The president narrowed his gaze, allowing Hagen to feel the weight of it before saying, “Tim, I sometimes wonder if you have an ounce of human compassion in your entire body.”
32
“Okay, listen up!” Gil said, taking a seat on the edge of the table. “Tonight we execute the illegal abduction of an American citizen. We will be breaking the law. This means we have zero room for error. Is that understood?”
Every one of the team members nodded his head, all of them steely eyed and focused.
“The plan is simple and straightforward. Four of us will enter the Luxor casino. We will be escorted by a CIA plant working as a hotel concierge to Muhammad Faisal’s suite’s elevator, which opens up just outside his door on the twentieth floor. When we arrive, we will blow the door and sweep the room, killing his entire five-man security team. Once Faisal is secured—alive—we will bring him directly back here for interrogation.”
Crosswhite cleared his throat. “Sorry, but do we plan on shooting our way out of there? Because that casino is wall to wall with security.”
Gil grinned. “Did I not say, simple?”
“Yeah, and that doesn’t sound too simple to me. Then again, I’m not a navy man.”
Gil got up and put out his hand for a cigarette. “The sheriff and the head of casino security have been advised that we have a FISA warrant for this guy — which isn’t exactly true — and they have both agreed to help. So there won’t be any trouble with security on the way in or out, neither with the cops or hotel security.”
“Who explains the bodies we leave behind?”
“Can any of you think of a better cover story than to blame it on the bastards who hit us in Benghazi? The State Department’s going to blame Faisal’s abduction on AQAP… Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula… the sworn enemy of the Saudi royal family.”
“Wow!” someone said. “Threaten us with a nuke, and our moral ethics go right out the fuckin’ window.”
Everyone laughed.
“Lying to the Saudis,” the SEAL went on, shaking his head in disappointment. “Tell me it isn’t so.” His name was Clancy, the team prankster.
Gil drew from the cigarette. “I think you’ll get over it.” He waited a moment for the men to regain their focus before continuing. “We’ll wear shemaghs and carry AK-47s, using hand signals to communicate, jabbering in gutter Arabic to make sure any witnesses we leave behind will corroborate our terrorist cover story.”
“What about the five million security cameras?”
“Pope’s hacked into their system. He’s going to make sure nothing is recorded. Once we’ve got Faisal, we stuff his ass in a laundry cart, and the CIA man brings us back down in a service elevator. Then we bring him back here and find out what he knows… by whatever means necessary.”
“And the president knows about all this?” Alpha asked dubiously.
“Given the briefing I received from Pope, I’m left with that assumption, yes. However, do not forget that every man in this room has a well-documented history of acting against orders. This means we could all be disavowed very easily without the president taking any damage if he chooses to double-cross us. Regardless, once the op jumps off, we’re in it to the last man. Nothing and no one can or will be allowed to prevent us from completing this mission.”
Tuckerman put up his hand.
“Yeah, Conman?”
“I don’t like to be the guy to point out the fly in the honey jar here, but how do we know the target will be in the room when the entry team makes the breach?”
“Actually, that’s where you come in. Like Pope said, he sprung your ass for a particular reason. It’s going to be your job to make sure Faisal’s in the room.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pope has secured you a one-million-dollar line of credit with the Luxor casino. He’s also secured you a seat at tonight’s high-stakes poker game. Muhammad Faisal will be at the same table.”
“No fuckin’ way,” Tuckerman said, laughing with nervous tension as everyone turned to look at him again.
“The son of a bitch never leaves the hotel these days,” Gil said. “Pope considers that an encouraging sign of his guilt.”
“Okay, so what am I supposed to do after I whip his ass at poker?”
“Con your way into his hotel suite and be ready to take his ass to the floor the second we blow the door. If he gets clipped, it’s game over.”
“Piss,” Tuckerman mumbled to himself. “It’s all gotta ride on me.”
“Hey, what about after the interrogation?” Trigg asked. “Suppose Faisal doesn’t know anything? I mean, we don’t have jack shit for evidence on the dude. It’s entirely possible he’s innocent. What happens to him then?”
Gil shrugged. “He can’t ever be allowed to tell the Saudi royal family that we took him — or what we did to him afterward. No matter what he knows… or doesn’t know… the royal family will be told that he was killed in a terrorist attack executed by AQAP. So if he is innocent — well, that’s just something we’ll have to live with.”
33
After three and a half hours of Texas Hold’em on the floor of the Luxor casino, there were only three of the original ten players left at the table: Conman Tuckerman, Muhammad Faisal, and Big Ray, a professional gambler out of San Antonio, Texas. Big Ray wore a black cowboy hat, dark sunglasses, and gaudy, diamond-studded gold rings on the thumb and middle finger of each hand. The dealer had just flipped open the turn card, and Tuckerman could see from the way that Ray now seemed to ignore his hole cards that he’d be gone before the flip of the river — the river card being the last of five community cards to be flipped open before the end of the hand.
Faceup in the center of the table were the three flop cards: the queen of diamonds, the queen of spades, and the four of hearts. The turn card, also faceup, was the king of spades.
Faisal eyed his hole cards for a moment and then laid them flat, suppressing a smile as he made a ten-thousand-dollar bet.
Tuckerman immediately raised it to twenty, letting out an obnoxious snigger toward Big Ray sitting to his left.
“Think you’re pretty fuckin’ funny, don’t ya?” This was the first Big Ray had spoken the entire game, and Tuckerman knew he was finally finished.
Tuckerman turned over both of his hole cards for Big Ray to see: the two of clubs and the queen of hearts. Combined with the two flop-card queens, this gave him a very strong three of a kind.
He sat grinning ear to ear, looking right at Big Ray. “We call those three natural queens where I come from.” Then he laughed out loud, and Big Ray tossed his cards into the muck, shoving back from the table and swearing a blue streak as he stormed off through the crowd surrounding the table.
Tuckerman, to his great satisfaction, watched him go and then glanced across the table at Faisal. “How about you, Muhammad? Whatcha got over there, buddy?”
Faisal smiled. Tuckerman had been cleaning his clock all night, and to lose this hand would put him out of the game, but he flipped over his own hole cards to expose the king of hearts and the king of diamonds. Combined with the turn card king, these cards gave him an even stronger three of a kind than Tuckerman’s.
“Would you like to surrender now?” Faisal asked good-naturedly, coolly enjoying the thrill of victory.
Tuckerman was hard pressed to hide his sudden unease. He was up against the clock, and if he didn’t force Faisal from the game very soon, he was going to blow the mission’s timetable. Big Ray had given him fits all night, stretching the game out longer than he had planned for, so he didn’t have time for Faisal to die a slow death. He needed to finish him.