Stark stood. He referred to some papers he had on the desk in front of him.

“We are moving along at a very fast pace, uncovering, then following up on leads. In the past eight hours, special operations units have raided dozens of known and suspected militant compounds throughout Iraq—both in Sunni- and Shiite-held areas, in the mountains of northern Syria and western Iran, in Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, and Yemen, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates all assure us they are doing the same within their own borders—for obvious political reasons, we cannot make incursions on their territory.

“Thus far, we have inflicted enemy casualties in the many hundreds, possibly thousands. I regret that we have also already lost over thirty men in these raids, with at least another ninety wounded. We have managed to keep these casualty tallies out of the newspapers for now, but eventually that information is going to be leaked.”

“What is the upshot of all this?” Baylor said.

Stark shrugged. It was an oddly ineffectual movement. “It’s a needle in a haystack, Mr. President. Countless intelligence agents are poring over data, seeking to find a clue as to where she may be held. There are hundreds of suspected militant sites. For obvious reasons, each one needs to be approached in a sudden, unexpected, and surgical fashion. So while we are moving fast, we also have to move carefully. Whoever has Elizabeth, if we set them off, they are going to kill her.”

“They are likely to kill her anyway,” Baylor said.

The general nodded. “Yes. That’s true. In the meantime, we proceed as best as we can, and as fast as we can. Across Europe, police and intelligence agencies are doing the same. They are raiding known and suspected terrorist safe houses, on the chance that the kidnappers never left Europe. In particular, French SWAT units have hit at least eighty homes since the abduction.”

“And we’re not putting any information together from this?” Baylor said. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s not that we’re not gleaning information. It’s that we’re moving so fast, we are generating a massive pile of information. We are being flooded with data. It could take weeks or months to make sense of it all. We have hundreds of people detained, many of whom have been trained to resist interrogation, or have memorized false narratives designed to make us chase our tails.

“Meanwhile, entire networks are being taken down or destroyed, including ones that have been under surveillance for years. A who’s who of rogues and baddies have been killed or captured. If there is an upside to this unfortunate situation, it’s that it has lit a fire under everyone, and a lot of house cleaning that should have been done long ago is getting done now. But not without cost, as I indicated.”