All In (12 page)

There was a pause. Jackson could feel Mahmoud’s tension rise. He knew Mahmoud well enough to know that there was a breaking point, and it had almost been reached. It was rare to see Mahmoud’s elegance ruffled, but Jackson knew when his family issues came up, Mahmoud would break.

“Listen, Jackson, here’s the thing,” he began. “I’m scared we’re going to fuck this thing up.”

“Keep it together, M,” Jackson replied. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

“I can’t let him go again. Each time we almost get there, but this time—”

“I know,” Jackson said gently. “This time, if we lose him, it’s like we’re done.”

“I just feel like if we fuck this up—”

“We’re not going to fuck it up, Mahmoud. We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. And no matter what happens, we’re not going to get your family back.” There was a tense silence. Then Jackson spoke again. “Sorry, old friend.”

“No apology necessary,” Mahmoud said. “You’re right.” He sighed, a sound of pain and frustration. “Make me laugh, Jackson. Or better yet, tell me what’s going on with you and Lisa Bee. Or both.”

Jackson let out a breath. “It feels real. It feels like what I’ve been waiting for. We work so well together. She’s an amazing woman. She’s a true friend. And she knows how to use a gun. What more is there?”

Mahmoud laughed. “I’m glad you finally pulled your head out of your ass. I thought I’d have to knock some sense into you.”

“I dare you to try, old friend. I dare you to try.” Jackson cast a light punch in Mahmoud’s direction, and they sparred for a bit, as they had in their youth. Mahmoud almost knocked Jackson out, but Jackson ducked and said, “Let’s save it for the real stuff, okay?”

Mahmoud offered his hand, and Jackson took it. “I’m glad for you, Jackson,” Mahmoud said. “And better you than me. Love is complicated. That’s why I prefer taking lovers. So I don’t have to deal with the rest of it.” He realized he was being a bit dishonest. After all, he really did want someone in his life who was more than that. But he felt unnerved about Tyka, whom he personally referred to as
l’assassin blonde
. He had never met someone who matched him so completely, and he was feeling out of sorts about it.

There was a long pause. They drank their coffee. Then Jackson spoke. “M, there’s something we’re missing, right? I’m sure of it.”

“That’s the thing, Jackson. It’s like it’s right under our noses.”

“Right. Do you think Omar was trying to tell us something? He was acting so strange. Like he was scared one of the boys would tell on him.”

“Yes, I got that, too.”

“And what was all that bullshit about the book?”

“
The Alchemist,
” Mahmoud replied. “One of my favorites. But I agree, he kept bringing it up, like it was some big thing between us all as kids. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken of it before.”

“Weird,” Jackson said.

They drank their coffees in silence for a few more minutes. Then Jackson broke in. “Mahmoud, do you think Omar knew something else? Something he was trying to tell us? I mean, he wasn’t the Omar I remember.”

Now Mahmoud came to life. “This is what I’m talking about, Jackson. It’s like there’s a series of clues, and we’re missing one of them. You’re so good at this stuff. You know, I always think if you had been around in Casablanca in 2003—”

“That your family would still be alive. I think about it all the time. I shoulda been here.”

“This one’s not on you, Jackson,” Mahmoud said, clapping a hand on his shoulder and looking him in the eye. “Truly. I’m just glad you’re here now.”

“Thanks, M. Let’s figure this out, yes? So back to Omar.”

“Right. He kept referencing
The Alchemist
. The boy who finds that the treasures he’s gone around the world looking for lie in his own backyard. I figured he was talking about the Casbah and where we all used to hang out.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Jackson said, “which is why I kept asking him about all the places we used to hang. But where would one hide a nuclear warhead in the Casbah? It doesn’t make sense.”

They sat stock-still, as if they were upon a ticking bomb. Then Mahmoud sat up straighter. “Jackson,” he said, “do they still have those nuclear warships off the East Coast? The submarines?”

“Yeah,” he said. “So? Those ballistic missiles are for nuclear deterrence.”

“But if Buzz Carter had been turned, is it possible—”

“Oh God,” Jackson said, “it’s my backyard he was talking about, Mahmoud. It’s an American missile pointed at the Pentagon.”

Jackson was just about to phone the Boss when his key chain vibrated and he got the message about Gabriella. He played it aloud for Mahmoud, who listened intently, his body tensing with each word. Jackson said, “Let me call the Boss ASAP and let him know what’s up. I’ll tell him to call Fritz and get the FBI on it. What do you want to do, M? You tell me.”

Mahmoud took a moment, then said with determination, “I’m off to Italy. I’m going to figure out who did this. I’m going to make them tell me what they know about BS. And then I’m going to make them pay with their lives.”

‡‡‡

CHAS, SUSANNAH, AND RAFAEL
were in Susannah’s childhood home in Alexandria, Virginia, and were combing through it. Rafael, who had been trained by the Israeli Special Forces, told them what to look for: where there could be bugs, cameras, hidden intel. Each was equipped with a utility knife and a cell phone camera, and Rafael had brought along a whole bag of other tools. Currently, Chas was in the basement, Susannah was in the kitchen on the main floor, and Rafael was on the second floor, looking through the bedrooms. It was about four
A.
M.
by now, and though Susannah was exhausted, she was filled with frustration and had a burning need for answers. Was her father the mastermind behind all these attacks? How had she become entwined with him in this way? And how had they gotten into such a dangerous situation?

Susannah had always been fascinated by the criminal mind, which led her to study criminology at Georgetown and pursue a career in law enforcement. She saw the world as black and white: good versus evil, the good guys against the bad guys. They were the good guys. And it felt like they were on the losing team. To make matters worse, on their way over to the house, they’d gotten the message from the Boss and a simultaneous call from Fritz about Gabriella; Susannah had felt herself shaken to the core. She hadn’t really known Gabriella. But she was one of theirs, and she’d been taken out.

She wondered how they’d gotten in so deep. True, the cases had been getting higher and higher profile, but how had they escalated to this? A week ago she had been looking forward to her wedding, more deeply in love than she’d ever been, and her life had felt so secure: She had a job she loved, colleagues she adored working with, and a man who was her knight in shining armor. That’s what it was. A week ago, her life felt safe. Now it felt terrifying.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Rafael entering the kitchen. He was a sight for sore eyes, in more ways than one. He was smolderingly attractive, she thought, with that olive skin, dark hair, and eyes that were almost black. He was over six feet tall, with rippling muscles that he clearly knew how to use. Every part of him spoke of readiness, of preparation. And he was kind, to boot. She wished she had someone she could set him up with, someone who could match him. Her mind instantly went to Gabriella, and her heart sank.

Rafael looked at her with great sympathy in his eyes. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

Susannah sighed, looking around the kitchen, which she had put into complete disrepair. Her mother always kept it so neat and tidy; Janice loved to cook and bake and spent much of her time in the beautiful open space with its vintage avocado green appliances and high-quality muffin tins and pie plates. Now it was a mess, and Susannah was looking through her mother’s cookie sheets for signs of her father’s terrorist activities. It just wasn’t right. “I don’t know, Rafael,” she said, turning toward him. “Truthfully, it hasn’t been the best day.”

‡‡‡

AT THAT MOMENT,
Chas came up from the basement, carrying a small wooden spice box in his hands. “Sorry to ruin the moment,” he said, “but now there’s this.”

If the turning of Susannah’s father weren’t enough, his gut clenched when he thought of Gabriella. Chas had known her for years without actually realizing who she was. He had gotten notes for years from “G,” the person he perceived to be the voice of the criminal operation run by the Italian. Six months ago they had taken that crime family down together, he and Gabriella both working undercover, both an integral part of Bruni’s network. He hadn’t realized how much she’d risked to implicate Bruni and how far she’d gotten herself in. He also had no idea her cover had been blown or how she had met such an end. But they were entrenched deeper than they’d realized; what had been sexy fun and games at one time had led to all of them being massive targets for a widespread and invisible foe. In addition, because of the nuclear warheads, there were hundreds of thousands of lives at stake.

“Sadly,” Chas said, “I think I’ve found what we’ve been looking for.”

Rafael strode toward him and looked inside the spice box. “What is it?”

“It’s a series of journals, all written in code, not dated. We’ll have to get these to someone who can decode them. But hidden in the frame of the box, I found this.” He held out sheets that looked like photo negatives. “First names of contacts. Numbers and addresses. And they’re all in Morocco.” Susannah gasped. “But there’s more. This is what disturbs me the most.”

Chas held out another sheet of negatives that looked like it had a series of pictures on it. “If I’m not mistaken, these are photos of Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, in Georgia. How would anyone get photos of a ballistic missile submarine base? And why? Kings Bay is massive—I remember from a seminar the FBI sent me to on protections against hacking our weapons systems. I think we know where to send our teams. And I think we know that Buzz is the connector.”

Susannah staggered a bit, and the men rushed to hold her up. Then she took a breath and said, “Let’s get Fritz on this ASAP. We don’t have a minute to lose.”

“Right,” Chas said. “Rafael, you call Fritz. Let’s gather what we need and get out of here fast. We better get back to Quantico.”

Rafael nodded at Chas, then put his hand on Susannah’s shoulder and said, “Chin up. All will be well.” Then he went to call Fritz.

Susannah looked at Chas’s grimace and said, “Oh, stop it, Chas. You know there’s no one else for me but you.”

“Not even Mahmoud?” he asked with a smile.

“Not even Mahmoud,” she said, and pulled him in for a kiss before they had to be on their way. Holding on to him, she looked deeply into his eyes. “Fuck, Chas. It looks like my dad could be the one we’re looking for.”

“Could be,” he said, “But let’s not jump to any conclusions. Let’s wait to see what Fritz has to say. And another thing . . .”

“What?”

“You’ve got me, babe. Every step of the way. No matter what.”

She looked relieved, and put her hands on either side of his face. “Now that’s the man I want to call my husband. Thank you, Tex. For knowing just the right thing to say.”

“Well,” he said, “this is just us figuring it out, hon. And maybe we needed to do this before we could say the oaths for real.”

They could see Rafael coming back to join them. “Right on,” Susannah said to him, wearily, but with a smile. “Right on, partner.”

12

A FEW HOURS LATER,
the FBI and the CIA were working in tandem to figure out what exactly was going on, and Fritz was having a rough go of it. On one hand, she was trying to plan how to disarm a nuclear weapon on a U.S. naval base without alerting those in control of it, and on the other hand, she was trying to organize the interrogation of Buzz Carter, who had all but proved himself to be the notorious Baba Samka. On top of it all, she was trying to comfort Janice. She must have missed this day in field training. Fritz sighed and scratched her head, grabbing one of her Parliament Lights and sitting back to smoke, alternately sipping black coffee and gulping down her fifth Red Bull of the day.

She had gotten the intel from Chas and Susannah a few hours earlier and had her highest-level code-breaking team working on it now. She had heard from the Boss almost simultaneously about the discovery from Jackson and Mahmoud, and so she had sent a team to get on it ASAP, realizing how high the stakes were. They had made some headway, enough to send people into Kings Bay to try to stop the threat before it became a reality.

The operation was top-secret and involved people of only the highest levels of clearance. Fritz didn’t know whom to share the information with, as Buzz Carter clearly had connections on the inside. Who was the mole? Or were there several? Fritz found herself looking at everyone with suspicion, every one of her colleagues, each of her superiors. Whom should she involve? Whom should she be wary of? She decided to keep it small and called a man she knew, without question, she could trust: the head command at Kings Bay, a former lover of hers. She told him to be very cautious. Fritz also had a contact in the Pentagon who was on the team responsible for overseeing all the nuclear operations throughout the country; he was one of the other people she trusted with her life, so she’d scheduled an emergency meeting. Now she had complete access to the Kings Bay database, infrastructure and internal communications as well as knowledge of all the technical bells and whistles of their nuclear armed submarines. She sent in a squad of engineers under the false pretense of a potentially dangerous fuel leak, all done on the DL with the help of her Pentagon contact and her Kings Bay former lover. She had already alerted the White House but told them to keep it quiet and immediately move the president out of D.C. As silently as humanly possible.

But what if the mole were one of her superiors?

She scratched her head and lit another cigarette, sending up a silent prayer that she had told the right people.

Then she sat back to wait.

‡‡‡

BUZZ CARTER WAS
in a room in Quantico that, according to the floor plan, didn’t exist. It was in the basement and could be entered only through a trapdoor that very few people had access to. It was about twenty square feet and had bare walls and a cement floor. A single lightbulb hung over his head. Buzz sat in a chair, his wrists bound behind him, blood coursing down his face. He had been slapped around by the two agents interrogating him, but that was nothing compared to what they had in store for him next. And they had just been given some very good material: The decoded contacts had yielded some known terrorists on the FBI watch list.

“Mr. Carter,” one of them said, “we know you’re involved. How else do you explain these photos of Kings Bay? The journals in code? The contact information of known hostiles in Morocco? We have everything we need to convict you and send you to your death. But you could keep yourself alive. Tell us what warheads are enabled and how you plan to detonate them. And then we can talk.”

At Buzz’s silence, the second one spoke. “Come on, Carter. Surely you don’t want this to be the last time you’ve seen your wife and daughter, not after being without them for so long. You know we’ll find what we’re looking for. But we’ll find it quicker if you cooperate. And you could keep yourself alive. You do want to see your family again, right? Or do I have that wrong?”

There was a pause. Then Buzz lifted his head. “I’m innocent. I told you. There’s an explanation for all of that. If you’d only let me contact Rob Smith—” He was interrupted by a strong uppercut, courtesy of Agent A. He shook his head to clear his vision, then spat out a tooth and looked directly at the two men. “Go fuck yourselves,” he said viciously. “I can help you find him. I can help you hunt down a mass murderer. But if you’d rather kill me, just do it. It’ll be the blood of countless Americans on your hands.”

Agent B laughed out loud. “Oh, I think we know who’ll be held accountable,” he said. “And we’ve got a lot more tricks up our sleeve before we kill you. Ever tried waterboarding? Deceptively simple, eerily effective. What do you think? Shall we?”

A few minutes later, there were screams from that room at the bottom of Quantico, but nobody heard them. Nobody except two anonymous agents. They weren’t on the government’s books, the FBI’s call list, the CIA’s secret files. No, they were individually contracted killers, and they worked exclusively for one man. Their boss was Baba Samka.

‡‡‡

IT TOOK ONLY
five hours for the team of engineers to find and disarm the warhead. They had gotten the intel from Fritz at around five
A.M.
and had gone straight in; now it was just after ten-thirty. They targeted each missile system and computer connection in rapid succession. Each missile was in constant surveillance via a computer feed to a human operator. One of the computers had been tampered with and was set to break connection with its human operator at nine
P.M.
EST. If they hadn’t tracked down this computer glitch, a large part of D.C., Baltimore, and Virginia could have been wiped out. At present, agents and engineers were checking security on all the other nuclear warheads, the ones in the underground silos in Montana and Nevada, the ones on the submarines off the coasts, and the rest in the undisclosed locations.

Even more troubling work lay ahead. All of America’s missiles were programmed by engineers and kept on launch-ready status. This recent compromise in security put the country into a dangerous place with regard to global terrorism and the possibility of cyber attacks. The government faced a tough series of questions: Were their firewalls enough? Was it possible for their crews to receive and execute unauthorized launch orders? Further investigations would need to get under way. But right now the fate of America and the world had been altered. For the moment, everyone was safe. And the hero of this extraordinary turn, the purveyor of this intel, the secret weapon at the hands of the American military, was a little-known group with a big reach. Only one agency had been bold enough and lucky enough to discover the connecting dots that led to the tyrant they sought. All eyes now turned to the Bod Squad.