Oath of Office

“There you go, then,” Jack said, checking his watch. The shock of the accident and the fight was beginning to wear off enough that he could think a little more clearly. He thought he heard a car door, and looked up at Dovzhenko. “Hey.” He hissed, grabbing one of the Kalashnikovs. “Where’s Ysabel?”

* * *

Major Sassani hated to backtrack, but sometimes the fastest distance between two points was not a straight line. He ordered his lieutenant to drive him straight from Fatima’s hovel to the main Afghan Border Police offices in Herat.

Just as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had agents in Mexico, Colombia, and Europe, NAJA assigned members of their antinarcotics squads and border guard to the Afghan National Police. The Iranian Cyber Police, more routinely occupied with cracking down on dissidents who attempted to circumvent government oversight of the Internet, also had a technician embedded in the Herat antidrug task force. If nothing else, Iranian law enforcement upset the Americans.

There was a good deal of friction between the regular Army and the IRGC inside Iran, but the Sepah were a powerful force that held a tremendous amount of sway over NAJA and, to a slightly lesser extent, the ANP. It took some time due to the late hour, but Sassani was eventually able to get the commanding officer to loan him five men, giving him a ten-man team, counting the three Iranian antidrug task force personnel and him and his lieutenant. Omar Khan was a known bandit, and everyone in the group was jumpy by the time they made the hour-and-a-half drive through a soot-black night to the smugglers’ stronghold near Ghourian.

They met no resistance, and it soon became clear why. The officer from Iran’s Cyber Police vomited on his own shoes when he saw the shard of lamb bone protruding from Omar’s mutilated throat.

Sassani squatted at the edge of the blood-sodden rug to study the carnage. “Ysabel,” he said.

The Afghan police captain’s face screwed up in disbelief. “How can you be sure?”

“This man has been killed many times over,” Sassani said. He stood up and wiped his hands on the front of his trousers, though he’d touched nothing. “Females are emotional creatures. They routinely find it necessary to overkill someone they hate or fear.”

The leftover food laid out on the carpets was cool, but not yet too infested by insects. The ashes in the fire pit still gave off heat when stirred.

“They have not been gone long,” Sassani said. “Places set for four… I wonder who else besides Kashani and Dovzhenko. Surely none of these bodyguards.” The major thought on this while he walked through the house. “Seven dead,” he muttered as he stepped over the body of what he suspected was the cook. The Russian was more of a man than he’d thought. He turned to the Iranian antinarcotics liaison, a swarthy little man named Malik with arms that looked powerful, if a bit too short for his body. “Please speak to your contacts at the airport,” Sassani said. “These fugitives are extremely dangerous.”

“Of course, Major,” Malik said, but he made no effort to make the call.

“At once,” Sassani prodded. “They could already be there.”

“Yes,” Malik blustered. “I will have to use the satellite phone from the truck.”

“Satellite phone…” Sassani mused. He nodded to the desk in Omar’s office. There was a letter opener, what looked like a functional Soviet F1 hand grenade, and several other knickknacks arranged around the edge of the desk. There was a clear space in the center where there had once been a laptop computer. “He would have used a satellite connection for the Internet. Would he not?”

The cybertechnician looked as if he was about to vomit again, but he’d regained enough of his wits to follow the rest of the group on the search of the house.

“There is no landline,” he said. “So he must have.”

“Very good.” Sassani searched through the desk drawers until he found a file with instruction pamphlets for a Thuraya XT-Pro satellite phone and a Wi-Fi hotspot of the same brand. He turned to the Afghan captain. “Do you have Flying Fish or some other satellite-monitoring capability?”

The man shook his head. “We rely on the Americans for that technology.”

“I do,” the Iranian cybertech offered. “Not Flying Fish but something similar. We run it continuously, but due to manpower issues do not monitor it unless we are actively hunting someone.”

“Outstanding,” Sassani said. “Because I am.”

“You are what, Major?” the Afghan captain said.

“Actively hunting.”

51

“Is this conversation being taped?”

Senator Chadwick sat on the couch with her back to the Resolute desk, staring at the President through narrow eyes, like he might jump up at any moment and attack her.

“No,” Jack Ryan said. “It’s just you and me.” He nodded toward the exit to the secretaries’ suite. “There is a peephole in that door so people can look in to see if I’m busy. But no tapes.”

“We’ll see,” Chadwick said.

“So,” Ryan said, “I thought maybe you and I must have gotten off to a bad start somewhere.”