"I know you are lying." Karim smiled.

"No, I'm not," the man pleaded.

"Really... tell me then why you were trying to get into the storage room across the hall."

"I..." the man stammered, "was looking around... that's all. I swear. It's my job to know what's going on around here."

Karim nodded for Aabad to put the gag back on. The man struggled and fought him every step of the way. When it was secure, Karim stuck the tip of the knife back under the nail and slid it back and forth. The man bucked and writhed in pain. Karim waited for it to pass and then asked him, "Who do you work for?"

With the gag off the man sputtered, "I'm a carpenter. I work for myself." He craned his head around and said, "Aabad, please tell him. You know me."

"He doesn't know you," Karim laughed. "No one here really knows you, do they?"

"That is not true."

"Yes it is." Karim held up the knife. A drop of the man's blood ran down the silver blade. "I will ask you one more time, who you work for. If you lie to me the toe comes off. Now... who do you work for?"

The man's eyes were filled with fear. "I told you who I work for. I work for myself. I don't know why you're doing this."

Karim gave the signal and the gag was slipped back on. It took all their combined strength to hold him down this time. Karim sat on the man's legs and when he had him reasonably still he pressed down on the big toe of the right foot. The man jerked and the cut was imperfect, the blade slicing through most of the big toe as well as the one next to it. The man's screams were muffled by the gag, but he was writhing in pain. Karim waited for him to lie still for a moment, and then he quickly cut the remaining tendons on the big toe. Things continued like this for thirty more minutes and two more toes, until the man, sobbing uncontrollably, uttered the acronym that Karim had been looking for.

"The CIA."

It was a strange victory. He had broken him, but he had also confirmed their worst fears. "Who is your handler?" Karim asked, his mouth only a few inches from the man's ear. The gag was off. The man no longer had the energy to fight. He hesitated, so Karim jammed the tip of the knife into one of the stumps on the right foot. The man started to scream, but Aabad was right there with a towel. He stuffed it in the man's face and waited for him to stop.

"Who is your handler?" Karim repeated.

"Mike..." the man's voice trailed off.

"Mike who?" Karim asked while grabbing him by the shoulders.

"Mike Nash."

Karim let him go. It was a name he knew. Al-Qaeda had key sources inside both Saudi Intelligence and Pakistani Intelligence. As part of his plan, Karim had asked for the flowchart of American counterterrorism operations. He wanted to know who he was up against and how they would respond to his attacks. He also wanted the ability to turn the hunter into the hunted.

"Mike Nash," Karim said to the man. "Former U.S. Marine, married, four children, lives in Arlington or Alexandria, I can't remember which one. Is that the same Mike Nash you work for?" The man did not answer. "The same Mike Nash who reports to Mitch Rapp?" he asked in a lighthearted voice.

The man looked up at him with confused eyes and said, "Who are you?"

"Ah," Karim said in a happy voice, "you don't know how pleasing it is to me that you have no idea who I am. Now let's get back to what we were talking about."

Over the next hour Karim coaxed as much information out of the man as he dared. He knew there would be protocols in place for an operative like this, but since he had no way of checking them, he wasn't sure it was worth pursuing. Instead, he focused on what the man had discovered at the mosque and what he had already passed on to his handlers. What he learned was that nothing of any value had been relayed. Indeed, the only only thing that had been passed along was the fact Aabad had been shooting his mouth off that something big was going to be happening. That and the delivery of the supplies that had been placed under lock and key. Karim questioned him for thirty minutes on this one point alone. When he was done he felt extremely confident that the CIA had nothing more than suspicions. thing that had been passed along was the fact Aabad had been shooting his mouth off that something big was going to be happening. That and the delivery of the supplies that had been placed under lock and key. Karim questioned him for thirty minutes on this one point alone. When he was done he felt extremely confident that the CIA had nothing more than suspicions.

Karim left the room and took a long moment to make sure he had everything figured out. Was it worth it to push it a little more? That was the question he kept asking himself. It was now nearly 1:00 in the morning. He doubted the man had a midnight check-in, but even if he did, this Mike Nash was likely asleep. Nothing would happen until morning, Karim decided, so he called Hakim using one of the disposable phones and ordered him to remove the back three benches from the van and return to the mosque with two of the men.

There were twenty-five cardboard boxes, each one weighing forty pounds. They were sealed and had USAID stenciled in blue on the sides. The contents of the boxes were courtesy of the U.S. government, but they could hardly be considered humanitarian aid. Each box was loaded with U.S. military C-4 plastic explosives. The shipment had been lost in Kuwait and ended up on the black market. Karim ordered Aabad to unlock the storage room and have his men begin placing the boxes on the delivery elevator. Hakim arrived twenty minutes later. His lack of enthusiasm for the change in plan was apparent from the moment he set foot in the door.

He came down to the basement and said, "We need to leave right now."

Karim smiled and calmly said, "We are fine. I have thoroughly interrogated him. I will explain it all to you later. Right now we need to load the boxes into the van." Karim pointed at the delivery elevator, which already had eight boxes loaded.

"But they will come looking for him," Hakim said as he nervously moved about.

"Yes, eventually, but I do not expect them before morning. Now, don't argue with me," he said in a surprisingly happy tone. "Let's get moving."

The first load of twelve cases was sent up, as more boxes were brought down the hall. It was like a fire brigade, with four men in the basement, passing the boxes from the room, down the hall, and onto the rusted metal platform of the elevator. Then up they went and into the back of the van. With seven people helping, they had the van loaded in less than fifteen minutes.

As they were preparing to leave, Aabad inserted himself between Karim and Hakim and in an extremely agitated state asked, "What should we do with him?" He pointed back down through the hole in the sidewalk where the delivery elevator was descending.

The him, him, they had found out, was a twenty-nine-year-old American named Chris Johnson. He had done two tours in Afghanistan and another in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. After his last tour he was recruited by Mike Nash to join a counterterrorism group within the CIA. There was actually no question what would be done with him, it was simply who would do it. they had found out, was a twenty-nine-year-old American named Chris Johnson. He had done two tours in Afghanistan and another in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. After his last tour he was recruited by Mike Nash to join a counterterrorism group within the CIA. There was actually no question what would be done with him, it was simply who would do it.

"Kill him," Karim said, as if he was ordering him to move another box.

Aabad looked at the ground and began mumbling to himself as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I..." he started to say, and then stopped.

"You can do it," Hakim hissed as he looked at Karim.

Karim looked from one end of the block to the other and thought they were pushing their luck. Now was not the time to stand around and debate the issue. To Hakim he said, "Wait for me in the van." To Aabad, he said, "Follow me."

Karim walked back into the mosque and down to the storage room. He looked at the bloody prisoner on the floor. He had already inflicted a great deal of pain on the man, but he still didn't feel it was enough. He decided he would not simply put him out of his misery. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he said to Aabad, "Do you have a video camera?"

"Yes, in the office."

"Get it." He ordered.

Aabad went down the hall and returned ten seconds later with the camera in hand.

"Turn it on and make sure you do not get my face." Karim pulled the hood on his sweatshirt over his head and turned his back to Aabad. "Is it recording?"

"Yes."

"Move in for a close-up after I'm done." Karim reached down and pulled Johnson's head back. He looked into the agent's tired eyes and said, "You are a deceiver, and you have insulted all of Islam. There will be a special place in hell for you."

Karim placed the blade against the throat just beneath the Adam's apple and drew the knife across the thin layer of flesh. The cut opened up pink, and then white, and then crimson as the blood began pouring out in a sheet. Karim stood upright and watched Johnson begin to choke on his own blood. It took a good thirty seconds for the agent to submit to his own death, and then he lay still on the blood-soaked floor.

Karim wiped the blood off the blade with what was left of the man's torn shirt and then said to Aabad, "Wrap him up in a prayer rug, bring him to an area where no one will see you, douse him in gasoline, and burn him."

CHAPTER 54

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA.

NASH woke up to the sound of his beeping watch at 6:30. He slid out of bed without any thought of the night before or anything else, for that matter. He knew if he did not keep his head down and his mind focused he would never get out the door. The shorts, socks, shirt, and long-sleeved pullover were sitting on the overstuffed chair in the corner of the bedroom where he had placed them before bed. He picked up the stack and quietly slid downstairs. In the mudroom he stripped off his sleep pants and put on his running gear. After a glass of cold tap water he stopped by the back door and opened the cupboard at the top of his cubby. On the top shelf sat a black biometric gun safe. He placed his right thumb over the glass eye, and a second later the safe beeped and the door popped open. There were three pistols and two extra magazines of ammunition for each.

Nash grabbed the Glock 23 off the top shelf, put it in his right hand, and with his left hand pulled back on the slide. He looked down and confirmed that the chamber was empty. He then yanked the slide all the way back and put one round in the tube. That left him nine more in the grip. He stowed the compact .40-caliber pistol in his fanny pack with his keys and one of his phones, which he didn't bother to turn on. Nash turned the alarm off and then turned it back on before leaving and locking the door again. He did all of this without putting any thought into it. "Good habits breed success," was what his high school wrestling coach had always said. In the Corps, the mantra was, "Discipline is what gives us the edge." Now in this next stage of life it was Rapp telling him flatly, "You fuck up one time and you're dead."

Nash hit the sidewalk running. There were only two cars parked on the broad tree-lined street and they were both familiar. The Jeep Wrangler belonged to the Gilsdorfs, and the Honda Accord belonged to the Krauses. He headed for Zachary Taylor Park. There and back was three miles, and if he couldn't do it in less than twenty minutes it would probably ruin his day. Right up until the explosion, he consistently did it in under eighteen minutes.

Nash ran for a lot of reasons, but more than any other, it was the clarity of thought it gave him. He'd made his toughest decisions during runs. He'd solved some of the biggest problems he'd faced, or at least figured out ways to get out of some pretty tough jams. This morning was no different. As his feet got lighter and he hit his stride it was like the beat of a drum in his head. First and foremost on his mind was Rory. The pain Nash felt over not being there for his family hurt every bit as bad as a piece of hot shrapnel slicing through his skin. Some things were going to have to change. He wasn't sure what, but he did know that Rory needed him in his corner. He knew his wife well enough to know that despite what he had told her last night, she would strut that pretty little ass of hers into school and try to smooth things over.

"Not going to let that happen," Nash said to himself as he pounded it out.

He was on call to go up to the Hill and testify. Kennedy had made it clear there was no way she would allow him to testify in an open hearing. If the Judiciary Committee closed it, they could compel him, but not if it was open. He hadn't a clue as to how that whole mess was going to turn out, but Rapp seemed extremely confident that it would be fine. For the rest of the run he put together a mental list of things he needed to get done. Some were mundane, like the call he had to make to personnel about the auto-deposit they kept fucking up on one of his overseas operatives, and others were a little more tricky. Like explaining to Rapp and Ridley that he'd allowed Chris Johnson to stay in the field. Rapp probably wouldn't give a shit but Ridley was likely to pop a bolt.

When he got back to the house, Maggie was in the kitchen feeding Charlie the gourmet baby food that made his poops smell so bad. He kissed the head of fine blond hair first and then the head of thick black hair.

"Good morning," he said as he walked to the sink for a glass of water.

"Morning," she replied, without any warmth.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Like crap. How about you?"

"Surprisingly well." Nash reached for the hand towel to wipe the sweat from his face.

As Maggie slid a spoonful of food into Charlie's mouth, she said, "You'd better not be using one of my dish towels to wipe your sweaty face."

Nash looked at the back of his wife's head and wondered how she'd known. He set the towel down and walked around the island. Charlie looked up at him with a gummy smile and a blob of something green at the corner of his mouth. Nash looked at him wildly and mouthed the word Charlie had been so fond of the day before. Charlie's little feet started dancing and he blurted it out. Maggie groaned and put her head down on the table, defeated by a one-year-old.

"Nice work, honey," Nash said as he left the room and headed upstairs for a shower.

Thirty minutes later he was back downstairs, cleanly shaven and dressed in the gray three-button Joseph Abboud suit his wife had got him for his birthday. Nash sat down at the computer in the office and logged on to his personal e-mail account. There were nine new e-mails since he'd checked it last night. He quickly scanned the From column for Johnson's name. He frowned that there were none. Nash walked over to the bookcase and grabbed his work BlackBerry. He quickly scrolled through thirty-four messages and again came up empty.

Nash felt his stress begin to build as he racked his brain to come up with a reason why Johnson would have disregarded the new protocols. He could think of no good reason and a lot of bad ones. Nash knelt down and opened the cupboard door, revealing a safe. He put his thumb on the reader and then opened the safe and retrieved a Motorola phone. Once the unit was powered up, he called Johnson's apartment. After eight rings, the answering machine came on and he hung up. He then tried his mobile number and again ended up listening to his voice-mail greeting.

The first pinprick of a headache started in his left temple. Nash put his hand up to his head and pressed down. "Not today, please. Not today."

"You all right?"

Nash looked up and saw his wife in the doorway dressed for work. "Yeah, everything is fine."

She looked as if she knew he was full of shit but also knew he more than likely couldn't talk about it. "Rosy just called. She's having car trouble, so she's jumping on the bus. Can you hang out with Charlie until she gets here? I would, but I have a really important client breakfast."

A small kernel of apprehension pushed its way into Nash's thoughts. This was one of those moments in a marriage where something relatively small could blow up into something really big. Nobody liked being wrong, and Maggie had blown it with Rory. And then in her typical stubborn way she'd dug in her heels, and now instead of apologizing for her behavior and putting it behind them, she was throwing out this test. Show me that I'm more important than your job. Show me that you still love me. Show me that I'm more important than your job. Show me that you still love me.

She was hurting in her own very real way from what had happened with Rory. She probably wasn't feeling like the best mother at the moment. Nash thought quickly about how he could make it work. He'd brought Charlie into work before; the problem would be getting him back to the house and then getting downtown for the hearing that was scheduled to start at 9:30. He realized they would never start on time because half the senators would be late, so he said, "Yeah... I can take him into the office with me, and then drop him back off before I go downtown for the hearing."

Maggie's tense expression melted away and a hint of a smile, not a happy one, but a relieved one, formed on her lips. "Great," she said. "I'll get him ready."

CHAPTER 55

ANACOSTIA RIVER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE warehouse looked like something out of an Eastern European country before the fall of the Iron Curtain. More than half of the glass panes were missing from the skylights, and the roof itself was missing small sections. The corrugated metal walls were rusted, dented, and even peeled back in a few spots. Animal droppings dotted the oily concrete and rotted pallets; shredded tires and garbage littered a space approximately half the size of a football field. None of it, however, could cast a pall over Karim's mood.

Aabad had returned just before sunrise with the three men who had helped him, just as Karim had ordered. The body of the spy had been stuffed into the trunk of a stolen car, driven to an abandoned lot, and the entire vehicle set ablaze. Karim thanked all of them for their devotion, and then as the first rays of the morning sun began to poke through the dirty and broken windows, he asked them to stay and pray. All thirteen men faced Mecca and knelt on the dirty floor. Karim's men were not bothered by the filth. They had long ago learned to shut out such things. Aabad and his men, though, were obviously bothered. For a full thirty minutes they prayed, and when they were done, Karim hugged each man and thanked him for his sacrifice, even the three men whom Aabad had brought along.

He asked to have a word alone with Aabad's men and led them back toward the door where they had entered. Karim spoke to them for a few minutes, and then without any consultation or warning, he drew his silenced 9mm Glock and shot each of the three helpers in the head.

Hakim was thunderstruck by the brutality of his friend. He looked around to see if the others shared his reaction, but all he saw were seven men acting as if nothing had happened. Karim had turned them into compassionless robots. Only Aabad was bothered by what had just occurred, but Hakim knew he was too feeble to protest.

Karim came to them across the open space, carrying with him the smell of gunpowder. He smiled and shook his head in a solemn fashion and said, "That was an unfortunate necessity."

Hakim had had enough. "Why?" he blurted out in a confrontational tone.

"Because," Karim said taken aback, "they had seen our faces."

"And what does that matter?"

"The CIA will come looking for their agent. We can hardly afford to leave any loose ends."

"Loose ends," Hakim said, as he pointed at the bodies. "Is that what we call believers now?"

Karim would not allow his upbeat mood to be diminished. "Come now, Hakim, we have discussed this many times. Many have martyred themselves... millions of our brothers... but American Muslims have given nothing. Those three men have martyred themselves and they will be rewarded by Allah. They are on their way to paradise as we speak."

They did not martyr themselves, Hakim thought. You martyred them, or more to the point, killed them. You martyred them, or more to the point, killed them. He did not say it, for fear of his own life. He looked at his friend's placid, almost euphoric face and finally realized just how much he had changed over the last year. He did not say it, for fear of his own life. He looked at his friend's placid, almost euphoric face and finally realized just how much he had changed over the last year.

"Come now," Karim said. "We have much to do. I have decided to move our plan up by two days."

This got everyone's attention. Karim's men were too well disciplined to question their commander, but Aabad was not. "Today?" he asked in an unsteady voice.

"Yes, today," Karim said proudly.

"But I am not ready," Aabad said with his hands fluttering. "My office needs to be gone through... my apartment... there are final things I must do."

"It is out of our hands. The CIA will come looking for their man, and we cannot wait for that. Once they have discovered what has happened, they will raise alarms and our job will become extremely difficult."

"But my plane ticket... I am not to leave until tomorrow. What am I going to do?" Aabad was beside himself.

Karim put a fatherly hand on his friend's shoulder. "Do not worry. I will take care of you. I want you to go to your apartment right now. Get only what you need. One bag," he cautioned him, "and come right back here."

"But..." Aabad started to say.

Karim covered his mouth. "Do not argue. This is a direct order. You must do exactly as I tell you. Now go and be fast." Karim released him.

With great irritation, Hakim wondered why Karim didn't simply shoot the imbecile like he shot everyone else. Instead he watched Aabad anxiously hurry toward the door, looking back every few steps. When he stopped at the door, Karim urged him on by repeating his instructions one more time.