“So this was about Pakistan, not about me and Scott.”
“Of course,” she said, not bothering even to try to be convincing. “I consider both of you completely expendable.”
• • •
The plane’s wheels touched down and the engines roared as the massive aircraft came to a stop. Rapp didn’t move from his position on a cot bolted to the fuselage. He watched silently as Coleman, utterly still and surrounded by his medical team, was wheeled out the back.
It wasn’t their planned stop in Europe. The docs had told him that Coleman wasn’t going to survive long enough to get there. This U.S. air base in Afghanistan was the closest thing that had the surgical capabilities they needed.
He continued to sit, staring at the wall in front of him, until an air force colonel came stalking up the open loading bay.
“Who’s in charge here?”
When Rapp didn’t react, Maslick subtly pointed.
“Who the hell are you?” the man said, putting his hands on his hips and positioning himself in front of Rapp. “I got a call saying that a plane was coming in with a medical emergency. Nothing about on whose authority, where it was from, who was on-”
He suddenly fell silent and it was obvious why. The blanket had slipped off the nuke strapped into a bunk to his left.
“What the hell did you bring onto my base?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” Rapp said finally. “You just need to make sure my man gets the best care available and call me in a fast transport to the U.S.”
With an expression of disgust, the officer examined Rapp’s filthy clothing, long hair, and thick beard. “CIA,” he spat. “Fuck you. You don’t walk onto my base and start giving orders.”
“Look, Colonel. I’m bone tired and we both know I’m going to get what I want. Why not just skip straight to that part?”
“You have confidence, I’ll give you that. Exactly why is it you think you’re going to get what you want?”
“Because I have a nuke.”
The man’s eyes shot toward the warhead again. “But where did you get it and where are you going with it? Because you’re not getting me involved in some bullshit CIA operation without authorization.”
It worried Rapp that he was actually thinking about killing the man. And not in some vague, theoretical way. He had his eye on a large wrench stowed against the fuselage and was picturing beating the officer’s skull in with it.
“Okay, Colonel,” he said, reluctantly abandoning the idea. “Then let’s get you authorization.”
He smirked. “What? From Irene Kennedy? I don’t work for her.”
The anger flashed across Rapp’s face and Maslick inched closer, putting himself in position for an intercept. The Delta man tensed when Rapp reached behind him, but then relaxed when nothing more deadly than a phone appeared.
“Would the president be good enough?”
“My ass,” the man said. “You Agency pricks are all the same. You swagger around and bullshit about how the White House hangs on your every word. I’ve been around way too long to fall for that.”
Rapp switched his phone to speaker and dialed a number that went to a private switchboard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“White House. How can I help you?”
“Could you put me through to the Oval Office, please?”
“Connecting you now.”
The still-unnamed air force colonel started to look a little uncertain.
“Oval Office.”
“Gloria, it’s Mitch. Is he available?”
“He’s meeting with the vice president right now. Do you want me to poke my head in?”
Rapp looked inquisitively at the man in front of him, who shook his head violently.
“No, it’s not that important.”
“Should he call you when he’s out?”
Again, Rapp looked up and again he got a vigorous shake of the head.
“No, I’ll just catch up with him when I get back. Thanks.”
By the time he disconnected the call, the anonymous colonel was already headed for the exit.
“Fast transport,” Rapp called after him.
“I’ll find the closest one and get it in the air,” he responded without looking back. A moment later he had disappeared down the tarmac.
“Helpful guy,” Maslick said.
Rapp stood. “Lock this plane down. No one gets on or off until we’re ready to transfer that nuke. I’ll be back in twenty.”
• • •
Rapp hated the smell of hospitals. It was a stale antiseptic stench that he’d come to associate with failure and loss. He walked up to a large reception desk and looked over it at a woman in a crisp air force uniform. “Excuse me, ma’am. One of my men just came in here.”
Her eyebrows rose a bit. “Are you the guy running our CO ragged?”
News had a way of moving quickly on military bases. “Yeah.”
“Congratulations. No one knew he could move that fast,” she said, sliding a clipboard toward him. “Your man didn’t have any tags or a name. Could you give us his information?”
“Sure,” Rapp said. “How is he?”
“They’ve taken him into surgery.”
“With respect, ma’am, that’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Rapp nodded his understanding and picked up the clipboard. “Is there somewhere I can fill this out? Somewhere private?”
“We’ve got a little chapel down the hall on the right. Nothing fancy but I don’t think anyone’s in there.”
He followed her directions, pushing through a set of double doors before dropping the clipboard in a trash can and dialing Irene Kennedy.
He thought about the deaths of his wife and unborn child. About his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a year. About his old friend Stan Hurley bleeding out in his arms only a few weeks ago.
And now Scott.
The line began to ring and Kennedy picked up almost immediately. “How is he?”
“Not good. He’s in surgery.”
“And the warhead?”
“Joe’s watching it. I’ve ordered up a transport.”
“You’re still planning on bringing it here?”
“We’ve been wanting to get a look at Pakistani nuclear technology for a long time. This might be our only chance.”
She didn’t respond.
“You disagree?”
“No, but I’m getting a lot of pushback from the Pakistanis. They know we have it and they want it back.”
“Call Chutani.”
“He’s one of the ones pushing back.”
“Bullshit. He’d be dead if it weren’t for me and that nuke would be in the back of a van with a bunch of terrorists.”
“Still, he’s the president of Pakistan and he’s trying to hold on to power. Shirani can use this against him.”
“Then stall. It’s not like we need it for a month. I’ll deliver it to Craig and tell him his tech guys have twenty-four hours to learn everything he can.”
“This isn’t like snatching some mid-level ISI operative or hacking into one of their computers, Mitch. This is a nuclear weapon. What do I tell them?”
“That it’s a holiday weekend. That my plane ran out of gas. Or maybe that if they don’t want us to take them, they shouldn’t drive them around in fucking fruit trucks.”
“I’ve briefed President Alexander and he’s given his authorization, but he asked some questions that I had a hard time answering. We know they have nukes. We know they work. How much are the details worth to us?”
Rapp let out a long breath. “There’s something not right here, Irene. Something we don’t understand.”
“What makes you say that?”
“A Russian mobster working with ISIS, for one. Why?”
“To get you out of the way so they could get their hands on a nuke. With Saddam Hussein’s former generals starting to take charge, ISIS tactics are getting more sophisticated. They have money and it’s not hard to believe that they’d use it to hire outside contractors.”
“But our information was that the people looking to snatch this nuke weren’t ISIS. They were al Badr. The two groups aren’t really connected.”