Brad Thor - Blowback

Alomari was seething, and subconsciously his hand began to move for his pistol. When he realized what he was doing, he tried to calm himself. Not here. Not now. It must be someplace else, away from witnesses.

As Gökhan Celik left the taverna, the assassin came to the conclusion that the Scorpion had made a very grave error in underestimating him. For that, Gökhan Celik was going to lose his life. The key would be in making it look like an accident, but accidents were the al-Qaeda operative’s specialty.

An hour later, his anger only partially cooled, Khalid Alomari crossed the lobby of the most elegant hotel in Athens, the Grande Bretagne. He was disgusted not only with how the Scorpion conducted business but also with how he protected, or more appropriately didn’t protect, his people. Gökhan Celik was supposed to be the man’s most important lieutenant, but the Scorpion allowed him to stay, unguarded, in the same suite of the same hotel every time he came to Athens. The Scorpion’s reputation might frighten most of the people who knew him, but it didn’t frighten Khalid Alomari, especially when so much money was on the line.

“How dare you?” demanded Celik as Alomari forced his way into the suite and knocked the old man to the floor.

“I want to know everything you know about Emir Tokay and who he was talking to before he disappeared.”

“You’ve already been told that’s no longer any of your concern.”

“You should have paid me what you owe me, Gökhan.”

“What do we owe you? You failed. We owe you nothing.”

“It was a small price compared to what it’s going to cost you now.”

“What do you mean, what it’s going to cost us now?”

“We both know that Emir Tokay has knowledge you don’t want anyone else to have. I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m going to sell him back to the Scorpion at ten times what you should have paid me,” replied the assassin as he slammed his foot down into the old man’s hip and heard the bone snap like dry kindling.

“You are a dead man!” howled Celik.

“Everyone must die,” replied Alomari, “but not all of us get to choose when. Answer my question and I will let you live. Who was Emir talking to before he disappeared?”

Celik spat at the pants leg of his attacker. “I will see you dead. Do you understand me? Do you know what Akrep will do to you?”

Alomari shook the spit from his trouser leg and said, “You have cheated me out of what is rightfully mine. Do you just expect me to slink away? I will give you one last chance to answer my question. What do you know about Tokay?”

Celik glared at the man in defiance.

“You should have known I wouldn’t give up, Gökhan. Things will only get worse from here. If you do not answer me, I will track down your daughter and your grandchildren, and they will be next. I am a man of my word. You know I will do it. Even if it takes me the next five years of my life, I will not stop until I have visited upon them deaths more horrible than any you can possibly imagine.”

Celik’s body was trembling.

“What will it be, Gökhan?”

“Akrep will know you did this.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alomari as he withdrew an empty hypodermic syringe from his sport coat pocket. “Embolisms are quite regrettable, but not uncommon in men of your age. Our friend the Scorpion may have his suspicions, but with the fall you took that broke your hip, I don’t think they will trouble him for too long.”

“You will be punished for this,” moaned Celik.

“As you will have Allah’s ear in Paradise before I do, I am certain you will do all you can to make that so. In the meantime, it is not too late for you to save your family.”

Celik didn’t need any further convincing to know the man was telling the truth. The assassin’s reputation was assurance enough.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

NEXT DAY

The president stood staring through the glass doors of the Oval Office onto the Rose Garden and said, “I couldn’t be more serious. I want this entire thing to go away, Chuck. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. Believe me, we all want it to go away, but just wishing isn’t going to make it happen. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Not now.”

“I don’t care about putting it back in the goddamn bottle,” snapped Rutledge as he turned to face his chief of staff. “I just don’t want some self-aggrandizing senator forwarding her career by pulling the mask off of one of the good guys. After everything he’s given to his country, forcing Scot Harvath to wear a scarlet letter is not only unfair, it’s just plain wrong.”

“With all due respect, sir,” replied Charles Anderson, “it’s not Harvath she wants wearing that scarlet letter. It’s you.”

The president turned away from the doors and walked back over behind his desk. “Then why doesn’t she come after me?”

“She is coming after you, Jack. This is how it’s done. You know that.”

“Well, the way it’s done stinks.”

“I’ll second that,” agreed Anderson.

“You don’t ruin good people who this country depends on. If she wants me, she should come get me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when she gets here. If you have any compromising photographs of yourself that you’d like to hand over to me now, maybe I could get her to agree to a trade.”

The president appeared to smile, but it could have very well been only a grimace as he mentally moved on to his next topic. “What do we have from the Joint Chiefs and USAMRIID?”

Anderson removed a briefing report from the folder in front of him and said, “It’s not good. USAMRIID has cultured the illness, but it seems resistant to everything they’re throwing at it. They’ve got representatives from the CDC and the Mayo Clinic’s exotic disease department working with them now, but they’ve yet to make any progress. At least it’s still contained to that one incident in Asalaam.”

“For now,” replied the president, “and that’s only because for the moment it suits the purposes of whoever’s behind this thing. What’s our state of readiness if it makes an appearance here?”

Anderson referred back to his briefing report and replied, “First responders are going to be primary care physicians and hospital emergency rooms. We’ve put out a bulletin via the Healthwatch system to report any cases involving the symptoms we’re aware of to their local public health department. Those departments will report back to a crisis center at the Department of Homeland Security. The key is being able to contain any outbreak as quickly as possible.”

“What do we do if we can’t contain it?”

Anderson tried to calm the president. “Let’s worry about that if and when it happens.”

“Chuck, you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. They may have finally been able to come up with the biggest stick on the playground. A stick that spares only the most faithful to their beliefs.”

“Which makes us confident there has got to be a way around it-a way to be immunized against it.”

Rutledge wanted to share his chief of staff’s optimism, but he’d always been one to prepare for the worst and then, and only then, hope for the best. “If we can’t contain it and we can’t immunize against it, what then?”

“USAMRIID is still developing scenarios.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. What are we talking about worst case?”

The president’s chief of staff was reluctant to answer, but he had little choice. “Worst case, we initiate the Campfire protocol to guarantee we stop this thing dead in its tracks.”

The color drained from Rutledge’s face. “Making me the first U.S. president to ever authorize a thermonuclear strike on his own soil and against his own people.”