Soar (9 page)

His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill, distinctive double ring of the red telephone mounted between the jump seats of the armored vehicle.

Rockman snatched the phone from its cradle. “This is the secretary,” he said. Rockman clapped his free hand to his left ear to drown out the road noise. He listened carefully for about half a minute. Then he said, “Yes, sir. Will do. I’m on my way.”

The SECDEF slapped the phone onto its cradle, reached forward, and slid the glass divider open. “Danny,” he said to the security man riding shotgun, “we’ve been called back to the White House.” He slid the divider closed and settled back in his seat as the big car negotiated the traffic circle and headed back across the Memorial Bridge.

Ritzik said, “Is there any way I can take a pass, Mr. Secretary? We’re on an incredibly tight schedule. It’s critical I get my people forward-based so we have some operational flexibility during the next thirty-six hours. I also need to see whatever satellite photos are available—right now—and I’ll need to create secure uplinks to track the Tangos on a full-time.” Ritzik checked his watch. “And I need your office to pull the military attachés in Ankara and Dushanbe into their offices so I can talk to ‘em on a secure line.”

“You can move your people anywhere you want. And I’ll get you the intelligence that you need. But there’s been some kind of development that affects the situation over there. So like it or not, son, you’re coming with me.”

The irritation in Ritzik’s voice was unmistakable. “I guess I am, sir.”

A cloud came across the secretary’s face. He removed his gold-rimmed aviator-frame glasses, extracted a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, and cleaned the lenses. “You’re a very outspoken fellow, Major. I might even say uncomfortably blunt on occasion. I don’t mind that—it’s been said that bluntness is one of my signature traits, too. But when I say you’re coming with me, that’s the way it is. One more thing: where we’re going right now I don’t want you uttering so much as a single syllable unless I ask you to say something first.” Rockman folded the handkerchief and shoved it back into his pocket. He slipped his glasses back on, then cocked his head, hawklike, to look Ritzik in the eye. “Am I understood, Major?”

“Understood, Mr. Secretary.”

S
AM
P
HILLIPS FINALLY MANAGED
to open his left eye. It hurt like hell and the vision was blurred. But at least he could see. He’d passed out again. For how long he had no idea. But it was night again. He guesstimated the truck was moving at about twenty miles an hour. From the way his kidneys and ribs were being punished, they were driving on an unpaved road, or caravan track, or through a wadi. He and X-Man were finally free of the hog-tie nooses that had
bound them, although they kept the cords around their necks and the ends buried between their feet.

They’d hunkered down on the truck bed during the fighting, flinching as rounds tore through the wood and canvas. He resumed chewing at the tape around Chris’s wrists only after the truck began rolling. Sam figured it had taken him an hour and a half, maybe more. After that, it was a matter of minutes until they’d loosened their remaining bonds. But they’d been careful to resecure a single strand of the thick tape around their wrists and ankles so they appeared to still be trussed.

As soon as Chris had freed him, Sam had asked the security man about Dick and Kaz.

X-Man’s bloodied face was grim. “No idea,” he whispered. “I never saw what happened to them. I hit the panic switch—God knows whether it transmitted or not—and then three guys yanked me out of the truck and beat the bejesus out of me. I passed out. Next thing I knew, you were trying to hump me awake.”

The two of them had gone over what they did know. And it wasn’t much.

First, the gunfight at dawn had been intense, even though it had lasted only a matter of minutes. Sam knew it had been intense because in the morning light he could make out dozens of bullet holes in the canvas over their heads. After the shooting stopped, there’d been a lot of shouting. Some of it had been in Uzbek, and so Sam had understood enough of it to grasp that whoever was in charge wanted everybody to haul butt quickly before the army showed up.

Within a short period of time—he didn’t know how much because the crystal display of Sam’s digital wrist-watch was smashed, and someone had taken X-Man’s—the truck they were in was slammed into gear, and they began bouncing across what Sam took to be the desert basin.

From the way the dawn had broken, he’d decided they were heading west. Sam listened to the sounds of the convoy as it ground through the high desert. If he was correct, he thought he’d identified the sounds of three trucks, maybe four. X-Man concurred. But they couldn’t be sure—and in any case however many trucks there were didn’t matter. Moreover, there was no way either of them was going to risk a peek through the canvas to find out.

He’d spent a long time as he lay there trying to reconstruct a map of the region in his mind’s eye. He was reasonably certain the bad guys would ultimately move northwest, heading for Afghanistan or Tajikistan. His reasoning was twofold. First, because the Afghan and Tajik borders were more porous than the Kazakh or Kyrgyz ones. Second, the mountain passes to Tajikistan had scores of unmarked, narrow roads that had been used by smugglers for decades. During his tour in Dushanbe, Sam had even been taken across into China—for a kilometer or so of bragging rights—on a precarious, rutted, cliffside smuggler’s road by Halil Abdullaev, the
muktar
of a small village on the Chinese border and one of Sam’s most productive Tajik agents.

He’d been certain they wouldn’t head south. The southern border—with India—was heavily fortified because of an ongoing Sino-Indian boundary dispute. And the Hindu Kush region that led to Pakistan was not hospitable to the IMU.

But Tajikistan was in a state of political flux, and the IMU, although weakened, still enjoyed support among the Muslim population. And northeast Afghanistan was still in a relative state of war. Remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban roamed more or less unhindered, shielded by the local tribes.

“Chris, Chris… “ Sam used his knees to shake the X-Man until he stirred.

The security man finally responded. “Christ, how long have we been passed out?”

“I don’t know. Hours.” Sam grunted as the truck bounced. “We can’t just stay here like this.”

X-Man whispered, “Sam, I don’t want to do anything precipitous until we know where Kaz and Dick are.”

“Agreed.” Sam swallowed hard. “God, I wish we had some water.” The two of them lay there for some minutes in silence. Then Sam said, “Thank God at least they don’t know who they got their hands on,” he whispered.

X-Man rolled over. “What do you mean, Sam?”

“Jeezus, X, think how much the IMU could get for us if they sold us to al-Qaeda. Or the Iranians.”

“Don’t even say that as a joke.”

Sam forced a wry expression. “Hell, at least the people who have us are moving in the right direction.”

X-Man snorted. “I was taught by the nuns always to be grateful for small blessings.”

Sam whispered, “Let’s hope they get across whatever border they’re heading for before the Chinese catch up with ‘em. I—” He started to say something else. But the truck braked to an abrupt stop.

Fifteen seconds later, Sam heard movement outside. And then the rear flap was lifted, and he was rendered blind by a sudden shaft of incredibly bright light.

“G
ODDAMMIT
,
Loner, if that’s the way it’s gotta be, then that’s the way it is. But I tell you, this sucks. And if you won’t tell those suits to go screw themselves and let you get back where you belong, then put me on the friggin’ phone
with ‘em and I will—and that includes the goddamn secretary of defense.” On the Long List of People Rowdy Yates Does Not Like,
suits
was his comprehensive term for all self-important, limp-dicked, spineless, backstabbing, politically motivated individuals including (but not limited to) most flag-rank officers and virtually all politicians, attorneys, and CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations. In fact, the only two categories of humanity Rowdy Yates detested more than suits were traitors and cowards.

The bad news, which Ritzik was relaying from the secretary’s car, was that he was probably going to miss his connections because they were being called back to the White House and the secretary had just indicated that he wasn’t going to be leaving Washington until the evening. And so he’d just told Rowdy to unlock his cage and grab his gear while he met with whomever. With the secretary’s help he’d catch a commercial flight out of Dulles to Frankfurt. There, he’d catch the Lufthansa flight direct to Almaty. If all the planes were on time, he’d beat Rowdy and the C-5 by two and a half hours.

The sergeant major was not convinced. “This op has already turned into a huge Charlie Foxtrot, Mike, and I’m still sitting behind my friggin’ desk.” Yates balanced the reading magnifiers on the tip of his nose and scribbled on a notepad. “I know you’ve already been promised coordination, but maybe you’d like to know anyway that I haven’t heard friggin’ word one from Langley. Not that it would make a bit of difference. Those self-important pencil-pushing sons of bitches wouldn’t know real intelligence if it walked up and bit ‘em on the ass.” He paused. “Yes, sir, Major, sir, you can put me on the speakerphone and I’ll say the same thing to SECDEF.”

Yates paused and listened. “Yes, Mike. Okay. Will do. We’ll pack each Fire Team One laptop, and every man gets
a handheld and GPS module. I’ll make sure Talgat has clothes for us, too.” Yates made another series of notations on the legal pad, then cradled the telephone. The effing suits in Washington were going to get them all killed. There was no doubt about that whatsoever.

M
IKE
R
ITZIK
followed Robert Rockman as they descended a narrow, carpeted stairway, turned right, then left, past a warren of offices. The secretary led Ritzik down a short corridor lined with framed photographs of the president and first lady on their overseas trips. At the end of the hallway, Rockman waited as a Secret Service agent opened the unmarked Situation Room door and stood aside so they could enter.

Rockman’s palm thrust Ritzik forward. The room was smaller and narrower than he had expected. He’d envisioned high-backed, hand-tooled leather judge’s chairs, lots of telephones and laptop computers, and high-definition flat screens displaying real-time satellite images. What he saw was a long, narrow, wood-paneled space dominated by a basic table with a dozen spartan leather armchairs around it. A single judge’s chair sat below the wall-mounted presidential seal at the head of the table. In front of each chair a notepad and a blue ballpoint pen, both bearing the presidential seal, had been carefully positioned. In front of the president’s place sat a black leather legal-pad holder, imprinted
with the Great Seal of the United States, as well as a large universal TV remote-control unit.

There were two multiline telephone consoles—one at each end of the table. At the head, there was also a single secure telephone. Two wall clocks were hung high on the walls at opposite ends of the room. There were three small TV sets jammed into a utilitarian cabinet at the rear, opposite the doorway. The screens displayed the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Sky News, but there was no sound coming from any of them. Stacked against the wood-paneled walls were perhaps two dozen plastic chairs, randomly scattered in stacks of two or three.

There were already a few officials sitting at the long table. The national security adviser was there, half glasses perched on the end of her nose, engrossed in a red-tabbed document as she sat at what Ritzik assumed to be the president’s right hand. She said, “Mr. Secretary,” but didn’t acknowledge Ritzik’s presence. Next to Wirth sat Nick Pappas, the rumpled, chubby former congressional staffer who was now director of central intelligence. Next to him sat a middle-aged, slightly overweight woman with a severe haircut and thick, retro eyeglasses. Three chairs down from the DCI, Admiral Phil Buckley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, scratched an itch just above the starched collar of his uniform shirt and stared at the wall, pointedly ignoring the SECDEF. At the far end of the table, an attractive young Chinese-American woman was listening to a middle-aged man whose face Ritzik had seen on the evening news but couldn’t identify. As he whispered, the woman’s head bobbed up and down as she made notes on a yellow legal pad.

Rockman nodded at the man at the far end of the table, then commandeered the armchair closest to the head of the table, directly opposite the NSC adviser. Ritzik started to sit next to him, but the secretary’s quick shake of head and
abrupt hand signal indicated that he “park it” on one of the black plastic chairs up against the wall instead.

He did as ordered, sitting silently, idly fingering the visitor’s pass clipped to his lapel and scanning the faces, absorbing the surroundings. The young woman conferred with her colleague, then scribbled even more feverishly. Monica Wirth passed the red-tabbed document to Rockman, who flipped it open and read its contents, his expression devolving into a hound-dog frown.

Then the door opened. Without fanfare or announcement, the president strode in. Twenty-eight casters rumbled across the linoleum tile in unison as everyone in the warm room scrambled to their feet.

“Everybody sit, sit, please.” Pete Forrest pulled the high-backed swivel chair away from the table and dropped into it.

Over the sound of chairs being settled into, the president said, “Give us the latest news, Nick.”

Pappas opened a leather folder and glanced down at the file inside. “The locator signal activated by the Sino Insertion Element is still transmitting strongly. The team is being moved in a northwesterly direction across the Tarim Basin.” The DCI paused long enough to run a stubby finger inside the collar of his white button-down shirt. “We believe the kidnappers to be from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU. Our assessment was that SIE-1 was being taken toward the Tajik border.”