He swayed back and forth but still did not look up.
“They must have taken your friend there.”
“Does the island have a name?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Yousef, please. I can stop them,” she said. “But you have to tell me.”
“I hope you stop them,” he mumbled. “It is only an hour by boat. But I don’t know if it even has a name. There are lots of birds there.”
She took a breath. She hoped it was the truth, and she sensed it was the truth. If there was an island with a bombed-out ship beached on the rocks at its edge, one satellite pass would find it. And if they could find it, the terror could be stopped.
“They have missiles,” Yousef said. “I saw them. They are for the virus.”
A chill shot through her as she heard this news. The cult had everything they needed. But it had been only seventeen hours. There was a chance. “Thank you,” she said.
Yousef did not respond. He just stared at the ground. She saw tears hit the floor.
“I’ve done things …,” he said, sounding broken inside.
“We all have,” she told him. He looked up.
“I am a traitor to everyone,” he said, tears filling his eyes and a panic of sorts growing over him. “I wish you would kill me.”
Her heart felt for him, despite all he’d been a part of, despite everything he’d probably done. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty. He seemed as much a victim as anyone else.
“You don’t deserve to die,” she said.
“They will mock me,” he said, shaking.
She reached out and touched his face, wiping away some of the tears. He was sobbing, breaking down. He looked up, unending tears streaming over his face.
“They will say: Here is the traitor. Here is Scindo. He rejected the Almighty and then betrayed those who took him in.”
“No,” she said firmly.
“They will,” he insisted.
“No,” she repeated. “They will say Here is Yousef Kazim. Who in his darkest hour rejected the devil and gave the world a chance at life.”
He gazed at her with wide eyes, as if some hope had come back within him. He continued to sob but he said no more.
Several minutes later, Yousef’s cries had ceased, the numbness had returned, and she allowed him, still cuffed, to lie down and finally sleep.
She walked out of the small room, shutting what was left of the door behind her. She continued across the work bay to where she’d parked the car.
A figure stood beside it.
“Did he tell you?” Hawker asked quietly.
She nodded, thankful but exhausted. “Sorry about shooting you,” she said.
He rubbed his shoulder. “It worked. But don’t ever let those riot police tell you rubber bullets don’t hurt.”
“Blood pack was a nice touch.”
“Almost dropped it,” he said.
She nodded, but felt almost emotionless after all that had happened.
“I’ll bring him back to the house,” she said. “I don’t want him to see you.”
There were many reasons for that. Strategically, it made sense to keep the lie going. But mostly she didn’t want Yousef to feel he’d been tricked. He had made an honorable choice, an almost impossible choice. She wanted him to feel whatever goodness might come from what he’d done.
Hawker nodded.
“He’s not evil,” she said. “He just fell.”
“We all fall,” Hawker said.
He seemed to understand. It was one of the things that Danielle found most refreshing in him. He was filled with arrogance at times and self-righteousness, but it was balanced by pity. He could look at the fallen and see himself.
CHAPTER 48
With dusk settling over the Middle East, Danielle sat in the left front seat of a maroon powerboat as it skimmed across the glassy surface of the Persian Gulf. To her right, Hawker’s friend Keegan piloted the craft, while Hawker sat behind them, studying an image on the laptop computer that had been downloaded from the NRI mainframe. The body armor and the AR-15s they’d taken into the desert rested beside him on the bench seat.
A mile ahead she saw the outline of a crude carrier heading their way. The ship rode high in the water, its tanks empty.
“Stay clear of the channel,” she said. “Don’t want to be confused for suicide bombers.”
“Right,” Keegan said. “Any idea where we’re going yet?”
“South,” she said.
“I figured that,” he said, “since we’d need wheels to go north from where we were.”
She moved back to where Hawker was and sat down beside him.
“What do you think?”
He turned the laptop toward her. She’d studied the image briefly when it arrived, but since it would likely come down to planning an assault on the island, she figured Hawker was more qualified to look at it.
“This image came from an NSA satellite?” he asked.
“A pass this morning,” she said. “Caught the island in the sweep, but it wasn’t the target, so the information isn’t as detailed as I’d like.”
“The buildings are all on the south side,” he said. “What isn’t blackened and burned looks abandoned.”
Danielle zoomed in on the island. It couldn’t have been more than an eighth of a mile across. On one side there were bundles of mangled pipes and what looked like pumping equipment. A few control buildings and a helicopter landing platform built out over the water looked shot full of holes and falling apart. A four-hundred-foot vessel lay against the west edge of the island. It was difficult to tell if it was docked or had been run aground.
“Looks like what Yousef described,” she said.
“It also looks abandoned.”
“I believe he told me the truth as he knew it,” she said. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t clear out once they got Sonia or the seeds.”
Hawker nodded. “I believe he told you the truth, too. Do we have an infrared scan?”
“Not on this pass,” she said, then glanced at her watch. “But the second pass should have gone over a few minutes ago. We’ll know if there is activity there any minute now.”
Thirty seconds later the satellite phone lit up. Danielle grabbed it.
For a second all she heard was the buffeting of the wind, caught in her own transceiver’s microphone. She turned to the side, sheltering the phone. Moore’s voice came through.
“Danielle?”
“Go ahead, Arnold.”
“Where are you right now?”
“We’re out in the Gulf, heading due south. Do you have the latest pass?”
“We do,” Moore said. “NSA confirms heat sources from the stranded freighter and some of the other structures. That island should be dark but it’s not.”
About as she’d expected. It was good news. “So this is probably the right place.”
“Seems to be,” Moore said.
There was a shortness in his voice that she didn’t like. As if he was waiting to drop some bad news.
“Where do we meet up with the assault team?” she asked.
“Danielle …”
“We could trail them in,” she said. “Or we could go in with them. Either way they’re going to need our help to confirm what we’re looking for.”
“There’s not going to be an assault team,” Moore said.
That was odd. They’d been preparing one an hour ago.
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re not raiding the place.”
“Why?” she asked.
“That rock is in Iranian waters,” Moore reminded her. “It’s been in dispute between Iran and Iraq for decades. The damage you see was done all the way back in ’86. No one’s touched it since.”