One man, one mission; prevent the outbreak of the next world war…

Live reports of an explosive attack in Pakistan are flooding the world’s newsrooms. The US Secretary of State is missing - and with tensions on the international diplomatic scene at boiling point Special Agent Tom Dupree has only three days to track down her abductors.

Linda Carlyle will be beheaded in three days if her abductor’s demands are not met. Except everyone knows that the US never negotiates with terrorists…

Saving Linda’s life = save the world from a brutal and bloody war: The stakes have never been higher…and a web of conspiracy, deception and betrayal leave Tom with no-one to trust, but himself.

Political thrillers don’t come more turbo-charged than this! Prepare for twist after twist right up to the electrifying climax in this high-octane political thriller.

State of Honour
Gary Haynes

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Gary Haynes 2013

Gary Haynes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472054791

Version date: 2018-09-20

GARY HAYNES studied law at university. His main interests are military history and international relations. He’s also a massive film buff, especially thrillers.

He began writing seriously four years ago as a hobby, but it quickly became a passion. He says he loses track of time when he’s writing and has to force himself to switch off his laptop and sleep!

On learning the craft, he says: “Some how-to-write books say that you should try to write in all manner of ways, including while drunk. Some authors have written entire books while drunk. I tried it once. When I reread what I’d written the next day after taking two painkillers, I seriously considered therapy. My advice is don’t let writing interfere with getting drunk.”

He has three children and lives in Devon with his very patient partner. When he’s not writing, he likes to keep fit by working out at his local boxing gym and going for long walks by the sea.

Gary writes cinematic, fast-paced, action-packed thrillers, although not without a healthy smattering of humour. He plans on writing a series of novels based on his main character, Tom Dupree, a special agent in the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

You can contact Gary at garyceh@virginmedia.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryHaynesNovel

Writing is a lonely pastime, but to get a book into shape for publication, it becomes a collaborative process. I would like to thank Helen Williams at Harlequin for spotting my potential and for her encouragement and enthusiasm, and my excellent editors Dean Martin, Victoria Oundjian and Lucy Gilmour for their attention to detail and helpful suggestions

For my partner, Catherine, who makes it all so much easier, and my mum and dad, for their love and belief.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

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Epilogue

Endpages

About the Publisher

Prologue

Hindu Kush. North-west Pakistan.

The shoot-to-kill order came through at zero one fifteen, relayed over a satellite radio. It’d been just three hours since the two-man reconnaissance team had reported the sighting.

They lay in a shallow dugout on a windblown ridge, the leeward slope falling away steeply to an impassable boulder field. A desert-issue tarp all but covered the hole, protected from view on the flanks by thorny scrub. Shivering, they blew into their bunched trigger-finger mitts. The daytime temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more, and fine sleet was melting on their blackened faces.

Darren Proctor extended the folded stock of his L115A3 sniper rifle. He split the legs of the swivel bi-pod and aligned the swivel cheek piece with the all-weather scope. Flipping open the lens cap, he glassed the terrain cast a muted green by the night vision. The tree line was sparse, a smattering of pines and cedars shuddering in the biting wind. Glimpsing movement on a scree slope fifty metres or so beyond, he focused in. The eyes of a striped hyena shone like glow sticks. He watched as the scavenger ripped at the carcass of an ibex or wild sheep. A second later it sniffed the air, ears pricked, and scampered off.

Too late, you’re dead, he thought.

Lowering the stock onto a wrapped poncho liner, he glanced to his left. “You see anything, Mike?”

“Nothing apart from that weird-looking dog,” Mike Rowe replied, his eyes fixed to a LION, a lightweight infrared observation night-sight. “This place goes into lockdown after dark.”

He’d served alongside Proctor in Iraq and Helmand Province; elsewhere, too. But their presence here, a few miles east of the Af-Pak border, was illegal. The drone strikes had ceased three months ago in response to the spike in civilian casualties, and the withdrawal of all but advisory ISAF personnel in neighbouring Afghanistan had been implemented as planned. With the West resorting increasingly to using private military contractors for black ops in the region, they now earned ten times what they had as regular British soldiers. If they died in the process, the politicians wouldn’t get flak from the media, or have to answer difficult letters from grieving parents. They were deemed to be expendable shadows, and they knew it.

Proctor shook his head. “It’s a hyena, genius.”

“Whatever. Fucking thing looks like it crawled up from hell. Even uglier than you, and that’s not easy,” Mike replied, snickering.

“Thanks, mate.”

They’d grown wiry beards and wore local tribal dress beneath their ghillie suits: baggy pants, long cotton shirts and sheepskin vests. Otherwise, the two men were physical opposites. While Proctor was six-two with a clean-shaven head and bull-like shoulders, Mike was five-six and bony, his matted brown hair reaching past the nape.

Mike placed the LION onto a kitbag, took off his camouflage helmet and picked up a Gerber tool. Using the small blade, he began to strip the bark from a twig, clearly bored.

They’d been on an unrelated mission, shadowing a small group of Haqqani network fighters suspected of the murder of a US diplomat in Islamabad. Once that operation had been aborted, they’d maintained their position high up in the foothills. The target was a priority. But they’d agreed that it could take days before he showed again.

Proctor grasped the bolt-action rifle once more, his eye glued to the scope, scanning.

The target – a phlegmatic Muslim cleric called Mullah Kakar – was hiding out in a cave complex a mile away. The area was riddled with them, used for decades as bombproof bolt holes. Earlier, they’d seen frail plumes of light-grey smoke curling over the craggy overhang above the mouth. Now there was nothing. If he’d been alone, they’d said they’d have risked an assault. But he was protected by four Afghan bodyguards and hadn’t come out since they’d spotted him. When he did, they’d decided to take out everyone, using fragmentation grenades, if necessary. They had to authenticate the kill. That meant close-up digital photographs, and mouth swabs and blood samples for DNA. With a seven-figure reward on the mullah’s otherwise elusive head, Mike had commented that this was going to be the last time he slept in the open.

“You want a brew?” he said.

Proctor put an open hand to his ear. Freeze and listen. He chambered one of the five rounds and flicked off the safety.

“Ninety metres at three o’clock. Rocky outcrop,” he whispered, aiming the seven kilograms, long-range weapon.

Mike snatched up the LION. “Terry?” he asked quietly, army slang for Taliban.

Proctor raised his open-palmed left hand across his chest and pointed to the right. Move there.

Mike slipped the LION into a cargo pocket, picked up a suppressed Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle fitted with a thermal imaging sight, and eased himself out of the hole. Proctor followed him with his night-scope. The body moved in a low crawl, inching diagonally towards a cluster of stunted bushes; a vantage point from which he could spy behind the mass of jagged rock. Proctor lay perfectly still, controlling his breathing. He should have had his scope trained on the outcrop, making sure Mike wasn’t in danger. But he’d lied to him. When he was some ten metres away, Proctor fixed the illuminated mil-dot reticle onto the back of Mike’s bare head. At this range, the 8.59mm round would pulverize the skull.

“Sorry, Mike,” he whispered.

He placed the ball of his forefinger on the trigger as he prepared to squeeze. A second later there was a muffled discharge, the noise and flash minimized by the fixed suppressor. Mike’s body bucked as if he’d been Tasered, a thick spray of blood erupting from his head. He didn’t move again.

Proctor removed his camo suit and put on a pakol, a woollen round-topped hat. Crouching, he sent an encrypted distress message to a Special Forces signaller in Kabul. Decoded it read: Target down. Spotter down. Situation critical.

Once sent, he wrapped up the tarp and shut down the portable SATCOM, GPS and VHF radio. Using a short-handled shovel, he hacked at the plastic and metal until he was sure the systems were inoperable, and shoved them into two canvas kitbags. He scooped them up and began filling in the hole with the relatively loose earth they’d dug out earlier. When he’d finished, he shouldered his rifle and walked slowly to the corpse. Kneeling down, he removed Mike’s two-way radio, sidearm, and wristwatch. He thought about his friend’s four kids, and his wife, Debra. Then, pushing aside the HK, he zoned out.

He spent the next half an hour digging a grave. After heaving the body in, he covered it with stiff clods of soil. That done, the equipment and gear had to vanish, too. He trudged along the ridge to a remote crevice, just wide enough to swallow the bags, and flung in all trace of their existence. Exhausted, he crouched down and lit a cigarette with a silver Zippo, telling himself that he’d earned it. He glanced up. The sleet had turned to snow. Trembling, he inhaled the smoke deeply, felt the frigid wind slice to his bones. The overcast skies rendered high-altitude recon drones useless, and it could be hours before a rescue team could be put together. He had time to spare.

A few minutes later, he zigzagged down the windward slope, using the metre-long rifle to steady him. Below, the land was farmed in terraced plots. He’d seen the hamlet on the drone feeds, the timber houses stacked one above the other. But Mike had been right. The place went into lockdown at night.

Reaching flat ground, he walked to the bank of the turbulent river, the rapids exploding like geysers against domes of smooth rock. It was warmer in the valley floor and the wind had dropped to a cool breeze. He bent down, cleansed his hands of bloodstains and cupped the icy water onto his face. Lighting another cigarette, he heard the vehicle before he saw it. Braced himself. As it pulled into the hamlet along a mud track peppered with potholes, the lights were killed. He made out a red Toyota pickup truck with five men hugging AK-47s sitting in the rear. It stopped a couple of metres from him. He let the cigarette fall from his fingers, stubbed it out with his boot.

A man opened the passenger door and strolled over. He wore shabby sneakers and a dark-green flak jacket. His face was pitted, the grey beard extravagant. Proctor thought he looked older than the photograph of him he had hidden in his pocket. Being a fugitive doesn’t suit him, he concluded.

They shook hands.

“Asalaam Alaykum,” Proctor said. Peace be upon you.

“Wa ‘Alaykum Asalaam,” Mullah Kakar replied. And peace be upon you also. He looked up at the surrounding foothills, as if he were recalling time spent here. “Are we officially dead?”

Proctor nodded.

“Then get in. We ghosts have much work to do.”

“Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; Take honour from me, and my life is done.”

William Shakespeare, Richard II

1.

Islamabad was a city that reeked of fear. Martial law had been imposed by the Pakistani generals, and terrorist attacks were escalating. As a result, the US Embassy compound in the Diplomatic Enclave resembled a modern supermax, ringed as it was by security bollards, floodlights, high-definition surveillance cameras, blast walls and heavy fencing. To add to the deterrent, three Marine rifle companies guarded it in rotation day and night.

Halfway down one of its tiled corridors, two men stood either side of a soundproof, brass-inlaid door, their tailored suits masking holstered SIG Sauer P229 handguns. On the other side of the door, the US Secretary of State, the forty-three-year-old Linda Carlyle, worked alone in a windowless office.

“I heard the generals ordered all women to wear the hijab,” Steve Coombs said, running his hand through his receding sandy hair, his broad back nestling against the wall. “It’ll be the burqa next. My eldest, Cathy, is studying law at Yale. Beats the hell outta me.”

“Me too,” the younger man replied.

His name was Tom Dupree. He’d spent twelve years overseas guarding embassy staff. After another three in the office of investigations and counterintelligence, he’d reached a career summit for a special agent in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security: head of the secretary’s protective detail. It had been his time. The scars on his body – a two-inch knife slash on his bicep and a chest seared by mortar shrapnel – were testament to his dedication. But now his time leading the protective detail was almost over.

“So you’ll be stuck in DC, huh, Tom?” Steve said, picking sleep from his eye.

“Yeah. Chief nursemaid to the good, the bad and the ugly.”

“Foreign dignitary detail ain’t so bad. At least you’ll get to snuggle down in your own bed some. When you gonna get yourself a little lady to share it with?”

“Who says I don’t?” Tom said, adjusting his stance.

Truth was, Tom hadn’t had a girlfriend in over a year. Not since Carrie, an analyst in the DS’s passport and visa fraud division, had told him she couldn’t deal with dating a man she saw less than her dentist.

“’Bout time you became a one-woman man, you ask me,” Steve said, his tone preachy.

Knowing his friend was a Catholic, who’d been married since his nineteenth birthday, Tom chose to ignore the comment. He checked the time on his wristwatch: 08:36. They would be on the move soon, but he was dreading it.

“It’ll get hotter than a habanero chilli out there,” Steve said, yawning. “I sure hope that kids’ hospital got AC.”

“The kids’ hospital is a bad idea,” Tom replied, his brow furrowing.

“So why don’t Lyric drop the line-up?” he said, using the DS’s pro-word for the secretary.

“A photo op. Who knows? But it’s making me twitchy as hell, I know that much.”

The advance detail had carried out a security profile on the location of the kids’ hospital, which was basically a threat and risk assessment: what could happen and the likelihood that it would. It was a dynamic process, and the additions Tom had made since arriving a few days before had been some of the most comprehensive he’d produced in his career. But after distributing the operational orders to his team, he’d realized that half of the countermeasures that would be required if security was compromised would be down to the host Pakistanis.

“Paranoia keeps you sharp. Don’t forget that, Tom.”

“Yeah. Paranoia till stateside.”

It was the most important mindset DS special agents were taught. If any place made it a healthy disposition, it was Islamabad, Tom thought. The city attracted violence as Palm Springs attracted pensioners. He was constantly briefed on hot spots, and this one had been at the top of the list for months. But apart from his six-strong protective detail, there were eight back-up agents in the tactical support team. Part of the Mobile Security Deployment, or MSD, they travelled in armour-plated SUVs, and carried Colt 9mm sub-machine guns and Remington 870 pump-action shotguns. The drivers were experts in defensive and evasive techniques. They’d studied satellite imagery of the surrounding road network, so, if they had to evacuate the secretary at speed, they knew alternative routes back to the safety of the embassy, or the nearest hospital or police station. Still, Tom knew a hundred things could go wrong. Compromises had been made. A fleet of up-armoured Humvees shadowed by a squadron of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters would have been the ideal way to travel, but he knew that was as likely as Steve turning into the laconic type.

“A perfect record and only a week to go. It had to be here, huh.”

“That’s real helpful, Steve,” Tom said, unbuttoning his charcoal-grey suit jacket.

But he’s right, he thought. Back home, the advance detail would have been thorough. Local extremists and publicity-seeking whackos monitored. Pipe-inspection cameras poked into every cranny. Storm drains checked for explosives. The dumpsters removed. Manhole covers bolted, the public trash cans sealed. Then, on the day of her visit, scores of local P.D. would’ve been on the periphery and tried and tested counter snipers on the roofs. All vantage points covered. Discarded bottles and lumps of loose concrete removed within an appropriate radius. The Belgian Malinois bomb sniffers would’ve swept every inch.

“Corridor duty is as boring as those TV reality shows, ain’t it, Tom?” Steve said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Tom watched Steve weaving his head in what appeared to be a figure of eight. “The hell you doing?”

“My doc said it’ll help with my headaches. Relieves neck tension.”

“Didn’t know you suffered from headaches,” Tom said, a little concerned that his friend hadn’t mentioned it to him before.

“They started a couple months back. Sometimes when I wake up at night, it feels like I’m wearing a vice.”

“Get it checked out again. You got a physical coming up.”

“Sure I will, Tom.”

A couple of seconds later, Tom coughed into his fist and gestured with his eyes. But Steve’s head was still animate. A stocky man with a weather-beaten face and short silver hair had entered the corridor from an elevator twenty metres behind Steve’s back. He carried a bundle of papers in a manila folder under his arm, and walked like an ex-military type. When the man’s footsteps became audible on the tiles, Steve stood ramrod straight. As he got closer Tom recognized him, and moved over to knock on the door before opening it.

“Thank you, son,” he said. He turned to Steve, gestured towards the clear wire spiralling down from his earpiece. “That wire attached to an iPod, Agent?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s good,” he said as he disappeared inside.

Tom closed the door, worried. He wondered if he’d missed something important in terms of the assessment. But the training his team underwent continually was based on repetition, the type that created confidence and long-term muscle memory. If an attack of whatever nature happened, be it a flung bag of flour or a multiple-armed assault, they would act instinctively, almost without conscious effort.

Steve sniffed. “The paper shuffler thinks he’s a comedian.”

“He’s a deputy director of the CIA,” Tom said, “and he ain’t here to tell Lyric a joke.”

2.

Linda Carlyle looked up as the heavy door opened, hoping her rising sense of unease didn’t show on her face. The dimly lit room was fifteen metres square, the few pieces of furniture functional rather than decorative. Sitting at an oak desk, she lifted a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses off her aquiline nose. For the past forty-five minutes, she’d been speed-reading a departmental report she’d commissioned on the near-past disputes between Iran and Pakistan; all of which had stemmed from Islam’s major schism. While Iran was ruled by Shias, Pakistan was Sunni dominated. In the nineties, they’d backed opposing sides in the Afghan Civil War, and had sponsored sectarian terrorism in each other’s major cities. Now they were on the brink of a conflict that could ignite the whole region.

“Good morning, Madam Secretary,” the deputy director said, walking towards her, his hand massaging the folded skin at his neck.

“You’re not harassing my boys, are you, Bill?”

“Sometimes I forget I swopped fatigues for a suit.”

Forcing a smile, she said, “Take a seat. I’ll be right with you.”

Deputy Director Bill Houseman, who had travelled to Islamabad with the secretary, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Under-Secretary of Defense, sat in a padded chair two metres from the desk and crossed his muscular legs.

Linda closed the marble-coloured lever arch file and tapped a remote. The room lit up. “So let’s have it,” she said, switching off the antenna-like arc lamp she’d been reading under.

“The switchboard operator just got a call. I think we should ask the head of your security detail to join us.”

“I’d like to hear what you have to say first. Please continue.”

“A threat has been made.” He clenched his teeth.

“I see.”

“The caller said the Leopards of Islam would ensure that the US Secretary of State never leaves Pakistan soil. We’re putting it down to a random individual. Low-level risk assessment.”

“And why’s that?”

Houseman cleared his throat, putting his hand to his mouth. “Because as a rule, the Leopards don’t make threats before an attack, ma’am.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better,” she said, shaking her head. “And the current situation here?”

“The Leopards are launching fresh attacks in Karachi, Bahawalpur, Lahore. The list goes on. There’ve been three bomb attacks in Islamabad in the past twelve days.”

“Is civil war on the cards?” she asked, fearing the worst.

“We have reports that Shia elements of the army are joining the insurgency, so it’s a possibility.”

“And the Leopards are definitely backed by Iran?”

Houseman nodded. “No question. But the Sunnis brought it on themselves. The atrocities against the Shia minority were bound to result in an armed response.”

“How serious is the Iranian threat?”

Houseman drew in an audible breath through his nose and shuffled his buttocks a fraction. “Satellite images and drone feeds show that Iranian Special Forces have already made incursions across the border. And there are three divisions of the Revolutionary Guard massed just four miles from the largest of Pakistan’s five provinces–”

“Balochistan.”

“That’s right. Our analysts believe that Iran is planning to occupy the port of Gwadar and help themselves to the huge resources of natural gas in the province if Pakistan becomes a failed state.”

“They’re hoping to take advantage of the chaos,” Linda said, leaning back in her chair and arching her fingers.

“They are, ma’am. But if the Iranians come over the southern border in force, the Pakistanis, despite their internal problems, are likely to go to war. They regard the Iranians as apostates.”

“It’s a mess.” She massaged her temples with her thumbs and forefingers.

“My view is we back Pakistan with muscle and–”

“That’s a decision for Congress.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Houseman said, nodding.

“Thank you, Bill. Send the agent in, will you? The tall one with the buzz cut.”

Houseman got up, said, “May I speak freely?”

“You may.”

“Don’t go to the children’s hospital this morning. Frankly, I don’t think it’s worth the risk; however small.”

He has a point, she thought.

Pakistan had been a Frenemy for years. But the new Prime Minister had requested her visit to discuss the possibility of the US taking temporary possession of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if matters got worse. Although they’d been distributed over the country for security reasons, they’d been brought back to Islamabad in recent weeks. They were safe for now. But if the Pakistanis refused to allow them into US custody, her brief also extended to ensuring that the likelihood of them being used if the Iranians came over the border in force was zero.

This, she had to admit, was the real reason for her visit. Houseman knows that, too, she thought, which is why he’s advising against the trip to the hospital.

But, she said, “The president wants to show solidarity with the new regime on the issue of opposition to extremist acts of terrorism, if nothing else. Those children are their victims. I will ensure that the head of my security detail speaks with your people before we leave. Is there anything else, Bill?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, barely able to conceal his concern.

Tom saw the door open. The deputy director came out, scowling.

“Is everything all right, sir?” Tom asked.

“Just peachy.” He gestured behind him. “The secretary would like to see you.”

He put the folder under his arm and straightened his tie before strolling off towards the elevator, taking a call on his cellphone after a few steps.

Tom moved through the door left ajar and saw the secretary standing in front of the desk, a neat, navy-blue box in her hand. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair was tied back with a flesh-coloured scarf. The scarf was a concession. Flowing hair was easily grabbed. Curtailing the possibility of that kind of embarrassing incident just meant one less thing to worry about. She also wore a ballistic pantsuit, as he’d asked her to, together with her specially made jewellery, a gold pendant shaped like a pear and a heavy emerald ring. The pantsuit was a pale hue of cameral. Soft body armour that could withstand a round from a handgun. The impact of the bullet was eradicated by a net of multilayered woven fabrics, which dispersed the energy over an extended area. Pure physics. He’d seen videos of Americans down in Columbia being shot at in their ballistic suits from close quarters. Something he wasn’t about to divulge. It was useless against a round fired by a high-velocity rifle.

She smiled and stepped forward holding out the blue box. “I’d like you to have this.” She handed it to him.

Tom opened the box. Inside was an expensive silver watch, an Omega with a large face studded with diamonds.

“I’ve had it engraved,” she said.

Tom took it out, turned it over. He read the inscription: To Tom with heartfelt gratitude. Linda G. Carlyle. US Secretary of State.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling a little embarrassed by her gift.

“I just want to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”

“It’s been an honour, ma’am. But I still have a week before I leave the detail.”

“I know. I just wanted to give it you today… Oh, and I should tell you that a threat has been made,” she said, clearly doing her best to sound mundane.

“A threat. Why wasn’t I briefed?” he asked, his jaw muscles flexing.

“It’s not serious. An anonymous phone call to the embassy just a minute ago. The CIA will brief you before we leave this morning.”

“I’d like you to reconsider your visit to the hospital, ma’am.”

The faint lines on her forehead deepened. “The president gets ten threats a day. He got fifty on the morning of his inauguration. Where would we be if we succumbed to them all? Ensconced in a bunker at Fort Bragg, I imagine.”

“But, ma’am—”

“No, Tom. My mind is made up.”

He looked down at the watch. “This is very generous.”

“Don’t ask what the G stands for. I never use it, and no one knows apart from my parents. Don’t ask about my birth certificate, either.” She feigned a laugh.

His head snapped back up. “I’ll get you safely home, ma’am,” he said. “I promise.”

“Yes, you will.”

3.

Tom sat in the front passenger seat of the third MSD SUV, feeling agitated. The convoy was doing a steady sixty-five along the eight-lane highway leading from the embassy, police outriders front and rear. They were ten minutes behind schedule. The secretary had had to take an urgent call from the president on a secure landline. Sitting directly behind Tom, the safest place from a protective viewpoint, she discussed the speech she’d give to the army generals at Parliament House right after her visit to the hospital. The speech writer had a retro moustache and a servile tone, a skinny guy whom Tom considered a hindrance.

After they’d agreed on the final changes, the secretary said, “The president wants the visit to the hospital cut to twenty minutes tops.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tom replied.

“That means no press questions.”

“Understood.”

“He mentioned the threat.”

Tom turned around in his seat. “If the agreed procedure is followed, your exposure will be minimal, ma’am.”

She nodded, slowly.

Tom double-checked that her seat belt was fastened securely, that the doors were locked and the windows closed. He ran through the various evacuation scenarios, depending on the nature of the attack and which vehicles might be taken out. She’d be plunged into the footwell. The driver would employ a full bootlegger’s turn or resort to ramming. They played out like video games in his head, priming him for a potential en-route ambush.

Next, he tested his push-to-talk, or PTT, radio. The PTT button was inline and ran between the radio connection and the earpiece. It could be used either via the button or as a voice-activated unit, providing a handsfree facility. The destinations they’d be travelling to today had codenames. The hospital’s codename was Cradle. He used them to communicate with his team, checking their radios were functioning in the process. Satisfied, he focused on the pre-planned arrival procedure. He’d alight first, opening the passenger door. The agents in the vehicle behind would form an open-box formation around her as she entered the building.

Check.

The Faisal Children’s Hospital was a few miles from the Saudi-Pak Tower, a contemporary landmark known for its Islamic tile work. Nineteen floors high, the tower was visible from the tinted windows of the SUV. Tom worried that the hospital was outside the so-called Blue Area, the commercial centre of Islamabad. Together with a couple of his team, he’d walked the route the day before, liaising with a group of ISI operatives, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the main Pakistan security service.

The lead operative had been called Awan. He was a beefy six-footer with leathery skin, who wore a sombre suit and black necktie.

“The road has been checked for IEDs. The hospital is clean, at least in terms of bombs,” he said, his wide face breaking into a crooked grin.

“What about all these people?” Tom asked.

“This isn’t the West. If they do not work, they do not eat.”

The street and those surrounding it lacked the Blue Area’s greenery and modern architecture. The hospital abutted run-down buildings on either side. Brick-built retail stores with whitewashed residential accommodation above. Opposite, bland concrete apartment and office blocks rose three storeys to flat roofs. They cast an unbroken shadow over a line of flimsy stalls, selling reams of brightly coloured cloth, second-hand cellphones, fruit and vegetables and halal meat on hooks.

“I don’t like it,” Tom said.

“Then tell her not to come,” Awan replied, shrugging.

Ignoring him, Tom said, “Your men ready for tomorrow?”

“As I told you on the phone, apart from yourselves, ten armed operatives will mix with the crowd. There will be fifty-two policemen. On the roofs, a team of snipers.” He pointed up to the sky. “And a police helicopter with elite commandos onboard.”

“Have the hospital staff been screened?”

“They were screened when they were employed. They’re all well-educated Punjabis. Our problems come from frontier hills people. Shia illiterates.”

Tom pinched his nose. “The main exposure is when the secretary leaves. A two-minute delay while she does her goodbyes to the official line-up,” he said, knowing that a couple of Grey Eagle drones would be monitoring the scene from above.

“Everything will be okay, Mr Dupree.”

Tom had wished he could’ve believed him.

He stood half a metre behind the secretary now, just to the right of her shoulder, his sense of unease unabated. The walls of the hospital ward were painted an insipid yellow. It was cramped with twenty small beds a fraction more than a body-width apart. If it had AC, it had been turned off. The competing smells of disinfectant and stale sweat were equally pungent. He figured the authorities were intent on making the experience both unpleasant and memorable.

A bearded doctor, with black bags hanging in folds like a bloodhound’s, explained to the secretary in detail the nature of each of the children’s injuries and what could and could not be done. Tom thought he looked like a coke addict, or a guy who drank a bottle of Jack a day, but put his jaded appearance down to a dedicated man who didn’t sleep much. He watched the secretary listen attentively, and speak with each child in turn via a government interpreter before moving sullenly to the last bed.

The undefined nature of the threat had left Tom feeling even more paranoid than he would’ve been normally in such circumstances. Beside the bed, a young female nurse with exquisite feline-like eyes, and a mouth so naturally generous that no amount of collagen could replicate it, checked a saline drip. Tom slid over to her and eased a ballpoint pen from her hip pocket stealthily, placing it onto a window sill just out of her reach. Two separate attempts on the life of President Ford had been by women who’d looked like grade-school teachers, and a pen was as deadly as a stiletto. His antennae were up.

“The Leopards have no regard for human life,” the doctor said. “Young or old. No matter.”

The bed was occupied by a small boy who was almost completely cocooned in bandages. With his wide-eyed stare and lack of visible skin, he resembled a fragile hybrid. The secretary bent over the bed and said a few words. As she went to touch him the doctor spoke.

“Please no. Ninety per cent burns.” He shook his head to emphasize that death was certain.

The secretary lowered her hand, looked close to tears but managed a closed-mouth smile. Tom fought the urge to wince.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but we’re due at Parliament House in thirty minutes,” a female aide said, bending towards the secretary.

Her thick red hair accentuated the paleness of her skin. She looked like a size zero, and what little make-up she wore had been applied with calligraphic precision.

“I visited a hospital just like this one in Iraq eight years ago,” the secretary said to her quietly, without turning around. “The only difference being the bombs were ours. But the children looked just the same. This can be an ugly world, Miss Hanson; please don’t add to the negativity with insensitive remarks.”

Tom glanced at the aide. She was flushed with embarrassment, her beauty suddenly diminished.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t worry, the TV cameras won’t pick that up,” the secretary replied, turning towards three news teams.

One was local, SAMAA TV, the other two from the States. There were half a dozen more in the corridor. Apart from the local crew, the teams had drawn lots. There just wasn’t enough room on the ward.

The secretary shook the doctor’s hand, thanking him and praising his work. She waved to the nurses and children, some of whom smiled and waved back, while others just carried on looking vaguely bemused. Tom retained his position, readying himself for the obstacle course that would no doubt occur in the corridors leading to the hospital lobby.

Once that had been overcome, she would shake hands with the security-vetted group and give a short statement to the news hounds. He would call up the tactical support team and usher her inside an SUV fitted with run-flat tyres. The windshields were made of glass-clad polycarbonate, which were both bullet-resistant and prevented glass fragments from showering inward. But the windows were constructed from layers of a laminated material known as one-way bulletproof glass. This prevented rounds from entering the vehicle, while at the same time allowing agents to fire out of it, as the unique combination of absorptive and flexible qualities of the layers responded accordingly. It was as safe a civilian vehicle as science could create.

But it was best practice to have the SUVs close to the exit point, parallel, in fact. In this instance they would block the view for the TV crews and the crowds, and Tom now knew that the secretary’s visit was essentially a PR exercise, despite her sincerity. He told himself it would be fine.

That done, he would breathe easily for a second or two before the whole routine would begin again.

This, at least, was his plan.

4

The lobby led to an incongruous-looking, clear-glass frontage set back about three metres from the narrow sidewalk. The excitable crowds were being held at bay by skinny, moustachioed policemen, wielding long wooden batons. Tom would’ve given a year’s pay just to have had them all swept by portable body scanners before they’d gotten within a hundred metres of the secretary. Regular procedure stateside.

But he consoled himself by thinking that the plan was simple, and in his experience simple was best. The police would create a secure funnel, which the secretary would move down to be met by the lead MSD SUV parked twenty metres to the right, flanked by police outriders. The protective detail would walk around her. If there was a hint of trouble, they’d form the closed-box formation, so that she’d be covered by their bodies for a full three hundred and sixty degrees, each agent within half an arm’s reach of her.

He stuck a couple of fingers inside his stiff collar, wishing he could loosen his dark-blue necktie. He put on mirrored shades. It was stifling, just as Steve had said it would be, even though it was only 10:13. He was to Tom’s right, his face glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. They exchanged tight nods.

Still positioned behind her right shoulder, he kept his head up. The secretary stepped back after brief contact, as he’d taught her to do, and moved steadily from hospital staff to well-wishing local dignitary. A second agent walked further down the line-up, while a third was shadowing her movement from behind it, watching for a drawn-back fist or leg, or worse. The split-second advantage could be crucial.

Seeing a rotund man in a blue pinstripe with his hand in his jacket pocket, Tom leaned towards him. “Excuse me, sir. Please remove your hand from your pocket.” He could speak good Urdu, but knew the majority of educated Pakistanis spoke fluent English.

The man looked bewildered, but removed it just the same.

“Thank you, sir,” Tom said.

He scanned those nearby looking for pre-attack indicators. Most were subtle movements, but they could be exaggerated. He knew that it didn’t matter if someone was smiling like a Baptist preacher, the average assailant exhibited at least one before an assault. A shifting body, rapid shallow breathing, trembling hands or dilating pupils. Traits brought about when the adrenal glands produced an adrenalin dump.

He stayed close to the line. The key distance was seven metres. Anything inside that and a trained operative had a chance to stop a person drawing a concealed handgun and discharging it; anything outside and the chances were they would get off a round. It didn’t matter how good a person was told or thought they were; it was a fact.

He was aware of everything around him. The details that most people missed or weren’t interested in even if they didn’t. If there was a security lapse, he’d have to manage the natural adrenalin surge that would happen in his own body. Primed meant being one step from a reaction rather than three. It meant avoiding being paralyzed by a sensory overload, or panicking, as the body was swamped by hormones. It meant learning to run at a person who had pulled out a twelve-gauge shotgun rather than heading in the other direction.

Mentally, he saw someone lurch at the secretary, a knife in hand. Stepping forward, he used his body as cover for hers. He stretched out his left hand to grab her arm, and manoeuvred her behind him, holding her back to his. Simultaneously, he quick-drew his SIG, pointing. Aggressive words and actions were generally enough to subdue an assailant. But if he saw a handgun, he’d propel into the gap, and swing her to the ground behind his legs, as he fired into the centre of the assailant’s chest. His team would bolt over, shielding her entirely in the tepee-shaped formation.

Check.

Ten seconds later, he was drawn to a woman in the front row. She was large-boned, a sweep of shiny black hair protruding from her dupatta headscarf. She wore a canary-yellow Shalwar Kameez, and was holding a bunch of pink roses. But he was drawn to her because the flowers were vibrating, just enough to mark her out. She didn’t strike him as a shy individual, so he eased the secretary on before the woman could present them.

Something’s not right, he thought. He couldn’t work it out at first. Then it hit him. A distraction, perhaps. With that, a commotion started in his peripheral vision; to his left. He turned. Four young men had broken free from the crowd and had overpowered Sam Eddy. He was a thick-necked ex-DEA agent. The type that didn’t go down easily. But he was on his back now, his jaw slack, taking a vicious kicking.

Tom felt the urge to go to his aid. But the secretary was in front of him, and his first duty was to her. Besides, it was a rule that one attack tended to be followed by another, and there was no counter-ambush team on hand. He spoke briefly into his mic, part of the restricted radio network linked to the temporary command centre. Two agents dashed to Sam’s aid, quickly followed by a dozen or more policemen who’d taken the initiative.

As he drew the secretary behind his back the woman with the flowers rushed forward and flung them into his face from the side. He parried most of them away with his free hand, but a thorn scratched his forehead, drawing blood. Half squinting, he glimpsed a muscular guy push through the crowd. The man threw a straight right, baring his teeth like a primate. Tom just managed to block the full force with his forearm, the fist grazing over his temple.

Before he had a chance to follow it up, Tom leant forward and ploughed his elbow into the man’s cheek. It wasn’t hard enough to fracture the bone, but he needed to disable him fast. As the man’s head jerked sideways Tom applied an arm lock, slid his right leg behind the front ankle, and struck him just under the throat with his palm, his fingers and thumb split in a V-shape. The man had no option but to fall over Tom’s extended thigh.

As fellow agents took hold of the secretary and bundled her away, Tom decided to keep the lock on. He grasped the man’s shirt, and lowered the body to the asphalt. Experiencing a hit of hormones, he heard gasps and half-muffled cursing, sensed the crowd moving back. The attackers had targeted him, not the secretary, and that had almost caught him off guard.

“Stay down!” he snarled.

Although the man was barely conscious, Tom didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with him again, and he wasn’t carrying cuffs. But the agent shadowing the secretary burst through the line-up, and grabbed the guy in a headlock.

Straightening up, Tom caught sight of the female slinking away, although people were pointing at her and calling out. Before he could get the police to arrest her, the agitated words of agents flooded his earpiece. The secretary, he thought, grimacing. He pivoted around. Two of his team, Dave Robbins and Becky Sykes, were jogging with her, Becky holding her elbow, Dave shielding her lithe but awkward frame. She was wobbling on her high heels, and Tom barked into his radio, told them to remove the damn things or lift her.

Seeing that the MSD team had alighted from the SUVs parked on the dusty roadway, he glanced back to see how Sam was faring. The male agents had restrained a couple of the young men, pinning them to the ground with their suited bulks, although their weapons were still holstered. Sam lay face up and looked to be in bad shape. A pool of dull-red blood had formed around his head, the consistency of mucus. The policemen were beating the other two men with their batons. If they kept it up, they’d either kill them or cause brain damage, Tom thought.

He turned, saw that the secretary had almost reached the nearest SUV. It couldn’t drive up to her due to the fracas on the road. But the MSD agents had surrounded her with their body-armoured chests and backs, their weapons sweeping the crowd and the roofs of the surrounding buildings for any sign of a shooter. Evacuation was the best defence. He knew they’d manoeuvre her swiftly into the rear vehicle and exit at speed.

He had a gut feeling and decided to stay put. A sixth sense that had developed over the years. He checked the windows opposite, the tattered drapes half drawn. After a three-second scan, he saw what looked like the muzzle of an assault rifle disappear from view, although he couldn’t be sure. He shouted into the radio and drew his SIG, releasing the safety. Two MSD agents raced towards the building’s entrance, shoving people out of the way as they went.

He aimed his SIG at the window, deciding that if the image re-emerged he’d empty a full clip into the dirt-stained glass, irrespective of the outcome.

Then his worst nightmare began.

5.

Smoke and stun grenades hit the ground first, quickly followed by tear gas and bursts of automatic fire. Flashes of white light erupted, the high-pitched blasts blowing people off their feet. Others flailed about, blood leaching from their bodies. The two agents who were sprinting towards the building were dropped at the double doors. Panic-stricken, the crowd began to stampede, desperate to escape the kill zone. The air was swamped by hysterical screams, the police rendered useless, hunkering down as bullets cut chunks from wooden beams and ricocheted off metal posts and concrete overhangs.

Tom swayed, disorientated, his ears throbbing. Shaking his head in an attempt to revive himself, he glimpsed at least ten armed men rappelling from open windows, their faces obscured by gas masks. They had what looked like HK sub-machine guns strapped to their backs, with scopes, which he guessed were of the thermal imaging variety and would allow them to see in the smoke. He half raised his SIG, thought he was going to black out. Before he had a chance to get off a round, they vanished into the grey haze rising menacingly from ground level. Due to the state he was in, he guessed he would’ve capped an innocent by mistake, even if he’d been able to squeeze the trigger.

He did his best to turn his head. He couldn’t make out the SUVs or the secretary, either, now, and sensed the first tendrils of panic, his heart rate escalating. He just hoped the MSD agents had evacuated her already. As dopamine kicked in, the pain eased, and his muscles began to take in oxygen at an increased rate, counteracting his ebbing strength. He searched the roofs above as best he could. The snipers, he thought. Where the hell are they?

A massive explosion erupted, sending him to the ground. He landed on his left shoulder, the pain making him grit his teeth and moan. Blinking rapidly, he just about made out an SUV somersaulting above the smoke. He knew the car had an anti-explosion fuel tank laced with fire-resistant cladding, and was leak proof. This protected it from a high-velocity round or an anti-personnel landmine. But as flames engulfed it he figured it must have been parked over an IED. That and the force of the blast. He damned the Pakistani ISI. It was either incompetence or complicity. Either way, he blamed them.

Pushing himself up with his grazed hands, he stumbled forward, bursts from sub-machine guns tearing into flesh and bone about him. But he barely heard them, his hearing impaired by the blast. His eyes felt as if soap had been rubbed into them, the tear gas almost blinding him and making him feel nauseous. He began retching, and his shades slipped off. Looking up, he squinted as the bright light hit him.

Move, he thought. Keep moving.

As he got closer to where the SUVs were parked he felt the intense heat from the burning wreckage of the lead vehicle. The armour plating could withstand a grenade blast, but the IED had all but shredded the doors. The car had landed on top of a police motorcycle, the rider spreadeagled under the front right-hand wheel. As the smoke lifted a little he counted five bodies around it, bloody and contorted. But none was that of the secretary.

Another explosion erupted, taking out the façade of an office block, the shockwave flinging people to the ground. Many were hit or buried by falling masonry. As he buckled at the knees his eyes levelled on the bodies of his two agents, Dave and Becky, stacked against the second SUV like effigies. He half crawled, half scrambled over to them. Their heads had flopped forward. They both had centimetre-wide entry wounds in the backs of their necks. Executed, he thought, resisting the urge to gag. He’d known Dave for three years, and Becky had been married just two months.

As grey ash settled on the talc-like dust that already smeared his suit he inched over the rubble. His eyes felt as if they were melting, the stinging sensation so great that he groaned. But he knew he had to focus.

The rear vehicle was covered by chunks of concrete and twisted iron girders. Wincing, he caught sight of four MSD agents strewn around it. They looked as if they’d been hit by a hundred rounds, their bare heads lacerated and unrecognizable. He moved back and rolled under the middle SUV, his jacket tearing on a protruding piece of metal. As he emerged on the other side the smoke had almost cleared.

Then he saw her. An MSD agent ran by her side, pursued by five armed men. They wore ballistic vests, heavy Kevlar helmets, blast-resistant goggles and respirators. He couldn’t risk firing his SIG because, although the crowd had thinned out here, there were still enough people to hinder a clear shot. If it hadn’t been for the pursuers, he knew the agent would’ve flung her to the ground and covered her body to protect it from careering debris. Now the guy was doing the right thing by getting her out of the danger zone in the only manner available to him.

Feeling a surge of adrenalin jump-start his muscles, Tom pushed himself up and broke into a sprint.

As the secretary reached the remnants of a fruit store he saw one of her pursuers kneel. He raised what looked like an M4 carbine, his eye pressed to a scope, a red-dot laser beam showing up on the back of the agent’s unprotected neck. A shot rang out, and the agent fell. The secretary stopped, her hands going to her head, clearly traumatized. When the men reached her, she was lifted off her feet.

“Jesus.”

Rushing up the road, Tom vaulted over clumps of shattered bricks and mounds of concrete and steel. The men carrying the secretary turned down a side alley, flanked by jerry-built buildings. Three re-emerged and crouched down at the entrance, emptying their magazines into a small group of policemen who’d appeared on the other side of the road. They were all killed or maimed instantly. Tom kept close to the building line, his SIG hovering above a low wall. It was a risky position. If there was another catastrophic explosion, he could be buried. If it happened next door, the shock wave could travel down the wall and kill him.

Seeing the men disappear, he bent down and moved forward, just as a Pakistani squad car came screeching around the far bend. It raced up the opposite end of the road, its siren blaring. But the men returned, together with another, carrying a compact RPG. Tom fired a couple of rounds, although he had to dive for cover behind a concrete pillar immediately afterwards to avoid a volley.

After a few seconds, he risked glancing around it. The telltale trail of white-grey smoke was spewing out of the rear of the rocket launcher.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, realizing that his hearing had returned to normal.

The police car was shunted sideways, a dust-filled cloud enveloping it. Shards of glass and red-hot chassis shrapnel ripped through the air. He hoped the occupants had died on impact, because the decimated vehicle was engulfed by flames soon afterwards, the tails of burning gasoline curling over the imploded windows and fractured bodywork.

Seeing the men retreat, Tom jogged forward, speaking into his radio to the temporary command centre, his laboured breath resembling an asthmatic’s as he reported what had happened and where the secretary was likely to be. He was told that a helicopter was on its way. On its way, he thought. It was meant to be overhead.

He stopped a few metres from the alley entrance. He heard car engines revving furiously, then the distinctive sound of the helicopter above. He looked up and, squinting against the white sun, saw that it was the Pakistani police. He waved his arms, and pointed in desperation in the direction of the cars.

Reaching the alley, he ducked down as a swath of bullets was fired from a HK, brick fragments raining down on him. But he’d managed to glimpse at least five cars, parked hood to trunk, although it’d been impossible to tell which one the secretary was in. The helicopter hovered low, the wash from the rotor blades creating a whirlwind of dust and litter. Kneeling in the open side door, a police commando scanned the ground through the day-scope on his G3 assault rifle. The helicopter is her only hope, Tom thought.

But then he noticed movement below it. A man had appeared on the edge of the flat roof opposite, the unmistakable shape of a Stinger perched on his right shoulder. Tom shouted out to the commando, his words lost in the cacophony of voices coming from behind him, and the wave of sirens from fast-approaching fire crews and ambulances. He aimed his SIG at the man, but there were a good three hundred metres between them. He let off four rounds, but realized there was nothing he could do. The effective range of the handgun was a third of that on a good day.

Stunned, he watched the flash at the tail end of the Stinger’s launch tube, the small engine falling away after about three metres, propelling the missile at a rate of over a thousand miles per hour. Using infrared to lock onto the heat in the helicopter’s exhaust, the missile impacted the target with devastating precision. The explosion created a fireball and caused the rotor blades to buckle and the windshields to shatter. As the helicopter lost altitude, zigzagging like a massive kite, a second explosion occurred as the fuel ignited. It fell the remainder of the distance to the ground horizontally, black smoke spewing from the tangled metal. When it hit the asphalt, the rotor blades snapped off and splintered, sending a flurry of lethal fragments through the air.

Tom gritted his teeth and ran forward, ducking down as he reached the alley entrance. But the men had disappeared and the cars, half on the narrow sidewalk under awnings and store overhangs, sped away, each one taking a different exit along the rutted track.

He realized he had one option left open to him.

6.

Tom turned towards the entrance of the run-down apartment block where the man had fired the Stinger. If he could capture him alive, it might be a start. He pressed the PTT button, waited for the static to clear, and reported his position, asking for back-up. He raced across the road, jumping over chunks of jagged metal and smouldering craters, oblivious now to the pepper-like stinking still in his dark, streaming eyes.

As he got to the door of the building he saw that the security system was one step up from a Yale lock. Phlegm rose in his throat, impeding his breathing. He bent over and spat it out, the taste in his mouth like pure acid. He ejected the clip from his SIG, took a fresh one from the pouch on his belt. Slipping it in, he chambered a round in what appeared to be one smooth action. Deftly.

He shielded his eyes with one hand and shot open the entrance door, the rapid impact of the rounds acting like a ripsaw, the spent cases spinning to his right and clanking on the glass-ridden floor. He ducked in, his pulse racing, his shirt sticking to his aching body. There was an elevator directly in front, a concrete staircase to the right. He decided to take the stairs.

He reached the top in twenty seconds. A slick of sweat covered his ribboned forehead, and he was breathing heavily, the debilitating combination of tear gas, inhaled smoke and the build-up of lactic acid taking its toll. He hadn’t met anyone on the way up, but had heard muted shouts and cries from the apartments he’d passed. There was a solid wooden door leading to the flat roof, but it was padlocked. You don’t shoot padlocks with a round—the ricochet could kill you, he’d told a rookie agent once. It was a good rule. One he wasn’t about to discount now.

He spun around, saw a red firefighter’s axe in a metal case on the breeze-block wall. Below it, a regular fire extinguisher and a couple of gas canisters. He used the butt of the SIG as a hammer on the Plexiglas cover. After the first hit, the plastic broke, and he jerked out the axe from its perch. He holstered his weapon, and held the axe firmly in both hands. He stood to the side of the door, and began hacking at the wood, knocking out the lock with the splintering chunks.

Dropping the axe, he drew his SIG. He kicked open the door, but ducked down behind the wall immediately afterwards. It was a sound move. A burst of automatic rounds tore into the doorframe and lintel, and peppered the wall to the rear. He felt blood run down his face, but felt no pain save for something akin to a paper cut. He brushed his forehead, pulled out a large splinter.

He glanced around the door, seeing a portion of the ill-kempt rooftop: an array of rusted TV aerials, mouldy tarps, and a weather-beaten awning hung over plastic chairs. There was no visible sign of the shooter. He moved back, picked up one of the canisters, and held it before him. Turning, he launched it into the centre of the rooftop.

As he sank down against the wall a second burst was unleashed. But he’d figured out the trajectory of the bullets. Smarting, he aimed his SIG around the doorway at the canister. Fired. The round pierced the metal and a huge mushroom of white smoke spewed out, the safety valve preventing it from exploding into a thousand lethal shards as he’d hoped it would. He stepped back, grabbed the axe and flung it, so that it somersaulted handle over blade to the left.

As it clattered to the concrete floor he darted out from the wall, using the smoke as cover. He dived into a forward roll to the right. Springing up into a crouch position, he glimpsed a man in black fatigues and a gas mask, holding a MAC-10 machine pistol: a stubby weapon fitted with a suppressor and a holographic sight. Just as the smoke was thinning Tom shot him twice in the legs, guessing he was wearing ballistic plates. The pistol fell from his victim’s hands. He ran over.

The man was still, save for his twitching left leg. Tom didn’t have the time to frisk him, the Stinger being nowhere in sight. He spoke into his mic, reporting his position and saying that one terrorist was down. Badly wounded.

He checked behind a pile of bricks, and noticed the curved iron handrails of a fire escape on the rear wall about four metres away. He sprinted over, saw a man descending three-quarters of the way down, the Stinger strapped to his back. The ground-to-air weapon weighed a mere sixteen kilograms, but it could hit anything flying below four-thousand metres. The helicopter had been hovering at less than thirty and hadn’t stood a chance.

The fire escape was rusted and unstable, the steps grating against the concrete under the weight of the black-clad terrorist. But at least it reached all the way to the side road beneath, which was the reason the access door was locked, Tom guessed.

If the man had a handgun, Tom knew he would be ridiculously vulnerable. But if he used his SIG to shoot him from above, he wouldn’t be any further forward. Unless he just winged him, and the man didn’t die from the fall. Concluding that that was far too risky, Tom spoke into his mic and asked for back-up again, said that the area should be cordoned off. The short reply crackled over the radio: “With what?” He figured all the nearby local resources were still dealing with the devastation outside the hospital.

He eased over the ledge, his right foot hitting the third step. He saw the man look up, a tinted gas mask and woollen skullcap covering his face and head. The man half slid down the remainder of the steps, hitting the ground with a crunch of his boots. Tom hurtled after him, almost losing his balance twice, the fire escape threatening to bust loose from the wall and either swing under his weight or collapse backwards. Conscious that the man could escape, he placed his feet outside the steps. He plummeted the last five metres, crouching into a parachute roll at the bottom.

He heard a motorcycle engine and saw the man hobbling along, his left leg dragging behind him. He was heading towards a teenage boy sitting astride the bike. The boy, twisted around on the two-man saddle and wearing only thin white cotton and sandals, was calling out and beckoning with his hand. The man released the clip on the canvas bag, and the Stinger fell to the floor. In his condition, the dead weight was slowing him to a crawl.

The side street was narrow, bordered by open-fronted stores, a smattering of people running about or pointing at the flames and smoke rising above the buildings opposite. A motorcycle was undoubtedly the best option. Tom broke into a run behind the shooter, saw him cock his leg over the back of the motorcycle and grab the saddle bars. He realized he had to act decisively. He stopped, bent down onto one knee, his lungs heaving. He raised his SIG, steadying his aim with his left hand, the tear gas still forming a milky sheen on his eyes. The motorcycle sped away, the engine screeching like a kicked cat as the back tyre skidded and threw up dust and grit.

You got one shot, Tom thought. Make it your best.

7.

The SIG bucked and the spent case skipped out. Tom didn’t move. The motorcycle was doing maybe thirty when it lurched to the left at a ninety-degree angle, smashing into a stack of wooden cages full of chickens. The few people in the street ran for cover, the women pulling at their hijabs. Tom stood up just as the owner of the store stormed out, a rotund middle-aged man wearing a long white shirt. He dragged the boy up by his arm, and cuffed him over the head. But when he saw Tom running towards him, gun in hand, he rushed back into the store.

Tom pointed the SIG at the boy, gestured to him to stand still. The shooter was strewn on the ground, the motorcycle’s battered fuel tank lying on his right thigh. He lifted his gas mask, clearly struggling to breathe. Gasping, he held it out for a second before letting it drop back. Tom didn’t see his face, just the sunlight glinting off a gold necklace, half lost among the curling black hairs, damp with sweat. He was a tall man, Tom estimated, perhaps six-four, his limbs beneath his dark fatigues appearing well-muscled. But he wasn’t strapped.

Holstering his SIG, Tom bent over, about to jerk the man up, put an arm lock on him and half drag him back to … what? he thought. The Pakistani police would get him talking soon enough, but that kind of harsh treatment made a man say anything to save his ass. He thought briefly if he should get the CIA to pick him up and take him to a remote, classified detention centre. Maybe he should ask him some questions of his own.

Halfway down, Tom saw the boy, who looked about seventeen years old, pull out a handgun from his waistband. He pointed it at Tom, who recognized it as a Kel-Tec P11 semi-auto; a little over thirteen centimetres long, with rounded edges designed for concealment. But it was chambered in 9mm Lugar and could stop a gorilla in its tracks. They were rare in this part of the world, so Tom figured it was a gift from the kidnappers; an inducement, perhaps.

The boy shouted at him to step back. Tom straightened up, told the boy in Urdu to relax. The boy’s eyes were glazed, he noticed, his face unusually gaunt, the skin sallow and spot-ridden. There was something in those oyster-flesh eyes that told Tom the boy was both unstable and fearless.

The man managed to ease out from under the motorcycle and, grunting, struggled up. Tom stretched towards him, but the boy shot at the dirt between them and he stepped back. The man remained silent, turned and limped off. The boy smiled at Tom, his teeth stained a dull yellow. An opiate addict, Tom thought. He knew that, despite being a Muslim country, Pakistan was awash with drugs. The kid was high or coming down. Either way, he was capable of putting a bullet in his chest.

Tom offered him his watch and wallet. The boy just grinned. Seven metres, he thought, the takedown zone. The kid was less than two metres away, but the gun was pointing at Tom’s head now, and making a grab at it would be suicidal.

He watched the man slink into an alley and cursed himself. But even if he hadn’t holstered his SIG, he knew he wouldn’t have shot the boy. He’d joined the DS to protect people, and that meant he might have to kill. But not like this. Not a kid on drugs with no immediate and direct danger to his charge.

Tom said he should put the gun down, that he’d done his job and that he would vouch for him. Truth was, he needed him alive. With the man gone, he was a potential link to those who had abducted the secretary. Although he knew that meant probable brutality at the hands of the Pakistanis, there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

He could see that the boy was wavering, that, despite the drugs, he didn’t have it in him to kill a man without cause. He would wait. The boy would succumb to his prompting, and if he didn’t drop the weapon he would risk disarming him as he lowered it, just in case he changed his mind. He kept talking, his tone sober and sympathetic. The boy’s head began to bow, his eyes blinking frantically, his mouth forming words he couldn’t speak.

He’s going to drop it, Tom thought.

A shot rang out. The boy buckled. Instinctively, Tom reached out to him, but he knew he was dead as soon as he slumped to the ground. A fountain of blood had spurted out from his left temple as the round impacted. A split second later, another round pinged through the air just centimetres from Tom’s head. He drew his SIG, and, spinning around and ducking down, he heard rapid fire.

He saw Steve Coombs about six metres away, his gun raised towards the flat roof of an adjacent store. His face was creased, his body relaxed. He had both hands on his SIG and was leaning forward a little from the waist, as if he were on a range doing target practice. But the roof was empty.

Tom turned back around, holstering his SIG. He took off his jacket and, bending down, placed it over the kid’s upper body and head. He heard Steve come up behind him, sniffing and clearing his throat. Tom figured the unknown assassin had killed the boy to prevent him from talking. He glanced over his shoulder just as his friend jerked out the silver crucifix he always wore around his neck. Placing it to his lips, Steve kissed the crucified Christ.

8.

Linda lay face down in the rear footwell of a car that was now travelling at a sensible speed. She had a boot on her neck and another on her ankles. Her hands and feet had been secured with flex-cuffs. She was gagged with grey masking tape and a hessian sack had been placed over her head. The car radio blared out what sounded like a string of Pakistani pop songs. She hadn’t seen her captors’ faces. They hadn’t spoken. She’d travelled in the footwell before, after a nut had fired what turned out to be a starting pistol at her. An agent had covered her whole body with his and hadn’t let her up for what seemed like miles. This time it was different.

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn’t help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.

Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn’t know about.

Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.

But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.

She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.

Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me.

9.

An hour and a half later, after undergoing an initial debriefing at the temporary command centre, Tom showed his blue and gold DS badge to a cordon of harried-looking policemen dressed in light-khaki pants and maroon shirts, guarding the now-shattered glass doors that led to the hospital lobby. The flanks were occupied by a platoon of US Marines, some of whom were handing out water bottles and the contents of med kits to survivors.

A CIA paramilitary operative stood immediately inside. He held an M6A2 carbine, said he’d just arrived from the embassy with ten colleagues. Edging past him, Tom was hit by the shocking sight of the aftermath of the attack.

The injured lay on gurneys or on blankets on the floor. Every centimetre of the ground-floor corridors seemed to be a mass of writhing bodies, their moans and shrieks reverberating in his ears. At least twenty doctors, nurses and paramedics were doing what they could, although it was obvious that they were overwhelmed by both the number of casualties and the severity of their wounds.

Tom knew for sure that three of his protective detail had been killed in the attack; another two badly injured, he’d been told. Mark Jennings, the youngest agent, a veterinarian’s son from Arkansas, had been shot in the head. He’d been examined by a specialist who’d been flown in by an MH-53 search and rescue helicopter from Islamabad’s Maroof International Hospital.

Tom eased by a woman doctor, her latex gloves soaked in blood. Two orderlies were holding down a young boy as the doctor attempted to give him a shot of morphine. A woman with angular features, whom Tom took for his mother, was hysterical, shaking her hands at the ceiling and wailing. He pushed open a fire door, and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor.

A muscular man in his mid-twenties stood guard outside one of the private rooms. He wore a flak jacket over a short-sleeved shirt, and held a HK sub-machine gun before his chest. He turned as Tom entered the corridor, nodded briefly. Tom figured he was CIA, too.

The door’s glass pane was criss-crossed with wire, although Tom glimpsed a bed beside the far wall, a hastily boarded-up window above it. He strolled in, a closed-mouthed smile slicing across his face. It was all he could muster. The room was a dull white and smelt faintly of mould. But at least the AC was functioning, although it sounded like an antique generator.

As he walked over to the bed Tom saw half a dozen tubes coming out of Jennings, including an IV drip. He guessed the poor guy was lucky to be alive. When he reached him, he was lying flat with an expressionless face, a bloated dull-red-and-yellowish bruise on his left cheek like a piece of ripped plum. The top of his head had been bandaged, his hair shaved.

“Lyric?” he asked, as soon as he registered Tom’s face.

“She’s still missing.”

“Goddamnit!”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her before the day is out,” Tom said, lying. There was no point in making Jennings feel worse than he already did.

“You think?”

“Sure.”

“Thank God.”

“You’ll be here for a few days,” Tom said. “Then we’ll get you home.”

“You gotta gum? I gave up the smokes five years since. I still get the urge, especially after getting shot in the head. And this pillow’s as lumpy as hell and smells like it’s had guinea pigs nesting in it.”

“I’ll be sure to get you a new one. What’s the diagnosis?” Tom asked, handing Jennings a stick of gum.

“The doc told me that the chances of surviving a head shot are about five per cent. And of those who live, only one in ten escapes suffering permanent disability. A bullet likes to rattle around in the skull, turning the brain into scrambled eggs, according to him. It’s a miracle, Tom, beating those odds. But they can’t operate. It’s too dangerous. Guess I’ll have to carry it around as a souvenir.”

“That’s good to hear. I think,” Tom said, glad that Jennings was taking it so well.

“It hurt like hell, Tom. Like a goddamned mustang mistook my head for a rattlesnake.” Jennings winced, as if reacting to the initial impact. “How does it look?”

“Like that mustang had a grudge,” Tom said, trying to keep the mood light.

“I collapsed. The sky turned red. Thought I was dying. I thought I was dying, Tom. And I don’t mind telling you, I was terrified.”

Yeah, too good to be true, Tom thought. He could see that Jennings was getting upset. It was a natural reaction. He knew that people who’d sustained head injuries, or sometimes just had their noses broken, often suffered severe depression soon afterwards. But at least the headshot had turned out to be better than a round in the leg or shoulder, where massive blood vessels were situated. In Nigeria, he’d watched a man bleed out in less than five minutes after being shot in the upper thigh. A medic had told him the femoral artery, which lay close to the surface of the skin, had been severed, and had retracted back up into the pelvis. And the shoulder housed a ball-and-socket joint that was all but inoperable if it got pulverised by a bullet.

Tom put his hand on Jennings’s forearm. “It’ll be all right. Trust me.”

“Who were they?”

“We don’t know for certain. But you did your job.”

“The hell I did. I got shot and Lyric has been kidnapped by a bunch of psycho Islamic terrorists, the way I see it. We lost some good people, too. Becky was a fine woman. It’s a goddamned disaster,” he said, using his palm to wipe his eyes dry.

Tom sucked his bottom lip, nodding. “There’s a CIA guy outside if you need anything.”

“He should be looking for her. It’s a waste of resources. Nobody gives a shit about me. You think someone’s gonna creep up the fire escape and smother me with a pillow, or inject poison into one of these tubes?”

“No, I don’t. Now get some rest.”

He grabbed Tom’s wrist. “Find her, Tom. Just find her.”

“I made a promise to her. I will keep it.”

“And kill them. Kill them for murdering our own and doing this.”

Tom smiled, weakly. “Rest. Then home.”

He patted Jennings on the arm and left.

“He’ll be fine, thanks for asking,” Tom said to the CIA guy, just wanting to take it all out on someone, but regretting it instantly afterwards.

The CIA man remained silent. Just stared hard. Tom guessed he didn’t even have the kudos to rouse a response any more. Besides, often people who said nothing said a helluva lot; all of it derogatory.

He’d been told to return to the embassy where, no doubt, he would be subjected to the second of many frame-by-frame debriefings on what had gone so badly wrong. As he reached the fire door at the end of the corridor he shoved it open. He stopped at the top of the stairs and sank down, engulfed by a sense of guilt and failure that had no hope of personal resolution, and not for the first time.

Involuntarily, he saw his mother’s face. He’d broken a promise to her, too.

10.

The car had taken a series of tight curves before slowing down to maybe fifteen miles an hour. Linda guessed she’d been in the car for an hour or more. She’d heard sirens and people shouting and screaming at first, but now there was just the sound of the radio. Her captors still hadn’t spoken a word. No contact, either, save for the boots on her neck and ankles, as if they were restraining a bad-tempered dog.

The car stopped and the music died, but the engine remained ticking over. She heard what sounded like a chain being drawn across metal, the creaking of a door opening. The car moved forward slowly before coming to a halt once more, but this time the engine was switched off. The boots were removed from her neck and ankles. She felt the plasticuffs restraint on her lower shins being cut, and was manhandled out of the rear footwell. The cramp in her legs made her wobble at first, but strong hands grasped her upper arms, helping her to stand upright.

Apart from her pantyhose, her feet were bare, and as she inched over the gravel the edges dug into her heels. No one spoke. The hood still covered her head. Will they kill me now? she thought, the gag preventing her from pleading for her life even if she’d succumbed to the urge. She decided not to struggle, to maintain her dignity and continue to comply, just as Tom had told her to. Then she thought that that was a pathetic thought. What choice do I have?

She sensed she was going to retch, but gulped a couple of times and the bile eased back down her slender throat. If I get out of this, things will change, she thought. I will spend more time with John and the girls. Maybe retire from public life and take up a teaching post at a university. She realized then that she had to tell herself these things, because the alternative was to start to go ever so slightly mad.

She was led a few steps forward before her hands were cut free, and she rotated her wrists to help the blood flow freely there. A hand clasped her left wrist, and moved it to something cold and smooth, which she realized was a handrail. An arm linked hers, and she was led down a flight of steps. Underground, she thought. Dear God, why are they taking me underground?

At the bottom of the steps, she heard the same sounds of a chain being removed and a door opening, the crunch of more footsteps on gravel. A tug of her arm prompted her to move again, and she realized that she was going inside, because the sun had stopped beating on her head. It was cool now, a smell redolent of blocked drains.

She went through three more doors, hearing the hinges creak and the doors shut behind her. She suddenly sensed that her feet were moving across something that felt like tiles. Yes, tiles, she thought, feeling the line of grout with her toes as she shuffled along.

Finally, she was held still.

When the hood was removed and she registered the contents of the room, tears welled in her eyes.

11.

In the Situation Room at the White House, the President of the United States, the fifty-year-old Robert Simmons, a Nebraskan with the lean body of a marathon runner and swept-back greying hair, had already convened a meeting. He sat on a swivel chair at the head of a mahogany table surrounded by two tiers of curved computer terminals. The pensive faces of the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC – and Deputy Director Houseman peered out from separate flat-panel videoconference screens.

Those members of the National Security Council who’d been in DC, including the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor and the vice president, had joined the commander-in-chief here. It was 03:05 in the capital and everyone present had been woken from their sleep as soon as the crisis had begun.

The basement room was an intelligence management centre used to conduct secure communications. The president watched a CNN news report on a TV monitor, showing the aftermath of the secretary’s abduction in Islamabad, the dishevelled female reporter’s voice cracking with emotion as she spoke. She stood in front of a chaotic scene: black smoke belched from the remnants of a building, the blaze being tackled by three fire crews. The LED lights of ambulances and police cars flickered. Sirens wailed. The dead and injured were still being carried away on stretchers. People were crying and shouting, while others simply sat on the kerb, dazed and bloodied.

“The Pakistan military, which formed a provisional government after a bloodless coup eleven months ago, are blaming the Leopards of Islam, the Pakistani Shia terrorist organization, for the attack and the kidnapping of the US Secretary of State, Linda Carlyle,” the reporter said. “The Leopards, who carried out an assassination attempt on the Pakistani President in Washington DC on March 10th this year, killing thirty people in the capital, have remained silent. But a source at the US Embassy here in Islamabad has revealed that a threat against the secretary’s life was made to the embassy by a man claiming to represent the Leopards less than two hours before this latest outrage. There is mounting speculation that the secretary may have been kidnapped in order to facilitate the release of twelve Pakistani men alleged to have taken part in the March 10th atrocity, who are currently in US protective custody at an unspecified location prior to their trial for multiple counts of murder and the attempt on the Pakistani President’s life.”

“Turn it off, Angie,” the president said.

The flat-screen cut to black.

“God only knows what she’s suffering,” he said.

“I hate to say this, Mr President, but she could be dead already,” the Secretary of Defense said, preferring to be formal in such circumstances, the fingers of his right hand propping up his ample head as he rested his elbow on the table.

“Don’t you think I know that, Jack; and how the hell did that reporter know the secretary received a death threat this morning?”

“The caller spoke to the switchboard operator, Mr President,” Deputy Director Houseman said, his hard features filling the screen, highlighting the mottling on his cheeks and hawk’s nose.

“I’m aware of that also. Find out for sure. What are the chances the Leopards are to blame?”

“Without any intelligence reports to go on, I’d say about sixty per cent, sir,” Houseman replied.

“They’d do it just to humiliate us. I don’t want the Bureau of Diplomatic Security dealing with this. The CIA will assume operational control. I will personally oversee matters from here.”

“Mr President, the White House is on high alert, but I’d prefer it if you boarded Air Force One, at least for the next few hours,” the secretary said, shuffling uneasily in his chair now, his forty-eight-inch waist spilling over his pants.

“That isn’t going to happen, Jack,” the president replied.

The secretary rubbed his flabby neck before shaking his head.

“I want the Joint Chief and the Under-Secretary back home today. I want the embassy closed in forty-eight hours. Is that clear, Bill?”

“Understood, Mr President,” Houseman said from the screen.

“Closing the embassy might not be the best move,” the secretary said.

“I don’t want another US citizen killed over there. The DS has taken a beating. The country will be seeing quite enough coffins draped in the flag. Quite enough.”

The president took soundings from each of the assembled group. At this stage, no one was able to come up with a coherent plan. Any plan, in fact.

“We have replays, Mr President,” a defence advisor said, sitting in the second row of chairs behind the table. “On terminal two.”

The president and the others watched in silence as the images of the kidnapping unfolded. The smoke obscured the view as it was intended to. The drone operators, fully trained pilots at Creech Air Force Base, had focused on the secretary being bundled down the alley. But the Pakistani police helicopter exploding into a white flash hadn’t helped, and in any event it was impossible to make out which of the five cars that had sped off from underneath the overhangs and awnings had been used to carry her.

“They parked there purposely. They knew we’d have Linda covered,” the Secretary of Defense said.

The president knew that drones could track insurgents with lasers to pinpoint them for pursuing Special Forces on the ground. But one of the few times he’d felt the multibillion-dollar technology would earn its keep, it had been rendered useless by a simple yet very effective diversionary tactic.

“Goddamn it, Jack. This is awful. I want everyone we have on this. Everyone, do you understand?”

“All leave has been cancelled for the FBI at the Hoover Building until further notice. The CIA at Langley and the NSA at Fort Meade, too,” he replied.

“Mr President,” Houseman said.

“Yes, Bill.”

“I should point out that we have no evidence to date that the secretary was taken in a car. She could’ve disappeared into one of the buildings. The cars coulda been decoys.”

“Either way, find her. Just find her,” the president said. “I want thirty-minute progress reports for the next twelve hours. And I mean progress.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Houseman said, his voice sombre.

The room fell silent again. The president stood up, followed by the assembled men and women. “I think we should pray now,” he said, bowing his head, knowing the Secretary of State was a deeply religious woman.

Truth be told, he didn’t know what else to say at this juncture. But he felt that a moment of reflection would, at least, assist a sharpening of minds. A resolve to follow every possible lead, legal or otherwise.

12.

Tom was slumped forward in a grey, blow-moulded plastic chair. His head was in his hands, his elbows resting on a Formica table centimetres from an untouched cup of coffee. The interview room at the embassy was no more than twice the size of a suit closet; stuffy and windowless.

He’d been questioned by a fresh-faced counterterrorism agent who’d looked as if he’d belonged to a college fraternity for tiddlywinks. Tom recounted the attack outside the hospital, sucking in air to calm himself. The kid repeated the questions too often for his liking, as if he were trying to trip him up. Tom didn’t have anything to hide. What he’d done was standard procedure, although he felt sick to his stomach. If the lead agent had to neutralize a threat, the support agents took his or her place. He’d acted professionally at all times, even though he’d failed. But when the kid had said that he’d recommend a psychological report be obtained, Tom had felt like punching the wall.

After the debriefing, he’d cleaned up in a restroom as best he’d been able. He’d put ointment on his forehead to heal the splinter wound, and checked his multiple bruises, which were deep-red blemishes covering a quarter of his body. He’d noticed that his angular features had hardened, the long shifts and many time-zone changes ageing him. But there was something else in the olive-skinned reflection that stared back from the restroom mirror: guilt at escaping almost without injury. He’d learned that all of the MSD agents were dead or seriously wounded. A total of twenty-three locals had died, another sixty-eight needing surgery of some sort. A third of the Pakistani police deployed there had died also.

Apart from the carnage, the secretary’s GPS tracking devices weren’t working. She could be anywhere, and as yet no one had a clue. He didn’t even know if she was still alive. No ransom demand had been made. Jennings had been right. It was a disaster.

After changing into a sports jacket and fawn-coloured slacks, he’d returned to the interview room as ordered.

Still slouched in the chair, he awaited another round of questions. He fingered a small wooden Buddha he kept in his breast pocket. It wasn’t a good-luck charm, but rather the symbol of a personal philosophy he’d cultivated over time.

Get it together, he thought. Just get it together and take it from there. He resolved to stop being so maudlin and see if at least he could do something positive to help find her. No, scratch that, he thought. I have to find her. He’d made a promise and he wasn’t going to renege on it. But how? In truth, he had no idea where to start. Then it struck him. The guy he’d shot on the roof had to have been found and recovered. If he was still alive, that might be something. And the two people who assaulted him might have been found by now. He’d been told that the man had escaped in the confusion. He already knew the woman had. But they were known. They were on a list.

He heard the door open. A man with massive hands sat in the chair opposite him, struggled to get comfortable in the confined space.

“They build this place for midgets?” he said.

Tom looked up. It was Dan Crane, a near-legendary CIA operative. Crane smiled, the skin on his wide face crinkling around his robin’s-egg-blue eyes.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“You don’t want to know what I feel like.”

“I can guess.”

Tom had come across Crane when he had spent two years in New Delhi, protecting the US embassy eight years ago. He’d seen him a couple of times since; once in DC and another at Langley when he’d been guarding the secretary. Crane had a reputation for sardonic humour of the un-PC variety, but he knew the Middle East and South Asia better than anyone else in the agency. He spoke five languages and had an encyclopaedic mind. He’d been held hostage by Hezbollah for three months back in the late eighties. He still had the remnants of scars on his neck and hands, off-white blemishes that looked like skin grafts. Tom didn’t want to think about where else he might have scars. His fame had been assured after he’d overseen the analysts who’d pinpointed bin Laden in Abbottabad. That also meant that he could get away with a lot of things that for others would’ve led to a reprimand, or worse. Crane was an offbeat kind of guy to say the least.

“So they all got away. Even the sonofabitch you say you shot on the roof and the one who fired the Stinger,” Crane said, waving his hand through the air.

“Wait, the man on the roof was incapable of walking. How the hell did he disappear?” Tom asked, straightening up.

Crane held up his hands. “You tell me?”

“You don’t believe me?” Tom wondered if Crane had been sent to do what the kid hadn’t had the experience or guile to accomplish: make him say something to incriminate himself.

“I didn’t say that. I just said he wasn’t there when the command centre asked the police to pick him up.”

“What about the man and the woman in the official line-up? They were all supposed to be vetted.”

“They were,” Crane said. “The Pakistani police raided their houses. Guess what? They weren’t there. Now, let’s go through it again.”

Jesus Christ, Tom thought. Back to square one.

Tom was questioned for a further fifteen minutes. Crane nodded his approval for most of the time, and never once lost his temper or even appeared irritated. When he finished, he looked genuinely sympathetic.

“That’s it. Same as I told the kid,” Tom said.

“Don’t beat yourself up too bad. The guys on the Kennedy detail let it affect their whole lives, even though everyone knows they did all they could. Now it’s home for you. There’s a flight taking the Under-Secretary of Defense and some brass back at fifteen hundred. You’ll be on it.”

“I wanna stay. Help out.”

Crane sighed. “It’s outta the DS’s hands. POTUS’s orders,” he said, using the acronym for the president. “It’s down to the spooks now.”

“She’s still my responsibility. I got a week left as head of the detail. A guy like you can understand that.”

“It’s not up to me. Besides, you’re probably still in shock. And don’t assume you know what makes me tick. You don’t,” Crane said, pushing the chair back against the wall, attempting to ride it.

“Whatever. But I’m not leaving.”

“You disobeying a direct order from POTUS?”

“He’s at the top of the food chain. He don’t concern himself with cleaner fish.”

Crane raised his thick eyebrows. “Wow, you got some self-esteem issues there, Tom. You gonna sprout gills?”

Tom smiled, weakly.

“Seriously, you’ll get through this. You’re a nice guy, Tom. Go home.”

They batted the issue around for a further five minutes. Finally, Crane agreed to pass it by Deputy Director Houseman, who was staying behind to coordinate matters on the ground.

“Appreciate it,” Tom said.

Crane struggled to get his bulk out of the chair. “Interview rooms for midgets. Jesus. They’ll be ordering us to carry stepladders next so they can climb up and feel less intimated.”

“Technically they’re called dwarves. Back home they like to be called little people. And they are the same as you and me,” Tom said.

“I’m joking with ya. You know that, right?”

“Sure I do,” Tom said.

“I know they’re the same. They just come up to your goddamned waist.”

Tom rubbed his temple and sighed. Crane was smart, but he was a jerk, too. He glanced up. “So come on. How do you figure that guy on the roof disappeared?”

Crane was looking serious, his eyes narrowing. “He was evidence. I guess the Leopards had some plainclothes guys on the ground, who cleaned up before the Pakistani cops got there.”

“Yeah. Sure they did.”

“A conspiracy theorist, huh. Well, it won’t come as any surprise to you when I say that if the deputy director lets you stay, don’t trust anybody. You hear me, Tom?”

Tom thought for a moment. “That include you?”

13.

An hour later, Crane told Tom that he’d swung it, and that the old man had asked him to join them for an initial in thirty minutes’ time.

The secure conference room was thirty metres square, the massive windows obscured by gleaming Venetian blinds. Tom sat at a large pine table on one of the matching rattan-wicker chairs, his brown loafers resting on coral-blue tiles. Crane said that it had been swept for bugs ten minutes before. Behind the locked door, two Marines ensured that they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“The ISI are playing hard ball,” Houseman said, cradling a fist. “But we have no jurisdiction here. They won’t allow the FBI to investigate. Anyone else in the US intelligence community, either.”

“They’re in a difficult position,” Crane said. “If they’re seen to be too pro-West, they’ll play into the hands of the Pakistan Taliban. And they got enough on their plate with the Shia Leopards just now. On the other hand, if they alienate us, they won’t get what they want.” He pinched an ear lobe, looking a little smug.

“Which is exactly?” Tom asked.

“About ten US divisions heading into Tehran,” Houseman said.

“We should leave them to fight their own battles. The Pakistanis double-crossed us,” Crane said, his tone surly. “Goddamned lying sons of bitches who caused the deaths of thousands of US and coalition forces.”

Tom knew Crane was referring to bin Laden. If it weren’t for the Pakistanis, he would’ve been captured in Tora Bora back in 2001. A bunch of al-Qaeda and Taliban lieutenants, too. After that, the ISI babysat thousands of insurgents in the Pakistan Tribal Areas. Then they just picked up where they’d left off. When bin Laden’s six-year holiday in Abbottabad was factored in, Tom was inclined to agree with Crane.

“That maybe, but I want to know what we’re going to do to find Lyric?” he asked, a little more bluntly than he’d intended.

“My money’s still on the Leopards,” said Crane. “Backed by the Iranians.”

“The ISI had to be involved,” Tom said. “The assault couldn’t have happened if they’d done what they said they would. The helicopter didn’t arrive on time. The snipers just disappeared. And it was too well organized.”

Houseman cleared his throat. “Listen, son. The Leopards have ex-military in their ranks. They were capable of it. The Iranians equip them with top weaponry. We ain’t dealing with farmers with AK-47s here. The building was razed to the ground by thermobaric charges.” He snatched up a bottle of water, took a frustrated pull.

Tom saw Crane staring at him.

“When a country is going down the tubes, people start to do all sorts of weird things. It could be as simple as rogue elements,” Crane said. “Or just plain corrupt ones. God knows it’s a national disease. Besides, the ISI are saying it was Shia traitors in their ranks. Shia cops, too. You remember when Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, got assassinated?”

Tom nodded.

“Then you’ll recall it was two of her own bodyguards. Peppered her with thirty rounds. Sikhs, who did it for revenge after the army stormed their temple and killed hundreds. Religion in these parts overrides any other affiliation.”

Tom studied Crane’s face. He guessed he’d been a handsome man once. But now his features looked tired, his eyes hooded, his mouth drooping at the sides.

Houseman banged the bottle on the table, as if he wanted Tom to stop staring. Clenching his jaw muscles, the old man said, “Up until the generals took over here, the Pakistanis were talking about declaring war on us if we attacked the Iranians. That gives you a hint at how complicated this area of the world is. They were buddies; now the Pakistanis regard Iran as an existential threat.”

“I don’t get it,” Tom said.

“You obviously ain’t heard of the Iran-Pak gas pipeline,” Crane said. “The Pakistanis have an ongoing energy crisis. They figured sidling up to the Iranians would go a long way to fixing that. The thing is now, the new Sunni regime here wouldn’t let an Iranian pipeline cross their land if their lives depended on it.”

“I thought the Iranians wanted to invade Balochistan to get their hands on natural gas,” Tom said.

“You’re right. They’ve got the resources to find and extract it. The Pakistanis don’t. All their efforts are focused on national security.”

“And so what now?” Tom asked, pursing his lips, feeling a little out of his depth.

“There are no contingency plans for such a kidnapping,” Crane said. “Not on foreign soil that ain’t fully cooperative. That’s the risk, and Lyric knew it.” He sat back in his chair, began riding it, as appeared to be his habit.

Tom bristled. “What are you saying?”

Crane ignored him. “The flight to Kabul leaves in twenty minutes. Get what you need.”

“Wait a second. Lyric is very likely to be right here in Islamabad. And we’re leaving?”

“POTUS has ordered the closure of the embassy in forty-eight hours,” Houseman said. “You come to Kabul with us or you go home.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Tom said. “But why Kabul?”

“The flight time is thirty-five minutes,” Houseman said. “We still got a fully operational set-up there. Otherwise we’d be flying back to the States and doing this from a computer screen at Langley. Now get outta here before I change my mind.”

Reluctantly, Tom stood up and strode over to the door. They hadn’t said anything explicitly, but he guessed the real meeting would begin as soon as he reached the corridor outside.

14.

“You okay?” Houseman said to Crane after Tom had left.

“I guess.”

“Anyone knows what she’s going through, it’s you, Dan.”

“Yeah,” Crane said, his mind going back.

He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year.

The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn’t strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would’ve had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home.

He didn’t run, because the only place to run was back the way he’d come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street.

They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they’d only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he’d learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then.

The makeshift cell Hezbollah had kept him in in Lebanon was a bare concrete room, three metres square, without windows or artificial light. The door was wooden, reinforced with iron strips. When they first dragged him there, he lay in the filth that other men had made. They left him naked, his wrists and ankles chained. He was gagged with rag and tape. They had broken his nose and split his lips.

Each day they fed him on half-rancid scraps like he’d seen people toss to skinny dogs. He drank only tepid water. Occasionally, he heard the muted sound of children laughing, and smelt a faint waft of jasmine. And then he could not say for certain how long he had been there; a month, maybe two. But his muscles had wasted and he ached in every joint. After they had said their morning prayers, they liked to hang him upside down and beat the soles of his feet with sand-filled lengths of rubber hose. His chest was burned with foul-smelling cigarettes. When he was stubborn, they lay him bound in a narrow structure shaped like a grow tunnel in a dusty courtyard. The fierce sun blazed upon the corrugated iron for hours, and he would pass out with the heat. When he woke up, he had blisters on his skin, and was riddled with sand fly and red ant bites.

The duo were good at what they did. He guessed the one with the grey beard had honed his skills on Jewish conscripts over many years, the younger one on his own hapless people, perhaps. They looked to him like father and son. They took him to the edge of consciousness before easing off and bringing him back with buckets of fetid water. Then they rubbed jagged salt into the fresh wounds to make him moan with pain. They asked the same question over and over until it sounded like a perverse mantra.

“Who is The Mandarin? His name? Who is The Mandarin?”

He took to trying to remember what he looked like, the architecture of his own face beneath the scruffy beard that now covered it, and found himself flinching at the slightest sound. They had peeled back his defences with a shrewdness and deliberation that had both surprised and terrified him.

By the time they freed him, he was a different man.

15.

The Ariana Hotel was in the Diplomatic Quarter, Kabul, near the US Embassy and the Presidential Palace. But it hadn’t been open to the public for well over a decade. The former hotel still housed the headquarters of the CIA in Afghanistan. The compound and the roads around it were some of the most heavily protected in the capital, following a day-long siege by insurgents in September 2011. Crane had grinned and had told Tom that to the average Afghan, the quarter was as inaccessible as a Playboy Bunny.

“It’s still off-limits to the local cops,” he said as they rode past a checkpoint with huge cement bollards in an adapted Land Cruiser. “For how long, who the hell knows these days?”

The boxlike, cream-coloured structure looked run-down. Tom saw more than three dozen armed guards on the perimeter, together with mobile rocket launchers. Two IAV Strykers, eight-wheeled, armoured fighting vehicles fitted with M2 .50-cal machine guns, were parked either side of the main gate.

“You’re not taking any chances, that’s for sure,” he said.

“Yeah, but looks are deceiving.”

“The Taliban breach this?” Tom asked.

“Green on blue nightmares. You can’t trust anyone in an Afghan uniform. And on the streets it’s worse than ever. We’ve lost a total of fifty-two core collectors since the military pulled out; fifteen in the last month alone. We stopped making that official a year back. You know, Tom, more people are killed coming down off a mountain than ascending it. Leaving an occupied country ain’t no different. They held off for a while there. To encourage us, I figure. But now they want as many dead as possible. I give it maybe three years before even what’s left of us are gone for good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I think.”

“You still got your gun on you?”

“Yeah. You want me to hand it in?” Tom asked.

“You’re a special agent, ain’t ya? You just keep it close. A SIG?”

“Standard-issue.”

“I favour the Kimber Eclipse Custom II,” Crane said, easing the handgun out of his shoulder holster and weighing it in his hand. “Now that barrel alone is five inches, but it’s a .45 ACP and is fitted with these here low-profile night-sights,” he went on, fingering the back of the gun where the sights were mounted in rounded dovetails. “And it’s only a four-pound trigger pull. I got it in 10mm, too, and that’ll take a man’s head clean off.”

“A good piece,” Tom said. “But mine allows an easy draw.”

“You wanna hold it?”

“I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself,” Crane said, holstering it. He took out a slim cigar from his jacket pocket, lit it with a gold lighter. “You smoke, Tom?”

Tom shook his head. He looked at Crane. He took a long pull on the cigar before puffing little smoke rings out of the open window. He was a strange kind of guy.

16.

Twenty minutes later, Tom was feeling frustrated that nothing positive seemed to be happening. He found himself at another intelligence briefing in another secure conference room, although the security had been ratcheted up several notches. He’d had to show a laminated badge to a Marine outside the shockproof door, who’d checked his name off on a clipboard list, and had noticed that the plaster had been replaced by lead-lined walls to eradicate the threat from electronic listening devices.

Crane and Deputy Director Houseman were present, together with half a dozen CIA analysts, a couple of high-ranking US Army officers, and a lieutenant in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force, called Mark Sawyer. He was a troop commander in B Squadron, a six-foot blond with a boyish nose and neat little ears, eyes the colour of cornflower.

B Squadron contained seventy-five operators split into three troops, which were in turn made up of teams of five. It was stationed at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina. The Delta Force squadrons, together with SEAL Team 6, made up the direct action and reconnaissance element of the tier-one Special Missions Unit of the US Armed Forces. Sawyer’s troop was on standby on the off chance something happened in the next day or two. They’d been training Afghan Special Forces as part of the US commitment to assisting the country’s security services following the official withdrawal, which Tom felt was the only piece of good luck that had happened so far.

Like the façade, the interior of the Ariana wasn’t exactly five star, but it had modern facilities and was clean. Apart from the flat-screens and the ubiquitous blue tiles, the basement conference room had a large moulded-plastic table and chairs. It was lit by fluorescent strips, which had added a clinical aspect to what had started as a frosty meeting. Tom knew it was the way when different departments with ultimately competing budgets had to get something done together, the continuing US debt crisis just making that dynamic more acute. But gradually everyone put aside their differences and concentrated on the clear-cut task of getting the secretary home safely, although they had nothing material to go on as yet.

After they had decided that gathering intel from Pakistani assets and sources was their best bet, the door opened and a young Special Forces officer with red hair came into the room without knocking, his face flush with excitement.

“You better have a real interesting thing to say, captain,” a broken-nosed colonel said.

“I’m sorry, sir. But we’ve located Lyric,” he said, his arms barely able to refrain from punching the air.

“The GPS,” the colonel said, excitedly.

Everyone in the room now knew what Tom had always known. Apart from the tracking devices hidden in her specially made jewellery – her necklace and ring – she’d agreed to have one implanted under the skin of her upper left arm. But due to its sensitive location, it wasn’t large or sophisticated enough to prevent jamming.

“Yeah, our techs designed them,” Crane said, preferring to lean against the beige wall rather than sit at the table. “But don’t hold your breath.”

“Where is she, son?” Houseman asked.

“Upper Kurram Valley, sir. We lost the signal for a while there, but, hell, we’ve found her now.”

“Federally Administered Pakistan Tribal Area. A stronghold of the Leopards,” Crane said, soberly. “It’s picture postcard. Northern Af-Pak border country. Less than a hundred and fifty klicks away, which means it’s easily accessible by stealth helos. The two major tribes are the Bangash and the Turi. In Upper Kurram, the Bangash are Shia. The Turi are all Shia. They’ve both sent alotta young men to join the Leopards.”

The assembled men nodded, all tacitly accepting that Crane was the expert in such things.

Tom held back from saying that they had to act fast. It was as obvious to everyone concerned as saying a diet of fries and pizzas wasn’t a great idea if you wanted to lose weight. So he kept quiet and did his best to fade into the background, hoping that his presence would be accepted, even though in truth he had no right being here, at least as far as the president was concerned.

He watched Houseman report to the POTUS on a secure video link. After the input of more than a dozen people, including the Director of the CIA – who everyone knew was actually coordinating matters at Langley – a process that took forty-five minutes, the president decided that the National Security Council would consider a rescue plan.

The chances of finding bin Laden in the compound in Abbottabad had been estimated to be forty per cent when a similar sounding had been taken. The chances of getting the secretary out alive were deemed to be half that at best. But no lines of communication had been established, and every minute that passed meant the chances of getting her out alive were diminishing. There really wasn’t any other option, despite the odds.

Houseman turned to Crane. “Go along with Lieutenant Sawyer. He’ll liaise with JSOC. Give ’em the benefit of your local knowledge. I want a plan ready to go in two hours.”

Crane looked aghast. “That’s not enough time. Even if we’ve got UAVs sending back photos of the brand of toothpaste they prefer,” he said, referring to the unmanned aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance.

“I think we can do it in the timeframe, sir,” Sawyer said. He turned to Crane. “Two hours is standard prep for a mission.”

Tom saw Crane’s pale-blue eyes bore into the lieutenant.

“Yeah, for a kill or capture mission. Lyric’s life is at stake here,” he replied.

“We haven’t got time for a red team analysis, or for this. Get to it,” Houseman said.

Tom left with Crane and Sawyer, figuring everyone was still too preoccupied to care.

17.

In a similarly secure, adjacent room, Tom, Crane and Sawyer were hunched over a large stainless-steel table, doing final checks on the rescue site via the twenty printed satellite photos spread out before them. The site was an ochre-red fort abandoned by the Frontier Corps of the Pakistan Army three months previously, after it had been almost overrun by the Leopards, and all supply routes had been cut off. Black-and-white drone feeds were playing on laptops either side of the photos.

“I count at least thirty pax,” Sawyer said.

Tom frowned.

“That ain’t disrespectful,” Crane said to Tom. “It’s military speak for people.”

Sawyer looked quizzical.

“Tom’s sensitive about such things,” Crane said, turning to Sawyer. “He thought you were calling the locals Paks.”

Tom shook his head, thinking that Crane was baiting him deliberately, but let it go. He looked back at the photos. A few hundred metres beyond the fort there was a makeshift town, which all but surrounded it. A ragbag collection of awnings, thin sheets of battered-out metal containers, and mud and stone and wooden structures. Home to four thousand Shia refugees from ransacked and burnt-out towns and villages further south and east. Innocent civilians who’d escaped from the sectarian tyranny that was blighting the country. As a result, the helicopters couldn’t land far enough away to enable an approach on foot, which Sawyer favoured. There’d be no element of surprise, or the advantage of sneaking up on the fighters before they had a chance to arm themselves. So a creep in, creep out mission was out of the question. They’d have to go in shooting from the off.

Sawyer had spoken with the JSOC Commander already. If the plan was a goer, it had been agreed that two Black Hawks from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s Night Stalker Unit, stealth helicopters fixed with anti-radar cladding, which could fly as low as thirty metres and at a hundred and thirty miles per hour, would carry the Delta troop as the first wave of attack. An MH-47E/G, multi-mission Chinook with terrain avoidance radar would transport a platoon of Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, a light-infantry-combat formation, which was part of the US Army Special Operations Command. The Rangers were carrying out weapons training for their Afghan counterparts alongside the Delta troop, most of whom were ex-Rangers themselves. They would secure the immediate perimeter. Despite the ban on armed drones, Reapers loaded with Hellfire missiles would protect the assaulters from above, backed up by a couple of adapted AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

A second Chinook would carry the civilians and double up as a flying ambulance for any wounded. Crane said he’d travel in the rear Chinook, together with a back-up interpreter and five CIA counterterrorist operatives whom he’d handpicked already. The entire search and rescue operation would be relayed in real time to Houseman, the Director of the CIA and the White House Situation Room via state-of-the-art surveillance equipment: a squadron of MQ-1C drones, infrared cameras secured outside and onboard the gunships, and robust video cameras fixed to the lead operators’ Kevlar helmets.

Tom had kept quiet about going along at this juncture, but he was desperate to be in on the action.

Crane scratched the back of his head. “I’m still not sure about it.”

“With respect, sir, this is special ops not covert ops,” Sawyer replied.

“You don’t say. There was me thinking we could dig tunnels under them and pop up wearing Halloween masks and then blame it on… Who? The freakin’ Chinese? Of course I’m aware it’s a special ops, I’m just saying I’m not sure about it.”

“If you would like to put forward an alternative, sir, I’d be happy to consider it with JSOC.”

“What, in about two minutes? It takes me longer than that to make sure I’ve shaken all the drops off when I take a leak these days,” Crane replied, stretching his back.

“He’s right,” Tom said to Crane.

“Is he, now? So you’re a trigger-happy Leopard and you see Sawyer here and his buddies arriving like the Seventh Cavalry. What are you gonna do, huh, feed the secretary grapes?” Crane gripped his forehead, clearly frustrated.

“They could move her any time. They could kill her any time. You want that on your conscience? Besides, JSOC know what they’re doing, so why don’t you ease up on the lieutenant here?” Tom said, feeling that Crane was being overly obstructive.

Truth was, the CIA’s ultra-secretive Special Activities Division, the most elite section of which was the Special Operations Group, had worked in tandem with Delta since their inception in the late 1970s, and regularly recruited operatives from the squadrons. But it was obvious that the CIA had the upper hand, and Tom had heard rumours that Crane headed the Special Operations Group, or had done.

Crane seemed to relax. “Sure. What the hell do I know anyways?” he said, although not without a hint of sarcasm.

“We’ve successfully carried out eight similar hostage recues over here,” Sawyer said, still apparently unfazed. “That’s why POTUS wants to go for it. But if the NSC judge it’s totally off the wall, they’ll say so. I know there’s only a twenty per cent chance of success, but we’re ready and able to give it our best shot. If we don’t try it, we’re likely to be too late. Now I’m no politician, that’s for certain, but why wouldn’t they have made a demand already, if they wanted something?”

“Why wouldn’t they have killed her already, if they wanted her dead?” Crane replied.

Tom thought that that was sound reasoning, although it made him shudder to think it could end that way. But you could bat this one back and forth for days, and you’d still be left with the same dilemma. He guessed that was why those who had to make such decisions would go for it. The alternative was inertia. And if the secretary died while they were procrastinating, well, that could be political suicide. Besides, although it wasn’t a perfect plan, no plan was, especially with what they had to work with. But it was unlikely to be any different in a week’s time, and with the passage of time came an increased likelihood of a leak.

“Are we done?” Sawyer asked.

“Yeah. Run it past Houseman,” Crane said.

Sawyer headed for the door, a laptop and a bundle of photos under his arm. Tom saw Crane glance at him, although he looked preoccupied.

“I’ll see what I can do, Tom. Just stick around for now.”

18.

Tom hadn’t wanted to push his luck, thinking that if he kept in the background Crane might be able to get him to go along on the mission. He got a cup of coffee from a vending machine in the lobby, and sat on a pleather chair. He thought about those who’d died already, and those young men who might lose their lives in the next few hours. He just hoped that their sacrifices would lead to a worthy outcome.

He sensed someone behind him and twisted around. It was Steve Coombs, holding the extended handle of a small suitcase on wheels.

“The hell you doing here?” Tom asked.

“Benazir Bhutto got a bomb threat. It’s closed till further notice,” Steve said, referring to Islamabad’s international airport, named after the assassinated female politician. “I’m flying home from Kabul. The CIA said they had a couple more questions; asked me to come in on my way to the airport.”

Placing the cup on the floor, Tom stood up. “Good to see you, Steve, anyhow.”

They shook hands.

“And you, Tom?”

“I’m staying put for now.”

“How’s that?”

Tom shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You get home safely, you hear. And give Page my love.”

Tom hadn’t seen Steve’s wife in maybe two years, but he admired the woman, and he knew that his friend was devoted to her. Steve was a lucky man in many respects, he thought. His parents farmed three-hundred acres in Eastern Pennsylvania spit into cattle and soybeans. He had six siblings, all of whom were married and doing well. Steve had told him that growing up on a farm was like he imagined heaven to be.

As they parted company Tom thought his own early life couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Up until he was eight, he saw his father about once every three months, if he was lucky. He gave him a toy or twenty bucks. He looked handsome in his Army officer’s uniform. He was six-two with a natural muscularity, his black-onyx-coloured eyes and hair marking him out like a movie actor. He’d never married his mother, and Tom didn’t have his name, Dupree being her surname. His father was uneasy around him, avoiding physical contact, and there would be long silences between them. He was Louisiana Creole, his forefathers being colonial French who’d settled in the southern states. Tom excelled at French at school; did it, he supposed, to make his father proud in some remote way.

He clenched his jaw muscles now and tried to focus on something positive.

“Tom.”

It was Crane’s voice. Tom looked over towards the row of elevators and saw him walking across the tiled floor, his big legs striding out, his confidence restored. Tom stood up.

“It’s a goer. You ready for this?” Crane said, excitedly.

“Hell, yeah” he replied, thinking Crane’s mood had turned a full one-eighty.

“We don’t land until the Rangers have secured the site. You realize that, right?”

“How did you pull it off?”

“Apart from Houseman being sympathetic, which, I have to say, ain’t his natural disposition, I told him that you were the only man suitable to go along who she’d feel instantly comfortable with.”

“Thanks, Crane.”

“You know how to use an MP5?”

Tom nodded.

“I’ll make sure you have one.”

“You getting paid to keep me alive?” Tom asked.

Crane grinned. “If I was intent on keeping you alive, I woulda made sure you went home on that plane.”

19.

The capital lay in a narrow valley of the Hindu Kush on the banks of Kabul River. The convoy of adapted Land Cruisers moved at speed, Tom sitting in the second vehicle beside Crane. Both men wore fatigues and body armour, their Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm sub-machine guns upright between their legs. They were fixed with suppressors. Crane had explained that all of the assaulters’ weapons were suppressed, so if they heard a round go off from a firearm that wasn’t, it meant it was from a hostile source.

The distance to Kabul International Airport was ten miles, the North Side Cantonment of which housed the command centre for the Afghan Air Force. They would utilize the seven helipads there for the mission, although the Afghans had been told an elaborate lie. Crane had told Tom that if they knew what they were up to, they would’ve all been arrested. Bagram Air Base, which had been used as a staging point for Special Forces’ missions along the northern Af-Pak border, was so depleted that it could no longer be used safely.

Kabul International was connected to the capital by a four-lane highway, shared with domestic traffic. As Tom stared out he saw the heat haze rising above it, the tarmac melting from the hours of intense sunlight.

“You wouldn’t believe this was Afghanistan, would ya?” Crane said, smiling.

“No. It’s changed a lot since I was here last.”

“Don’t get me wrong—you get outside the ring of concrete and steel and it’s still a Third World hellhole as bad as any I’ve seen.”

“You think we were right coming here?” Tom asked.

“It was a hornets’ nest. But staying as long as we did, hell, no. They sit down and talk, but you can’t tame these people. They’re tough, goddamn it. Toughest people I’ve ever met.”

“Nothing tough about IEDs,” Tom said.

“A necessity. They couldn’t fight a hundred thousand well-armed troops face-to-face.”

“So that’s all gonna be forgotten about now, huh?”

“Look, I do my job. Damn good at it, too. You know why?” Crane said, rhetorically. “Cuz I don’t hold grudges. That gives you ulcers. I got enough bad habits as it is.”

“That’s not what you said about the Pakistanis,” Tom said, massaging an aching bruise on his thigh.

“Always gotta have exceptions, Tom.”

Tom glanced at him. “How will they’ve treated her?”

“That depends,” Crane said, his voice serious.

“On what?”

“If she’s been compliant, they’ve likely just ignored her most of the time. But if she’s acted like the US Secretary of State, they’ve probably treated her worse than a stubborn goat.”

Tom watched Crane staring into space now, and wondered what was going through his mind. He hadn’t held back. He wasn’t the type. Fingering his Buddha in his pocket, Tom just hoped she’d acted as he’d instructed her to if the worst happened.

The military terminal was marked by a ring of black, red and green Afghan flags and what looked like relatively newly built redbrick buildings. As the Land Cruisers passed through the heavily guarded checkpoint, Tom felt a knot in his gut. He was both a part of it and a bystander; a voyeur, even. But as Crane opened the door and the sticky heat hit him he consoled himself by knowing that if she was there, she would be glad to see a friendly face at least.

Let her be there, he thought. Let her be alive.

20.

The sound of the twin engines and huge tandem rotor blades scything the cold air was near-deafening as the special ops Chinook flew at almost two-hundred miles per hour. The Black Hawks had silenced rotors and engines, but by the time the Chinooks got there it would be game on. Dusk had fallen now and the clouds were high and wispy, the skyline above the mountains the colour of hacked strawberries.

Tom had been told to wear a seat belt and helmet to stop himself from knocking himself out if the helicopter had to take a sharp turn or got caught in downdraft. Although the cabin had been fitted out with padding, it still looked as if it was weeks away from being finished. But anything that wasn’t functional was left out, especially on a mission. The operators called the helicopter the flying school bus, which Tom thought inappropriate.

He sat on a red canvas, aluminium-framed seat, his feet placed firmly on the metal decking with exposed rivets. Crane, wearing a clear earpiece attached to a PTT radio, sat beside him, talking to one of the other CIA men who were in flight. An iron-pumper with a black beard and square face, a real Cro-Magnon hard case, who was nodding as Crane talked in short loud bursts like a drunk in a noisy bar.

From the oval porthole opposite him, Tom could see a four-blade Apache attack helicopter. It was a state-of-the-art killing machine, the nose-mounted sensor hub housing the night-vision systems for its 30-mm Chain Gun carried between the landing gear, and the Hellfire missiles and Hydra rocket pods on the stub-wings sticking out of the fuselage behind the cockpit. But he knew such weapons had been of little use in a guerrilla war where the combatants had dressed like locals and had lived among them, too.

The Apaches would fly ahead soon and be the second wave of attack, once the Black Hawks had landed at the insertion point and there was no further need for an element of surprise, however brief. Then they would buzz the valleys of the White Mountains in the vicinity, deterring any element of reinforcements. The drone reconnaissance hadn’t shown up any other settlements nearby, but a group of Leopards could always be squatting under scrub or in dugouts.

Tom chewed his lip and grabbed the seat bar as the Chinook hit turbulence. He knew he was heading for a death zone.

The last time he’d flown in a helicopter had been on a short flight from DC to Richmond, Virginia, where the secretary had opened a library at South University. That was a fortnight ago. He’d thought that his time with her would end in a clean slate until he’d gotten the call from his direct superior, informing him that she would be going to Islamabad. He never knew why, in detail. He didn’t have to know. He was only ever told her destination days before if her schedule changed. But he’d felt uneasy from the beginning, a nagging doubt that had played out as fretful dreams.

Crane turned to Tom. “ETA five minutes,” he mouthed, holding up five fingers. He opened up a laptop to get the live feeds. “That’s the view from Sawyer’s video camera in Salt One,” he bellowed. “That’s the interpreter next to him. Bet he didn’t sign up for this. The operators call it flying it into the X. Heavy shit, huh.”

The interpreter was a Pakistani, his face obscured by a black ski mask. Tom knew that his whole family would be killed if he was ever recognized.

The screen was split into quarters, with different images appearing from the various cameras, including those mounted on the Black Hawks’ fuselages. Briefly, Tom wondered what his first words to her would be. Whether it would be appropriate to apologize or simply say he was glad to see her alive? But what if they found her dead already? What if the plan failed at the last moment and she was killed or terribly injured? What would he say or do then? he thought.

As the amber LED lights were cut, he spent the next few minutes zoning out.

“They’re moving in,” said Crane, breaking into Tom’s thoughts.

Tom looked down towards Crane’s lap at the live feeds. “The Black Hawks are shaking a lot,” he said, watching one of the helicopters hover above the fort’s flat roof as the other lowered down to about ten metres above the courtyard. Each had a sniper aiming a suppressed rifle out of the cabin’s open side door, scanning the rescue site for any sign of a fighter.

“Uplift of trapped air,” Crane said. “It’ll be fine. The Delta work top down, bottom up, and converge in the middle. Smooth and fast, smooth and fast. A breacher blows down a door, then the fire teams enter. They take out the resistance. The main dangers are trip wires, IEDs and blind firing around walls. If the whole place isn’t rigged with Semtex, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”

At least Crane is still upbeat, Tom thought. He just hoped he had a right to be, despite the man’s previous misgivings.

On screen, he watched Sawyer lead the assault on the ground. He fast-roped adroitly in leather mitts some seven metres from the bar jutting out from Black Hawk’s fuselage, landing into a swirl of dust and small stones. After being propelled forward by the rotor wash, he took point in the dark courtyard, adjusting his headphones before speaking into his cheek mic. The main building was directly ahead of him, a few outbuildings and vehicle ports left and right. He scanned around with his M4A1 carbine, fixed with a thermal scope and red-dot laser, his four-tube night-vision goggles allowing peripheral vision, but making him look as if he’d landed from another solar system.

After the main interpreter sprained an ankle on the descent and a medic had his ill-secured backpack almost torn off by the wash, the assault teams panned out and ran forward, their torsos clad in sixty-pound ballistic plates. The live feed showed a serious of controlled explosions, bursts of automatic fire and swift movement.

“Alpha three down. Medevac,” Sawyer shouted, looking over at an operator seven metres from him, his body splayed on the ground.

With that, another Delta was blown into the air three metres in front of Sawyer. He landed heavily, his legs a twisted mess. The operators couldn’t use their fragmentation grenades, because they had no idea where the secretary was being held. But the local fighters were using them to devastating effect. That and a triangulation of small-arms fire.

“Jesus,” Tom said.

The movement ratcheted up to something approaching frantic. Gunfire crackled and breaching charges erupted. A flurry of tracer rounds flew through the air from a corner turret and, a few seconds later, there was a massive explosion coupled with a white flash. Tom heard the muted voices of the men on the ground.

“Salt Two down,” said Sawyer. “A bird’s down. A bird’s down.”

“Shit!” Tom said.

With that, an Apache hovered before blowing off the turret. A funnel of flame exploded upward from the black smoke ball, the smashed clay bricks showering down onto the courtyard. Tom thought it might as well have been made of balsa wood for all the protection it had afforded.

“Wow,” Crane said. “See that? Got those RPGs for damn sure.”

As the operators moved into the main building they began to clear the warren of corridors. Their eyes were covered by helmet-mounted NVGs as they aimed suppressed, desert-tan HK416 assault rifles and Colt carbines, assaulting the building from top and bottom, just as Crane had said they would. The insurgents fell away like ghosts, or buckled under double taps to the head and body from relatively close quarters, after they were fixed with IR lasers. Once a section was cleared, an assaulter shouted, “Move,” and his teammate would shout, “Moving,” before taking a step. It was precise. Calculated.

Outside, a second Apache fired a rocket at the far left-hand side of the surrounding wall of the fort compound, smashing a gaping hole in the clay bricks.

“There ain’t enough room to put the Chinooks down in the courtyard and the gate is likely to be rigged. Hence the hole. We’re going in,” Crane barked. “And put your goggles on or you’ll be picking grit out of your eyes for a week.”

Tom felt a rush of adrenalin. He’d been in combat zones many times, but this was something else.

21.

The Chinook hovered before descending ten metres from the fort’s outer wall. After it touched down in the landing zone, the tail ramp lowered so that they could disembark quickly without squeezing through the cabin doors. A bearded master sergeant, holding an HK fixed with an AG416 40mm grenade launcher, led them through the smoke and swirling dust whipped up by the rotors, over the chunks of bricks and into the main courtyard. The downed Black Hawk was burning up in the far right-hand corner, the other circling in front of the bullet-ridden walls of the main building. The Delta told them to follow his steps, saying that they hadn’t swept the area and IEDs could be anywhere.

Tom saw a dozen bodies lying dead or groaning on the ground, including three operators, who were being attended to by medics. A group of women, hugging children and wailing, sat in the courtyard to the left. In front of them, a couple of Delta stood either side of the second masked interpreter as he attempted to comfort the innocents and obtain intel in the process. Directly behind him, four operators were securing those insurgents who’d surrendered or had been captured alive with plasticuffs before hooding them. At the doorways to the outer buildings, infrared lights visible only via the operators’ night-vision goggles signalled that they’d been cleared of any threat.

Tom, Crane and the others were met at the central door by another five Delta, all wearing mismatched uniforms and padded gloves. One was holding a Belgian Malinois dog on a lead, its eyes protected by a ballistic visor, its torso sheathed in body armour. The dog snarled when they came close, bearing huge fangs. Its Delta handler jerked the lead and took point. Sawyer remained behind, organizing the ongoing security of the periphery with the rest of the troop, together with the Rangers who had disembarked from a Chinook beyond the wall.

The interior was thick with dust and stank of stale smoke and kerosene. Guided by the operators’ helmet-mounted flashlights, the dog led the way, its snubbed snout tracking the scent of the secretary via an article of clothing taken from her bedroom at the embassy. The GPS had pinpointed the building, but the signal had faded en route, so it was impossible to tell her exact position in the many dark corridors and small rooms that constituted the fort proper. The corridors were on three levels and narrow, no more than two-metres high, creating a claustrophobic effect. The walls were uneven, the floors pitted and strewn with small rocks.

After five minutes or so, the dog, salivating now and snorting, moved down a slope below ground level. It stopped at a reinforced metal door at the end of a pitch-black corridor peppered with rat droppings. The air here smelled of something akin to rotting vegetables. An operator carrying an M4 Super 90 shotgun moved up before banging on the door and calling out. There was no answer. Tom clenched his jaw muscles, feeling anxious. Crane stepped forward and ordered the door blown open.

“We can’t risk it,” Tom said, intervening.

He knew that if the door opened inward, the secretary could be killed as it careered into her.

“Blow it down, son,” Crane insisted.

Ignoring Crane, the Delta spoke into his cheek mic. “A metal door, sir. Lyric could be beyond it. No question of knocking out the hinges with Hatton rounds. It’ll need an explosive breach.” After getting an order from Sawyer, he said, “Copy that.”

The rear operator came forward and placed a strip of adhesive breaching explosives over the lock, which would rip it apart. He primed it with two blasting caps, so that if one malfunctioned there’d be less chance of failure, and reeled out the connecting wires. Tom and the others retreated a way back down the dim corridor. As blast shields were held up in front of them they lowered their heads. Tom just hoped the door would blow back outwards.

“Fire in the hole,” the Delta shouted.

After a two-second delay, the explosion was ferocious, making the shields almost buckle, the shock wave exaggerated by the confined space. An operator ran forward, with bolt cutters strapped to his back. He leapt over the blown-down door, his red-dot laser scanning the room. He flipped up his night-vision goggles, activated his helmet flashlight and double checked for any sign of the secretary, a booby trap or Leopard.

“Clear,” he shouted.

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