bombers that stuff has collectively been the definition of terrorism to the global consciousness for years, and that’s been more than bad enough. This was so much worse I didn’t know if I could put it into any reasonable perspective. If they were trying to spread Ebola it wouldn’t be this bad because Ebola doesn’t chase and try to bite you. Whoever was behind this was one sick son of a bitch. Smart, sure, but sick. This went beyond religious fundamentalism or political extremism. Right at that moment I was sure we were looking at something born out of a mind that was truly and genuinely evil.
I don’t think I clearly understood Church until that moment. If I were in his place, looking into that same future, how would I handle it? How ruthless would I be? How ruthless could I be?
“I think you already answered that question, boyo,” I murmured, thinking about the five men in that room.
Church may act like a Vulcan but he had to be feeling all this stuff, too. If so, then the strain of holding back all of his emotions, all of his humanity, must be terrible. If I were going to work for him, then I’d have to look for signs of that pressure, look for cracks. Not only in me, but in him, too. On the other hand Church could be a monster himself just one on our side. There were guys like that. Hell, after World War II our own government hired a bunch of Nazi scientists. Better the devil you know. More to the point, there was the comment FDR supposedly made about Somoza. Something like, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
Great. I’m going to work for a monster in order to fight other monsters. So what did that make me?
The bathroom floor seemed to tilt a bit as I headed for the door.
Chapter Thirty
El Mujahid / Near Najaf, Iraq / Five days ago
“THEY’RE COMING,” SAID Abdul, El Mujahid’s lieutenant. “Two British Apache attack helicopters. Four minutes.”
“Excellent,” the Fighter murmured. He took one last look around and then handed a bundle of clothes to Abdul. “There is nothing of value here. Burn them.”
The half-track sat askew in the middle of an intersection of two lonely roads, thirty-six kilometers from Najaf. Smoke still curled up from beneath the chassis. Additional smoke rose from a dozen corpses. There was blood everywhere, muted by sand to the color of dusty roses. Two cars were in flames-an old Ford Falcon and a Chinese Ben Ben-both with registration numbers that would tie them to Jihadist sympathizers. The entire picture was perfect: a battle fought to a tragic victory. A half-track crippled by a roadside bomb; a few British soldiers, outnumbered by insurgents, taking heavy casualties as they bravely fought through an ambush. All of the hostiles dead. Of the seven Brits in the truck, four were dead-badly mangled and burned-and three clung to life.
“Go, go, go,” whispered El Mujahid, and his lieutenant melted away and slipped down into a rat hole hidden by a spring trapdoor covered with coarse dry bushes. In the stillness nothing moved, and the only sound apart from the whup- whup- whup of the helo rotors were the piteous moans of the wounded.
“Allah akbar!” said El Mujahid, and then used his thumb to test the edge of the piece of jagged metal debris he had selected. He laced the tip of the metal against his forehead, right at the hairline; he drew a breath, held it, and then exhaled sharply as he ripped the metal through his skin, tearing down from upper left to lower right, through his eyebrow, across the bridge of his nose, along his cheek all the way to his jawline. Pain exploded in his face and blood surged from the cut. He could feel tears in his eyes and he had to bite down against the white-hot agony of the wound. It was worse-far worse-than he expected and it nearly tore the cry from his throat.
The helicopters were nearly overhead. With a gasp he flung the metal from him and slumped back into the wreckage, deliberately snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, making sure that the droplets touched everything. By the time the first helicopter landed he was perfectly placed, his torn face transformed into a mask of bright blood, his clothing soaked. His heart raced and he could feel blood flow from the wound with each pulse beat.
He closed his eyes and as he heard the first footfalls as the soldiers leaped from the helicopter he raised one gory hand and reached toward them, and now he let out the scream. It was a wet gargling cry, inarticulate and savagely hurt.
“Here!” he heard a voice yell, and then the half-track rocked as men clambered inside. There were hands on him, touching him, probing him, feeling for his pulse.
“This one’s alive. Get the medics!”
Fingers scrabbled around his throat, feeling for the little dogtag chain, pulling it free. “Sergeant Henderson,” a voice said, reading the name. “One hundred third armored.”
“Clear the way, let me get to him,” said a different voice; and then there was a compress against his face as the medics worked to save the lives of the British wounded.
It took every ounce of strength that the Fighter possessed not to smile.
Chapter Thirty-One
Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 2:51 P.M.
WE WERE IN Courtland’s office, just the two of us. Everything was still not unpacked and I had to sit on a plastic folding chair. We were both drinking bottled spring water. One wall of the office was a big picture window that looked out onto the harbor. The afternoon sunshine made everything look peaceful, but the lie buried within the illusion was appalling. I turned away from the window and looked at Courtland.
“I’d prefer to have given you the complete version of this, but as Mr. Church pointed out, we don’t have the time, so the learning curve will be more of a straight line.” She sat back and crossed her legs. Even in the fatigue pants I could tell she had nice legs. Except for her personality, which so far was somewhere between a cranky alligator and a defensive moray eel, most things about her were nice. I even liked her husky voice and thick British accent. I just didn’t particularly like her.
“Fire away,” I said.
“After 9/11 your government formed Homeland Security and Great Britain created a similar and rather more secret organization, code name of Barrier. You won’t have heard of it. MI5 and MI6 get most of the press, which is as it should be. Barrier was given a lot of power and freedom of action and was therefore able to stop several major threats against my country that would have been, to us, as devastating as the World Trade Center attack was on you. As I was involved in some of those operations I was loaned out to your government when the DMS was formed.”
“Did you help create the DMS?”
“No,” she said, “that was Mr. Church’s doing, but there were some similarities in both structure and agenda between the DMS and Barrier, and the lines of communication, at least where antiterrorism is concerned, are wide open between the White House and Whitehall. As you probably know there are many such task forces around the country, and all of their intel passes in one way or another through DMS hands. Church is wired in everywhere. When your wiretap flagged the name El Mujahid it rang a bell at the DMS and Church ordered an immediate infiltration of the task force. By the time the team was formed we had three agents in place.”
“Really? Then you do have a working field team?”
“Did,” she said as a shadow passed across her face. “But we’ll get to that. First I need to tell you about the cell your task force took down. After the raid our computer specialists were able to salvage several laptops and we’ve been systematically decrypting their coded records. We haven’t learned as much as we’d like but we are making some headway. So far we’ve decoded what amounts to shipping manifests for weapons, medical supplies, research equipment, and even human cargo.”
“You mean agents they’ve smuggled in?”
She shook her head. “No actual human cargo. Like Javad. Brought into this country in temperature-controlled containers like the one you found here.”
“How many others?”
“We’ve only found references to three, including Javad.”
“Shit,” I said.
“The import records indicate that the other walkers were brought into the country less than twenty-four
