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  And he was coming straight toward Gomez.

  Bartosowicz, a private from Cleveland, was on duty at the gate with Gomez. He didn’t look like he had noticed the guy yet, so Gomez called across to him, “Yo, Barty, one of the locals comin’.”

  Bartosowicz jumped a little and said, “Shit, you think he’s a suicide bomber?”

  “I dunno.” Gomez thumbed off the safety on his weapon and lifted the rifle. He knew how to say “Halt!” in both Urdu and Punjabi. He tried Urdu first, calling out to the approaching figure. The man kept coming. He was shambling along at an unsteady gait, Gomez could tell now, like he was sick or hurt or something.

  Or maybe he was just a little scared because he was about to blow himself up. That would be enough to put a hitch in anybody’s step.

  Gomez yelled at the man in Punjabi next, telling him to stop right where he was and not come any closer. When that didn’t work, Gomez started to get impatient and shouted in English, “Stand down, my man! Right there! Come any closer and we’ll shoot!”

  Bartosowicz glanced over nervously at Gomez and asked, “Are we really gonna shoot him?”

  “Damn right we are,” Gomez responded without hesitation. “Maybe he’s just drunk, but I’d rather take a chance on cappin’ him than let him blow us to hell.”

  Still, Gomez thought as his finger lightly touched the trigger of his rifle, it wasn’t easy to shoot a man down in cold blood. He’d never killed anybody in his life. Not back in the streets of East L.A., and not here in Pakistan. But all it would take, he realized as he drew a bead on the cloaked, shambling figure, was just a little more pressure on the trigger…

  The guy croaked something. Gomez couldn’t understand the words, but he thought the man sure sounded like he was hurt or sick.

  He yelled again in Urdu, then Punjabi, and finally in English. “Stop right there and get down on the ground!” To his fellow sentry he added, “Barty, call the lieutenant!”

  “Already did,” Bartosowicz replied. “He’s on his way.”

  Gomez wished the officer would hurry up and get there, so the decision whether or not to kill this guy would be taken out of his hands. But he would make it if he had to, Gomez told himself. If the stranger took two more steps—

  Again the cloaked man lifted his head and said something, and this time Gomez was able to make out the words. A shock went through him as he realized that the guy had gasped out, “Semper…fi…”

  Bartosowicz had heard it, too. He said, “Shit, Gomez, he’s one of us!”

  “Not necessarily,” Gomez warned. “These guys can learn to speak English, just like we learn to speak their lingo.” He kept his rifle trained on the figure as he shouted, “Hey, man, if you understand what I’m say in’, stop right where you are! Don’t come any closer or I’ll shoot you, I swear to God I will!”

  The man stopped and slowly raised his hands. He was close enough now so that Gomez could see his face in the glow from the floodlights that illuminated the grounds of the embassy compound. It was the same sort of dark-skinned face Gomez saw hundreds of times a day on the Pakistanis, except this guy didn’t have a beard like most of the men around here.

  The man began fumbling with the turban wrapped around his head. Bartosowicz yelled, “He’s got a gun in there!” His rifle came up.

  Some instinct made Gomez say, “Wait! Hold your fire!” He didn’t think the guy was going for a weapon. He watched as slowly, unsteadily, the man began unwrapping the turban. As the cloth fell away, it revealed hair that was a dark shade of blond, but definitely blond nonetheless.

  A grin creased the guy’s gaunt, haggard face. “I’m…an American,” he said. “Got to see…the ambassador.”

  Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched forward, either passed out cold—or dead.

  As Gomez pushed the buttons on the keypad that would open the heavily reinforced iron bars of the gate, he hoped the guy had just passed out.

  Gomez wanted to hear the story of how a blond American dressed like a Pakistani came wandering up to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad in the middle of the night. Gomez was willing to bet it was a good one.

  CHAPTER 15

  So I’m not dead after all.

  That was Brad Parker’s first thought when consciousness seeped back into his brain. He had fully expected to wake up either at the Pearly Gates or the gates of Hell, depending on how harshly his sins were judged. But the first face he saw didn’t belong to either St. Peter or Lucifer.

  It belonged to J. Gordon Keyne, United States Ambassador to Pakistan.

  Keyne was a balding, stuffy-looking black man who had once been a university professor—and looked it. He glared down at Parker, who seemed to be in a bed of some sort, and said, “Young man, you’d better have a good excuse for showing up unannounced on my doorstep at three o’clock in the morning.”

  Parker recalled that he and the ambassador had never met, although Parker certainly knew what Keyne looked like. Parker’s lips and tongue didn’t want to work at first because they were so dry, but after a moment he managed to husk, “I need to talk to…Ford.”

  Keyne frowned. “You mean Larry Ford?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  The expression of disapproval on Keyne’s face deepened. Lawrence Ford was a deputy attaché at the embassy. At least, that was the way he was carried on the books.

  But he really worked for the Company, and Keyne knew it. He probably didn’t like it much. Diplomats seldom liked to acknowledge that there were some problems in the world that couldn’t be solved by negotiations. But a CIA presence in American embassies worldwide was a fact of life.

  Keyne looked at somebody Parker couldn’t see and snapped, “Get Ford in here. Now.”

  When Keyne turned his attention back to the man in the bed, Parker asked, “How bad…am I hurt?”

  “My medical people tell me that you have three broken ribs, a concussion for sure and possibly a hairline fracture of the skull, a bullet hole in your left arm, a couple of deep grazes on your right arm and right side, and enough scratches and scrapes and bruises for a regiment. In other words, son, you’re lucky to be alive, and depending on how bad that head injury really is, we’re not sure what kind of shape you’re in.” Keyne paused, and his voice was a little more sympathetic as he went on, “What’s your name? Or are you allowed to tell me that?”

  “B-Brad Parker…sir.”

  “I suppose it would have been too much to expect for someone in Washington to let me know you were over here in Pakistan.”

  “Things sometimes…develop pretty fast…sir.” There was no point in telling Keyne that he had been in Pakistan for months, working with Odie to develop intel and do whatever needed to be done. Parker knew that, by and large, it was better to keep the paper-pushers in the dark as much as possible.

  Another man bustled into the room. He was tall, broad-shouldered, starting to develop a little paunch. A pair of glasses perched on his nose. “Brad, old buddy,” he said, “you look like you just went six rounds with a buzz saw.”

  Parker grinned, even though it hurt. “Yeah, well…at least I…didn’t start out lookin’ this way…Fargo.”

  Lawrence “Fargo” Ford had picked up his nickname because of his hometown in North Dakota. He chuckled, even though his eyes were deadly serious behind the glasses. When he glanced at Keyne, the ambassador gave a frustrated grimace and said, “I know, I know, I need to leave you two alone.”

  “I’ll debrief Mr. Parker and then be in to talk to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Ford promised.

  Keyne just grunted, nodded, and left the room.

  When Parker and Ford were alone, Ford drew a chair closer to the bed and sat down. Parker asked, “Is this room…clean?”

  Ford reached into the pocket of the robe he wore over his pajamas and brought out a small black box with a tiny lever on it. He pushed the lever and said, “It is now. We sweep the whole place for bugs pretty regularly, and even if we missed something, this little gizmo will take care
of it.”

  “Even the ones that…our side planted?”

  Ford grinned. “Even them. Now tell me…” He leaned closer to the bed. “You ran into trouble in that village? The one where Hizb ut-Tahrir has its training compound?”

  “Had,” Parker said. “No more Jihad U.”

  “Damn! That’s good work, Brad. I’d heard rumors that something big had happened over there, but I hadn’t been able to confirm them yet. What about Odie?”

  “Didn’t…didn’t make it.”

  Ford took a deep breath and then shook his head. “I’m sorry. He would’ve been a hell of an agent someday.”

  “He…already was.” Parker lifted a hand and reached out toward Ford. “Got to tell you…documents hidden in my jacket…”

  Ford nodded and said, “I’ve already got ’em, but they’re, uh, sort of soaked in some of that blood you lost. We haven’t been able to translate them yet. Under the best of circumstances, it’s hard to dig the details out of all that chicken-scratching they call writing—”

  Parker clutched at the arm of his friend and comrade in the shadow war against terror. “I can tell you,” he said as urgency lifted him in the bed. “They’re going to…blow up something…in the States…on the day after Thanksgiving.”

  “What is it? A political target? Part of the infrastructure?”

  “Worse,” Parker said. His head pounded fiercely with a sudden pain that sent black flashes across his vision. He was about to say, They’re going to blow up the biggest damn MegaMart in the world, when something burst inside his skull, flooding it with agony. The whole world was red, then black—

  Then gone.

  “According to a story by the Associated Press datelined Washington, D.C., November 27, there was a brief confrontation today between American and Iranian airplanes over the Persian Gulf. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the Iranian planes attempted to turn back an oil tanker heading into the Strait of Hormuz with radio warnings that if the tanker proceeded, it would be fired upon. American fighter jets from one of the carriers in the Gulf arrived only moments after the warning was given, and the Iranian jets departed from the area. The tanker was able to proceed on its course without incident.

  “Spokesmen for the Iranian government in Tehran immediately issued a statement claiming that their planes were fired upon without warning or provocation, but the Pentagon denies that any shots were fired by either side. The Pentagon also released a recording of the Iranian pilots threatening the oil tanker.

  “White House Press Secretary Davisson stated that while the President remains committed to finding peaceful solutions to the problems in the Middle East, the United States will not permit any disruption of shipping in the Persian Gulf, a statement which the Iranian government decried as meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations. Iran has long insisted that the Strait of Hormuz belongs to it, and that it can be shut down at any time.

  “In other news, the war scare in the Middle East appears to be having little effect on the American economy. With the Christmas shopping season poised to officially begin tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving, retailers are looking forward to booming sales, as all indicators point to a retail bonanza, as people will be shopping more and spending more this year….”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Madame President, you’ll be leaving shortly to go to the soup kitchen,” her Chief of Staff reminded her as she stood at the window behind the desk in the Oval Office. The glass was bullet-proof, of course. In fact, it was so heavily reinforced that it might as well have been a sheet of armor.

  But it couldn’t keep out the bad news. Nothing could.

  “I don’t suppose I could beg off this year,” the President said. “Given the circumstances in the Middle East.”

  “Well, you could, I guess,” the Chief of Staff said. “But you’ve made it a tradition to help feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. It would look bad to the press if you skipped it, unless we were actually at war or something.”

  “Or something,” the President muttered. She had been roused from sleep before dawn with the news that Navy fighter jets and Iranian planes had almost started shooting at each other before the Iranians decided to turn tail and run instead.

  Would they do the same thing next time? Who knows? That was the problem with fanatics—you never could predict with any reasonable sort of accuracy what they would do.

  Washington was gray and overcast on this Thanksgiving morning, matching the President’s mood. The leaden sky looked like it might produce some snow later in the day. By then she would be back from the homeless shelter where she would dish up turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and giblet gravy, to the unfortunates who had nowhere else to go on this holiday. Or any other day, for that matter. Nothing said compassion like a photo op of the President helping out the homeless.

  And right now, returning to her roots as a champion of the unfortunate and disenfranchised wasn’t a bad idea, because fresh polling data showed that the electorate had very little faith in her ability to handle the crisis in the Middle East. That came as no surprise considering her antiwar, antimilitary background. People expected her to roll over and give the country’s enemies whatever they wanted because…well, because that was exactly what she had done in Iraq, wasn’t it?

  But she had done that because the polls said that was what the country wanted her to do. It wasn’t fair for people to turn on her just because things had turned out so badly there. It wasn’t her fault. Nothing had ever been her fault. It was all because of her enemies and the conspiracy among them…

  She took a deep breath and forced those thoughts out of her head. She didn’t have time to get bogged down in them now. She had homeless people to feed. All the evening newscasts, broadcast and cable, would lead with the footage of her standing in the homeless shelter in an apron, dishing out Thanksgiving dinner. People would see that and know how good and moral she was. They wouldn’t be thinking that she was liable to let things in the Persian Gulf spiral out of control.

  At least it was still almost a year until the election. By then people would have forgotten all about this little glitch in the Middle East, and they would return her to office for a second term.

  As long as nothing else bad happened between now and then.

  CHAPTER 17

  Allison Sawyer was up early on Thanksgiving Day. Even though it was just her and Nate, she wanted to fix a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey and all the trimmings. Her parents lived in Waco, and she and Nate could have driven down to spend the day with them, but Allison knew all too well how easily spending time with her parents could lead to an argument.

  Her folks had never approved of her marriage and had never been shy about letting her know that, and still weren’t. Of course, as it turned out, they had been right about her choice of a husband being a bad one, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear about it over and over…

  So she got everything cooking and then woke Nate so they could watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade together. He always got a kick out of the giant balloons, and to tell the truth, so did Allison. And at the end of the parade there was Santa, and his appearance always made Allison think of that old movie Miracle on 34th Street.

  It was a pleasant way to spend the morning, and after dinner, she could read or nap while Nate watched the Cowboys play on TV. Allison had been a Cowboys fan when she was a teenager, but she’d sort of lost interest in the sport after Troy Aikman retired, which she supposed meant that she had never been all that interested in the games themselves, just a certain Number 8…

  Nate surprised her that afternoon by asking, “Hey, Mom, can I go with you to MegaMart tomorrow?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Allison said. “I’d planned to get Mrs. Sanchez to watch you while I was gone.” Their neighbor in the apartment house babysat for Nate pretty often. They got along well.

  “Yeah, but I want to go. It’s the grand opening.”

  Allison hesitated. The re
al reason she couldn’t take Nate with her was because she intended to do all his Christmas shopping at the new UltraMegaMart. There was a huge ad for the place in this morning’s paper, and in the few looks she had sneaked at it, she had already seen several things she thought he might like as presents. She couldn’t very well get them, though, if he was right there at her side. That would spoil everything.

  “No, it’ll just be a big mob of people,” she said, putting a note of firmness in her voice. She didn’t do that very often, but she wanted him to know that she had made up her mind and wouldn’t be swayed by whining or complaining. “You wouldn’t enjoy it. I’ll take you there later, on a day when it won’t be quite so busy.”

  “But, Mom—” he began.

  “I’ve already asked Mrs. Sanchez to have you come over, and she said she’d be glad to. You wouldn’t want to disappoint her, would you?”

  “What about me being disappointed?”

  She reached out to tousle his hair. “Don’t be like that. You’ve got your whole life to go to MegaMart, because I promise you, they’re not going away. Now, is it still halftime in the game?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the score?”

  “Cowboys are ahead, fourteen to three.”

  “Good,” Allison said. “Maybe they’ll win.”

  CHAPTER 18

  People told Ellis Burke that he was lucky to have gotten the house in the divorce. Burke didn’t see it that way. He knew he had gotten it only because Rebecca hadn’t wanted to put up a fight for it. She wanted to move out and get a fresh start, she’d said. Sure, it meant taking Vicky out of the only home she’d ever known, but Rebecca hadn’t cared about that. As usual, Burke had thought bitterly at the time, his wife wanted what was best for her, and if anybody else didn’t like it, that was just too bad.