“Yet, you’re still opposed to sending out any sort of Homeland Security alert.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

The president set the article down on the table. “If an attack does happen, what then? You don’t think at that point the Sun will repackage the article in a way that’s equally damaging?”

“How could they? We’re the only ones who know the full story. What they have is only a small piece of the puzzle, and it’s a piece we can spin. It’ll show we were engaged in a concerted effort, before the fact, to bring the terrorists to justice. Harvath’s already killed two of them, two more are about to be apprehended in their home countries, and we’ve got multitudes of agents in the field trying to track down the fifth and final one. I think we should let this play out.”

Rutledge admired Vaile’s confidence, but unfortunately he wasn’t convinced. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that hindsight is always 20:20. People will demand to know why, if we knew about a threat to school buses, we didn’t put out an alert.”

“Because,” replied the DCI emphatically, “putting out an alert is an admission of guilt. It would tell our enemies that we believed we had broken our word and that we deserved to be hit, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

The president tried to say something in response, but Vaile held up his hand in order to be allowed to finish. “Rightly or wrongly, our agreement with the terrorists was based on the assumption that the five men released from Gitmo would not use their freedom to strike against us here at home.”

“Of course,” said Rutledge. “We agreed not to hunt them.”

“That’s what’s been bothering me. The more I look at this, the more I believe the terrorists have had other plans all along.”

Chapter 87

“What kind of other plans?” asked Rutledge.

Vaile looked at him and replied, “Those five men must have been very important for their organization to risk so much to get them released.”

“Agreed,” said the president, nodding.

“We’re also worried that they’ve remained important enough that their organization will make good on its promise to retaliate for any of their killings.”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“Palmera and Najib are both dead, yet nothing has happened so far. Nothing.”

“Well, one was killed in Mexico and the other in Jordan. Maybe their organization doesn’t know yet.”

The DCI shook his head. “Everyone in the neighborhood knew Palmera, and his death was very public. Najib was a member of Syrian intelligence and while I have no idea what the Jordanians might have done with his body, Harvath allowed Al-Tal’s wife and son to live and they are definitely not going to keep their mouths shut. Word like this travels fast. Their organization knows. And yet I keep coming back to the fact that nothing has happened.”

The president thought about it a moment. “For all we know, they’re putting their people in place as we speak.”

“Oh, I think they’ve done more than that,” replied Vaile. “I think they’ve got one person and he’s already been in place.”

“Roussard?” asked Rutledge.

The DCI nodded. “If we maintain the reasoning that these five were so important that their organization risked all to spring them from Gitmo and then could be so angered by the deaths of two of them that it would make good on its threat to retaliate, then how could this same organization not know that Roussard was here and not know what he was doing?”

“He could be acting alone. He’s obviously got a vendetta against Harvath.”

“He might be acting alone in carrying out his attacks, but he’s getting a lot of support from somewhere. This kind of operation takes money, intelligence, weapons, forged identification. There’s no way, just over six months after being released from Guantanamo, he could pull this off completely alone. His people know what he’s doing, and I think this has been their plan from the beginning.”

The president was quiet while he thought about this from as many angles as possible. Finally, he said. “It’s an interesting theory, but can you prove it? Because you’re asking me to risk the lives of tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of American children on a theory.”

“No, sir,” answered Vaile. “I can’t prove it.”

Rutledge rubbed the hairline scar where his right index finger had been reattached, an ever-present reminder of his own gruesome kidnapping several years ago, and said, “Well, there’s one thing I can prove. I can prove that these people already hijacked one school bus and killed its driver. Those victims and their families were terrorized and traumatized beyond belief. It made national headlines, and as president, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that never happens again.

“So I am going to allow DHS to issue the alert and I’ll deal with the Baltimore Sun or whomever else I have to deal with if and when they become a problem. In the meantime, I am ordering you to find Scot Harvath and stop him. No more excuses. You tell your people to do whatever they need to do to get their job done. And damn it, you remind them that when I said dead or alive, I meant it.”

Chapter 88

ANGRA DOS REIS, BRAZIL

The Troll had dropped a bombshell on Harvath and the impact was intense. Philippe Roussard wasn’t the assassin’s real name after all. It was the name that had been given to him as a boy to protect him from his family’s enemies. His real name was Sabri Khalil al-Banna.

He began to explain who Roussard had been named after, but Harvath held up his hand to stop him. “He was named after his grandfather.”

The Troll nodded his head.

There was an acidic gnawing in the pit of Harvath’s stomach. Before Osama bin Laden, Sabri Khalil al-Banna had been the world’s deadliest and most feared terrorist. His exploits were bloody, ruthless, and the stuff of legends in both the terrorism and counterterrorism worlds.

As was common with Islamic radicals, he was known by many names, the most famous being Abu Nidal. Philippe Roussard was almost a dead ringer for his late grandfather. Now Harvath knew why he had looked so familiar in the material Vaile had sent.

He also knew why he, or more appropriately the people he cared about, were being targeted.

It was payback for a mission he had led several years ago, code-named Operation Phantom. His assignment had been to decapitate a resurgent Abu Nidal terrorist organization. The reins of power had been handed to Nidal’s daughter and son, twins who had been born and raised without the knowledge of Western intelligence agencies. Based upon what Harvath was hearing, it seemed something of a family tradition.

“As far as we know, Abu Nidal had only two offspring.”

“Correct,” said the Troll, “the son, Hashim, and the daughter, Adara.”

Just their names had the power to send a chill down Harvath’s spine. They were two of the most vicious terrorists he had ever come across, Adara even more so than her brother, Hashim.

Harvath remembered her all too well. Her hatred for Israel and the West consumed her to such a degree that it poisoned what would have otherwise been ravishing features. She was tall, with high cheekbones and long dark hair. Her eyes, though, were her most striking feature. They were gray to the point of almost being silver, like the color of mercury. But when she was enraged or under stress, they underwent an amazing transformation and turned jet black.

It was in the midst of a hijacking by Adara Nidal and her brother that Harvath had met Meg Cassidy. Together, they had tracked the twins to a vineyard outside Rome, only to be beaten to the punch by a veteran Israeli intelligence operative named Ari Schoen-a former top-ranking member of the Mossad who had his own axe to grind with the Nidal family.