Alex Lukeman - The Cup

"On my way."

A few minutes later she took her place on the couch with her laptop. The baby was asleep. Nick gave silent thanks for small favors and laid it out for them. He told them about Adam's reappearance and that the Grail was in Syria. He told them what Adam had said about the prophecy. He left out the part about being in a war between good and evil. Then he told them ISIS had built a nuclear bomb.

"Adam told me when I was in the car. Hood confirmed it."

"Is he sure?" Ronnie asked. "ISIS has a nuke?"

"Yes. Hood has an informant somewhere in the organization. He said the analysts think they've found the lab where it was built, a couple of hours out of Raqqa. He was going to send us to look at it but things have changed. He's setting up a Delta mission to go in and check out the site."

"That's the worst news I've heard since 9/11," Ronnie said.

"They plan to set it off here, in the states. If they succeed, it will make 9/11 look like a preview to the main attraction.”

"They have to get it into the country first," Lamont said.

"You know they can do it," Ronnie said. "Our borders make Swiss cheese look like a brick wall."

"Langley's on it," Nick said. "It's not our job to deal with the bomb."

"Can't say I'm sorry about that," Lamont said.

"ISIS knows the Grail is in Syria. Our job is to retrieve it before they do."

"Do they know it's in Darraya?" Selena asked.

"Adam didn't say that, only that they knew it was in Syria. But it's safe to assume that if they figured out that much, Darraya can't be far behind."

Stephanie said, "I don't know if it's relevant, but I think I've identified the man who's been sending people after you, the one who's looking for the Grail."

She put a picture up on the monitor of an unsmiling man with grim eyes.

"Everything's relevant," Nick said. "Who is he?"

"His name is Abu Abdul Haddad. He's close to al-Baghdadi, one of the ranking members in ISIS leadership. He's in charge of foreign intelligence, surveillance, things like that."

"Our spymaster," Selena said.

"Yes. He thought his phone was secure but he was wrong."

"If ISIS finds out the Grail is in Darraya, he'll send someone after it," Selena said.

Nick drummed his fingers on Harker's desk.

Now I see why she does this all the time, he thought..

"I'll tell Hood. If we can spot him, we can take him out. It might buy us some breathing room. Good work, Steph."

She smiled at him. "My pleasure."

Nick pulled out Adam's map.

"This shows where the Grail is supposed to be hidden."

"Let me have it," Steph said. "I can put it up on the monitor."

She came over to the desk and he handed it to her. There was a scanner on the corner of Harker's desk. Steph smoothed the map out on the desktop and placed it in the scanner. With a few keystrokes on her laptop, the map appeared on the wall monitor where everyone could look at it.

Stephanie entered a new command and a satellite photograph of Darraya appeared on the screen next to the map. She zoomed in on the area Adam had circled in red.

"Man, that place looks like pictures of Berlin in 1945," Lamont said.

Darraya had been a popular tourist spot known for its crafts and cafés, but it wasn't a place to visit anymore. The satellite photograph showed streets lined with the pockmarked shells of buildings and filled with piles of rubble. Everything had been bombed or hit by artillery shells and heavy weapons fire. It was hard to imagine that people still lived there.

"Zoom out a little," Nick said.

From a wider point of view they saw that the city was surrounded by hostile forces. Assad's troops were everywhere, supported by tanks and heavy artillery.

"More like Stalingrad than Berlin," Ronnie said. "You gotta hand it to the rebels. Those guys are tough bastards. Too bad they're not on our side."

"That's one of the problems," Nick said. "They're not."

He opened the drawer of the desk. Elizabeth kept a laser pointer in it. He found the pointer, clicked it on and pointed out the spot on the satellite photograph where the library was indicated on the map. It was almost in the center of the city.

"Hell of a place to go just to get a book," Lamont said.

Getting into a city surrounded by enemy troops and under siege was bad enough. The surrounding region was equally hostile and that made it worse. If they went overland they would almost certainly be discovered. Nick had no illusions about what would happen then.

They talked it through and decided the only way in to the target was a high-altitude, high opening jump. Nick and Ronnie had each made one during their time in Marine Recon. Lamont and Selena had never done it.

HAHO jumps were dangerous and difficult and were only used when the risk of the aircraft being shot down on approach was extremely high. For Darraya, coming in over the target low or high was not an option. They would be over enemy territory, lighting up enemy radar. Assad's antiaircraft missile batteries wouldn't miss. They were modern and deadly, courtesy of the Iranians.

The advantage of a HAHO jump was that they could leave the plane some distance away from the target and glide in undetected. They could approach the Lebanese coast without being blown out of the air. The distance from the coast to Darraya was at the edge of HAHO capability, but it could be done.

That left the problem of getting out again. Nick called Hood and told him the Grail was in Darraya and that he wanted to take the team in to get it. He didn't tell Hood about Adam.

"I'm beginning to understand how good Director Harker is at this. I never thought much about how she got us the support we needed or where it came from. I just figured it was part of her job."

"You're the acting director now, Nick, and you seem to be doing rather well at it. You're going to have to learn on the run. Stephanie can help you with some of it. But Elizabeth had all the threads in her fingers."

"I need your help," Nick said. "The only way in there without being detected is a HAHO jump."

"That makes sense, given the situation," Hood said. "Give me a day and I can line up what you need."

"Getting in is one thing. I'm wondering how the hell we're going to get out."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Hood said, "Let me call you back in about an hour."

Hood disconnected. An hour and a half later he called.

"I had to get your security clearance upgraded before I could tell you this," he said. "You need it anyway since you're running the Project until Elizabeth recovers. DARPA has developed an experimental stealth helicopter for penetration into enemy territory. It's fast, well armed and damn near invisible. It's also quiet. It's perfect for what you need."

"Will the Pentagon go along with it? They're protective of their toys."

"They'll go along with it," Hood said. "It gives them a chance to put it through its paces and see if everything works in a real life combat situation."

"To see if everything works?"

"I told you it was experimental. It's never been tried in combat."

"You mean we'd be guinea pigs."

"In a way. Unless you have a better idea…?"

He left the question dangling.

"Could we use it to go in?"

"I don't think I can persuade them to do that," Hood said. "They'll risk it for an extraction if I tell them it's important. They won't want to make a double run, it's too much to ask."

"Half a ride is better than none," Nick said.

Darraya was a city pulled from a madman's darkest dreams. The deserted shells of burnt out buildings formed black and menacing shapes against the night sky. There were no lights to be seen. A light would have drawn an instant hail of sniper fire or worse. The only illumination came from smoldering fires and artillery flashes in the distance, or when a shell landed and exploded.