93

Marcus had no memory of falling asleep.

But now he heard someone walking past him and it woke him up. Checking his watch, he discovered hours had passed. He unbuckled his seat belt, got up, and found Callaghan pouring himself a cup of coffee in the galley.

“Want one?” the former SEAL asked.

“Sure,” Marcus said. “Thanks.”

“In your shoes, I would have done the exact same thing,” Callaghan said out of the blue, then paused a moment and corrected himself. “Well, I would have set Ruzami on fire, filmed it, and posted the video on YouTube. He was never going to talk. It would have been a waste to let him leave that house alive. But hey, that’s just me.”

Callaghan finished his coffee and returned to his seat. Marcus returned to his. Every muscle in his body ached. Yet he could not stop replaying the conversation with Ruzami in his head. And as he did, something bothered him. If there really was going to be a major operation inside the United States, why was Kairos’s chief of operations in Yemen? And where were his sons? Why were they not all together inside the States, preparing to execute whatever plan he had concocted?

Then again, how would Badr Hassan al-Ruzami enter the U.S.? He was the second most wanted man in the world. He couldn’t just fly into an American airport. Even in a disguise, even with forged papers, he had to know that the CBP—Customs and Border Protection—would nail him right away. That explained why the father was not in the U.S., Marcus concluded. But the sons were a different story. The CIA knew there were three of them. Jibril was the oldest at twenty-seven. Ali, the middle boy, had just turned twenty-five. The baby of the trio was Mansour, only twenty-one. But that was about all the Agency had on them. No pictures past or current. No fingerprints. No DNA samples. Barely even a file on them. They only knew this much because Al-Sawt had done a full profile on Ruzami once the CIA identified him as Abu Nakba’s second-in-command. It had been a big story in the region.

Come to think of it, Marcus realized, that profile had been produced by none other than Hamdi Yaşar. Now it made more sense how Yaşar could have had such unusual access to one of the world’s most notorious criminals. Marcus briefly mulled the prospect of going back to Gitmo to interrogate Yaşar again, this time about Ruzami’s family, but concluded the man was never going to talk, and Marcus didn’t have time to waste.

It was then that Marcus remembered something else Ruzami had said. His bluff to convince the Kairos operative into thinking that the U.S. had captured his sons had been unsuccessful. But for a moment there, it was clear Ruzami thought Marcus might just be telling the truth. It was only when Marcus had forced the man to look out the window at the three bodies chained to the flagpole and set ablaze that Ruzami had realized his sons were not in American custody.

“Liar,” the man had screamed. “You’re a filthy liar—my sons are twelve thousand kilometers away. Ready to execute the plan. And there is nothing—nothing—you can do to stop them.”

In the heat of the moment, Marcus had incorrectly assumed Ruzami’s sons would have been at their father’s side, somewhere in the compound. If so, it would have made sense for his team to have captured them alive and tied them to the flagpole. But rather than just being relieved at calling Marcus’s bluff and knowing his sons were fine, Ruzami had given away an important detail. His sons were not with him. They were already in the United States or on their way.

Marcus pulled out his phone and connected to the G5’s Wi-Fi. Choosing the Yemeni capital of Sana’a as his reference point, he did a Google search of the distance to New York City. It turned out to be 11,105 kilometers. He did the same with Washington, D.C. That turned out to be 11,430 kilometers. Neither were precise, but they were close, and there was no reason to think Ruzami was trying to be technically accurate. Tokyo was 9,501 kilometers from Sana’a. Seoul was only 8,343 kilometers away.

No, the U.S. was the target. That much was certain. Ruzami had not lied in his final moment. He had been proud of what his sons were doing, and with his last words he had chosen to boast of it. New York and Washington made sense as targets. These had been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s strike points. Why not Badr Hassan al-Ruzami’s?

Someone’s satphone rang. It was not his. Scanning the cabin, he saw Noah rouse.

“Hello?” he heard him say. “Say again? You sure? Okay, I’ll let him know.”

Noah rose from his seat and came to the back of the plane. “That was the watch officer at Fort Meade.”

Marcus was all ears. “Tell me they broke into Ruzami’s gear.”

“No, that’s going to take a couple of days.”

“Then what?”

“They’ve actually just broken into one of the damaged satphones the SEAL guys recovered from the compound near Ghat.”

“And?”

“That particular phone was used only six times and only to call one number.”

“Abu Nakba?”

“No.”

“One of Ruzami’s sons?”

“No—listen to me, Marcus,” Noah replied in exasperation.

“Fine but spit it out, man,” Marcus pressed.

“NSA says it’s a private number belonging to a wealthy Mexican businessman. He owns a huge mining and agriculture conglomerate, though DEA has long suspected he also makes and launders money from drug running and human trafficking. They have never been able to build a solid case against him. And the guy is completely wired into the Mexican government. Donates massive amounts to the current president and top senators, no doubt to buy protection. But it doesn’t make much sense. What would Kairos need from a Mexican mining magnate?”

Marcus knew immediately. “They need a tunnel into Texas.”

Heading to the front of the plane, Marcus ordered the pilots to refile their flight plan. They were no longer going to Washington.