The President Is Missing(40)

Overhead, the first sounds from a turbulent sky. Thunder but no lightning. No rain yet. The lights in the ballpark are already on, so the darkening of the sky has little effect.

I lean into him, peering into his eyes. “Is this a history lesson? Or are you telling me something is imminent?”

He blinks. Swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Something is imminent,” he says, his voice changing.

“How imminent?”

“A matter of hours,” he says.

My blood goes cold.

“What are we talking about, exactly?” I ask.

“You know this already.”

Of course I do. But I want to hear him say it. I’m not giving anything away for free.

“Tell me,” I say.

“The virus,” he says. “The one you saw for a moment”—he snaps his fingers—“before it disappeared. The reason for your phone call to Suliman Cindoruk. The virus you have not been able to locate. The virus that has baffled your team of experts. The virus that terrifies you to the core. The virus you will never stop without us.”

I glance around, look for anyone paying close attention to us. Nobody.

“The Sons of Jihad is behind this?” I whisper. “Suliman Cindoruk?”

“Yes. You were correct about that.”

I swallow over the lump forming in my throat. “What does he want?”

Augie blinks hard, his expression changing, confusion. “What does he want?”

“Yes,” I say. “Suliman Cindoruk. What does he want?”

“This I do not know.”

“You don’t…” I sit back in my seat. What is the point of a ransom demand if you don’t know what you’re demanding? Money, a prisoner release, a pardon, a change in foreign policy—something. He came here to threaten me, to get something, but he doesn’t know what he wants?

Maybe his job is to demonstrate the threat. Someone else, later, will make the demand. Possible, but it doesn’t feel right to me.

And then it comes to me. It was always a possibility, but as I contemplated the potential scenarios for tonight, it was never very high on my list.

“You’re not here representing Suliman Cindoruk,” I say.

He raises his shoulders. “My interests are no longer…aligned with Suli, that is true.”

“They once were. You were part of the Sons of Jihad.”

A snarl curls his upper lip, color rising to his face, fire in his eyes. “I was,” he says. “But no longer.”

His anger, that emotional response—resentment toward the SOJ or its leader, a power struggle, perhaps—is something I tuck away for later, something I might be able to use.

The crack of a bat on a ball. The crowd rises, cheers. Music plays from the speakers. Someone hit a home run. It feels like we are light-years removed from a baseball game right now.

I open my hands. “So tell me what you want.”

He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. No chet.

The first sprinkle of rain hits my hand. Light, sporadic, nothing heavy, bringing groans from the crowd but no movement, no rush for shelter.

“We go now,” says Augie.

“We?”

“Yes, we.”

A shudder passes through me. But I assumed this encounter would eventually move to a different location. It’s not safe, but neither was this meeting. Nothing about this is safe.

“Okay,” I say and push myself out of the seat.

“Your phone,” he says. “Hold it in your hand.”

I look at him with a question.

He stands up, too, and nods. “You will understand why in a moment,” he says.





Chapter

26



Breathe. Relax. Aim. Squeeze.

Bach lies on the rooftop, her breathing even, her nerves still, her eye looking through the scope of the rifle down at the baseball stadium, the left-field gate. Remembering the words of Ranko, her first teacher, the toothpick jutting out from the side of his mouth, his fiery red, stalklike hair—a scarecrow whose hair caught fire, as he once described himself.

Align your body with the weapon. Think of the rifle as part of your body. Aim your body, not the weapon.

You must remain steady.

Choose your aiming point, not your target.

Pull straight back on the trigger. Your index finger is separate from the rest of your hand.

No, no—you jerked the weapon. Keep the rest of the hand still. You’re not breathing. Breathe normally.

Breathe. Relax. Aim. Squeeze.

The first drop of rain hits her neck. The rain could accelerate events rapidly.

She moves her head away from the sniper scope and raises her binoculars to check on her teams.

Team 1 to the north of the exit, three men huddled together, speaking and laughing, by all appearances nothing more than three friends meeting one another on the street and conversing.

Team 2 to the south of the exit, doing the same thing.

Immediately below her perch, across the street from the stadium, out of her sight, should be team 3, similarly huddled together, ready to stop any escape headed in their direction.

The exit will be surrounded, the teams prepared to close in like a boa constrictor.

“He is leaving his seat.”

Her heart does a flip, adrenaline pumping through her, as the words spill from her earbud.