“That’s between them and me. I put in nineteen goddamn years of loyal service, and they kicked me to the curb. Now what’s it gonna be, tough guy: do or die?”
Akram felt something hot and wet spatter his face, followed by the distant echo of a rifle shot.
Duke dropped his flashlight, and the strap of the TAC-50 slipped from his shoulder. He put a hand to his stomach, where his fingers found a gaping exit wound the size of a baseball. “Fuck,” he muttered, and dropped dead to the ground.
Akram dove between the rocks as another round ricocheted off a boulder. He grabbed the strap of the TAC-50 and pulled it to him while radioing Abad that Shannon was firing from inside the house.
Automatic weapons fire broke out down below, and Akram pulled the infrared binocular from Duke’s head, snatching the dog tags from what was left of the body, before scrambling back down the trail on the eastern side of the slope. He radioed for the men to cease fire, and ten minutes later linked back up with them in the stable, where they all stood around in a heated frenzy.
“Where’s Duke?” Abad asked.
“Shannon shot him,” Akram said, throwing the dog tags at him. “He tricked us!”
Abad shined a red penlight on one of the tags, reading Glen’s name and seeing the “USMC.” The idea of killing Marines was distasteful to him, and he was ready to be done with the entire mess. “Uday is missing.”
“What do you mean he’s missing?”
“Just what I said. He’s missing. He was under the horse trailer covering the front of the house. Now he’s not there, and we can’t find him. I told you we needed more radios.”
“Have you tried his phone?” Akram asked testily.
“There’s no damn signal out here.”
Akram combed his fingers through his wet hair. “So what are you saying? That someone came out of the house and dragged him inside?”
Abad may have been a devout Muslim, but he’d been raised in America, and the American in him didn’t have the patience for Akram’s condescending Arabian bullshit. “I’m saying he’s missing! Open your ears!”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m talking to you,” Abad said, stepping forward. “And I’m telling you one of our men is missing. We need to end this, Akram, and we need to end it soon.”
When the firing had died off, Buck crawled down the hall with the Winchester into the bathroom, checking on Janet, who was curled up beneath a blanket in the cast-iron bathtub. “You okay in here, Jan?” Lighting flashed, and he saw a big chip in the porcelain where a bullet fragment had struck the side of the tub.
“Fit as a fiddle,” she answered. “How are you men doing?”
“We’re okay,” he said, pulling himself up against the tub. “I got one of ’em up there on the ridge.”
“Good for you!”
“Jan, I think Glen and Roger might be dead.”
She peaked over the edge of the tub. “You can’t know that.”
“Two of them godless sons a bitches were just standin’ up there with a flashlight, like they didn’t have a care in the world. They were lookin’ down at somethin’. I think it was one of my boys.”
She reached out, touching his face in the darkness. “If it was, Buck, he’s in a better place now. But don’t give up hope.”
57
When Pope at last broke through the firewall on Kashkin’s hard drive, gaining full access to the encrypted data, it wasn’t necessary for him to translate the Chechen text in order to know which city had been targeted. The myriad photographs of Washington, DC, were obvious in any language.
He grabbed for the phone. His call to Edwards was answered on the first ring. “White House Chief of Staff Tim Hagen speaking.”
“This is Pope. Get the president.”
The president of the United States came on the line. “What do you have, Robert?”
“Mr. President, you need to order an immediate evacuation of Washington, DC. I still have to translate the Chechen text to English”—he was rapidly paging through a series of JPEG files—“but I’m looking at dozens of photos taken in and around the capital. All of our most important buildings have been photographed in detail; multiple telescopic photos of security points around the White House and the Capitol building.”
“How fast can you remit those files for evaluation at our end?”
“I’ll translate them immediately and send them within the half hour, Mr. President, but in the meantime, sir, I strongly recommend you order the evacuation.”
“I’ll do it immediately. Now, forward those files as soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir. There’s something else, Mr. President.”
“What is it?”
“Our interrogation of Haroun al-Rashid revealed nothing,” Pope said, “but his sister-in-law told us that her husband, Akram al-Rashid, is on his way to Gil Shannon’s place in Montana to assassinate him.”
“Okay,” the president said. “Then it’s lucky that Shannon is with you. I assume his wife is moving to a safe location?”
“Not exactly, sir. She’s still on the ranch, and she’s not answering the phone. I’ve cleared Shannon to fly to Montana in the Gulfstream V.”
There was another typically long pause at the president’s end before he made his reply. “To be frank with you, Robert, I’m getting tired of losing my temper — especially with you. So let me make something perfectly clear without shouting… Shannon and his team are not your personal army. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Are they in the air now?”
“They are, sir. I’ve already alerted the Montana Highway Patrol and the local FBI office in Helena.”
“Excellent,” the president said. “In that case, we’re going to allow the local authorities to do their jobs. You do realize that Shannon’s team gunned down six off-duty police officers and a young woman during the Vegas operation.”
“Mr. President, the young woman was shot by one of Faisal’s men, and there was no way we could have anticipated out-of-town law enforcement getting involved. It’s the fog of war, sir.”
The president grunted. “Well, fog or no fog, Shannon and his team have served their purpose. I’m going to order them back on the ground and fully debriefed.”
58
Marie and Oso arrived at the Chatham ranch looking like a couple of drowned rats. A bed-headed Dusty Chatham answered the door in his bare feet, naked to the waist in a pair of blue jeans. He was forty-five with a black beard trimmed close to his face. The Chathams and the McGuthrys had a long history of bad blood dating back to the late forties, all of it over land disputes. There had never been any rancor between Marie and Dusty, however, the trouble having always been between their fathers and grandfathers.
“Marie?” Dusty’s face was a mask of disbelief.
“Dusty, I’m really sorry to bother you so late, but I’ve got big trouble. Can I use your phone?”
“Yeah,” he said, stepping back to let them inside. “Hey, that’s a big dog.”
“He just saved my life.”
He shut the door. “How’d he do that? What’s going on?”
“You won’t believe it, but Al Qaeda just tried to blow up my house.” Her cracked rib was making it painful to breathe, and she was using both hands to apply pressure to it. “They came for Gil, but he’s not there, and we think they’ve already killed Glen and Roger Ferguson.”
He gaped at her. “What? Marie, slow down and tell me what’s really going on.”
“I swear it’s the truth.”
“Al Qaeda? Here? How many?”
“About twenty, I think. I snuck off to find a phone, and Buck stayed behind with Hal to protect my mother. She’s hurt. I gotta call Gil so he can get us some help out there before it’s too late.”