Pursuit Of Honor (34 page)

NASH opened the front door and stepped outside. He was wearing a white dress shirt and black slacks. Charlie was on his left hip, already bathed and in his pajamas. Rory was out in the middle of the street with his two friends and Jack was playing whiffle ball. Nash checked his watch. The reservations were for eight, and they hadn’t been easy to get. The manager told Nash that they were full, but he could wait in the bar and see what opened up. Nash gave him his name to put on the waiting list and the man practically lost it. “Is this the Mike Nash? The one who was given the medal by the president?”

Nash reluctantly confirmed that he in fact was that Mike Nash, and then the man went berserk. He offered the best table in the house, any time he wanted, and insisted on paying. It was about the only good thing that had come out of his public outing so far. Maggie came down the stairs in a little black cocktail dress and a wrap. She joined her husband and Charlie on the front stoop. She was all done up for the evening and she looked great.

“You look fabulous, honey,” Nash said.

“Thanks, so do you.”

Charlie smiled at his mom. Nash yelled, “Come on, boys! Everyone inside!”

“But, Dad,” Jack protested, “we only have one more inning. It’s not even dark yet.”

Nash looked to the west. “I don’t see the sun, do you?”

“It’s still light out.”

Nash handed Charlie to his wife. “Why don’t you give him to Shannon and tell her to put him down. I’ll get these clowns rounded up.” Nash made the exchange with his wife and then marched down the sidewalk.

Jack whacked the yellow plastic bat on the ground. “Not fair, Dad!”

“Life isn’t fair. Get your butt inside.” Jack tried to protest again, but Nash cut him off. “Jack, I’m not going to tell you again. I didn’t say you couldn’t have fun. You guys have a Ping-Pong table in the basement, hundreds of movies, and an Xbox. Get your little butt inside, and I’m not going to tell you again.”

Rory stepped forward. “Come on, guys. We’ll play you in Madden 360.”

Nash and all four kids walked in the house. When they got to the kitchen, Jack plopped down in a chair and ran a hand over his freckled face. “Can we at least have a can of pop?”

Nash nodded. “You can each have one can. And if you decide to microwave some popcorn, hit the popcorn button on the microwave. That’s all you have to do. One of you two keeps burning it and it stinks up the whole house.”

“How do you know it’s not Shannon?” Jack asked.

“Because she’s the only person who picks up after herself around here, and I’ve seen her make popcorn.”

Maggie entered the kitchen. “I’m ready.”

“One last thing, boys. No one leaves this house. No one answers the door. When your mom and I leave I’m going to turn the alarm on. If you guys turn it off, my phone will beep and I will paddle some major ass. Do you understand?”

All four boys nodded.

“Good.” Nash looked toward the staircase and in a louder voice said, “Shannon, we’re taking off.”

She bounded down the steps a few seconds later and came cruising into the kitchen. “Have a great time.” She kissed her dad on the cheek.

“No one leaves the house. Understand?”

“Yes!” she said in a dramatic voice. “I heard you the first four times. You two go and have a good time. We’ll be fine.”

“Come on,” Maggie said, grabbing his arm. “The restaurant is only a mile from here.

Nash followed his wife into the mudroom. He stopped at his locker and opened his gun safe. There were several options. For tonight he grabbed the subcompact.40 caliber G27 and its small leather holster. At the back door he armed the security system and then left and locked the door. Back in the kitchen Shannon and her brothers shared a conspiratorial look and then darted to the front of the house. They dropped to the floor and crawled into the dining room. From the big window they watched their mom and dad back down the driveway and leave. None of them moved for close to a minute and then they sprang to life.

Jack announced, “All right… Let’s go. We were up two runs going into the top of the seventh.”

“But the security system?” Rory’s blond friend asked.

“He’s been saying that for years,” Jack scoffed. “I’ve already tested it. He has no idea if we turn it off or leave it on.” Jack punched in the code at the front door and disarmed the system.

Shannon came back from the kitchen and handed Rory the baby monitor. “Here.”

Rory took it without protest. “Be careful.”

“Be careful with what?” Jack asked.

“I’m just going to drive around the block a few times.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re crazy. If Dad catches you, he’ll kill you.”

“Jack, I’m only driving around the block! It’s not a big deal.”

“They why did you wait for them to leave?”

“Why did you wait for them to leave?”

Jack thought about it for a second. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right, although playing whiffle ball after dark was not a crime. “You’re not a good driver. What if you hit something?”

“Come on, Jack, she’s just going around the block. Stop arguing and let’s get out there or we really will be out of light.”

“What if he calls?”

Shannon held up her cell phone. “He always calls my cell.”

“Fine, let’s go.”

The four boys headed out the front door with the baby monitor and the bat and balls and Shannon went out the back door with the keys for the minivan. It took her three attempts to get it out of the garage, and she only backed over one small shrub on her way down the driveway. The boys stopped play to watch her as she inched her way into the street and then put it in drive and moved off at a snail’s pace. At the end of the block she hit her blinker and took a right turn. The boys resumed play. Six pitches and two hits later she appeared at the other end of the block. The boys all moved to the side and shook their heads at her as she did another slow pass-by. Then they started to play again and forgot all about her.

RAPP sat across the table from Hakim al Harbi and tried to make sense of it all. He’d seen a lot of strange stuff in the nearly two decades that he had been doing this, but this was a first. They’d flipped guys before, but always after exercising either pressure or incentive. They all broke eventually, but most of these militant types had to be threatened to within an inch of their lives before they would give any good information. There were others, not the front-line troops, but the support people, who helped purchase weapons and other supplies. The moneymen and the deal makers who traveled around the Middle East raising capital and recruiting new bodies for the cause, they could be turned with nothing more than the hint of violence on one hand and the possibility of hard cash on the other if they cooperated. That in itself told him that maybe this Hakim fellow was nothing more than a logistics guy, but then again he had freely admitted to killing American and coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

On the flight up they’d pulled him out of the bag and given him a drug to counteract the tranquilizer. He woke up groggy, but in obvious pain and discomfort. After a brief inspection they found out that in addition to a bruised and battered face, he had at least two broken ribs and one lung on the verge of collapsing. Wicker was a trained medic. He pulled Rapp aside and told him to be careful. If the other lung collapsed the man could die. Rapp didn’t care so much if the man died, he just wanted to get the information out of him first. Until he was in better condition they would have to hold off on the rough stuff.

To Rapp’s surprise, though, al Harbi spoke openly and without any preconditions. Rapp handled the questions while Coleman observed and recorded everything that was said. By the time they landed back at Dulles, Rapp was convinced that al Harbi was either telling the truth or the greatest liar he had ever met in his life. On the advice of Wicker they pulled the jet into the hangar and closed the doors. Stuffing him back into the bag was not a good idea. When they arrived at the Quarry, Dr. Lewis was waiting for them. He gave al Harbi a sedative to help with the pain and started him on some heavy-duty antibiotics. After that was out of the way, Lewis hooked him up to a lie detector and led him through a series of questions to establish a baseline. Rapp stayed in the room and looked for any signs that al Harbi was trying to fool the machines. He didn’t notice any, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t.

Unbeknownst to Rapp, Coleman had gone into Max Johnson’s cell and asked him about his contacts in the telecommunications industry. Johnson began babbling through a list of companies and his contacts at each place. Coleman asked him, if he gave him a phone number, would he be able to tell him where the phone was located when it made a call. Johnson explained that he could tell him what tower it used to connect to the network, but that was it. Then he babbled on about some surveillance equipment he’d developed that could pinpoint the whereabouts of a phone down to the nearest foot. Coleman explained that for now he only wanted to verify the location of the one phone call. He went on to tell Johnson that his cooperation would go a long way toward convincing Rapp that he could be trusted. Johnson eagerly leaped at the chance. He told Coleman all he needed was a computer with internet access, and he’d have the info for him in less than five minutes.

True to his word, he had everything verified in only three minutes. Coleman asked him if he had a back door into customs and Johnson said yes. He had him check if al Harbi had in fact traveled under the alias of Michael Andros through New Orleans and Miami on his way to Nassau earlier in the day. He verified that information as well. Coleman told Reavers to keep an eye on Johnson while he went and talked to Mitch.

Rapp was in the middle of interrogating al Harbi with Dr. Lewis when Coleman knocked on the door and asked Rapp to step outside.

Rapp closed the door behind him and asked, “What’s up?”

“I thought you’d want to see this. That phone number… the one that he says belongs to Karim. I had it checked out.”

“Is Marcus back?” Rapp asked hopefully.

“No, I had Johnson do it.”

Rapp showed his surprise. “You gave him access to a computer?”

“Relax… I watched him.”

“Can I trust the prick?”

“He wants to live, so I think we can.” Coleman handed over the map he’d printed. “Two things. The first… that phone pinged this tower right here south of Branson, Missouri, and it matches the time stamp on the voicemail that was left on Hakim’s phone.”

“So at a bare minimum he wasn’t lying about where they were.”

“Correct. I also had Johnson check the ICE database. Michael Andros left New Orleans at six this morning and connected through Miami on his way to Nassau. He was traveling alone and his ticket was purchased online.”

“What about the other message?”

“What other message?” Coleman asked.

“Karim left two messages.”

“I only heard one.”

“Check the phone. There’s another one. It starts out very similar to the first. He calls him a coward… all that bullshit. See if Johnson can find out what tower he used when he left the second one.”

“And what do you wanna do with the FBI?”

It was the million-dollar question and the eight-hundred-pound gorilla all rolled into one. Rapp grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed while he tried to sort it out. “This isn’t going to be easy. We give them the phone numbers and they’re going to want to know where we got them.”

“There are two dead bodies in northern Arkansas, and from everything he’s been telling us,” Coleman pointed toward the cell door, “this Karim whack job probably isn’t done killing people. We have to share this information. The feds are all still up in Iowa trying to piece things together and these guys are hundreds of miles away killing grandparents and God only knows who else.”

“I know. I’ve already talked to Irene and she’s trying to figure out a way to source it.”

Coleman stepped back and shook his head.

“Scott, I don’t like it any more than you do, but come on… you got any better ideas? I mean we’re not exactly sitting on it. We just found most of this shit out ourselves.”

“And if we gave the feds these phone numbers they’d have them pinged in ten minutes.”

“Bullshit… they’d bring in the lawyers, ask for a fucking warrant, and fill out ten forms in fucking triplicate, and then and only then would they ask the phone companies for their records.”

“I don’t know.” Coleman shook his head.

“Listen… Irene’s on her way to the White House right now. She’ll figure it out. In the meantime, ask our new friend Max Johnson if he would please hack back into the phone company database and find out where Karim was when he left that second message. And see if there’s any other activity on the phone.”

Coleman nodded and headed back down the hallway. Rapp collected his thoughts and went back into the cell. Lewis and Hakim were talking. Rapp stood behind his chair and placed his hands on the back. They were discussing Karim’s temper. Rapp was only half listening to what Hakim was saying. At the moment he was more concerned with how they were going to bring this sordid mess out of the dark covert world and into the transparent world of law enforcement. He didn’t doubt for a minute that it had to be done. It was just a question of how. Rapp was trying to figure that out when Hakim said something that caught his attention.

“What did you just say?” Rapp asked Hakim.

“He was very proud of his men. The six that were killed in the attack on your terrorism facility.”

“No… just before that. You said something else.”

“He was upset with me for doubting his bravery. He was very upset with your president for calling his men cowards. He said we were going to go to Washington and show the world that your president is a liar. Show-”

“Washington?” Rapp asked. “Are you sure he said Washington?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I believe him. I mean… he might send Ahmed. That was part of his original plan. To turn Ahmed loose in downtown Washington and let him kill as many people as he could before you managed to stop him.”

“Ahmed is a trained sniper?”

“Yes. And he’s very good. I saw him work in Afghanistan.”

“But he said you were all going to Washington?”

“Yes. To martyr ourselves.” Hakim shook his head. “But I do not think Karim will do it. He is too vain.”

There was a knock on the door and then it was yanked open. This time Coleman didn’t wait for Rapp to come out. “The second message was left at twelve-oh-four this afternoon. It pinged a tower just off Sixty-six and Jackson Lee.”

“Shit.” Rapp started pacing. His hand was forced. They had to bust this thing wide open. He grabbed his BlackBerry from his pocket and was about to call Kennedy when he saw Nash’s name pop up on the caller ID. Rapp thought he might be with Kennedy so he answered the call. He listened for a few seconds and then said, “Mike, slow down. Are you sure?” Rapp listened for another few beats and as he listened to Nash explain himself he felt his stomach begin to twist into knots. “We’ll be right there. Don’t do anything crazy… just wait for us to get there.”