tattoo on his bicep, the word “Jen,” short for Jennifer, his fiancee. At a nod, both guards seized him, and she placed the shining sharp edge against his flesh and rocked it gently, top and bottom, then side and side, cutting a rectangle around the tattoo. The slices barely broke the skin and caused little pain and only a thin trace of blood. The younger woman stepped forward and pressed a small cloth on the wound to dry it while the elder returned to the bench and exchanged blades. She held up the little knife with the hook and examined it in the sunlight that streamed through the window before returning to work. With the guards struggling to hold the victim steady, she hooked a corner of the opened skin and peeled it toward her, slid the blade beneath the tiny flap, and pressed the ribbon of flesh against the steel with her thumb. With a slow pull, she ripped the rectangle away from the fatty membrane beneath while Jake Henderson screamed in agony and genuine terror. His eyes were huge. “Javon! They’re going to skin me alive!”
The woman held up the piece of skin like a prize and dangled the tattoo before Jake’s eyes. Satisfied with her work, she said something, and the younger woman rushed forward again and applied ointment and a thick bandage. Remarkably little blood oozed from the wound. The older woman had returned to the bench and slowly wiped, polished, and sharpened her knives before rolling them up and tying a knot in the small leather strap that held the bundle together.
Outside, Javon Anthony could hear the merriment increasing as he prayed for his friend, who remained tied to the chair, mumbling incoherently, sounding like he was going mad with fear.
The door opened, and six of the terrorists who had taken them prisoner came inside, laughing with a fat man with a thick gray beard. The old man approached Jake Henderson and bent forward, hands on knees. He spoke with a thick accent. “Hallo, American. I am Mustafa Khan, the leader of defense forces in this area. In a few minutes, we will be called to the town square. I shall walk down the path beside my nephew, the courageous Fariq, who led this especially trained team of strong fighters in Afghanistan. People have come from all around to pay them honor today for their deeds on the battlefield. Then we will bring you to the square, and Fariq will personally give you over to the women as a symbol of his victory. It will be quite a sight. Afterward, we shall have a feast.”
“Fight them, Jake! Fight back!” Anthony screamed, somehow lurching up from the floor, only to be knocked back down again by the guards. “Fight the bastards! You goat-fuckers are all dead men! Hurt him like that again and the United States will destroy this fucking dirty village, and I’ll see you in hell!”
Mustafa Kahn walked over and slapped his cheek hard. “Your time will come, black man. Just not today. Be patient.”
THE PREVIOUS DAY, THE United States had unexpectedly received information on the captives from a very reliable source, and early that morning an unmanned Predator robot plane had been launched to carry out a reprisal raid. The aircraft coasted without detection into a circular pattern nine thousand feet above the village of Gilgot, too high to be heard, and its controllers back at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan scanned the target zone with an infrared camera. Clear shots of the cluster of buildings came onto the command screen in real time and confirmed the nugget of information, that an American was to be sacrificed during a celebration honoring the terrorists who had kidnapped two soldiers and slain a third. The camera also provided a close-up picture of the small building where the prisoners reportedly were being held.
With that confirmation, the order was given without a second thought. Two Hellfire air-to-ground missiles slid off the rails beneath the drone. Pushed by solid-propellant rocket motors, they tore away on flights of their own, homing in along the invisible path of a reflected laser beam.
The Hellfires appeared seemingly from nowhere in the clear sky and crashed into the center of the village, and the twin impacts of their twenty-pound blast-augmented warheads exploded almost simultaneously with terrifying thunder. The hut on the hill saved the lives of those inside, but the small building seemed to leap on its foundation when it was socked by a gigantic concussion wave, then a shower of debris. Mustafa Kahn struggled to the door in time to see a huge and pulsing orange-red fireball consuming his village.
Behind him came the maniacal laugh of Sergeant Javon Anthony, who was rolling from side to side. “Told ya, motherfucker! Tried to warn your stupid ass. There goes your fucking party. Big storm headed over the mountains, straight for this shithole, and you and your pissant nephew gonna die hard!” The laughing continued until the guards beat him unconscious.
WARLORD MUSTAFA KAHN WOULD never learn how his village had been discovered as the hiding place of the prisoners. He staggered among the bodies, hearing the cries of the injured and seeing the devastation spreading from the big crater on the northern edge of the square. He had failed to protect his people, the worst thing that could happen to a tribal leader. He did not want a follow-up missile strike, which would either kill him outright or ignite a rebellion that eventually would have children kicking his severed head around like a ball. Even while Kahn spoke the usual promise that Allah would take the ultimate revenge on the Americans, he was regarding his nephew and his friends as objects worthy only of his scorn, filthy things that had brought doom to Gilgot. The six young fighters were transformed into a commodity. Mustafa Kahn believed he had sacrificed enough to show them honor and protect his own dignity. Now they had to go.
He reestablished contact with the esteemed Taliban chieftain Muhammed Waleed to say that he would welcome a price of twenty-five thousand dollars for each American soldier in his possession, and that he would throw in the half-dozen brave heroes who had captured them as a bonus. The deal was accepted, and three highly polished SUVs arrived that night to whisk away all of the men, who had been traded like a herd of camels. The young fighters were glad to leave Gilgot with their own skins intact.
Mustafa Kahn finally could relax, count the money, and consider the overall episode to have been a profitable venture. He had long been eyeing a beautiful falcon whose owner and trainer was asking about twenty-five thousand dollars for the graceful bird. Now he could buy the falcon, share about ten thousand dollars among the villagers who lost family members in the missile attack, and still have another fifteen thousand left over. He also had curried favor with the powerful Muhammed Waleed, the leader of the Taliban.
4
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
CIA DIRECTOR BARTLETT GENEEN and his luncheon guest remained politely silent while Filipino servants in white tunics and creased black trousers set a table in his office with regular china instead of the elite tableware used to impress politicians. When the stewards left, the two men nibbled quietly on vegetable salads and small servings of jumbo shrimp sauteed in a light mustard sauce. They had known each other for a long time and would tend to business in its turn.
Geneen was a carryover from the previous administration of President Mark Tracy and had been reappointed by the new president, Graham Russell. The director had spent his entire professional life remaining studiously nonpolitical in the intelligence world. From his point of view, it did not matter who was sitting in the White House, for he served the office, not the man. Geneen gave unvarnished advice, heavy on facts, and stayed out of the line of political fire. He had other people do that kind of thing. One of them was sitting across the table.
The long battle with America’s changing foes over the years had drawn deep lines of worry in Geneen’s sharp, emaciated face, and his white hair was almost entirely gone. Age made no difference in his determination to keep the nation as safe as possible.
His guest at this 12:30 P.M. lunch was another CIA veteran, James Monroe Hall, a special assistant to the deputy director of operations. Hall was calm and sipped some iced tea, waiting for Geneen to speak.
“Jim, this beheading thing and the capture of our two soldiers poses a problem for us,” the director said.
