“We sold Pakistan its first nuclear reactors—i.e., their nuclear weapons’ training wheels. We educated and prepped their nuclear scientists. We gave them enough money to make millions of bombs. We’re responsible for Pakistan’s nukes. We brought it on ourselves.”
—Elena Moreno
The bartender issued last call. They had been drinking for eight straight hours, yet neither woman, to the bartender’s amazement, seemed noticeably drunk.
“I honestly thought you’d died in Pakistan,” Elena said, ordering a final round.
“For a while I thought I had too.” Reaching across the table, she handed Elena a flash drive. “Sometimes I wish I had.”
“That’s a little extreme, Adara, even for you.”
“Maybe, but you don’t know what we’re up against. It’s going to get ugly.”
“So?” Elena said. “You and I have seen lots of ugly, but we’re still here.”
“Nothing like this,” Adara said. “Look at the stuff on this flash drive. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to give it to you. This has to be strictly on the down low. It could get both of us killed, but it has everything you need to know.”
Elena placed the memory stick on the table in front of Adara.
“Keep it, Adara. You and Rashid chose to go back to Pakistan. You wanted to be world-beaters and global heroes. I told you at the time you were nuts, and you didn’t listen. Now you want me to bail Rashid out. Sorry. I’ve passed the torch. My days in the Special Ops salt mines are over.”
“You still know Pakistan and their terrorist groups,” Adara said, “better than any agent I ever knew.”
“But I’m not into reckless risk anymore. Those days are over.”
“Suppose I told you we had a chance to do some good—to make things better over there.”
“What’s life without a dream?”
Adara leaned toward Elena, placed the flash drive in her hand, and curled her fingers over it.
“I only got out,” Adara said, “because Rashid covered my escape from that Pashtun hellhole. That’s why I’m alive. He held the New United Islamist Front off with an M60 machine gun.
“That flash drive, did you try taking it to the Company? Or the FBI?”
“Why not just give it to Raza and Kamal?”
“You don’t trust the Agency or the Bureau?” Elena said.
“Waheed, Putilov and Tower own them.
“How?” Elena asked.
“They’re all in Putilov’s trick bag, the Saudis included.”
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
“You can help me get Rashid out of Pakistan,” Adara said. “He knows everything. He was in the middle of it, on the inside. You, Jules, Rashid and I can blow the whistle on the whole dirty mess. We can put them all away.”
“Not possible. Tower, Putilov, Waheed—they’re invulnerable to people like us. I know from experience.”
“Rashid’s got them nailed—dead–bang.”
“Naw, they’re wired too tight.”
“Please. I’m begging you, Elena.”
Adara’s voice was starting to crack. Elena had never heard her voice break before. She was impressed. She also wondered if it was an act. She didn’t think so. She took Adara’s hand and held it.
“Nothing good comes out of the Mideast,” Elena said. “It’s the gift that never stops giving.”
“Like the Hotel California.”
“‘You can check out any time you like,’” Elena said, quoting the old lyric, “‘but you can never leave.’”
“Suppose I said there are people there ready to turn NYC into a nuclear necropolis?”
“I’d say what goes around, comes around,” Elena said.
“The U.S. has done a lot of dumb things, and it’s run by morons, but your country doesn’t deserve to get nuked.”
“Really?” Elena said. “We sold Pakistan its first nuclear reactors—their nuclear weapons’ training wheels. We educated and prepped their nuclear scientists. We gave them enough money to make millions of bombs. We’re responsible for Pakistan’s nukes. We brought it on ourselves.”
“You can tell that to New York’s charred smoking corpses.”
“It’s not my fight anymore.”
“There are Muslims, like Rashid and me, who want to do some good. We know people we can work with.”
“Who?” Elena asked. “Your mythical Muslim moderates? You know the difference between Islamist extremists and Islamist moderates? The moderates are political opportunists and money-whores, while your ISIS soldiers and New United Islamist Front cretins are murderously messianic fanatics, but they’re sincere in their paranoid beliefs and willing to die for their cause. Guess who wins?”
“Now that they have nukes they will definitely win,” Adara said.
“Maybe that’s what it will take before that region rids itself of the Islamist plague. Watch them nuke New York, and then watch the West obliterate the Mideast in a nuclear Armageddon. If that happens, it will be ‘Goodbye, Islamist terrorists.’”
“That’s nihilism talking.”
“That’s realism, girl,” Elena said. “That’s history. They have a barbarism there that goes back to ancient Babylonia. Did you ever look at any of those early Assyrian artworks? They depict a world, ghoulish and macabre, their trees trimmed with severed heads. It has not changed in 3,000 years. ISIS, al Qaeda, the TTP, the New Front, they decorate their electrical towers, lampposts and city squares with gibbeted corpses and decapitated craniums.”
“Then do it for Rashid, do it for me.”
“In God’s name, why?” Elena fixed Adara with a hard stare—a stare so hard Adara looked away.
“Any time you needed Rashid and me, we were there,” Adara finally said, the words choking in her mouth.
“That was in another world, another time, another life.”
“Some things never change.”
“I’ve changed.”
“Then I need the old Elena back—one more time.” Again, Adara crammed the flash drive into her old friend’s palm and closed her fingers around it. “Here’s everything you’ll need to know. I’ll help you assemble a team.”
“That old Elena no longer exists. She’s dead and in the ground.”
“Then we’ll resurrect her.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because Rashid was there when you were nabbed by the TPP and held in that desert hellhole. Rashid got you out.”
“Jamie got me out.”
“But Rashid found out where you were. Rashid choppered Jamie in and choppered both of you out when you were comatose on a stretcher.”
“I guess I forget to thank him. ‘Thanks, Rashid. Sorry you didn’t have the brains to take my advice and walk away.’”
“We don’t want your thanks. We want your help.”
“I can’t.”
“Suppose I told you Putilov and Waheed are going after Jules next, that she’s pissed them off too long, that they’ve heard about her new book and that Waheed, in particular, wants her taken out?”
“I’d say you’re a lying bitch. I’d say you’re using Jules to scam me into rescuing Rashid.”
“Which is why I didn’t want to say it. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true. Talk to Jules. Find out what she has on them. She has … everything, and they know it. The only way to keep any of us safe is to stop those bastards in their tracks.”
“Tell it to someone else,” Elena said shaking her head.
“I’m telling it to you, and you can’t say no. You owe me. You owe Rashid. You owe Jules.”
Now Elena’s own voice was starting to crack, but still she got it out:
“No good, no bueno. I can’t. I don’t do that shit anymore.”