Sword of God(40)

He smiled at her story, glad to know something about her background that wasn’t found in a personnel file. “I have to admit I was skeptical at first. But truthfully, things have worked out well. Of course, I’m still not sure how you convinced Harrington to give you a chance. There had to be dozens of other applicants who spoke Korean.”

“There probably were. But unlike most of them, I’m also pretty good with Arabic.”

Payne froze, his warning sensors going off. “Excuse me?”

“I speak Korean, Arabic, Japanese—”

“Hold up.” Payne glanced around to make sure no one was listening. He lowered his voice just to be safe. “Arabic was one of your requirements?”

She nodded. “Korean and Arabic, though I’m not sure why Arabic was so important. It’s not very common in this part of the world.”

“Sonofabitch!” Payne mumbled. A major piece of the puzzle had just fallen into his lap, and he needed to act on it immediately. “Kia, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for dinner.”

“We don’t?”

“No,” he said as he stood from the table. “We have to leave now.”





23


Payne hustled back to his suite, where he roused Jones from his nap. Meanwhile, Kia was dispatched to find Mr. Lee, whose local knowledge might come in handy.

Jones said, “You’re telling me Arabic was a requirement of her job posting?”

Payne nodded. “Which means Harrington was expecting Arab witnesses.”

“Or prisoners.”

“Which supports our terrorist theory. It also explains something Kim said. He mentioned hearing ancient voices, like the Devil speaking in tongues. That’s how Arabic might sound to someone who’s never heard it before.”

Jones agreed, then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He had showered before falling asleep so he was ready to leave whenever necessary. “Any word from Dial?”

“Not yet. But it’s only been a few hours. Nick’s good, but not that good.”

“Unfortunately, Arabic doesn’t do much to limit our candidates.”

“Sure it does,” Payne joked. “Only three hundred million people speak Arabic as their main language. We’ve just eliminated several billion suspects in the world.”

Jones gurgled in front of the sink. “G-g-g-g-g-ooood point.” He spit for emphasis.

“The thing that confuses me the most is Harrington. What’s with all his games? He dragged us here under false pretenses, then gave us only half the intel we needed to succeed. That doesn’t make sense to me. Why bring us in if he wants us to fail?” Payne paused, thinking back to their plane trip with Harrington. “Do you remember what he said when you asked him about Schmidt’s latest missions? He told you it was none of your goddamned business. That should’ve told us something right there. He’s been keeping stuff from us from the very beginning.”

Jones emerged from the bathroom. “Unless he hasn’t been.”

“What does that mean?”

“Who knows? Maybe Harrington isn’t messing with us. There might be other possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe he’s a crappy colonel.”

Payne laughed. “A crappy colonel?”

“Maybe he’s not keeping us in the dark. Maybe he’s just clueless.”

“Sorry, but I didn’t get that sense in Pittsburgh. He seemed pretty perceptive.”

“Fine. Then maybe it’s something else.”

“Like what?”

Jones paused, trying to think of an alternative. “Maybe he’s in the dark, too.”

“In what sense?”

“Well, we used to run black ops. How often did we report to our superiors?”

Payne smiled. “Not as often as we were supposed to.”

“Exactly! So maybe the same thing happened here. Maybe Schmidt followed our example and failed to tell his boss what was going on. Days go by and Harrington finally sends someone to check up on him. And when he got there, he found the cave covered in blood.”

“You know, that’s not half bad.”

Jones nodded, impressed with his own theory. “Actually, it would explain a lot. Early on I asked Harrington when Schmidt was last seen, and he said he didn’t know. Then I asked him where, and he didn’t know that either. That sounds like a soldier who didn’t report very often. Just like us back in the day.”

“Which might explain Harrington’s comment about the MANIACs. He said we were being brought in because we thought differently than normal soldiers. He must’ve figured we’d be able to piece together Schmidt’s final mission, maybe shed some light on what happened here.”