“Here’s the deal,” Rapp said. “I need your help here, but those missing missiles have me worried. Very worried. Any ideas on this second convoy?”
Coleman sighed.
“I’ve been thinking about that nonstop. Iranians smuggling weapons into Afghanistan isn’t new. The Brits have even interdicted MANPADS shipments out by Herat, near Afghanistan’s western border with Iran, but this is the first time the Quds Force has tried to bring munitions in from the east.”
“What are you driving at?” Rapp said.
“Smuggling Iranian weapons and fighters into Afghanistan from Pakistan is the equivalent of heading west from New York to get to Paris. The convoy we interdicted came in through Torkham. That means they would have had to cross over seven hundred miles of Pakistan-controlled territory just to reach the Pakistani-Afghanistan border checkpoint. Why in the hell would they do that?”
Rapp pictured the geography as he thought about Scott’s question. While Afghanistan shared an almost four-hundred-mile western border with Iran, Pakistan encompassed its southern and western sides. The Torkham border crossing was heavily trafficked, but why would the Iranian convoys risk discovery by skirting Afghanistan’s entire southern border for hundreds and hundreds of miles?
Unless they hadn’t.
“Pakistan’s Regional Stability Conference,” Rapp said. “What do you want to bet those motherfuckers flew the missiles into Islamabad with the Iranian delegation? From Islamabad to Torkham is only, what, one hundred miles? They knew we’d probably catch them if they tried smuggling the weapons in from the west—”
“So they did it from the east,” Coleman said. “But the second convoy split before they crossed the border—”
“Which means the Iranians were smart enough to hedge their bets,” Rapp said. “The missing missiles must be coming into Afghanistan via another border crossing. Maybe farther south toward Khost or north up in the Kunar. Shit, shit, shit.”
“What do you want me to do?”
That was a great question.
What Rapp wanted was for Coleman and his crew to saddle up and head for Pakistan, but the situation with the missing missiles was sounding more and more dire by the moment.
“I don’t have the situational awareness to make that call from here, Scott,” Rapp said. “If you think you can get something more out of the HIG fighter, work that angle. Call in any assets you need, and if you run into a roadblock feel free to invoke my name. If you think it’s a dry hole, get yourself and the team here.”
“On it.”
“Good hunting,” Rapp said, and ended the call.
“Where’s that leave us?” Noreen said.
“With too much road and not enough time.”
CHAPTER 73
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
MIKE Nash was not having what anyone would consider a successful trip.
After verbally jousting with his Pakistani hosts and getting crossways with his own colleague at the Department of State, Nash had been looking forward to his off-the-books meeting with the number two at the MOIS, Darian Moradi. Nash didn’t claim to be a diplomat and had no expertise resolving interservice rivalries between State and the CIA, but he did know a thing or two about being a spy.
While the meet was supposed to occur at a brightly lit Islamabad coffee shop rather than the back alleys or decrepit safehouses more familiar to Nash, he still felt on safe ground for the first time on this godforsaken trip.
Except that Moradi had never showed.
Now Nash was beginning to wonder if he was cut out for a desk job.
Strike that.
Nash knew he wasn’t cut out for a desk job, which was why he had never put in for one in the first place. In the blissful days before Mitch Rapp had turned him into a national hero while simultaneously guaranteeing that Nash would never again work clandestinely, he’d occasionally pondered his exit strategy.
Okay, so perhaps more than occasionally.
Between the aches and pains that grew ever more persistent and Maggie’s increasingly less-than-subtle hints that their relationship needed to undergo a strategic rebalancing, Nash had known that his days as a paramilitary officer were numbered. Unlike Rapp, who had nothing and no one to live for besides the job, Nash’s children were hurtling toward adulthood and his wife was a hotshot attorney at one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms.
Something had to give.
And it had.
But not in the way he’d imagined.
Nash’s gaze slid across the room’s sterile confines. Known as “the bubble” in Agency lexicon, the room was the most secure space in a CIA station. The bubble was surrounded by a Faraday cage to mitigate electronic eavesdropping and insulated from the floor and structure of the building to prevent the unintentional transference of sound waves. It was the Holy of Holies. The place where the most secure conversations were held and the most sensitive emails read. Nash had always associated the bubble with executives huddled around stacks of classified documents, and he’d done his best to avoid the space.
Now he was one of those executives.
His eyes drifted back to his secure laptop and the cable he was trying to compose to Irene. Sending a SITREP to his boss was nothing new, but Nash had been struggling with the verbiage for the last fifteen minutes.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t entirely true.
His issue was more with the tone and substance of his update. Even to Nash’s eyes, the text read like a whiny missive written by someone who was angry they’d been sidelined. That all of that was true didn’t make the transgression any less serious. Nash was not some prima donna Ivy Leaguer upset that his first Agency posting had been to Mozambique rather than Vienna. No one was holding a gun to Nash’s head. He could leave the Agency tomorrow and his family would be fine until he found another job.
More than fine.
Maggie made a shit ton of money, and though their lifestyle was a bit ostentatious for Nash’s liking, they lived well beneath their means. Nash needed to either get with the program or get out the door.
This business was too serious to be lukewarm.
