“The beauty of this, if you will, is we can issue an ultimatum to all of our enemies in the Muslim world. Either they are with us or against us. The groups and places I named earlier must pull any and all strings they have to gain Elizabeth’s safe release, or we will begin a campaign of open warfare the likes of which they have never seen.”

He paused. “Whoever did this has sponsors. And we can make anyone we suspect of being a sponsor pay dearly.”

Baylor took a deep breath. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But isn’t Saudi Arabia the most likely sponsor of whoever carried out this kidnapping?”

Stark shrugged. “I don’t know. No one can know that for a fact. Does Saudi Arabia the state, and wealthy individuals in both Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, sponsor Al Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist groups? Almost certainly. You know that. I know that. But Joe and Jane Sixpack don’t know that. And what’s more, they don’t really care. They just want someone to pay for this. We can decide who that is. Obviously, we’re not going to attack the Saudis. They’re allies of ours. But Iran? Syria? Hezbollah? Libya? It’s open season. Or can be, if we want.”

“And so,” Baylor said. “The options?”

“Many,” Stark said. “As you know, we have a great many military assets in the region. Tens of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq. Tens of thousands of troops stationed at Doha. Jet fighters and bombers that can leave from Iraq, from Doha, and from Saudi Arabia. The Fifth Fleet controls the Persian Gulf, and the Sixth Fleet has destroyers and cruisers on standby in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Central Command has drones in the air twenty-four hours a day. I would suggest that we publicly give whoever is holding Elizabeth a twelve-hour deadline to release her unharmed. At the same time, we indicate to several bad actors in the region that they are also responsible for her well-being.”

He paused. “At the end of twelve hours, if Elizabeth hasn’t been released, or if she has turned up dead by then, we unleash an all-out assault from the air. We destroy, as much as is possible, Hezbollah fortifications in southern Lebanon. We destroy Shiite training camps the Iranians have set up in the northwestern mountains of Iran. We also wipe out the Iranian fast boat navy in the Persian Gulf. All of them. Wipe them off the map. We fortify the whole thing with missiles locked on air force and naval bases in southern Iran, along the coast. If they even try to fight back, we destroy those assets, with impunity. We can do the same in the north, to their assets on the Black Sea.”

Stark flipped over a page and scanned the next one.