McCoy relayed Bennett's concern.
"Just tell Jon to trust me — I'm going to get this Jeep ojfyour tail, "Kirkpatrick shouted over the roar of the storm and the gunfire.
Two minutes later, they broke out of the alleyway and were suddenly facing the violent, crashing waves of the Mediterranean. Bennett slammed on the breaks, spun out onto Ahmed Orabi Street, and broke left, headed south. He'd given Kirkpatrick the benefit of his many doubts. But they didn't have any margin for error. Six seconds later, Banacci's Suburban spun out on the main beach road and raced to catch up with them. A few moments later, the Jeep — guns still blazing — followed suit.
Kirkpatrick had better be right.
She punched the button marked "Langley."
Kirkpatrick's eyes were glued to the images of the chase scene in Gaza, fed from Predator Six, the CIA's unmanned aerial vehicle. The Jeep was gaining fast. Bennett and McCoy might make it, but she wasn't so sure Banacci's team would. Someone picked up on the first ring. She expected the watch officer in the Global Operations Center. She got CIA Director Jack Mitchell instead.
"Mitchell, go."
"It's Marsha — you guys ready?"
"Almost, hold on."
"Come on, Jack."
"I know, I know — just tell Bennett and Banacci to floor it and hang on."
The dimly lit war room was high tech and state of the art.
The whole place looked a bit like NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston. But this was the CIA's Global Operations Center. This was where the Agency's secret war on terror was run—24/7/365—in a command post less than a hundred people in the world had ever seen. No press had ever been allowed in. No official photos had ever been let out. Entry required the highest possible security clearance, a retina scan, a voiceprint, and authorization from the director of Central Intelligence himself.
Danny Tracker — the CIA's deputy director for operations — was six foot three, 223 pounds, and forty-one years young. A former navy SEAL who'd fought in the '91 Gulf War, he'd specialized in blowing up Iraqi command-and-control centers. Tracker's father had been a top counterterrorism specialist who'd worked extensively throughout the Middle East. In 1968, during a two-year stint at the Pentagon, his father met and married a gorgeous coed from Beirut studying mechanical engineering at Georgetown University. Danny was born a year later — dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin — and grew up all over the world, learning army life and Arabic.
By the post-Gulf War 1990s, Danny was not only one of the precious few Arab-language specialists in the operations division, he was the Agency's most decorated field agent. And its most eligible bachelor. Twice voted by the women in the operations division as the guy they'd most like to do a "covert op" with, rumors about his love life were legendary. So were the rumors of his mission history. Hunting down Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Assassinating an Iranian arms courier supplying Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Flipping a senior Saudi intelligence operative working at the Saudi embassy in Washington to work as a double agent for the CIA. Even — allegedly — bugging the Al Jazeera newsroom in Doha, Qatar.
All anyone really knew for sure was that quiet but high-octane Danny Tracker had risen through the ranks faster than anyone else in the CIA's history, and that those who worked with him and for him in the Operations Division not only loved him, they were willing to risk death to catch his attention and make him proud. Jack Mitchell now caught Tracker's eye — this mission was a "go."
Gun it, Jonathan," McCoy shouted.
Sa'id crouched on the floor in the back of the limousine. He held his head his hands and kept praying to Allah. He was terrified for their lives, and filled with shame for what his fellow Palestinians were doing to the Ameri-cans, and to themselves.
Galishnikov wasn't nearly as scared. He'd grown up as a Jew in Stalin's Siberia. As a child, he'd seen his father and his father's two brothers, all prominent refuseniks, shot execution style in his parents' living room. He'd seen his mother taken away that same night by the secret police, never to be heard from again. He himself had spent three years locked away in Lefortovo, the KGB interrogation prison in Moscow, where he'd survived on cock-roaches and rats. He'd seen evil firsthand and now he felt almost numb to its shock value. Fear wasn't an emotion he readily identified with. But rage was.
He was furious — furious at the Palestinians for this culture of barbarism— furious at himself for getting sucked into a business deal with a Palestinian. Oil for peace"? There wasn't going to be any peace. This was war — pure and simple. The Americans had better get used to that. You couldn't just swagger in like John Wayne and remake the modern Middle East. It didn't work that way. There was too much hatred. The place was an endless cycle of vengeance and retribution. How could he have ever let himself believe for two seconds that Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen could make peace? Or that the Muslims would let them? They were on a fool's errand, trapped, and about to die.
Galishnikov was glued to the back window. Amidst the driving rains and blinding flashes of lightning, he could see Banacci's Suburban weaving back and forth across the street at forty, fifty, now sixty miles and hour. He could also see the much lighter Jeep picking up speed and closing the gap. Two hooded men were in the back of the Jeep now, soaked to the bone and trying to reload the .50-caliber machine gun. It wasn't going to be easy, but Gal ishnikov could tell they were professionals. It wouldn't take more than a few seconds. That's all they had.
Tracker barked orders to his team.
They were doing all they could, but he wanted more. One of the CIA's own was in a race for her life. They all knew the stakes, and they'd do anything to bring her home safely. But no one was more serious about that mission than Danny Tracker. He adjusted his headset and snapped a command at a specialist sitting just a few yards away.
The biggest coup of Tracker's impressive career was recruiting Erin McCoy into the CIA's operations division. It was Tracker who'd first heard about a college-age daughter of the late Sean McCoy from MacPherson. It was Tracker who'd obtained access to Sean McCoy's file and began poring over it. It was Tracker who'd cleared Erin to learn what her father had really done for all those years and why she'd rarely seen him. It was Tracker who helped her understand for the first time how her father had died, and why. And in time it was he who'd persuaded her to join his team, and eventually to infiltrate GSX and watch Jon Bennett's back.
McCoy's foray into Global Strategix hadn't gone precisely as Tracker had hoped. There'd been complications that he hadn't foreseen. Still, he regarded it as a coup for many reasons, some professional, some personal. But now all of it was in jeopardy. McCoy's life was on the line, and he wasn't entirely sure their plan would really work.
Galishnikov could see the Jeep catching up to them. He knew they were running out of time. This wasn't random. This was personal. They were coming after him — to kill him, to send a message to the president to stay out of their war with the Jews. Why weren't the Americans and Israelis on offense? Why weren't Bennett and McCoy calling in air strikes? Where was the IDF? Why weren't they sending a strike force? This was out of control.
If the Palestinians were going to start blowing up their own leaders, how could Israel ever make peace with them? Why should they? Maybe Ariel Sharon had been right. Jordan was Palestine. Sixty percent of the country of Jordan was Palestinian. Why did they need the West Bank and Gaza, too? All of the Palestinians should just be deported to Jordan, Galishnikov thought. Let King Abdullah take care of them. God had promised all this land to the Jews. They were willing to share some of it. He certainly had been. But enough was enough. No one could accuse him of being a hawk. He wasn't an extremist. He wanted peace. He'd worked for peace. But a peace treaty without real security guarantees for Israel was a suicide pact and he wasn't going to be part of that. Not anymore. Not after what he'd seen today.