“The Old Man loves you. You can tell whenever he’s around. His eyes follow you, did you know that? I didn’t notice it at first, but his face lights up when you’re near. He cares about you.”
“I know he does,” Nancy admitted. “I’m trying to be a better person. You’re my first real friend. Someone I can let in.”
Karen shuddered inside. While she had some affection for Nancy, she wouldn’t consider it a true friendship. Then again, she wasn’t sure if Nancy could ever have a true friend. “Thanks. I know that means a lot.”
“Yes, it does,” Nancy said. “That’s why I don’t hold sleeping with Eric against you.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “We’re not together. I’m married. What Eric and I do is just… for fun.” She was shocked when Nancy nodded.
“I believe you. I’m not jealous, or angry, or hurt. He needs a clear head, to perform at his peak. You help him do that. Dewey is the same for me. Sex with him is like a pressure valve. Makes me less likely to do something rash. What I’m saying is, don’t stop. Keep helping him. My father placed a lot of trust in him. The StrikeForce project is just the beginning.”
Karen’s cellphone beeped and she picked it up, read the message, then smiled. Just in the nick of time. “Dewey cleared up space and the job just finished. The drives are decrypted.”
Eric knocked softly on John’s door.
John opened it, his face sour. “I wondered when you would stop by to talk.”
“I had to wait until you were checked out,” Eric said. “Can I come in?”
“You don’t have to ask,” John said with a shrug. “You’re the base CO. You can go anywhere you want.”
He sighed. “It’s called being polite.”
“I know,” John said. “Doesn’t change anything.”
Eric waited patiently until John finally beckoned him in. He entered John’s quarters, a smaller version of his own, and took a seat on the couch against the wall. He motioned for John to take the seat next to him. “How was the mission?”
“You were watching,” John said, staring at the wall.
He waited silently.
“I killed those women without hesitation,” John finally said. “They offered no threat.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” he countered.
“What were they going to do, cower in the bedroom until I dropped dead?”
“We didn’t know that when we planned the mission,” Eric countered. “We couldn’t leave witnesses. The US isn’t supposed to be operating in Syria.”
“I’m the monster, but you authorized killing them.”
“We went over this,” Eric said. “They were terrorists, and the intel pointed to something big. We needed boots on the ground to get hard data. Those women? They were wives. Supporters. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill Americans.”
John slammed his hand against the armrest of the couch. “That gives us the right to assassinate them?”
Eric waited for John to calm down, then said simply, “Yes.”
John glared, then finally slumped forward, resting his face in the palm of his hands. “I hate this.”
“I know you do. I’m sorry, but we have to do it. It’s my job and your duty. You owe the country for what you did.”
John looked up, tears threatening to stream down his face. “You think I don’t know that? That was the old me. I’m a different man, now, but I’m still paying that other man’s debt.”
Eric nodded. “Yes, you are. You’ll keep paying that debt until you die. Damn it, we’re making a difference. I need you.”
“I’m not at the top, Eric. I don’t see all that you see. To me, it looks like I’m just an over-trained assassin.”
“You’re not. You’re a soldier, a good man who’s doing what he can to make the world a better place.”
They stared at each other until John finally said, “I don’t feel it.”
Eric decided to lay his cards on the table. “If I didn’t believe in you, would I keep your secret? Protect you? Would I risk everything if I didn’t think we were doing the right thing?”
John’s glare softened. “No. You’re a lot of things, Eric, but you wouldn’t lie to me about that.”
Eric nodded, even though he was lying. John was dying but Eric kept that to himself, because the rest of what he told John was true. They were making a difference, and he needed John. He needed the ultimate killing machine if they had any chance of stopping the threats to the United States.
Eric’s cellphone vibrated and he checked the message from Karen. The drive decryption had finished. “Looks like the drives from Syria are paying off. We’re needed in the War Room.”
CHAPTER TWO
Eric navigated the man trap and entered the War Room with John following close behind. The steel desks were abuzz with activity as the analysts typed furiously, and the collective noise as they discussed the drive decryption was a dull roar that echoed against the hard concrete walls of the chamber.
Nancy stood outside the front conference room, and he tried not to notice how her plain black outfit highlighted her shapely figure. She beckoned them to join her in the room with Karen, Taylor, Mark and Todd Clark.
He took the leather chair next to Taylor and nodded to Nancy. John slid in next to Taylor and gave him a fist-bump, then nodded to Mark, Nancy and Sergeant Clark.
Sergeant Clark watched John, his expression neutral, but his green eyes followed the young soldier with barely contained hostility. Clark had run point on the operation to capture him after the Red Cross bombing.
Clark would never forgive John, he knew, and he didn’t blame him.
He turned his attention to Karen, who sat at the front of the room, loudly slurping coffee while typing on her keyboard. “You found it?” he prompted.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all here.” She stabbed at the keyboard and a file appeared on the wall screen. “This is an encrypted email sent to an ISP in Nashville. It’s about Al-Hakim.”
“Al-Hakim the American?” Eric asked. Born and raised in California, Gary Hite was barely out of his teens before he was swept up in a tidal wave of resentment against the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and was now one of their trusted advisers.
Karen nodded. “The very same.”
“Why didn’t we catch it before this?” Nancy asked, clenching her fist. “I thought we snagged a copy of all inbound and outbound emails to ISP’s in the US?”
“We do,” Karen said, “but you’re talking hundreds of millions of emails a day. We don’t have the computing power to decrypt them all. We try and flag any coming from suspected terrorists, but I don’t have to tell you how many there are. This was sent by one of the men in Syria to Abdhuhl Sadir, a sheikh in Nashville. Sadir has no known terror ties. I’m backtracking emails to and from him for the past year.”
“What did this one say?” Taylor asked, pointing at the wall screen.
Karen glanced up from her keyboard and her eyes swept the room. He noticed her concern. Something had her spooked.
“It’s about a package Al-Hakim purchased from a North Korean agent,” she said. “I think they bought an atomic bomb.”
Eric’s stomach sank. It was only through sheer luck that they had found an email trail referring to a meeting in Syria. That had been enough to convince the President to authorize their mission in Syria, but now it looked like they were on to something bigger.