Stuart Woods - Mounting Fears

He noted that the Reverend Johnson was due on Amelia Island, Florida, for a convention of black undertakers in a week. He knew something about Amelia Island: it was a golf-oriented upscale community near Jacksonville.

Then he noticed something else on the reverend’s website: he was to perform a marriage ceremony the day before on Cumberland Island.

Teddy Googled Cumberland Island.

Martin Stanton checked into the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, which dated from its days as a cow town, and rapped on the door to the adjoining room. Liz opened it and gave him a big, wet kiss. “More later,” she said. “I have some phone calls to make.”

“Before you do that, order yourself dinner from room service,” Stanton said. “We don’t want them delivering two dinners to my suite.”

“Right,” she said.

Stanton closed the door, ordered his own dinner, and went to get a refill for his pen from his briefcase. As he opened it, he heard his secret cell phone vibrating, and he picked it up. “Yes?”

“It’s me, baby,” Barbara said.

“Good to hear from you,” Stanton replied, not entirely convincingly.

“That sounded like something you’d say to a campaign contributor,” she pointed out.

“I’m sorry, hon. It’s just that they’ve had me on a breakneck schedule for three weeks, and I’m sort of operating on autopilot. How are you? What are you up to?”

“Well, I’ve started my new job at Justice, and now it’s up to you and Will Lee to get reelected, so I won’t get fired by a Republican attorney general early next year.”

“We’ll do our best,” Stanton said. “We’ve got to keep you in work.”

“And I bought a house,” she said proudly.

“Well, that was fast. Where?”

“On a beautiful block in Georgetown,” she said. “It’s tiny, having been previously occupied by a Republican congresswoman who didn’t think she could be reelected, and you’re going to love it. It’s the sexiest place you ever saw!”

“Then I look forward to sex in it!”

“Oh, me too, baby! I’m aching for you.”

“Then let’s not wait. What’s wrong with now? Are you alone?”

“No, I’m with you.”

“Then get your clothes off,” he ordered.

“You, too.”

“Are you naked now?”

“I am. How about you?”

“I am.” He was not, but the two of them proceeded to have phone sex until Barbara climaxed noisily. Stanton had to pretend, because his mind and his cock, which were co-located, were both in the room next door.

The doorbell rang. “Kid, there’s somebody at my door,” he said into the phone. “Gotta run.”

“Bye,” she had time to say before he ended the connection.

Stanton went to the door and let the room-service waiter in, signed the ticket, and went to wait for Liz to wheel in her dinner.

He had been turned on, in spite of himself, during the phone sex, and now he would spend that pent-up energy on Liz.

When she rolled her tray in, she was naked, and they dined that way.

Todd Bacon sat at his new desk in Owen Masters’s old office and leafed through a file marked “Golf in Central America,” and looked at the photograph of Teddy Fay. Todd had lied to Lance Cabot when he had told him that he had destroyed it. Who was this guy? he wondered. Some drug dealer, like the cops said, or just some hit man? But if he was any of that, why would Owen care about him? It seemed obvious to Todd that Owen had wanted the man killed, so he must have been a danger of some sort, but what sort?

He pored over the two pages of notes that Owen had kept in a haphazard way and found references to Ned Partain. He was the reporter from that tabloid who had been found dead on the ship. Owen hadn’t mentioned him, but Todd had seen a reference to it in the daily news digest circulated inside the embassy.

Then, down at the bottom of one page, he saw the entry, in block capitals: PARTAIN/TEDDY?

Teddy? Teddy who? And then something clicked in Todd Bacon’s mind.

Will was finishing a meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture when his phone buzzed, contrary to his instructions. “Yes?”

“Mr. President,” his secretary said, “the director of Central Intelligence and the chief of naval operations are here to see you urgently.”

Will didn’t like the sound of that combination. He checked his schedule. “All right, just push everything back as necessary and send them in.” He shook hands with the secretary of agriculture and apologized for the interuption.

Kate and Admiral Halstead entered the Oval Office and were waved to a seat.

“All right,” Will said.

“Mr. President,” Kate said, “we have received pretty good intelligence that the missing Pakistani nuclear warhead is in one of a group of eight villages, all within fifty miles of each other, in extreme western Pakistan, along the Afghan border.” She spread a map on the coffee table and pointed.

Will sat up straight. “Isn’t that the area where you think bin Laden and his top people are hiding?”

“Yes, sir,” Kate replied. “And we have refrained from sending people in there because of the objections of the Pakistani government.”

“Well, the presence of a nuclear warhead in that area would place a different color on those objections, wouldn’t it?”

“I should think so,” Kate replied, “but Admiral Halstead and I have a suggestion, and we both believe the Pakistani government should not, in this case, be consulted.”

Will sat back and looked at the two people before him. “And what is your suggestion?”

“We have enough people within chopper range-a combination of Navy SEALs and CIA operatives-to put eight small reconnaissance teams on the ground there to investigate the report of the presence of the warhead. We’d like to put them in there at the earliest possible moment to check this out.”

“How soon is the earliest possible moment?”

“If we go now, before dawn tomorrow morning. They would be choppered to the border on the Afghan side and hike it from there.”

“And when would the teams be in place?”

“By dawn on the following day, without complications.”

Will didn’t need to ask about the complications; the possibilities were multitudinous. “What are their chances of getting in there, getting the intelligence, and getting out without detection?”

Kate and Halstead exchanged a glance. “Better than fifty-fifty,” Halstead said. “Maybe as good as seventy-thirty.”

Will’s stomach felt funny. “If any of those people were captured…”

“In the circumstances,” the admiral said gravely, “their orders would be not to be captured.”

Will stared at the admiral, then back at Kate, whose gaze was steady. “I’ve never given anyone an order like that,” he said.

Kate spoke up. “It’s my firm belief that the circumstances require it.”

“But there’s no time for preparation, is there?” Will asked.

“All these men and women have run multiple rehearsals for missions such as this,” Halstead said. “They are equipped with the latest surveillance and communications equipment, which, I might add, would be destroyed in the event of the threat of capture.”

“The alternative,” Kate said, “is to share our intelligence with the Pakistanis and let them send their people in. They would have the advantage of blending in with the population and would be able to travel openly in daylight.”

“I seem to recall,” Will said, “that a couple of years ago we requested a similar mission from the Pakistanis. How long did it take them to mount it? Does anyone remember?”

“Three weeks,” Kate said.