He remembered the senators and his mood sank again. That ball-busting senator would drag his ass before her committee and humiliate him in front of an ungrateful nation. All of his hard work, all of his sacrifice would be destroyed because of some juvenile airman who couldn’t practice a little restraint.

Up on the screen, the air force investigator who was talking to the bloodied Haggani suddenly reached out and grabbed him by the throat. Garrison was trying to comprehend just what in the hell was going on when Leland stepped forward.

“Sir,” Leland said as he concentrated on the screen, “there’s something familiar about that man… I think I’ve seen him before… back during my first tour.”

Garrison was less concerned with who the man was and more concerned with why he was choking a restrained prisoner. Nothing he was seeing made any sense.

Leland watched the screen intently, waited for the man in the air force BDUs to give him more than a profile. Suddenly the man turned and pointed at the camera. Leland finally got the look he’d been waiting for. His eyes narrowed at first and then opened wide. He could barely contain his excitement. “Sir, that man is not OSI!”

Garrison looked at his aide like he was speaking Latin.

“Sir, he’s CIA. I know he is. A few years back when I was on my first tour here they were talking about him. He’s some interrogation specialist.”

“CIA,” Garrison repeated in a skeptical voice. He turned to the screen. Looked at the blood, thought of the choking and the man’s actions, and it all suddenly made sense. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Garrison thought of the implications. CIA operatives dressed in air force uniforms, beating prisoners. What were they going to do, simply leave him with the mess in the morning? Have him try to explain why these guys had had the shit kicked out of them? Garrison was getting madder by the second. He personally had no ax to grind with the CIA, but this was ridiculous.

“Sir,” Leland said, “would you like me to arrest him?”

Garrison thought of the drama that could come of this if it was ever made public. Again, nothing good could come of it. Reluctantly, he nodded, and gave Leland the order to put the man in custody.

CHAPTER 12

RAPP didn’t spend a lot of time questioning the civility of what he was doing. Civility was for people living in cities with law and order. This was asymmetrical warfare, where one side, due to political pressure, was playing by the old set of rules, while the other side played by no rules at all. It was a down-and-dirty street fight, with knives and guns and hands and teeth and anything else that could be brought to bear. Washington didn’t want to recognize that obvious fact, so Rapp made his peace with it. He didn’t like it, couldn’t really even understand how they thought, but he was done fighting them. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, so he, and a select few like Nash, ventured out and risked it all to try to stop the enemy from another spectacular strike like 9/11.

There’d been a few politicians who’d pulled him aside and thanked him for his actions. Told him to keep it up and make sure we don’t get hit again. “Do whatever it takes,” they would say, and then they’d go on TV and decry Guantánamo, the rendition program, and detainee treatment in general. Sure, there were a few wise old men in Washington who understood what they were up against. Men who realized someone had to be willing to climb down into the gutter with this scum and slug it out. One-hundred-million-dollar fighter planes and billion-dollar aircraft carriers were great for the heavy lifting. Five-million-dollar tanks came in very handy in a fight, but against an enemy that refused to put on a uniform and refused to meet you on the field of battle, they went only so far. Eventually someone had to reach out and wrap their hands around the throat of the enemy and pick apart their network.

At the moment, Rapp was trying to do just that. With his left hand he tightened his grip around Haggani’s larynx and forced his head back. He looked down into the man’s deep brown eyes and searched for some hint of his mental state. He’d done this more times than he could count, and had found he could usually get a pretty good sense of how things would go. Most showed outright fear, a few looked back with the crazed eyes of someone who had serious mental issues, there were even a couple whose eyes reminded him of Charles Manson’s – that wide-open “I see right through you into the essence of your soul” look of a zealot high on his beliefs. Those guys were the worst. They screamed and thrashed like some toddler throwing a completely irrational temper tantrum. They were so bad you wanted to beat them just to shut them up.

The eyes gave him a clue, but you never knew with these guys. Some of them folded at the first hint of violence – tried to talk their way out of it. Which was fine with Rapp. The more they talked the easier it was to catch them in their lies. Like a python squeezing the air out of its prey, he would strip away the deceptions until the subject’s only chance at life, a lung full of air, was the truth.

Rapp stared intently at Haggani’s eyes, searching for a clue. It took only a few seconds for him to categorize what he saw, and it wasn’t good. Rapp wanted to swear out loud, but knew he couldn’t let Haggani see his frustration. He recognized the look in Haggani’s eyes. It was an expression of absolute conviction. There wasn’t a drop of fear in either orb. It would take weeks to break him. Rapp’s grip eased for a second, and he thought of calling everything off, cleaning Haggani up, and throwing him back in his cell. They could focus on al-Haq, and then possibly later on arrange to have Haggani transferred to a more discreet location where an entire team could work on him.

But maybe, Rapp thought, just maybe I can bait him into making a few mistakes. Rapp increased the pressure, his fingers digging into the taut tendons of Haggani’s neck. “I know about your plan.” Rapp searched his eyes for a flicker of recognition. “We’ve intercepted both cells. They’ve told us everything. You’ve failed yet again.” Rapp saw something, an acknowledgment that his words had stirred something in Haggani’s limited brain. Rapp eased his grip just enough so the man could reply.

“You know nothing,” Haggani said in a hoarse voice. “You will never stop us. For every warrior you strike down another will take his place.”

Rapp casually released his grip. The important thing was to keep him talking. “You guys blew your load on nine-eleven. You got lucky. You caught us with our guard down, but what have you done since?”

“Madrid and London, and there will be many more.”

“Madrid and London,” Rapp scoffed. “You might have got the Spaniards to blink, but all you did was piss off the Brits.”

“The entire West is afraid of us.”

“The West thinks you’re a bunch of cowards. You intentionally kill innocent people because you’re too big of a pussy to take on our troops. You’re a coward, Abu.”

“You know nothing.”

“What do you say I take those handcuffs off, and you and I find out just how tough you are?”

Haggani considered the offer and looked across the room at the thick man who had bound him to his chair. He looked back at Rapp and said, “He will join in on your behalf.”

“I don’t need any help. Not against some baby-killing little pussy like you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Rapp laughed and circled around the table. “Just like I said, you’re a coward. You blow up schools where you know little kids can’t fight back. You attack office buildings where innocent men and women are simply trying to make a living.”

“There are no innocents in the West.”

“If that’s true, why haven’t you hit us again? All you had was nine-eleven. You haven’t done jack shit since then.”