“Tell everyone to get out,” Yousseff said in nearly perfect Oxford English.
One of the Secret Service agents protested, as did a number of aides.
“Stay just on the other side of the door. I will be fine,” said the president.
“At least let me search this man for weapons or chemicals,” said one of the agents. Yousseff reluctantly agreed, and when it turned out he was implement free, the small crowd exited the room, leaving the two of them. The president sat across the table from Yousseff.
Yousseff’s eyes locked with the president’s. It was the president who blinked. When he did, Yousseff spoke. “You are aware that Kumar has escaped from Inzar Ghar?”
The president nodded imperceptibly.
“He made it to your embassy in Islamabad. From there he was taken to the docks on Karachi Harbor, to my firm, Karachi Dry Dock and Engineering.” Again the president nodded slightly.
“He slipped by a Naval blockade at the mouth of the outer harbor. He was in one of my experimental ships, the Allegro Star. Here are the engineering drawings showing the outlines and specifications of this craft.” Yousseff flipped a sheet of paper onto the table.
The president again nodded, looking at the various profiles of the Allegro Star.
“You have a trillion-dollar intelligence community and security apparatus at your disposal. Everything from satellites to submarines. Find that craft and sink it. With Kumar in it.”
“Do you know where it could be, which direction it went?”
“No. But I can tell you that there is a high likelihood two American agents are with him. Zachariah Goldberg and Richard Lawrence. Your military and intelligence agencies will know these two. Enlist these agencies. They, between them, should be able to figure this out. My loss is your loss. My gain is your gain.”
“And what if I simply tell my agents outside that door to arrest you and slam your terrorist ass in Guantanamo?”
“Sure, Mr. President. Go ahead and do that. But know that most of our conversations have been recorded. Most of these recordings, in fact, are videos of our meetings. Those videos are lodged in a data farm. In the cloud, as you Americans would say. If I do not make a telephone call to my security people in the next ten minutes, those videos will be uploaded to a Facebook page and dozens of other social media sites. I think it will be your ass that will be in Guantanamo Bay. And if you would care at all to maintain a presence in Afghanistan, you need me.” The president nodded again.
“Do not ever threaten me, Mr. President. Now find that ship and destroy it.” Yousseff stood up and exited the room. The aides and Secret Service found their president sitting at the table, pale and shaken.
“What’s going on, sir?” Tyra Baylor asked.
“Get me CJ,” he said. “I need to speak to the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence. They need to find a ship for me. This ship.” He slid the drawings of the Allegro Star across the table.
“Of course, sir, right away,” Tyra replied. “The ONI has many satellites and drones and intelligence-gathering devices on the water. You need to find a ship? They can find a twelve-foot car topper in the middle of the Pacific should that become necessary.”
The Allegro Star was speeding at an astonishing rate of sixty knots some fifty miles off the Goa coast of Western India. The craft was designed so that at top speed, the central fuselage, containing the navigation area and small living quarters, would lift out of the water, and the struts attached to the two outriggers were displaced downward in relation to it. Once the speed exceeded fifty knots, the only portion of the craft touching the water’s surface were the thin hydrodynamic outriggers and the main propeller assembly, reducing the water resistance by almost 90 percent. The craft was stabilized by a series of flaps, ailerons, and horizontal and vertical stabilizers, all controlled by the computers in the navigation center. There was more jet than ship in her DNA.
Kumar was busy overhauling Zak’s prosthetic forearm. He clucked with amazement at the tiny servomotors that controlled forearm, wrist, and finger movements. His engineering brain poked through the wiring controlling the communications hub that had allowed Zak at Inzar Ghar to connect the arm to the comm-link. He shuddered at the compressed spring that controlled a wicked dorsal blade. He had the device hooked up to the ship’s DC power supply, and had a couple of fans blowing air across the mass of wiring and electronics.
As he was prodding various electric and mechanical parts of the device there was an arc of electricity that flashed between two points of the prosthesis, followed by a shower of sparks and a puff of acrid-smelling smoke. Suddenly through the speaker came a dial tone, followed by a sequence of sixteen rapid keyboard tones. Before Kumar could respond, Richard had snatched the prosthesis from him.
The TTIC control room was just beginning to settle down after another Dan rant. Rumors began drifting through the control room about Dan’s interdiction at Ronald Reagan National, and his brief sojourn thereafter at Guantanamo Bay, compliments of the Republic. There were whispers about Turbee’s role in the episode. Neither Turbee nor George advertised their involvement, and the whispers remained whispers. Turbee, however, was certain that Dan was plotting revenge.
Dan Alexander had laid out the latest directive from the Oval Office, which was to find an exotic ship by the name of the Allegro Star and, once found, to relay the coordinates to the acting DDI. Kumar Hanaman was on board. He was a dangerous terrorist and an individual who had for whatever reason undertaken a campaign of disinformation to show that Yousseff Said al-Sabhan was the true directing mind behind the Colorado attack. The Allegro Star was to be found and taken out, no questions asked. It did not matter that
