“Why?”
“He’s trying a little sleight of hand. It’d be best if nobody runs with it.”
“Okay.” Then Werner’s voiced turned formal. “Saif Yasin, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be taken down and can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present. Do you understand what I just told you?” Werner asked, taking the man’s arm.
The Emir didn’t say a word.
Werner looked to Dominic. “He understand English?”
Dominic grinned. “Oh, yeah. Believe me, he knows exactly what’s happening.”
EPILOGUE
THOUGH JACK RYAN SR.’S Secret Service detail obviated any worries about unauthorized photographs being taken, most of the members of The Campus-Gerry Hendley, Tom Davis, Jerry Rounds, Rick Bell, Pete Alexander, Sam Granger, and Gavin Biery-had arrived several minutes early in three separate cars. Chavez and Clark came in a fourth vehicle with the recently retired and newly hired Campus member Sam Driscoll, who’d been spending half his time at The Campus bringing himself up to speed and the other half hunting for town houses and rehabbing at Johns Hopkins. Though he’d never met the fallen Caruso brother, Driscoll was a soldier to the core, and blood relation or not, known or not, a comrade in arms was a brother.
“Here they come,” Chavez murmured to the group and nodded down the tree-lined drive.
Per Marine Corps standards, Brian’s immediate family, escorted by Dominic, arrived in the lead limousine and stopped behind the hearse, where an eight-man escort platoon of Marine Corps pallbearers stood at attention, eyes forward and faces expressionless. Moments later the second limousine, carrying the Ryan clan, appeared and glided to a stop. At a nod from Special Agent Andrea Price-O’Day, rear doors on both limousines were opened, and the attendees emerged.
At the grave, Gerry Hendley and John Clark stood beside each other and watched as the members of the escort platoon stoically and smoothly slid the flag-draped coffin from the hearse and then fell into position behind the chaplain for the march across the lush lawn.
“Starting to sink in,” the head of The Campus murmured.
“Yeah,” Clark agreed. Six days had passed since Yucca, four since Brian’s body had returned home from Tripoli. Only now had any of them had time to absorb everything that had transpired. For the country, The Campus had scored a big win, but it had come at a big price.
The rain that had been falling most of the morning had cleared away an hour earlier; the rows of stark-white headstones seemed almost luminous in the midday sun. Paralleling the pallbearers’ course to the grave, a Marine band contingent marched in lockstep while playing a somber drum cadence.
The casket reached the foot of the grave, and the family members took their positions. The escort commander softly barked, “Order…
Per Dominic’s request, the chaplain kept the ceremony short.
“Escort… ten-
Then came the Marine Hymn and the gun salute, the Firing Party going through its crisp, almost robotic movements until the last shot echoed through the grounds. As it faded away, a lone bugler played taps as Brian’s flag was carefully folded and then presented to the Carusos. The Marine band played the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
And it was over.
The next morning, Monday, The Campus resumed business, but the mood was predictably subdued. In the days leading up to Brian’s funeral, each of them had, of course, written and submitted his own after-action report, but this would be the first time the members of the now dismantled Kingfisher Group would meet for a postmortem. Faces were grim as everyone filed into the conference room. By unspoken agreement, a single chair at the table was left open for Brian.
The answer to Jack’s big “Why?” question had taken all of them by surprise. The Emir did, in fact, have larger aspirations for Lotus. The Heartland Attacks and the aborted
Where the United States rightly invaded Afghanistan following 9/11, she would again react swiftly and overtly, expanding military operations east across the Safed Koh and Hindu Kush mountains. The inevitable destabilization of Pakistan, already a near-failed state, would, according to the Emir, create a power vacuum into which the Umayyad Revolutionary Council would step and take control of Pakistan’s substantial nuclear arsenal.
“It’s plausible,” Jerry Rounds said. “Worst case, the plan succeeds; best case, we have to go into the area big, maybe quadruple our current presence.”
“And stay there for a couple decades,” Clark added.
“If we thought Iraq was a recruiting poster for militants…” Chavez observed.
“A win-win for the Emir and the URC,” Jack added.
“I told Werner to dig into the legends first. He’ll figure it out,” Dominic Caruso said. “The question is, was this the only trick the bastard had up his sleeve?”
As if on cue, the phone beside Hendley’s elbow buzzed. He picked it up, listened, then said, “Send her up.” He hung up and said to the group, “Maybe one less question that needs answering.”
Mary Pat Foley appeared in the doorway sixty seconds later. After greetings were exchanged, she laid a manila folder on the table before Hendley, who opened it and began reading.
Mary Pat said to Sam Driscoll, “Collage finally spit out an answer on your sand table.”
“No shit?”
“Let me guess,” Chavez said. “Old news. Yucca Mountain.”
“No,” Hendley said. He slid the file down the table to Clark and Jack, who scanned it together. Jack looked up at Mary Pat. “You sure this is right?”
“Crunched it a dozen times. We got eighty-two perfect geographical data point matches.”
Dominic said, “Spit it out.”
“Kyrgyzstan,” Clark replied, without looking up from the file.
“What the hell does the Emir want with Kyrgyzstan?” Chavez said.
Gerry Hendley replied, “The million-dollar question. Let’s start looking for the answer.”
The meeting continued for another hour before breaking up. At eleven, Jack took an early lunch and drove to Peregrine Cliff. As he stepped onto the porch, Andrea Price-O’Day opened the front door.
“That’s what I call service,” Jack said. “How’s things?”
“As always. Sorry about your cousin.”
Jack nodded. “Thanks. Dad?”
“In his office. Writing,” she added pointedly.
“I’ll knock carefully.”
Which he did, and was surprised to hear his father say, cheerfully, “Come on in.”
Jack sat down and waited a few seconds for his father to finish off a sentence on the keyboard. Ryan Senior swiveled in his chair and smiled. “How ya doing?”
“Okay. You getting close?” Jack asked, nodding at the autobiography on the computer monitor.
“I can see light at the end of the tunnel. After this, I’ll let it cool off a little, then start rewriting. You went to
