“Saw that,” I said. “We know who the VIPs are, but how about the guy in the beard?”

  Van Dreeves zoomed in. “Look closer.”

  Then it hit me.

  The bodyguard was Sanson, the executioner. He was the link that Sly was pursuing. Sanson was the connective tissue between the gold and the Dakhla Accords, but what did that mean? And how did it relate to Chinese activity at the Eye of Africa?

  Which led me to believe that Sanson’s execution of Sly might have some personal connection and might not be some random act. I recalled a conversation with Luckey prior to the mission when he told me to “Sit this one out and let Morgan lead the team.”

  Had someone fed Sly into the executioner’s blade? Had he known too much?

  “Sanson,” I whispered. “Le bourreau.”

  9

  WHEN PRESIDENT CAMPBELL HAD given me the phone to use for communications with her, she’d said at the time, “I’ve got so many layers of bullshit between me and reality, I never know what the truth is anymore. Call me if you need to tell me anything or even if it’s just to talk about Melissa … especially if it’s to talk about her.”

  While I doubted anyone could miss Melissa as much as I did, Kim Campbell could be a close second—that is, if she didn’t play a role in Melissa’s death. I still had reservations about what could have been a career-ending incident for Campbell that occurred in college and which only Melissa had known about. I’d had reasonable suspicion that Campbell had been involved in Melissa’s “cancer” until I realized that her killer was another person I’d known. But still, the doubt lingered, and I would never fully trust her.

  I had used the phone exactly four times in the two years I’d had it, two of those in extremis, requiring her intervention, and most recently at the cemetery. I excused my team from the command pod in the airborne C-17, checked the classified presidential calendar, saw that she was finishing a meeting with the leadership of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Union in the Oval Office and had fifteen minutes before she was to go to the briefing room and take questions from the press.

  I retrieved the presidential burner, which I kept in my uniform cargo pocket, and took a chance calling her. She answered on the second ring.

  “Garrett, why did you hang up on me?”

  “Technically, I sent it to voice mail,” I said.

  “Right,” she scoffed. “What have you done with this piece of paper? You can’t do that. Especially after I visited Arlington.”

  “Nothing to worry about presently, ma’am. I’m still good.”

  She paused, understanding my cryptic response.

  “But, Garrett, you can’t do this,” she said as if she had a say in the matter. Well, actually, she did. With the inspector general investigation, she could dial up or down the heat on me however she wished. “I have big plans for you.”

  “That’s what worries me,” I said.

  “More to the point. I stopped by Arlington the other day and paid a visit to one of your Rangers, a Sergeant Laxalt,” she said. “I do that sometimes to pay my respects. It helps ground me when confronting big decisions, national security or not. It was bitterly cold, but I feel such peace there. And knowing that I’ve got you to execute missions both large and small in the name of preserving our freedoms reassures me,” she said.

  “I’m glad you had a meaningful visit,” I said.

  “Which made me concerned about what you presented to General Luckey. I need you on the team even if it’s a curtain call. Even if it’s to find your friend’s daughter,” she said.

  “I understand.” This was her way of giving me the Campbell two-step. She took a step to open the door to the mission I was quietly pursuing while I took a step through the door without any specific reference to what she was partially authorizing. For anyone recording or listening to this call, and voice programs existed that might rapidly find our conversation in the spectrum, the takeaway would be her displeasure with the document I had handed to Luckey and some generic caveats about a “curtain call.”

  What was unspoken was that members of her administration were conspiring with the Chinese to ease the United States into a power-sharing agreement in Africa and were going to blackmail her into complying if she didn’t agree.

  That was Sly’s conclusion based upon the intercepts he had recorded. We were still mining the details but had enough to get into action. That information alone wasn’t sufficient to light the fuse on a breakneck mission to Africa, but him finding reference to five nuclear weapons in the Eye of Africa was. We didn’t know if these were intercontinental ballistic missiles on transports or what their purposes might be.

  But we were going to find out.

  “And so, when the chairman called me today, it gave me a good excuse to reach out and try to understand what you’re doing. While I don’t openly support it, there’s really nothing I can do to stop you.”

  Green light. If this conversation ever came to light, she could reasonably argue that she was saying there was nothing she could do to stop me from doing what I indicated in the letter that I had delivered to Luckey. My clear interpretation, though, was that she was not going to prevent me from getting to Africa to discover what could be a grave threat to the country and, if true, stop it.

  She continued by completely changing the subject.

  “Plus, these ironworkers I just met with gave me a hard hat, making me think of the time I visited Bragg and you gave me a helmet to wear in the helicopter.”

  “Glad you’re keeping safe, Madam President,” I said.

  “Did you know that since I signed the Keep American Jobs Act, steel production has increased ten percent here in the United States?”

  “I think everyone’s tracking that,” I said.

  She paused. “Wait. You’re busting my balls?”

  “I don’t believe that’s actually possible, ma’am.”

  “I’ve got a press conference in ten minutes, and I’d rather pull a fishhook through my forehead.”

  “Have a good press conference, ma’am,” I said.

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “I imagine not.”

  “Garrett…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. Life has gotten … challenging. But the friendship remains through everything. Always.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. She might have been reaching for my approval in a moment of self-doubt or reflection.

  When I didn’t respond, she continued, “This is the first time we’ve talked without you mentioning Melissa. Are we good?”

  I paused for a long time, to the point that I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Images of my beautiful wife danced in my mind, auburn hair flowing across her shoulders. Her quick smile and quicker wit. Green eyes that bored through my soul and hooked me from the first meeting in our church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, as teenagers. Raising our two children, Brad and Reagan, both now young adults struggling to make it in this troubled world. Her whispering in my ear one night when I was home from West Point on leave for Christmas and she was home from Meredith College. She had been upset, distraught. I didn’t push her but also let her know I was ready to listen if she needed me, which she did. Finally, the night before I returned to the frozen tundra of the military academy, she whispered into my ear, “Kim did something terrible. She killed another student. Kept pouring this girl alcohol at a party.” Then she pulled away and refused to talk about it ever again.

  “You should report it to the police,” I had said.

  “Someone already did,” she replied. And she’d left it at that. The investigation was sealed. After heavy Meredith College interference, the police ruled the death as accidental alcohol poisoning. Kim’s name was listed as simply another girl at the party. The record was later erased from all the databases, including that of the Raleigh Police Department.

  Years later, when Campbell announced her candidacy for governor of North Carolina, Kim had come to Melissa and talked about working on her candidacy and seeking plum promotions for me. Holding my hand in our quaint Fort Bragg quarters, Melissa had said, “Kim, I know what I saw. You can’t bribe me. Now please leave.”

  Campbell had departed, ruffled, and no doubt concerned about Melissa’s defiance. Melissa had broken down crying into my shoulder that night, saying, “There was an investigation. The matter was resolved. It remains resolved.”

  She never uttered a word to anyone except me, but there was no way for the aspiring governor and presidential candidate to know that she would remain quiet. Five years later, Melissa was dead, and I wasn’t exactly sure what, if any, role Campbell played in her death.

  “Garrett?” The president’s voice brought me back to the moment.

  “Melissa loved Zoey, Kim. She would want me to do this,” I said.

  Campbell was silent, perhaps nodding and looking wistfully out the Oval Office windows, wondering if I still doubted whether she was involved in Melissa’s death—or, for that matter, how much I knew. I would never know the truth, and I might never reconcile that concept with my conscience.

  I was a warrior, and I really didn’t care much anymore about anything but the people I loved, which included my kids, my troops, and their families.

  “Be safe, Garrett, I’ve got to run,” she said ambiguously. Either she lost track of the real purpose of the call—going around my chain of command for her approval for me to find Zoey and perhaps more—or she intentionally left her response open to interpretation.

  Be safe.

  If we were hugely successful, she could claim credit. If we failed, she could deny involvement. More importantly, we had created the plausible story that would provide her an out. The truth was far more dangerous. She was a seasoned politician, and I hung up without saying goodbye. She was probably already gone and didn’t notice.

  Roger that.

  10

  PRIOR TO THE “ALEXA Files” being made famous by The Washington Post, Van Dreeves had figured out a way to hack through the presidential burner and tap into the network in the Oval Office with the help of an enterprising White House communications sergeant who had been eager to join JSOC.

  President Campbell had placed an encrypted Amazon Web Services Alexa home assistant video and audio recording base station, disguised as a Remington horse statue, with networked cameras dotted elsewhere in the Oval Office, Situation Room, and Air Force One. The statue in the Oval Office sat in the middle of the coffee table in between the two sofas. Van Dreeves’s hack was no different from tapping into a Ring home security camera. For all its protections, the White House was extremely vulnerable to intruders as the Solar Winds and other penetrations had demonstrated. A modern version of Nixon’s tape-recording system.

  After she hung up the phone with me, my team transitioned back into the command suite in time to watch and listen as General Luckey, Secretary of Defense Angela Blankenship, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lucius Rolfing, all streamed into the Oval Office.

  Campbell said, “What can I do you for, ladies and gentlemen?”

  “General Sinclair gave me this, ma’am,” Luckey said, the paper crinkling as it passed hands.

  Campbell looked at the document briefly and asked, “Seen it. What do you make of it?”

  “He’s lost it, and he might be trying to negate the IG investigation,” Secretary of Defense Blankenship said. She was midfifties, black hair streaked with gray, conservative pantsuits, and a stern face with small eyes. She looked severe at times, as if the world were burning right in front of her every day all day. Her nose was angular and looked larger than it really was, juxtaposed against her eyes. She had been a Washington, D.C., denizen most of her life, rotating between academia, consulting gigs, and the Department of Defense, depending on which party was in power. The common denominators were access, power, and money.

  “Define ‘lost it,’ AB,” Campbell said.

  “He’s lost his wife. He most likely killed the last secretary of state, and now he’s gotten six soldiers killed in random action in Mauritania.”

  “How was that random? It was approved by me and recommended by you,” Campbell said.

  “I think what the secretary is saying—” General Luckey interrupted.

  “I’m quite capable of speaking for myself, General,” Blankenship snapped. “What’s a general doing on a hostage rescue mission? What was he doing facing up against Parizad before that? He should be a major, not a three-star general, if that’s what he wants to do, and I told him to his face.”

  “So, in your view, generals should be in offices while their troops are in the trenches duking it out? And my understanding is that you’re the one who ordered him not to lead the Stockton mission.”

  “There’s a place for everyone,” Blankenship said. “And certainly, a general shouldn’t be mixing it up with the troops.”

  Campbell turned to Luckey and asked, “Tell me, General, when you snuck out of Karzai airport during the withdrawal and cut that deal with the Taliban that saved scores of American citizens, what rank were you?”

  “Ma’am, I was a two-star general,” Luckey said.

  “Why didn’t you send a major out to do that, though?” she quickly added.

  After a pause, Luckey said, “Sometimes leadership at the decisive point can make a difference … make the difference.”

  “Kind of like you did in Objective Rhino when you were the ground commander as a captain, right? Or did you have some supervision?” Campbell asked.

  Luckey nodded. “Yes, ma’am. The Ranger regimental commander and his staff jumped into the objective, as did the battalion commander and his staff, not to manage me and my one hundred and fifty Rangers but to manage the significant strategic implications.”

  “I see. So, AB, the inspector general is investigating the allegations that Sinclair killed the secretary of state, who, mind you, was working with Iranian Quds Force commander Parizad and, accordingly, had committed treason. Three of his coconspirators are in pretrial confinement in Leavenworth right now on charges of sedition and treason. I believe you were on the Capitol steps on inauguration morning when Sinclair jumped from a helicopter and stopped a drone with chemical weapons from spraying us, right?”

  Pause, then, a muted, “Yes, but as you said, they’re all allegations. Innocent until proven guilty. There’s some traction out there that Sinclair, being the spy that he actually is, orchestrated the entire thing and hung everyone else out to dry.”

  “So, whatever your personal animus against General Sinclair might be, he is to be given all due consideration,” Campbell said.

  “I have no animus with the general,” Blankenship said. “I’m looking at this strictly from a Defense Department point of view. I have it on good information that the dead sergeant major’s daughter is over there seeking revenge and that Sinclair wants to go chase her down. I don’t recommend authorizing a fishing expedition to go find his friend’s daughter, especially in the same location as the Stockton recovery. The place will be crawling with bad guys. Help me out here, Generals.” She turned to Luckey and Rolfing.

  “The ‘dead sergeant major’ has a name. It’s Sylvester Morgan. And his daughter is Dr. Zoey Morgan,” Campbell said.

  “Yes, I’m sorry, I should have said that,” Blankenship said. “Generals?”

  “She’s right, Madam President. This is tough terrain. Easily defendable. Whatever you say about Sinclair, and he is one of our best, I have noticed a change in his decision-making since Melissa’s death. He’s disobeyed several orders to comply with the inspector general. I’m out of rope to give him. He’s different,” Luckey said.

  “Wouldn’t you be? I suggest you find more rope,” Campbell said.

  “Yes, but I would recognize my own limitations if the change clouded my judgment,” Luckey said.

  “Would you now?” Campbell asked, a rising pitch in her voice, perhaps a chuckle.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Is there any reason we need to be in Western Sahara or Morocco’s Southern Province or whatever they’re calling it these days?”

  “No reason for risky missions,” Luckey said. “Unless we want to add to the death toll.”

  Blankenship added, “The only possible reason to be anywhere on the west coast of Africa is that China is looking for a base there, like they’ve done with Djibouti. They’re looking at Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and, to some extent, Mauritania. The question is, do they want to be tucked in the Gulf of Guinea, or do they want to be farther west along the open coast—i.e., Mauritania? Secretary McHenry and I signed the Dakhla Accords last week, which includes China—already a major presence on the continent, by the way—in the decision-making process. Gives us all transparency, not unlike the Treaty on Open Skies with Russia. They see us; we see them. It’s all good, but to satisfy our curiosity about this activity, I’ll call Defense Minister Albert Gambeau, my counterpart in France, who was instrumental in establishing the accords.”

  “We don’t need to worry about China,” a male voice said. It was her chief of staff, Wilson Jordan IV. Most called him by his nickname, “Quad,” a nod to his IV suffix and the fact that he dominated all four corners of the basketball court as a high school and collegiate athlete. He was young with dreads hanging loosely on his shoulders. His royal-blue suit was perfectly tailored around his lean frame. Tall and athletic, Jordan had run for Congress at twenty-seven years old, won his southeast Raleigh district, and abandoned that when Campbell asked him to serve as her chief of staff. Jordan had spent his two years in Congress focused on social issues, and Campbell had hired him because of his domestic policy strength and generally good reputation in Congress.

  “Why not, Quad?” Campbell asked.

  “Not relevant to this mission. Their economy is about to implode. Why would they be pursuing global hegemony?”