The co-pilot was a lean-faced guy with a trace of teenage pimples, who spoke with a Midwest accent. He sat on one of the flimsy seats in the Chinook’s cabin, a laptop balancing on his closed thighs.
“It’s been taken down, but I guess it’s been downloaded and seen worldwide already,” he said, clicking on the saved video.
Tom, who was seated one side of him, Crane the other, as Sawyer sulked to the side, winced. The secretary was slumped in a wooden chair, bound and gagged with a bare-stone wall behind her. She wore a T-shirt and cotton pants. Next to her on a stool was a radio playing a news report.
“It’s the BBC World Service. The report was aired ten minutes ago,” the co-pilot said.
“They want us to know she’s alive,” said Tom, just glad that she was, despite her predicament.
A masked man walked behind her carrying an old-fashioned tape recorder. He switched off the radio and turned on the recorder. The crackly recording began, the sound of a thunderstorm breaking the silence.
“They like the sound of thunderstorms,” Crane said. “Taxi drivers play it all day long as an imam recites apocalyptic verses from the Qur’an. Still, I suppose it beats most of the shit we get stateside.”
“This is where the guy speaks,” the co-pilot said.
A male Pakistani’s voice spoke in English as the eerie sound of the thunderstorm drained away.
“The Leopards of Islam, the true followers of the faith and the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, will bring the Westerners to their knees and avenge the deaths of our brothers and sisters. The US Secretary of State has confessed to being a murderer of children and a desecrator of mosques. Despite her vile crimes, Allah is Most Merciful. The Westerners will release our brothers being held in the United States, the heroes of the Shia jihad. The Westerners will pay ten billion dollars for crimes against Shia Islam. If these demands are not met in full within seventy-two hours, the Secretary of State will be beheaded live on the Internet.”
Tom ran his hand through his close-cropped hair and groaned, a deep sense of personal failure and shame engulfing him.
Crane stood up and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tom.”
Tom knew that the chances of the president agreeing to the release of those who’d attempted the assassination of his Pakistani counterpart and the payment of the ransom were non-existent. The Leopards had killed thirty innocent men, woman and children in the attack, simply because the Pakistani leader had escaped unscathed. They’d gone on a killing spree. Besides, her kidnappers hadn’t said that they would release her, just that they wouldn’t kill her within the three-day timeframe.
But then his training kicked in and he glanced at his wristwatch. The clock had started ticking at 19:40 Pakistan time.
He got up and walked to the cockpit, asked for a satphone. He’d spoken with Vice Admiral Theodore Birch, the head of DS and an Assistant Secretary of State, a couple of times already. After a few minutes, Tom was speaking with him again. He asked him if there was anything their people in the office of counterterrorism division could do. Anything at all. But he knew what the answer would be before it came.
He rubbed his temples with his thumbs and forefingers, his mind racing in a hundred different directions, trying to find a way to get a lead, anything other than accepting the status quo. He’d seen the ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, and had watched her eyes as the recorded voice had fallen silent. It was clear to him that she hadn’t been aware of her fate up until then. He wondered what kind of impact that had on a person’s mind, even one as strong and resourceful as the secretary’s.
Crane came up to him. “The Pakistani fighters are closing in. We’re outta here now.”