“One: How have they or their associates operated in the past? Two: Will they release the hostages when their demands are met or not? Three: Have their dealings with past HRT units been consistent or not? And four: Can we possibly predict a safe outcome based on their past dealings? In other words, know your enemy.”
She lowered her hand; her voice had gained strength and momentum with every passing sentence.
“We’ll need to get on this as soon as possible. I want as much information on the remaining operatives as I can get my hands on. Contact the CIA abroad, Mossad, the CTC, whomever it is you need to contact to create the most complete dossier on each individual involved with the Soldiers of Islam. Then we’ll need to create several strategies to deal with them. And I’m going to need all of this at my fingertips when the time comes to negotiate. We’re dealing with the human element here, which is always difficult, but at least we’ll be in a position to act when the terrorists make their next move.”
Shari’s speech was well-versed and never missed a beat, which was more of a natural skill than a learned one.
Paxton, on the other hand, seethed with contempt and rolled his eyes.
“Past history is usually a great indicator of future behavior,” she continued. “If the group is rogue, we don’t have a lot of past accounts, so we’ll have to come up with a format based on their individual dossiers. Psychology, in this case, will become paramount. And that’s where I’ll come in.”
Shari peeled off another page, but never referred to it.
“We’ll play this based on our data and according to the situation. If the situation seems to be heading in the wrong direction, then we’ll have to shift course. That’s why we’ll need to develop a series of schematics to deal with whatever scenario may arise.”
Shari gave each face a quick examination. “Questions?”
There were none, the team apparently resolved and ready for duty.
“Then let’s get to it,” she said. Her briefing was quick and to the point.
During the next hour Shari moved the staff to a workroom filled with personal computers, terminals, and phones, then divided the assembled experts into groups of three and designated each group a specific task according to their skills and strengths.
In essence, Shari Cohen was flexing her muscles.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kimball Hayden sat alone in the front of a Gulfstream jet cruising along at twenty-nine thousand feet. The four members of his team were situated throughout the cabin, sitting quietly, their moods matched by the depressive gray of the Atlantic sky.
After drawing a deep breath and releasing it in an equally long sigh, Kimball closed his eyes, trying to attain a moment of peace. But when he closed his eyes, the images always returned: snippets of his life, from his days as a teenager, trying to become an appreciative glimmer in his father’s eye, to the moment of his epiphany in Iraq as a member of the Force Elite.
His father, Daryl Hayden, was a man of minimal presence. As a widowed father, having no social standing of his own, he relied on his son’s achievements to confirm his own importance. By the time Kimball was seventeen, he was a foot taller than and twice as broad as his father. But Daryl didn’t credit his son for being strong, handsome, or charismatic. The way he saw it, these were accidents of nature, not achievements. In fact, Kimball felt his father resented rather than valued these attributes. He spent his entire youth wondering why it was so easy to please others — his classmates, his teachers — but so impossible to please his own father.
He remembered in vivid detail the night he first saw the glow of appreciation in his father’s eyes. He was playing linebacker for his high school football team. It was Friday night. The stands were full. And in front of thousands of people, he was being knocked off his assignment by a center that was smaller than him. Repeatedly, Kimball was sent sprawling as the running back ran to daylight through the gaping hole Kimball was supposed to fill. Catcalls erupted; the coach was on the brink of benching him.
When the tailback scored a second touchdown, running through the seam that Kimball was supposed to fill, it all proved too much for his father. So when Kimball went to the sidelines, his father grabbed his facemask and twisted it, the man looking like a child before his behemoth son. Spittle flew from his mouth in rage as he openly chastised his boy, telling him he was an embarrassment to the Hayden name.
More wrenching of the facemask followed, the violent tugging almost causing the coach to intervene. It appeared Kimball’s father had lost his way in disciplining his son; the incident appeared to border on abuse.
“Do not embarrass me!” he screamed. “I want you to go out there and make something of yourself! You hear me? Push yourself to the limit, Kimball! And when you think you reached that limit, then push yourself some more! You got me?”
Kimball nodded.
“You look like a pansy out there! I will not have a pansy for a son! You got me? Not one more time on your backside!”
Another nod.
“Then get out there and act like you belong!”
When he released Kimball’s facemask, Kimball returned to the sidelines ready to prove himself.
When the next defensive series began, Kimball became an animal. This time when the center approached him, Kimball hunkered down to a low center of gravity and launched himself forward, hitting the center so hard that the player fell backward and knocked the running back off his route, causing other players to swarm in for a tackle of a loss. As the pile cleared, it was apparent that the center was severely injured. Blood foamed at the edges of his mouth from an internal injury, and he had to be carted off the field. When Kimball looked up into the stands, he saw his father standing there bearing a smile of approval and pride. It was the turning point in Kimball’s life, the pivotal moment in which he finally shone bright in his father’s eyes. Kimball had finally discovered the key to his father’s approbation.
He was courted by numerous college football programs; coaches around the country loved his aggressive tenacity on the field. However, Kimball shunned the scholarships and decided to join the Army Rangers instead. It was here that he caught the eye of the military hierarchy. They noticed his determination and his remarkable strength and agility. They also noticed that he seemed to thrive on pressure. The more challenging the task, the more committed he was to completing it.
Soon, Kimball found himself under a new command in the Force Elite, a governmental Black Ops unit known only by the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the Force Elite, Kimball assailed insurgents with incredible efficiency, earning a reputation as an unstoppable warrior.
Since targeted assassinations were banned by the Ford administration in ‘76, Kimball had become the first of a new breed. Secret meetings were the norm in the Situation Room, where the ban went unnoticed by future presidents and the JCS. At these meetings, Kimball was often the focal point, spotlighted for his ability to carry out even the most difficult missions with stoic precision.
In 1990 he was assigned to kill three key members of Saddam Hussein’s Cabinet responsible for brokering deals with Russian dissidents for high-grade plutonium. Not only was the plutonium never delivered, but the Iraqi brokers were found shot to death in Chelyabinsk, Russia by a Rav-.22LRHA, which happens to be Mossad’s weapon of choice for assassinations. This weapon was the red herring that made Israel the scapegoat for the killings.
From that moment on Iraq never attempted to develop a nuclear arsenal in earnest.
In December of that same year, Kimball was asked to commit another assassination. This time the target was Saddam Hussein.