Code of Honor

The crew stops at a hotel room in rural West Virginia, to sleep. They are taking a route off the beaten path to Arizona, in order to avoid detection. Jimmy is in the bathroom, and Dane and Aaliyah are gathering supplies from the van. Kamran turns on the television to see his own face staring back at him; various late-night show hosts are talking about his escape, and the tragedy of two American brothers working with al-Qaeda to “take down America from within” (151). Jimmy comes out of the bathroom. He is a tattooed, young, scruffy-looking guy with piercings. His tattoos are all coded numbers, running in every direction. Jimmy notices Kamran staring and reveals that each number is an IP address he has hacked. He began working for the Department of Defense after he was caught hacking into their website and subsequently hired by the government to test their internet security. Kamran becomes anxious when Jimmy says the DoD makes him wear an ankle bracelet to track his movements, but Jimmy laughs him off; he hacked into the bracelet's software ages ago. Aaliyah and Dane return, and Kamran helps them unload. He laughs at Aaliyah's shirt, which features a screen-printed photo of the Backstreet Boys. Kamran is embarrassed to discover that Aaliyah is a superfan, and apologizes for his mistake. Aaliyah forgives him, waving off Jimmy's jests, and she and Kamran settle down to learn more about Haydar Ansari. 

Haydar Ansari was a typical Iraqi man, according to the one photo of him that the CIA is in possession of. He is shown as a handsome, dark-haired teenager with a soccer ball. Aaliyah calls him “The Lion,” his code name among al-Qaeda's insurgents. He was born in Tikrit, Iraq, the same city in which Saddam Hussein was raised and came to power. The Ansari family was made incredibly wealthy during Hussein’s time in power. This affluence was promptly torn away from them when Hussein fell and the Shi’a government took control. For many years, Ansari was a successful man with a bride and children; later, the government discovered that much of his money was being funneled to support al-Qaeda. After the death of Osama bin Laden, Ansari fled to Syria, enraged that his life had been ruined by the US government. He became a leader of one of the splinter groups that broke apart from the main terrorist organization after bin Laden's death. Aaliyah reveals that despite frequent attempts to kill Ansari, he keeps returning: “He’s like a cockroach. We step on him but he just comes back” (157). She also assures Kamran that he was right to see through the ploy; Ansari is all about manipulation. Jimmy interrupts the research session to tell everyone that Hagan has just sent a new video of Darius.

Darius is nearly unrecognizable to Kamran in the new video. Kamran wonders if this is how Ansari's family felt, as they watched him transform himself into a terrorist. The group watches the video together, and Darius gives two clues—the first is a repeat of the Joker's goons clue, which referenced football. The second is a new clue—one about Godzilla, which doesn't make a lot of sense to Kamran.

At first, Aaliyah and the others think the repeat clue is because Darius lacks access to information; he is repeating himself because he doesn't know the World Cup plot has been foiled. But the more Kamran thinks about it, the more he begins to wonder if Darius is complicating the riddle—if the initial clue was about soccer, but the new clue is, in fact, about American football.

Suddenly Kamran has a sinking realization: Darius is in Arizona, and the Superbowl is being held outside Phoenix in only a week's time. He puts on ESPN to show the rest of the team what he’s thinking, and they are shocked. Jimmy is sure that can’t be their plan because the Superbowl is such a secure event; Dane insists they talk to authorities about the potential plot. Jimmy then goes to get an energy drink and dips his plastic cup in an ice bucket. Dane grabs him, asking who got ice. Kamran reveals that it was him, and Dane becomes enraged, yelling at Jimmy, “You let him out of your sight?” (162). Dane looks out the hotel window, through the curtain, and then screams for everyone to get down as a canister of tear gas comes crashing through the glass.

Kamran has his cheek against the floor as tear gas fills the room. The gas makes his eyes and throat burn and his lungs ache. Dane reaches under the bed and grabs the tear gas cartridge with his hand, shoving it into the ice bucket so the flame dies down and the smoke stops. As he does that, bullets begin to rip through the hole in the glass. Kamran hits the floor, startled: “They were shooting at us. I couldn't believe it” (164). Jimmy says that “[t]hey tend to do that when you shoot your way out of a Department of Homeland Security Facility” (164).

Dane shoves a mattress up against the broken window and takes the second mattress and makes a hole against the back wall so that Jimmy and Kamran are protected from the open fire. Dane also sends Aaliyah into the back bathroom. Suddenly, Kamran hears her shout, “Explosives set!” (164), and an enormous boom shakes the walls. Kamran looks back to see a hole where the bathroom’s back wall used to be. The hole leads to the back parking lot, where the van is parked.