the impression that Tranthan intended this telephone call to accomplish more than a simple exchange of information. It seemed more like a stab at getting a “get out of jail free” card, as in being able to tell a grand jury, Hey, I did my best to cooperate with the investigation.
“Thanks, Mr. Tranthan. I’ll ponder this, and you do the same. If you get any more ideas, please let me know.”
“I will.”
Tom Pope wrote RT in another circle and drew a line to the center.
“Let me know what?” Garland Sebeck entered his office as Pope hung up. He was holding a bright red folder.
“What’s up, smart-ass?”
“Nada. Who was that?”
“Tranthan.”
Sebeck raised his eyebrows. “What did he want?”
“Sent me this photo.” Pope turned the monitor to Sebeck.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Maggie O’Donald,” Pope said. He explained how Tranthan believed that the photo was more than a portrait — that it held some sort of personal or professional message. “What do you think?”
“I think she’s beautiful…” Sebeck studied the enlarged photo for another minute. Soon Pope joined him in staring at the image.
“I wonder if the flash drive this came off of had anything else on it?”
“Is that what Tranthan claimed — it had only this picture?”
Pope nodded.
“I doubt it.”
Another nod from Pope.
“Truth is, Tom, I don’t trust those spooks any farther than I could throw them. Especially Robert Tranthan.”
CHAPTER 53
“Sergeant?”
Gunnery Sergeant Moncrief was asleep, but still grabbed the airman’s wrist when he felt the nudge. It was a combat reaction. If he hadn’t stopped, the next move would have been to the throat.
“It’s Gunny.” In the Marines, there was a substantial difference between a sergeant and a gunnery sergeant. One ran a squad; the other was someone you stayed out of the way of.
The C-17’s cargo bay was barely lit by a red light glow. Moncrief peered out of one of the windows to see a moonless night. Down below, a solid bank of clouds extended as far as the horizon. In the far distance, the snowcapped peaks broke up the shape of the seemingly flat tabletop of clouds. They looked like ships in the low light, crossing a white-foamed sea. A thin, white, transparent coat of ice covered the aircraft’s large wing. A wispy vapor of superheated water molecules struck the frozen air behind the jet, causing a white streak to trail each of the engines. Moncrief knew that a cold front cleared the air above the mountains.
A perfect night.
The cloud cover below would give them a chance at dropping into the valley sight unseen. The clouds provided protection unless the altimeter failed.
An altimeter off by one digit and we will be toast.
Moncrief looked in a trance at the quarter moon above and the gray clouds below.
The team would be slicing through the air at well over a hundred miles an hour toward the rocky cliff face of the eastern edge of the Hindu Kush. If one were very lucky and his parachute opened late, he would only break his legs and fracture his hips. The fentanyl lollipop would barely deaden the pain of being carried by the team across the mountains. If he were even luckier, he would be off course by only several hundred feet and, falling totally blind in the high clouds, would slam into a rocky riverbed. The force of the impact would leave a crater, death instantaneous and painless.