in the area, and not targeted specifically by the guys from Gaza.”
Dom thought about it for a moment. “Make it look random to protect whomever it was who passed the intel about Yacoby and his whereabouts?”
“Possibly. I don’t know. Let’s not overspeculate.”
“Fair point.” Dom picked at the bandage on his arm, then said, “The more important question is, how did they find out about him?”
Gerry said, “Unknown at this point. I wonder if the Israelis have a traitor on their hands.”
“Shit,” mumbled Dom. Then he said, “You know what, Gerry? I was about two seconds away from getting a gun site on the back of the suicide bomber’s skull. I could have prevented their deaths.”
“Don’t think like that. I know you did a hell of a job. The report from the Indians is you killed multiple attackers yourself.”
Dom wasn’t listening. His mind was back at the Yacobys’ farm. “Arik had two boys.”
“I know, son. I know.”
“If I’d made it upstairs a little faster, I just might have—”
Hendley’s southern drawl boomed over the sat phone. “You just might have been blown to bits with the rest of them! Look, Dom. I can’t tell you how to get past this. I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” After a pause he said, “You’ve been through this sort of thing before.”
Dom had been through this sort of thing before. His twin brother, Brian, also an operative for The Campus, had died in his arms two years earlier. Dom knew he had changed since his brother’s death, and he feared the changes weren’t for the better.
“With Brian, you mean?”
“Yes. I was the one who sent you and your brother to Libya. That weighs on me every day.”
Dom countered without reservation, because he’d never blamed Gerry for what happened. “You made the right call. What we were doing needed to be done. Brian just got the short end of the stick.”
“And so did Arik Yacoby and his family. There’s nothing you can do about it, and no sense replaying that night over in your head for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, sir.” Caruso forced the thoughts of the dead family in India out of his head. “What’s the fallout going to be for The Campus on this?”
“Hard to say. We don’t know how al-Qassam knew about Yacoby, so we can’t gauge your exposure yet.”
Dom knew what Hendley was thinking. “Until you know how the intel got out about him and his location, you don’t know if I’ve been burned as well. For now I need to stay away from The Campus. From the guys.”
Gerry said, “Shouldn’t be hard to do. The rest of the team is spread out around the world. I’ll keep everyone where they are, but you take some time off. Just take it easy.”
Dom chuckled into the sat phone, but his heart wasn’t in the chuckle. “I was already on stand down before this happened. Now you’re telling me to get lost.”
“No. I’m telling you to get better. Ms. Sherman tells me you’ll need some recovery time. While you’re doing that, this situation will subside. I can instruct the pilots to take you wherever you want to go. You want Adara to find you a resort hotel somewhere in the Rockies? A beach house in Hawaii? Someplace you can take it easy until everything blows over?”
“Honestly, Gerry, I just want to go home. Back to D.C.”
“Fair enough. Get some rest, Adara will take care of you.”
7
H ARLAN B ANFIELD was a print journalist by trade; he’d been at it for more than forty years and he certainly looked the part. He was small and frumpy, with permanently messy silver hair and bright gray eyes that conveyed kindness and empathy even when they were locked on a politician he was interviewing for the purposes of writing an excoriating hit piece.
Harlan’s day had begun in College Park, Maryland, at a breakfast meeting for an association of foreign correspondents. He’d been a foreign correspondent himself, with bylines from places as far away as Ho Chi Minh City and Montevideo, and
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