burned his nostrils. But he loved it. He loved the sand under his rubber soles, the cool breeze on his cheek, the sweat on his palms, and the accelerated beat of his heart.
Battat wondered how many foreign invaders had stood on these shores, perhaps in this very spot. The Persians in the eleventh century. The Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Russians in the eighteenth century, then the Persians again, then the Soviets. He couldn't decide whether he was part of a dramatic historical pageant or an ugly, unending rape.
Not that it matters, he told himself. He wasn't here to safeguard Azerbaijan. He was here to redeem himself and to protect American interests.
Crouched among the high reeds at this isolated section of beachfront, Battat felt as though he had never been away from the field. Danger did that. It was like a fond song or a familiar food smell, a bookmark in the soul.
He loved that, too. He also felt good about what he was doing. Not just to atone for Annabelle but because it was right.
Battat had been here for nearly seven hours now. The cell phone communications they'd intercepted said that the pickup was scheduled for eleven-thirty p.m. The Harpooner was supposed to be there to examine the parcel, whatever it was, then pay for it and leave.
Just then, something happened on the boat. A hatch door opened, and a man climbed out onto the deck. Battat looked out at the water. The man turned on a radio.
It was playing what sounded like local folk tunes. Maybe that was a signal. Battat's gaze swept across the water.
Suddenly, an elbow locked around Battat's throat from behind and yanked him to his feet. He gagged. He tried to tuck his chin into the elbow, to relieve the pressure on his throat so he could breathe, but the attacker was well trained. He had locked his right arm around his throat and was pushing Battat's head with his left hand so he couldn't turn it. Battat tried to drive an elbow back into the attacker's gut, but the man was standing to the side. Finally, he tried to reach back and grab the shoulder of the choking arm and pull the attacker over.
The attacker responded by tilting his own body back and lifting Battat from the ground. Although Battat was able to grab the man's shoulder, he couldn't throw the attacker. Battat's feet were in the air and he had no leverage.
The struggle lasted five seconds. The attacker's arm squeezed against the American's carotid arteries from the side, immediately cutting the blood supply to the head and causing Battat to black out. Taking no chances, the attacker kept pressing the arteries for another half minute. Then he dropped the unconscious body to the sand.
The Harpooner reached into the pocket of his windbreaker. He removed a syringe from his pocket, pulled off the plastic tip, and injected the man in the neck. After wiping away the small drop of blood, he took out a flashlight and flicked it on. He waved it back and forth several times. Another flashlight answered from the Rachel.
Then both lights went dark. Moments later, a motor dinghy lowered from the boat and headed toward shore.
Camp Springs, Maryland Sunday, 4:12 p.m.
Paul Hood sat on an armchair in the corner of the small, TV-lit hotel room. The heavy shades were drawn and a football game was on, but Hood wasn't really watching it. He was watching reruns in his mind. Reruns of over sixteen years of married life.
Old pictures in my new home, he thought.
Home was an anonymous fifth-floor suite at the Days Inn on Mercedes Boulevard, located a short distance from Andrews Air Force Base. Hood had moved in late Saturday night. Though he could have stayed at a motel right next to the base where Op-Center was located, he wanted the option of being able to get away from work.
Which was ironic. It was Hood's dedication to Op Center that had cost him his marriage.
Or so his wife maintained.
Over the past several years, Sharon Hood had become increasingly frustrated by the long hours her husband kept at Op-Center. She grew tense and angry each time an international crisis caused him to miss one of their daughter Harleigh's violin recitals or their son Alexander's ball games. She was bitter that virtually every vacation they planned had to be canceled because of a coup attempt or assassination that demanded his attention. She resented how he was on the phone, even when he was with his family, checking with Deputy Director Mike Rodgers on how the mobile Regional Op-Center was performing in field tests or discussing with Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert what they could do to strengthen the new relationship with Op-Center's Russian counterpart in Saint Petersburg.
But Hood had never believed that work itself was really the problem. It was something older and deeper than that.
Even when he had resigned his position as director of Op-Center and went to New York for Harleigh's performance at a United Nations reception, Sharon still wasn't happy. She was jealous of the attention that other mothers on the junket gave him. Sharon realized that the women were drawn to Hood because he had been a highly visible mayor of Los Angeles. After that, he had held a powerful job in Washington, where power was the coin of the realm. It didn't matter to Sharon that Hood put no stock in fame and power. It didn't matter to her that his replies to the women were always polite but short. All Sharon knew was that she had to share her husband again.
Then came the nightmare. Harleigh and the other young musicians were taken hostage in the Security Council chambers by renegade United Nations peacekeepers.
Hood had left Sharon at the State Department's understaffed crisis center so that he could oversee Op Center successful covert effort to rescue the teenagers and the captive foreign delegates. In Sharon's eyes, he had not been there for her again. When they returned to Washington, she immediately took the children to her parents' house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Sharon had said she wanted to get Harleigh away from the media zoo that had pursued the children from New York.
Hood couldn't argue with that. Harleigh had seen one of her friends seriously wounded and several other people executed. She was almost killed herself. She had suffered the clinical consequences of classic stress or triggers for post-traumatic stress disorder: threats to the physical integrity of herself and others; fear and helplessness;
