Flash Point by Huston James W

Author:Huston, James W. [Huston, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Mystery
ISBN: 9780061801785
Amazon: 006180178X
Goodreads: 10544863
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2000-05-30T07:00:00+00:00

23

The task force members had gathered in the fusion room, where they waited for Joe Kinkaid. The computers in the room hummed from the satellite photos and data being manipulated by eager agents; a live CNN broadcast played in the back of the room, showing footage of an Israeli air strike into Lebanon. Sami watched it abstractedly. It looked so much like other strike footage he had seen he couldn’t help wondering if they ever just pulled out footage of a similar Israeli air strike and showed it with a new date on it.

Now his attention focused on Joe Kinkaid, who’d just come into the room, looking more rumpled than usual. Sami could tell that Kinkaid wasn’t interested in the latest news reports or anything else. He was very unhappy, and very angry. “I didn’t tell you what Ricketts was doing,” he began, forgoing any preliminaries.

Sami stared, wondering what was coming.

Kinkaid continued, “He was involved in an operation to kidnap the Sheikh.”

Sami looked around to see how many of the task force members were in control of their expressions. Kinkaid wasn’t looking for any reaction as he went on. “He had excellent intelligence of the Sheikh’s whereabouts and set up one of the most creative covert ops I have ever heard of. The Sheikh was about to walk into the trap this morning, while you were all sleeping soundly in your beds.” Kinkaid reached for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, forgetting that it hadn’t been there for ten years. “Apparently the Israelis had the same intelligence we did. The air strike they conducted this morning was against many targets all over southern Lebanon, but one of the targets was the place where the Sheikh was supposed to be this morning. Ricketts was standing right in the middle of it. There was some thought that the explosives Ricketts was . . . using, might have gone off at the wrong time. But we don’t think so. The Israelis hit the building with two one-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs and blew it to hell.”

Sami winced. He had enjoyed his evening conversation with Ricketts. It had ranged from the general untrustworthiness of the Israelis to the stupidity of Syria and various terrorist groups. They had discussed Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the future of the United States in the Middle East, and the Agency’s role in the area. Sami had asked Ricketts what guided him through all the confusion. Loyalty to the United States had been his response. Not the answer Sami had expected. Ricketts had actually said loyalty to the U.S. Sometimes it was tricky, but that was his guide. And look where it got him, Sami thought.

One of the members of the task force from the Directorate of Intelligence, the same directorate Sami was part of, asked angrily, “When are the piss-ant Israelis going to start telling us when they have an operation this big going down so we can stay out of the way?”

Kinkaid agreed. “That was the first question that occurred to me too.

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