Mercifully, her voice didn’t break and the hot pinpricks at the corners of her eyes didn’t materialize into tears. She might not have recruiting assets completely licked as of yet, but she had mastered the science of masking her emotions.
“I’m still working on that part,” Rapp said. “Here’s what I know. Our friends in the safehouse had a final play and it didn’t pan out. The other adults living in the compound don’t leave, but their kids sometimes do. While observing the compound kids playing with the nearby farm children, one of the analysts came up with a pretty inspired plan—get a DNA sample from the kids and bounce it up against bin Laden’s.”
“That is a good idea,” Noreen said. “How were they going to obtain it?”
“Vaccinations,” Rapp said. “Polio is still rampant in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We vaccinate the kids, and if possible, their mothers.”
“And grab the DNA from the used syringes,” Noreen said. “That sounds like a great plan.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Why?”
“Because the doctor they sent was a man.”
Noreen understood immediately even as she wondered how the Agency planners who’d advocated for the scenario hadn’t anticipated this obstacle. While not exactly a bastion of liberal democracy, Pakistan was a progressive country by the standards of Fertile Crescent. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, home to Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Nassiri, who was considered the preeminent Shia theologian, women were required to wear the hijab and cover their legs, arms, and torsos. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest city of Mecca and the Islamic pilgrimage known as the hajj, forbade women to drive and prohibited travel abroad without a male guardian. Bin Laden’s radical form of Sunni Islam more mirrored the beliefs of Afghanistan’s Taliban. Women were considered fit for little beyond bearing children and domestic duties. As part of this belief structure, segregation between men and women was strictly enforced. It was no wonder that the compound residents had refused to allow a male doctor access to the facility.
“Did the doctor vaccinate anyone?” Noreen said.
Rapp shook his head. “They didn’t even open the door.”
“So we’re going to give it a go with a female doctor?” Noreen said.
“No time to find one,” Rapp said. “Besides, I have something better than a doctor.”
“What?”
“You.”
Noreen thought she knew where the conversation had been headed, but Rapp’s words still came with a finality. An ominous sense of finality. Two days ago, she’d been napping beside her husband as she burned away the final bit of leave accumulated by her six years as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now she was half a world away, about to walk into the compound housing the most wanted man on earth with nothing more than a syringe full of saline and her wits.
“What if they won’t open the door?” Noreen said.
“They will,” Rapp said.
Rapp hadn’t asked if she was willing to do her part, at least not directly, but Noreen understood what he was waiting for all the same. She was not a Ground Branch shooter or a veteran of the special operations community. Up until this moment, she’d been a failed case officer about to trade in her blue badge for FBI creds. No doubt there were trainees at the Farm who would kill for an opportunity like this one.
Not Noreen.
But that didn’t matter.
Sometimes the moment really did choose you. Noreen was the only person who could do this. The only person who had a prayer of determining whether the compound’s mysterious resident really was the most evil man of the twenty-first century.
“Okay,” Noreen said. “What’s next?”
“Grab your bag. We’ll talk in the car.”
CHAPTER 60
JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN
SIXTY minutes later, Coleman was reconsidering his earlier optimism. While Captain Smith had proven true to his word, the operation had not gone according to plan.
Anyone’s plan.
In the first reality check of the day, the original Black Hawk slotted for the flight had developed a maintenance issue. One the positive side, Captain Smith seemed to know his business. A spare Black Hawk had already been idling and Coleman and his crew had been quickly bumped to the replacement aircraft.
This was where things got tricky.
The second aircraft lacked the command-and-control console present in its predecessor. This meant that, rather than a flat-screen display the size of a small television populated by a moving map, the operational graphics, and the blue and red icons representing friendly or enemy units, Smith had to run the operation via a small tablet and his paper map. Also missing from the new aircraft was the communications panel that had linked Smith to five different radios. The new configuration limited Smith to two frequencies via the standard intercom, and he needed the help of one of the pilots to switch from channel to channel.
Not ideal, but certainly doable.
The second limitation had to do with the space inside the Black Hawk.
Or lack of it.
In the first iteration of the plan, Coleman’s assault element had been divided between two aircraft. The support element, consisting of Charlie, would be located in the second aircraft while Coleman, Will, and Mas would ride in the first. Scott had broken down the manifest this way so that his sniper could infil separately, but this was no longer possible. Now a single Black Hawk held all of the CIA shooters along with Smith. Not ideal, but Scott would make it work.
Assuming, of course, they ever found the convoy.
“Shock 6, this is Shock 16. We are phase line JAMESON with negative contact, over.”
“One Six, this is Shock 6,” Smith said. “Roger that. Shock 26, this is Shock 6. Status, over?”
“Shock 6, this is Shock 26. We are two klicks west of JAMESON, over.”
“Roger that, 26,” Smith said. “Call phase line JAMESON, over.”
