Dead or Alive

Ibrahim jerked his thumb toward the others spread out along the pipeline behind him. “Ours have been acting up tonight, too.”

“Sunspots or something, probably,” the driver said. “Interesting accent you’ve got.”

“Angola. Lived there until about a year ago.”

The driver shrugged. “Okay. Take it easy.”

The truck drove on and disappeared down the road. Ibrahim waited until he could no longer hear its engine, then let out his breath. Almost there. Allah guide me. He crossed the road, picked his way down into the drainage ditch, then back up the other side. The fence was in sight now, a hundred yards away. He passed the final pylon and began counting steps. At the halfway point, he stopped and knelt down. The pipe was directly over his head. He could hear the gurgling rush of fuel through the steel.

The first of his two charges, the largest of the six, weighed eight ounces but still easily fit in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. The second charge, at two ounces, fit in the palm of his hand. He set the main charge’s digital timer to four minutes, ten seconds; the second charge to five minutes. He squeezed his eyes shut, said a quick prayer, then stood up, affixed the main charge to the pipe’s underside, then started the timer. He watched two seconds click off, then walked into the open, turned around, and scratched his head. He waited long enough to ensure that all three of them had seen his signal, then started the timer on the last charge and stuffed it into its duct tape and Bubble Wrap cocoon.

He heaved the bundle over the fence, then turned around and started walking.

74

HENDLEY, GRANGER, and Rick Bell spent part of the afternoon and early evening debriefing Dominic in the conference room. Jack Junior and John Clark sat in a pair of chairs along the wall and listened; Jack was family and a good friend, and while Dominic seemed to be holding it together, Hendley had thought Jack’s presence might be helpful. As for Clark, Hendley wanted his professional eye.

Jack watched his cousin carefully as he walked Hendley and the others through the Tripoli mission: their initial meeting with Archie, their foray into the Medina to snatch Bari, their trip to Almasi’s house, and finally Brian’s death. At every step, Dominic answered their questions curtly but thoroughly, never losing his patience and never hesitating. And not showing a trace of emotion, Jack realized. His cousin showed no affect in either his face or his body language. He was flat.

“Tell us again about Fakhoury,” Sam Granger said.

“According to Bari, he was low-level, just an enforcer. We decided Almasi was a better target. We didn’t want any witnesses to Bari’s disappearance, so we talked about what to do with him.”

“Whose decision was it to kill him?”

“We both decided. I wasn’t so sure, but Brian… His argument made sense.”

“Did you do it?”

Dominic shook his head. “Brian.”

“Counting Fakhoury, how many dead?” This from Bell.

“Six. Four by us.”

“Let’s fast-forward to Almasi’s house,” said Hendley.

Dominic went through it again: parking in the quarry… infiltrating Almasi’s house… the computer and the safe… Brian getting shot… the firefight and their exfiltration. Dominic trailed off there. “The rest you know.”

“Body count?” asked Granger.

“Five.”

“No wounded?”

Dominic shrugged. “Not when I left the house.”

“What does that mean?” asked Rick Bell.

“It means I made sure there were no witnesses. No way for the URC to know who or what happened. That’s kind of the point of what we’re doing, right?”

Hendley nodded. “True.” He looked to Bell and Granger. “Anything else?” Both men shook their heads. “Okay, Dom, thanks.”

Dominic stood up to leave.

Hendley said, “Dom, we’re sorry about Brian.”

Dominic simply nodded.

“I’ll get a car to take you home.”

“No, I’m just going to find a couch and crash.”

Granger said, “If you’d like us to make arrangements for Brian-”

“I’ll do it.”

Dominic left, shutting the door behind him. Hendley said, “Jack?”

“Hard to say. I’ve never seen him like this, but then again, it’s not exactly common. For anybody. I think he’s just numb. He’s exhausted; he watched his twin brother die in his lap; and, right or wrong, he’s probably feeling pretty damned guilty about it. Once it all sinks in he’ll fall apart, then pull himself back together.”

“You agree, John.”

Clark took a moment to answer. “For the most part, but he’s a changed man, that’s for sure. Some switch got flipped.”

Bell said, “Explain.”

“He was on the fence about taking out Fakhoury. Brian had to talk him into it, and probably did the job himself because he knew Dom wasn’t ready for it. Three hours later, they’re at Almasi’s house. Brian gets shot, and before Dom leaves the house, he’s finishing off wounded men. That’s day to night in pretty short order.”

“So assume you’re right about the flipped switch,” Hendley said. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Don’t know. Depends on how or if he rebounds. Right now he’s got that thousand-yard stare in his eyes. This is usually where operators take one of two paths: learn to deal with the job and put it into perspective, or let it eat you up.”

“Is he okay for the field?”

“This isn’t an exact science, Gerry. Everybody’s different.”

“Best judgment. Is he okay for the field?”

Clark thought it over. “Not by himself.”

Hendley asked Rick Bell, “What do we know about what Dom brought home?”

“A flash drive full of Almasi’s computer files, and one CD-ROM. The files are gonna take a while to sift through; the CD was a gold mine: three hundred sixty five JPEG images of onetime pads-nine square by nine square grids with alphanumeric substitution characters. I don’t know how the math works out, but we’re talking about millions of different combos.”

“About a year’s worth,” Hendley said. “One for every damned day. Please tell me they’re dated.”

Bell smiled. “Bet your ass. They go back almost ten months, which means unless they pull the plug, we’ve two months of future OTPs in our hands.”

“That’s how they’re doing it,” Jack muttered.

“What?” Clark asked.

“They’re doubling up. They use steganography to embed the OTP into website images. Recipients pull an image off the site, use a program to peel away the stego layer, and they’ve got the daily OTP. After that it’s just numbers: Go into a forum on a URC website, find the post with a string of a couple hundred letter-number combinations, run them through your OTP, and you’ve got your marching orders.”

“I’m with you on most of that,” Granger said, “but not the forum idea. I don’t think the URC would shotgun a message like that. They’d want to make sure it reached only the recipients they wanted. We know it’s not e-mail, right?”

“Doubtful. URC traffic is all but dead.”