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None of this barbarism was new.

All of it, Marcus knew, had its roots in the ISIS playbook, The Management of Savagery, written by an obscure jihadi strategist from Egypt by the name of Abu Bakr Naji. The book was gruesome enough. But Marcus now recalled an analysis of the book by two professors working in the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London. He pulled out his phone, looked up the text, and read:

Jihadism counterposes a belief in life with a cult of death. This is not a reversion to medieval cruelty. It has modern origins. Fascism, as Umberto Eco observed, possesses a taste for political necrophilia: elevating slaughter and martyrdom to theater, symbolism, and modus operandi. The Islamist version is similarly obsessed. . . . Adoring and serving death provides the movement with its fundamental rationale. . . .

In essence this fetishizing of death defines itself against secular, Western, Enlightenment assertions of life.

“Whatever truce the president imagined, it’s over,” Marcus said, breaking the silence and putting away his phone. “We’re at war, and it’s time we got back on offense.”

“Amen,” Dell said as Annie and several others reentered the room, all color drained from their faces.

“I need one thing,” Marcus said.

“Name it,” Dell said.

“I can’t go into battle without knowing my family is safe,” he replied. “I’d like to bring my mom, my two sisters, and their families to Washington and house them on a military base here in the city, preferably Bolling.”

Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling—previously known for decades as Bolling Air Force Base, but forever pronounced “bowling”—served as the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency as well as the base for Marine One and the fleet of other helicopters used by the president, the VP, and senior government officials. Bolling was a highly secure facility set on 905 acres, located just across the Potomac River in southeast D.C.

“Will they come?” Dell asked.

“They will now,” Marcus replied.

“Then do it,” Dell said. “Come to think of it, I want you and the rest of the team there too. And you, Annie. I’ll relocate there as well for the time being. We’ve got to get on a war footing. There’s no way we can stay in our private homes with this kind of threat out there, though I suspect we’ll all actually be spending most nights here for the foreseeable future.”

Everyone agreed, and Dell told Marcus to make arrangements for his mom and sisters to come right away.

Then she turned to Annie. “Call Pete and tell him to bring the team back here immediately. In the meantime, take over my old office next door. There’s already a foldaway cot in there. But I’ll get fresh linens sent up right away. Let me show you around.”

“Thanks,” Annie said as she followed Martha into the deputy director’s office.

Marcus headed down the hall to set up shop in the suite of five offices, a dozen cubicles, a conference room, a SCIF—secure compartment information facility—and a kitchen for his team’s own private use.

✭

Once Marcus and Annie were taken care of, Dell returned to her office and worked the phones, stepping up satellite coverage of Yemen and checking with the head of the NSA to see if the ransom money had been moved out of the bank in Zurich where Treasury had wired it. Not yet, she was told, but they were monitoring it closely.

Next she participated in a secure videoconference with NSC principals. Hernandez explained that he’d just called the families to express his condolences and vow to bring down Kairos once and for all. He said he planned to address the nation that evening and call for another National Day of Prayer for the following day. He would set the example, he said, by attending Mass first thing in the morning.

Dell was ashamed that she didn’t have any new leads to give the president, any hope to provide for her colleagues. She was struck, however, by the reports Whitney, Foster, and McDermott shared of the wave of phone calls, emails, and cables coming in from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, from allies, and even from some unaligned nations. And they were offering more than sympathy. Outraged, they were offering any assistance they could to end the Kairos reign of terror.

Something profound was underway. The geopolitical ground was shifting beneath their feet. The question was, how could she marshal it and use it to America’s advantage?