THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN-ISLAMIC Affairs was less than two years old, a new bureaucracy within the U.S. Department of State, with the onerous portfolio of trying to chart a stable diplomatic course in the fractious Muslim world. Career workers who were specialists in the field had been culled from other sections to take up duties in a heavily guarded and secure office complex outside of the Washington Beltway, but the heartbeat of the bureau was a remodeled three-story Victorian building at Thirty-fourth Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. In that ornate building, Arab princes and Persian potentates and the bewildering array of leaders in the volatile Muslim world were welcomed and entertained almost on a daily basis. In its short existence, the mansion had become an important back door to power.
From his lavish office on the third floor, Undersecretary William Lloyd Curtis could look over the treetops and see the groomed front of One Observatory Circle, the stately official home of the vice president of the United States. While the White House was the most visible point of government in Washington, hardly anyone even knew where the vice president lived. It was therefore easy to arrange private sessions between Muslim leaders and U.S. government officials without drawing undue attention. The American representatives would say they were visiting the home of the vice president; the Muslim representatives would declare they were in private meetings with Undersecretary Curtis. In reality, they could all be in a secure conference room on the second floor of the BAIA.
Curtis was a tall and broad-chested man who wore tailored suits that were obviously cut from cloth rich enough to denote private wealth, as did the patrician Massachusetts accent. Deep gray eyes matched the thick brows and carefully barbered hair that was thinning but was still full for a sixty-year-old. A closer look at the calm face would show hard lines that had been etched at the corners of his eyes from staring into the desert sun too much. His scarred hands also gave away his true past, for although the nails were manicured, the fingers were gnarled and the palms hardened from decades of working in oil patches and construction projects all over the world. His nose had been broken several times, leaving it with a curious bent shape that added to his look of experience. Bill Curtis had grown from being a mining engineer to becoming a one-man equipment hauler and eventually to creating Curtis Construction, a multinational corporation.
By the time Bill Curtis decided to retire from the business, he had contacts all over the globe and was friends with most of the powerful men in the Middle East. Those contacts, and his easy ability to juggle business, political, and personal favors, had led to him becoming the American ambassador to Kuwait, and then he was given the plum prize of Egypt.
Curtis was there to steer U.S. interests when Egypt fell apart under the tidal wave of revolutionary upheaval that was beginning to sweep through the Muslim world, and the old regimes toppled and fell so rapidly that it was often difficult to determine which side the American government should support. There were no good options in some of the uprisings.
The overwhelmed State Department decided to bring the entire troubled region beneath one tent, so it created the BAIA, and Big Bill Curtis was deemed uniquely qualified to be its leader. The paint was hardly dry on the walls of the new offices when the American SEALs staged the assault in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden and created a leadership vacuum in the terrorist world. The charming and tough Curtis was the man who would have to ride the tiger of Arab revolution, and he was more than happy to do so, for he had spent several years pushing the idea that bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization had become obsolete.
For more than a decade, since the attacks of 9/11, there had been the feeling that bin Laden and al Qaeda were in charge of the entire Muslim revolution, for he had struck the biggest blow ever against the Great Satan. The Saudi was revered for that, but almost before American sailors wrapped his body in a white sheet and dumped him overboard from an aircraft carrier, internal bickering erupted within the terrorist community over who would carry that violent legacy forward. Bin Laden’s old friend Mullah Omar was too worried about being the next on the list for Seal Team Six to step forward. The egocentric Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq spoke loudly, but no one listened to him. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri from Egypt inherited the official role as head of al Qaeda but could not control it. Even an American Muslim cleric in Yemen derisively known as the “big-headed little man” due to his likeness to the cartoon character Charlie Brown made a pathetic attempt to be seen as the ultimate leader. The Palestinians were never even in the game.
Curtis felt that Osama bin Laden’s death marked the passing of the flag. Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the inevitable lone wolf terrorists were scrambling for wider pieces of the pie and their own agendas, but none was succeeding, and he blocked them all whenever possible. Iran bankrolled revolution but cared only for itself. The only real success was being shown by the New Muslim Order and its leader, Commander Kahn. Bill Curtis had long ago decided that Kahn was to be the one and used his position as undersecretary to nudge things in the proper direction. He had a dog in the fight. The Commander was no stupid outlaw but a friend and ally from years gone by.
Which was why Curtis was angry as he stood beside the big office window. In his hands was a handwritten note that had been delivered by a private courier, folded and sealed in two envelopes. His lips had drawn into thin lines when he read it, and the eyes darkened. Failure! The girl still lived!
The undersecretary sighed and fed the note and envelopes edge-on into the office shredder, which cross-chipped the paper into microscopic pieces that would be impossible to ever reassemble. At the end of the day, they would go into the burn bag and be incinerated. During the Iranian revolution that toppled the shah from power back in the 1970s, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had shredded all of its important documents. Those thousands of strips had been reassembled and pasted back together by Iranian students and today could be read verbatim. The WikiLeaks scandal made security even chancier. William Curtis preferred for his secrets to remain secrets.
There had been no mention of the Quantico action in his morning briefing, which was gratifying. The Marine Corps was keeping it bottled up while its investigators tried to determine exactly how the breach happened and who was involved. Curtis was confident that they never would. The mission that day to which the girl had been assigned was a simple training exercise, and all preparatory communications were handled through normal open channels. The people at Task Force Trident had contacted the Department of Defense with a request for technical support, and DoD went through the Treasury Department to get a particular helicopter and its Coast Guard crew. Orders were cut from departmental operations to base ops and squadron ops, specifying exact times and coordinates. It had all been available in various military mailboxes, easily monitored by outsiders.
Curtis had had a rogue private security company monitoring the system for information ever since the CT/DSS terminated surveillance of Petty Officer Ledford, declaring that she was no threat. That depended, the undersecretary thought, on who, or what, was being threatened. The target wasn’t even in the United States but in Pakistan, where the huge new bridge project was under way, with funding flowing in from the oil fields. Front companies of Curtis Construction, in partnership with similar Muslim businesses, were lost in the organizational maze. He could not afford to have that link exposed.
When Beth Ledford had first begun making inquiries, Curtis managed to blunt her requests and employ State Department resources to track her under the guise of a potential terrorist threat. When the DSS pulled out, he had resorted to his very expensive friends in the private sector who specialized in unusual assignments, professionals that he had used before.
For them, infiltrating the Quantico base had been easy. Distant fences that were bare of infrared sensors or cameras could have been scaled easily, since guards were posted only at the choke points of entrances and exits. That would have made getting away more difficult, however, so two uniformed Marines in a Humvee bearing the proper stickers on the windshield drove up to the gate and merited no more than a wave from the guard who allowed them in. They drove to the landing zone coordinates, where one had taken his long rifle and found a comfortable hide on the side of a hill overlooking the LZ. The driver hid the Humvee nearby and took up position with a reliable Stinger ground-to-air missile. Afterward, they simply drove off the base, right before security was heightened.
It should have worked. Now the message stated the mission had failed, the hundred-thousand-dollar fee was nonrefundable, and the girl had dropped out of sight. The only good news was that his team had acquired the name of the Marine who had been her training escort. A second operation was being assembled to snatch him and squeeze out the information on the whereabouts of prime target Beth Ledford.
SLEEP DID NOT COME easily that night for Kyle Swanson in his apartment near Georgetown University, so after midnight, he went out to walk and think. There were few people around, except those lingering at the doorways of bars and pubs to smoke their cigarettes before going back inside to the beer and laughter. Some were students, but most of them were government workers and young lawyers and lobbyists pawing through the bureaucratic victories and defeats of their day on Capitol Hill like witches divining a purpose from a scattering of bones.
The unexpected catastrophe at the landing zone had left everyone in Trident, including him, also searching for meaning. There were no answers, and General Middleton was pissed, shaking the trees hard. The counterterrorism people at the State Department were equally bewildered and adamant that they had nothing to do with what had happened. For Kyle, how the daring ambush was done was less important than why it was even attempted. What did Beth Ledford have that was so damned important?
He meandered down M Street, heading east. The buildings all around were relatively small by the standards of other major urban areas, because skyscrapers did not exist in Washington. Nothing was taller than the Washington Monument; buildings were instead spread out, or excavated to create space underground. Swanson paused. Just ahead, M terminated as it crossed the Potomac River into Rosslyn on the Virginia side. With the heat of the day finally gone, a slight mist was rising from the water. A well-used pathway led to the boathouses clustered under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, named in honor of the writer of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He followed it down to the water’s edge, giving plenty of space to a young couple making out in the shadows.
Bridges, he thought. What is going on with bridges? His Nikes padded silently along the board of the dock where the long canoes were stacked and secured. Sailboats. Motorboats. Sculls. Jet Skis. Why wasn’t there a big river going under that big bridge in Pakistan? The mist was thicker on the water.
With his hands in the pockets of his jeans, Kyle turned toward the lights of the city downriver. The upper part of the monument could be seen, with small red lights at the top blinking to warn pilots of its presence, as if the big floodlights that bathed the obelisk at night did not provide enough of a clue. To his right were the elegant lines of the Kennedy Center, and closer was the stack of concrete-and-glass pancakes of the Watergate Complex. He went halfway up the grassy bank, found a dry spot of grass, lay down, and fell asleep just after seeing the faraway sparkle of a falling star.
He heard an oar sluggishly moving against the Potomac water and instantly knew it was not some sculler out for a midnight row. The smell told him so: dried tears, dead flowers, fresh blood. Swanson let out a groan. The Boatman had arrived. He knew the ragged figure emerging from the fog was nothing but a dream, a character that had a habit of showing up in his mind when there was a crisis. Invariably, death followed in his wake.
Hello.
You’re on the wrong river. The Styx is underground somewhere, down in hell. This is the Potomac.
A slender thread of crooked laughter made Kyle look up. Charon was still in his boat, the long oar over the stern bumping ever so lightly against the boardwalk.
We will be doing more business soon. Carry plenty of gold coins to put on their eyes or beneath the tongues, Gunnery Sergeant. I give no free passage from this world.
Swanson looked across the river to the Virginia shoreline, which was being eaten by a churning wall of fire.
I will never pay you to take a man to hell.
But you are the one who sends them there. It is only fair that I be paid if I am to further your work.
The silent laughter rose again, and the Boatman pushed back the hood of his rotten cloak. A bald bone skull seemed to grin, and the black holes of the eyes had seen an eternity of life and death.
Why are you here, you decayed piece of trash?
Why is there a bridge in Pakistan, in a place with little or no water?
There was a huge flood. Thousands died. Don’t you watch the news?
Yes. I have been busy there, and with paying customers. Their friends and relatives do not want the souls of their loved ones stuck on this side of the veil, to loiter around as unwanted ghosts. If the flood collapsed dams, no mere bridge would have held back such water. So the bridge is over a tributary waterway, not a major river. And why is a bridge needed at all now that the flood has receded? I can hardly paddle my little boat in that trickle.
Kyle waited a minute before speaking again.
I have known you many years.
Yes.
This is the only time you have ever made any sense.
Do not forget the gold coins. And take two for your own eyes, and two more for those of the girl. She also will be on this voyage.
Gold is too expensive. Copper pennies will have to do. How about I pay you a dollar in advance? Give me room to work.
The skull turned upward and looked toward the sky, and the skeletal arms were raised wide.
You would bargain with death?
Yes. And I will cheat you every time.
The laugh turned into a shriek from the gaping mouth, and the Virginia inferno climbed higher, licking the bottom of the night clouds. Kyle’s nostrils seemed clogged by the thick scent of charred, dead bodies. There was a flash of light, and the Boatman vanished with a final hiss: “It begins now…”
Swanson snapped awake, with all senses alert, although he kept his eyes closed and his body immobile. He picked up the sound of cars going across the Key Bridge, but there was something else, a slight movement in the stillness, weight being gently pushed against the heavy grass on the slope where he lay, and he heard a man breathing, moving closer. With one approaching cautiously, there was probably another nearby. He heard the creak of a board from the dock, so the backup was down there, about fifteen feet away beside the water, to cover his partner.
As soon as Kyle opened his eyes, the nearest man made his rush, holding a thin, extended steel baton high above his head and ready to slam it down. He leaned in to make the strike, which made him slightly off balance on the gentle slope. Swanson dug his left foot into the soft dirt and pushed over into a roll hard to his right toward the attacker, and the baton swished harmlessly through the air. It smacked the ground at the same time Kyle rammed his shoulders into the man’s ankles.
The unknown assailant fell forward and hit the ground facedown with a loud grunt, stunned. Kyle finished the roll and smoothly came to his feet, drawing the .45 Colt from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket. The downed man wore a gray sweatshirt and straight-leg jeans, was probably about six feet tall, and had enjoyed too much fried chicken and pizza. Kyle stomped hard on the spinal column at the base of the skull with his left foot and felt and heard the C-2 neck vertebra give way with a loud snap as it forcibly parted from the C-3 under great force, in a classic hangman’s break.
He swiveled to face the second threat and saw the man charging from the dock, a dark figure moving fast but from lower ground. He was shorter and even wider than the other one and had Asian features. The blade of a knife flashed in the subdued lights below the bridge. Kyle raised his pistol and fired point-blank into the face, and the man jerked to a halt as the back of his head blew off in a spray of blood and bone. The body fell backward and landed on the grass with a wet sound. The double-tap of gunshots echoed wildly beneath the arch of the bridge.
Kyle held his Colt in both hands and methodically quartered the area around him. The choice of a baton and a knife instead of guns meant the two men were not expecting to be unsuccessful in the attack, and therefore they were likely professionals. It was unlikely that they had brought along even more support. Two tough pros would normally have been more than enough. When Swanson was certain no one else was there, he holstered his pistol and made a quick search of the pockets of the dead men. Neither had a wallet, nor any identification. Pros, for sure. Swanson for a moment considered dialing 911 on his cell but decided it would be better to just move on out of there. Let someone else report the sound of gunfire.
He walked up the hill and back into Georgetown. This whole thing was out of control. It was time for Trident to go black on it, and for Kyle and Beth Ledford to vanish. He was tired of people knowing where the fuck he was at.