Black Skies (9 page)

B
uck Chapman was on his way home, where Rose had promised him her famous spaghetti and meatballs and a relaxing night away from work. He was lost in this daydream when Smith’s phone rang, and he swore, with a mixture of irritation and anticipation.

“Chapman,” he said, picking up.

“My people may have located the Secretary of State,” said Smith.

“Holy shit,” said Chapman, making a highly illegal U-turn that drew angry honks, his tires squealing as he turned back toward Langley. “Where?”

“The Balochistan province of Pakistan,” said Smith. “Outside the town of Zhob. I will send you the coordinates presently. I don’t think I have to impress the urgency of this upon you, do I?”

Chapman hung up and called Schroeder’s office. Getting voice mail, he called his cell.

“Tell me this is good news,” said Schroeder.

“It’s the best kind,” said Chapman. “We’ve got a tip on a possible location. I’m getting in touch with my team next to get satellite imagery. How fast can you mobilize the SEAL teams?”

“They’re on standby,” said Schroeder.

“Good. I’ll send you the coordinates. Have them formulate a plan of attack. Let’s get those bastards!”

Chapman then called Cynthia, who was in charge of the team in his absence. “Put everything on the back burner. I need satellite imaging on this.” He gave her the coordinates Smith had sent him. He hung up and clutched the steering wheel white-knuckled and bit his lower lip in nervous anticipation, his foot heavy on the accelerator. Smith might be a prick, but when he delivered, goddamn did that man deliver.

He practically ran into the task force office and nearly knocked down Gillespie, who smiled as she saw him. “We’ve got satellite images of the location whose coordinates you sent,” she said. “I have to say, it looks promising.”

“You,” he said affectionately. “I could kiss you, you know?”

It was supposed to be just part of their usual banter, but there was an awkward beat after he said this, a slight hesitation on her part that faded almost immediately.

“Look, here,” she said, clearing her throat. “It’s up on the monitor.”

She showed him the images of a large compound on rocky ground speckled with green cedars. There were two Jeeps parked in the courtyard.

“Those look awfully similar to the ones used in the attack,” said Chapman.

“Do they ever. I have Ingram working on identifying them—”

“We’ve got a match!” yelled out Ingram, from three workstations over. He was an overweight, pasty man with curly brown hair and permanent pit stains who, through thick glasses, never missed a thing on the monitor.

“We have positive identification on the vehicles, boss,” he said. “These are definitely the ones that were used in the abduction.”

“Hot damn,” said Chapman, euphoric. “We found him.”

“Looks that way,” said Gillespie with a grin. “Where did you get this tip, anyway?”

“I’ve got people,” he said.

“I should know better than to ask,” she said with a knowing smile. “Do you think this is conclusive enough for us to take action?”

“Not my call,” he said. “I need to get Schroeder. Excuse me.” He touched her shoulder, and there it was again, that awkward beat. She giggled and punched him in the arm to break the discomfort. He was too excited to give it a second thought. He walked straight into his office and dialed Schroeder’s cell.

“Talk to me, Buck,” he said.

“We’ve confirmed that the cars used in the abduction are there,” he said. “Tell me that’s good enough.”

There was a pause as Schroeder considered it. “Okay,” he said. “I’m convinced. I just need to get the President’s approval on this, but he’s already said he’s willing to do whatever it takes. He’ll do it on my recommendation. Let’s pull the trigger on this. We’re getting the Secretary home.”

M
orning had come as Conley and Harun made their way back into Zhob, revealing the deep green of the cedar trees that speckled the city. They reached their lodging and were admitted back inside by Khalol. Conley got the call from Smith about an hour later telling him that an operation would be launched imminently. Now, all they could do was wait.

An agonizing hour passed, during which neither man said much. Both listened for the sound of an approaching Black Hawk helicopter and the ringing of the phone. For a time, Conley tried looking out the window, but he found that he couldn’t help scanning the skies, so he opted for lying in bed and staring at the ceiling instead.

It was in this state of tense expectation that Conley first heard shouting downstairs. He and Harun both stood up at once. Conley reached into his bag for his handgun, and Harun did likewise. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, three men, at least.

“The odds are against us,” said Conley. “We can’t fight our way out of this one.” He looked around the room, and his eyes fell on the window. “Help me get the bed up against the door!”

They dragged Conley’s bed so that its length was pressed against the threshold. They pulled Harun’s bed next, between Conley’s and the far wall so that they were wedged tightly and the door couldn’t be opened. Someone on the other side turned the knob and pushed, but the barrier held.

“All right, out the window!” Conley yelled. He grabbed his bag and jumped out, rolling as he hit the ground. He leapt out of the way for Harun, who hung from the window ledge before dropping down and hitting the ground with a graceless tumble. Conley heard the familiar sound of gunfire from an AK-47 coming from upstairs.

“That door’s not going to hold,” said Harun.

“How many people do you think they left guarding the front?”

They looked at each other with tacit understanding, then ran around the side of the house, guns drawn. A narrow alley led from the front to the backyard. Conley rounded the corner and found a man on the sidewalk, leaning against a beat-up Jeep that he recognized as one used in the attack, holding an AK-47. The man hardly had time to react before Conley double-tapped him in the chest at close range.

“Your keys, Harun!” The Pakistani took them from his trouser pocket and unlocked his car. Conley could hear the men coming back downstairs, drawn by the gunfire.

“Get moving!” he cried out to Harun, and shot out the Jeep’s front tires. He ran to the passenger door to Harun’s Daihatsu and jumped into the car as it was already moving. The men in the house had emerged on the sidewalk. They opened fire as Conley and Harun tore down the street as fast as the old car would run.

“They’re going to come after us,” said Conley.

“I know,” said Harun. The tires screeched as they went around corners, putting as much distance between themselves and their attackers as they could.

“Is there anywhere in town where we can hide?”

“If they found us once, they will find us again,” said Harun.

“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

They drove in silence as Conley looked anxiously at the rearview mirror for any sign of pursuit. As they left the city limit, something nagged at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Suddenly it drew into focus: the sound of the rotating blades of an approaching Black Hawk helicopter.

Conley took out his cell phone from his pack.

“What are you doing?” asked Harun.

“They know we’re here,” said Conley. He speed-dialed Bloch. “They’re going to know that the SEALs are coming. They’ll be waiting. If they reach that house, they’re all dead.”

“Cougar,” came Bloch’s voice after three rings, “the operation is going down right now, I don’t—”

“Call it off,” he said. “Do it now.”

His tone brooked no argument, and Bloch said only, “Okay, stay on the line.” He heard Bloch speak, then yell something he couldn’t make out, but could very much imagine. He looked for the aircraft, and saw that it would pass right over them.

“Stop the car!” he yelled to Harun, who, startled, hit the brakes hard, pushing Conley’s body against his seat belt painfully until the car came to a complete halt on the dusty shoulder of the road. Conley released the seat belt clasp and got out. He waved frantically at the helicopter as it passed over them, with no sign of stopping. In a desperate effort, he drew his gun from his bag in the car and fired shots into the air, but the chopper crew took no notice.

Harun got out of the car, his eyes on the chopper as well. Conley could only watch as it approached the house. He picked up the phone, which he had dropped onto his seat. After some commotion on the line, he heard Bloch saying, “Cougar?”

“Here,” he said.

“I’ve sent word to the Pentagon. The abort order should be coming through.”

Conley took the binoculars from his pack and found the chopper through them, steadying his hands against the roof of the car. It had reached the villa and was hovering, slowly descending low enough for the team to rappel down. Conley couldn’t look away. It stopped, and a rope went over the edge.

“No,” he whispered.

And then the chopper began to pull up. It was hardly perceptible at first, but it picked up speed as it rose higher into the air. A sudden movement from below caught his eye: a surface-to-air missile, hurtling toward the chopper. Conley’s heart sank. It was over.

But the chopper banked, and the rocket sailed past, hitting the mountain behind it and sending up a plume of smoke and fire. In another moment, the Black Hawk was far enough to be out of harm’s way.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he told Harun.

S
ilence hung in the air as Buck Chapman watched the monitor in dismay. They had been getting a live feed from the helmet-mounted cameras of the SEAL team, following in anticipation the raid on the Pakistani villa. Without warning, the mission had been aborted.

“What was that?” said one of the analysts.

A full discussion broke out, a din of voices expressing their anger, frustration, grief and attempts at understanding. Chapman felt his phone vibrate. It was Schroeder.

“What the hell happened?” Chapman asked.

“We got a tip that it was a trap,” said Schroeder. “You’d better thank your lucky stars, Bucky boy. If this operation had gone south, it would’ve been your ass.”

Chapman had to get out. He slipped away from the crowd and closed himself in his office, pulling down all the blinds. The thought of being responsible for the deaths of a team of Navy SEALs made him short of breath, and nausea was coming in increasing waves. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. He put his hand on the desk and tried to suppress imminent dry heaving when his door opened behind him and Cynthia Gillespie came into the office.

“Buck,” she said. “It didn’t happen. They didn’t die.” Even though he didn’t turn to face her, her presence had a stabilizing effect on him, and he could feel his feet more firmly on the floor.

“Who cares?” he said. “It was my call, and I made the wrong one. It nearly got good men killed.”

“It wasn’t your call in the end,” she said. “You’re not in charge of this operation. You didn’t have the authority to do it. You were acting on the best information you had.” Her voice was faltering now. It was clear that the guilt was getting to her, too.

“Except now, we’re back at square one,” he said. “This was supposed to be a slam dunk, and it was a bust. What the hell do we do next?”

“We’re not at square one,” she said. “Not exactly. We know the captors were in Zhob. It narrows down the radius of the search. Plus, there’s something else.”

He turned around to face her, half sitting on his desk. “What?”

“I know it’s not much,” she said. “But that guy? Iftikhar Ali? We got his bank records. I didn’t tell you because, well, this was more important at the time.”

“It really isn’t much,” he said.

“But it’s something.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s something.”

She moved in closer to him. “Look, Buck . . .” She put her hand on his shoulder, and her touch felt electric. She drew in her breath when she touched him too, and for a long moment frozen in time, they stared into each other’s eyes.

Everything in Chapman’s mind had been exhaustion, frustration, and despair. This sudden sweet longing welled up inside of him. All his energy drained, he gave himself up to this feeling, and leaned in. Their lips met with a sensation he had not felt in years, and he pulled her close. His only thought was of her.

He couldn’t have said how long it lasted, but they broke apart and the haze lifted. He could only regard her in shock. She looked like a deer in headlights.

She blinked twice, shaking her head with eyes downcast as if to jog herself awake. She cleared her throat. “I should . . .”

“Yeah . . .” he said, turning his back and moving to put his desk between them. He turned back just in time to see the door closing behind her as she left the office.

D
an Morgan, along with Kirby, Shepard, O’Neal, Dietz, and Bishop, the Head of Tactical, had been waiting for news of the operation in Pakistan in the Zeta War Room when Conley’s call came. “It was a trap,” Bloch had told them after relaying the news to Smith. “The Secretary wasn’t there. The SEAL team was attacked, but the chopper made it out.”

Morgan’s first thought was about Conley. “Do you have word from Cougar?” he asked.

“He told me he was getting out of Zhob,” said Bloch. “I’m going to stand by for more information. I’ll pass it along to you as it comes.”

Morgan sank in his chair. “God
damn it,
” he said through gritted teeth. O’Neal exhaled a whispered curse.

Bloch emerged from her office again, phone in hand. “It’s Cougar,” she said. “He’s on his way back to Islamabad. Shepard, could you come up here for a second?” Shepard got up and started heavily up the stairs. “Meanwhile, the rest of you, our job is not done. This setback means that our work has really only started. I want everyone focused on trying to find Raza and the Secretary.” She rubbed her palm against her face in consternation. “Now!”

She and Shepard disappeared into her office, and she shut the door.

Kirby, Dietz, and Bishop shuffled off in different directions, leaving Morgan, who didn’t have a permanent workstation, and Karen O’Neal, their resident financial analyst, who usually preferred to work out there. Morgan pulled out his laptop at the War Room table and went over the field reports one more time with his eyes glazed over. He always hated this part—he was a field agent, not an analyst, but right now, the order was “all hands on deck.” He had experience with foreign intelligence, and he might catch something that others would miss. He also needed to be up to date on the situation in case he was called into action.

Lincoln Shepard emerged from Diana Bloch’s office with purpose in his step. As he passed the table, he said, “O’Neal,” in a quiet tone that was completely uncharacteristic of him. “Come with me. There’s something that we need to look at.”

O’Neal stood up to follow him.

“Mind if I tag along?” asked Morgan. “If you’ve got something new, I’d love to take a look.”

“The more the merrier,” Shepard said glumly. Morgan followed the two young analysts to Shepard’s office, where he had a multiscreen setup at his desk, a Space Invaders poster on the wall, and a mini-fridge full of snacks and energy drinks. He whistled, and the screens, which had previously been running a screensaver in which comets would whoosh by from screen to screen, were restored to show the programs that were running.

“Do you like that?” he asked Morgan. “Programmed it myself. Responds only when I do it.” He whistled again, and it went back to the screensaver. “Try it.” Morgan whistled, trying to hit the same pitch, but nothing happened. “Cool, isn’t it?”

“Oh, please,” said O’Neal. “A three-year-old could do that.” She laid her laptop on a desk along the side wall and turned it on.

“Could have fooled me,” said Morgan, shrugging.

“Could we get to it?” said O’Neal. “We do kind of have a national emergency on our hands.”

“Forgive me,” said Shepard. “What we have is information on one Mr. Iftikhar Ali, the Pakistani government official who tipped Cougar off about the house in Zhob. We suspect he was receiving bribes from whoever is behind this, and the hope is we can find out who that is.”

“Has anyone thought about picking him up and interrogating him?” asked Morgan.

“It seems,” said Shepard, “that our Mr. Ali has disappeared. According to bank records, he took his money and, as best we can presume, hightailed it for greener pastures. He wouldn’t have been an easy man to take, at any rate. He was a public servant. The Pakistani government might resent someone other than them taking him into custody.”

“We don’t need interrogation,” said O’Neal. “Data tells us everything we need to know”

Karen O’Neal had been one of the quant, or quantitative analyst, whiz kids on Wall Street, making investment predictions based on mathematical models and mountains of data. She had brought her considerable talents to Zeta after an SEC investigation put her in hot water with federal authorities.

“To me,” said Morgan, “it’s people who tell you things.”

“People can lie,” said O’Neal. “They can deceive themselves. They can just get the facts plain wrong. But data doesn’t lie. Lay it all out in front of you, know how to tease and prod it, and you can unravel all the secrets of the universe.”

Shepard scoffed as he ran through items in a complicated file management system, dense with text.

“It’s a wonder you ever find anything,” said O’Neal.

“Does baby need a nice user interface to hold her hand?” Shepard mocked. He brought up what seemed to be what he was looking for.

“Toss that over to me,” said O’Neal. In moments, she had the same file on her laptop screen. “Jeez, you’d think they would at least have it in a spreadsheet format. What have we got here, checking and savings accounts, credit card bills, receipts and income tax returns . . .” She clicked through the documents one by one.

“Is this what you did on Wall Street?” Morgan asked.

“Not quite,” she said as she laid out the numbers in a grid. “You know how short-term trading works these days? Like, on stocks and bonds and commodities?”

“I imagine my mental image of people yelling on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is a little outdated.”

O’Neal chuckled. “And how. Everything’s electronic these days.” She continued to manipulate the numbers on the screen as she spoke. “You’ve got your dinosaurs who do it old school still, putting in orders to buy and sell based on hunches. And then you have people like me, who let computers do the work for us. We write programs that do thousands of trades
per second.
”

Morgan raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” she said. “It
is
impressive. And instead of running on gut feelings, these programs run on
data.
No fallible human judgment, just predictions based on the numbers. You get reams of data on stock market fluctuations and run a regression analysis—”

Morgan blinked.

“Are you all right, Cobra?” asked O’Neal. He realized, embarrassed, that he had fallen asleep in his chair.

“I think I need a break,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m going home. I’ll be back in later.”