“I can understand their caution. I start to feel exposed when I get the full treatment. You can call me Alex,” Cody offered.
“Fine. You can address me as Captain, or Captain Remington.”
If Cody took any insult, he didn’t show it. “Very well, Captain. You’ve been briefed on our situation?”
“Only that you’ve had an agent go missing, and that we’re supposed to help you get him back. If possible.”
Cody reached into his shirt pocket and produced a miniature CD in a plastic case. “I’ve got an image of the agent here.”
Remington took the disc and handed it to Lewis, one of the young techs. “Get this up for me.”
“Yes, sir.” Lewis took the disc, pushed it home into a CD-ROM reader, and tapped the keyboard.
Instantly, the monitor on the left scrolled. Thumbnails of images spread out in a simple information tree. All of the images were of a young, dark-complexioned man who looked Middle Eastern. He might have been Turkish, Kurdish, or Syrian; in fact, he could have been from any of a dozen countries in the area. He looked all of twenty years old.
“He’s one of ours?” Remington asked.
“Yeah.” Cody gazed at the young man’s photo. “An American, Captain. Not a recruit or paid informer.”
“What kind of assignment has he been on?”
Cody hesitated. “You don’t have clearance.”
Remington mastered the wave of anger that flooded through him. “I just detailed a squad of men to handle the intercept your agency asked for, Cody. If my men are going to be in danger, then you’d better clear me.”
Cody pursed his lips and removed his sunglasses. “Icarus is a covert operative we’ve managed to get into one of the PKK cell groups.”
The PKK, Remington knew from his own briefings regarding the border patrol assignment, was the Kurdistan Worker’s Party. Organized in 1974 by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK planned to establish an independent Kurdish state from land within Turkey, Iraq, or Iran. Over the years, the organization had turned to terrorism aimed at destabilizing the Turkish government. Often the PKK terrorists killed as many Kurds as they did Turks.
“Infiltrating a single terrorist cell doesn’t seem like a good investment of manpower,” Remington stated. “The cells are kept small and independent, with relatively no interaction among other cells or the parent organization. The intelligence you’d get would be infinitesimal at best.”
“Icarus penetrated the cell assigned to assassinate Chaim Rosenzweig,” Cody said. “Thanks to Icarus, the members of that team were … dissuaded from that action.”
“How dissuaded?”
“Five of the eight men assigned to the assassination are dead,” Cody said. “The other three escaped our sweeps. They have apparently taken Icarus with them.”
Remington nodded. He hadn’t heard about an assassination team being intercepted, but he wasn’t surprised that Rosenzweig was a target. The Israeli botanist whose synthetic fertilizer had turned his country into a veritable Eden almost overnight was reviled by most of the Arab nations, although Israel’s neighbors had made their peace with Israel. In the end they’d had no choice, but peace at the end of a gun barrel was still peace.
Rosenzweig had been given the Nobel prize in chemistry for his efforts, and he’d been handed a death sentence by terrorist organizations scattered around the Middle East, who now faced a concerted Israeli effort to put them out of business.
That shift in prosperity in the Middle East, especially since it also affected the global balance of trade and power, had triggered a Russian surprise attack that had caught Israel and the world off guard fourteen months ago. When he’d heard of the attack, Remington had figured Israel’s existence would be measured in minutes.
Instead, the Russian air force had suffered a massive systems failure. Their attacking force had self-destructed, its crumpled remains raining down from the sky in flaming chunks. Military experts and analysts agreed that the Russian air force had grown lax and that the fleetwide systems failures were caused by poorly maintained, obsolete equipment. Remington wanted to be sure that such a disaster never occurred to his forces on his watch.
“If this assassination attempt is off the books,” Remington asked, “why is your covert agent still with the PKK cell?”
Cody stared at the young man’s face on the computer screen. “We haven’t been successful in exfiltrating Icarus.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be exfiltrated.”
“We don’t feel that’s the case.”
Don’t feel, Remington knew, wasn’t a definite answer. “How long has Icarus been under?”
“A year and a half. He penetrated the PKK almost seven months ago. We were about to pull the plug on the op at that point but he managed to get inside the cell.” Cody paused. “Captain, there is no question about this man’s loyalty. That’s why I’m here talking to you today. He’s a good man in a bad situation. He gave us the assassination team when they were ready to strike, and he endangered himself by doing so.”
“He could be dead already.”
Concern creased Cody’s face for just a moment then flickered out of existence. “I refuse to believe that.”
“You’ve asked for help,” Remington pointed out. “I’m risking the lives of my men. Sell me on what you believe.”
The CIA agent nodded at the computer terminals. “I can log your computers in to the link we’ve set up for your team.”
Remington excused Lewis from the chair and Cody sat. The CIA chief’s fingers clacked against the keyboard in rapid syncopation. The monitor screen scrolled and scrolled again.
“What am I looking at?” Remington asked.
“I’m downloading a satellite feed. We have a lock on the vehicle Icarus is being transported in.”
The screen image changed, revealing a ten-year-old Subaru Legacy. Battered and pale blue, the vehicle stood out in sharp relief against the yellow sand. A billowing amber dust cloud trailed behind the Subaru.
Remington watched the station wagon jerk and bounce across the rough terrain. The road was ancient, a whisper-thin memory that probably was constructed for carts
