After several more moments of tense silence, Jones couldn’t take it anymore. She looked at the president and blurted, “I warned you that having him around was a bad idea.”
President Hayes looked at his chief of staff evenly. “I don’t always agree with Mitch’s opinions, but I do always value them.”
“Robert, he doesn’t see the big picture. He doesn’t understand the negative impact this type of scandal will have on your presidency.”
Hayes cocked his head a bit to the side and said, “I have a feeling that Mitch would say it’s you who don’t see the big picture.”
Jones exhaled in frustration. “I’m not going to sit here and debate the big picture with some assassin from the CIA.” Jones turned to Kennedy and said, “No offense, Irene, but I’m paid to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and minimize the president’s exposure. You don’t have to have a doctorate in political science to figure out what’s going to happen when this story breaks. We are going to get eaten alive by the press, and then the committees on the Hill will begin to call for hearings”—she turned her attention to Hayes—“and they will make damn sure they drag you through the mud right up to your reelection.”
To everyone’s surprise Kennedy said, “I agree with Valerie.”
Looking smug with her newfound support, Jones said, “Even his own boss agrees with me.”
Kennedy held up a finger and added, “I do, but with one exception. You’ll never be able to keep a lid on this. The press already knows something’s up. By the end of today, they’ll have a pretty good handle on this story, and we’ll probably see our first installment in the morning papers.”
“But we can handle that,” Jones jumped in. “I already have our people working on the press release. The servicemen were lost in a joint training exercise with the Philippine army.” Jones looked to General Flood. “This type of thing happens all the time, right?”
Before the general could answer, the president said, “The Philippine ambassador has already called twice this morning, and I assure you it wasn’t to talk about the weather.”
Jones batted away the concern with her hand. “They need our aid to prop up their economy. All we need to do is throw them some more money, and they’ll play ball.”
Kennedy slowly shook her head. “Too many people know about this, sir. There’s no way you’re going to be able to keep a lid on it.”
The president was leaning back now, tapping his forefinger against his upper lip.
Before he could say anything, Jones jumped back into the debate. “Give me one week. That’s all I’m asking for. One week and I’ll have the press looking into something else, I promise.”
Hayes looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and said, “General, you’re unusually quiet this morning. Is there anything you’d care to add?”
General Flood was an imposing man and even more so in his uniform. A few inches over six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds he looked more like a retired football player than a man who still liked to jump out of planes a couple of times a year. It was evident from his face that he was trying to choose his words carefully. Keeping his eyes on the president he finally said, “Sir, I couldn’t disagree with Miss Jones more emphatically.”
The president was looking at Flood, but from the corner of his eye he could see his chief of staff begin to squirm. Ignoring her he said, “Please elaborate.”
“We have announced that we are at war with terrorism. We have proof that at a bare minimum a Philippine general is taking bribes from a known terrorist organization that has taken a family of Americans hostage. We have proof that a State Department official, who was told in no uncertain terms that this rescue operation was to be kept secret, decided on her own volition to break federal law and discuss this information with an overseas State Department official. We have a U.S. ambassador, who took it upon himself to brief the head of a foreign country that U.S. Special Forces were about to conduct a covert operation on that country’s soil. Any reasonable person would conclude that these actions clearly led to the deaths of two U.S. Navy SEALs. You have said it yourself, Mr. President, we are at war. This is serious business, and in my mind the ambassador and the undersecretary are traitors and their actions cannot go unpunished.”
“I agree that they should be punished,” Jones said quickly before anyone else could speak. “I say we ship them off to the worst posting we can think of. I say we not only make them take a cut in pay, but we make them pay restitution to the families of the two dead soldiers. I say—”
“Dead sailors,” the general corrected her. Looking back to the president he added, “I happen to agree with Mitch. If it were up to me, I would have these two marched in front of a firing squad and shot, but I realize in today’s world that will never happen. I do, however, think they need to spend some hard time in jail and they need to be publicly humiliated. They need be made an example of.”
Jones, desperate to turn the tide of this conversation, weighed in once more. “General, I’m not saying I disagree with you, but again I don’t think you’re looking at how this scandal will affect this administration.”
“With all due respect, Miss Jones, I’m more concerned with the welfare of this republic than any single administration. The two should go hand in hand, but as you’ve so passionately pointed out this morning, that’s not always the case.”
Jones glared at the general and said, “That was a cheap shot.”
“No, it was a direct shot, but if I wasn’t blunt enough for you, let me spell this entire clusterfuck out for you in clear English.” The general leaned toward the chief of staff and said, “This was a big operation. A lot of military and intelligence personnel knew about it beforehand, and since it went south a lot more people know about it today.” Flood stuck out one of his beefy fingers with conviction and said, “I can guarantee you, if you try to whitewash this thing, someone in uniform, or over at Langley, is going to be so offended they will talk to a reporter off the record and they will set off a chain reaction that will do exactly what you’re hoping to avoid. And that’s if Mitch doesn’t break the story first.”
“You worry about your people, general,” Jones shot back, “and I’ll handle Rapp.”
The sheer lunacy of the comment caused Flood to roar with laughter. “You’re going to tell Mitch Rapp what to do? Let me know when and where, and I’ll pay top dollar to witness that fight.”
Before Jones could speak again, the president came forward in his chair and rested his forearms on his desk. “I’ve made a decision.” He was talking to everyone, but was looking at Jones. “We’re going to confront this thing head-on, and it’s not up for debate. If we try to bury it … it’ll only come back and bite us in the ass. I want the Justice Department to prepare warrants for the arrest of Assistant Secretary Petry and Ambassador Cox.”
Jones began shaking her head. “Robert—”
Before she could continue the president cut her off and said, “Valerie, cancel my dinner plans for this evening and inform the congressional leadership that I’d like to meet with them.”
Jones had a pained expression on her face. The president’s demeanor suggested that any further protests would be unwise. She’d lost this one for now, but there was always later. When she had him alone she would try to get him to rethink his decision before he jumped off the cliff.
With strained pleasantness Jones asked, “What would you like me to tell them?”
“Tell them I need to brief them on an issue of national security.”
“I’ll get to work on it right away.” Before leaving she turned to Kennedy. “You’ll keep me informed of any decisions you reach with the DOJ and the FBI?”
Kennedy noticed it was more a demand than a question, but nonetheless nodded politely. Jones had been thoroughly defeated and there was no sense rubbing it in.
When the chief of staff was gone the president addressed Kennedy and Flood. “I’m sorry about that. Politics comes first for Valerie
. She can’t help it.”
Flood shook his oversize head and grumbled something. Kennedy watched the general with pursed lips and then added, “No need to apologize, sir. You need people who will watch out for the political ramifications.”
“That’s true,” agreed the president, “but that doesn’t mean we have to check our morals at the door.” Hayes’s face twisted into a disapproving frown. “Valerie’s tendency is to try to control everything. She doesn’t understand that the American people will cut you a lot of slack as long as you’re up front with them and they know you had the right intentions. In this situation it’s pretty cut and dried.”
Hayes laid his hands flat on his desk and moved several pieces of paper around while he pondered precisely how to proceed. “I want to do the right thing here. I want to be up front on this, and I want to move very quickly. I don’t want some hotshot reporter breaking this before we get out in front of it, otherwise I’m afraid Valerie will be proven right and I’ll be crucified on the Hill.”
“If I may, sir?” asked Kennedy. The president nodded and she said, “You might not want to wait for tonight. The general and I could begin briefing select members of the various committees this afternoon. Then when you meet with them tonight, you can give them the entire story. I would caution you, though, that we need to keep General Moro and his involvement out of this.”
The president’s expression went from keen to confused. “Why?”
Kennedy hesitated and then said, “Mitch has come up with a solution for dealing with the general. If you have time, I think we should get him back in here so he can explain it to you.”
The president eyed the director of the CIA with great curiosity. Since diplomacy was far from Mitch Rapp’s area of expertise, the president was very curious about what his top counterterrorism operative had in the works. Two Navy SEALs were dead, a family of Americans were still held hostage and his presidency was on the brink of scandal. Right now, the idea of retribution seemed very appealing.
12
The little girl sat huddled in the corner, wrapped in a white robe, clutching herself tightly. David was sweating profusely under the black hood that covered his face. He grabbed one of Hamza’s legs and arms and pulled him to the center of the bed. Hearing a muffled sob, he looked up to check on the girl. Her face was covered by the oversize white folds of the hotel robe. He felt a genuine ache in his heart at the agony she was suffering. He knew it wasn’t just physical pain. Even worse, anguish and nightmares would probably follow her for the rest of her life.
David guessed that she couldn’t be more than ten years of age. Right about now guilt and self-recrimination would be working their way into her innocent mind. She would begin to wonder what she had done wrong to warrant such treatment. The Muslim world dealt very harshly with sexual stigmas where women were concerned. In David’s patriarchal society the distinction between a woman who willingly commits adultery and one who is forcibly raped is often lost. The honor of the family, which really means the honor of the father, is above all else.
David looked down at the poor frightened kid in the corner and struggled over what to do with her. He knew he should have never untied her. He should have simply shot Hamza in the back of the head, dispatched the two bodyguards and left. If he’d stuck with his original plan he’d be long gone by now; miles of safe distance between himself and the crime. The maid would show up in the morning and find the young girl, and she would be taken to a hospital. Everything would have turned out just fine for her.
As much as he wanted to believe it, though, he knew that was far from what would really happen. The maid would have called the police, who would very quickly discover they had a dead Iraqi general on their hands. The media would find out shortly after that, and this little innocent girl would get swept up in the maelstrom that would follow. The police and reporters would talk to her parents and the entire neighborhood would find out that the young girl had been sexually assaulted. Through no fault of her own she would be shunned and treated as a pariah for the rest of her years.
David wasn’t about to let that happen. When he’d started down this dangerous path years before, he’d made a promise to himself. David hadn’t grown up in the camps, but his mother had been sure to bring him along whenever she visited the various clinics. She wanted him to see firsthand the squalor that Palestinian people were forced to live in. His mother, unique in more ways than he could ever count, used the long car rides to and from the camps to enlighten her only son on the politics of the most contested region in the history of mankind.
The camps were a breeding ground for discontent, corruption and anti-Semitism. The Jews were blamed for everything, both real and imagined, consequential and inconsequential. They were the evil greedy Zionists who had stolen the land away from the Palestinian people. The propaganda was insidious but his mother had been very careful to teach David about the complicated history of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews. In her mind there was more than enough blame to go around.
For a brief period in 1948 the Palestinians actually had a state, but instead of taking what the United Nations had legally mandated, they decided to attack the fledgling country of Israel with the help of five Arab armies. The decision proved disastrous. Israel trounced the Arab armies, seized the land that had been set aside for the Palestinian state, and deported most of the Palestinians who hadn’t already left.
David’s mother liked to point out that it was a little disingenuous of their people to cry that Israel had stolen their land. She was fond of asking him, “If we had won the war back in forty-eight, do you think we would have allowed the Jews to keep their land?” She never waited for him to answer. The reply was always a resounding, “No. The Arab armies would have killed every last Jew.”
“The Jews are racists,” she used to tell him, “but the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Saudis are all worse. The Jews hate us because we’ve given them no reason to like us, but what excuse do our Arab brothers have? They have none. We are beneath them, that is the way they feel. They have kept our people in these camps and stoked the flames of hatred toward the Jews to serve their own corrupt governments. We are servants to them. A useful tool in their campaign to keep their subjects’ anger focused not on them, but on the evil Jews.”
His mother’s teachings had made David wary of all propaganda. He refused to allow hatred to drive his ambition. He would never allow himself to turn a blind eye to the truth. He would never allow himself to become just another cold-blooded killer. That was why he didn’t just shoot Hamza and leave the poor girl to be discovered in the morning. David truly was a unique man. He was a pragmatist with a heart. The girl would be brought with him now, and an explanation and some cash would be given to her father later.
He finished tying the general’s wrists and ankles to the bed and then hovered over him for a moment. General Hamza had spent the better part of thirty years inflicting pain on people, destroying lives and ruining dreams. A bullet in the head was too good for him. Hamza needed to experience the fear he had so perversely meted out to so many souls. David wanted to see real fear in the man’s eyes.
He pulled his knife from its leather scabbard with his right hand and slapped Hamza’s cheek with his left. The Iraqi thug’s jaw hung loose. Reaching in with his thumb and forefinger David grabbed the tip of Hamza’s tongue and pulled it taut. The general started to stir. David tightened his grip and angled the tip of the four-inch blade into Hamza’s mouth. A quick upward slicing motion and a good seventy percent of Hamza’s tongue was severed from his mouth. With perfect timing, the general’s eyes shot open just in time to watch David tear the rest of his tongue out.
The Iraqi general, his eyes ablaze with fear and agony, let out a low guttural moan that because he no longer had his tongue never quite elevated itself to a scream. Immediately, he began to slash about like a landed fish in the bottom of a boat. He struggled against his bonds, trying to break free, st
ruggling to comprehend what was happening. His last memories were deliciously good ones, and now he was tied to this bed with some masked man sitting on his chest dangling a piece of meat in front of his face. Making matters worse, his mouth was on fire with a pain that his brain could not identify. A warm liquid trickled down his throat and caused him to gag when it dribbled into his windpipe. Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. In a panic, Hamza lifted his head off the pillow and tried to speak. All that came out were a jumble of primitive noises. The masked man sitting on top of him wasn’t holding a piece of meat, he was holding Hamza’s tongue.
David dropped the fleshy organ onto Hamza’s bare chest and reached into his own pocket. He grabbed a pack of crisp counterfeit hundred-dollar bills and waved them in front of the general’s face. He didn’t need to speak. Neither did the general, although he tried. There was instant recognition in his eyes. David crumpled a dozen of the new bills into a ball and with the tip of his blood-soaked knife he pried open the general’s lips. He crammed the wad in and then added two more fistfuls of money until Hamza’s mouth was overflowing with bills.
Moving quickly, he shoved another pillow under Hamza’s head and then got off him. Taking a moment to relish the sadistic bastard’s fear, David looked down at him and shook his head in disgust. He wondered if this butcher of Saddam’s had ever granted someone a reprieve, if he had ever felt an ounce of guilt over his actions or pity for the people he had so brutally tortured. As David looked into Hamza’s fearful eyes he knew the answer was no. Monsters like Hamza were wired differently. Their brains worked in ways normal people could never understand.