Court this day. The house sat off the cul-de-sac, connected by a stone driveway.
Approaching to the front door of the imposing residence, he knocked loudly on the door, holding the tracts in his right hand, only inches away from his concealed automatic. A couple minutes, and no one came. Another knock. Still silence.
“I’m going in,” he whispered into his lip mike. “Cover me.”
“Roger that. The alarm has been disabled. You’re clear to move.”
Five minutes later, he had picked the lock on the back door of the Sarami residence and was standing in the mudroom, examining the alarm system. Sure enough, it was off-line. Never hurt to double-check, he thought, running a gloved finger over the unit.
A brief check of the living room and kitchen revealed nothing. Time to head upstairs…
“What’s the good word, sir?” Hamid turned to find Sergeant Jose Obregon standing at his side.
“It isn’t,” he replied, shoving the TACSAT back into the pocket of his Kevlar vest. “We’ve got some problems.”
Hamid turned without another word and walked back to the Humvee, the Army Ranger sergeant following in his wake, M-4 held at the ready.
The Humvee was of Iraq War vintage, additional armor plates bolted onto the sides. A.50-caliber Browning was mounted to the roof, manned by a nineteen-year-old technical from Kennesaw, Georgia.
“Everybody listen up.” Hamid called out as he stopped a few feet away from the vehicle. It had been years since his own days in the Army Rangers, but he remembered the command voice well.
“Everyone dismount and set up bivouac here for the night. We just received comm from Sergeant Brown,” Hamid continued. Due to the clandestine nature of their operation, they were using pseudonyms in front of the Rangers. Thomas was Sergeant Brown. “He and his guide are trapped on the other side of a rain-swollen mountain stream. To detour around would involve well over a hundred kilometers and several days of travel. They’re going to make an effort to cross in the morning. Then we will meet at the border as planned.”
“Why not keep pressing forward?” Obregon asked.
Hamid cast a critical glance in the sergeant’s direction. “I grew up in this part of the world, sergeant. I don’t want to spend any more time in Kurd-controlled territory than I have to.
Obregon nodded, a temporary flash of annoyance crossing his face before the iron mask of discipline once again asserted itself. The CIA was in control of this mission, whether he liked it or not.
“Take your men and start setting up a defensive perimeter. Sergeant Black!” Hamid called. “I need to talk with you.”
Davood appeared from the other side of the Humvee, an anxious look on his face. “Yes, Sergeant White?”
Hamid motioned for him to follow, then walked away from the path, until they were out of earshot of the Rangers. “Is Thomas all right?”
“Exhausted, but okay otherwise,” Hamid replied. “I hope they can cross the stream in safety.”
“Did he say where they were specifically?”
Hamid shook his head. “No. Just that they were on the east side of a stream there in the mountains. Keep your eyes open,” he continued, looking toward the mountains. “Hopefully the Kurds will leave us be.”
He had been in the house for an hour and three minutes, precisely, he realized, checking the luminous dial of his Armitron wristwatch. And he was stymied.
It would appear that the lawyer possessed a laptop. At any rate, it was gone, leaving behind an empty socket where it would have been docked with the flatscreen LCD monitor. Modern technology had such frustrating potential.
Despite this setback, he’d tossed the house. No dice. He moved back to the desk with the monitor, drawn there by a sudden impulse. A thin book lay there, with the word
All at once his earbud came to life with static, taking him off-guard. It was his partner’s voice, low and urgent.
“We’ve got an issue, Vic.”
His body tensed, every sense alert. He knew that tone. “What is it?”
“A car just pulled into the drive.”
“Oh, crap. One of theirs?”
“That’s a negative. It’s a little Honda. Ohio tags.”
Vic paused, torn by indecision. “A woman’s getting out,” his partner reported. “Looks like she’s got some sort of mop in her hand. I think she’s there to clean the place.”
He swore under his breath, standing there with the book in his hands. “I’ve got to have five minutes.”
“I don’t think you’ve got that kind of time, Vic. Get out of there. Now.”
“You’ve got to stall her somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t care how, just do it,” he retorted stubbornly, whipping a PDA out of his pocket and running it over the open page. A scanned image appeared on the screen and he clicked Save. Next page. Rinse and repeat.
Plan B. Improvise. The man in the car sighed, disconnecting his lip mike and shoving it in a pocket. After ten years working with Vic, one might think you would become accustomed to this kind of thing.
A single coffee-stained pamphlet from the Jehovah’s Witnesses was crumpled in the center console, still there from their rehearsal of the night before. The trouble was, it was
He took a deep breath, trying to smooth out the paper as he stepped from the car. Time to convert the lost…
“We have approximately twenty minutes till landing, Mr. President.” Hancock raised his head to smile at the brunette staffer who had just made the announcement. “Thank you, Mary.”
She smiled back, fairly glowing at his remembrance of her name. It was his specialty, he thought, watching as she returned to her seat.
“What do you think, Ian?”
“I think things would go much more smoothly if you would keep it zipped, Mr. President.”
Hancock laughed. Ian was among the very few men who would dare say such a thing to him. A straightforward opinion could be refreshing. At times. He tapped his fingers together and shrugged. “What could be the problem? Nicole stayed home on this trip.”
“And the wingnuts are already speculating as to
