Kill Zone

were thinking about Kyle?”

“Not yet. Like I said, I wanted to call you first and make sure.”

“You can’t trust those two. If they are suspicious about why you acted strangely at the meeting, they are going to force you to give up the information.”

“What do you want me to do, Double-Oh? I can’t just sit here while Kyle is in big trouble!”

“Don’t worry about Kyle right now. He can take care of himself. I’m more worried about you calling me on an open circuit. Shari, my special ops nerves are shaking like leaves on this. Those two guys will do anything they have to in order to keep that letter secret, because if they don’t, it will mean prison for them.” His voice went softer. “That includes getting rid of everybody who may know about it. That means Kyle. It means me. Now it means you, too.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You can’t go back to work until this thing is settled. And when you don’t show up, they are going to pull out all stops to find you and get what you know. Guaranteed they will discover your relationship with Kyle. We have to assume that Buchanan, with all of his intel assets, will have the NSA recording this call.”

“They won’t bother me. I’m a serving naval officer.”

“That will be no protection whatsoever. Trust me on that. You and I both have to disappear before Buchanan can get his hands on us, Shari. Hang up this phone and dump it, then get to somewhere safe. Not your apartment.”

“Orville, I can’t just leave! If I don’t show up for work, it will be an unauthorized absence.”

“Take it from me, honey,” said Double-Oh. “Right now, that is the least of your worries. When the house is burning down, your first job is to save yourself, then worry about the house. You get out to Quantico right now and contact the duty NCO, and he will stash you in the VIP lodgings… until I can contact you on an encrypted line.” He emphasized the word.

Shari almost dropped the phone when she realized that Dawkins was right. The NSA would be listening to her call, particularly since it was being made within an invisible listening cone that surrounded the White House. “Right. The duty NCO at Quantico will be expecting me.”

“We’ll talk soon.” Double-Oh broke the connection and threw his cell phone overboard, watching until it splashed into the Mediterranean Sea. There would be no sleep for him tonight.

In Washington, Shari Towne moved quickly. She put her phone into the same trash can as her coffee, stepped to the curb, and hailed a taxi.

By the time the cab drove away, a supercomputer at the National Security Agency had recorded the call and traced it from Lieutenant Commander Towne to a number assigned to Marine Master Sergeant Orville Oliver Dawkins.

Instead of racing down to Quantico, Shari Towne had the cab driver turn right and head toward the Hashemite Kingdom.

CHAPTER 35

GERALD BUCHANAN AND THE secretary of state had a private meeting with the President following the NSC session, but as soon as he returned to his office, he called for Sam Shafer. “What the HELL was that all about with Towne? The world is coming apart and one of my staff members interrupts an important meeting by dropping her schoolbooks? In front of the President of the United States? For God’s sake!”

“Commander Towne has been under a lot of pressure, sir. She was the one we brought back from leave to work on the crisis.”

“The woman is supposed to be a professional!” He spun his chair around to stare out the window. “Her action today reflected directly on me. Everybody will think I hire morons who can’t take the pressure.”

Shafer ran a hand through the hair, a finger comb. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Buchanan turned back around, his anger replaced by curiosity. “Talk to me, Sam.”

“I’ve worked with Shari Towne for a long time, sir, and nobody has a cooler head in a crisis. That damned brain of hers goes so fast it throws off sparks, and I have never seen her rattled. If a situation is really going to hell, she might squint an eye in thought. Nothing more.”

“So why was she dropping Top Secret files all over the President’s expensive rug?”

“She saw something in that folder of the dead Marines, sir. I gave it to her to review while I took notes on the meeting. She was going through the meat shots when it happened. I thought at first that it might be because the pictures are pretty gruesome.”

“So what? Pictures of dead people usually are.”

“I agree. She had not yet reached the pages of text, so all she had seen were the photographs. Right before she dropped the file, she was looking at the picture of one of those poor faceless bastards. More than looking at it, she was studying it hard, almost breaking it down into pixels. When everything else hit the floor, she held that picture so tightly her knuckles were turning white.”

Buchanan shook his head. So what? “ Several people, including me, have looked at the file and none of us had that kind of reaction.”

“That’s just my point, sir. But how many of us who examined it were trained intelligence eyes? Shari Towne is one of the best analysts in the building, and she doesn’t work here because she misses things. No one else apparently picked up on whatever it was she spotted. It’s not the first time she’s done that. Remember how she pegged the Libyan missiles that Gadhafi claimed he had destroyed?”

“So she saw something.” Buchanan had found the file to be exactly what he had expected. Bunch of dead guys. It was supposed to be nothing more than an impressive visual prop to demonstrate the abilities of the Gates Global operators. He did not like the idea that Towne had picked up a detail he had missed, something that might be important.

Shafer crossed his arms. “Whatever was in there made the stone-cold lieutenant commander lose her cool, for maybe the first time in her life, outside of an orgasm.”

“Wait a minute, Sam. She didn’t tell you what it was after the meeting?” Buchanan leaned forward, elbows on the desk blotter. “Get her ass in here. Right now!”

“Can’t do it, sir. She grabbed her purse and left the building. Told a secretary she was going for a walk and hasn’t come back.” Shafer glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock. “She left about thirty minutes ago. I called her cell phone. No answer.”

“The bitch is keeping a secret from me?” Buchanan’s anger flared so hard that he broke his pencil.

“It gets worse, sir. I had the White House operator call Towne’s secure beeper ten minutes ago. All White House staff must answer such a page immediately, without exception. Nothing. For whatever reason, the commander is choosing not to communicate.”

“Damn! We have to find her, Sam.” Buchanan’s mind churned. “Meanwhile, put some of our other intel people on the file and see what they can get. And I want to know more about Miz Towne. Put the bitch under a microscope.”

“Just here in the office?”

“No. I don’t think she’s coming back,” said Buchanan, making a guess, then a decision. “Do the full package. FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Center. Pull her Secret Service background check. Yank the computer hard drive from her office and have the NSA crack it. Wiretaps, computer scans, the full audio-video surveillance package, pictures, financial information, the whole nine yards, including interviews with people who know her. I want to know everything she does, everybody she knows, where she buys her damned groceries, who she is screwing, and the name of her third-grade teacher’s pet canary. Everything!”

“Warrants?”

The National Security Advisor leaned back and dodged the question. It had been proven too many times that White House walls have ears. “Sam, as I recall, isn’t Lieutenant Commander Towne of Middle Eastern extraction?”

“Her mother is Jordanian, father was an American diplomat. He died in a plane crash when she was a child.”