“Believe it or not, a major target of the Khorasan group. You remember the alleged foreign fighter who had supposedly defected to al Qaida from French intelligence?”

“Yeah, but I thought he was a myth. He ended up being just a young French bomb-maker, and we killed him in an air strike.”

“That was the conventional wisdom, but we scanned the computer al-Britani had with him. He was using Twitter to direct message with another man, and we believe this man is Rashid al-Jaza’iri, a Frenchman of Algerian descent who has had significant training with French intelligence. We know for a fact he’s with the Khorasan group.”

Alexander Palmer said, “That’s pretty damn specific. Was there a folder called ‘My Top Secret Jihadist Friends’ on the computer? What leads you to this?”

“The Khorasan group connection is from the direct messages. Rashid was instructing al-Britani to do the attack, then claim credit in the name of Jabhat al-Nusra and Khorasan instead of the Islamic State. Apparently, there’s not a lot of love between them, regardless of all the reports of reconciliation.”

“And the name and background?”

Kurt shuffled his feet, thinking, Here goes nothing. . . .

He said, “The Israelis. While we were always wondering if he was a ghost or not, Mossad’s been tracking him. Shoshana and Aaron recognized the Twitter handle as one he uses. It’s never used for broadcast tweets. Only direct messages.”

President Warren looked at Kerry. “And they’ve been keeping this from us?”

Kerry raised his hands and said, “Sir, we don’t give them everything either.”

President Warren shook his head, muttering something under his breath, clearly aggravated.

Billings said, “Why Twitter? Why not something more secure?”

“We don’t know. Best assessment is that Rashid didn’t have an email address for al-Britani. The British guy was all over Twitter bragging about his beheadings, so it may have been the only way for Rashid to find him. We do know that al-Britani was first fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra before switching allegiance to the Islamic State, so their paths may have crossed before. The rest is just speculation.”

Palmer took over, asking Kurt, “So you want to do what, exactly?”

“I want to go get Rashid. The last ISP used is from an Internet café in Tirana, Albania. Give me Alpha authority to explore the issue, then on-call Omega to roll him up. It may not go anywhere, and I won’t do anything unless I can confirm it’s him, but when I do, I can’t have a long debate. The Twitter ISPs have been all over the map, and he’s probably not going to stay long. Let’s do the debate now, ahead of time.”

Billings said, “We’re going backwards with this. In Nairobi, we got a report on the situation from the ground before granting Omega.”

Kurt said, “That was going backwards. You severely restricted my ability to operate. I understand why, since we’d just conducted a separate Omega operation, but if we’d have let the Nigerian get arrested with everyone else, we wouldn’t have gotten the intelligence that led to the elimination of the Islamic State emir.”

The secretary of defense said, “How long will it take to spin up a team? If you’re worried he’s not staying, isn’t this a moot point?”

“I’m using the same element from Jordan. We have a complete Omega package there, with a support team that was supposed to transport Hussein, Pike for assault, and Blaine’s headquarters element as overarching control. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Jordan, and I’ve already got them prepping to leave. All I need is the go-ahead. You say no, and I’ll turn them around.”

He saw Billings’s sour look and said, “I had to get them moving. All they’re doing is flying. I didn’t step on your authority.”

Palmer said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. How are you going to confirm that the target is correct? Surely he doesn’t have his real picture on his Twitter profile.”

“No, we don’t have any pictures of him. The profile picture is the Twitter egg.”

“Then how?”

Kurt considered his next words, the phrase boom goes the dynamite floating in his head. He ignored the rest of the room, focusing on President Warren. Needing his support.

“Sir, I . . . uh . . . have a couple of people with the team who know him on sight.”

43

I said, “Yes, sir. WILCO,” then hung up the cool, James Bond satellite phone affixed permanently to the small desk in front of me, thinking of the ramifications. I glanced at Jennifer, as usual in the window seat, watching the land of Jordan fall away as we rose into the air, her head pressed against the window like a child, the larger window facilitating a view that she’d never get on a commercial aircraft.

We were flying a Taskforce Gulfstream 650, which was conveniently leased to Grolier Recovery Services, the company Jennifer and I used for operations. While it was cool to zip around like a rock star, the plane actually had a few operational capabilities that were crucial. All of them built into an aircraft that rock stars used, and now available for us. As we say in the Taskforce, “money is no object.”

Across from me, in another plush, full-size seat that faced my direction like one on a train, Knuckles said, “Well? Where are we landing?”

I glanced toward the back of the aircraft, where Shoshana and Aaron were sitting and said, “Looks like we’re a go. How in the hell Kurt convinced the Oversight Council to let this continue is beyond me, but it was apparently a pretty good fight. Blaine says best behavior on this one.”

“Did Kurt tell them about our strap-hangers?”

“He had to. They’re the only ones who know what Rashid looks like. He couldn’t get approval for Alpha without a lead, and having an anchor of an Internet café wasn’t cutting it. At that point, apparently, things got ugly. Especially with that shithead Billings.”

Knuckles laughed and glanced back, making sure we were outside of earshot. “Billings has had a hard-on for you since Brazil. I’m sure your Israeli love interest being both there and now here caused him to shit a brick. He’s probably trying to figure out how you managed to get a Mossad team into Jordan to help your operation.”

I bristled at that, saying, “She’s not my damn love interest, and she purposely killed al-Britani. She has her own agenda, which concerns me.”

He said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I may not be a spoon-bender like her, but I can see the connection.”

I waited on Jennifer to defend me, and when she didn’t, I said, “Are you going to let him say that shit?”

She said, “I’ll correct him the minute he’s wrong.”

“I can’t believe I’m even talking about this. The fact remains that she ignored orders and purposely killed our target. I get she’s needed here, but I worry about what she’ll do next.”

Knuckles said, “I’m not going to second-guess what happened out there. The guy was a terrorist willing to give his life for the cause. He was apparently on a suicide run, and he held a pistol. He got what was coming.”

I turned to Jennifer and said, “You were there. I got there late, but I saw that twisted thing in Shoshana. The one that comes out when she’s killing. She looked like a damn demon. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I know. I saw it too. What Knuckles says is true, but there was no way he was getting off the bridge alive once she showed up.”

I said, “And you let her go, when you broke orders.”

She looked like I’d slapped her, the implications clear on who was responsible for the end result. Knuckles interrupted, “She made a bad call, but the guy beheaded four Americans—that we know of. I got no issues with what happened to him.”

I said, “That shithead’s death isn’t the point. It’s the manner in which he was killed. We have zero information from him because he cracked his head like a melon on the concrete. We might as well have used a drone.”