“HELLO?” THE Dean’s voice snapped him out of it. “Are you still there, James?”

Hicks saw Roger silently mouth: What the fuck?

“I’m right here, sir. I’m digesting what you told us. To be clear, you’re saying you want us to take down all of the cells in the Bajjah/Jabbar network on our own. Without involving any of the other agencies.”

“Precisely.”

“And you expect us to do it without help from any of the other agencies?”

“Yes, that is what I said. You seem distressed by this news. I am disappointed.”

Hicks knew the Dean’s ability to detect the truth beat any sensor Roger had in his arsenal, so he didn’t bother lying. “Sir, Bajjah’s network has five cells in the United States, four cells in the Middle East and one of them is Shaban, the supposed money man in Europe.”

“You have already told me this, James. You are repeating yourself. One might be forgiven for believing you’re the one with brain cancer, not me.”

Hicks ignored the jab. “The University doesn’t have the resources to hit a multinational terror network while evading the Barnyard at the same time. We don’t have the money or the manpower or the firepower to…”

The Dean’s voice came through the laptop once again. “Is Roger still in the room? I take it you have informed him of your encounter with the CIA this morning.”

“Yes, sir, as per our earlier discussion.”

“Good, because allow me to explain the new reality to both of you at the same time. When you captured Bajjah and uncovered his plans, you caused this institution to stumble into a dangerous part of the intelligence jungle where the larger agencies roam. Think of them as the alpha predators, like lions and tigers. And like their counterparts in the animal kingdom, these agencies do not welcome outsiders. They do not tolerate rivals. In Bajjah, we have something these predators want and they will not stop until they get it.”

Hicks saw his chance to reason with him. “All the more reason to hand him over to them now, sir. We can justify why we took him and hand over the information we extracted from him. That should…”

The Dean cut him off. “Sharing the information you obtained from Bajjah will not quell their appetite, James. It will only whet it. They will want to know more about who we are and how we found Bajjah and what methods we used to interrogate him and if we were holding back any information he had given us. I also fear giving the Bajjah information to the Barnyard could risk too many people becoming aware of it, thereby increasing the likelihood that Jabbar could be alerted. We cannot allow this to happen. We are too close to finding and stopping a monster like Jabbar to allow the Barnyard’s bureaucratic bungling to allow him to escape. Capturing Jabbar must be the University’s main focus now.”

Hicks tried to push through the growing pounding in his head. He’s serious. He’s planned this. “Finding Jabbar will be a hell of a lot harder if we’re in the crosshairs of three separate intelligence agencies, sir.”

“I know. I am not suggesting open warfare, James. Taking on one of the agencies would be suicide and taking on all three at once would be madness. Which is why we must evade the lion, not fight it. We must use the overgrowth and shadows of the jungle to our advantage while we search for the weapon to slay the lion. Jabbar is such a weapon, James. Not information on his network, but the man himself. Delivering Jabbar in chains will be the only way to quell the appetite of our enemies and give us the bargaining power necessary to get them to leave us alone. Anything less may lead to the destruction of the University.”

“I don’t mean to argue with you, sir, but…”

The Dean talked over him again. “Stop arguing and devise a way to find Jabbar and end all of this. Your rash actions played a part in causing this, James. Your swift action will be the only way we resolve it. I will expect a full plan of action in my inbox by this time tomorrow. Time is a luxury we can ill afford. And so is failure.”

Hicks heard the connection end. And his troubles were only beginning.