It troubled Eric as well. “Karen, start working on the video surveillance from traffic cams. There’s bound to be video of the shooter.”
“I’ve already pulled the records,” Karen said. “Analysis of street cam videos in the vicinity have come back blank. To widen the scope to the rest of the video cameras in Nashville? It’s going to take a lot of horsepower.”
“I authorize it,” Eric said. “This situation stinks.”
“I agree,” Deion said. “There’s something funny going on. What are our options?”
“What do we know about Reza Nazer?” Nancy asked.
Sergeant Clark spoke up. “Nazer is a low-level flunky. If you want more info, we’re going to need HUMINT. I contacted your Delta friend, Mr. Burton, and his team is ready to insert into Syria. They’re on the Iraq border, awaiting your orders.”
Eric smiled. Bill “Redman” Burton was one of his oldest friends in Delta Force. They had been on countless missions together, and he had seriously considered recruiting the squat little Georgian into the OTM. “Deion, I’d like you to work with Redman. Nancy, a woman in this kind of situation might make things worse.”
Nancy smiled. “I agree. However, I might better monitor the situation from Turkey.”
The surprised look on Karen’s face mirrored his own. Nancy had changed. She was still violent and unpredictable, but more open to new ideas. She listened to other points of view, reviewed her actions and modified her behavior. He’d seen glimpses since the operation in New York City. It made her more effective. In fact, he was impressed, and apparently he wasn’t the only one.
Sergeant Clark raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “I can get you a temporary office in Incirlik,” he said.
“Fantastic. I want wheels up in sixty. Take Taylor, Mark, and John. Make sure John has the Battlesuit. Send the order to Redman, he has permission to insert into Syria. I want surveillance on Nazer as soon as possible. What about Al-Hakim?”
Karen typed furiously on her keyboard, displaying the photo of a young man with sandy blond hair and dark blue eyes in his early twenties. “Gary Hite, born in Fresno. Left for Somalia in 2006 and joined an Al Qaeda affiliate. He was quickly named Al-Hakim, the American, and began making recruitment videos. The CIA has been looking for him ever since. They think he’s hiding out in England or possibly Europe. We suspect he’s planned and helped carry out multiple operations.”
Deion rapped his knuckles on the table. “I’ve looked through the CIA’s case file on Hite. Typical spoiled punk, liberal upbringing, converted to Islam when he was seventeen. His father was a defense contractor at Lockheed Martin, his mother a nurse. They went on CNN calling for him to return home, but Hite disowned them both in a video shortly after he joined Al-Qaeda. He’s declared war against them, and against the United States.”
Sergeant Clark cleared his throat. “This guy purchased a nuke?”
Eric agreed. “Sadir claimed Hite was the money man, but I can’t see Sadir planning this. If we get eyes on Nazer, we might have a better idea about what’s really going on. Above all, we have to find that nuke.”
“I’ll have the team in the air within the hour,” Deion said. “It’s a long flight. We won’t be there until tomorrow.”
“Redman will pick up the slack,” Eric said. “Good hunting.”
Deion and Clark exited the conference room with Karen close behind. She turned and cast a long glance at Eric and Nancy sitting at the conference table before slowly closing the door.
“Was there something else?” he asked Nancy.
“I’m surprised you’re not going,” Nancy said. “Isn’t this the kind of mission you love?”
It was true. He wanted to insert into Syria. He wanted to be at the heart of the action, but the director of the OTM had more responsibilities than any single mission.
There was still the problem with the Iranian centrifuges. The Russians were moving arms into Venezuela. Osama Bin Laden was still on the loose, believed to be somewhere in Afghanistan. AQ was active in Iraq and Afghanistan, with dozens of plans to strike Europe and the United States, and that wasn’t counting the splinter groups. The OTM had dozens of other high-value, high target operations currently in flight, but there were only so many resources.
He hated to admit it, but his place was back home, leading the OTM. “I’m not a field agent anymore, remember?”
Nancy smiled, and fine lines appeared around the corner of her eyes, the barest hint of teeth between her lips. “It’s hard sitting back and letting others do the dirty work. As much as I disagree with my father sometimes, he was right about one thing. You are capable of so much more.”
She stood and headed for the door. The muscles in her legs were clearly visible under her tight skirt, and he couldn’t help but admire the firmness of them and how smoothly she walked. Her body was like a coiled spring, full of energy, but with a bounce that stirred something in him.
She put countless hours in the gym, running on the treadmill, lifting weights, and practicing martial arts. She was at peak fitness, and for the second time in an hour a vision of a naked woman came unbidden… an image of them, together, sprawled naked among the sheets.
She stepped through the door, but for a moment her eyes lingered on his. She caught him watching and the briefest of smiles played across her face.
That woman is going to be the death of me.
John made his way to the coffee shop. It was one of the base’s smaller rooms, eight meters square, with six round faux-wood tables on slender stainless steel bases. The shop was one of two in the underground base, staffed by soldiers who volunteered during their spare time for the privilege of running the coffee machines and wiping down the tables.
Kara Tulli waited, and her face flushed when he took the seat next to her. It was slow in the shop and half the tables were empty. Kara held two large white paper cups and handed one to him. “Black, just the way you like it.”
He took it gratefully. “Thanks.”
She smiled. “How was your mission?”
“You probably know more about it than I do. Elliot and Oshensker reviewed the metrics while I was in the field, and I sent them my after-action write-up while still in the air over the Atlantic.”
“True, but I wasn’t asking about that. How are you?”
“I didn’t find the shooter,” he said with a frown.
She took a sip of coffee. “That’s not what I meant, either.”
He had to tread carefully. Kara used to despise him. He didn’t want to give her any reason to go back to that, any reason for her to suspect he remembered his past. “I think if Sadir hadn’t talked, Eric wanted me to break his fingers.” He hesitated, then said, “That’s not something I want to do.”
She leaned back, surprised. “Sadir was a bad guy?”
Apparently, she knew the bare-bones mission plans. “That doesn’t mean I wanted to torture him.”
Her face flushed. “Eric wouldn’t give you an order if he didn’t have a good reason.”
He took a drink of his own coffee and tasted the complex flavors, the bitterness, as it rolled over his tongue. “I just don’t want to hurt someone when I don’t have to.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But you would hurt someone? If you had to?”
“If Eric ordered,” he said slowly. “If it meant saving innocent lives. I wouldn’t want to. I’d tell myself it was for the greater good. I’d tell myself it would all be worth it.”
“You don’t believe that,” she said, shaking her head. “You think that would make you a bad person.”