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He kept my gaze, trying to determine if I was telling the truth. And he saw I was.

Jennifer broke the tension, saying, “Because Pike has a way with people. Let’s get on the plane.”

Jahn said, “I hope this is the right thing.”

I said, “Better than being chained to a bed.”

He chuckled and said, “What about my niece? She doesn’t have the same pedigree as me, to say the least.”

“She’s good. Trust me. I have a little experience in that department.”

“But I have no proof about her. I have no birth certificate, no identification, no nothing.”

Amena came forward at that point, taking the niece’s hand and saying, “I’ll take her home. Does she speak Arabic? I don’t speak Pashto.”

Jahn nodded, confused.

Amena spoke a few sentences to the girl and put her arm around her, turning and pointing at me. The girl smiled for the first time ever, and they walked up the stairs.

Jahn said, “Who is that? Why is there a kid here on this?”

I said, “She’s with me. She’s like your niece, only she’s from Syria. She’s now my daughter. Trust me, you’re in good hands.”

He looked at me dumbfounded, then said, “I don’t know what to say.”

I said, “You don’t need to say anything. You helped our country, now you get to enjoy it. Give me a call when you get there. We’ll have a beer.”

He laughed and said, “I don’t drink.”

I said, “Well, you’d better learn, because that’s going to be a detriment in my world.”

He laughed again, and then did what I’d hoped he would. He shook Knuckles’ hand and kissed Jennifer on the cheek, saying, “I’m so sorry that saving my life cost the life of your friend. If I could reverse it, I would.”

Knuckles heard the words and they seemed to mean something to him. He patted Jahn on the shoulder and said, “You getting out is what she wanted. Don’t dwell on the past. Plan for the future.”

Jahn nodded, and in five minutes they were gone.

Chapter25

Jennifer waited until the computer screen cleared, showing a long hallway, then said, “It’s going to be hard to get down that thing without being seen.”

I was glad to see she was thinking about the mission. I was worried about both her and Knuckles, about their ability to continue. I wouldn’t tell the Taskforce that, because I trusted them both, but they were still feeling the loss of Carly.

In Hollywood, someone dies and it’s just a flash of film. In the real world, it bites deep, in ways that could explode like theChallenger,with one small O-ring failure causing a catastrophic event. They could pretend all day long that nothing was wrong, but when the pressure on the O-ring happened, it either held, or it was total destruction.

And I was the NASA scientist who should be calling for a delay of launch. But, like that guy back in 1986, I didn’t.

I said, “Yeah, well, Veep got the camera in there with no issue, so it’s not like it’s impossible.”

We’d been given an address for the supposed mastermind in the target package, and it was in the upper town of Zagreb, where all the old shit existed. We were holed up in a hotel in the lower town called Esplanade, right outside the train station. It was a good place to plan because it had robust Wi-Fi that our VPN could access, and it was only a fifteen-minute walk to the upper town.

The difference was really just a function of time: the upper town was the original part of the city, on a plateau, where the parliament and historical sites were located, and where the streets were built before anyone thought about a car. The lower town was where the real world lived, full of hotels and glass buildings that were the engine of Zagreb.

The target in question was a four-story building that was a mix of apartments and businesses. The bar we’d been given as the source of the penetration was deeper in the building on the same floor, with the Wi-Fi extending weakly to this hallway, although even my Cro-Magnon brain thought it was stupid for anyone to attack anything in the United States using their open Wi-Fi network. And Creed agreed with that assessment.

Using the enormous reach of the United States government, he’d found an apartment under Branko’s name, but had sent a note in the target package saying it made no sense for Branko to use the bar Wi-Fi. Basically telling me it smelled, but that what Dylan Hobbes had said did, in fact, pan out. The apartment was in the same building as the bar.

Made me wonder.