“You’re grossly mistaken. As Angie died in my arms, I promised her that I would make those responsible pay for what they’ve done. I will end Mixell’s life, and although I can’t hurt Christine, my relationship with her, even as friends, is over.”
“You can’t put Christine’s actions in the same category as Mixell’s. I think I can say with certainty that if she had known your involvement in Mixell’s case would have led to your wife’s death, she would not have brought you into the agency.”
“It’s too late now, isn’t it? And why are you such a fan of Christine all of a sudden?”
“Because Mixell deserves your hate. Christine does not.”
Harrison folded his arms across his chest. “We’re done talking about Christine.”
His statement hung in the air until Khalila stood. “In that case…” She pulled the towel from her body, letting it fall to the floor.
As she approached him, Harrison said, “I thought tonight was a one-time deal.”
“It is. The night’s not over.”
41
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Not long after landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jake Harrison and Khalila Dufour were seated at the table in the seventh-floor conference room, joined by the usual CIA leadership — Christine O’Connor, DD Monroe Bryant, DDO Frank McKinnon, and DDA Tracey McFarland — wrapping up their discussion of the Natanz mission. Events had transpired as planned when it came to the issues that mattered: the centrifuge fabrication and uranium enrichment facilities had been destroyed, and no team members had been left behind, alive or dead, which would have provided incontrovertible evidence that the United States had been involved. The topic then shifted to Mixell.
“We still don’t have any leads,” McFarland explained. “At this point, we think it’s best you help out at the NCTC; see what you can find.”
The National Counterterrorism Center, located in the Liberty Crossing Building in McLean, Virginia, was staffed by fourteen government agencies, including the FBI and CIA, serving as the logistical hub for the collation and dissemination of terrorist-related information within the U.S. intelligence community. During their previous attempts to track down and thwart Mixell’s plans, Harrison and Khalila had discovered critical leads while at the NCTC.
Harrison and Khalila were soon on their way to McLean in Khalila’s car. Their trip was a quiet one, as had been their return journey from Bahrain. Khalila had resumed her typical aloof persona, with not a single mention of anything that had happened between them the last night in Bahrain. For Harrison’s part, he felt guilty, as if he had soiled Angie’s memory. It had been too soon to be with another woman and Angie deserved better, he told himself. Thankfully, Khalila appeared true to her word — the night in Bahrain was a one-time deal — as she had offered no indication that she was further interested.
After arriving at the NCTC, they worked their way across the main floor, filled with sixty analysts at their desks while supervisors observed from glass-enclosed offices on the second floor, until they reached the two workstations that had been freed up for them.
To help track Mixell down, the NCTC had released his image, captured as he left Fort McNair after assassinating the secretary of defense. It was clear that Mixell was either lying low or traveling with an effective disguise, because not a single shred of his existence had been detected since the assassination. Although law enforcement agencies had been directed to be on the alert for Mixell, the effort was suffering because the search for him hadn’t been designated a National Special Security Event by the Department of Homeland Security. There had been no determination on what Mixell’s next target was — person, place, or event — or even that there was a follow-on target. As a result, the NCTC wasn’t entirely focused on Mixell, spreading its resources across several potential terrorist actions.
Nonetheless, potential leads had been flowing into the NCTC from various law enforcement agencies and the public. Harrison sat beside Khalila and pulled up the files on Mixell, then began reviewing the evidence collected from the scene of the Secretary of Defense’s assassination and the leads that had been investigated thus far. Despite the lack of a focused NCTC effort, several hundred leads had already been run to ground, producing nothing. After categorizing those that remained, Harrison and Khalila each took half.
None of the leads seemed promising or even interesting. Harrison was trained to work out in the field, not pore over data scrolling across a computer screen for days or even weeks on end. He could tell that Khalila was similarly unenthused.
Harrison pushed back from the desk. “I’m getting some coffee. Want some?”
Khalila nodded. “Yeah. This is gonna be brutal.”
42
USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Dusk was creeping across the Middle East, the sun sinking beneath the horizon as the Theodore Roosevelt strike group entered the Strait of Hormuz, headed into the Persian Gulf. It had been an uncharacteristically rainy day in the strait, with visibility out to only a few hundred yards in the waning light. Rather than monitor the small displays on the ship’s Bridge, Captain Ryan Noss had decided to monitor the strike group’s status from the aircraft carrier’s Combat Direction Center, located three levels below the Flight Deck.
On watch as the Operations Officer was Captain Dolores Gonzalez, her eyes scanning the Video Wall, a collection of two eight-by-ten-foot displays mounted beside each other, with a half-dozen smaller monitors on each side. With the apparent threat being only one or more Russian submarines, only the standard Combat Air Patrol was aloft, but an E-2C Hawkeye was at twenty-five thousand feet, its radar searching the skies for hostile aircraft or missiles in case the Russians had more nefarious intentions.
Although Noss was relatively new aboard Theodore Roosevelt, having relieved the former Captain, Rich Tilghman, only a few months ago, Gonzalez was near the end of her tour of duty aboard the carrier and one of the veterans of the brutal battle in the Arabian Sea against the combined Russian Pacific Fleet and Indian Navy, occurring at the apex of Russia’s Blackmail operation against its NATO foes. By the time Roosevelt joined the conflict, black smoke had been billowing upward from the other four American carriers engaged in the battle, with Eisenhower and Bush forced to terminate flight operations due to the extensive damage, while Truman and Reagan limped along, somehow retrieving, rearming, and launching aircraft while fires raged in compartments damaged by missile strikes.
Theodore Roosevelt had entered the battle late, still scarred from an earlier engagement with the Russian Pacific Fleet. Its Island superstructure was still a molten mass of steel and her hangar bays were scorched black from the fires that had raged inside. But her flight systems — catapults, arresting wires, and elevators — were operational again. Shipyard tiger teams had done an admirable job, beginning the carrier’s repairs in Pearl Harbor, then continuing their efforts as the carrier sailed across the Pacific, with the ship navigated from Secondary Control located beneath the Flight Deck, instead of the mangled Bridge.
After the battle in the Arabian Sea, Theodore Roosevelt’s Island superstructure had been rebuilt, and now one would have to know where to look to spot the residual scars in the Hangar Deck. Noss knew that those who had participated in the vicious engagement — especially Captain Gonzalez, who had been the Operations Officer in CDC — would never forget what Theodore Roosevelt and the other American carriers had endured during the devastating battle.