“I called you an idiot! An unbelievable idiot!”
“You will show me the proper respect,” Karim commanded, “or you will be punished.”
“I’d like to see you try.” Hakim took a step toward his old friend and pushed his sleeves up. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”
An incredulous look on his face, Karim answered, “I stopped these two men from walking away and telling the authorities that we are here. I did what you should have done.”
“Should have done? You are an utter fool. You have ruined everything and for nothing. These two weren’t going to tell anyone anything other than what I told them. They were going to go hunt down by the river and leave us alone.” Hakim looked at the father and son. Both of them were writhing on the ground in pain. Now what the hell were they going to do with them? “They believed me, you arrogant ass.”
“You are the fool,” Karim spat back. “They only acted like they believed you. They are probably police.”
“You have never been to this country before. You have no idea how to read these people. They are not police.” Hakim motioned at the house, the barn, and the surrounding land. “Where are we to go?”
Karim was obviously irritated by the question. “Well… if they are hunters as you say, we will bury the bodies and be done with them.”
“And when they don’t make it home for dinner tonight, and the wife calls the police and tells them they were coming out here to hunt. What do we do then? Because the police will come and look for them.”
Karim saw that the boy had pulled a cell phone from his jacket and was trying to make a call. He raised his gun, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The orange hat flew off the boy’s head in a puff of dust and his foot twitched a few times before he went completely still. Looking back at Hakim as if nothing had happened, he said, “Then we will have to leave.”
The father howled in agony and started to frantically crawl toward his son. Hakim was sickened by the entire scene. None of it had to happen. These two men had done nothing wrong. “I explained to you what would happen if we had to leave. I told you in detail that our best chance for survival was to stay here for at least a month. To wait them out. Then we would be able to slip out of the country.”
“I am sick of your complaining,” Karim announced. “I question your devotion.”
“And I question your devotion. You are a coward. No different than the rest of the lazy rich men who claim to lead us.”
Genuine anger flashed across Karim’s face. “How dare you question me?”
“I am not one of your brainwashed robots. I have known you for too long. If you were a real warrior you would have gone into that building with your men and martyred yourself. But you are too obsessed with your own fame. The Lion of al Qaeda… Ha!” Hakim spoke in reference to the name that Karim had given himself in the videos he released after the attacks. “You should be called the coward of al Qaeda.” He looked back to the father, who had reached his son and was sobbing uncontrollably.
Karim could not take another word. The insolence of his friend should have been checked a long time ago. “Prove to me that you are not a coward. Kill the father now. I order you.” Karim tossed his gun to his friend.
The gun sailed through the air, but Hakim made no effort to catch it. The gun landed at his feet and skidded a few inches along the gravel. Hakim looked down at the gun and shook his head. “There is no honor in this. No bravery in killing an unarmed father and son who have done nothing to offend you, or Allah.”
“I order you!”
“We are the infidels in this land. This is wrong. If you want him dead, then you should finish what you started.”
“For the last time I order you to pick up the gun and shoot the father.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Hakim said with a derisive scowl.
“Yes, you do.”
Hakim turned and started back for the house.
“Do not turn your back on me,” Karim yelled, but Hakim paid him no attention. Karim had finally had enough. He broke into a run and caught his friend just as he reached the steps. He delivered a quick rabbit punch to Hakim’s kidney and then kicked through the back of his right knee, collapsing him to the ground. Karim then grabbed him by the shirt, threw him onto his back, and dropped on top of him, delivering a flurry of punches to his friend’s face. “This,” he said in between his third and fourth punches, “is a lesson I should have taught you a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 17
ADAMS pleaded, then cried, and in between the sniffles and tears he began mumbling to himself. The door buzzed and Rapp opened it to find Hurley standing on the other side, looking none too pleased that he was going to have to shoot his best friend’s son in the head for the second time.
“I should have never stopped you,” Rapp said in an apologetic tone.
“Damn right you shouldn’t have.” Hurley pushed past him, his cane in one hand and his gun in the other.
Adams snapped out of his mumbling trance and began screaming for Rapp to stop. Upon seeing Hurley and the gun, he tried to stand, and forgetting that his ankles were still tied to the chair, toppled over. He caught the edge of the table and brought it down with him, sending the glass and bottle of vodka crashing to the floor at the same time.
Hurley moved into position over him and took aim.
“Don’t shoot!” Adams screamed. “Mitch, wait! I know things! I can help!”
Rapp shared a quick look with Hurley as he walked back to Adams.
He squatted and said, “You get one shot at this, Glen. Tell me something worth knowing, and it better be good.”
Adams was lying on his side, the toppled chair still attached to his legs. He looked at the puddle of urine and then at Rapp. “Help me up first.”
“Fuck you!” Hurley growled as he jabbed the gun into Adams ’s face.
Rapp stood and again started for the door. Adams began screaming frantically for him to stop and Hurley let loose a litany of profanity that described in very colorful terms exactly what he thought of Adams. To further punctuate each word he stabbed his gun closer and closer to Adams ’s face until he had it pressed into his temple.
Rapp was halfway out the door when he heard a name. It was repeated three times in quick succession. Rapp stopped, his interest finally piqued, and turned. “What did you say?”
“Kathy O’Brien!” Adams said with his face pressed into the floor.
Rapp’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected to get out of Adams, but the name Kathy O’Brien wasn’t anywhere on the horizon. She was the wife of Chuck O’Brien, the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “What about her?” Rapp asked cautiously.
“That’s how I knew about the operation you were running.”
One of the keys to a successful interrogation, at least early on, was to keep the subject off balance. No matter how shocking or strange a piece of information might be, you never let it show. “Which operation,” Rapp asked, “would that be?”
“The mosques.”
“Go on,” Rapp ordered.
“The undercover guys you sent into the mosques.”
Rapp walked back and looked down at Adams. “You mean the operation that was leaked to the Post last week.”
“Yeah… Yeah… that’s the one.”
“The story you leaked, you mean?” Rapp asked.
Adams didn’t answer fast enough, so Hurley gave him a little love tap with the tip of the barrel-just hard enough to draw a drop of blood.
