GENGHIS glanced at Camille, “Sorry. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I wish,” she whispered.
The other guards died before they could discharge their weapons. The inmates erupted in cheers just as the power went out, courtesy of their advance team. Darkness was a relief. With their night vision equipment, they had the advantage.
GENGHIS yanked at Bobby’s keychain, but couldn’t get it off his belt. He unbuckled it and tugged, struggling to harvest keys from the corpse.
Camille turned away. She pulled the dishdashah over her head and tossed the man-dress aside. She was scared Iggy had ordered the abort because he had received intel that Hunter was dead. He would never say it over the comm for fear it would shake her up too much to operate. He was right.
It was pitch dark and she smelled death. Every muscle in her body tensed up and the animal in her told her to run. Breathing hard, she reached around and removed the night vision goggles from where they were taped at the small of her back. She put the NVGs on her head, turned them on and could see again-sort of. The place was so dark, there wasn’t much light for them to magnify and everything seemed to be closing in on her. She knew she had to forget Hunter, pull herself together and concentrate on the egress, so she took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down and focus, but the surging adrenaline made her feel like a frantic beast.
An operator grabbed her arm and tugged. “Move.”
She went with him. They met the team at the slider to the cell block and waited for too many seconds until GENGHIS and COPPERHEAD pushed through them with Bobby’s keys. GENGHIS unlocked it and slid the bars aside. The roar of hopeful prisoners grew louder, wrestling sounds echoing in her head.
The team rushed to the steel door to the outside. COPPERHEAD shoved keys into the lock, but there were too many to try them all. Her breath was fast and shallow. She had to get out. Now. She wanted to body-slam the door and she realized she was losing it. She closed her eyes for a second and imagined she was with her father.
She knew what to do.
“Stand aside. We’re blowing the door.” Camille said as her training took over and she drew her knife from a thigh holster. She sliced off the block of C-4 duct-taped and contoured to her stomach along with a packet containing a set of four electronic blasting caps and a remote detonator, then cut the C-4 brick in two and gave the other half to GENGHIS. She pinched off a chunk of C-4 the size of a golf ball and ripped a strip of duct tape from her stomach. Pushing the C-4 against the lock, she shoved a cap inside, then slapped the tape on to hold it in place.
In less than ten seconds, she and GENGHIS finished setting charges on the lock and hinges.
“Get back and look away!” Camille said as she raced back through the slider onto Broadway and out of the blast range. “Fire in the hole.” She pressed the remote. The explosion thundered through the cell block and inmates screamed.
She dashed through the open doorway, gasping for fresh air.
Chapter Sixty-One
Today, anyone suspected of links to terrorism can be snatched anywhere in the world, put on a secret CIA jet and taken to a country, such as Egypt, for “out-sourced” torture. When [Michael] Scheuer developed his programme he stipulated strictly that only suspects who had been tried in absentia for terrorist offences or had an outstanding arrest warrant were to be targeted… Today there only has to be the suggestion they are involved in terrorism-no convictions or warrants are needed, nor is the permission of another country.
– Sunday Herald [Glasgow], Oct. 16, 2005, as reported by Neil McKay
Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad
In the past hour Camille had killed an innocent man, busted out of Abu Ghraib and torched a stolen Rubicon vehicle in the desert. Having to perch on GENGHIS’ lap for most of the ride back to Camp Raven didn’t put her in any better mood and she still had no information on why they had had to abort. Even though the radio was encrypted, Iggy didn’t want to use it. It had to mean that Hunter was dead. Iggy just didn’t want to tell her over the air-waves. She absolutely knew it was true when she saw Iggy, Pete and Virgil were waiting on them at the entrance to the ops center.
Camille climbed from the Black Management Navigator and made eye contact with Iggy, but couldn’t read him.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t think so.” Iggy shook his head. “Your bounty worked a little too well. Some Rubicon guards tried to spring him on their own a few minutes before you got there.”
“They get him?” Camille stretched. The other operators stood around, listening. “Is he here?”
“They fucked it up. They’re dead.”
“Hunter?”
He put his prosthetic hand on Camille’s back. “Let’s go talk inside-in private.”
GENGHIS and Pete followed Camille and Iggy into the operations center. Most of Black Management’s business happened at night and the place was buzzing even more than usual. Oversized LCD monitors showed live feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles, helicopters and ground troops, all in the green tones of night vision. Like a television producer of a live event, supervisors with cordless headsets studied the screens, giving directions as they toggled between images.
“Just tell me. Is Hunter alive?”
“Best we can tell.”
“Syria?” Camille watched fast moving terrain on one of the monitors, then saw the bright trail of a missile flying away from the Super Cobra helicopter. GENGHIS and Pete stood a few feet away, still within earshot, as they followed the live action on the screens.
“Over there,” Iggy pointed across the room. “That’s Iran you’re looking at. It’s really hopping tonight. Some recon Marines got into a little trouble. We’re keeping the Revolutionary Guard busy while their comrades yank them out.” He turned toward Camille. “I’m afraid we’ve lost our chance to grab Stone. They’re moving him, probably out of the country.”
Camille kept her eyes on the monitor, waiting for the flash as the Hellfire hit its target. It gave her a few moments to sort through a jumble of emotions. She was relieved that he was alive, but frustrated that they had lost their chance to rescue him by only minutes. “We need to find him before that happens. But I’ll go wherever it takes-let’s just hope it’s Afghanistan where we have the infrastructure.”
“Not much chance of that.” Iggy laughed.
“What’s your source?”
“The Brits at AegeanA came through with sigint. Some idiot in the prison made a frantic call to a Rubicon oil exec at home on an unsecured line.”
“So Rubicon is giving its own operatives covers in their petroleum division. Pretty sloppy,” Camille said.
“What makes you think he’s one of Rubicon’s?”
She shot Iggy a worried glance. “You’re not thinking the Agency? But I don’t care who’s involved, I’m going after him as soon as we pick up a trail. Black Management can’t get pulled in any deeper-we have too many Agency contracts. We can’t risk it. This is going to take a very light footprint.”
“Back up a minute,” Iggy said. “You can’t seriously be thinking of going after him on your own?”
“I’ll take GENGHIS.”
GENGHIS was watching the action in Iran. He swung his head around, opened his mouth, then shut it. He paused, then decided to speak. “You surprised me tonight. I didn’t think you had it in you to do what you had to do.”