33

The call startled Paige out of a sound sleep, her mind full of cobwebs. She looked at the time as she answered: 2:16 a.m. She felt the sickness lodge in the pit of her stomach. Nobody called with good news at that time of night.

“Hello,” Paige said, her voice husky.

“This is the Patriot,” came the metallic voice from the other end. “Are you awake?”

“I am now.”

“Why did Jackson file suit?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t check with me.”

“You’ve got to get him to back off. The judge will dismiss the case, and the whole thing will be over. They’ll block any congressional investigation by saying the court has already ruled.”

Paige didn’t know what to say. The Patriot sounded frustrated. She was still trying to get her bearings. Should she tell him that she was getting ready to sign on as cocounsel?

“I can’t talk Wyatt Jackson into much of anything,” she protested.

“You’ve got to try.”

Paige sat up, her mind clearing. “I’ll do what I can.”

“There’s another thing,” the Patriot said. “You should know that a Muslim cleric named Yazeed Abdul Hamid was killed by our Special Forces inside Yemen. The coalition army took credit for it, but it was definitely our guys.”

Paige was scrambling for a pen and paper. “Spell that name for me,” she said.

The Patriot carefully listed each letter.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“He’s nothing more than a Muslim imam preaching hate in a country where we are not even at war,” said the Patriot. “It was an illegal assassination.”

Paige still didn’t get the connection, but then again, everything seemed unclear when you were jolted out of a sound sleep at this hour.

“Tell Congressman Mason about it,” the Patriot said.

“How can I prove it?” Paige asked.

“Get Mason to launch an investigation. Have him put the commander of the Joint Special Operations Forces under oath in a closed hearing and question him about it. But you’ve got to get Jackson to drop that suit.”

“I already said I would try.”

The line went dead, and Paige wondered whether the whole thing was just a nightmare. Why didn’t the Patriot call Wyatt directly? Why was it so important to drop the case? And what did this Muslim cleric have to do with anything?

She got up and googled the imam’s name but learned nothing more than what the Patriot had already told her. Abdul Hamid was supposedly killed by Yemeni coalition forces a little more than two weeks ago. She made some notes, then lay down and eventually drifted back to sleep. Her last murky thoughts were of American Special Forces killing an unarmed Muslim imam on his way home from preaching his last sermon.