State Of Attack

When Ibrahim had heard this he knew that that meant the general was capable of getting close. If he did, he might be able to not only thwart what had now become his raison d’être, but also interrupt or even sabotage the mission as a whole. And so he had found out what he could about the man.

Once he had he knew the general had to die. It was the only decision to make. Ibrahim had decided to do it himself. It was a risk being so close to mission time, but it was riskier to get more people involved with the assassination of a top-ranking US military official. He didn’t want any mistakes made so close to the Silent Jihad.

He closed his eyes now. It was done. There would be no comeback and he was going on to greater things. By the time he opened his eyes he told himself that he would have forgotten the general had ever existed.

Chapter 15 (#ulink_0bd64c5b-58d1-57d9-af48-146be03bec3d)

Halfway out of the car door, which abutted the café and store fronts, the general had seen a white-red flash and had heard a massive explosion. Vaguely, he’d sensed that he’d been flying through the air; that he’d been cut by what had felt like dozens of razorblades. He’d landed on his back with a sickening thud, his bloody head jarring. The world had turned black.

Three minutes later he tried to blink and realized that his eyelids were heavy with, he guessed, brick dust and flecks of tarmac. He couldn’t feel his legs or his arms, but there was a searing pain in his chest. Smelling burning gasoline, he heard people screaming and the sound of sirens from fast-approaching emergency vehicles, although the noise was muted, as if he was wearing padded ear defenders. Then the competing sounds simply began to merge into a dull drone. But he could make out another distinct smell, a smell that was both sweet and nauseating. Grimacing, he realized it was his own burning flesh.

“Jesus,” he said, his voice little more than a murmur.

He tasted blood and chocked as bile rose in his throat. He did his best to keep it down but the conscious effort made his head swim. The pain moved over his body in waves. With that came the realization that his breathing was shallow and wheezy. It seemed as if his airway had all but closed over and his lungs had partially collapsed. There was no way he could move his limbs an inch.

Feeling what he took for the sun beating on his forehead, he risked opening his right eye partially. As grit made him blink repeatedly, he glimpsed the sky directly above him. It was shrouded by thick black smoke. Despite this, the heat intensified and he realized it was coming from a fire. Fearing being burnt alive, the sky began to rain red-hot ash, which settled on his face and fizzled out, and felt to him like the caress of death.

Blinking still, he sensed someone bending down to his face. He winced involuntarily, fearing the worst. The person began speaking in Turkish, a low, muffled voice, or so it appeared. Then his head was being raised. The pain in his head and neck made him clench his teeth and moan. Something was placed around his neck, supporting it. Something smooth yet firm, which, despite his dazed state, he realized was a brace.

When he was raised off the ground he felt the urge to vomit again. His head ached; his eye closed. But as quickly as the pain had risen in a crescendo, it began to abate now, the throbbing being replaced by numbness, even in his neck and chest. He felt as if he was floating and, incongruously, a closed-mouthed smile crossed his face. Morphine, he thought. Thank God for morphine, although he’d felt no prick from a needle, and that meant he might be paralyzed, albeit in one or more of his limbs.

But as he was being carried his head seemed to explode, his skull crack and shift, despite the drug. He sensed what felt like warm blood flowing from the back of his head to the nape of his neck. He panicked, his mind forming words he couldn’t express.

With that, he lost consciousness.

Chapter 16 (#ulink_126935e3-c747-5e50-97a6-43d1764d69d2)

Tom had drawn the heavy drapes to hide the encroaching sunlight and lay asleep now on his bed, his angular face lost between two chocolate-coloured buckwheat pillows. His cellphone on the nightstand began to buzz in vibrate mode, moving around like a kid’s toy whose battery had almost juiced out. His half-limp hand stretched out and picked it up.

Yawning, he said, “Who’s this?”

“Mr Dupree?”

It was a man’s voice. Businesslike, he thought, blinking his eyes slowly like a reptile.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Can you be at Langley in an hour, sir?”

He rubbed his face with his free hand. “Langley? What time is it?”

“Zero one thirty, sir.”

Tom sighed. “You kiddin’ me?” He’d been asleep for the best part of eighteen hours.

“It’s important, sir.”

“Yeah. What’s this all about?”

“Your father, sir. It’s about your father, General Dupont.”

He sat up, switched on the arc light on the nightstand to his left. “What about him?”

“Langley in an hour, sir. The NHB,” the man said, referring to the New Headquarters Building.

Tom thought for a couple of seconds. “Okay.”

The line went dead.

He put the cell down back on the nightstand, pushed back the duvet and vaulted out of bed. What the hell did the CIA want to say to him about his father at this hour? he thought. As he pulled on a pair of jeans and a black sweater, he decided that trying to work that out would be an impossible task and, at best, could only lead to increasingly negative conclusions.

He knelt down, opened the drawer on his nightstand and eased out his badge and SIG. He clipped the badge to the belt on his jeans and, out of habit, released the handgun’s magazine, checking there was a full complement of twelve .357 SIG cartridges, and that the chamber was empty. Satisfied, he walked to his closet and took a nylon windbreaker from a hangar.

Apart from his time as head of the Secretary of State’s protective detail, and a couple of occasions when he’d been in the DS counterterrorism unit, he hadn’t had any interaction with the CIA. Truth was, he felt uneasy around them, not because he feared them, but rather because he found their take on the world changed with a disconcerting regularity. One day some group was an ally, the next it was a sworn enemy.

The CIA had advocated airstrikes against the Assad regime in Syria, which would bolster the Sunni jihadists there, and then a few months later, they’d advocated airstrikes against the same Sunni jihadists to bolster the Shia regime in Iraq, and he couldn’t imagine living his life in that way. Then there was Dan Crane, of course, the man who’d been saved by his father and had helped him find the secretary. The guy was a walking contradiction, too.

Thinking this he headed out of his second-storey bedroom and down the staircase without turning on the lights. Reaching his study he couldn’t remember where he’d left his small recording device. To the world, it was a fountain pen. Sam, his veteran DS driver, had told him once that when he had to meet with the CIA or Homeland Security he should tape it. Given that this meet had something to do with his father he felt it was doubly important.

He flipped the light switch. The sudden brightness had caused his tropical fish to dart for cover. The huge tank, which lined the fourth wall, appeared to be empty. It could be a full twenty minutes before they emerged from the encrusted rock formations and clumps of green plants, and begin to swim in the open again, circling the miniature Doric columns. They were timid souls, Tom thought; or perhaps paranoiac ones, like him. Not a bad trait for a fish in a tank to have. He scribbled a note for the lady cleaner to change the water and put in a fresh delayed feeder.

He got a text message, a world security update from the DS’s counterterrorism unit. Truck bomb kills thirty-four in Ankara. Two American casualties.

Chapter 17 (#ulink_be18173d-fb45-5684-95d1-fc1f07c03b06)

It was only a twenty minute journey to Fairfax County, Virginia. Tom was driving his Buick, the streets deserted but well lit. The CIA HQ was known as Langley after the unincorporated community it was situated in a few miles west of DC. But it had been called the George Bush Center for Intelligence since 1999, a compound consisting of a couple of major linked buildings set in two hundred and fifty-eight acres of land.

After passing through the high-level security checkpoint, Tom parked his Buick in the visitors’ car lot and walked to the entrance of the New Headquarters Building, or NHB. It was a chilly early morning, dawn still hours away. He passed the “Kyptos” sculpture, which ran from the entrance to the north-west corner of the courtyard, a massive S-shaped copper screen containing numerous coded messages, and felt his sense of unease heighten.

The single-storey section of the compound was flanked by two marble pillars, the glass facade on either side bathed in a yellowish glow from the security lights. Atop the pillars, an elongated, curved glass roof gave it the appearance of a modern art museum, rather than the most sophisticated intelligence hub on earth. The NHB, completed in 1991, was characterized by two, six-storey office blocks and was situated on a hill behind the well-known Old Headquarters Building, with its iconic CIA seal in the entrance lobby.

After being processed by internal security and given a laminated visitor’s badge, Tom entered the lobby area of the NHB, which was dotted with commemorative plaques and an impressive collection of donated statues. The four-storey glass atrium between the two tower blocks had three model drones suspended overhead. They were beetle-black and would ensure that visitors were left in no doubt that what went on here was deadly serious, Tom thought.

The main entrance to the NHB was on the fourth floor of one of the blocks, with an impressive skylight ceiling. Tom stepped out of an elevator into the corridor. At the end, he could see the still well-lit structure of the Old Headquarters Building, integrated by a network of further corridors, the wall space broken up by hung works of abstract art of the Washington Color School.

Before he could be questioned at the reception desk, he noticed a slim young woman dressed in a black business suit with a large-lapelled white shirt walking towards him. Her blonde hair was cut in a neat bob, her gait confident.

As she held out her long-fingered hand to greet him, he caught a waft of her perfume. Expensive and classy, he thought, reminding himself that he hadn’t been in a relationship with a woman for close to three years. He was left feeling oddly remorseful about that, given the circumstances of his visit.

“Cindy Rimes,” she said with a distinct New York accent. “Thank you for coming, Mr Dupree.”

Tom shook her hand and nodded. “My pleasure, ma’am.”

He got the impression that she was slightly embarrassed by her name, but couldn’t think why. It was as good a name as any. He didn’t ask her why he’d been woken up and told to report here. He’d get the answers regarding his father soon enough, he figured.

“Please follow me, sir,” she said, leading him down the corridor.

Getting about halfway up the corridor he saw a large alcove and was invited to sit on a low-slung chair behind a chrome and glass table, containing several copies of the National Geographic and promotional material for the agency. Apart from a water cooler and a vending machine, the space was empty.