Chapter 74
CIA OPERATIONS CENTER
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
SAY that again,” Irene Kennedy said.
Though the Operations Center was in an uproar, she felt disconnected from the chaos.
As if she were watching the scene unfold from the ceiling.
Phones were ringing, analysts were attacking their keyboards, Hannah Edwards was flitting from station to station like a hummingbird, and Irene was somewhere outside the fishbowl looking in.
Except she wasn’t.
This was her disaster, and as the person on the other end of the handset made clear, the situation wasn’t getting any better.
“Which part, Irene? I just dumped a whole hell of a lot on you.”
She didn’t know which part was worse—the horrible update Stan Hurley had just delivered or his kind, reassuring voice. He’d only spoken that way to her once before. On the day her father had been murdered by a suicide bomber in Lebanon.
“The part about Rapp,” Irene said. “Is he—”
“Dead? I don’t know. All I can tell you is he wasn’t in the convoy, and neither were the chemical weapons.”
Even half-paralyzed with shock, the analytical side of her brain was still functioning.
Like the pilot of a doomed airplane reciting an emergency checklist while the aircraft broke into pieces around her, Irene continued to ask the pertinent questions as the human side of her struggled to come to terms with the significance of Stan’s answers.
“What was in the convoy?”
“Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Every last truck was empty.”
Irene turned to consider the television on the far wall, as if the electronic display somehow held the answers to what had gone horribly wrong in Iraq.
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose as she replayed what she’d just heard.
There was something Stan had said that pinged her radar.
Then she had it.
“The trucks,” Irene said, stretching the phone cord to its limit as she moved closer to the display, “were there any civilian ones?”
“No. It was a straight-up military convoy.”
“It was the wrong convoy.”
“The hell you say?”
The kindly uncle voice was gone, replaced by the growly basso she knew all too well.
“Rapp was part of a smuggler’s convoy. The military convoy was supposed to embed with them.
If there were no civilian trucks in the target package, you hit the wrong convoy.
” Irene paused as she realized her statement sounded more like an accusation than an observation.
“Wait—I didn’t mean it like that. What I’m trying to say is that there must have been two convoys.
We know Rapp linked up with the DGS trucks carrying the chemical weapons because he triggered his beacon.
And we know the convoy left the staging area because he triggered it a second time. ”
“And then a third,” Hurley said.
“Yes,” Irene said, waving away the comment, “but that was probably a mistake. I had the techs pull the data logs. Those two transmissions occurred less than a second apart. Mitch accidentally triggered the COVCOM device twice.”
“Does that sound like Rapp?”
Irene frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Our boy is pretty damn good. I’m not saying he’s perfect, but does he strike you as somebody who would make that kind of mistake?
Especially since he’d just triggered the lighter correctly fifteen minutes before?
If he was going to accidentally trigger it twice, wouldn’t that have happened the first time he’d used the device rather than the second? ”
Stan’s words battered her like invisible fists. She wanted to rebut what he was saying. To go back to her earlier explanation. Her easier explanation. Because if what he was saying was true, Rapp had tried to signal that something was wrong hours ago and she’d missed it.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“There’s going to be time enough for that later. Right now, I need you focused like a laser on one thing—finding our guy. Do you hear me?”
Hurley’s words didn’t make sense at first. Then she realized she’d been cursing out loud.
And not quietly either, if Hannah’s expression was any indication.
With a start, she noticed that Hannah wasn’t the only one looking her way.
Until someone told her otherwise, she was still the captain of this ship.
Time to start acting like it.
“Hold on a minute, Stan,” Irene said before placing the handset against her chest. She took a breath, then cleared her throat.
“Excuse me, everyone.” A few of the faces who were turned in her direction seemed to be paying attention, but the majority continued what they were doing.
With a sigh, she channeled her inner Stan. “LISTEN UP!”
Her voice cracked like a whip through the Operations Center.
Now she had everyone’s attention. The sight of so many eyes focused on her made her stomach flip, but Irene smoothed the nervousness from her face.
“We’ve just lost two things—a convoy of vehicles carrying chemical weapons and the asset who is supposed to be with them.
I intend to find both. Their last known location is annotated on the situation board.
That information is several hours old, but it will be the starting point.
You are hereby empowered to request anything you think will aid in this search.
Anything. If someone asks for your tasking authority, you give them Director Stansfield.
If that doesn’t work, tell them the president.
We will reconvene in thirty minutes. Questions? ”
There were none.
“Good. Then let’s get to work.”
Irene paused to make eye contact with as many of her people as possible. Then she placed the handset back against her ear. “Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologize. It was a good speech. What are you going to do next?”
“Take my own advice. There’s someone else who must know something about that convoy. I’m going to give them a ring.”