Rapp released Moradi’s hair and closed the folding knife. Turning to Nash, he uttered just two words.
“Call Irene.”
CHAPTER 76
WASHINGTON, DC
IRENE Kennedy had weathered many a tense moment in the White House.
In her more than two decades of service with the CIA, she had spent almost half as an executive. Her mentor, Thomas Stansfield, had been grooming her to replace him long before cancer claimed his life. As such, she’d accompanied her surrogate father to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue countless times before assuming his role as the director of the world’s premier intelligence organization. In this capacity, Irene had sat in war rooms with multiple presidential administrations.
She’d seen a thing or two.
None of that held a candle to this.
Irene often wondered what it might have been like in the Roosevelt White House as the president and his staff anxiously waited for word from the armada of ships carrying an army of nearly 130,000 troops poised to hit the beaches of Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion. The restless hours must have been absolutely agonizing, but Irene thought that her lot might be even worse. She was just as helpless, but today’s technology allowed her to watch events unfolding half a world away in real time.
It was maddening.
“Final inspections complete. Strike package boarding their aircraft.”
An Air Force general was translating what was happening on the television into words. Originally, the plan had been for the president to wait for news of the operation’s success or failure from the Situation Room’s much larger conference room, but the siren song of technology had proven too great. Someone had let slip that a single officer was monitoring a livestreaming satellite feed from a much smaller anteroom, and the president had promptly joined him. Now a space meant to hold three or four was packed with bodies all mesmerized by a flight of idling helicopters parked on the J-Bad tarmac.
Though she wanted to zone out with the other cabinet members, Irene couldn’t. She had made a promise to the president. A promise still unfulfilled. True to his word, President Alexander was launching the mission based on her assurances that Rapp would come through with final validation of bin Laden’s whereabouts before the SEAL Team 6 assaulters fast-roped onto the Abbottabad compound. But as the ghostly figures boarding the helicopters could attest, time was running out.
Irene felt the weight of the president’s gaze.
Turning to make eye contact with her boss, she shook her head.
Alexander’s features hardened and he gave a short nod in return. The aircraft would launch without Rapp’s report, but the Pakistani border was the president’s red line. Traversing the width of Pakistan uninvited could be classified as an act of war. An act of war against a notional ally, no less. In a counterbalance to the momentous failure that had led to the 9/11 attacks, this time the CIA had to get the intelligence right.
One hundred percent right.
Irene glanced at the clock.
Twenty minutes.
That was how long she had once the aircraft departed the airfield before the helicopters would be in Pakistani airspace. Twenty minutes to confirm that she was not sending twenty-six men on the most dangerous mission of their lives just to assault a compound full of children and low-level Al Qaeda operatives. To his credit, Joshua Alexander was risking it all—the presidency, his legacy, and maybe even war—solely on her say-so.
Where was Mitch?
Her chest tightened.
The question brought to mind the other time she’d desperately wondered where Rapp was and what he was doing. Back then, the stakes had been much more personal. Instead of the lives of anonymous commandos, Irene had spent her time in that dank cell worrying about something much closer to home.
Her own life.
The lighting dimmed and her respiration quickened.
Not now.
This couldn’t be happening now.
Her boss was on the brink of taking the nation to war and she was having a panic attack. Irene closed her eyes and massaged her temples, feigning a headache as she tried to block out the sensation of a rubber hose stinging her bare back or the fists striking her face and body or the indignity of being doused in her own urine or the—
“Director Kennedy?”
Irene snapped open her eyes.
She slowly turned toward the sound of the voice, resisting the urge to leap from her chair and run toward the speaker like a drowning swimmer lurching for a lifeline. She was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Men were about to live and die based on her word. This was not the time to give the impression that she was losing her grip.
Even if she was precariously close to doing just that.
“Yes?” Irene said.
The speaker was a young woman with short, dark hair and an earnest expression. To Irene’s eye the woman looked about twelve, but maybe it was because she lacked the sense of chic jadedness that the more senior interns tried to project. Part of Irene wanted to thank the woman for her service while the other half wanted to scream at her to run while there was still time.
“There’s a phone call, ma’am,” the woman said. “The secure line.”
“Coming,” Irene said, getting to her feet.
She caught the president’s eye as she headed for the door.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t have to.
CHAPTER 77
