The crate would be shipped by air express on the PIA cargo liner directly to its pickup in Toronto, Canada. The second cell would pick up the shipment in a small cargo van rented from Ryder Trucks. They wouldn’t try to cross the border but, instead, would drive north to a small village on Georgian Bay. The drive would take most of the night, heading north to a small harbor where a boat would be waiting. The boat would head north, following the shoreline, until it crossed over to a small, isolated place named Lonely Island.

  The girl with the limp would meet them on the road on Georgian Bay. She had been trained as a pilot in New Zealand for a reason. The same training in the States would have put her on a list.

  Piloting the seaplane, she would leave Lonely Island on a direct course, south by southwest, never climbing more than fifty feet above the surface of Lake Huron and well below radar detection. The pilot would follow a path over the water into Saginaw Bay, where just south of Grand Rapids it would enter the United States. The aircraft’s fuel capacity would allow her to cross over the land without stopping, still on the south-by-southwest course, passing just south of South Haven Lighthouse as it again headed out over the water of Lake Michigan. From the lighthouse, it would be unstoppable, too low to detect as it crossed the water, heading toward the center of the city of Chicago.

  At precisely noon, the software virus, buried deep in the Office of Emergency Management, would shut down both the OEMC operations center and Chicago’s Operation Virtual Shield, a network of security cameras that covered the metro region. The city’s disaster-response capability would be paralyzed.

  Also at noon, the seaplane would cross the bay on the final leg of its trip. While the technicians were frantically working on the downed emergency system, she would near the buildings of Chicago and reach for the trigger on the yoke.

  The seaplane would deliver a solid, twenty-kiloton nuclear explosion, its fallout intensified to perhaps twice its magnitude if there happened to be any early November snowfall.

  Umarov nodded his head in agreement. “I only wondered . . . separate cells? All at the same time? All must work perfectly, yes?”

  “Umarov, my friend, are you in doubt?” Yousef moved next to his leader while holding his palms out, facing the warmth of the fire. “Have you ever heard of the doomsday principle?”

  Yousef knew the answer. The man could barely read.

  “No.”

  “There is a probability that mankind will become extinct. That only a finite number of humans will ever exist.”

  “Yes?”

  “It is our duty, we must . . .” Yousef poked the fire as though putting a blade under the ribcage of his enemy. “We must make sure that the last man standing be a true Muslim. That is our duty.” He paused as he continued to push the stick into the glowing embers of the pit. “This American giant must suffer a deep and severe wound. Only this will bring him down.”

  CHAPTER 52

  CIA headquarters, Langley

  Tranthan stared at the print of the photograph. The technician had blown it up to a full eight by eleven, a color photo of Maggie O’Donald. The only item on the flash drive had been this single photograph.

  “A fucking photo?”

  Was this her idea of a joke?

  Many thoughts entered his mind as he sat in the dark of his office. Only the brass and crystal table lamp lit the room. Tranthan held the photo directly under the lamp.

  There she is, standing, smiling, as if her world would never fall in.

  She stood beside her desk in Qatar, in front of the library shelves crowding her space, only a short reach from her chair.

  A dead end.

  Tranthan lit a cigarette and leaned backward in his chair, watching the smoke drift upward.

  What’s the downside?

  He reached for the telephone on his desk. He squeezed the receiver in the notch of his shoulder, holding the cigarette in his hand as he used the other to pull open the main drawer and start searching through business cards. He went through several before coming to the right one.

  Tranthan shifted the telephone to his left and, while ashes fell from the cigarette in his hand, he dialed the number on the card.

  The phone rang only once.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “This is Robert Tranthan at the CIA. I need to talk to Agent Tom Pope.”

  “Sir, can I take a message?” The young female voice sounded inexperienced.

  “No.”

  “Sir?”

  “Just tell Agent Pope it’s Robert Tranthan.”

  The voice hesitated for only a second.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Agent Pope?”

  “Yes, Mr. Tranthan.”

  After a painful quiet, Tranthan spoke. “I have something for you.”

  “What?’

  “I’m scanning it now—check your e-mail.”

  A minute later Tom Pope was looking at a photograph of Maggie O’Donald. His first impression was how exceptional she looked. In addition to her striking beauty, she had a slight smile on her face, a devilish smirk.

  “Maggie O’Donald.”

  Tom Pope knew who she was. In another stack on his desk, Pope had surveillance photos of several of Robert Tranthan’s visits to Bethesda. The Bureau’s report on her death also lay somewhere on Pope’s desk.

  Pope grunted affirmatively into the phone.

  “You know she died yesterday.”

  “I do.”

  “She was our field agent in Qatar.”

  “I know all this, Mr. Tranthan. Is there a reason you’re sharing a picture of her?”

  “She had this photo stored in a highly encrypted flash drive. Just the photo. Nothing else.”

  “All right.” Pope pulled a pad of paper close to him and started to sketch on it. He wrote the word Doha in the center and drew a circle around it. In another circle he wrote Op Officer and drew a line to the circle in the center.

  “It means something.”

  “Mm-hmm. What are you thinking that might be?”

  “It may be a message to me, or to someone else.”

  “Really? What kind of message?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  For some reason, Tom Pope got the impression that Tranthan intended this telephone call to accomplish more than a simple exchange of information. It seemed more like a stab at getting a “get out of jail free” card, as in being able to tell a grand jury, Hey, I did my best to cooperate with the investigation.

  “Thanks, Mr. Tranthan. I’ll ponder this, and you do the same. If you get any more ideas, please let me know.”

  “I will.”

  Tom Pope wrote RT in another circle and drew a line to the center.

  “Let me know what?” Garland Sebeck entered his office as Pope hung up. He was holding a bright red folder.

  “What’s up, smart-ass?”

  “Nada. Who was that?”

  “Tranthan.”

  Sebeck raised his eyebrows. “What did he want?”

  “Sent me this photo.” Pope turned the monitor to Sebeck.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Maggie O’Donald,” Pope said. He explained how Tranthan believed that the photo was more than a portrait—that it held some sort of personal or professional message. “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s beautiful . . .” Sebeck studied the enlarged photo for another minute. Soon Pope joined him in staring at the image.

  “I wonder if the flash drive this came off of had anything else on it?”

  “Is that what Tranthan claimed—it had only this picture?”

  Pope nodded.

  “I doubt it.”

  Another nod from Pope.

  “Truth is, Tom, I don’t trust those spooks any farther than I could throw them. Especially Robert Tranthan.”

  CHAPTER 53

  A C-17 cargo jet, forty-one thousand feet

  above the eastern border of Afghanistan

  “Sergeant?”

  Gunnery Sergeant Moncrief was asleep, but still grabbed the airman’s wrist when he felt the nudge. It was a combat reaction. If he hadn’t stopped, the next move would have been to the throat.

  “It’s Gunny.” In the Marines, there was a substantial difference between a sergeant and a gunnery sergeant. One ran a squad; the other was someone you stayed out of the way of.

  The C-17’s cargo bay was barely lit by a red light glow. Moncrief peered out of one of the windows to see a moonless night. Down below, a solid bank of clouds extended as far as the horizon. In the far distance, the snowcapped peaks broke up the shape of the seemingly flat tabletop of clouds. They looked like ships in the low light, crossing a white-foamed sea. A thin, white, transparent coat of ice covered the aircraft’s large wing. A wispy vapor of superheated water molecules struck the frozen air behind the jet, causing a white streak to trail each of the engines. Moncrief knew that a cold front cleared the air above the mountains.

  A perfect night.

  The cloud cover below would give them a chance at dropping into the valley sight unseen. The clouds provided protection unless the altimeter failed.

  An altimeter off by one digit and we will be toast.

  Moncrief looked in a trance at the quarter moon above and the gray clouds below.

  The team would be slicing through the air at well over a hundred miles an hour toward the rocky cliff face of the eastern edge of the Hindu Kush. If one were very lucky and his parachute opened late, he would only break his legs and fracture his hips. The fentanyl lollipop would barely deaden the pain of being carried by the team across the mountains. If he were even luckier, he would be off course by only several hundred feet and, falling totally blind in the high clouds, would slam into a rocky riverbed. The force of the impact would leave a crater, death instantaneous and painless.

  The gunny made out the outlines of several team members sitting in the seats against the wall of the aircraft, eating what looked like hamburger patties out of clear plastic Tupperware containers.

  “Here, this is yours.”

  Army captain Mark Furlong took a seat next to Moncrief, handing him another plastic container.

  “What’s this?”

  “Chapli kabab.”

  “Chappy the fuck what?”

  Moncrief took a bite of the spicy kabab. It was shaped like a hamburger but heavily spiced with garlic, salt, chili powder, and coriander. Sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and lemons surrounded the patties in the little plastic container. Moncrief had the image in his mind of some local Afghan café in Lakenheath carrying the food out to a waiting driver.

  “Eat as much as you can.”

  Moncrief complied, though the coriander didn’t help much.

  “It’s the food of the Pashtun.”

  “I got it.” Moncrief understood the purpose behind it. His body would absorb the spices, then ooze the scent back out through the pores of his skin. A sniper lying motionless, camouflaged in wait, eating the same food as his target, would have no distinguishing smell from the man who was walking by. A small advantage, but nevertheless an advantage.

  “It may be the last time you get anything to eat for a while.”

  “Yeah.” The gunny could go a long way without eating a meal. A recon, like a Ranger, knew that pleasures such as meals and sleep became secondary once one stepped out of the door of the airplane.

  “You cut out the other scents?” Furlong asked.

  “Please. I knew that much.” Moncrief had tossed the aftershave and deodorant out several days ago. He had been a hunter all his life. Scent was a weapon no less important than the rifle he carried, or sight or sound.

  “Here’s some kawa.”

  Moncrief tasted the lukewarm green tea. It had leaves floating on top.

  “Not bad.” He hesitated. “Not freakin’ good, either. Jack Black would be preferred.”

  “Speaking of which, I don’t know if you want these or not.” Furlong handed him a small, unmarked packet containing several tablets.

  “What is it?”

  “CAP go pills. Something new from DARPA. The next generation, they say.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s Red Bull on nuclear steroids. You won’t sleep for several days; you won’t be too hot or too cold. You will hear a fucking flea fly pass by and count how many times he flapped his wings.”

  Moncrief opened up the unlabeled container and swallowed two of the small pink tablets. He swallowed some more of the green tea to wash the pills down. It was the new age. The age of the pharmacological warrior. Who was he to stand in the way of progress?

  “Here’s another pack. You shouldn’t need it.”

  In a short time the gunny started to feel a euphoria coming on. As he looked around the cargo bay of the jet, Moncrief felt sure he was hearing sounds in the jet bay that he hadn’t noticed before. Far forward in the bay, the crew chief was telling one of the crewmembers that an engine would go out soon. It would be number four. And Vaatofu Fury was telling Vaas to finish packing something called the FireFly. No doubt about it: Moncrief could hear more, see more.

  What the fuck is this stuff?

  “You don’t know us, Gunny.” Furlong sat next to Moncrief. “I’m not thrilled about you being here. We can’t carry a man with a broken leg or a bad back. You get hurt and you’re on your own.” The implication was also that Moncrief was older and, therefore, slower.

  “Captain, you don’t have to worry.”

  “If you get any one of my men hurt, you won’t have to worry either.”

  Moncrief wasn’t offended by the speech. He had given speeches like this before to others. He nodded, watching the men go about their work. Furlong’s men had finished their meals and were in the process of unpacking large, black, sealed containers. Some of the packs contained clothing. Moncrief recognized the brown-linen kurtas and the wool pakols. The short kurta shirt and the round chocolate-colored pakol hat would be typical wardrobe items for Yousef and his mujahideen.

  Vass and Villegas had also laid out two Windrunner sniper rifles with scopes. The XM107 Windrunner was a simple machine, a black, lightweight, stainless-steel rifle. Both rifles were resting on their bipods on the floor of the aircraft. One scope was much larger than the others. The weapons should be relatively easy to carry in the high-altitude Hindu Kush.

  Burgey was unpacking several black jet-pilot-styled helmets connected to small black tanks. The gunny recognized the HALO gear used in high-altitude jumps. Burgey’s job was to ensure that no piece was missing, no strap was loose.

  Villegas went to each piece of gear, checking for anything that could create noise, and picked the gear up and shook it. Occasionally, a small, metallic click could be heard as he shook the gear. Once he found something loose, Villegas used an enormous roll of electrical tape to wrap it tight. They all knew that just one metallic strap slapping against a magazine or the stock of a rifle could send out a telegraph to the enemy.

  Frix continued to load magazines with bright brass rounds that had odd black tips. The cargo bay seemed to be a surgical suite, with the skilled operating-room nurses preparing their instruments, laying each out and counting each one, leaving nothing to chance.

  “You need this as well.” Furlong handed him a curled-up plastic tube in a sealed, clear plastic bag.

  “What’s this?” Moncrief didn’t want to appear stupid later on. He had not seen something like this before. It looked like an IV apparatus.

  “You remember asking about this being the Oscar Papa team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everyone on this team is OP—blood type O positive. We let you come with us because you are Parker’s man, but also because you are O negative.”

  “Damn. You’re saying that each team member is the other man’s potential blood supply?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Okay?”

  “After seven combat operations, each of these rangers have shared their blood with the other. Every one here had his life saved by a teammate.” Furlong pointed to the lanky sergeant loading the magazines.

  “Frix is our best doctor. He dropped out of med school in his second year. He had worked four or five years as an EMT before that in Brainerd, Minnesota.”

  “I know Brainerd. Camp Ripley?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been to Ripley?”

  The National Guard camp had been used by the military for cold-weather training for years. The Mississippi River cut through the camp, but that far north it was a stream no larger than the width of a two-lane highway.

  “Two winters.”

  “Good. Frix is good, very good. He is the guy we need to get to your man first. He’s been spun up on meningitis.”

  Moncrief was reminded abruptly that soon his “man” would be both contagious and very ill.

  “Frix is going to give each of us a booster shot. It’s mixed just for this bug.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Frix and Burgey are one team. Burgey is our best shot, and Frix isn’t a bad spotter. I’m putting you with them.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Fury and Villegas are our best speed shooters. They can take out twenty guys in less than twenty seconds. All with head shots. All of us were raised on hunting. Frix and Burgey hunted in the north. Burgey’s from the Upper Peninsula. They can track anything over ice and snow. Vee and Villegas are both from south Texas. South of San Antonio.”

  “Vee?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we call him. He works the radios. He can take a solar sheet in a sandstorm and give you enough power to call in.”

  The solar panel could provide electricity for days.

  “So where’d they all come from?”

  “Seventy-fifth Rangers. All of them did a tour as instructors at the Sniper School. Two of them could have been Olympians. The Army didn’t want their faces plastered on posters, so they were ordered to take a pass. Burgey could split a dime at a hundred meters. A dime held between your fingers—sideways.”