Clarke nodded. ‘We’ll be able to locate him to the nearest centimetre as soon as he turns the thing on,’ Clarke said. ‘We’ll have him in zip-ties and a hood five minutes after he makes the call. But that call won’t be made until the twenty-fourth or maybe even the twenty-fifth. That’ll leave us just twelve hours or less to get the location out of him . . . We can’t sit on our hands until then.’

‘No,’ Sami said. ‘We can’t.’ He looked towards Jax. ‘Got any ideas?’ he asked.

JAX was now racing the clock.

Twenty-six days and counting . . .

He had to do more than just wait. He couldn’t sit around until the twenty-fifth, doing nothing until the deposits were made. Waiting for the bombers to make their final call. Nor could he rely on Clarke and Sami to force a confession from the mastermind once he’d been identified through triangulation. No matter what they did to him – pulling fingernails, chopping toes – he’d only have to hold out for a day at most. Then boom! Game over.

Jax had to work out a way to give them more time, even if it was just an extra day.

He suspected the Christmas Day attack would be the finale. It made sense to end a religious reign of terror on the most celebrated religious day of the year. And as the finale, the attack would no doubt be bigger and bolder. Something spectacular. But more of a world-ender than showstopper. A war-starter, at least.

Back in his cell after the meeting, Jax pulled up the latest press update from Sami on his phone. The appetite for war was building, Churches were empty and clergy were fighting among themselves. The Pope was calling for calm and demanding peace. But the rest of the Vatican, pushed by the all-powerful South American diocese, was calling for a holy war. The Crusades, version 2.0.

According to the CIA, the United States would have already declared war on every enemy state in the Middle East had it not been for the Australian revelation. America had formed an official alliance with Russia, France, Italy and Mexico in the immediate aftermath of the Mexico attack. But it had hit pause on talks and plans as soon as the Australian link was revealed. Still, the US government was still firmly holding the remote, finger itching to press play.

President Forrester, a devout Christian elected largely thanks to the size and power of the American Bible Belt, had begun talks with Russia immediately after the Alabama bombing. The attack on America gave him the legitimacy he needed to make a friend of a foe. It also gave him the opportunity to do what no American President had been able to do: take control of the Middle East. Finally. And for good.