Blue Warrior

1

Maputo International Airport

Maputo, Mozambique

^{1 May}

The gusting wind battered Troy Pearce’s bearded face. He didn’t care. It kept the humidity low and the stink of jet fuel at bay while he and Johnny Paloma finished loading up the last of the gear into a rented Toyota Land Cruiser pickup. They had two drone contracts to fulfill this trip.

Johnny hardly said a word. Unusual for the former LAPD detective.

“Something on your mind?” Pearce asked. A pair of dark aviators hid his world-weary blue eyes.

“Been meaning to ask you something.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“Seems like the last couple of weeks you haven’t been yourself.”

More like a couple of months, Pearce thought. He didn’t think it showed.

Even though Pearce was the CEO of his global contracting firm, he liked getting his hands dirty out in the field. Didn’t believe in leading from behind. He slammed the truck gate shut. “So ask.”

“How about I run this first training consult by myself?”

Pearce liked Johnny a lot. He was street smart and fearless, a real door buster. Proved his worth last year in the ops they ran against the Mexicans and Iranians. Since then, Johnny had picked up on the basic technical aspects of drone operations and proved himself a decent small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) operator.

Pearce Systems specialized in drone operations. Their first gig this week was an sUAS delivery and training consult with Sandra Gallez and the World Wildlife Alliance. Four days from now, they would deliver a security package to the South African special forces training center at Fort Scorpio.

For the first time in a while, Pearce smiled. “You want that Gallez woman all to yourself.”

“She’s a friend, that’s all. I just think I’m ready to lead the training. Don’t need you to wet-nurse me.”

Sandra Gallez had flown up to Addis to sign the WWA contract three months before. The two of them obviously hit it off.

“I call bullshit.” Pearce saw the way he looked at her when she came into their office.

“We’ve stayed in touch.” Johnny grinned. “By phone, mostly.”

Pearce couldn’t blame him. The Belgian wildlife conservationist was a real looker, and bright. It was a good match.

“Maybe it is time you took point.” Pearce tossed him the truck keys. “No point in wasting that picnic basket, either.” He’d seen Johnny sneak it into the pickup that morning. “Unless you packed it for me.”

Johnny smiled. “Not exactly.”

“I’ll secure the Aviocar.”

Pearce was glad to let Johnny do the training. Their destination today was the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, but Lake Massingir bordered the wilderness reserve. Pearce had fished all of his life, all over the world. He thought he wouldn’t get a chance to bait a hook this trip, but now Johnny made that possible. Maybe things were looking up after all.

He headed back into the rented hangar. Pearce and Johnny had arrived with Dr. Rao’s shipment last night from Addis in the Pearce Systems C-212 Aviocar, a boxy, top-winged, twin-propped STOL cargo plane. Pearce was doing most of his own flying these days now that his personal pilot, Judy Hopper, was gone.

The South African equipment was stowed away in a secret, locked compartment under the deck. Pearce shut and locked the plane’s cargo door, then shut and locked the hangar doors. Determined thieves could still break in, but he hired an armed security service to keep an eye on things while they were in the field.

Pearce climbed into the truck cab on the passenger side. The a/c was blowing good and cold.

Johnny checked the map on his satellite phone. Didn’t look at Pearce.

“You see those two jokers in the silver Mercedes G-Class, by the fence?”

“They picked us up back at the hotel an hour ago,” Pearce said.

“You could’ve said something.”

“How’d you manage to survive in LA with eyes like yours?”

“High-capacity magazines.” Johnny chambered a round into his Glock 19 pistol. “Any idea who they are?”

“SVR. Russian intelligence service.”

“What do you think they want?”

“My head.” Pearce had killed Ambassador Britnev for masterminding the plot that murdered President Myers’s son last year and nearly drew the United States into a shooting war with the Russians.

“I thought you got away clean on that one.”

“So did I.”

“What do you want to do?”

“They had a clear shot at me. So taking me out isn’t the objective.”

“An exfil back to the Motherland? They must be really pissed.”

“Britnev was a douche bag, but he was their douche bag.”

“Two against two. We can take them.”

“Too risky.”

“Got a better idea?”

“I always liked the G-Class. Reminds me of a Tonka truck.” Pearce pulled out his smartphone. “Let’s roll.”

Johnny pulled away from the hangar and through the fence gate, heading for the road exiting the airport. The boxy German SUV sat tight as Johnny passed by their parking place, just as Pearce instructed.

By the time Johnny cleared the airport, the Mercedes was in his rearview mirror, keeping a discreet distance.

“The driver’s good,” Johnny said.

Pearce tapped keys on his phone screen. “The SVR only sends the best. They won’t try anything until we’ve cleared the city.”

Thirty minutes outside of Maputo, traffic disappeared. The highway was an empty straight line for miles. The silver Mercedes glinted in Johnny’s rearview mirror a mile back. Couldn’t miss it.

“That G-Class AMG is a sweet ride,” Johnny said. “Hundred thirty grand plus, just to drive it off the lot.”

“It’s an amazing piece of technology. All the latest bells and whistles.”

“Ready?” Pearce asked.

Johnny smiled. “Say the word.”

“Red-line it,” Pearce said.

“God, I love this job.” Johnny mashed the gas pedal to the floorboard.

The Toyota rocketed forward, but the straight-six engine was topping out at 180 kph. Not good enough.

Pearce glanced in the side mirror. “He’s coming on, fast.”

The Mercedes’s thundering 5.5-liter turbocharged V-8 was still accelerating. They were just a quarter mile back.

Shooting distance.

Pearce tapped his phone screen, capturing the Mercedes Distronic Plus radar-controlled cruise control. Ran his finger along a slider. Told the radar unit that an object was just one inch away from the Mercedes’s front bumper.

The power disc brakes locked. Pads and rotors screamed.

The big Mercedes tumbled end over end on the asphalt, glass flying, steel crunching, doors exploding. On the third rotation, a body flew out, cartwheeling on the asphalt. Four more devastating rotations, and the crumpled Mercedes finally landed in a shattered heap on the side of the road.

“How’d you manage that?” Johnny asked. He pulled his foot off of the gas pedal, dropping back down to the legal speed limit.

“Pirated his Bluetooth back at the parking lot.”

Johnny chuckled. “Technology’s a bitch.”

Pearce powered down his smartphone. “Let’s go find your girl.”

2

CIOS Corporate Offices

Rockville, Maryland

^{1 May}

She was there at the beginning, when the U.S. government first weaponized the Internet. In fact, she had loaded some of the first rounds into the cylinder and cocked the hammer.

Jasmine Bath was twenty-four years old when she earned her M.S. in computer science from UC Berkeley, one of the first recruits into the NSA’s Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) program. They started her at Fort Meade but moved her around, grooming her for bigger things. She was a software specialist but became familiar with hardware operations, too. She helped write some of the first coding for the NSA’s pervasive XKEYSCORE surveillance software before moving up into senior development positions within TAO’s aggressive counterintelligence ANT program. Her coding fingerprints were all over persistent software implants like JETPLOW (firewall firmware), HEADWATER (software backdoors), and SOMBERKNAVE (wireless Internet traffic rerouting). Those successes earned her multiple commendations and promotions, leading to training and supervisory positions in newly developed TAO sites in Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, and even the Dagger Complex in Germany.

That meant the vast resources of the NSA were entirely at her disposal. She now had access to TAO’s shadow networks of servers and routers, used for covertly hijacking or herding unsuspecting Internet traffic through them. It was the Internet equivalent of the CIA opening up a cell phone store in Abbottabad and secretly selling supposedly untraceable burner phones to al-Qaeda terrorists.

With the help of the CIA, FBI, and other national security agencies, TAO also planted hardware and software bugs and malware in electronic devices manufactured around the globe—including memory chips, hard drives, motherboards and cell phone cameras, to name just a few—to gain access to their data.

TAO also remotely implanted software bugs and malware into network firewalls and security software programs, allowing the NSA to back-door more malware into, and harvest data out of, entire computer networks or individual computers, tablets, and phones. They even had their own manufacturing facilities, producing comprised keyboards, monitors, routers, and connector cables that secretly transmitted user data. The NSA also operated mirrored cell phone base stations that acted like legitimate cell phone towers, secretly capturing entire networks of cell phone users without their knowledge.

In short, nearly every kind of commercially produced electronic device had been compromised, infected, and harnessed to TAO purposes, allowing them to hear, see, or read virtually any data-capable device on the planet without the knowledge of either the users or manufacturers. Best of all, these devices, once installed, remained in place, continuously harvesting data for future NSA use—data that Bath still had access to as well.

But that wasn’t all.

The NSA and its sister agencies successfully compromised nearly every social networking site on the planet. They even penetrated the “Dark Web,” where criminal and terrorist activity supposedly occurred without public knowledge or government interference.

The NSA also created hundreds of fake jihadist, anarchist, and terrorist websites, blogs, and Twitter accounts in order to gather data from unsuspecting users, identify new suspects, compromise those individuals and organizations, and plant false data into hostile communities. They operated cybercafés around the world, offering free Internet access to unsuspecting users, not unlike the CIA conduct of fake vaccination campaigns to harvest DNA data on terror suspects. Conservative politicians who supported intrusive surveillance activities never realized that certain security agencies had also created virtual “Honey Pot” websites in order to draw out the most extremist elements within Tea Party, nationalist, constitutionalist, and “prepper” circles.

Jasmine Bath had access to all of these fake portals as well.

With all of these weapons in hand, Jasmine Bath could find out just about anything about anybody, or plant credible false evidence against any person. That gave her the kind of power that state security agencies had sought since the time of the pharaohs but could only dream of.

And that’s when she quit.

Bath’s extensive experience and exposure gave her a big-picture overview of the NSA’s far-reaching capabilities and boundless resources. It also allowed her to secretly pocket a number of keys she would later use to pick her own locks at her former employer, which she would use to form her new company, CIOS. In effect, she used the NSA’s resources against them in order to exploit the NSA as her own spying agency. Who watches the watchers? Jasmine Bath does, she’d joke. She spied on the spies—or, more accurately, spied through the spies—without their even knowing it.

With her top-security clearances, impeccable credentials, and agency contacts, she acquired several legitimate NSA contracts for CIOS just hours after tendering her resignation. But the real money to be made had nothing to do with honest work. She knew her unparalleled ability to find or fake information on virtually anybody, anywhere, would pry open the deepest wallets in Washington.

She felt no guilt. She lost count of the number of “false flag” operations governments around the world—including her own—had used to start wars in the last forty years, or the lies told by politicians, bureaucrats, and advocacy groups to justify radically new domestic policy agendas. Venerable science journals and prestigious research institutions were plagued with falsified data in the scramble for federal grants and venture-capital investments. Bath just wanted her piece of the pie.

All she lacked was the funding to launch the venture. But she didn’t have long to wait. A silent investor approached her and offered her unfettered control of her company. In exchange for no-strings-attached financing came his quid pro quo of no questions asked, and in turn, she was to be available when called upon, which would be both rare and remunerative.

The silent investor’s name, she would discover much later after proving herself to him, was startling. One of the true power brokers in Washington. His connections provided her with all the cover she would ever need should her formidable defenses ever fail. Owing to his preeminence in her corporate life, she always referred to him as The Angel.

3

Lake Massingir

Mozambique

^{1 May}

Pearce scratched his beard with his free hand, wild and woolly the way he wore it back in the war, except now it was flecked with gray, just like his long black hair. The crow’s-feet around his eyes had deepened.

He reached into the bucket for another bottle of Sagres Preta, a local Portuguese dark lager, and worked the black cap off with a knife edge. He’d been drinking too much for the past few months, and his gut showed it. He never drank at work, only after hours, and never got too drunk. Just numb.

Mostly.

The locals told him bloody chicken livers were the next best thing to live bait if he wanted to catch one of the razor-toothed tiger fish lurking in the deep water, a hundred silvery pounds of thrashing mouth full of vicious teeth as long as sixteen-penny nails. They told him to keep the hooks small unless he wanted to catch one of the really big monsters, but then he’d have the fight of his life on his hands—literally.

He went with the big hooks.

The choppy water chucked against the hull of the small wooden boat. His fishing line hadn’t budged in hours in the gray water. Sunset wasn’t too far off. If something didn’t strike the bait soon, he’d start rowing back. He flexed his blistered hands. In this wind, he was in for a long haul back to shore.

He’d rejoin Johnny tomorrow, back in the park after Johnny finished up his training consultation with Sandra.

Troy took a sip of beer.

He thought about his old man a lot lately, a Vietnam vet killed by the war years after it ended. Wondered if the same fate awaited him.

Growing up, he and his dad had fought their own private little war, scratching out a living in the mountains of Wyoming. The old man would laugh at him now, for sure. Wasn’t he becoming all the things he said he hated about him?

Probably for the same reasons, too.

His dad didn’t talk much about the war. Didn’t have to. Wore it in his brooding face, the scars in his flesh. If he had regrets, he didn’t say. He just drank.

Pearce had no regrets. Was proud of his CIA combat service. In SAD/SOG, he engaged the enemy wherever he found them. Righteous kills, each one. But the War on Terror had taken too many of the people he cared about, sacrificed on the altar of political ambition. So he quit. He missed them all.

Especially Annie.

Pearce still loved his country but hated politics. He formed Pearce Systems because he could pick and choose his operations with a certain moral clarity. And it paid well. More important, deploying remotely piloted vehicles kept his friends out of harm’s way even when the bullets were flying.

So what was his problem?

He was an angry man. Always had been, bar brawling all the way back in high school. Stanford took some of the edge off. Practically civilized him. Then he joined the CIA. They honed his angry edge into a fine killing blade, but under control.

Maybe he was losing control.

His anger deepened the last few months, for sure. So had the depression. Didn’t make sense. His company had never been more prosperous, or done better work.

After last year, he focused Pearce Systems on the commercial uses of drone technologies. More opportunities, more money. And little chance of his people getting killed. The South African delivery was a favor for an old friend, and probably the last military system he would ever deliver.

But bitter disappointment still ate at him. The United States had cut and run out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now both were sliding back into chaos and radicalism. Tens of thousands of brave Americans bled and died to free those nations, but the jihadi shits they fought remained, which meant they won.

His government had broken faith; now Pearce felt like he had lost his.

Serving President Myers last year rekindled it briefly. She was the one politician he could believe in, because she put the national interest ahead of her own. He trusted Myers completely. But she resigned, falling on her sword to keep the nation safe.

He and his team proudly fought the Mexican cartels and the Iranian terrorists. He was grateful Myers secured blanket immunity for them all after it was over. But he didn’t need a law degree to know that only criminals need immunity.

Heroes got medals, not pardons.

President Greyhill and Vice President Diele were in charge now. Exactly the kind of politicians he loathed.

He was done with it.

Pearce took a long pull on his beer. His line still didn’t budge. He hoped Johnny was having more luck than he was in trying to land his own pretty fish.

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Mozambique

Johnny Paloma pretended to stare at the solar-powered drone in Sandra Gallez’s hands, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her face, confident and curious.

“Like this?” she asked. The Belgian beauty held the Silent Falcon’s carbon-fiber fuselage forward with one hand while the other supported the tail structure. The six-bladed prop spun almost silently, but the electric motor threw enough torque into the blades even at this low speed to blow her dark, curly hair away from her cheeks. Working undercover in L.A., Johnny encountered plenty of hot women in the clubs and on the beaches. He even worked a few side jobs as a bodyguard for some of the best-looking women in film. But Sandra’s natural, unadorned beauty enthralled him.

“Yes, about forty-five degrees. Just like a Raven,” Johnny said. He held the Nintendo-style controller in his hands. The auto launch toggle was selected. This would automatically take the Silent Falcon to an altitude of five hundred feet and circle it until it received further commands. Onboard sensors and software avoided obstructions in its flight path or possible collisions with other aircraft.

“Now?”

“Now!” He laughed.

She threw it. Despite its seven-foot wingspan, the lightweight sUAS lifted effortlessly into the bright morning sky.

This portion of the park was mostly flat grassland, populated by a smattering of acacia trees. Perfect for small drone operations, especially landings by rookies. It was elephant country. Rhinos, too.

Sandra jogged back over to Johnny, standing behind the brand-new green Land Rover Defender utility wagon. The famous World Wildlife Alliance white rhino logo was painted on the hood and the rear door. Pearce Systems fitted out the wagon with all of the necessary drone operations gear. The talented young conservationist was in charge of the WWA’s most advanced research project.

“Now put the goggles on,” Johnny said.

Sandra picked up the wireless Fat Shark Dominator HD video goggles and slipped them over her eyes. They were lightweight but huge, like a telephone handset attached to her face. Of course, she couldn’t “see” out of them—they didn’t have any lenses. The Fat Shark was a video projection system—a wearable digital theater.

“Now take this.” Johnny handed her the flight controller.

“Fantastique!”

“Quite the view, eh?”

“Like a bird. I can see everything.”

Sandra’s entire field of view was filled with a perfect HD first-person video (FPV) image on the screen, which was also simultaneously recorded on a hard drive in the Rover. The forward-looking bird’s-eye POV through the spinning propeller was mesmerizing. She tapped another toggle and a real-time map of Limpopo Park appeared on her video screen. A blue dot indicated the GPS location of the Silent Falcon, and a red dot indicated the position of a recently GPS-tagged rhino, part of the last herd in Mozambique, about five kilometers away.

“Now rotate the camera,” he said. “The god’s-eye view is even cooler.” The Silent Falcon was equipped with a rotating gimbal that housed the optical and infrared cameras, along with a laser pointer.

“This is perfection, Johnny!” Sandra rotated the camera through its entire range of motion, like she’d done on simulated practice sessions before, but this was her first real-time flight with the Silent Falcon.

The WWA recently made arrangements with Mozambique’s Wildlife Department to take over rhino observation-and-research duties. The cash-strapped, ill-equipped bureaucracy had become rather lax in its conservation responsibilities in the last few years, particularly in regard to the endangered rhino population, now perilously small and reduced to just a dozen adults. The sad truth was that some of the poorly paid Mozambican park rangers were known in the past to have colluded with poachers to gather up the rhino horns so prized by wealthy Chinese for their supposed powers as aphrodisiacs and medicinals. But even the honest park police were increasingly tasked with counterterror duties, and wildlife considerations took a backseat to the new security priorities set in Maputo.

The quiet exchange of cash to the appropriate government ministers gave Sandra’s privately funded NGO the chance to get into the GLTP and begin monitoring the rhinos. Fortunately, poachers hadn’t been seen on the Mozambique side of the Limpopo in over a year, so the human threat to those magnificent animals wasn’t her main concern.

Tracking rhino migration patterns and feeding grounds was the primary focus of Sandra’s research. Her dream was to introduce more rhinos into the local population and restore the herds that once roamed freely here.

The joy in her face at that moment was palpable, and Johnny had just handed her the high-tech key to her dream. He had no idea it was possible to be this happy for someone else.

Pearce Systems’ research director, Dr. Kirin Rao, selected the solar-powered sUAS because it had a fourteen-hour flight time and a nearly silent propulsion system, both features that made it a perfect platform for wildlife observation. Rao paired up the hand-launched surveillance drone to a control station and a video camera system with an editing suite installed in the cargo area of the oversize Land Rover, but the Silent Falcon could also be easily flown with the handheld controller that Pearce Systems provided. With detachable wings, the Silent Falcon could be quickly disassembled for transport, and just as easily reassembled in the field. Along with spare parts, extra batteries, a charging station, and all the other equipment needed to operate it, the solar-powered drone system was completely contained in the self-sufficient Land Rover. Dr. Rao hoped that this new unit would be the test bed for a whole range of new wildlife applications.

“Oh! Johnny! I see them!”

Johnny glanced into the back of the Land Rover. In the corner he’d stashed a small picnic basket with avocado and tomato sandwiches and a bottle of vintage Portuguese wine, and even a blanket, all courtesy of the hotel concierge. The river wasn’t far from here. It was going to be a damn good day. Maybe one of the best days of his life.

4

China National Petroleum Headquarters

Beijing, China

^{1 May}

Zhou Yi watched the automatic window blinds blot out the smog-choked sky. He sat in a crowded conference room on the top floor of one of the three glass-and-steel monoliths of CNPC headquarters, buildings that were as gray and uninspiring as Beijing’s nearly unbreathable atmosphere. His morning runs in the park the last few days had burned his lungs and stung his eyes. Unfortunately, he was in for more of the same in here. The older executives seated around the long mahogany table lit up cigarettes after tea and coffee had been served by the waitstaff, and now the air in the conference room was clogged with acrid smoke.

As the recently appointed vice president of business affairs of the newly formed Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation, Zhou was expected to spend more time in Beijing, which technically was his birthplace but hardly his home. The grandson of an original Politburo Member and the son of a princeling on the ruling Standing Committee, Zhou was as close to royalty as a communist regime would allow. This gave him unprecedented freedoms, powers, and privileges, but equally binding responsibilities both to his family and his nation. Responsibilities that the handsome and athletic forty-year-old took quite seriously despite his famously hedonistic lifestyle.

Zhao believed he could best fulfill those responsibilities by remaining out in the field and Skyping meetings like this one rather than sitting in a sealed conference room. But when Zhao’s uncle, the chairman of CNPC, summoned him back to company headquarters, Zhao was compelled to obey both as a dutiful nephew and as an up-and-coming executive in the state-owned enterprise that had made his entire family extremely rich over the last four decades—nearly three billion dollars in total.

But Zhou’s meteoric rise was due primarily to his outstanding performance in the field, not his family connections. He’d just outmaneuvered a European energy consortium and brokered a lucrative new oil contract with the Azerbaijani government, still reeling from the Russian invasion nearly two years before. Zhou’s latest promotion was just another rung up on the lofty ladder of his ambition. He had already climbed high, and swiftly, but he had much farther to go. He also knew that one false step from this great height would be fatal to his career, if not his life.

Zhou sat bolt upright in his leather chair and wore the standard gray business suit so common among his peers. However, his suit was an elegant English, hand-tailored affair, perfectly cut to his broad shoulders and accented with a stunning light blue Italian silk tie and pocket square. The effect was bold, even brash, but not rebellious. Zhao was completely committed to serving the cause of China, but equally committed to serving it with style.

The analyst presenting today’s briefing was a member of the Ministry of State Security. Zhou knew him well. They had risen through the ranks of the MSS together, though Zhou’s membership in his nation’s foreign intelligence service was itself a closely guarded state secret.

Zhou’s government properly understood that economic development was itself a weapon in the war against the West, and resource acquisition was key to furthering China’s blistering economic growth. The Western nations still waved the flag of “free enterprise,” but its most successful corporations long ago abandoned pure capitalism in exchange for securing favors with their respective ruling classes by guaranteeing the politicians’ perpetual reelection in exchange for favorable tax and regulatory policies that guaranteed the “too big to fail” corporations hegemonic dominance in their markets.

Zhou constantly marveled at America’s repudiation of its own past greatness. During his university days, Zhou met more committed communists on the campuses of UCLA and Harvard than he ever had in Beijing. The running joke among the ruling class in China these days was that if you wanted your child to study socialism, send them to an American Ivy League school, but if you wanted them to learn about capitalism, send them to Shanghai. Not only was China a more capitalist nation than the United States these days, it vigorously applied the lessons of American economic development that the Americans themselves had long forgotten. In a short period of time, aggressive, mercantilist trade policies catapulted a newly independent nineteenth-century America into the ranks of the wealthiest nations of Old Europe. Now America ran half-trillion-dollar annual trade deficits, exporting both wealth and jobs as quickly as it was accumulating debt from the same nations with which it ran trade deficits, particularly mercantilist China.

America was in rapid decline, even as its few ruling elites and their “too big to jail” client corporations accumulated ever-more-egregious amounts of wealth and political power. China understood, in fact, that it was because American elites enriched themselves without responsibility to their society that the United States was in an economic and political death spiral. China believed that capitalism should serve the interests of the state. American political elites apparently believed in crony capitalism where the state served the interests of the capitalist masters. The twenty-first century would soon decide which of the two systems was most viable.

The lights dimmed and a 4K HD digital projector lit up a massive screen on the far wall. Images of various African nations, Chinese corporations, and specific industrial enterprises—particularly oil and other natural resources—flashed on the screen as the analyst spoke. No recording devices, tablets, or even paper and pencils were allowed in the room today. Today’s meeting was top secret, and the security services feared the Western intelligence agencies and their vast cybersurveillance efforts. CNPC was a known target, particularly of the CIA. The purpose of the briefing was for policy orientation only.

“Today, there are over eight hundred Chinese corporations operating in nearly every nation on the African continent,” the analyst began. “Many of them are engaged in resource extraction to meet the growing demand of our rapidly expanding industrial and manufacturing sectors.” Icons matching African resources and Chinese industries flashed in sequence. “Every day, new resource potentials are being discovered and developed across the continent, but none so important as the recent location of new uranium and, amazingly, massive rare-earth-element deposits here in the Saharan desert, in the far reaches of Mali. In fact, Mali may have the world’s single greatest known deposit of lanthanum.”

The screen zoomed in on an image of northeastern Mali to emphasize its importance. The executives gathered around the table whispered excitedly. Lanthanum was critical for the manufacture of batteries. Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius required more than ten kilograms of the mineral per vehicle, and more hybrids were being brought to the market every day. China itself was now the world’s largest car market, and hybrids were key to the expansion of that market. The startling new REE discovery in Mali was obviously the reason why this top secret emergency meeting had been called.

“As you are all well aware, China is the world’s largest producer of rare earth elements, giving us nearly monopolistic control over their use. This allows us to minimize their costs for ourselves but also deny their use to our biggest competitors.” From an earlier briefing, Zhou knew that the seventeen chemical elements on the periodic table known as REEs weren’t, technically, “rare” so much as widely dispersed throughout the earth’s crust—but seldom in harvestable amounts. Those elements were critical in other key new technological products like wind turbines, lasers, and cell phones. China was the country with the greatest concentration of REE deposits and was currently mining between 80 and 90 percent of all REEs today. That near monopoly provided China with a significant competitive advantage it had no intention of relinquishing. That competitive advantage was one of the reasons why Los Angeles Metro had purchased its first all-electric buses from the Chinese corporation BYD.

“Fortunately,” the analyst continued, “Mali has recently signed new contracts with the Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation, which includes provisions for all other forms of underground resource acquisition. Unfortunately, Mali, like most other African nations, might soon be tempted to reconsider the terms of the very generous contracts we have signed with them. They also have an indigenous population problem in the area.”

“You mean the Tuaregs,” Zhao said. Prior to his new appointment, Zhao had thrown himself into research into the Sahara region. The vast desert occupied significant portions of Mali, Algeria, Niger, and Libya, which also happened to be the most important resource states in the area. Nomadic Tuareg warrior clans had freely roamed the vast Sahara since the fifth century before Christ.

“The Mali government has already begun operations to nullify the Tuareg problem,” the analyst said. “They are fractured and disorganized.”

“Are you referring to the Africans or the Tuaregs?” one of the executives blurted out. The room exploded with laughter. Even the stoic chairman grinned.

“The Tuaregs have been restless for quite some time,” Zhao interrupted. “Are you confident the government in Bamako is on top of this?”

The analyst smiled. “I believe the term Tuareg in Arabic means ‘abandoned by God.’ So, yes, unless God shows up, President Kouyaté should be able to quell them soon enough.”

“You just can’t trust a damn African,” a voice in the dark muttered. It was the vice president of one of the civil engineering firms building new highways in the rapidly expanding northern corridor. Murmurs rumbled around the table as graying heads nodded in agreement. “The Kenyans canceled one of our contracts for the new highway expansion project between Mombasa and Nairobi last week. They claimed there were environmental concerns, but all they really were concerned about was more money.” The middle-aged executive slowly rubbed his open palm for emphasis.

Zhao knew what the engineer said was true, but it was only a small piece of the picture. China’s decades-old policy of “noninterference” in the domestic affairs of other nations meant his government would gladly do business with the tyrants and despots that the West shunned on humanitarian grounds. Chinese government and business officials also freely issued “soft” development funds and loans—financial transactions unencumbered by human rights provisions or even basic accounting principles. These aid packages were giant pots of money from which greedy, cruel African elites could dip freely for their personal use so long as Chinese interests were also served in the process.

Chinese firms were also quick to provide arms, ammunition, and other contraband items denied to dictatorial regimes by the moralizing Western powers. Security treaties and Chinese military bases soon followed. By such means, China swifly gained lucrative footholds across the continent.

But the other reality, Zhao knew, was that Chinese firms wreaked terrible environmental damage all over Africa in recent years—just as they had in their own country for decades. Over eight million acres of arable Chinese land were now so polluted they could never be used for food production. Arable land had decreased in China even as industrialization exploded. Africa, on the other hand, possessed the world’s largest supply of arable land and could amply serve as China’s new food basket if exploited properly.

Chinese companies also imported their own labor, even low-skilled positions, and dominated local economies. They were as rapacious and colonizing as the Great Powers had been in the nineteenth century, lacking only the missionary zeal of “the white man’s burden” to justify their efforts. The Chinese government no longer had any vested interest in spreading the gospel of communism, as it once had in the sixties—such quaint sentiments were bad for business. Freshly minted Third World communist revolutionaries tended to nationalize key industries, and Chinese businessmen held no interest in that. Neither did Zhao. He fully appreciated the Africans’ concerns, but he didn’t care about them. Like his own government, Zhao was a supreme pragmatist. Economic development always came at a high price, and every great nation had to pay it at one time or another. If Africa wanted to develop with China’s help, Zhao reasoned, it should have to do so on China’s terms.

The bottom line for African governments, even the despotic ones, was that they were beginning to count the true costs of doing business with a predatory partner like China and found the transactions wanting. They were changing up the rules of the Chinese game with the help of the opportunistic West. It was a worrying proposition for the Politburo. The general secretary himself had visited the African continent on his first official overseas tour abroad to underscore China’s interest in the region, and its concerns.

“Thank you for the excellent presentation, Mr. Li,” the chairman said as the lights went up. The MSS analyst bowed gratefully and took his seat. The chairman continued. “The Standing Committee has decided to draw a line in the sand in Mali. We want to create a new model of secure cooperation and development for our other African partners. The future of China depends upon it. That is why I am calling upon the resolute Mr. Zhao Yi to represent us in the Malian venture.” The chairman waved a hand at his nephew, who stood, beaming with confidence. All eyes turned to him.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t let China down.” He bowed respectfully to his uncle, then the room.

The chairman himself led the others in a round of applause.

5

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

^{1 May}

The village slept this time of day. No one would come to the shop until later. The relentless heat blanketed everything. But Ibrahim couldn’t sleep. The curse of advancing age, he supposed.

The shopkeeper felt the gentle breeze of the old GE oscillating fan on his back. The aluminum blades were bent, rattling the little wire cage enclosing them. Ibrahim didn’t care. The rattling sound comforted him. So did the heat and the sun. He liked familiar things these days, even the unpleasant ones.

He glanced out of his doorway into the little village square. A half dozen mud-brick buildings just like his faced the old well, but his was the only shop. One hundred and seven people last count, mostly women, children, and old men like him. That made him the village elder, in deed if not in title. He wore that responsibility like the black tagelmust wrapped around his head and face. All of the young men were gone, shepherding their flocks or driving trucks in the south.

Or riding with Mossa Ag Alla.

If he was a young man, he’d be in the hills with Mossa, too. Both he and Mossa were Kel Tamasheq, were they not? People of the Tamasheq tongue? Not Tuaregs, as the outsiders called his people. Different classes, yes. Mossa of the Ihaggaren nobility, and warriors; Ibrahim of the vassal Imrad—traders and shepherds. But Chief Mossa cared not for such distinctions. Only his people. Imohar. Free people. It was the new way, and Ibrahim agreed with it. The world was changing, and it was the better way. Especially now with all of the troubles.

Ibrahim’s anxiety spiked. The misbaha prayer beads in his right hand sped faster through his callused fingertips as he touched an amulet unconsciously with his left. He detested the jihadist Ansar Dine, his own people, or so they claimed. But they cared for Mali more than the rights of the Imohar. The al-Qaeda Salafists cared for neither Mali nor the Kel Tamasheq. Indeed, they detested even the prayer beads. Ibrahim was glad the French had driven them out, and glad the French, too, had left again. All of them had come and now all had left, and that was a fine thing, he thought.

He stepped back from the doorway and glanced at the far wall. A yellowed French military map was pinned neatly to it, the ancient folds forming a grid. In the bottom right-hand corner in minuscule numbers and letters his dimming eyes could no longer read it gave its origin: Le Département du Armée de Terre, 1937.

Thirty years before, his wife had drawn a small red X on the map where she thought the village was located, in case a traveler ever wanted to know where he was standing. Ibrahim had laughed at her. Only Imohar and other nomads who knew of the well ever bothered to come here to water their camels and flocks, so they would already know where it was, he insisted. They yelled at each other for an hour over that one. But the X stayed, and so did the map. Ibrahim smiled. But that was a long time ago. At least the map was still here, and so was the X, and so was the village.

Ibrahim lit another cigarette and glanced at the clock-faced thermometer. The red hand pointed at 41c/107f. Not unusual for the desert this time of year, especially in this part of the region. The hottest time of the day. Soon it would cool again, as it should. A man couldn’t sleep when it was too hot. He glanced around the shop—really, just the front room of a three-room building where he and his grandson lived. Not like a real shop he’d once seen in Timbuktu, before the troubles. He wondered if it was still intact. He heard rumors that many shops in that fabled city had been burned to the ground by the AQS if they sold what was haraam.

The three wooden shelves screwed into the adobe wall were full. Toothpaste, razors, gum, canned goods—meat, milk, fruit. Even a red-and-white cartoon of Lucky Strikes, the brand the Chinese requested when they passed through two months ago. Ibrahim paid hard cash in Kidal for the expensive American brand, but the Chinese hadn’t returned. That was unfortunate. The Chinese had paid too much for the poor ones he had in the shop, and they didn’t bargain, which was a blessing. Just paid his price. He thought again about opening the carton and selling the cigarettes one at a time, the only way his friends could afford them. But perhaps the Chinese would return soon. Inshallah.

His grandson would be home soon from the government school in the next village. Eight years old and already doing higher math. Ibrahim was proud of him. The boy would someday make a fine shopkeeper. Tonight he would feed him, then send him to the widow’s house with her cell phone. It was on the shop floor connected to the car battery, charging. It wasn’t much money for the service, but every little coin still helped fill the purse. The cell phone couldn’t make a signal here near the well, but it could a half kilometer east outside of the village. The widow could still walk that far and back, and tomorrow was her regular day to take a call from her son working in Bamako and she wanted her phone fully charged. Life was good in Bamako, her son said. Many Chinese, and much money to be made. And peace.

Peace is better than money, Ibrahim thought. Like cold water from that well in the square.

He spun his beads, waiting for the boy.

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Mozambique

“I’ve lost it, Johnny.”

“Lost what?”

“The video image.” Sandra pulled the Fat Shark goggles off. “It just went blank.”

Shit. There goes the picnic, Johnny thought. “Let’s check the control station.” Johnny and Sandra climbed into the back of the Rover. She was right. The video image was gone.

“We lost the video signal.” Johnny realized how stupidly obvious he sounded.

“Now what?”

Good question. The Solar Falcon was preprogrammed to automatically return to base when it sensed either low battery or signal disruption of any sort. Johnny checked the monitors. At least the Solar Falcon was still broadcasting a GPS signal. The drone was turning a lazy figure eight, but not returning to station.

“That’s weird,” Sandra said. “Why is it doing that?”

Johnny shrugged. “Something wrong with the motherboard, I guess.”

“I thought you said these things are reliable. We paid a lot of money for it.”

“The Solar Falcon is as reliable as they get. But it’s still just a machine. Things happen.”

Something caught Sandra’s eye. She leaned over. Glasses tinked. “What’s this?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s a picnic basket back here. Looks like some good stuff.”

“The hotel concierge pulled it together for me,” Johnny confessed. “The basket, too.”

She smiled mischievously. “So that’s why Pearce isn’t here today.”

Johnny frowned, worried about his friend. “Not exactly.”

Sandra pointed at the GPS monitor again. “So what should we do?”

“We jump in the Rover and go find us a Falcon.”

The small herd of white rhinos chuffed and snorted contentedly as they fed on the grass beneath their heavy feet. Two calves brayed as they chased each other in circles around a big female, her ear tagged with a great yellow tab marked “WWA.” A nearby bull swung his heavy head with its menacing long horn in their direction, just checking to make sure no threats had startled the bellowing calves.

A thousand feet above the herd, Sandra’s Silent Falcon drone was still making a lazy figure eight, its camera still pointing at the big female. Had the rhinos any inclination to gaze skyward, their famously poor eyesight wouldn’t have allowed them to notice the aircraft at its current height, but even their excellent hearing couldn’t have picked up its whisper-quiet motors, not even at two hundred feet.

But a four-wheel-drive ground vehicle? That caught the herd’s attention, though nobody stopped feeding. Heavy, tube-shaped ears perked up and rotated in unison in the direction of the engine rumbling toward them from a distance. As the sound edged nearer, heads lifted warily. The big bull grunted, then turned and trotted heavily for a nearby stand of acacia trees for shelter. The others followed swiftly behind him, the trumpeting calves falling in line behind their mothers. The female with the yellow tag took the rear and felt the bee as it zipped past.

Only, it wasn’t a bee.

It was a bullet. Then a hundred.

The air roared with gunfire.

Men shouted.

The bull had led them all into a trap.

The tagged female ran. Her flanks suddenly stung with heat. Her sides ached as if tree branches were thrust into her ribs. She bellowed in pain.

They were all bellowing.

Except the babies. They cawed like birds, high-pitched and keening.

The tagged female dropped to her knees. Saw the flash of metal in her dim eye. Searing pain exploded in her snout as the machete blade thwocked into the bone just above the horn.

Two dozen men. Black, like shadows, swarmed the herd. Rhinos down. The men circled them. Arms swinging, blades chopping. Blood and skin and bone flecked into the air with each strike. Men pulling hard on the horns while others chopped at the roots. Panicked eyes rolled white in shock as blood seeped into the grass.

And then the big bull roared.

He was on his knees but still swinging that giant horn and roaring, knocking a shadow man to the ground.

More gunfire. The bull’s guts spilled into the grass.

And the last baby screamed.

The Land Rover bounced over the uneven terrain, but Johnny kept the pedal floored. He kept one eye on the GPS locator on the dashboard and one on the windshield.

Sandra pointed at a thick stand of acacia trees looming in the distance. Bright red burning bush creepers flowered brightly in the tree branches. “They must be in there.” Sandra had lost visual contact with the herd when the video feed was cut but the falcon was still tracking them, apparently. A handheld tablet monitor was in her lap now.

Johnny yanked the wheel hard to avoid a fallen log, then pointed the Land Rover toward the acacia stand. A path of beaten-down grass wound around toward the back. “Looks like our rhinos were here after all,” Sandra said, nodding at the grass track.

The Rover sped around the bend and past the first tree. Johnny slammed the brakes.

The man standing in his way was Chinese, tall, broad-shouldered. His face was edged and hard, but creased with a smile. He was focused intently on the dark gray Silent Falcon fuselage high above doing loops, guided by the radio transmitter in his hands. He didn’t budge despite the Rover’s skidding stop just ten feet from him. He wore green camo without insignia, but his bearing was pure military. An operator, Johnny guessed. Special forces. They all looked the same, no matter where they came from. A combat knife was strapped to the man’s leg.

“Who is that?” Sandra asked, pushing open the door.

Johnny grabbed her wrist. “No, stay here.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“You wait here. I’ll check it out. This is my rice bowl, remember?”

“Careful, Johnny. Please.”

“I’m a cop. I’m always careful.” He flashed her a smile.

Johnny shut the door behind him and approached the lone Chinese. Johnny’s Glock 19 was in his waistband at the small of his back. The smiling man finally turned his gaze toward him.

“An expensive toy,” Guo Jun said, nodding at the sky.

“Not a toy. A camera, watching everything you do.”

“And recording it, too, I’m certain,” he said. “I should like to see the pretty pictures.”

“Then buy your own.”

“Why should I? I have yours now.” Guo looked back up at the Silent Falcon.

“Because it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the World Wildlife Alliance.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “To that lady in the truck.”

“She won’t be needing it anytime soon, Johnny.”

Johnny startled at the sound of his name but hid it. “If you’re going to say my name, say it correctly.”

“And how is that?”

“For dickheads like you, it’s Mr. Paloma.”

“Too bad your name isn’t Troy Pearce. I was hoping to play a game with him today.” Guo’s eyes were still fixed on the plane.

“What game?” Johnny slipped his gun hand toward his back.

Guo tossed the transmitter at Johnny.

Instinctively, Johnny caught it, worried about crashing the drone overhead. A steel fist punched his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He dropped the transmitter into the grass. Looked down.

Saw the carbon blade wedged in his chest up to the hilt.

Johnny grabbed the blade as he crumbled to his knees, gasping for air. His darkening eyes saw the smiling Chinese still crouched in a throwing stance, throwing arm extended, fingers pointing at him like an accusation. A swarm of Africans burst out of the trees behind Guo, flashing long blades.

Sandra called his name, but her muffled screams seemed far away.

6

Lake Massingir

Mozambique

^{1 May}

Pearce tossed the last empty bottle of Preta by the neck like a potato masher grenade. It whistled through the air until it finally splashed into the water. It joined a half-dozen other empty bottles bobbing around the lake like forlorn sailors lost on a dismal sea.

Pearce sighed. The wind wasn’t letting up, the fish still weren’t biting, and now he was out of beer.

A truly shitty day.

His ears perked up at the sound of distant thunder, mechanical and regular. Chopper blades hammered low on the eastern, treeless horizon.

Pearce watched the diving speck racing toward him, barely ten feet above the deck, about a mile out. Within moments the helicopter took shape; a Bell JetRanger, if memory served. Nose down, full throttle, the single rotor kicked up a pair of misty wingtip vortices off of the lake surface that melted away in the gusting wind.

Thirty seconds later, the helicopter flared, rotated ninety degrees, and hovered a hundred feet away from Pearce. The rotor’s downwash battered Pearce even from this distance, and he fought to hold on to his boonie hat. Bright yellow letters on the black and white zebra-striped fuselage shouted Air Safari! as the passenger door slid open. The pilot was clearly fighting the crosswinds on the lake as the bird struggled to hold position.

The man in the passenger seat wore a light blue linen suit without a tie. He waved a cell phone in the air, then tapped on the screen. Seconds later, Pearce’s cell phone signaled a text message: “Pearce?”

Pearce glanced back at the helicopter and nodded heavily. His phone chimed again.

“DIGNAM, US EMBASSY.”

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Mozambique

The Air Safari! copter cycled down as Pearce and Dignam hunched beneath the blades, racing toward the burned-up Land Rover. Dignam briefed Pearce on what little he knew on the flight over. The CIA station chief, Jack Hawkins, had remained on scene, afraid to leave before Pearce arrived. Six Mozambique park rangers in floppy hats and faded green fatigues stood in a loose perimeter scanning the horizon, clearly skittish, rifles high.

So much blood.

Hawkins worried that if he left the scene, the rangers might have bolted, too. Whoever had done this could still be around, and it was only an hour until sunset. But the rangers’ dignity, such as it was in their disheveled uniforms and battered assault rifles, wouldn’t allow them to leave if the American had the balls to stand fast. Especially an African-American like him.

Pearce marched up to Hawkins.

“Troy. I’m so sorry.” Hawkins shouted above the helicopter turbine still winding down. He extended his hand.

Pearce stared at Hawkins’s hand for a moment, trying to clear away his rage, then reluctantly took it. Hawkins wasn’t to blame, that was for damn certain. Pearce leaned in close so he didn’t have to shout. “Thanks for holding down the fort, Jack.” Hawkins nodded. Pearce and Hawkins briefly met years before in D.C. When Pearce and Johnny had checked into the embassy a few days before, Hawkins was there to brief them over rum and Cokes.

“Dignam gave you all of the particulars. There’s not much more to add, but I wanted you to be able to get a look-see before this place got picked clean by the locals.” Hawkins defined “locals” by nodding at the park rangers nervously fingering their rifles.

“Show me what you’ve found,” Pearce said.

Dignam jogged back to the chopper while Hawkins walked Pearce to the back of the Land Rover. The windows were busted out from the intense heat that had melted away all of the plastics, tires, and paint. “Bodies?” Pearce asked.

“Not here.”

Pearce forced open the back door of the utility wagon, the spare tire melted off of the rim. The hinges creaked with stiff resistance as if rusted shut. Clearly, everything inside was destroyed.

“Gear’s missing,” Pearce said.

“Burned up?”

“No. The bays are empty.” Pearce pulled out his smartphone, pulled up a locator app. No GPS signal from the Silent Falcon. “Shit.”

“You lose any classified stuff?”

“Not exactly. But it’s not the kind of equipment you want to hand over to your worst enemies, either.”

Pearce glanced back over at the park rangers. “What do you think?” Park rangers all over Africa had a mixed reputation, especially the armed ones.

“No. Bishop and I were here first, before those boys showed up. He’s an ex-pat and a drinking buddy. He was flying the park when he saw the bodies and the busted-up Rover. Figured they might be Americans or Europeans, called it in to me, then flew me out here. I recognized Johnny from our meet and greet the other day. Thought I’d better find you.”

“Where is he?”

Hawkins knew Troy’s record. A real tough customer. Figured Pearce could handle seeing his friend.

Doubted he’d seen worse, though.

“Follow me.”

They trudged over to the stand of acacia trees. The park rangers spread out a little further to give Pearce and Hawkins privacy. With the helicopter rotor finally shut down, the air filled up again with the sickly stench of death.

Johnny was just inside the tree line, lying in the dirt in a crumpled heap, like a bag of bloody laundry that had fallen off the back of a speeding truck.

“Jesus.”

Pearce kneeled down. Johnny’s jaw had been sheered away by some kind of jagged blade. The rest of Johnny looked worse. He’d been hacked viciously by dozens of blows. Machetes, judging by the width of the cuts. A chunk of scalp was missing. So was the left cheek, now covered in clotted, black blood. They even cut off his nose all the way down to the bone, leaving a gaping hole. The cut was too neat, though. That was done with a sharper, smaller blade. A message? Heavy black flies buzzed around Johnny’s face, darting in and out of the gaping sinus cavity. Pearce batted them away.

“Fucking savages,” Hawkins said. He wasn’t thinking about race, obviously. But if the ambassador had heard him say that, she would’ve written him up on the spot.

The underside of Johnny’s broken forearms were shredded with blade cuts, too. “He tried to put up a fight,” Pearce said. “That must have freaked them out. Most people drop at the first hit.”

“So they frenzied.”

“Maybe.” Pearce knelt closer. Saw something. Unbuttoned Johnny’s shirt. “Look at that wound in his chest.”

“What about it?”

“Knife wound.”

“I don’t understand.”

“One knife wound, the rest machete strikes.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.” Pearce stood. “Where’s the girl?”

“Not far. She have a name?”

“Gallez. Sandra. World Wildlife Alliance. A Belgian national.”

“I’ll have Dignam call that in to the their embassy. That’s the same Alliance project you told me about, right? It’s why you guys were here?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing else? I mean, off the books?”

“No. Straight up.”

“I’ve heard… rumors.” Hawkins was sympathetic, but he had a job to do, too.

Pearce glared at him. “I’m giving you the straight dope.”

“Why no security? This is Indian country out here.”

“Johnny was the security. He was a good gunfighter.”

So are you, Hawkins wanted to say but didn’t. “And you went fishing?”

“Johnny wanted to make his play on the girl. Didn’t need a third wheel to cramp his style. You know how it is.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m just surprised anyone got the drop on him. This is all close in. No bullet casings? Nine mil?” Pearce was thinking about Johnny’s Glock.

“Not around here.”

“The girl?”

Hawkins pointed up ahead. “Over there.” He led Pearce twenty feet farther in and pointed to a female form splayed under a camouflaged rain poncho borrowed from one of the park rangers. Pearce pulled back the poncho. She was stripped naked except for the pink sock still on her left foot. She must’ve fought, too. Her fair skin was tattooed with welts, scratches, bite marks. Her broken jaw was purpled and swollen. The perineum was a red ruin, the blood turning to a sticky black in the heat.

“Extensive bruising around her neck. No bullet wounds. I’m no CSI, but I’d say they’d strangled her to death,” Hawkins said. “If she was lucky.”

Pearce knelt down beside her. Closed the lifeless green eyes still staring into the faces that had killed her.

“She was a smart girl. Johnny was sweet on her.”

Dignam approached cautiously with a couple of neatly folded body bags.

“You need to see anything else?” Hawkins asked Pearce.

Pearce shook his head.

Hawkins nodded at Dignam, who signaled a couple of park rangers for help.

“What’s that god-awful smell?” Pearce asked. But he knew.

“You haven’t seen the worst of it,” Hawkins said. “At least in terms of pure savagery.”

Hawkins led the way past the outer ring of trees and into a tree-canopied clearing. The air roared with thousands of buzzing flies.

Pearce stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh my God.”

A dozen adult rhinos lay on the ground, all dead. Two calves, too. All of them had had their horns hacked off, leaving gaping wounds of exposed bone and broken flesh. Each lay in a puddle of its own blood.

“Poachers aren’t exactly surgeons, are they?” Hawkins pointed at the massive spill of intestines in the grass around one of the big females. “Some of these weren’t even dead when they butchered them.”

Pearce spat in the grass. “All of this because some old Asian dirt bags can’t get a hard-on.”

“Your friends must have stumbled upon the slaughter in progress. The butchers didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind.”

A park ranger screamed. Pearce and Hawkins whipped around as a rhino crashed out of the tree line, eyes crazed, bellowing. Blood soaked its snout, a gaping hole where the horn used to be. It loped toward the ranger, three thousand pounds of deadweight lunging on three wobbly legs, the fourth leg shot to hell.

A yellow tag pinned to its ear.

The ranger tossed his battered rifle and bolted away, shouting for help in his tribal tongue as the other rangers open fire. Dozens of steel-jacketed 7.62mm slugs slapped into the thick gray hide. Hawkins hit the dirt at the first shot, but Pearce stood firm, mesmerized. The animal’s front legs gave out first and its heavy, ruined head hit the dirt with a grunt, followed by the rest of the shredded torso. The rhino corpse kneeled there for a second before it crashed over on its side. The rangers finally stopped firing. The gunfire echoed into the distance, then finally faded away. The air still buzzed with flies.

Hawkins stood and dusted himself off.

“Congratulations,” Hawkins said. “You just witnessed the killing of the last rhino in Limpopo Park. Hell, in the whole damn country.”

Pearce turned around and watched Dignam and the other park rangers gently lift the body bags.

“I should’ve been here,” Pearce said. He glanced at Hawkins.

Hawkins’s pitying eyes agreed.

Pearce snatched off his hat and crushed it in his hand as he trudged behind the corpse of his friend back to the helicopter, its turbine slowly spinning up.

7

Zhao private residence

Bamako, Mali

^{3 May}

To Zhao’s dismay, much of the new construction in the capital city was in the current pseudo-modernist style now in vogue throughout the Middle East. Zhao found the sharply angled cement and reflective glass structures to be distinctly childish and unsophisticated, if not pathetic. But this was the trend all over the developing world, including the new Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation building rising up on the bank of the Niger River.

Zhao witnessed the rise of such monstrosities in the pleasure capitals of Dubai and Doha. He’d even stood on the heli-deck of the soaring Burj Khalifa, soon to be the not-tallest building in the world thanks to the towering ambition of his own proud nation. Pounded by ninety-kilometer-per-hour winds and clutching his safety helmet, Zhao had struggled even more with the blustering of the emir’s nephew, who proclaimed with wild gesticulations the Burj as proof of a new Arab renaissance. Zhao bit his tongue to keep from laughing in the young fool’s face. Didn’t he realize the soaring Burj was designed by Americans and constructed by Koreans using cheap imported Indian labor? The only thing “Arab” about the building was its location. Even the money that paid for it was Western, technically, from oil discovered, exploited, refined, and shipped by the Western powers themselves.

So when Zhao was given the choice, he located his personal residence in Bamako in one of the city’s old quartiers, in a refurbished French colonial compound. The pink and white nineteenth-century Beaux Arts building and its furnishings were perfectly anachronistic and, like him, sophisticated, refined, and decadent. As the vice president of Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation, he was expected to entertain prominent officials, none more important than the minister of internal security, General Abdel Tolo, second only to the Chinese-installed president himself. Tonight’s debauch was in General Tolo’s honor.

The heads of the ministries of mines, natural resources, energy, and trade were also in attendance, along with a wide selection of the finest Thai and Ukrainian whores that Zhao kept under contract. For appearances’ sake, Zhao invited the Chinese ambassador to the evening’s event, but dismissed him immediately after dinner. The prudish and inefficient party bureaucrat frowned on Zhao’s famously lavish sex-and-drugs style of diplomacy and, no doubt, would have reported the abundant presence of prostitutes and cocaine in Zhao’s residence had he remained for the festivities. An even greater liability, as far as Zhao was concerned, was the fact that the ambassador possessed the complexion and deportment of a small toad wearing an ill-fitted suit.

Zhao and Tolo had retired to his private study and indulged in snifters of Martel X.O. cognac and Cuban cigars. The corpulent African was clearly enjoying the cohiba he was puffing with relish. Zhao lifted the distinctive arch-shaped bottle and refilled Tolo’s glass. Heavy techno beats thundered on the other side of the thick wooden doors.

“Thank you, Zhao,” the general said. “You are a gracious host.” He lifted the glass to his round face, admired the copper-colored liquor, then took another sip, followed by another long drag on his cigar. Zhao studied the general’s medal-clad dress uniform. He wondered if any other armchair general in history had ever acquired so many pieces of spangled baubles in just one lifetime. “I am a humble guest in your country, General, and your servant.”

The African roared with laughter. Blue smoke billowed out of his wide mouth. “Bullshit! Don’t pull that ‘Mandarin servile’ act with me.” The general pointed the smoldering cigar at him. “I know you, Zhao. I’ve even seen you with your pants down around your ankles.”

“Indeed, you have.” Zhao first met Tolo at a military trade show in Paris the year before. Zhao not only threw an infamously raucous bacchanal that week but participated vigorously in the festivities. “So you also know why I’m here.”

“We have everything under control in the Kidal,” Tolo said, referring to the region of Mali where the REE deposits had been discovered earlier.

“I should hope so, now that your security forces have been amply resupplied by my government.”

“It’s not guns that matter. It’s guts,” the general harrumphed. He tapped his temple with a thick thumb, the smoldering cigar dangerously close to his bald scalp. “And brains.”

“Yes, of course,” Zhao said. He leaned forward and lifted his snifter toward Tolo. “To guts and brains.”

Tolo smiled and gulped down his cognac. Zhao sniffed his, savoring the aroma.

“My company is concerned about the safety of its workers,” Zhao said. “There are rumors of Tuaregs in rebellion all over the Sahara.”

“Rumors only. The ‘godforsaken’ are like dried grass. A small puff of wind and—” The general pursed his lips and blew. “They disappear.”

“We have a saying, too. When a little grass catches fire, the whole village is in danger.”

The African belly-laughed again. “You Chinese and your proverbs! Enough. The Tuaregs are easily dealt with.”

“The Tuaregs have traversed the Sahara for nearly three millennia. They are superlative desert fighters. No one has ever found them easily dealt with. I’ve read recent reports that they are rising up again in Niger.”

“Yes, around the uranium mines you Chinese are operating there. And do you know why? Your operations are draining away all of the scarce water in the region, robbing the Tuaregs of grasses to feed their precious camels, sheep, and goats. You’re polluting the land, and worse, you import cheap labor, so you don’t even give those poor bastards jobs in those filthy mines while you’re starving and killing them.” Tolo set his snifter down.

Zhao nodded. It was true. His countrymen were often worse colonialists than the British and French they had displaced. But then again, Zhao reflected, these were only Africans they were talking about. If Africans weren’t meant to be skinned by the Chinese people, then history would not have made them rabbits.

“Mistakes have been made, and they are being corrected. I assure you no such abuses will occur among your people,” Zhao said.

Tolo shook his massive head. “We both know you are making promises you can’t keep. But what do I care for such things? Eggs must be broken in order to be eaten. Still, if you were to bring jobs to the Kidal, this would be a good thing for you.”

“But we can’t bring jobs until operations begin, and we can’t begin operations until the Tuareg problem is settled.” Zhao stabbed out the butt of his cigar in a crystal ashtray. “How do you plan on doing that?”

Tolo glanced at his empty glass. Zhao unstoppered the bottle and refilled it.

“The Tuareg problem now is simple. Always these ‘godforsaken’ have been restless and rebellious, but the desert grows hotter and they grow fewer. They are divided by clans and tribes, often fighting among themselves, at least until now.”

Zhao emptied the last of the Martel into the snifter. Tolo nodded his thanks. “Merci.”

“De rien,” Zhao said. “What is different now?”

“The whole of the Tuareg nation now looks to one man. He is called ‘The Blue Warrior’ by his people. His name is Mossa Ag Alla.”

“‘The Blue Warrior’?” Zhao sat back and let the image of a blue-turbaned desert warrior roll around in his mind for a moment, admiring its mythical possibilities. “Yes, that makes perfect sense. The Kel Tamasheq men are famous for wearing the indigo blue headdress and veil.”

Zhao had done his homework. Unlike other Middle Eastern cultures, it was the Tuareg men who wore veils, not the women. Often living as fugitives, the Tuareg tagelmust was the way the Tuareg fighters hid their identities as well as protected them from the violent sun and heat of the desert. The long garment that was used to wrap their heads and hide everything but their eyes was also considered a protection against the djinn of the desert, and when they sweated, the indigo dye bled onto their unbathed skin. The ultimate symbol of the Tuareg warrior was his blue tagelmust.

Tolo shrugged his sloping shoulders. “He is but a man, and the Tuaregs a plague. We’ll kill him, and that will be the end of the affair.”

“But how will you find him?” Zhao asked. The Tuareg were virtual ghosts when hiding in the desert.

“We don’t have to,” Tolo said. “He will come to us, like a fish to the net.”

“Why would he do that?”

“We will smash the Tuareg villages, one by one. And he shall hear of it, and he will come out of his lair and strike, and then we will spear him!” Tolo laughed. His people had fished the Niger River for five hundred years.

Zhao began to say something but held his tongue. The Malian’s confidence was evident. Perhaps it was best to give him a chance to handle this problem. There was a gentle knock on the door.

Zhao smiled. “I believe my token of appreciation has arrived for you, General.”

Tolo chuckled, and set down his snifter and cigar. He turned heavily in his chair toward the door.

“Come,” Zhao said in a language Tolo didn’t recognize.

The heavy door swung open. Three Thai girls with tall drinks and short silk dresses entered, giggling.

Tolo turned back toward Zhao, white teeth grinning. “You are a good man, Zhao!”

“I knew you were a confident man, General.” He winked, and pointed at the three women. “Let’s see how far that confidence goes.”

“Trust me, Zhao. I won’t disappoint them—or you.” He laughed again. So did Zhao. If the fat man failed, Zhao would be the one still laughing when he put a bullet between those bulging white eyes. But that would be little consolation. It would be his neck on the chopping block if this mission failed.

“If you’ll excuse me, General. I have some business to attend to.” Zhao excused himself with a wink and headed for his secure communications room to contact Dr. Weng. He’d give the general a chance to complete the mission, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t call in reinforcements, just in case.

8

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

^{3 May}

Captain Naddah rode in the old Baptist missionary bus with the new recruits, still in civilian clothes. He worried they might lose heart as they neared the village. Two weeks’ training was just enough to teach them to use their rifles and follow basic orders. But this was their first mission. In Allah’s sense of humor, he had chosen the right bus for them after all. The Toyotas carried his most trusted militia fighters, men with blood on their hands, like his.

Naddah was a captain in name only. He didn’t belong to the Mali army, though they supplied his militia with weapons, food, and an abandoned camp for training. When the foreign jihadists and Tuareg separatists rose up to seize cities in the north, Naddah quit his job in the repair shop and joined Ganda Koy, and when the Tuareg jihadists Ansar Dine declared sharia law in Gao and began destroying his people’s sacred shrines, Naddah volunteered to fight them.

It surprised Naddah how much he enjoyed killing the whites and the foreigners and how much skill he had in doing it, at first with only a machete and then a gun after he had taken one from a man he had killed.

They gave him this mission because he had proven himself loyal to Mali and his people, but also because he could follow orders and even read a little.

The faded letters of the akafar Christians on the side of the bus were blacked out and Ganda Koy—“Masters of the Land”—painted over them. The Songhai Empire was the greatest of all African empires five hundred years ago, but invasions by foreigners had robbed his people of their land, wealth, and dignity for centuries. Black Africans like the Songhai were reclaiming their rightful place under the sun, and Ganda Koy was the tip of the spear in Mali.

The windows were up but fine dust and sand somehow still creeped into the bus, and the overhead fans only blew the hot air and dust around. The recruits didn’t seem to mind. They had sung a few patriotic songs earlier and now sang Songhai folk songs, shouting over the roaring bus engine. His number two was his morale officer, a short, powerful woman from Gao like himself, though he never knew her until now. She had recruited seven women for this mission, three of them her nieces. All had been raped by Tuaregs in the past and all wanted bloody revenge. Number Two and her recruits would lead the rape gang, house to house, after first killing whatever men or boys they found.

Naddah checked his watch, then stood. Number Two stopped singing and the recruits quieted down. Their earnest faces dripped with sweat, black skin glistening in the heat.

“We are only ten minutes away. Squad leaders, do you remember your orders?”

“Yes, sir!”

“And the rest of you? Are you ready to cleanse our land of the Tuareg filth that has covered it?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Do you hate the arrogant Tuaregs as much as I do?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Their white skin?”

“YES, SIR!” Now their faces broke into smiles. Some of them stood, shouting and throwing their fists.

Number Two shouted, “Mali for Africans! Mali for Songhai!” The bus rocked violently.

“Mali for Africans! Mali for Songhai!” they echoed. Naddah pumped his fists in the air and shouted with them.

Number Two shouted louder, “MALI FOR AFRICANS! MALI FOR SONGHAI!”

“GANDA KOY! GANDA KOY! GANDA KOY! GANDA KOY!”

The boy drank the ice-cold Coke greedily, sweat still pouring down his small, handsome face. Ibrahim loved that small face. It reminded him so much of his daughter, long since dead.

Ibrahim laughed. “Not so fast, you’ll get cramps.” He owned one of the few small refrigerators in the village, along with one of the few kerosene-burning generators to power it. He loved that boy with all of his heart. Everything he had was his, in time.

The boy drained the last dark bubbles from the bottle, then grimaced. “Wee-ya!” He laughed, eyes watering with the Coke burn in the back of his throat.

Ibrahim roared and clapped his old, dark hands. He was tempted to offer him another. But the sound of the whooshing air brakes outside and the squeak of heavy leaf springs invaded the magical moment. Was it a truck? What would a truck be doing here?

Ibrahim and his grandson exchanged a glance, each asking the same questions with their eyes.

Ibrahim stepped over to the doorway, his grandson at his side. Ibrahim saw an old bus, faded white. Saw the black words painted on the side. Words that nearly stopped his heart. His worst fear.

Ganda Koy.

The bus’s front door snapped open with a clang. A dozen black men with rifles and machetes poured out. The rear emergency gate swung open, too, and still more men with guns and machetes leaped into the dirt. Women with guns, too. Strange, he thought, his feet frozen in terror.

A wild-eyed Songhai man in a faded military uniform pointed and shouted at Ibrahim. Three men in mismatched camouflage pants and soccer shirts put rifles to their shoulders.

“Run!” Ibrahim grabbed his grandson by his shirt and dragged him away from the door as the rifles exploded behind them.

“The phone!” Ibrahim pointed at the cell phone charging on the car battery, but his grandson didn’t need the direction. He snatched the phone up on a dead run, snapping the charging cable in half. No matter now.

The rifles opened up again. Bullets splattered the canned goods on the shelves in a spray of peaches and milk, then stitched the wall above their heads as they dashed passed it, shards of mud brick stinging their faces. His grandson yelped but kept running toward the back of their little house. They spoke often of escape plans should such a day arrive. Ibrahim had put a door in the back of the kitchen for access to the little courtyard and outhouse, but also as an escape route. His grandson bolted for the door and yanked it open as Ibrahim reached into a drawer.

“Run! Find Mossa!”

“No! Not without you!”

“RUN!” Ibrahim flung the skinny young body out the heavy wooden door and slammed it shut. He turned as heavy feet pounded through his front doorway, an ancient French army revolver now in his trembling hands. He pointed it at the doorway, pulling the trigger as fast as he could at the screaming faces spilling through, guns blazing. Fists of molten lead slammed him against the door, clawing his chest open like a hoe turning wet earth after a storm. His body tumbled into the dirt, blocking the exit, the boy’s name on his lips like a prayer.

Maputo International Airport

Maputo, Mozambique

Pearce and Hawkins stood by the tall glass window of the new Chinese-built international terminal. Pearce watched Johnny’s aluminum shipping coffin scissor-lifted up to the cargo bay of the Boeing 737. He had booked the first commercial flight out he could get for Johnny, a thirty-hour transshipment from Maputo to London, then LAX. The family had enough to deal with without having to wait another week for the next available flight. He would have flown Johnny home on one of the big jets in the Pearce Systems fleet, but they were all deployed on other missions. Like everything else on this trip, bad timing was kicking his ass.

“His sister asked me to thank you, by the way,” Hawkins said.

“For what? Getting him killed?”

“For making all of the arrangements. Paying for the flight. She was grateful. Nice woman.”

“I wish I could’ve done more.” Pearce still felt guilty about his friend’s death. Sandra’s, too.

“I know.”

The two men watched the ground crew shut the cargo bay door and secure it.

“Still no leads?” Pearce asked.

Hawkins shook his head. “The locals are running the investigation now. Told us to stand down. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

The scissor lift began descending as the ground crew disconnected the fuel line.

“What’s next for you?” Hawkins asked. He turned to Pearce.

But he was gone.

9

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

^{4 May}

Captain Naddah leaned in the doorway of Ibrahim’s shop and took a long pull on the Lucky Strike, draining the last of the sweet American tobacco smoke into his lungs. He held his breath, then exhaled slowly, through his nose, savoring the aroma.

Naddah checked his watch. It was just after two in the morning. He had finished his turn in the rape house about an hour ago, then made his rounds in the village, checking on the sentries. He found them all awake at their posts, eager to get another go in the rape house before they pulled out at dawn. His new orders targeted a village thirty kilometers to the north.

How long can those women keep wailing? Naddah’s men had been raping them for hours, each man taking his turn. Naddah’s favorite was the young girl with the long, angular face and pale brown eyes that spit fire at him.

Naddah started to pull another Lucky Strike out of a crumpled packet but changed his mind. His throat was dry. Instead, he popped the can of cold Coke open and took a long swig.

He crossed back over to the doorway and stood there, staring at the house on the left, hearing the cries. He checked his watch. Time enough to go back to the house before dawn. He would like one more turn with the girl with the pale brown eyes and—

Naddah’s left kidney exploded with fire. He dropped the Coke as he screamed, but nothing came out of his mouth. His throat was clamped shut by a powerful hand that pulled his entire body backward, deepening the knife thrust.

Naddah’s legs buckled, but the powerful hand gripping his throat kept him standing long enough for the blade to be pulled out and thrust again into his lower back, severing the spinal column. His bowels gave way and he felt the shame of that. The hand let go.

Naddah fell. His skull cracked on the hard dirt floor, eyes exploding with light.

Naddah drew his last breath, a whimper.

Because he knew.

There is no paradise for a man covered in his own shit.

Northwest Polytechnical University (NPU)

Xi’an, China

Xi’an was a city with a long memory and an even longer history. Home of the fabled terra-cotta warriors, the ancient city at the headwaters of the Silk Road was the wealthy capital of more than a dozen Chinese empires in antiquity. Commerce between East and West flowed along the courses of the Silk Road, but equally important, so did technology. Europe acquired many Chinese inventions over the centuries thanks to the Silk Road. It was only fitting that the flow had now changed directions.

Beijing was the nation’s capital today, but Xi’an considered itself to be the intellectual and cultural soul of the Middle Kingdom, as it had been for centuries. Hundreds of Western corporations recently established themselves in the thriving metropolis. Some of China’s leading military, security, and space research facilities were also located there, as were fourteen universities, including NPU, one of the most prominent in the nation.

Dr. Weng Litong was officially listed as an adjunct faculty member in the electrical engineering department, but in reality she was the head of the Expert Working Group for Robotics Weapons Systems, which was under the direction of the PLA’s General Armament Department, which itself was under the authority of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. She was, in fact, the most powerful person on the university campus and, arguably, in the entire province of Shaanxi. The Central Commission recently turned its focus to unmanned weapons systems, particularly LARs—lethal autonomous robotics—which they now considered to be the future of warfare.

Weng was the daughter of a prominent PLA Air Force general who sat on the Central Military Commission, and her mother was an active Party functionary and a noted economist in her own right. But Weng’s brilliant mind and ruthless cunning had won her the honors and responsibilities she now enjoyed, including her top-floor office towering over the tree-lined boulevard.

Weng earned her first engineering doctorate at the age of eighteen at the prestigious Tsinghua University, where she was first recruited by the General Armaments Department into their “Flying Doves” program, sending tens of thousands of talented young Chinese students abroad for espionage and intelligence-gathering activities. Weng was provided a new identity and legend and sent to MIT, where she earned a second doctorate in robotics and electrical engineering.

The specially selected “doves” were expected to demonstrate the mythical qualities of the favored bird: fierce loyalty and fecundity. Weng exhibited both qualities admirably. Besides distinguishing herself as an engineering student, the young spy recruited and ran eleven Chinese expats and Chinese-American doctoral students, who all went on to significant positions within the American national security establishment. The lovely and brilliant young graduate student easily charmed her American colleagues with her gracious and unassuming demeanor, even as she arranged for the arrest and execution of Chinese nationals whom she identified as having betrayed the Revolution while studying abroad.

Weng’s nationalistic zeal and engineering brilliance, however, didn’t blind her to the reality that China was badly losing the drone arms race to the United States. Her Expert Working Group set up over a dozen RPV labs around the nation, each focusing on specific applications—land, sea, and air—and each had achieved some measure of success.

Bio-bots were proving to be one of the most promising developments. Animals were nature’s perfect machines, engineered by evolution to run, crawl, fly, and swim for survival. They also had the advantage of nature-engineered intelligence, still far superior to China’s feeble attempts at AI. During World War II, the Americans hired the behaviorist B. F. Skinner to train homing pigeons as autonomous guidance systems for bombs, and the Soviets deployed trained bomb-carrying dogs as autonomous antitank weapons against the Germans.

But as exciting as some of her bio-bot breakthroughs were, none was as startling or decisive as the drone technologies the Americans already deployed. This led her inexorably to the logical solution: steal everything the Americans made.

She accomplished this task through the vast network of international student and faculty exchanges—functions that NPU was famous for arranging—as well as planting vast quantities of Chinese-manufactured computer chips and processors with “back door” apps that were commonly installed in American systems. Hacking, of course, was another primary source—and the primary reason why so many Chinese weapons systems, manned or unmanned, bore such an uncanny resemblance to their American counterparts. Capturing or stealing platforms in the field, however, allowed Weng and her teams to reverse-engineer actual working systems, and no one was better at acquiring them than Guo Jun, her best operative. Thanks to him, she now possessed her first working model of a Silent Falcon.

But she had a problem.

She glanced out of her top-story window. It offered a 180-degree view of the sprawling campus, most of it ancient. But her glass-and-steel tower was in the new section. Construction cranes were raising four more towers nearby, all funded with PLA money. But her eyes focused on the famous statue down below. Even this high up, the white limestone torso of the warrior statue was gargantuan. It was one of the most famous sculptures on campus. Famous, but in the wrong location. So she had it moved to where she could see it daily. The giant warrior’s bowed head nearly touched the grass, his muscular back and shoulders exposed to the sky. In front of his head, two massive stone hands thrust up out of the grass holding a great stone sword parallel to the earth in obeisance to an unseen master. It was the image of the victorious, all-powerful warrior humbled before its master.

Guo was such a warrior. Perhaps the greatest in China’s military. Guo and his handpicked operators, posing as an elite police unit, had won the international Warrior Competition in Jordan two years before, besting more than thirty other SOF teams from around the world. Guo had won the individual sniper competition as well.

But for all of his skills, Guo lacked humility.

It was the reason she would eventually have to execute him.

She picked up her secured phone and dialed.

PLA Safe House

Johannesburg, South Africa

Guo and his team returned to their secured residence in South Africa’s largest city, melting back into the largest population of ethnic Chinese on the continent. His secure satellite phone rang. Only Dr. Weng had his number. He clenched his jaw, answered.

“You violated your orders,” Weng said.

“My orders allow me to kill when it is necessary to protect the identities of my team members.”

“How were your identities compromised?”

“The two guılaos possessed advanced surveillance and intelligence capabilities. It was highly unlikely but still possible that we had been under their surveillance with the Silent Falcon. When they arrived at the scene in the surveillance vehicle, I assumed we had been compromised.”

“Ridiculous. We hacked the World Wildlife Association cloud server. The Silent Falcon in their possession was meant only for animal research purposes. That’s how we knew to send you there to retrieve it in the first place.”

“Things aren’t always as they appear. Perhaps they were undercover.”

“Spies? Impossible. But even if it were so, it would have been better to capture them and bring them here,” Weng said. Still, there was some nagging doubt. The Belgian’s identity was confirmed with the documents recovered by Guo. Just another feckless Westerner “chasing her bliss.” But the American was a member of Pearce Systems with known ties to the American government. The woman’s death was truly of no consequence. But killing the American robbed Weng of valuable insight. “Why didn’t you capture them instead of killing them?”

“I had intended to. But the African gangsters I employed overreacted. Short of killing the Africans on the spot, there was no way to stop the carnage.”

“But you did kill the Africans?”

“Of course, but later. They were drug addicts and criminals. They were a liability, so they were eliminated.”

“Why did you employ such unreliable elements?”

Guo hesitated before answering. When Weng recruited him into her organization, she’d promised him the chance to win glory for himself in battle. His greatest desire was to prove to himself he was the world’s best warrior. His loyalty to China was an accident of fate. Had he been born an Israeli, he would have gladly joined the Sayeret Matkal; born an American, he would have joined the SEAL teams. All that mattered to him was to be the best. That was hard to do as an errand boy.

“My extra assignment for the general was to secure rhino horn for him while I was on this mission. I have no such expertise, so it was necessary to employ locals who could fulfill the task.”

“And why are you so resentful? Were you not adequately compensated for both missions?” Weng asked. “Paid fully in gold?”

“It was an inappropriate use of resources, in my opinion. I am a soldier. Not a delivery service.”

“Are you referring to the Silent Falcon or the rhino horn?”

“Both.”

Weng was silent.

Guo stood a head taller than the older woman, but he feared her greatly. She could easily order the other members of his team to kill him, and they would obey her without question. Or at least try to. But Guo feared anonymity even more than death. Death was eventual for everyone, and it was final. Only a man’s fame could live on forever, and few ever achieved it.

“Killing that American was a mistake,” Weng finally said.

“I’ve killed Americans before.”

“In Afghanistan, as a sniper, secretly assigned with other Hunting Leopards. Not like this.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I know your desire to prove yourself in combat, particularly against Americans. You will soon have that chance again, but only under my authority.”

Guo allowed himself the least possible smile. “Where?”

“Mali. I have a target for you to eliminate. A desert warrior. Quite dangerous. Your contact there will provide the details. You will proceed there directly. I am sending some equipment there for your use.”

“Will Americans be there as well?”

“Perhaps. Until then, remain focused on the task at hand. Drones are the future of warfare and China must have them, but our nation still needs soldiers like you to acquire them. Don’t disappointment me again.”

“I won’t.”

10

Avenida Martires de Inhaminga

Maputo, Mozambique

^{5 May}

The elephant stared at him.

“Hold?”

The baritone voice slapped Pearce’s fogged mind back to reality. His bleary eyes switched from the dusty elephant head looming over the polished mahogany bar to the man in front of him. Thousand-dollar suit. Million-watt smile. Forty-five caliber, short-barreled chrome pistol in a shoulder holster. Not that the Australian needed it. He outweighed Pearce by fifty pounds, all muscle, straining against the fine Italian silk suit.

Peace glanced at his cards again. Hard to focus after three days of drinking. After loading Johnny’s coffin on a commercial flight home, he headed for a familiar dive in the old port district, a crumbling relic in the part of town where tourists and police both feared to tread.

Hammered as he now was, he still couldn’t dull the image of Johnny’s slaughtered corpse in his mind.

Or the guilt.

“C’mon, Pearce. Quit playing the stunned mullet.”

Pearce tossed three cards on the felt. “Hit me.”

Pearce scanned the room as the Australian dealt. The two Iraqi bodyguards were slumped in their chairs, suits crumpled and stained, bored out of their minds. The ancient barkeep was stocking liquor. No other patrons.

“Well?” The Australian nodded at the three dealt cards on the felt.

Pearce picked them up. Glanced at the pile of cash on the table, along with a large leather pouch and his own holstered pistol. He was all in now.

Yup. Everything.

Pearce squinted at the blurry numbers on the cards.

“Don’t like what you see?” The giant Aussie smiled.

“Hey, boss.” A familiar voice.

A soft hand fell on Pearce’s shoulder. He turned around.

“What are you doing here?” Pearce asked.

Judy Hopper smiled softly, lowered her voice as if she were speaking to a dim-witted child. “You haven’t picked up your phone for days.”

Pearce set his cards on the table and patted himself down, face screwed with confusion. “Guess I lost it.” He glanced back up at her. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

“Ian.”

Like every other Pearce employee, Troy had a proprietary tracker installed in his body. Judy was already in Africa a few borders away, which meant she was closest to him on the ground. That wasn’t saying much. Traveling in Africa was always difficult. Ian explained the situation, sent her the coordinates. She came as fast as she could.

The bodyguards eyed Judy, but not for weapons. She wore her mouse-brown hair in a ponytail and no makeup on her plain, tired face, but she was easy on the eyes, especially at this hour.

“Not your first card game, is it?” Judy asked. “Or your first stop.”

“I thought you quit,” Pearce said. “You said you quit.”

“Miss, we’re in the middle of a hand. If you don’t mind—” The Australian’s deep voice was kinder than she’d expected.

“Just a moment, I promise,” she said with a polite, earnest smile. She stepped closer to Pearce. One of the bodyguards sat up, the chair scraping on the old stained floor.

“I didn’t quit. I took a leave of absence. That’s different.”

“How?”

“You’re still paying me.”

Pearce shrugged. “But you still quit on me.”

“I didn’t quit on you. I just needed time away. Spent it with some friends in Kenya.”

“A vacation. Sounds nice.”

“Miss?” The Australian’s tone sharpened.

“It was a refugee camp. No canoes or S’mores, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ll tell you about it some other time.”

“Looks like you quit them, too.”

Judy wanted to cry. Or scream. She’d never seen Pearce this wasted before. “Yeah, to find you, you… drunkard.”

BAM! The Australian’s hand slapped the table. “Are we going to finish this game or not?”

“WE’LL FINISH THE FUCKING GAME!” Pearce roared.

“Whoa. What’s this?” Judy picked up the leather pouch on the cash pile. Unbuttoned it. Rifled through the neatly folded documents. She found the title to the Pearce Systems Aviocar, still parked at the airport. “You’re betting my plane?”

“Your plane?” Pearce asked.

“Why am I arguing with a lush? What time is it?” Judy asked.

Pearce checked his wrist. Nothing.

The Australian pulled back his suit sleeve. Shoved the military-style watch in Pearce’s face. Pearce’s watch. The one Annie gave him years ago.

“Two… eighteen?” Pearce finally said, squinting.

Judy pointed the pouch at Pearce. “You can’t bet the Aviocar.”

“Sure I can.”

“Of course he can. He did.” The Australian pointed a thick finger at the pouch. “Put it back. Please.”

“We’re gonna need that plane,” Judy said to Pearce.

“I don’t need it anymore. And you quit, remember?”

“Well, I’m here now. We’ve got to go.” Judy tucked the pouch under her arm and grabbed Pearce’s shirt collar.

The Australian whipped out his chromed .45 pistol and held it to Pearce’s temple. Both bodyguards were on their feet now, pistols drawn.

“Pick up your damn cards and play your hand.” He waved the gun barrel at Judy. “And put those papers back.”

Judy sighed, frustrated. Tossed the pouch back on the table.

The Australian pointed his pistol at Pearce’s chest. “Mr. Pearce, last warning.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Boss—”

“Shhh!” Pearce held a finger to his lips to quiet her. “The man just wants to play a hand of cards. No harm in that.” He glanced at the Australian. “Right? Everybody calmed down now?”

Pearce tossed off a glass of vodka in a single throw and slammed it back on the table. “Now, where were we?”

“Cards!” the Australian blurted.

“Boss, it’s important. Really important.”

“Then you should’ve called sooner,” Pearce said.

“I did. Like, a hundred times,” Judy said. “So did she.”

“PLAY, God damn you!”

“She?” Pearce asked.

“Yeah. An old friend has been trying to reach you.” Judy punched a speed-dial button on her smartphone.

“I don’t have any old friends.” Troy laid his cards down in a crooked fan.

The Australian leaned forward to look at them. He howled with laughter. Fanned his own cards on the table.

“Sorry, Mr. Pearce, but three of a kind beats none of a kind.” He reached for the pile.

Judy handed Pearce her phone. “It’s for you.”

He frowned. Took the phone. “Pearce.”

“Troy, it’s me. Margaret Myers.”

The Australian stacked the bills on the table, smiling and counting. Pearce listened intently.

“Right away.” He tossed the phone back to Judy. Stood. The bodyguards rose, too. Pulled their guns.

Pearce pointed at the pile of winnings. “Gonna need that plane after all, friendo.”

11

Founders’ Plaza

DFW Airport, Grapevine, Texas

^{5 May}

The American and Texas flags snapped in the crisp noon breeze.

The small plaza was a favorite hangout for locals and tourists who came to watch airplanes from all over the world make their north–south landing approach. It was a gift to the public by DFW Airport, the scene of last year’s murderous mortar attack by Iranian and Mexican cartel terrorists.

A small crowd had gathered for today’s announcement. A news van from a local ABC affiliate was there to broadcast the live event. The camera operator checked her sound levels against the aircraft noise while the on-air reporter checked her makeup.

“How’s my hair look?” the young reporter asked, worried about the wind.

“We’re live in three, two, one.”

David Lane (D–24th District, Texas) approached the music stand serving as his podium. Forty-four years old, boyishly handsome, and tall, Lane had the confident, well-earned swagger of a former Air Force MC-130 Talon pilot who flew SOF operators in and out of hot spots all over the world. Lane’s chief of staff, his wife and three kids, and his parents stood beside him. He carried no notes.

“My name is David Lane and I have proudly served the 24th district for three terms, working on both the Homeland Security and Veterans’ Affairs committees, sitting on a variety of subcommittees, including Border and Maritime Security, Intelligence, and Counterterrorism. It has been an honor and a privilege serving my constituents and the nation on these committees.

“As I promised when I ran six years ago, I would limit my service in Congress to just three terms. I will therefore not be seeking reelection to a fourth term next year. In this current era of mistrust of government, it is especially important for elected officials to keep their word. I also want to set an example for my three young children, who are watching me like hawks.”

Lane turned and smiled at his twin first-grade daughters and pre-K son, who was squirming in his mother’s grip.

“At the urging of friends, family, and constituents, I am also here to announce my candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

“I’m making this announcement today despite the reality that I have very little chance of winning. Money dominates every aspect of government today, including election cycles. The fact that it will be hard for me to win is the reason why I need to run. Our system of government is broken. I intend to fix it.

“Today we live in an entitlement society, where everybody wants all of the privileges but none of the responsibilities of citizenship. Too many Americans who want to work or start a business are thwarted by federal policies from both parties that favor Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Worst of all, to remain in office decade after decade, our career politicians keep giving away benefits we can’t afford to supporters who haven’t earned them by borrowing money we don’t have from children who haven’t been born yet. That’s a recipe for disaster. It’s also just plain wrong.

“Most people in my district probably don’t even know my name. Even fewer in the state know who I am, and I’m hardly a blip on the national radar. If you want to know who I am and what I stand for, I guess the best way to describe me is as a Kennedy Democrat, just like my father, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran, and my mother, a retired schoolteacher.

“I’ll be posting all of my policy positions on my website, but all of my ideas for future legislation and policy initiatives can be summarized in the great words of President Kennedy: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ It’s not an original campaign theme, but it’s the most necessary one I can think of. It applies to every American citizen, but it should apply to our politicians, too. Me most of all.

“Thank you, and God bless America.”

Lane’s mother whooped with pride, and the rest of his family clapped.

“Better go grab that interview,” the camera operator said to the reporter. “He’s leaving.”

The reporter rolled her eyes and whispered, “Boring.”

The camera operator shrugged. “I kinda like what he said. He’s right, though. He hasn’t got a chance in hell.”

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Hart Senate Office Building, Room 412, Washington, D.C.

Senator Barbara Fiero was neither the chairman nor the highest-ranking majority member of the Senate’s intelligence committee, but she had arranged for this closed-door, classified intelligence briefing on al-Qaeda in Africa. She did it for her own personal benefit, but not her knowledge—she could’ve given the briefing herself to her octogenarian colleagues. What mattered is how she performed during the briefing and the relationships she could further cultivate afterward. How the meeting came to be scheduled, and others canceled or rearranged to accommodate this one, would never be discovered by the chairman or his staff, only that it had magically appeared on the digital calendars that dictated everyone’s schedule both on Capitol Hill and over at Langley these days.

Fiero always had objectives in mind when she attended these briefings. Today she had three.

Fiero always arrived early and left late for the closed-door meetings just for the chitchat. She’d found over the years that it was in those small, human moments that unsuspecting minds were changed and alliances formed. Just this morning she had stood in the soaring sunlit atrium of the Hart Building, exchanging pleasantries with today’s CIA briefing analyst, when she learned that his daughter was struggling to get into NYU’s graduate film school. “My husband is a member of the Dean’s Council for Tisch. I’m certain he can make a call on her behalf.”

“You’d do that for her?”

“It’s nothing, really.” And just like that, she turned a disbelieving smile into another indebted ally. Her life was seemingly filled with such coincidences.

Amazing coincidences. Almost unbelievable.

And those coincidences could always be turned into favors, favors Fiero collected like buffalo-head nickels, never to be spent, but always traded up when something more valuable came along.

Fiero was also funny and personable in a disarming way; the self-deprecating charm and razor-sharp intelligence behind her bright, alluring eyes attracted most men, even ones half her age. Not that her age mattered. She was fifty years old but had the body of a much younger woman, thanks to exercise, nutrition, and cosmetic surgery. Like most beautiful older women, she practiced the simple secrets of looking younger. The first, of course, was having the right parents—DNA went a long way. But perfect, blazingly white teeth (Lumineers), regular professional hair coloring to keep out the gray, and a simple but modern fashion sense made all the difference. At five-eleven she was strikingly tall, but she never used her size for intimidation. She was a master of the comforting touch and the firm but not-too-confident handshake, both equally necessary in the world of fragile male egos.

Fiero also carried an intoxicating aroma about her, the most aphrodisiacal scent of all: money. She was the richest woman in the Senate, with an officially self-disclosed net worth of between $7 and $180 million, thanks largely to her husband’s consortium of international investors. In reality, if one ignored the accounting gimmicks but included the deferred-compensation packages and offshore assets, she and her husband were worth triple the latter figure.

That kind of cash left a scented pheromone trail all over Wall Street and Washington that drew insatiable suitors to the queen’s hive, where deals, votes, and alliances were fervently consummated.

The irony, of course, was that wealthy people like Fiero never had to spend their own money. It was the lesser people desperately seeking their favor who wound up spending their own cash to win her patronage. People all over town were desperate to get into a relationship with Barbara Fiero, who everybody knew would win her party’s presidential nomination the following year.

“AQ in Africa has been relegated to the villages and hinterlands,” the CIA analyst summarized. “Particularly in Mali, where French and ECOWAS troops were able to push back rebel groups, including the MNLA, Ansar Dine, and AQ Sahara last year.”

“Weren’t those rebel groups fighting each other as well?” Fiero asked. Despite their mutual hatred of the corrupt Mali national government, the rebel groups were bitterly divided among themselves over political aims, ethnic rivalries, and religious doctrines.

“Yes they were, but in that struggle, each was also occupying strategic villages and towns in the resource-rich areas of the north which threatened the sovereignty of the weak national government. It was necessary for West African and French forces to intervene in order to stabilize the new government by pushing al-Qaeda Sahara out.”

“By ‘new government’ you mean the one which had overthrown the previous government because it couldn’t contain the Tuareg uprising, correct?” Fiero asked. She smiled coyly at her new CIA friend.

“Exactly, Senator. You certainly know your African politics.”

“Oh my gosh, the teacher’s pet is showing off again.” The old man harrumphing was Senator Wallis Smith, a staunch Republican ally of President Greyhill, which naturally made him an enemy of Fiero. The room ignored the snarky comment, but Fiero didn’t. She’d just been called out as smart by the ranking Republican in the room.

First objective accomplished.

“And how would you characterize the new Bamako government? I mean, the one that just replaced the one that replaced the one just before it.” She said it in such a comical, offhanded way that the entire room chuckled, even Smith. What Fiero was referring to was the messy succession of incompetent, corrupt Malian governments. The thoroughly corrupt Touré regime had been overthrown by a military junta in 2012 led by an unremarkable American-trained army officer who, in turn, relinquished his temporary government to a French-approved civilian who, in turn, stepped down six months ago in favor of the new president, Ali Kouyaté, who had known ties to the Chinese government.

“I would characterize the Kouyaté regime as somewhat more competent and somewhat less corrupt than all previous administrations, and therefore, probably the brightest hope for Malian stability over the next few years.”

“Why the brightest hope?”

“The French are exhausted, politically and economically. They have vested interests in the uranium mines in Niger, but little in Mali. They’re pulling back everywhere they can in Africa right now to consolidate their diminishing resources, including Mali. China, however, recently took an interest in Mali, and President Kouyaté enjoys Beijing’s favor, along with Beijing’s considerable resources.”

“That would seem to pose a problem, wouldn’t it?” Fiero said. “We don’t want China gaining another foothold in Africa.”

“Why not?” Smith interrupted. “Let the goddamn Chi-coms wrestle with that mess for a while. We could use some consolidating of our own.”

“They’re already all over Africa, Barbara. Maybe they’re too spread out. Let them get swallowed up in that godforsaken hellhole. No point in us jumping in after them.” Senator Anne Coates was a Democrat from Ohio. Her state had lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs to the Chinese over the last two decades. She was a commonsense moderate, not an ideologue, but she could always be counted on to vote the straight Democratic party line when it mattered.

“I’m not certain why the Greyhill administration wants to cede vast portions of the globe to our biggest geopolitical competitor, particularly when it comes to strategic, resource-rich areas like the Sahara,” Fiero insisted. The heads of the chairman and the other neocons around the table nodded in agreement with her.

Second objective accomplished.

“What invaluable resources are you referring to? Sand? Who the hell needs sand?” The skin around Smith’s jowly neck flared red. Like his ally, President Greyhill, Smith was committed to the Myers Doctrine: no new American boots on the ground anywhere until America’s fiscal house was put back in order.

“Not just sand, Senator,” the CIA analyst said. He was actually the CIA’s Africa strategic-resource specialist, which was why Fiero wanted him to brief the committee. “We know there are significant uranium deposits in the region, particularly Niger, which both the French and Chinese have exploited, particularly the French in support of their extensive domestic nuclear reactor program. Unlike the Germans, who have committed to dismantling all of their nuclear reactors, the French remain committed to their nuclear industry. It not only produces seventy-five percent of their domestic electricity supply, but France is also a net exporter of electricity, which earns them over three billion euros per year.”

“We don’t need any Malian uranium, that’s for sure, or Niger yellowcake, for that matter.” Senator Bolt was a staunch antinuclear activist. His home state of Washington became alarmingly concerned about nuclear catastrophe after the Fukushima disaster. Environmental activists up and down the Pacific Coast were monitoring Fukushima’s Texas-sized debris field floating toward California, and feverishly testing local habitats for cesium and other fatal contaminants. Locals carried Geiger counters and posted their findings on YouTube. Officially, the federal government wasn’t concerned. Privately, Bolt was losing sleep over it. He was a leading member of a bipartisan antinuclear power caucus in Congress that had gained an upper hand after the Japanese catastrophe.

“No, but we do need REEs, and we’ve just learned that a Chinese mining outfit recently discovered a vast new deposit of them, particularly of lanthanum,” the analyst said. “By the way, that information is for your ears only. Highly classified.”

“The whole damn meeting’s classified,” Bolt complained. The old Vietnam antiwar protestor turned environmentalist had long argued against all closed-door government meetings, particularly of the intelligence committees. He’d first come to Capitol Hill as a staffer for Frank Church during his famous CIA hearings. He’d heard firsthand what kind of havoc was wrought by too much governmental secrecy.

“REEs?” Smith asked, incredulous. In the old cowboy’s mouth, the “EEs” was drawn out like a long pull of saltwater taffy. “What the hell are R… E… Es?” Smith turned in his chair and glowered at Fiero. “I suppose you know?”

Fiero smiled. The CIA analyst had just confirmed what she needed to know. Or, more accurately, what she already knew. Her secret source had informed her about the massive new REE deposit two days before.

Third objective accomplished.

“Rare earth elements, I believe,” Fiero said. “But I’m no expert.” She smiled at the analyst, her signal to him to fill in the details.

Fiero pretended to pay attention while the analyst droned on about REEs. She was already plotting her next move. Greyhill had no political incentive to invade Mali. She would have to give him one.

12

In the air

Southeastern Zimbabwe

^{5 May}

Thanks to a phone call from Judy earlier, the Aviocar was fueled and prepped at the Maputo airport and waiting outside of its hangar when Pearce and Judy braked in a screeching halt in front of it. Fifteen minutes later, they were cleared by the tower and in the air. After leveling off at cruising altitude, Judy patched Pearce through to Margaret Myers at her home in Colorado.

“Troy? It’s Margaret. Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” he said, wincing. He rubbed his aching head. He and Myers hadn’t spoken since the day she’d resigned the presidency the year before. She had resumed her duties as CEO of her software company, and he assumed she was too busy to reach out to him. Pearce had been busy, too, but that wasn’t the reason he never tried to contact her.

Judy listened in on the conversation through her headphones.

“I’m sorry to have chased you down, but I didn’t know who else to turn to. I tried to pull some strings for Mike on my end, but I couldn’t make it work. I knew I could count on you.”

“What’s his status?” Pearce asked.

“He’s reported as wounded and in serious but stable condition. He needs immediate evacuation.”

“Who made the report?”

“Female, unknown. But I’m working on it.”

“Then how do you know this is the real deal?”

“Only two people in the world have my private cell number. Mike is one of them.” She didn’t need to remind Pearce that he was the other person with that number, even if he never used it.

“Could be a trap,” Pearce said. “Targeting you. Maybe they tortured him for the info. Maybe he’s already dead.”

“Maybe. You willing to let it go?”

“No.”

“Me neither. But I’m not the one putting my butt on the line. It’s not as if they would’ve expected me to personally fly in there. And they wouldn’t know who I’d send in to do the job—maybe the Marines. They made no demands, gave no conditions. Just said ‘Hurry.’ Doesn’t sound like much of a trap to me.”

“We’re not talking about brain surgeons. If some joker is looking to create an international incident, they’ve got the perfect megaphone with someone like you involved.”

“Even if it is a setup, I’m still willing to stick my neck out on this thing,” Myers said. “Obviously, so are you.”

“It’s Mikey we’re talking about. God knows how many times he pulled my bacon out of the fire.”

“I’m glad you’re the one on the ground out there, Troy. And I heard about your man Johnny.”

Troy hesitated, pushing away the memories. Didn’t want to talk about it. “You have a plan, I take it?”

“Pulling some things together for you now. Everything should be in place by the time you land in Niamey.”

“Mikey’s in Niger?” Pearce asked.

“Mali. But Niamey’s your jump-off point. It’s the best I can do on short notice.”

“What’s Early doing in Mali?”

“Not sure. The GPS coordinates on the cell phone that made the call came from the Kidal region. That’s Tuareg country.”

“The 2012 Mali civil war was about them, wasn’t it?” Pearce asked.

“It’s complicated, but yes. What time is it now on your end?”

Pearce lifted his bruised wrist to check his watch. His fists still ached from the fight in the bar. He wiped the dried blood off of the watch face. He just couldn’t leave it behind. It was the only thing he had left of Annie. Something she’d touched. Never should have bet it.

“Zero-three-zero-five, local.”

Judy tapped in Niamey, Niger, into the GPS navigator. “About fifteen, maybe sixteen hours flight time. Three refueling stops, too. Better add another three hours, minimum.”

Pearce frowned. Not good. That was a long time for a wounded man to wait for an exfil. But there was nothing to be done at this point. He hoped Early really was in stable condition.

“I’ll call you as things firm up on my end,” Myers said. “Good luck to both of you.”

In the air

Northwestern Zambia

Six hours and twelve hundred miles later, Judy tapped the fuel gauge. “Know any good gas stations around here?”

Pearce shook his aching head. Sober, but hungover now. “No, but I have a Shell card if you find one.” He glanced out the window. The morning sun behind them bathed the savannah below in a sweet, golden light. “Postcard Africa,” Judy called it. A small town hugged the Zambezi River in the bottom of their windscreen.

“That’s Mwinilunga. Nice little place.”

“You know it?”

“I grew up in this part of the world, remember?”

“They got a Starbucks?”

“No, but I have a friend who lives about five miles north of here. He has an airstrip we can use. And by ‘airstrip’ I mean a stretch of flat ground and not too many trees nearby.”

“McDonald’s has pretty good coffee. Or Hardee’s. And they’ve got biscuits. Either of those will do.”

“Whit will have coffee, for sure. Probably a batch of antelope stew, too.”

“Sounds like a winner. I don’t suppose he has any fuel?”

“Whit runs the Aviation Mission Fellowship station. He should have plenty.”

“You know everybody around these parts,” Pearce said.

“The missionary community is pretty tight-knit, and missionary aviators even tighter.”

“You ever think about going back to that life?”

Judy ignored the question. “I checked your manifest. You’ve got a delivery to Fort Scorpio due in about an hour. What do you want to do about it?”

The Aviocar still contained the special-delivery packages for the “Recces,” the South African special forces. Johnny was supposed to run that training, too.

“Gonna have to disappoint them.”

“Buckle up. We’re heading down.”

Minutes later, Judy flared the nose and wings as she landed the boxy airplane. The Aviocar’s fixed tricycle landing gear absorbed the grassy field with hardly a bump. She taxied over to the hangar. Three ancient Cessna 172 Skyhawks were parked neatly in a row on the far side of the building. They were all painted in the mission’s famous Florida-orange paint scheme. Their old logo—a cross, a Bible, and a dove—had since been painted over and replaced with a simple AMF in black letters. It wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. Too many Islamic extremists had taken potshots at “infidel” planes in the last year to ignore the problem.

“Interesting paint jobs,” Pearce said.

“They paint them bright orange so that when they crash we can find the bodies more easily and send them back home.” She flashed a smile. Soldiers weren’t the only people with guts.

A big man in stained coveralls and a crew cut ambled heavily out of the open hangar door, like a bear walking on two legs. He stuffed an oily rag into a rear pocket as he approached the plane.

Judy and Pearce stepped out of the cargo door, stretching out their tired muscles.

“Judy!” The big man dashed over, surprisingly fast for his size. They hugged. Judy nearly disappeared in his massive embrace.

“So good to see you, Whit.”

“You, too, sister. Who’s this?” Whit’s green eyes beamed through a pair of rimless glasses. His hair was so blond it was nearly white, and the bristles in the crew cut were as thick and stiff as a shoe brush.

“Whit, this is Troy Pearce. Troy, this is the Reverend Whit Bissell. He runs the AMF division in central and west Africa.”

Whit thrust out a meaty paw. “Great to meet you, Mr. Pearce. And call me Whit.”

Troy took it. The man’s hand was a vise. “Name’s Troy. Mr. Pearce was my father.”

“I just put on a pot of coffee back at the house. Should be ready in a jiff. You two want to clean up while we wait?”

“We need to fuel up and get going, Padre. We have an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“A friend in trouble. We need to go get him,” Judy said.

“What kind of trouble?” Whit asked. He frowned with pastoral concern.

“Not the kind of trouble you can help with,” Troy said. “Unless you’re handy with a—”

“We can use your prayers, Whit, that’s for sure,” Judy interrupted, throwing Pearce a nasty glance. “And a refuel.”

“I can pray, but I’m not sure how much fuel I can spare. How far are you going?”

“Heading up north. Cameroon,” Judy said, lying by omission. “We’re bone-dry and we need a full tank to get there.”

“How much is a full tank?”

“Five hundred and twenty-eight gallons,” Judy said. “And 80/87 avgas is fine. We don’t need the fancy stuff.”

“Sorry, but I can’t spare it.”

Pearce pointed at an old GMC fuel truck parked a hundred yards away on the far side of the airstrip. “Is that thing full?”

“Half.”

“That must be, what, fifteen-hundred-, two-thousand-gallon capacity?”

“Two thousand.”

“So we take five, we leave you five. What’s the problem?” Pearce asked.

“We’re glad to pay for it,” Judy said.

“It’s not that, though we could surely use the donation. The problem is, we need the gas. We do a lot of medical missions and emergency transport. Just got back from one yesterday, as a matter of fact. And I’m the fueling hub for two other agencies. Avgas is hard to come by in this part of the world. When the refinery has it, I have to make a six-hundred-mile round-trip to go get it, and they say it will be another four to six months before I can restock. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

“Our friend is in trouble, Whit. We really need that fuel.” Judy laid a hand on his forearm.

Whit shrugged. “I understand, but I’m sorry.”

“I think Jesus wants us to have that gas, Padre.”

The missionary’s broad back stiffened. “I don’t take kindly to blasphemy, Mr. Pearce.”

“I’m not blaspheming. I’m quoting scripture.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sermon on the Mount. ‘Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.’ So I’m just askin’—can we please have that fuel?”

“No. I’m sorry. There are too many other lives at stake.”

“Our friend’s life is at stake, too,” Judy said.

“Then I’ll pray for him.”

Pearce stepped closer. “There’s another verse, Padre. Something like, if a man strikes your face—”

“Troy.” Judy’s eyes flared.

Whit didn’t back down. “You’d rob a mission? We’re doing the Lord’s work here.”

“Didn’t David eat the Bread of the Presence from the tabernacle?”

“The Devil can cite chapter and verse, too.”

“Then pray for us sinners, Padre, but only after you help me get that damn fuel loaded.”

Whit tugged on his ear, then laughed. “You might be a horse’s ass, Mr. Pearce, but somebody’s darn blessed to have you as a friend.”

13

Zhao residence

Bamako, Mali

^{6 May}

The Malian boxer was ten centimeters taller and at least ten kilos heavier than Zhao, but it was his face and not Zhao’s that was drenched in sweat and bleeding heavily over the left eye.

Both men were shirtless and ripped. The black man kept his gloved hands up by his face, one hand carefully guarding the eye now swelling shut. He kept driving cautiously toward Zhao, who was springing on the balls of his feet, dancing half circles around the squeaking parquet dance floor, first left, then right, then back again, a smile plastered on his handsome face, his bare hands loose and bouncing in front of his broad chest.

Guo stood at parade rest. The boxing ring was in Zhao’s colonial mansion. Previously it was a ballroom with a giant crystal-and-gold chandelier dangling overhead. Guo disapproved of the entire house and its furnishings—a garish historical anachronism. Everything about the house screamed excess and self-indulgence. Guo preferred the sleek linearity of his modern high-rise apartment in Beijing, or the spartan efficiency of a military barracks, to this European monstrosity.

It was an honor for Zhao to personally request Guo’s services. Zhao was the kind of man the Party groomed for leadership. If Zhao’s star continued to rise, he would inevitably reach the Standing Committee, perhaps even the presidency. Weng emphasized the importance of this mission to Zhao’s career, which meant, of course, his own. Their fates were now intertwined. The two men were practically mirror images of each other: ambitious, intelligent, powerfully built, and ruthless. They were even the same height. The primary difference was that Zhao fought in boardrooms, Guo on battlefields. Politics versus blood. In Chinese history, the two were often commingled.

“You read the files I sent you, Guo?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Malian threw a lightning left jab into the space where Zhao’s head had been a nanosecond earlier. Threw a second. Missed again. Zhao laughed.

“What did you learn?”

“Mossa Ag Alla is a dangerous opponent, that he is to be killed upon contact, and that I am to conduct operations without revealing my identity or location while in country.”

Zhao danced right, then left. “Correct on all counts. And secrecy is vital. The Mali government would be outraged if they knew you and your team were here.”

The chiseled Malian charged again, throwing a vicious right cross, lowering his left hand just a few centimeters.

Zhao saw the punch coming in the man’s eyes even before he threw it. As the African swung his enormous right fist, Zhao spun on the ball of his right foot and launched a devastating roundhouse kick. His heel crashed into the boxer’s left temple, just behind the swollen left eye. The African boxer grunted as his brain short-circuited. His upper body still twisted on a right axis, following the centripetal weight of the failed right cross, and the strike from Zhao’s heel into his skull accelerated the spin. The big Malian pirouetted on his right leg, then tumbled to the floor like a bag of wet meat slapping wood. He didn’t move.

Zhao sauntered over to a gilded table and pulled a bottle of water from a champagne bucket brimming with ice. He tossed it over his shoulder at Guo, who caught it in one hand. Zhao cracked one open for himself, pointed it at Guo. “Ganbei.”

“Ganbei!”

Mali was hot. Guo was glad for the cold water. He drained it.

But Zhao sipped his water, Guo noticed. The man also wasn’t breathing hard, and didn’t seem to be sweating much, if at all.

“So tell me, Guo,” Zhao said, smiling. He nodded at the unconscious African. “What should we do about him?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You said that you were to conduct your mission without revealing your identity or location while you were here. And yet you revealed both in front of this man.”

“I assumed he was in your employ, sir. Otherwise, you would not have summoned me in his presence nor inquired about my mission.”

“Not an unreasonable assumption. He does work for me, but he is an African. Where do you think his loyalties are?” Zhao knelt down next to the boxer, felt for his pulse.

Guo flushed with humiliation. It had been a test, and he’d failed. He drew his combat knife. “I’ll take care of him now.”

“No need. I already solved your problem.” Zhao stood, held out his hand for Guo’s knife.

Guo turned the blade in his hand and extended the handle to Zhao. His mission was over before it began.

“I was told you were the best,” Zhao said. He drained the last of the water and let the bottle tumble to the floor.

“I am the best.”

“That’s disappointing.” He lifted the heavy combat knife in his hand. “Nice weight. Well balanced. Is it a good thrower?”

“Yes, sir. It is.”

Zhao glared into Guo’s emotionless eyes. Raised the razor-sharp blade behind his ear to throw it.

Guo didn’t flinch. How one died mattered even more than how one lived.

The blade launched from Zhao’s hand. It thudded heavily between the shoulder blades of a naked young French woman combing her long red hair. The carbon steel blade buried itself into the plaster wall behind the old oil painting.

“Never really cared for Degas,” Zhao said. “You?”

“I don’t have an opinion, sir.”

“Be sure to keep your blade sharp. And don’t make me clean up your mess again.”

“No, sir.”

Zhao picked up his shirt and pulled it on. “My bartender makes a fantastic Rusty Nail. We’ll drink a few and talk some more about your mission. I especially want to hear more about this Pearce fellow you are supposed to capture, if you have the time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Of course Guo had the time. He had all the time in the world now.

CIOS Corporate Offices

Rockville, Maryland

CIOS wasn’t unique. American defense and intelligence agencies like the NSA contracted with thousands of private, nongovernmental companies to handle their enormous workloads. CIOS was just one of hundreds of contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, the infamous former employer of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

As an authorized NSA contractor, Jasmine Bath had either legal access to NSA resources or the knowledge to gain access to those resources, and the ability to cover her tracks while doing so in either case. She had been subjected to the pervasive scrutiny of security-clearing authorities, not only before she was initially hired by the NSA, but also during and after her government employment, then reexamined again when she applied for her contractor authorization. Those investigations themselves were conducted by a private contractor, National Investigative Services. Bath easily penetrated the NIS mainframe and wrote her own glowing clearances.

She was also well aware that her bank accounts, e-mails, and all other data footprints were subject to constant, randomized checks to ensure her continued loyalty and fidelity. But since the day she entered Berkeley, Jasmine had been prescient enough to sanitize her own records and to create the necessary fictions to maintain the illusion of purity.

As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter that her job was to violate the privacy of other people in the name of national security. It was no one’s damn business but her own to know whom she slept with, which nineteenth-century German transcendentalists she read on her Kindle, or how often she ordered Kao Pad Poo at the Smiling Panda.

It also didn’t bother her one whit to dig wherever she was told to dig, especially by The Angel. What did it matter to her that she generated lists for him of Dark Web porn downloads, offshore painkiller prescriptions, or secret organ-donor purchases of certain committee chairmen, Treasury Department undersecretaries, and Senate staffers? Politics was a game of sharp elbows and vicious cross-checks. Bath wasn’t playing the game. She wasn’t even keeping score. She was just supplying the sticks and blades for a hefty fee.

That morning she had received a new research request from The Angel. “Lane, David M.” She knew the name. Had watched his pathetic announcement a few days earlier. The congressman seemed earnest and sincere in his speech, but those qualities in politics were about as useful as a floppy drive on a MacBook Air, so she dismissed him out of hand as a loser.

So why the research query from The Angel?

Hers not to reason why, only to cash the checks. She ran her searches, a digital colonoscopy. But Lane came up clean.

As in, nothing. As in, not doctored or laundered or sanitized, or even a fictional legend concocted for some CIA spook needing a cover. Nope. Nothing.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Then you need to create some catastrophic filth. Put it out there in a credible way, the way you do better than anybody else.”

“No problemo.”

“Get started on that right away, but don’t let it out. Yet.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Lane, David M. Sincere, earnest… lame.

Like Justice Tanner. Tanner killed himself, sure. Jasmine looted the coroner’s hard drive. Saw the crime-scene photos. A bloody mess. Jasmine hated that. But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t put the gun in his mouth, did she? Or pull the trigger? No. But maybe she supplied the bullets, metaphorically speaking.

Screw the metaphors.

Screw Tanner. And David Lane.

Not her problem.

Her problem was Margaret Myers. The former president was a software engineer in her own right and owned her own software company. The truth was, the two of them had a lot in common. In another reality, or a J. J. Abrams parallel universe, the two of them could’ve been friends.

But Myers wasn’t her friend. Myers had been sniffing around the Tanner suicide for weeks. The initial queries had been clumsy, almost like a drunk walking into a plate-glass door he had trouble seeing. But Myers came back, slowly, cautiously, and from new directions, using bots, mostly, tapping into a wide variety of public databases, then breaking through passworded accounts and, finally, private nets, all unaware of Jasmine’s presence monitoring her searches. Or, at least, so Jasmine hoped. What was clear to Jasmine, however, was that Myers was assembling the right data set. But just to be sure, Jasmine broke into Myers’s toy box and took a look around. Then there was no question.

Myers knew, or at least was on the verge of knowing.

Jasmine informed The Angel. Now Myers was his problem.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“The only way to be metaphysically sure is when the feds come rolling up to your driveway in a fleet of those big black Suburbans.”

“Can’t you steal her database? Drop a virus into the network?”

“If she has any brains—and she does, believe me—she’s got hard copies of everything, or cloud backup, or both. But even if she didn’t, once I broke in there and stole everything, she’d know that we know, so you’d alert her and she might be forced to act or go deeper. I think it makes more sense for me to sit tight and watch what she does. If she alerts the black-Suburban boys I can let you know, but there are a whole lot of intermediary steps she’ll be taking before she gets to that point, and right now I’m completely invisible to her.”

“Sounds like a plan, so long as you’re sure you’re invisible to her.”

“Guaranteed,” Jasmine wrote. “Trust me.”

14

Myers residence

Denver, Colorado

^{6 May}

Vin Tanner was the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice to commit suicide while in office. That’s how he would always be remembered in the history books. Myers chose to remember him only as her friend.

She’d known Tanner for twenty years before she nominated him to the Supreme Court. Knew his wife and kids well. Their two skiing families vacationed together in Vail several times. Justice Tanner sent her a handwritten note when her son had been killed, and enclosed an old Polaroid of their two young boys in soccer jerseys, skinny arms draped over each other’s shoulders, gap-toothed smiles and sweaty foreheads, best friends forever.

But Myers didn’t nominate Tanner because they were friends. He was a brilliant jurist, but more important, a thoughtful and prudent political theorist. Small government, small businesses, and small farms were his Jeffersonian mantra. Her opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee hung the libertarian label on him at the televised hearing, thinking that the old canards about legalized prostitution and disbanding the FDA would scuttle his chances, but his effortless, irrefutable defense of limited constitutional government silenced his critics. His confirmation sailed through with only two dissenting votes.

Myers was certain at the time that Tanner’s appointment would be one of the highlights of her presidency. She hoped it would be the beginning of the end of the “tyranny of black robes.” She believed Tanner would cast a number of crucial swing votes that would finally begin to push back the overwhelming encroachments of federal legislation and administrative decrees that now impinged upon nearly every facet of American life. But to her chagrin, he cast the deciding vote in favor of upholding sweeping new regulations promulgated by Senator Fiero’s finance committee, regulations that would only serve to further empower the largest banks and enlarge yet again the role and opacity of the Federal Reserve.

His decision deeply troubled her. The nation had nearly seven thousand banks, but just six of them controlled sixty-seven percent of all banking assets. Those “too big to fail, too big to jail” bankers were largely responsible for the 2008 crash and the long Great Recession still ravaging the nation and much of the globe. The last thing Wall Street and the Big Banks needed was more power and more regulatory protection in the guise of banking reform. If any Supreme Court Justice could have been expected to vote against the Fiero legislation, it was Tanner. Instead, he wrote the majority opinion. As any student of the Court knows, justices have a funny habit of changing after their appointments—and disappointing their champions. Myers and Tanner would be in the footnotes, too, but for a grislier reason.

She reflected on her decision to visit Tanner two weeks prior. Myers may have resigned the presidency but she still felt responsible for his disastrous decision. She had the right to know why he made it. God knows he’d been pilloried in the media, crucified on both the left and the right for his inexplicable vote. She had known that if the media got wind of her visit, it would only make his bad situation worse. But she had needed to see him face-to-face, look him in straight in the eye.

She arrived at his Georgetown brownstone late in the cool evening, unannounced. That way she could avoid the press, and Tanner couldn’t avoid her. She knocked.

Tanner’s dark, sleepless eyes narrowed when he saw her that night. He reluctantly waved her into his study.

“I’m surprised it took you so long.” He lit a cigarette. “Where’s your Secret Service detail?”

“I discharged them. I’m no longer the president, so why should the public have to pay for them? Only pimps need an entourage like that.”

“The world’s a dangerous place, Margaret. You need to be more careful.”

“Where’s your security detail?”

“Gave them the night off.” He led them into his study. Offered her a chair. Floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves were crammed with books.

“How are Michelle and the kids?”

“They’re fine. Visiting her parents.” He took a long drag. “Kind of late for a social visit.”

“I’m just a concerned citizen calling on an old friend. You look awful, by the way.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. What’s done is done. And I don’t owe you anything.”

“I’m not a debt collector. I just wanted to know why.”

“It’s all in the majority opinion.”

“I think it’s all in your face.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He stabbed the cigarette out in a crystal ashtray full of butts.

“You’re one of the most principled men I’ve ever known, and yet you’ve obviously made a decision you regret. You regret it so much it’s tearing you up. The Vin Tanner I know would never make a decision that violated his principles, but something compelled you to do so.”

Tanner’s face blanched. “I’ll have to ask you to leave. Now.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He rose to his feet. “Yes, leave. This minute.” His shoulders slumped. “Please.”

“I’m sorry I’ve upset you.”

She left.

Three hours later, Tanner put a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Myers blamed herself, of course. The timing of Tanner’s death couldn’t have been coincidental. That meant she played a part in it. The guilt had eaten her alive since that day. But something else was wrong. Her intuition told her she was being followed. She couldn’t prove it. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she probably was under surveillance. She made herself a target the minute she knocked on Tanner’s door. Stupid.

There was a knock on her door.

“Come in.”

The service technician. He’d left twenty minutes before, after a service call. Her TV signal had been experiencing irregular glitches the last few days. She had called for service and the tech arrived today, to replace one of the circuit boards on the satellite dish.

“Forget something?”

“No, ma’am. Found this about a mile up the road.” He handed her an electronic device about the size of a tablet.

“What is it?”

“Not sure, ma’am. But it’s generating a radar signal. And it was pointed in the direction of your house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m retired Navy. I just do this job to keep from getting bored. Radar is kind of a hobby of mine. I carry a homemade rig in my truck, picks up all kinds of radar signatures, especially wide-spectrum. About a mile north of here, my rig alarmed. It wasn’t one of the police bandwidths, for sure. So I pulled over. Looked around with my handheld. Found an all-weather box strapped to a tree. Kind of unusual, to say the least. Found that inside. Just thought you should know.”

She flipped the device over. No markings. “What do you think it was doing?”

“Can’t be sure, but I’d guess it’s some kind of surveillance function. You need to run it by your people, just to be sure.”

Her security chief, Roy Fox, was scheduled to stop by after lunch. She’d ask him then.

“Thank you for taking all of the time and effort to bring me this.”

He shrugged. “Glad to do it.” Then he added, “If you don’t mind my saying, ma’am, you were a damn fine president. I hated like hell to see you go.”

Roy Fox arrived on schedule after lunch. He was former FBI, a specialist within the communications exploitation section (CXS) of the bureau’s Counterterrorism Division. Fox easily identified the tablet-sized device in his hands as one of the next-generation PHOTOANGLO radar units.

“This isn’t good.”

“What’s the problem?”

He explained. Myers agreed. This wasn’t good at all.

The presence of a PHOTOANGLO unit meant LOUDAUTO passive room bugs, or their equivalents, were planted in her house. The LOUDAUTO units were nearly impossible to find, either by electronic detection or physical inspection, if they were properly inserted. The miniature microphones turned room audio like human voices into analogue electrical signals that were picked up by the PHOTOANGLO radar unit, rebroadcast to a relay station, then reconverted to audio files for analysis.

Fox went on to explain that similar passive bugs could record keyboard strokes, printer outputs, and even video cable signals.

“God only knows how long they’ve been in place.” His face flushed. “I’ll tender my resignation immediately, of course.”

Myers didn’t know what to think. She had hired Fox to protect her security. He’d obviously failed. But whoever had deployed these devices was world-class. Maybe she was at fault for not taking her security more seriously.

“Well, at least we know now.” She pointed a finger at an invisible room bug. “And so do they.”

“I just hope there isn’t another PHOTOANGLO out there still picking up this conversation.”

“Why don’t you and your team conduct a sweep. Yank out everything you can find.”

Fox pulled out his cell phone, scrolling for numbers. “I’ve got a few favors I can call in. I’ll get a team here right away. I won’t let you down again.”

He bolted out of the room with the phone in his ear.

Myers didn’t know what to do next. She knew that all of this equipment was standard NSA ANT spy craft—the kind of technology they deployed to spy on the European Union, the UN, and sometimes even hostile governments in its DROPMIRE program. Not that any of these devices were stamped NSA. But she herself had approved of their deployment when national security was at stake. At least, that’s what she believed at the time.

Now that she was being targeted by the very same technology, she began to doubt the wisdom of her previous decisions. She felt horribly exposed, even violated. She understood that sometimes people were targeted in order to eliminate them as suspects. Didn’t matter. Her privacy had been stolen from her, and no matter the reason, she resented it. Now she understood the rage of people like Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been similarly bugged by her American “friends.” Was it possible that spying on allies caused more damage than it prevented? Spying, by definition, was illegal. Spying on allies violated trust, and alliances were built on trust.

Myers knew these surveillance units were also available to other federal agencies, and even state and local investigative units, including some of the larger metropolitan police departments. Undoubtedly, other national governments had access to similar technology as well. There was really no way to determine who might be behind these incursions. But she hadn’t committed any crimes. This couldn’t be an official investigation. This was a private affair—undoubtedly, the same people connected to Tanner’s death.

Her visit with Tanner had been unofficial, off the books. She hadn’t called him in advance or sent an e-mail. She’d known that if he was home he’d let her in, so why give him the chance to wave her off beforehand? Myers thought it wise to not volunteer any information about her visit that night, and neither the district police nor federal authorities had ever contacted her after his death. She didn’t attend his funeral, probably the reason she had never gained closure with his death.

Why had he killed himself? Even if he had made a ruling he’d regretted, it could have been addressed, either by later rulings or in off-the-record interviews. Unless he couldn’t do either. That meant some kind of pressure had been applied to him, didn’t it?

Whoever had pressured him was now coming after her. If that person could break Vin Tanner, they could break her. And now they had the gall to come after her. That made her angry. It also scared her. Whom could she trust?

A horrible thought crossed her mind. What if her own security chief had been part of this? He probably wasn’t—she’d known him for years—but now she had doubts. Was he really unable to find those devices? Or was he hiding them? Once again, the very existence of the technology had poisoned the well. Could she really trust him? Now she wasn’t certain.

She wanted to call Troy. But if her phone was compromised like her computer, she’d only put him in danger, too. She may already have. He was too busy on Early’s rescue mission to help her anyway. What was she thinking?

She needed to find a way to securely contact Ian McTavish, Troy’s computer genius. Troy gave her permission last year to contact anyone at Pearce Systems for any reason. Finding Tanner’s blackmailers seemed like a good reason to her. Not getting killed by them was even better. The brilliant Scot could help on both counts. She’d already worked with him to make arrangements for Troy’s rescue of Mike Early. Now she was the one who needed a little rescuing.

She made a decision. Purse, keys, cash.

Time to run.

15

Karem Air Force Base

Niamey, Niger

^{6 May}

Guess we’ll have to play it by ear,” Pearce said.

“Is that before or after we’re shot down?” Judy was nervous flying toward an American military base without the proper clearances or emergency call signs. The Aviocar they flew in was strictly commercial and broadcasting the proper IFF signal, but her alarms indicated they’d been lit up with antiaircraft radar and laser range finders.

“We have our orders. Let’s stick to them and see what happens next.”

“Sure. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Pearce was concerned, but not for himself. Myers had called back late yesterday and instructed them to arrive at the American air facility precisely at 2100 local, and promised to call back with details about the plan but never did. Pearce tried to reach her but couldn’t. Either she was in trouble or running from it.

“Bet you wish you hadn’t threatened to beat up a missionary right about now, eh?” Judy grinned.

“Maybe we should’ve let the padre keep the gas after all.”

“Angel Two-Four, Angel Two-Four, do you copy?” A woman’s voice crackled in their headsets. The Air Force air controller.

“Guess they got the message. That’s our call sign,” Judy said to Pearce. She radioed back, “This is Angel Two-Four. Copy.”

“Angel Two-Four, this is Tower Control. You are cleared to land. Come to two-seven-zero heading. Over.”

“Copy that, Tower Control. Coming to header two-seven-zero. Over.”

“Here goes nothing.” Judy gently pushed the rudder pedals and turned the yoke to the new heading until the long black strip of illuminated asphalt was centered in her windscreen, one of three on the small air base. A granite-gray, push prop aircraft with a twenty-meter wingspan stood on one of the runways.

“Reaper drone,” Pearce said. “Night ops.”

“No wonder they built their own little base out here.” The U.S. Air Force located the facility five miles north and west of the city, not far from the N24 roadway, which they repaved and widened to accommodate larger military vehicles. Diori Hamani International Airport was about two miles south and east of Naimey’s outermost boundaries. Diori Hamani had too much civilian traffic and security problems for a sensitive military operation to have to deal with.

Just five hundred feet off the ground they could make out a series of low-lit prefab buildings and trailers: hangars, offices, quarters. At least one of those trailers was the ground control station (GCS) for the Reaper and its crew. Pearce watched the Reaper roll down its runway and gently angle into the brilliant night sky pregnant with stars. He lost sight of it as soon as it cleared the runway lights, but he could discern its deadly shadow blotting out a swath of starlight.

Moments later, Judy landed with practiced perfection. She taxied as directed by the tower toward an available hangar, an airman first class marshaling her into position with red-lighted batons. She was a young Hispanic, probably no more than twenty, Pearce guessed, with a pair of orange safety earphones nearly as large as her head. Did the recruiter tell her she’d wind up at a super-secret drone base in Africa when he visited her high school back in El Paso or Denver or Sacramento? The young face was earnest and confident in the blinding landing lights as she crossed the batons over her head, signaling a stop. Judy pressed the brake pedals. The marshal dropped her arms back sharply to her sides, then snapped the right baton to her throat, parallel to the ground, signaling Judy to cut her engines. Pearce threw the young woman a mock salute, and she allowed herself a small smile before turning on her boot heels and heading back into the hangar.

“Now what?” Judy asked.

Pearce pointed out the window. “There’s our ticket, I’m guessing.”

A black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows raced toward them.

Judy and Pearce went through the shutdown procedure, powering down and securing the aircraft. By the time they opened the cargo door, the big Chevy SUV had pulled to a stop and two doors had swung open. The man in the front passenger seat made a beeline for Pearce and Trudy, buttoning his suit coat as he marched toward them. He was followed closely behind by a harried young Air Force captain in her camouflaged ABUs and carrying a clipboard. Her name tag read SOTERO in block letters. The driver, a private, remained behind the wheel, but a square-jawed AF Security Forces sergeant named Wolfit stood watchfully by the vehicle, eyes boring a hole in Pearce. An M4 carbine with an HK grenade launcher and high-end optics was slung across his broad chest.

“Troy Pearce, Judy Hopper, it’s a pleasure to see you both again. You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Bert Holliday. We met at the HIV/AIDS conference in Nairobi last year.” He shook Pearce’s hand warmly.

“Bert, of course. Great to see you again, too.” Pearce had no idea who he was.

“Mr. Holliday,” Judy offered, shaking his hand without conviction.

“I’m sure you’re both surprised to see me out here. I was recently reassigned to this mission, and with Ambassador Ray just called away yesterday, I’m now the acting chargé d’affaires.” Holliday wore his smile as easily as his neatly tailored suit, no tie, and custom-made cobalt-blue oxford shirt. He pointed to the captain. “And this is Captain Eva Sotero, the officer in charge this evening. Captain, this is Troy Pearce and Judy Hopper, our valiant guests.”

Pearce put on his best poker face, but guileless Judy frowned with confusion. The captain was clearly frustrated and off her game, but she caught Judy’s expression. It only added to her suspicion. Sotero glanced at her clipboard. “I just received these orders twenty minutes ago from a Colonel Ian Sanders, out of AFRICOM’s offices in Stuttgart. I’ve been instructed to give you full logistical support for your mission.”

Colonel Sanders? Pearce stifled a laugh. It was a funny way for Ian to let him know he was the one who made the arrangements.

“I’ve been instructed by my superiors to offer any assistance I can as well,” Holliday added.

“But these orders are highly irregular,” Sotero insisted. “And I’ve never heard of this Colonel Sanders.”

“Did you try calling him?” Pearce asked. “We’re doing this on the fly, so a lot of things won’t be regular.” The late-night arrival meant a junior officer was in charge of the base, and Pearce intended to take full advantage of Sotero’s inexperience.

“I called Stuttgart immediately. But, unfortunately, the direct line to his office is out of service.”

Good move, Ian, Pearce thought.

“Did you try Washington? Someone in the Pentagon?” Pearce asked.

“It’s four in the morning there, sir. I’d just get some other poor OOD slob like me.”

“Base commander?” Pearce asked.

“Not picking up his cell phone. Left a voice mail.”

“What’s the problem, Captain?” Holliday stiffened. “This is an emergency medical evacuation of an American citizen in a hostile environment. These two people are risking their lives to save another, so let’s loosen up a few buttons and get to work for these people.”

“I’ll need to see some ID, please,” Sotero said.

“There’s no need. I’ll vouch for them,” Holliday said.

“SOP, sir,” Sotero insisted.

“Not a problem,” Pearce said. He and Judy both pulled current passports from their pockets and handed them to her. She verified names and photographs.

“I’ll need to make photocopies,” Sotero said.

“There’s time for all of that later,” Holliday insisted. “Let them get some chow and some shut-eye.”

“What time will you be departing?” Sotero asked Judy.

“What time?” Judy glanced at Pearce.

Holliday jumped in. “We’re still waiting for a shipment of medical supplies. It should be here in four hours.”

“Destination?” Sotero asked.

“That’s ‘Need to Know,’ Captain,” Holliday said.

He turned to Pearce. “How soon until you’re ready to leave?”

“Soon as we can refuel and run a brief maintenance inspection,” Judy said. She yawned.

Sotero caught the hint. “I’ll assign ground crew to take care of the refuel, maybe have them check systems, too, if you like.”

“That would be great.” Judy was happy to get extra hands on the job, but after they were done she would still do her own walkaround, the way her father trained her.

The captain stepped past Judy and stuck her head in the cargo door. “Mind if I take a look around?”

“Never seen a plane before?” Pearce said. “The Air Force used to have a bunch of them back in the day.”

“Need to check for contraband.”

“Captain Sotero, please,” Holliday insisted. “This is a humanitarian mission.”

“And this is a United States Air Force base. We have protocols, Mr. Holliday, and it’s my ass if I don’t follow them.”

“Not a problem,” Judy said. “Feel free to look around.”

Judy wasn’t concerned. Pearce’s special-delivery cargo to South Africa was carefully hidden and stowed away in a secret locked compartment.

“Before you get started, Captain, how about some food and drink for our guests?”

“Of course. Let’s load back up and I’ll run you two over to the mess hall. I’ve got a couple of BOQ trailers open if you want to shower and catch some sleep.” She eyed Pearce, then Judy. “Do you folks want one bed or two?”

“One,” Troy said, serious as a heart attack. He wanted to tease his way out of Judy’s doghouse.

“Two beds,” Judy corrected. She punched Pearce in the shoulder. “Two trailers, now that I think about it.”

Judy had only planned to shower, but as soon as she toweled off and re-dressed in her dirty clothes, she got the bright idea to lie down on the bed for a few minutes to rest her aching back. She passed out immediately.

Three hours later, a soft knock on the door startled her awake.

“Ms. Hopper? Are you decent?” Holliday whispered.

Judy bolted upright, dazed and groggy. “Uh, yeah. Come in.”

The door pushed slightly open and Holliday slipped in, shutting it swiftly behind him as if he were sneaking between barracks in a prison camp. The bachelor officers’ quarters were little more than a motel room—a bedroom with a desk and TV set and a bathroom.

“Sorry to wake you, but we have a situation,” Holliday said.

“What situation?” Judy swung her legs off the bed and reached for her boots.

Holliday touched a finger to his lips as he removed a handheld scanner from his pocket. He waved it back and forth as he moved toward the bathroom, then thrust the bug scanner through the bathroom door and checked the readings. “We’re clear here.”

“So what’s the situation?” Judy asked again.

“It’s your friend Pearce. He’s gone.”

“What do you mean he’s gone? Is the plane still here?”

“Yes, and fueled and ready to go, and your package arrived from our friend in Colorado.”

“‘Our friend’? How do you know her?”

“Margaret and I go back a long way. We actually dated in college for a few months. But she thought I was a flake because I wanted to join the Peace Corps after graduation, so we broke up. But we remained good friends ever since. She even nominated me to be the ambassador to Morocco, but when she resigned, Diele had me replaced and I was shitcanned to this backwater. Turns out this place is getting more interesting by the day. Here.” Holliday handed her a slip of paper.

“GPS coordinates.”

“Your new destination, just over the border in Mali. Got them thirty minutes ago.”

“Why isn’t she communicating with us directly anymore?”

“Margaret thinks her communications are being monitored, so she had to backdoor this through your man Ian.”

“Who’s monitoring her?”

“Not sure. That’s probably why she’s going dark for a while. You and your team will be on your own until further notice. Any idea where Pearce might have gone?”

“Without these coordinates? No. You’re sure he’s gone?”

“He’s not at the plane, he’s not at the hangar, and he’s not in his quarters. I can’t exactly tell Captain Sotero he’s gone missing. She’s already cockeyed about this whole thing. The last thing we want is for her to unleash base security for a manhunt.”

Judy stood up. “I’m going to grab some more coffee, then I’ll head back over to the plane.”

“If Pearce doesn’t show up, will you still take the mission?”

She shrugged. “Of course. Mike Early is an American, isn’t he?”

Holliday’s voice took on a fatherly tone. “Couple of things. You’re aware that this mission is strictly off the books, right? I know Margaret burned some bridges when she was in office, but now she’s persona non grata all over D.C., like she’s got the plague or something.”

“She told me as much when she called me.”

“That means you’re not legally crossing into Mali airspace.”

“Shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

“Not unless you get into trouble. If you do, the American government won’t be able to help you, because you’re breaking the law.”

“We’ve never counted on anybody to help us. Especially the feds. No offense.”

“The Air Force might also arrest you when you return, since you’re originating your flight from one of their air bases. They’ll track your plane to and from Mali using your IFF transponder.”

“Still not a problem. I can shut it off from the cockpit before we enter Mali airspace.” That was illegal under international air traffic regulations, but Judy believed it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission when it came to operational security.

“Right, and you’ll need to. But once you do, any military aircraft that encounters you will assume you’re either hostile or criminal and will likely shoot you down.” Worry framed his kindly face.

“This ain’t my first rodeo, Mr. Holliday.” Judy tried to comfort him with a smile.

“You’re a very brave young woman.”

“I’m a pilot for Pearce Systems. It’s what I do.”

“And what is Pearce Systems, if I may ask?”

Judy had to think about that. She’d been away for several months now. Heard through the grapevine it had changed a lot.

“It’s a private security and technology firm. Drones, mostly. Air, sea, and land.”

Holliday frowned, curious. “And here you are on a drone base. That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Gee, it is, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought about that until now.”

He tried to read her guileless face. “Are you a drone pilot, too?”

“Me? No, I’m terrible at it. Even with haptics. I fly by feel, not numbers.”

“But a drone is safer, isn’t it?”

“Sure, at least for the pilot. But I don’t fly to feel safe. I fly because I love it. It’s what I was born to do.”

“Well, I’ll say it again. You’re a very brave young woman. Best of luck to you.”

“Thanks. We’re gonna need it.”

16

Glory Box Café

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

^{7 May}

It was 3 a.m. when the blond woman with a French-braided ponytail and a Colorado Buffalos ball cap slipped into a padded booth. A few locals lingered in the main lounge. Sleeve tattoos and pierced noses, mostly. Dusty moose heads, snowshoes, and salmon trophies adorned the rough-timbered walls. A performance space in the corner was empty save for a mic stand and an empty stool. She could smell the sweet tang of pot in the air.

A heavy Hispanic kid with a mop of curly hair and a pencil-thin beard ringing his jawline dropped a large plastic tumbler of ice water and a menu in front of her. His black T-shirt was stained. Pink letters read GLORY BOX. She asked for coffee and he asked what kind, they had a bunch. “Strong,” was all she said. But he was slurring his words, probably stoned, so she added, “Caffeinated,” and as an afterthought, “two eggs, fried hard.”

She sipped the coffee and waited. It was all she could do. Ian had managed to get her the address safely. She used every trick in the book to get here without being followed—cash only, no cell phone, and the blond wig being the three most important. Now she sat in the all-night café and waited for Ian to contact her again.

Margaret Myers took another sip. She guessed the coffee was Sumatra, but she wasn’t sure. It was strong, all right, and a little burnt. But she wasn’t here for the coffee.

The Hispanic kid and the cannabis aroma brought back memories. She was glad she had waged war on the drug lords. A lot of bad hombres got planted in the dirt, and drug violence had decreased dramatically on both sides of the border now that President Madero was in charge down there. The irony, of course, was that marijuana had been legalized in several states since then, including her home state of Colorado. There was much further to go in the drug war, but President Greyhill wasn’t the man for the job. Maybe her critics were right. Maybe the nation would never have the wherewithal to fight it like a real war. If that was true, legalization was inevitable, and it wouldn’t end with marijuana.

How would history judge her? She’d asked herself that question a thousand times in recent weeks, then pushed it away before she could answer. It was a vain, stupid question, and the answer would only come long after she was dead, past her caring. But the question kept coming back nonetheless.

So many things hadn’t gone the way she’d planned as president. Drone strikes, a showdown with the Russians, resignation. She had shown resolve, then quit. But that was the deal she had made. The alternative was a shooting war with the Russians and a showdown with Congress. But she couldn’t fight the feeling that she had failed.

No matter how she justified it, she had quit her job, and she had never quit anything in her life. There were still so many things left undone that she might have been able to accomplish had she remained in office. And now she’d put the destiny of her country in the hands of Greyhill and Diele, exactly the kind of career politicians she’d always railed against.

But “What If?” was a fool’s game and she needed to stop playing it. Now.

Myers’s free-range eggs finally arrived, fried hard, along with four triangles of whole-wheat toast. The menu solemnly promised, “Non-GMO, soy-free, vegan, Kosher” foods. No mention of rubbery and burnt. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t hungry anyway.

The one good thing she’d taken away from last year was meeting Pearce. She’d lost the ability to trust very many people, especially after entering politics. But Pearce was definitely one of the good guys, good as his word. That was hard to come by in politics or anywhere else these days.

She’d once felt the same way about Vin Tanner, too.

The only people she knew she could trust with her life were Pearce and, by extension, Ian. As soon as she fled her home, she bought a burner phone with cash, called Ian on the road, told him she needed a perfectly secure method of communicating with him. An hour later, he made the arrangements.

Once secure, Myers explained her situation. Told Ian cryptically she needed some alone time, her first use of coded language in this new adventure. He understood. They decided to go old-school. He sent her a package, indirectly, through third and fourth parties. The package directed her here, to the Glory Box.

Now she was waiting for the next link in the chain. She felt like she was in a cheap spy novel. Felt foolish sitting in this hippie dive at three in the morning with a six-hundred-dollar wig on her head and picking at a plate of rubbery free-range eggs. What was she doing?

She was hiding, of course. And running for her life. At one time, she was the most famous woman in the world. She couldn’t exactly walk around in broad daylight without attracting some attention. But the wig and the tortoiseshell glasses and a dark café full of alternative lifestyles allowed her to hide in plain sight. At least long enough to hear from Ian.

A rusted Subaru Outback with dented door panels and a bent roof rack pulled up to the sidewalk. A tall, thin woman with a buzz cut and neck tattoos pushed through the door. She glanced around the room, looking for somebody, her head on a swivel until her eyes locked on Myers. She marched over to Myers’s booth.

“Are you Margo Denver?”

Ian had given Myers a different name on the previous delivery, but the same pattern. The first letter of the first name had been an M, too.

“Yes.”

The woman’s long, thin fingers fished a padded envelope out of a fringed paisley shoulder bag. Myers noted the black fingernail polish and the sad, large eyes highlighted with blue eye shadow. She handed the envelope to Myers.

“Thank you. Do I owe you anything?”

“Nah. I’m doing this as a favor for Troy.”

“You know Troy Pearce?” Myers asked. Her curiosity got the better of her.

“Yeah. But I haven’t seen him around in a while. He used to come in here at least once a month. Is he okay?”

“He’s been away. On a business trip.”

“For a whole damn year?”

“Something like that.”

“If you talk to him, tell him Sadie said ‘Thanks.’”

“For what? If I may ask.”

“Paid my rent for the year. He’s been a real good friend to me and my kid.”

Meyers motioned to the booth. “Have a seat. Let me buy you breakfast.”

Sadie shook her shaved head. “Can’t. My boy’s asleep in the car. I just ran over here to give you that. I was told I had to deliver it in person exactly at 3:15 a.m. But thanks anyway.” She looked at Meyers’s plate and the half-eaten eggs. “You should try the veggie empañada next time. It’s real good.” She nodded, turned on her boot heel, and left.

Myers watched her climb back into the Subaru and pull away from the curb before opening the envelope.

It was from Ian. Keys. Codes. Instructions.

Relief flooded over her. She was almost there.

17

Fiero National Campaign Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

^{7 May}

Harry Fowler wanted her. Always had, ever since he’d first laid eyes on her twenty years before. Fiero knew it, too. Didn’t matter. They could still work together, even be friends, which they were. But she was immune to his charms as few women were. That made her all the more desirable to him, of course. But business was business. He poured them each two fingers of his favorite, Bushmills twenty-one-year-old single malt.

As her national campaign manager, Fowler’s job was to consummate her greatest political desire. The next best thing to bedding her, he supposed. Hated telling her today that she wasn’t going to be the next president of the United States, at least not next year. Ruined all kinds of prospects. He handed her a glass.

“Why not wait for 2020?” he asked. He sat in a chair across from her, getting out from behind his desk. The walls were lined with photos of him and all of the politicians he helped get elected over the years, including Fiero.

“I’m not getting any younger. And Greyhill is weak. He can be taken out.”

“He’s bulletproof, I’m telling you. If the election were held today—”

“—he’d win. Yes, yes, I’ve heard it before. Poll after poll. I don’t believe in polls. Opinions can be changed. Look at Bush 41. He had an approval rating of over ninety percent at one time. He couldn’t be beaten either, until he was.”

“Greyhill’s invulnerable right now. He’s continuing everything Myers initiated. The economy’s picking up, thanks to her energy policy. That means the deficit’s inching down without raising taxes, thanks to her budget freeze. And for the first time in a long while we aren’t gearing up for a new ground war. Just exactly where do you expect to find the key to his chastity belt?”

“That’s just it. He isn’t invulnerable. He’s Calvin Coolidge. The do-nothing president.”

“What’s your bumper sticker going to say? ‘Trust Me, Not Your Lying Eyes?’ Everything getting better feels like he’s doing something right to most people.”

Fiero shook her head. “No, that’s not my point. I think I’ve found the issue.”

“Domestic or foreign? You’re perfectly positioned for both.”

“China.”

“Are you kidding? You of all people.” Fowler was referring to a sweetheart deal she helped broker for a Chinese shipping company to lease valuable warehouse space at the Port of Los Angeles last year despite the fact that two of its ships had been seized for smuggling illegal aliens into the country. The Department of Homeland Security had originally blocked the deal, but Fiero had rammed it through with help from across the aisle. Her husband’s offshore business partners were grateful, and showed it. California news media remained characteristically uninterested in these kinds of unpleasant affairs, as far as Fiero was concerned. It was partly due to the fact that she always brought home the bacon. But Fowler suspected there were other reasons, too, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were.

“Who better to raise the warning flag? I’ve championed trade and commerce with China from the beginning. I’ve headed up three trade junkets to the mainland in the last five years. I’m the most pro-China senator on the Hill, so if I sound the alarm, people will listen.”

“How will Anthony feel about that?” Fiero’s husband did a lot of business with the Chinese.

“He’ll be fine with it. So will the Chinese. They understand the concept of optics. They probably invented it.”

“So what’s the issue with China? Yellow Peril and all of that?”

“Don’t be racist. I was just in a briefing two days ago. China is all over Africa now. All we need to do is provide the public a color-coded map showing African nations falling like dominoes to Chinese influence.”

“Who cares about Africa?”

“Seven of the ten fastest-growing economies of the world are on the African continent. And it has the most arable land in the world—over sixty percent. It’s eventually going to be the world’s food basket. And it’s also a treasure trove of rare minerals. We’re going to lose all of it to the Chinese, thanks to Greyhill. I can beat him over the head with that all day long.”

“And what about your base? I can’t see the Sierra Club getting wet over your plan to exploit Africa’s natural resources.”

“We can gin up the NAACP types, get them focused on China’s miserable human rights record on the continent. Get the Greens ranting about the Chinese record on environmental issues over there, and raise hell with the aid organizations—show China robbing food from starving African children to feed themselves. C’mon, Harry, this is all low-hanging fruit.” She held up her glass, signaling a refill.

He took his time picking up the bottle and bringing it back over to her. Gave him time to think. Could she be right? She had amazing instincts. Or was there something else going on she wasn’t telling him about? He tipped in two more fingers for her, then two for himself.

“Maybe” was all he would give her for now.

“Do you know the real reason why Clinton beat Bush in ’92?”

“You mean besides the dirty tricks, the media bias, and the Bush team’s tone-deaf incompetence?”

“It was because Clinton had the balls to get in the race. Sam Nunn, George Mitchell, even Al Gore were better suited to make a run at it, but they were afraid they couldn’t take down a sitting president with high approval ratings, so they bailed. I hate that kind of weakness. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but nothing worth having ever is. Fortune is a woman, right? E con più audacia la comandano.” Fiero winked and took another sip.

Fowler laughed. Who the hell else in this godforsaken town would have the audacity to quote Machiavelli anymore?

What a woman.

“Maybe we can even get him to invade,” Myers said.

Fowler laughed. “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

Fowler shook his head. “You know Greyhill won’t invade. He’s riding high in the polls on the ‘no new boots on the ground’ stuff.”

“Maybe he won’t invade. But if I call for military intervention, I’ll get the neocons on my side and he’ll look like a weak sister. Besides, they’re still blaming him for the budget freeze and the damage that’s been done to the DoD. He needs their support, and this would be an easy way to get it.”

“And if he does invade?”

She chuckled, then did her best Dana Carvey–does–George Bush impersonation: “Read my lips—no new boots on the ground.”

Fowler smiled at her joke. Back in 1990, the congressional Democrats engineered a budget crisis, then demanded President George H. W. Bush raise taxes to solve it. He foolishly complied, and Bill Clinton’s campaign staff blasted the former war hero president for breaking his “no new taxes” pledge and essentially called him a liar for doing so. No matter that Clinton himself promised to not raise taxes on the middle class and then broke that vow as soon as he took office, it would always be the hapless moderate Republican who was remembered as losing a presidency for breaking his promise.

“If I can goad Greyhill into a Mali invasion of any kind, we can beat him with it like a club and ride his broken promise all the way to the White House in 2016.”

Fowler smiled with admiration. “It’s still a great play, even if he doesn’t bite. You have to prove that ‘women are from Mars, too,’ if you want to be the next commander in chief. If Greyhill doesn’t invade, he’ll just be proving your point that you’re stronger on defense than he is and that you take the Chinese and al-Qaeda threats more seriously than he does.”

She nodded. The pieces fell into place. “Either way, I win. He invades, he breaks his promise and can’t be trusted. He doesn’t invade, he’s weak on defense and can’t be trusted to protect us.”

Karem Air Force Base

Niamey, Niger

The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the lights were on inside the hangar.

Judy admired the new paint job on the Aviocar’s tail. The sergeant who’d painted the Red Crescent logo beamed with pride. Red paint stained his long black fingers.

“The Air Force almost didn’t let me enlist because I got busted for tagging when I was a kid. Now look at me.”

“Looks fantastic, Sergeant. You did a great job. The logo is spot-on.”

“You can find anything on the Internet. Just hope it works.”

“I’m sure it will,” Pearce said, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. He patted the young man on the back. “Go grab yourself some breakfast. We’ll take it from here.”

“Thank you, sir. Will do. Don’t have to ask me twice when it comes to grub.” The airman snatched up the improvised stencil off the ground and tossed it into the trash can on his way out the door.

“Where’ve you been?” Judy asked. “And what’s that you’re carrying?” She nodded at the duffel slung over one shoulder.

“This? It’s that thing I brought with us from Moz. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. And by the way, I’ve been here the whole time.”

“But—”

“The whole time.” Pearce forced a smile.

“Do I need to know why you’ve been here the whole time?”

“In case you’re ever called to testify.”

Judy shook her head. She can only imagine what Pearce had stolen, or whom he’d stolen it from.

“Sunrise at 6:47 a.m.,” Judy said. “We need to be in the air well before then. You should grab a shower before we leave.”

“I’m fine.”

Judy sniffed, turned up her nose. “Hope you’ve got cologne in that bag, chief, or you’re walking.”

Showered but not shaved, Pearce sat in the copilot’s seat as usual, studying a map. They were at cruising altitude. The steady thrum of the engines filled the cabin, muted by the noise-canceling headsets he and Judy wore.

“You want to talk about what happened back in Maputo?”

Pearce left three men on the floor of the Elephant Bar, broken and bleeding. He was lucky to get the two of them out of there alive with the title to the Aviocar without having to kill anyone. But Judy was the most nonviolent person he knew, and the incident had really upset her. She still hadn’t opened up to him about it. He was worried for her.

“Soon as you tell me why you’ve turned into a drunken sad sack. And what’s with the long hair?”

“I should’ve thanked you earlier.”

“You should’ve done a lot of things earlier. What’s in the bag?”

“Stuff.”

“Booze?”

He shot her a look. “No booze.”

“First you stole from God, and now the federal government. You’re not exactly racking up good karma.”

“I figure the government owes me.”

“What did Myers send?” Judy was referring to the sealed aluminum case with the Red Crescent logos marked Équipement médical d’urgence Holliday delivered to the hangar just before they left.

“Plasma, bandages, and antibiotics.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We could’ve gotten that stuff from the base clinic.”

“And thirty thousand euros. Guess Mikey ran up a helluva medical bill over there.”

“Holliday said something about Myers’s security situation.”

“She might have kicked a hornet’s nest when she reached out earlier on Mikey’s behalf. I think she’s just being careful.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Easy as pie. In and out. Mikey’s supposed to be waiting for us at 0700. Put him on, drop the case, and we’re out of there.”

Their headsets both rang, three short beeps. Judy opened the line. “This is Hotel, over.” They agreed to use the NATO phonetic alphabet for security reasons, even though their line was quite secure.

“Hotel, this is India, over. Is Papa with you? Over.” Ian stressed the second syllable correctly. His Scottish brogue rumbled on the headsets, like a drunken Ewan McGregor whispering in her ears.

“I’m here. What’s shaking?”

“The situation on the ground is changing rapidly. Looks like a convoy is heading your way. ETA 0720 at current speed.”

“What are the particulars?”

“I’ve got eyes on one APC, five trucks. I’d estimate fifty combatants, maybe less.”

“How do you know this?” Judy asked. Pearce Systems didn’t have any drones in the area.

“The International Space Station is passing overhead right now. They’ve an optical camera on board for geological surveys they aren’t using at the moment.” Ian chuckled. “Or think they aren’t using. Unfortunately, it’s passing out of range. I’ll lose my link in two minutes.”

“Military?” Pearce asked.

“Malian army. I can see the flag.”

Judy shook her head. Gave Pearce the stink eye. “Yup. Easy as pie.”

“Repeat that, Juliette?”

“Never mind,” Judy said.

“You’re in contact with Mike-Mike, correct?” Pearce asked. Margaret Myers’s code name, not to be confused with Mike Early, code name Echo.

“Correct.”

“Have her communicate with her intel source. Echo’s got to be there on time or we’re all dead.”

“Roger that, Papa. One more thing. Intel source now has a name. ‘Female, unknown’ has been identified as Cella Paolini. Mike-Mike thought you might know her. Take care, you two.” Ian logged off.

“What?” Pearce shook his head, dope-slapped.

Judy caught Pearce’s stunned expression. “Who’s Cella Paolini?”

“She’s my wife.”