State Of Honour
“Good morning, Madam Secretary,” the deputy director said, walking towards her, his hand massaging the folded skin at his neck.
“You’re not harassing my boys, are you, Bill?”
“Sometimes I forget I swopped fatigues for a suit.”
Forcing a smile, she said, “Take a seat. I’ll be right with you.”
Deputy Director Bill Houseman, who had travelled to Islamabad with the secretary, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Under-Secretary of Defense, sat in a padded chair two metres from the desk and crossed his muscular legs.
Linda closed the marble-coloured lever arch file and tapped a remote. The room lit up. “So let’s have it,” she said, switching off the antenna-like arc lamp she’d been reading under.
“The switchboard operator just got a call. I think we should ask the head of your security detail to join us.”
“I’d like to hear what you have to say first. Please continue.”
“A threat has been made.” He clenched his teeth.
“I see.”
“The caller said the Leopards of Islam would ensure that the US Secretary of State never leaves Pakistan soil. We’re putting it down to a random individual. Low-level risk assessment.”
“And why’s that?”
Houseman cleared his throat, putting his hand to his mouth. “Because as a rule, the Leopards don’t make threats before an attack, ma’am.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better,” she said, shaking her head. “And the current situation here?”
“The Leopards are launching fresh attacks in Karachi, Bahawalpur, Lahore. The list goes on. There’ve been three bomb attacks in Islamabad in the past twelve days.”
“Is civil war on the cards?” she asked, fearing the worst.
“We have reports that Shia elements of the army are joining the insurgency, so it’s a possibility.”
“And the Leopards are definitely backed by Iran?”
Houseman nodded. “No question. But the Sunnis brought it on themselves. The atrocities against the Shia minority were bound to result in an armed response.”
“How serious is the Iranian threat?”
Houseman drew in an audible breath through his nose and shuffled his buttocks a fraction. “Satellite images and drone feeds show that Iranian Special Forces have already made incursions across the border. And there are three divisions of the Revolutionary Guard massed just four miles from the largest of Pakistan’s five provinces–”
“Balochistan.”
“That’s right. Our analysts believe that Iran is planning to occupy the port of Gwadar and help themselves to the huge resources of natural gas in the province if Pakistan becomes a failed state.”
“They’re hoping to take advantage of the chaos,” Linda said, leaning back in her chair and arching her fingers.
“They are, ma’am. But if the Iranians come over the southern border in force, the Pakistanis, despite their internal problems, are likely to go to war. They regard the Iranians as apostates.”
“It’s a mess.” She massaged her temples with her thumbs and forefingers.
“My view is we back Pakistan with muscle and–”
“That’s a decision for Congress.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Houseman said, nodding.
“Thank you, Bill. Send the agent in, will you? The tall one with the buzz cut.”
Houseman got up, said, “May I speak freely?”
“You may.”
“Don’t go to the children’s hospital this morning. Frankly, I don’t think it’s worth the risk; however small.”
He has a point, she thought.
Pakistan had been a Frenemy for years. But the new Prime Minister had requested her visit to discuss the possibility of the US taking temporary possession of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if matters got worse. Although they’d been distributed over the country for security reasons, they’d been brought back to Islamabad in recent weeks. They were safe for now. But if the Pakistanis refused to allow them into US custody, her brief also extended to ensuring that the likelihood of them being used if the Iranians came over the border in force was zero.
This, she had to admit, was the real reason for her visit. Houseman knows that, too, she thought, which is why he’s advising against the trip to the hospital.
But, she said, “The president wants to show solidarity with the new regime on the issue of opposition to extremist acts of terrorism, if nothing else. Those children are their victims. I will ensure that the head of my security detail speaks with your people before we leave. Is there anything else, Bill?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, barely able to conceal his concern.
Tom saw the door open. The deputy director came out, scowling.
“Is everything all right, sir?” Tom asked.
“Just peachy.” He gestured behind him. “The secretary would like to see you.”
He put the folder under his arm and straightened his tie before strolling off towards the elevator, taking a call on his cellphone after a few steps.
Tom moved through the door left ajar and saw the secretary standing in front of the desk, a neat, navy-blue box in her hand. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair was tied back with a flesh-coloured scarf. The scarf was a concession. Flowing hair was easily grabbed. Curtailing the possibility of that kind of embarrassing incident just meant one less thing to worry about. She also wore a ballistic pantsuit, as he’d asked her to, together with her specially made jewellery, a gold pendant shaped like a pear and a heavy emerald ring. The pantsuit was a pale hue of cameral. Soft body armour that could withstand a round from a handgun. The impact of the bullet was eradicated by a net of multilayered woven fabrics, which dispersed the energy over an extended area. Pure physics. He’d seen videos of Americans down in Columbia being shot at in their ballistic suits from close quarters. Something he wasn’t about to divulge. It was useless against a round fired by a high-velocity rifle.
She smiled and stepped forward holding out the blue box. “I’d like you to have this.” She handed it to him.
Tom opened the box. Inside was an expensive silver watch, an Omega with a large face studded with diamonds.
“I’ve had it engraved,” she said.
Tom took it out, turned it over. He read the inscription: To Tom with heartfelt gratitude. Linda G. Carlyle. US Secretary of State.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling a little embarrassed by her gift.
“I just want to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”
“It’s been an honour, ma’am. But I still have a week before I leave the detail.”
“I know. I just wanted to give it you today… Oh, and I should tell you that a threat has been made,” she said, clearly doing her best to sound mundane.
“A threat. Why wasn’t I briefed?” he asked, his jaw muscles flexing.
“It’s not serious. An anonymous phone call to the embassy just a minute ago. The CIA will brief you before we leave this morning.”
“I’d like you to reconsider your visit to the hospital, ma’am.”
The faint lines on her forehead deepened. “The president gets ten threats a day. He got fifty on the morning of his inauguration. Where would we be if we succumbed to them all? Ensconced in a bunker at Fort Bragg, I imagine.”
“But, ma’am—”
“No, Tom. My mind is made up.”
He looked down at the watch. “This is very generous.”
“Don’t ask what the G stands for. I never use it, and no one knows apart from my parents. Don’t ask about my birth certificate, either.” She feigned a laugh.
His head snapped back up. “I’ll get you safely home, ma’am,” he said. “I promise.”
“Yes, you will.”
3.
Tom sat in the front passenger seat of the third MSD SUV, feeling agitated. The convoy was doing a steady sixty-five along the eight-lane highway leading from the embassy, police outriders front and rear. They were ten minutes behind schedule. The secretary had had to take an urgent call from the president on a secure landline. Sitting directly behind Tom, the safest place from a protective viewpoint, she discussed the speech she’d give to the army generals at Parliament House right after her visit to the hospital. The speech writer had a retro moustache and a servile tone, a skinny guy whom Tom considered a hindrance.
After they’d agreed on the final changes, the secretary said, “The president wants the visit to the hospital cut to twenty minutes tops.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tom replied.
“That means no press questions.”
“Understood.”
“He mentioned the threat.”
Tom turned around in his seat. “If the agreed procedure is followed, your exposure will be minimal, ma’am.”
She nodded, slowly.
Tom double-checked that her seat belt was fastened securely, that the doors were locked and the windows closed. He ran through the various evacuation scenarios, depending on the nature of the attack and which vehicles might be taken out. She’d be plunged into the footwell. The driver would employ a full bootlegger’s turn or resort to ramming. They played out like video games in his head, priming him for a potential en-route ambush.
Next, he tested his push-to-talk, or PTT, radio. The PTT button was inline and ran between the radio connection and the earpiece. It could be used either via the button or as a voice-activated unit, providing a handsfree facility. The destinations they’d be travelling to today had codenames. The hospital’s codename was Cradle. He used them to communicate with his team, checking their radios were functioning in the process. Satisfied, he focused on the pre-planned arrival procedure. He’d alight first, opening the passenger door. The agents in the vehicle behind would form an open-box formation around her as she entered the building.
Check.
The Faisal Children’s Hospital was a few miles from the Saudi-Pak Tower, a contemporary landmark known for its Islamic tile work. Nineteen floors high, the tower was visible from the tinted windows of the SUV. Tom worried that the hospital was outside the so-called Blue Area, the commercial centre of Islamabad. Together with a couple of his team, he’d walked the route the day before, liaising with a group of ISI operatives, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the main Pakistan security service.
The lead operative had been called Awan. He was a beefy six-footer with leathery skin, who wore a sombre suit and black necktie.
“The road has been checked for IEDs. The hospital is clean, at least in terms of bombs,” he said, his wide face breaking into a crooked grin.
“What about all these people?” Tom asked.
“This isn’t the West. If they do not work, they do not eat.”
The street and those surrounding it lacked the Blue Area’s greenery and modern architecture. The hospital abutted run-down buildings on either side. Brick-built retail stores with whitewashed residential accommodation above. Opposite, bland concrete apartment and office blocks rose three storeys to flat roofs. They cast an unbroken shadow over a line of flimsy stalls, selling reams of brightly coloured cloth, second-hand cellphones, fruit and vegetables and halal meat on hooks.
“I don’t like it,” Tom said.
“Then tell her not to come,” Awan replied, shrugging.
Ignoring him, Tom said, “Your men ready for tomorrow?”
“As I told you on the phone, apart from yourselves, ten armed operatives will mix with the crowd. There will be fifty-two policemen. On the roofs, a team of snipers.” He pointed up to the sky. “And a police helicopter with elite commandos onboard.”
“Have the hospital staff been screened?”
“They were screened when they were employed. They’re all well-educated Punjabis. Our problems come from frontier hills people. Shia illiterates.”
Tom pinched his nose. “The main exposure is when the secretary leaves. A two-minute delay while she does her goodbyes to the official line-up,” he said, knowing that a couple of Grey Eagle drones would be monitoring the scene from above.
“Everything will be okay, Mr Dupree.”
Tom had wished he could’ve believed him.
He stood half a metre behind the secretary now, just to the right of her shoulder, his sense of unease unabated. The walls of the hospital ward were painted an insipid yellow. It was cramped with twenty small beds a fraction more than a body-width apart. If it had AC, it had been turned off. The competing smells of disinfectant and stale sweat were equally pungent. He figured the authorities were intent on making the experience both unpleasant and memorable.
A bearded doctor, with black bags hanging in folds like a bloodhound’s, explained to the secretary in detail the nature of each of the children’s injuries and what could and could not be done. Tom thought he looked like a coke addict, or a guy who drank a bottle of Jack a day, but put his jaded appearance down to a dedicated man who didn’t sleep much. He watched the secretary listen attentively, and speak with each child in turn via a government interpreter before moving sullenly to the last bed.
The undefined nature of the threat had left Tom feeling even more paranoid than he would’ve been normally in such circumstances. Beside the bed, a young female nurse with exquisite feline-like eyes, and a mouth so naturally generous that no amount of collagen could replicate it, checked a saline drip. Tom slid over to her and eased a ballpoint pen from her hip pocket stealthily, placing it onto a window sill just out of her reach. Two separate attempts on the life of President Ford had been by women who’d looked like grade-school teachers, and a pen was as deadly as a stiletto. His antennae were up.
“The Leopards have no regard for human life,” the doctor said. “Young or old. No matter.”
The bed was occupied by a small boy who was almost completely cocooned in bandages. With his wide-eyed stare and lack of visible skin, he resembled a fragile hybrid. The secretary bent over the bed and said a few words. As she went to touch him the doctor spoke.
“Please no. Ninety per cent burns.” He shook his head to emphasize that death was certain.
The secretary lowered her hand, looked close to tears but managed a closed-mouth smile. Tom fought the urge to wince.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but we’re due at Parliament House in thirty minutes,” a female aide said, bending towards the secretary.
Her thick red hair accentuated the paleness of her skin. She looked like a size zero, and what little make-up she wore had been applied with calligraphic precision.
“I visited a hospital just like this one in Iraq eight years ago,” the secretary said to her quietly, without turning around. “The only difference being the bombs were ours. But the children looked just the same. This can be an ugly world, Miss Hanson; please don’t add to the negativity with insensitive remarks.”
Tom glanced at the aide. She was flushed with embarrassment, her beauty suddenly diminished.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry, the TV cameras won’t pick that up,” the secretary replied, turning towards three news teams.
One was local, SAMAA TV, the other two from the States. There were half a dozen more in the corridor. Apart from the local crew, the teams had drawn lots. There just wasn’t enough room on the ward.
The secretary shook the doctor’s hand, thanking him and praising his work. She waved to the nurses and children, some of whom smiled and waved back, while others just carried on looking vaguely bemused. Tom retained his position, readying himself for the obstacle course that would no doubt occur in the corridors leading to the hospital lobby.
Once that had been overcome, she would shake hands with the security-vetted group and give a short statement to the news hounds. He would call up the tactical support team and usher her inside an SUV fitted with run-flat tyres. The windshields were made of glass-clad polycarbonate, which were both bullet-resistant and prevented glass fragments from showering inward. But the windows were constructed from layers of a laminated material known as one-way bulletproof glass. This prevented rounds from entering the vehicle, while at the same time allowing agents to fire out of it, as the unique combination of absorptive and flexible qualities of the layers responded accordingly. It was as safe a civilian vehicle as science could create.
But it was best practice to have the SUVs close to the exit point, parallel, in fact. In this instance they would block the view for the TV crews and the crowds, and Tom now knew that the secretary’s visit was essentially a PR exercise, despite her sincerity. He told himself it would be fine.
That done, he would breathe easily for a second or two before the whole routine would begin again.
This, at least, was his plan.
4
The lobby led to an incongruous-looking, clear-glass frontage set back about three metres from the narrow sidewalk. The excitable crowds were being held at bay by skinny, moustachioed policemen, wielding long wooden batons. Tom would’ve given a year’s pay just to have had them all swept by portable body scanners before they’d gotten within a hundred metres of the secretary. Regular procedure stateside.
But he consoled himself by thinking that the plan was simple, and in his experience simple was best. The police would create a secure funnel, which the secretary would move down to be met by the lead MSD SUV parked twenty metres to the right, flanked by police outriders. The protective detail would walk around her. If there was a hint of trouble, they’d form the closed-box formation, so that she’d be covered by their bodies for a full three hundred and sixty degrees, each agent within half an arm’s reach of her.
He stuck a couple of fingers inside his stiff collar, wishing he could loosen his dark-blue necktie. He put on mirrored shades. It was stifling, just as Steve had said it would be, even though it was only 10:13. He was to Tom’s right, his face glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. They exchanged tight nods.
Still positioned behind her right shoulder, he kept his head up. The secretary stepped back after brief contact, as he’d taught her to do, and moved steadily from hospital staff to well-wishing local dignitary. A second agent walked further down the line-up, while a third was shadowing her movement from behind it, watching for a drawn-back fist or leg, or worse. The split-second advantage could be crucial.
Seeing a rotund man in a blue pinstripe with his hand in his jacket pocket, Tom leaned towards him. “Excuse me, sir. Please remove your hand from your pocket.” He could speak good Urdu, but knew the majority of educated Pakistanis spoke fluent English.
The man looked bewildered, but removed it just the same.
“Thank you, sir,” Tom said.
He scanned those nearby looking for pre-attack indicators. Most were subtle movements, but they could be exaggerated. He knew that it didn’t matter if someone was smiling like a Baptist preacher, the average assailant exhibited at least one before an assault. A shifting body, rapid shallow breathing, trembling hands or dilating pupils. Traits brought about when the adrenal glands produced an adrenalin dump.
He stayed close to the line. The key distance was seven metres. Anything inside that and a trained operative had a chance to stop a person drawing a concealed handgun and discharging it; anything outside and the chances were they would get off a round. It didn’t matter how good a person was told or thought they were; it was a fact.
He was aware of everything around him. The details that most people missed or weren’t interested in even if they didn’t. If there was a security lapse, he’d have to manage the natural adrenalin surge that would happen in his own body. Primed meant being one step from a reaction rather than three. It meant avoiding being paralyzed by a sensory overload, or panicking, as the body was swamped by hormones. It meant learning to run at a person who had pulled out a twelve-gauge shotgun rather than heading in the other direction.
Mentally, he saw someone lurch at the secretary, a knife in hand. Stepping forward, he used his body as cover for hers. He stretched out his left hand to grab her arm, and manoeuvred her behind him, holding her back to his. Simultaneously, he quick-drew his SIG, pointing. Aggressive words and actions were generally enough to subdue an assailant. But if he saw a handgun, he’d propel into the gap, and swing her to the ground behind his legs, as he fired into the centre of the assailant’s chest. His team would bolt over, shielding her entirely in the tepee-shaped formation.
Check.
Ten seconds later, he was drawn to a woman in the front row. She was large-boned, a sweep of shiny black hair protruding from her dupatta headscarf. She wore a canary-yellow Shalwar Kameez, and was holding a bunch of pink roses. But he was drawn to her because the flowers were vibrating, just enough to mark her out. She didn’t strike him as a shy individual, so he eased the secretary on before the woman could present them.
Something’s not right, he thought. He couldn’t work it out at first. Then it hit him. A distraction, perhaps. With that, a commotion started in his peripheral vision; to his left. He turned. Four young men had broken free from the crowd and had overpowered Sam Eddy. He was a thick-necked ex-DEA agent. The type that didn’t go down easily. But he was on his back now, his jaw slack, taking a vicious kicking.
Tom felt the urge to go to his aid. But the secretary was in front of him, and his first duty was to her. Besides, it was a rule that one attack tended to be followed by another, and there was no counter-ambush team on hand. He spoke briefly into his mic, part of the restricted radio network linked to the temporary command centre. Two agents dashed to Sam’s aid, quickly followed by a dozen or more policemen who’d taken the initiative.
As he drew the secretary behind his back the woman with the flowers rushed forward and flung them into his face from the side. He parried most of them away with his free hand, but a thorn scratched his forehead, drawing blood. Half squinting, he glimpsed a muscular guy push through the crowd. The man threw a straight right, baring his teeth like a primate. Tom just managed to block the full force with his forearm, the fist grazing over his temple.
Before he had a chance to follow it up, Tom leant forward and ploughed his elbow into the man’s cheek. It wasn’t hard enough to fracture the bone, but he needed to disable him fast. As the man’s head jerked sideways Tom applied an arm lock, slid his right leg behind the front ankle, and struck him just under the throat with his palm, his fingers and thumb split in a V-shape. The man had no option but to fall over Tom’s extended thigh.
As fellow agents took hold of the secretary and bundled her away, Tom decided to keep the lock on. He grasped the man’s shirt, and lowered the body to the asphalt. Experiencing a hit of hormones, he heard gasps and half-muffled cursing, sensed the crowd moving back. The attackers had targeted him, not the secretary, and that had almost caught him off guard.
“Stay down!” he snarled.
Although the man was barely conscious, Tom didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with him again, and he wasn’t carrying cuffs. But the agent shadowing the secretary burst through the line-up, and grabbed the guy in a headlock.
Straightening up, Tom caught sight of the female slinking away, although people were pointing at her and calling out. Before he could get the police to arrest her, the agitated words of agents flooded his earpiece. The secretary, he thought, grimacing. He pivoted around. Two of his team, Dave Robbins and Becky Sykes, were jogging with her, Becky holding her elbow, Dave shielding her lithe but awkward frame. She was wobbling on her high heels, and Tom barked into his radio, told them to remove the damn things or lift her.
Seeing that the MSD team had alighted from the SUVs parked on the dusty roadway, he glanced back to see how Sam was faring. The male agents had restrained a couple of the young men, pinning them to the ground with their suited bulks, although their weapons were still holstered. Sam lay face up and looked to be in bad shape. A pool of dull-red blood had formed around his head, the consistency of mucus. The policemen were beating the other two men with their batons. If they kept it up, they’d either kill them or cause brain damage, Tom thought.