slam so fast, so hard, that it felt as though it might explode at any moment. He pushed paper all day, moved agents and paramilitary operatives around like chess pieces on the board, one eye on his strategic plan, the other on the next promotion. Not all CIA directors had been that way, but this guy was and Simmons hated him for it.
He picked up the satellite phone and set it in his lap. With the diagnosis of cancer, he thought constantly about death, realized he’d leave nothing behind. His career had been heroic, but shrouded in secrecy and bereft of recognition. His ex-wives hated him and had trained his daughters accordingly. He’d lost contact with most of his military buddies, and only occasionally socialized with the other CIA employees outside of work.
During the last decade or so, the closest thing he had to family had been his Force Recon team. Those men had admired and trusted him, following him into hell time and again. He’d repaid them with death, leading them into a deadly mission and returning home with a handful of survivors.
“Sir, are you okay?”
Simmons looked up and saw a young woman, her amber hair pulled into a ponytail, a wireless headset wrapped around her head. She was one of six technicians and intelligence analysts in the room.
He waved her away. “I’m fine, Dana. Head just feels a little light, is all.”
“If I may say so, you look tired, a bit pale.”
“I said, I’m fine. Dammit, leave me alone.”
The volume of his voice surprised him. The woman stiffened, jerked back a bit as though burned, her pretty features hardening into a cold stare.
“Yes, sir. Jon Stone called two minutes ago, just before you returned.”
“I’ll deal with Stone.”
In his mind, his voice dripped with disdain, like venom trickling the length of a cobra’s fang. Stone was an undisciplined killer, a wild cannon. Maybe he dazzled the brass with his dual master’s degrees and his record of successful missions. Simmons knew better. He knew that every time Stone walked into a mission, he drew innocent blood. Women. Children. Stone cared little as long as he got results. Same went for his buddy, Stephen Archer.
If Simmons’s voice betrayed his hatred, the woman in front of him showed no signs of it. And what if she did? To hell with her and everyone else. Simmons was dying. And the way he saw it, a dying man ought to be able to say whatever the hell he wants.
“Sir, did you hear what it I said?”
The room came back into focus for a moment. “Huh?”
“They lost contact with Doyle, sir. He was supposed to check in with Stone and they lost contact with him.”
Simmons sat upright in his chair. Doyle not checking in? Something about that bothered him, though he couldn’t place what. Why was it so damn hard to think?
“Get out.”
“Sir?”
“Get out. All of you. I need to speak with Stone.”
The analysts and technicians filed from the room, leaving Simmons alone.
Raising the satellite phone, he began to punch in Stone’s code. Knowing he might need to dial it at a critical moment, he’d burned the code into his memory, doing so until he could recite it in his sleep. Still, he had trouble bringing the numbers on the keypad into focus. They blinked and blurred as he tried to pin them down under his index finger.
Finishing the number sequence, he leaned back in his chair, waited for Stone to pick up.
The agent’s voice sounded far away, angry in Simmons’s ear.
“Where the hell you been, man?”
“Do it,” Simmons said.
“What?”
“You heard me. Lee says it’s a go. So, go”
IHMAD JUMA STEPPED from the room and wrinkled his nose, a vain attempt to expel the stenches of vomit, blood and human excrement that clung inside his nostrils. He shut the door behind him, hoping to seal behind it the memory of an old friend who still lay inside, mangled and dying.
Correction: an old friend who had turned traitor. That made the man an enemy, and his impending death a cause for celebration. Perhaps if Juma told himself that long enough, eventually he’d believe it.
Juma moved with clipped, precise strides that belied his twenty years as an Iraqi military officer. As he continued down the hall, he realized the air felt irritatingly cool against his forehead and armpits. He extracted a handkerchief from his fatigue pants. Wiping the cloth over his forehead, he traced the edge of his severe widow’s peak and scrubbed away the sheen of perspiration that lay below it.
The screams and pleadings of Brahim Azar echoed in his mind, as unrelenting as the desert sun. He shook his head violently to shoo them away, then caught himself and looked around self-consciously. None of the passing soldiers seemed to notice his momentary distress, eliciting a silent prayer of gratitude. He’d witnessed more tortures, beatings, rapes than he could recall. The memories of these events flashed past his mind’s eye like a high-speed kaleidoscope, one blurring into the next with almost blinding speed. Years ago the images had disturbed him, yanking him from sleep, prompting violent outbursts against his family. But now he prided himself on his aloofness in the face of others’ agony.
Still something about watching an old friend suffer had disturbed him deeply, wrenching his guts and searing his soul with the unwelcome fires of guilt, self-hatred.
Several minutes later he stood in front of the great leader, in one of the man’s numerous private offices. Silence and cigar smoke hung heavily in the air, the latter stinging Juma’s eyes. His stomach continued churning, this time because of nerves. He’d been close to the leader many, many times, but never the focus of the meeting. The news was grim, and Juma couldn’t help but wonder whether delivering it might cost him his life.
The great leader sat in a high-backed chair, facing a wall. Waiting for an invitation to speak, Juma eyed his surroundings. Bookcases lined the walls, ornate brass lamps shone brightly and a television carrying Iraqi state news reports blinked in the background.
“You bring me information?”
“Yes, sir. Of utmost importance.”
“Speak.”
“A small group of men, including some within the government, have conspired to kill you. They planned to do it tonight.”
“Who are these men?”
“I have their names here, sir.” Juma pulled a manila folder from under his left arm and handed it to one of the guards, who, in turn, set in on the great leader’s desk. “They planned to kill you tonight at the royal palace. Tariq Riyadh is among them.”
“The Americans?”
“The infidels also are part of the plan, yes. They have operatives within the country, all of them posing as foreign journalists, even as we speak. As for our own countrymen, I have dispatched teams to hunt them down, arrest them.”
“No.”
