Lei considered his injured squadron and its mission. The hardest challenges lay ahead, and he disliked his odds.
But he knew men fought beside him with courage and resolve, and he embraced his faith in both the human spirit and a higher power.
“All things are possible,” he said. “We may indeed triumph.”
CHAPTER 19
Jake Slate had expected sleep in the reclined luxury of first class flight over the Pacific Ocean, but a nagging thought pricked at him from Tokyo to Chicago.
He deplaned and marched through the United Airlines terminal to his connecting gate, but his fuzzy mind sought a resolution to the nagging.
Planning to surprise his wife Linda with his return to Michigan, he realized he had the freedom to take a detour.
Having removed the number of his ex-girlfriend from his phone, he scoured his memory for it. He dialed his best guess, heard an unfamiliar voice, and apologized for the misdial. He tried again and stopped breathing when he heard CIA agent Olivia McDonald.
“Olivia?” he asked.
“Jake? Wow. What’s it been? Three years?”
“Something like that.”
“So,” she asked. “How are you? You’re married, right?”
“Yeah. It’s awesome. I mean, I’m a totally different person. Linda is the center of my life, except, when I’m, well, you know.”
“Doing clandestine things?”
“Yeah. I don’t suppose you know what I’m up to anymore. No more need to know?”
“No more need to know.”
Jake’s stomach tightened as he groped for a segue to his request. He backed into a plastic chair and sat.
“Roger and I just got engaged,” she said.
“Roger?”
“The naval intelligence officer I met while, well, doing clandestine things you don’t need to know about.”
“I remember you mentioning him,” Jake said. “That’s great. You sound happy.”
“I am.”
Chains fell from his shoulders as her words released him from the subconscious lingering responsibility he had internalized for her well-being.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I wanted to know if you can get me time with one of your subjects.”
“I have many subjects,” she said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“We would agree that this is your most interesting and challenging subject.”
“You can’t be talking about… really?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You can’t possibly understand him better than the army of psychologists that’s dissecting him.”
“I’m not trying to understand him,” he said.
“Then what?”
“I’m trying to understand myself.”
Tension rose in her voice.
“I can’t just let you see him for fun. There are rules, protocols. I stake my reputation and career on every person I let near him.”
“This isn’t for fun,” he said. “I’m not even sure I want to.”
“Make up your mind,” she said. “I would need to pull strings — especially for you since you’re supposed to be—”
“Dead,” Jake said. “I’m supposed to be dead. But I’m not. I’m alive, and talking to him will help me make sense of things.”
He heard her exasperated sigh.
“Since when did you become a philosopher?” she asked.
“Since I got tired of living to cheat death.”
“Interesting,” she said. “I’ll get you in front of him.”
Deep in an underground floor of a federal building, a guard escorted Jake down a long corridor of cells holding prisoners behind clear plastic walls.
At the end of the hallway, the guard stopped.
“Here he is. Return to the guard post when you’re through. You’ve dealt with him before, and you know the rules.”
Jake turned to the glass and compared the handsome, lean man seated behind it against his memory. He recognized Hana al-Salem.
Salem lowered his tablet computer to a table, rose from his chair, and walked to the glass.
“You look familiar,” he said. “Have we met?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I almost killed you. Had the chance. Didn’t bother.”
Salem’s face lit up.
“I remember you. You and your French friend. You visited me soon after I had been incarcerated here.”
“That’s right,” Jake said.
“You didn’t mention that you were a commando, although I see now that you have the physique and you carry yourself like one.”
“I’m not.”
Salem squinted and studied Jake’s face.
“If I remember our last visit correctly, you took credit for having saved the Bainbridge,” Salem said. “Now you say you almost killed me. That suggests that you were among the commando team that infiltrated my submarine to take it from me. I am confused.”
“It wasn’t your submarine. It belonged to the Israelis.”
“Perhaps we should avoid arguing about the proper stewardship of submarines gifted through guilt by the Germans to a race of people who stole land from its proper inhabitants.”
Jake sat in a plastic visitor’s chair.
“I didn’t come here to argue history.”
“Do you mind if I sit as well?” Salem asked.
“Go ahead,” Jake said. “It’s your cell.”
Salem reclined in a chair that appeared comfortable by Jake’s expectation of prison standards, and his voice came clearly through the ventilation holes in the glass.
“I assume you came here to ask me questions,” Salem said, “but would you be so gracious as to explain how you almost killed me?”
“I was in another submarine with a torpedo headed for you. I shut the weapon off when I realized my friend and the commandos had taken the Leviathan back from you.”
“I see. I hadn’t realized how extensively my good fortune ran that day. First, a commando’s bullet is targeted to wound but spare me, and then you spare the submarine because your friend is aboard it.”
“That’s why I didn’t bother to kill you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
Jake leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin in his palms. He cast his gaze to the tile floor and realized he didn’t know what to say.
He felt Salem watching him and sensed his curiosity. Jake blurted out his first thought.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You hit the world harder than I did, but you couldn’t have been half as pissed off as I was for revenge.”
“In all my interviews with countless experts,” he said, “you are the first to volunteer a personal comparison to my life.”
“I’ll be blunt,” Jake said. “I’m not here to learn about you. I’m here to learn about me.”
Salem’s knuckles turned white on his armrests.
“Fascinating,” he said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Call me Jake.”
“You will tell me your story then, Jake?” Salem asked.
“Most of it will be cryptic, but you’ll get the point. I only ask that you volunteer the truth in return.”
“Of course,” Salem said, “assuming that you don’t ask me to identify the names of people I’ve already refused to identify. I’ve been pressed for this information many times, and threats to extract it from me by torture have proven idle.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Jake said.
“What do you care about then?”
Jake pressed his back into the chair as he recognized his jealousy.
“I care about why I fell short trying to do exactly what you did,” he said.
“You certainly didn’t attempt to disable the United States with an electromagnetic pulse attack, did you?”
“No,” Jake said. “But I did steal something powerful, just like you did when you stole the Leviathan. I also intended to do something epic with it.”