True Faith and Allegiance

Midas smiled a little and shook his head. “I knew it. The FNG has to babysit the asshole with the blindfold.”

“Sorry, Midas. Guard duty is beneath you, but we can’t fly him back to D.C. with only Gavin on board.”

Gavin made a face, but said nothing. It was clear he didn’t particularly want to fly alone in the cabin with the crazy Romanian.

Jack said, “Okay, I’ll work with Dalca to make the targeting package so we draw al-Matari to the cabin, and we’ll send it ASAP. We don’t have much time at all to make this happen. But if we don’t make this happen, somebody in D.C. is going to get killed today.”

Chavez looked at his watch. “We’ve got six hours’ flying time remaining. Someone could get killed even if we do everything right.”

68

Sami bin Rashid listened to the phone ring several times, until finally al-Matari answered on the other end.

“Yes?”

“Congratulations, brother. Chicago was a crippling blow. A masterpiece.”

Al-Matari did not share the jubilance of bin Rashid. “The President spoke at the White House today. He still refuses to put more troops in the Middle East. Even after last night. What kind of fool is he?”

“Patience. It will happen. And I think I know how to make it happen even more quickly.”

“How?”

“I am sending you another folder. This one is the best of them all. It will stick a knife right into the President’s heart, and there is no doubt we will have our war after this. He will bring his armies into the quagmire, your leadership will raise a call to arms, the believers will come from all over the world, and the caliphate will grow across the land.”

Abu Musa al-Matari didn’t buy into the flowery language of the Saudi. He merely said, “I’ll read what you send me.” And hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later he called back. His demeanor had changed completely. “This is authentic? This is real?”

“Of course it is real, brother,” bin Rashid said. “It is the truth. The son of Jack Ryan is alone in the woods, a lamb awaiting slaughter.”

“Incredible,” al-Matari said.

“But don’t delay. As the file says, he will be in that location for less than a day. By tomorrow morning he will return to Washington, D.C. You have to do this now.”

Al-Matari did not discuss operational details with the Saudi, and he was not about to change that now. He just said, “I will see what can be done.”

But right now Musa al-Matari himself was in a car with Algiers, and just behind them Omar and Tripoli followed. They were in central Pennsylvania, and with a check of the vehicle’s GPS, he saw they could be at the location in less than four hours.

He had two more operatives in D.C. right now, about to begin an operation within an hour, and four more en route from other areas. He could bring them all to meet him near this cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and together they could attack.

If the targeting information was correct — and the Saudi had sent good information thus far — then he and nine others should have no problem assassinating the son of the President.

He gave the order to his vehicle and the vehicle behind them, and then he sent the coordinates to the Atlanta cell.

They would all go after Jack Ryan, Jr.

* * *

With a little makeup, civilian dress, and hair blown out, Carrie Ann Davenport didn’t much look like the captain of an attack helicopter, and standing here in the sun at a backyard party with a drink in her hand, no one would have guessed that just a few days earlier she had been fighting on the front lines in Iraq.

She drank tonic water with lime and picked at finger food on a table as she chatted at the party in College Park, Maryland, at the home of a former commanding officer. Though the afternoon temperature was sweltering for most Marylanders, Carrie Ann found it pleasant. At the moment she wore a skirt with a sleeveless blouse, a far cry from the flight helmet, body armor, aircrew battle dress uniform, boots, and gloves that normally kept her roasting in the heat of Iraq.

She forced herself to focus on the now and not on the fact that in exactly one week she’d be wheels-up again, heading back toward the war zone.

Around her at the party were mostly Apache and Chinook pilots, both present and former. She’d served with many of them on deployments, and trained with many others stateside. A couple of senior officers here at the party worked at the Pentagon, as did her former commanding officer, who was now a lieutenant colonel and worked in strategic planning.

Carrie Ann was with the 2nd Battalion, 159th Aviation Regiment (Attack Reconnaissance) of the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade. She was stationed at Katterbach Kaserne Army base in Germany, which meant she was the only person here from her own unit. But she made friends easily, and was having an especially good time talking to a group of nonmilitary in the mix: a half-dozen liberal arts students from the University of Maryland, here at the lieutenant colonel’s house because they rented the house next door and her former commanding officer had invited them over for drinks and food.