26

EISENHOWER EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING

Marcus took an elevator to the fifth floor.

Walking down a long marble-tiled hallway, he arrived at the unmarked suite of offices in the northwest corner. It was only six in the morning, yet the entire team was already in, at their computers, working the phones. The place was humming. And Jenny Morris was waiting for him.

“Overnight the Egyptians captured a cell of Yemeni jihadists at a training camp in northern Sinai, close to Gaza,” she said as she handed him a sheaf of classified cable traffic and a mug of freshly brewed coffee and followed him into his office.

Marcus had no idea where they had gotten the coffee maker from, nor how they had outfitted the office so quickly. When he had left to meet Annie for dinner, none of the team had even arrived yet. Now they were in full motion.

“How many?” he asked.

“Nine men, eighteen to twenty-six years old. All training with brand-new equipment, including Russian-made RPGs and surface-to-air missiles.”

“Houthis or Kairos?” he asked, hanging his suit coat on the back of his door, tossing his briefcase onto a chair in the corner, and walking behind his desk.

“Don’t know; they’re not talking.”

“Is this public?” Marcus asked as he took a seat and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt.

“Not yet,” Jenny replied. “Egyptian GID says it all went down less than two hours ago. They want to better understand what they have before they release it.”

“No. We can’t let them release it.”

“Cairo wants a headline, Marcus. They need a win.”

“I get it, but not today. Not until we know who they are and what they’re training for.”

One by one, the rest of the team—Donny Callaghan, Geoff Stone, and Noah Daniels—filed into his office. As they did, Marcus skimmed the cables.

“The Egyptian thing, you got that from Langley? They’re being cooperative.”

“Not exactly.”

“DIA?”

“No.”

“Then where?” Marcus asked, reaching for the remotes on his desk and turning on the eight flat-panel TV monitors mounted on the far wall, all tuned to various cable and satellite news channels, even as he continued to read.

“Actually,” Jenny said after a pause, “Pete got it for us.”

Marcus looked at her, confused, and even more so when the man himself poked his head through the door. “Pete, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to help an old friend,” Pete said as he entered the cramped office. “Just to be clear, I’m still leaving on June 12. But I’ve got a month, and I figured, why not?”

“Then welcome aboard. Now, where’d you get this Sinai stuff?”

“A Mossad source tipped me off. But I confirmed it with a guy at the Egyptian embassy. He promised more as soon as he gets it.”

“What do you make of it?”

“I don’t know—it’s too soon.”

“Okay, stay on it. What else have we got? Noah, you’re up first—go.”

Noah Daniels was the team’s tech guru. Marcus had met him in Jerusalem when they were safeguarding the first Israeli-Saudi-American peace summit that led to this treaty, and he’d been impressed. Only thirty-five, Daniels had joined the CIA when he was twenty-three after having graduated from high school at the tender age of sixteen, earning his bachelor’s from MIT and both a master’s degree and a PhD from Stanford. He still looked like he could be in high school, but his skills at setting up, hacking, or crashing any computer or phone system were undeniable.

“All our desktops are now up and running, and we’ve finally got encrypted email capability and secure phone lines,” Daniels reported. “Our TVs are all operational, too, obviously, and I’ve set up our own dedicated satellite dishes on the roof. As of 4 a.m., we now have encrypted access to the mainframes at DIA, DSS, DHS, and Liberty Crossing. And Dell assures me we’ll be patched into Langley’s mainframe by COB.”

“We’ll see—but good job—stay on it.”

“Will do.”

“Agent Callaghan, tell me you have good news.”

“Some,” the former commander of SEAL Team Six replied. Callaghan explained that he’d spent yesterday afternoon discreetly meeting with various special forces commanders at the Pentagon who might have files on Kairos cells and operatives. “Now that we’ve got secure email, I’ll let them know they can start flowing intel to us.”

“And when we’re ready to deploy?” Marcus asked. “Are we going to have access to choppers, weapons, ammo, comms gear, the works?”

“That’s going to take more time.”

“How much more?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s been no public announcement about our unit, so nobody knows we exist. And those who do, don’t understand why we’re not operating out of Langley or JSOC or CENTCOM.”

“Call in every chit you’ve got, Donny,” Marcus insisted. “When we get a hot lead—which may come quick—we need to be able to strike hard and fast.”

Callaghan assured him he was on it, and Marcus had no doubt. Born and raised in south Boston, the son of a three-star Army general, Donny Callaghan was now thirty-six and a legend in the SEAL community. One of the best snipers in any branch of the U.S. military, he was even better known for his leadership and tactical brilliance on the battlefield. He was fluent in Russian and learning Arabic at night. He was also a hulk of a man—six foot three, 220 pounds of muscle, with closely cropped hair and a bushy beard that were both naturally red but that he’d dyed black to operate more effectively in the Middle East. Divorced young, he now had two small children from a second marriage to a Navy nurse, though this one wasn’t going much better than the first.

“What about you, Agent Stone? Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I spent the afternoon at DSS,” Stone began. “To be honest, their files on Kairos are pretty thin. But I did pick up one interesting nugget.”

“What’s that?”

“A couple of my guys on Secretary Whitney’s detail are worried about the timing of this strike in Libya with the upcoming papal visit. Four cities. Four stadiums. Massive crowds, upwards of seventy-five thousand to a hundred thousand each. The secretary plans on attending all of them with His Holiness, and they’re worried each Mass could become a target. With your permission, I think I should spend next week with them thinking through how to harden those sites.”

Marcus shook his head. “Negative. DSS and Secret Service have the lead on all that. They’re on defense. We’re on offense, and we need to stay laser-focused on our mission. Find out everything we can about the Troika and whoever is left of Kairos. Give the president actionable intelligence on where they are. And be ready to go deep into enemy territory to take them out or at least to assist any SEAL team or Delta guys who are ordered to do so. That’s it. Period. We don’t have the time or the manpower to do anything else.”