The Burning Edge

The doctors said the patient was unlikely to survive much longer.

Across town, in a third-floor room of North Platte’s federal building, a bland three-story red stone structure that evoked a 1960s high school, a growing team of investigators was at work dissecting the mystery surrounding the suspect.

Agent Frank Morrow had arrived with several New York agents the previous night, joining FBI agents from North Platte, Omaha and Denver who were crammed into a meeting room along with local and state investigators. The ad hoc local task force used secure laptops and cell phones to work online and through teleconference calls to federal agents in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Quantico, Manhattan, the NYPD and the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

The Ogallala stop was a critical break.

Morrow agreed, the subject’s cobra tattoo was consistent with Lisa Palmer’s description of the one wrapped around the wrist of Agent Dutton’s killer.

Who is our subject? Will he lead us to the others?

They had to confirm his identity.

North Platte P.D. got a clear set of the driver’s fingerprints, which were now being processed through databases in the United States, Canada and Europe, while an Evidence Response Team from the FBI’s Denver office processed his car and the scene.

“We need to ID this man and put him at the scene in Ramapo, or in the area at the time of the hit,” Morrow said.

So far they had received nothing on the prints.

But with each piece of evidence, the scope of the investigation broadened. Chicago confirmed the car was rented at O’Hare. Then Homeland confirmed an air ticket for Dieter Windhorst on an Air Canada flight direct to Chicago from Toronto. Toronto Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were investigating the subject’s activities in Canada under the alias Dieter Windhorst.

In Nebraska, in the lining of the subject’s jacket, the ERT had found a credit card in the name of Hans Ballack of Munich. Credit card security confirmed Ballack’s identity had been stolen. The card was shut down after one recent fraudulent use at a motel in Teaneck, New Jersey.

“This charge puts our guy, whoever he is, twenty minutes and twenty miles from the heist the day before it happened. He checked out the morning of the crime,” Morrow said before requesting emergency warrants to search the New Jersey motel room the subject had rented and check the IDs and rooms used by every guest. “The heist crew may have launched from this motel.”

At that point identification of the subject’s fingerprints had been confirmed via Interpol, Europol and the BKA, Germany’s equivalent of the FBI.

Suspect identified as Erik Rytter, age twenty-nine. Last known address, Munich. No criminal record, no arrests, convictions or warrants. Not even a traffic infraction.

According to the BKA, Rytter was a former member of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s national defence force. He completed two tours of Afghanistan with the Kommando Spezialkräfte. He’d been a sniper and an explosives expert. Upon returning home to Germany, he pursued a Ph.D in chemical engineering at university but left to become a professional soldier, taking a job with a private international security firm with contracts in Iraq. From there, Rytter’s trail got murky as he continually subcontracted himself to shadowy companies.

The BKA was sending agents to interview Rytter’s relatives and friends.

Rytter’s military expertise and his potential network underscored Morrow’s concern about the people behind the heist. This was no ragtag crew. Morrow updated the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland and several other national security agencies for help probing Rytter’s background as more questions arose.

Was Rytter ever legitimately in the United States under his real name? If so, what was his status? Who were his associates, what were his activities, his travel patterns? Did he have any affiliation with anyone at American Centurion? Did he know Gina Saldino, who gave the crews their delivery spreadsheets?

And where was Saldino?

They’d failed to locate her so far. That Saldino, who had access to all information on routes and deliveries, would take a vacation without any contact information a week before the heist was an aspect of the case that troubled Morrow.

Was she involved?

Morrow returned to his files to review statements and reports, when his cell phone rang.

“Morrow.”

“It’s Darby at the hospital. He’s regained consciousness, but it doesn’t look good.”

Kyle Rice, with North Platte P.D., got Morrow into his unmarked Ford and they roared to the hospital in minutes. Morrow badged his way to Rytter’s room just as Darby exited, shaking his head. Behind him nurses were drawing a sheet over the body before the door closed.

“He never said a word, Frank,” Darby said before Morrow was paged to the phone at reception.

“Morrow, FBI.”

“Captain Wagner, with State Patrol.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“We’re getting calls from local press following up on the bare-bones news release we issued yesterday on the shooting. Now, we don’t want to jeopardize your case, but what more can we tell them at this point?”

“We’d prefer you say nothing further about the suspect. Only that his identity is under investigation.”

“Can we tell them the FBI is involved and this is linked to your armored car heist?”

Hell, no. The last thing Morrow wanted was the three other suspects to learn what had happened. He wanted to use the advantage the FBI had at the moment to capitalize on leads that could bring them closer to the others.

“No. Keep it low-key for now, please.”

“Low-key?”

“Yes, it’s crucial for some of the leads we’re pursuing.”

“You know, Agent Morrow, sooner or later this thing is going to blow open. It was our trooper who put his life on the line to bring in your suspect.”

“Yes, it was outstanding work.”

“Damn straight, and we’d like to inform the public about it.”

“I appreciate that, Captain, but we need time before we can release more details.”

“I hear you, Agent Morrow. We’ll keep things low-key for now, out of respect for the FBI man and the guards you lost back east in the heist.”

“I understand and I appreciate your help, Captain.”

Morrow hung up, ran a hand over his face.

“Excuse me, Agent Morrow?”

He turned and his stomach tensed.

“Jack Gannon, WPA, New York. Can I get a moment with you?”

37

North Platte / Ogallala, Nebraska

Morrow’s face flashed with disbelief.

He did not need this. Not now.

“Can you just give me a few minutes?” Gannon asked.

Morrow stared at him.

Early on he’d accepted that this case was high profile, involving many jurisdictions; that leaks were inevitable. But Gannon’s presence meant he had been tipped again and the continued betrayal was an insult Morrow couldn’t stomach.

His eyes burned with a dangerous fury.

He walked away.

“Sir,” Gannon persisted, “is this your shooter from Ramapo? Is this one of the killers?” He started down the hall after him. “Agent Morrow, you know I’ll do a story with or without your help.”

Before Morrow turned a corner, he mumbled something to a uniformed officer who sent Gannon back to the reception area.

Frustrated, Gannon sat in a cushioned chair.

Morrow’s presence confirmed a significant development. Gannon could use that, but where did he go from there? After considering matters, he pulled out his BlackBerry and scrolled through his notes, only to be hit with a text pressuring him to deliver something. New York feared the AP would beat the WPA to the arrest story and wanted him to file immediately.

Damn it, I just arrived here. Story still developing, he responded, to buy time as he reflected on his ordeal and his next step.

To get to North Platte he’d taken an early-morning flight direct to Denver, then a one-hour hop in a Beechcraft twin-prop. Then he’d rented a car. But it was not the trip that kept adrenaline pumping through him, it was the terms. First, he’d broken his own rule after he’d been tipped. He rushed to Lisker, begged him to forget the dog show and put him back on the heist story by promising an exclusive.

“One of the suspects has just been arrested near Ogallala, Nebraska. No one knows yet. It’s all ours. Send me there now.”

Lisker weighed matters.

Then, thinking of costs, because that was always Lisker’s first concern, he tried WPA’s Omaha and Denver bureaus, but staff members were out of town on other assignments. They had a student stringer out of North Platte. But that was too risky.

“I’ll send you—on one condition,” Lisker told Gannon. “No doubt you’ve heard the WPA is facing staff reductions. I don’t care how good your reputation is, your insubordination and this episode with the police makes you a prime candidate for termination.”

“I was just doing my job.”

“If you want to keep it, you’ll give me an exclusive on an arrest in the heist murders. If you don’t— Well, think of Nebraska as the potential graveyard for your career.”

Right, well, fuck you, Gannon thought, sitting there in the hospital waiting room, the pressure on him mounting. He would not fail. He would not let a guy like Lisker bury him. There was a story here and he’d pull it together.

One way or another, he’d deliver.

North Platte was a small town but it was pure freakin’ luck that he’d encountered Morrow. The fact the FBI’s case agent was here confirmed the significance of the traffic-stop shooting. Gannon had to piece something together fast. He went to the Nebraska State Patrol’s website. The news release on the stop was still not updated. It was the same one he’d printed off before he left. Beyond the time and date, it said nothing about the magnitude of the incident.

A trooper with the Nebraska State Patrol Troop D Headquarters—North Platte, stopped a 2011 Chrysler for speeding westbound on Interstate 80, near Brule. Upon checking the driver’s credentials, the trooper determined that the white male driver fit the description for a wanted subject and proceeded to arrest him. During the arrest the subject grabbed for the trooper’s sidearm. In the struggle the gun discharged. The subject suffered a serious gunshot wound and was taken to hospital in North Platte in critical condition. No other details available at this time.

Gannon exhaled.

His next step was to find the unnamed trooper who took down the suspect. He’d put in a call to the State Patrol but they refused to provide more information. His only option at the moment was a suggestion texted by the stringer, Trevor Reece, a part-time freelancer for the Underground Movement, an online student arts-and-entertainment newspaper.

Troopers hang @ 6 Bees Roadhouse W of NP off I-80. Big sign can’t miss it.

Gannon left the hospital and drove there.

Encouraged at seeing three marked State Patrol cars among the vehicles in the lot, he parked his rented Chevy, sat on a stool at the counter and took a quick inventory.

It was a popular place, nearly every table and booth in use. Conversations, the strains of a Garth Brooks ballad and the smell of coffee filled the air. He noticed three uniformed cops sitting together in a corner booth with a man in jeans and a gray sweatshirt.

After ordering a cheeseburger platter, Gannon studied the mirror which reflected the booth occupied by the troopers. It allowed him to stare without being obvious. Within a few seconds he’d detected fresh cuts on the face of the man wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. As the man talked, Gannon studied the way he gestured and the faces of his trooper friends. They were engaged, as if he was telling an enthralling tale.

I don’t believe this. It has to be him.

Feeling time slipping by, Gannon went to the table.

“Forgive me for intruding.” Four sets of eyes turned to him as he nodded outside to the patrol cars in the parking lot. “I figure you’re with the State Patrol and I sure could use your help.”

“What’s the problem?” one of the uniformed men asked.

Gannon produced his ID.

“Jack Gannon, I’m a reporter with the World Press Alliance in New York.”

“Afraid we can’t help you with that,” said one of the troopers, cuing soft laughter at the table.

Adapting to the mood, Gannon played along, smiling as he fumbled in his pocket for his faxed copy of the State Patrol’s news release, unfolded it and held it up.

“I’ve got to file a story about the trooper who made this stop that resulted in the suspect’s getting shot in the struggle.”

“What about it?” one of the troopers asked.

Gannon saw eyes shift to the man with the fresh scrapes on his face, and knew.

“I’d like to interview the trooper for the WPA. Our stories go across the country and around the world. I understand he’s a hero and what he did was connected to a major case in New York City. I just flew in and I’m on deadline for the wire service.”

“You call him a hero?” One of the troopers smiled into his coffee and winked at the man in plainclothes.

“Sure, why not?”

“We call him Duane who shoulda waited for backup.”

As soft chuckling rippled around the table, Gannon waited, then asked, “Could you guys help me find him so I could interview him?”

Someone kicked the man in plainclothes under the table.

“Hey, Duane, seein’ how you didn’t make the Cornhuskers, this is your only chance to be famous. The man came all the way from New York City.”

The man in plainclothes lowered his head and shook it, giving off an aura of gentle shyness, until a cell phone was held before him by one of his friends.

“Check with the lieutenant for the green light. Maybe you’ll get on Leno.”

“Or COPS?” Another trooper laughed.

Duane took the phone and turned to Gannon.

“Give me a minute. I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll be at the counter eating my lunch. I appreciate this. But I really am on a tight deadline.”

Buoyed by the break, Gannon dug into his meal. Between bites, he received a call from Hal Ford.

“How’s it going? Any chance you’re about to file?”

“I should have something to you in ninety minutes.”

“Ninety minutes? That’s a lifetime.”

“Sooner if I can.”

“Lisker is sharpening his fangs, so it better be a big scoop.”

“I’m working on it.”

By the time Gannon finished eating, all the troopers had gathered at the cash to pay. After they left, the one Gannon was waiting on approached him and introduced himself.

“Duane Hanson.” He shook Gannon’s hand. “I’ve got about fifteen minutes before I have to go. Hope that works for you.”

“I’ll make it work, thanks.”

Hanson nodded to an empty booth in a far corner.

At the table, Gannon sensed the younger man was masking something unsettling. Only hours ago he’d struggled with one of the Ramapo killers who’d tried to end his life. As Hanson began recounting what happened on Interstate 80 near Ogallala, Nebraska, his tone darkened and he chose his words very carefully.

“My lieutenant said I can’t tell you everything because it’s all part of the FBI’s investigation, especially now that he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Died in the hospital a little while ago.” Hanson glanced out the window, the light accentuating his abrasions as he pondered the interstate stretching west to the horizon. “It’s a hell of a thing. It could’ve been me. A hell of a thing.”

38

Queens, New York

The employee lunchroom at the Good Buy Supermart was near the produce section and always smelled of lettuce, apples and earth.

It had a battered time clock for punching time cards, a kitchenette, six chrome-trimmed table-and-chair sets, a message board for schedules, union meetings and used items for sale. Judy was offering a baby stroller; Wanda, recently single, was selling a man’s watch that was “never worn.” Smoking in the lunchroom had been banned for years, but fresh-air zealots complained of a lingering stench.

Today, the usual cashiers yammered in the usual bitch-gossip sessions between the afternoon-evening shifts. None gave a second thought to the TV above the row of lockers. It was always on, usually tuned in to a talk show. But today, the Breaking News banner that crawled along the bottom of the screen seized Lisa Palmer’s attention.

…A suspect in the armored car heist that left three guards and an FBI agent dead in New York has died in Nebraska after struggling for the gun of the state trooper who’d stopped his car for speeding, the World Press Alliance is reporting…

Lisa caught her breath, covered her mouth with her hand and battled the noise to listen to the report, which offered few details.

“You all right, hon?” Pam Horowitz, the most senior cashier, asked.

Other than Rita, no one at work knew of Lisa’s role in the investigation.

“I’m fine. Something caught in my throat. Got any gum, Pam?”

Five minutes later, alone in the parking lot, chewing on bubblegum behind the wheel of her Ford Focus, Lisa let go.

Oh my God! Was this true? Did they really get one of them?

She fumbled through her bag for her new cell phone, called Frank Morrow’s number. It rang through to the FBI’s New York Division.

“Agent Morrow is out of the office,” an assistant said. “May I take a message?”

“This is Lisa Palmer. I really need to speak to him, or Vicky Chan, or Eve Watson. It’s about the Ramapo case.”

“I’m afraid no one is available at the moment.”

“It’s important I talk to somebody. I’m Lisa Palmer. I’ve been working with them on the investigation.”

“Yes, I’m aware of who you are,” the assistant said. “But they are all unreachable at the moment, so if you’ll just leave your number, Lisa—”

“They have it,” Lisa said. “They have everything. I just need to talk to someone about what happened in Nebraska. I have questions.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Can I speak to their boss? Or their boss’s boss?”

“I’m sorry, Lisa, that won’t be possible.”

Lisa’s breathing quickened with her rising frustration until she gave up, left a message and gathered her thoughts. She turned on her car radio, set it to scan, hoping to land on a news report that would tell her more about what had happened in Nebraska.

She left the parking lot bound for the school to pick up Ethan and Taylor. She drove through Queens, needing to believe that the Nebraska incident was good news. If they got one of the bastards, it meant they were making progress, getting closer to the others.

Which one was it?

Lisa stopped at a traffic light and a memory blurred in front of her.

The smell of lemon floor cleaner…her reflection in the black shield of the killer’s helmet…his anger boring into her through the blood splatters…his gun drilling into her skull…

Was it him? The one who murdered the agent? The one who wanted to kill her? Which one was it? How did they get him? Was it because of her telling them about his tattoo?

A horn sounded behind her. The light had turned green. But the questions wouldn’t stop, so Lisa pulled over, took out her phone and sent texts and emails to Morrow, Chan and Watson.

Please get back to me. I need to know what’s happening.

When she got the kids, she held off telling them. First, Lisa wanted to learn more directly from the FBI, but no one was responding. She hid her unease by singing along with rock songs on the radio. The last one was Queen, “Somebody To Love.”

It was not until they’d pulled into their driveway and Lisa killed the Ford’s engine that her phone rang. At last, she thought, unlocking her back door and deactivating her home security system with one hand, keeping the phone to her head with the other.

But it was not the FBI calling.

“My God,” Rita said. “Did you hear the news?”

“About Nebraska?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I saw it at work in the lunchroom.”

“It’s fantastic, Lisa. Did the FBI tell you what happened?”

“Not yet. I got messages in, but they’re not getting back to me and it’s starting to piss me off.”

“Well, it’s still all good news. I mean, they got him way out west, a billion miles from here. And the creep is freakin’ dead.”

“Yes, that’s good.”

Lisa made the kids spaghetti for supper but used every free moment to go online and to monitor news reports on TV for more on the case. It was futile. She was unable to find anything beyond the first report.

Rita was right.

Lisa had to accept that what happened was “all good.” The fact they got one, and got him so far away, and that he was dead made her feel safer, lightened the weight of her worry.

She smiled to herself when she glimpsed Ethan’s map on their corkboard near the fridge. He’d done a good job. It reminded her that they had important things to take care of. She had to get ready for their trip—the last one—up to the cabin.

She had to get ready for the rest of her life.

By early evening, after they’d finished supper, after Lisa had washed the dishes and put them away, she still hadn’t heard a response from the FBI. It ate at her—feeling shut out—and she resented it. She couldn’t understand and would never accept why Morrow and the others were ignoring her, especially after all she’d been through; after all she’d done to help them with the case.

Maybe something else was at work; something more going on?

If that was the case, she deserved to know.

Why won’t someone help me?

At that moment, it dawned on her that all the news reports had attributed the story to the World Press Alliance, the wire service where that reporter, Jack Gannon, worked. Lisa’s keyboard clattered as she searched his name and his story emerged online.

Life-and-Death Struggle with Murder Suspect on a Nebraska HighwayJack GannonWorld Press AllianceNORTH PLATTE, Neb.—Minutes after Trooper Duane Hanson pulled over a speeding car from Illinois cutting west along a windblown stretch of Interstate 80, he was locked into a battle for his life. It ended in the death of a fugitive suspect wanted for the cold-blooded murders of three armored car guards and an FBI agent in the recent 6.3-million-dollar heist out of Greater New York City…

Lisa read Gannon’s entire story.

It was compelling and it proved to her that he knew a great deal about the case, certainly more than she did. It brought her back to her questions and concerns over why the FBI had not responded to her calls. She contended with a growing fear that something was going on, something that the FBI agents were unwilling to share with her.

“Mom!” Ethan called downstairs from his room. “Is it bath night tonight?”

“Yes, do you need towels? I’ll be right up!”

Lisa continued searching Gannon online, finding photos from his days at the Buffalo Sentinel, his Pulitzer nomination and stories he’d done across the country and around the world for the WPA. He came across as a guy who was confident, rough around the edges, but who had a good heart. He was easy on the eyes, too.

Lisa saw that he worked out of the WPA’s world headquarters in Manhattan; saw the phone number and his email.

She bit her bottom lip.

Should she contact him for help?

39

San Francisco, California

Ivan Felk was in his hotel room, reviewing street maps on his laptop, when his screen chimed with a news alert.

The New York Times posted a breaking newswire item online three minutes ago.Ramapo Heist Suspect Dies In Nebraska

What the hell?

Felk read the story fast.

The car was a rental from Chicago, heading west on the interstate. The driver was shot after he struggled for the trooper’s gun and died later in hospital. The Times attributed the story to the World Press Alliance. Felk read it a second time.

But how did they link this to the heist?

Rytter was not named, and there were few other details. Still, the facts, and what Felk knew, were enough to convince him it was Rytter who had died.

A moment passed as he absorbed it.

Erik was dead.

Damn it.

This jeopardizes the mission.

What happened?

They were all professionals, the best of the best. They all knew going into this that there was no guarantee they’d come out alive. But they were not prone to mistakes. Rytter was careful, meticulous at eliminating risks.

How the hell did this happen?

Felk went to his window, looked down at the Federal Reserve Bank across the street and assessed the situation. Rytter was a strong soldier, a good man. They needed him. Every member of the team had a specific job that was crucial to the next stage of the operation. Rytter was his lead explosives expert, his best C4 man.

What do I do now?

Felk forced himself to stay calm, to think. They had to adapt just as they did in battle. When you lost a man, you adjusted and you advanced the mission.

Rytter was dead. But how did they link him to the heist?

Someone was knocking on the door.

In the peephole, Felk saw a fish-eyed version of Dillon and let him in.

“You see what happened in Nebraska?” Dillon asked.

“I saw. Where are the others right now?”

“I don’t know. What’re we going to do, Ivan?”

“We keep going.”

“But we need Rytter.”

“We carry it and we keep going. Unger’s good with explosives.”

“What about Sparks?”

“What about him?”

“He’s a good explosives man. We’ve got time to bring him in.”

Felk considered it, but the Sparks option came with challenges.

“He’s been having a hard time,” Felk said. “That’s why we didn’t want him operational. He’s unstable. Besides, he’s already given us support, gone as far as he can go.”

“But we need help. You could have him here in a matter of hours. We could get him up to speed. Sparks could do this with his eyes closed.”

It was true.

When Sparks could function, he was outstanding. Having lost Rytter, they were now facing an extraordinary situation. Felk went to his laptop, opened a hidden file that contained phone numbers, then picked up his untraceable cell phone and made a call.

He got a recording:

The number you have reached is no longer in service.

“His number doesn’t work. Hang on.”

Felk called again to be sure he hadn’t misdialed, and got the same message.

“Maybe he changed it?” Dillon said. “Call his building.”

Felk went back to his laptop for the name and address of the building then went online for the super’s number and called it. He expected a recorded message, but after three rings, the line was answered.

“Oceanic Towers, Shelly Konradisky.”

“Hello, I’m trying to reach the tenant in 1021, Harlee Shaw. His number may have changed—”

“I’m very sorry, are you a friend?”

“Uh, yes. Would you have his new number?”

She cleared her throat. “You must not know what happened.”

“No, what do you mean?”

“I am so sorry to be the one to tell you but…um…Harlee died.”

“He died?” Felk shot a look to Dillon, whose eyes widened.

“Yes, I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I’m afraid he took his own life.”

“How?”

“With his gun.”

“Jesus.” A long moment passed before Felk said, “I knew he was having trouble from his time in the war.”

“Yes, it’s just terrible what our boys go through over there.”

“When was this?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Who found him?”

“I did. Well, me and a reporter.”

“Reporter?”

“Yes, he wanted to talk to Harlee.”

“What reporter? Why?”

“I’m not too sure, some kind of story about war vets, maybe?”

“What’s the reporter’s name?”

“I have his card right here. Jack Gannon. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you his contact information. He’s from the World Press Alliance.”

Felk took it down.

“Did Gannon say anything about why he wanted to talk to Harlee?”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name?”

“Wayne McCormick.”

“And how did you know Harlee?”

“We went through basic together. Thanks for helping me.”

“I am so sorry about your friend, Wayne. It must’ve been terrible what he went though overseas.”

“It was.”

Felk hung up and turned to Dillon.

“I got your end of that,” Dillon said. “What’s the reporter part?”

Felk shook his head in deeply troubled thought.

“Find Northcutt and Unger and meet me in the park at that spot in front of the port building in thirty minutes. We have to assess.”

Dillon left. Felk returned to the window and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

No other option existed but to advance the operation.

They were at battle, taking losses, but they would adjust. They had time to evaluate resources and adapt the mission. The clock was ticking down on them. He replayed the older video from militants of the Revolutionary Movement showing his men unshaven, gaunt, cadaverous, eyes enlarged to dark pools of fear. He braced as a hooded captor raised a sword above his brother’s head.

Ivan, please! Don’t let me die!”

We’re coming, Clay. Nothing’s going to stop us.

Staring down at the Federal Reserve, Felk counted the days before the bank would process the ten-million-dollar order to be transported by armored car to Oakland International Airport.

They had time to prepare.

Still, he was assailed by the unknowns, questions that loomed large, eclipsing everything, gnawing at him.

How did they link Rytter to the Ramapo hit? They had to know something. Are they getting closer to us? What if Rytter talked before he died? What about Sparks and the reporter? A reporter? Goddamnit. Take it easy. Harlee didn’t know about California. But he knew about the operation. But he wouldn’t have told the reporter anything. Sure, he was a bit unstable, but he wouldn’t betray the operation to this reporter—Gannon, Jack Gannon.

Why was that name familiar?

Felk went to his laptop and looked at news reports he’d saved.

Christ.

Gannon wrote the Nebraska story. But there was another reason his name rang a bell with Felk. He went to the first news reports on the Ramapo heist.

There it was.

Jack Gannon with the World Press Alliance. He was the first to report that the FBI had an eyewitness.

Eyewitness.

It all came back to her.

That bitch from Queens.

40

New York City

Erik Rytter extended his arms through the driver’s window. He dropped his keys to the ground, got out of his car, raised his hands, palms out, walked to the rear right of his car and got on his knees.

“Don’t move, sir!”

The air tightened in the twenty-eighth-floor boardroom of the FBI’s Manhattan office where investigators were watching twenty-six minutes of digital recording made by Nebraska state trooper Duane Hanson’s in-car camera. Morrow had lost count of how many times he’d viewed it in North Platte and during his return flight to New York. Now he was using it to kick off today’s case-status meeting and brainstorming session. The window shades had been drawn to dim the light.

The deadly takedown played out on the room’s large monitor. Rytter disappeared from view. Hanson approached him, gun drawn, issuing commands, disappearing from the frame, leaving the audio to replay the life-and-death struggle, the firecracker pop of the gunshot, Hanson scrambling to his car, his frantic call for an ambulance.

The recording ended with murmurs and paper shuffling around the table as the shades were opened.

“This break is critical,” said Glenda Stark. “We must capitalize on it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. We’ll update and assign. Over to you, Frank.”

“First,” Morrow said. “I want to stress that the tattoo is our key fact, the evidence that led to Rytter. It may lead us to the others and result in their prosecution. It’s all linked to our eyewitness. The tattoo is absolutely holdback from the public. Our objective is to find the other suspects, not spook them. Is that understood?”

Morrow’s eyes inventoried the faces at the table before he continued with the warrants executed at the Heavenly Rest Motor Inn in Teaneck, New Jersey. An FBI Evidence Response Team was still processing the room rented under the name Karl Ballack.

“Nothing has surfaced yet, but the clerk recognized Rytter as a guest. We’re running the room’s phone and all pay phones in the vicinity and checking cameras in restaurants and gas stations nearby.”

Morrow said agents were showing Rytter’s photograph to staff at the Freedom Freeway Service Center in Ramapo.

“We’re still working on that front,” Morrow said. “We are also asking the NYPD, the counties, New York and New Jersey to circulate his photo with motorcycle shops and tattoo artists.”

As for other areas, Morrow said that Canadian authorities had confirmed capturing Rytter on security cameras at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Prior to that, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had nothing more on his movements in Canada. Nothing had emerged yet showing entry into Canada from the United States. Morrow said it was believed Rytter entered Canada from the States using false identification, or entered at an unsecured point in the border. Meanwhile, he said, U.S. federal aviation security cameras picked him up at Chicago’s O’Hare.

“We’re interviewing a dentist from Milwaukee. She sat next to him on the Toronto-to-Chicago flight.”

Morrow used the remote for the monitor to show a timeline in development. “This is where we pick him up.” Dates and times starting with Rytter in Teaneck, New Jersey, then in Ramapo, New York at the heist, then to Toronto, the flight to Chicago, the car rental and his death in Nebraska.

Details of Rytter’s entry into the United States in the time prior to the heist were uncertain. Rytter’s genuine German passport did not show any entry into the States, according to American and German security.

“Again, he may have entered this country with counterfeit ID.”

“What do we know about his background and associates?” an agent from the Department of Homeland Security asked.

For the benefit of those who had just joined the case, Morrow summarized. He said that the BKA was investigating Rytter’s activities in Germany. “They are interviewing his relatives and friends and so far they tell us that Rytter was private and secretive. He was a former member of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s national defence force. What they’ve learned is that after he completed two tours of Afghanistan with the Kommando Spezialkräfte, the elite KSK, he became a private contractor with a number of murky security firms with contracts and subcontracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He never talked about what he did. It’s believed to have been his last known area of employment.”

“Are we able to get to any of the contractors he worked for?” asked an NYPD detective with the joint task force.

“Not yet,” Morrow said. “We’ve got the CIA, Defense and State Departments Intelligence looking into that aspect. It’s a world of ghosts because many of the contracts are linked to national security.”

Morrow wrapped up the meeting and nodded to Dimarco. The NYPD detective had spent much of his time peering over his bifocals at his own status sheets. As the room cleared, the two men talked quietly.

“Anything on Gina Saldino, Al?”

“No. Her friends have no idea where she went for vacation. She did withdraw three thousand in cash before her holiday, but since then we’ve got no action on bank accounts or credit cards.”

“Phone records?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t like this,” Morrow said. “She’s an unknown factor.”

“We’ll keep on it. Are you ready to go?”

“I have to take care of something. Why don’t you grab a coffee downstairs. I’ll meet you there.”

The Nebraska shooting was front-page news in New York where the media had inundated the FBI with calls and emails demanding more information on the dead suspect. The New York FBI office had prepared a short press release. Morrow needed to review it before it went out to ensure it did not hamper the investigation.

The draft gave the time, date and location of the traffic stop in Nebraska and a summary of the incident, without revealing key details. It confirmed that the suspect was Erik Rytter, a German national from Munich. It stated that Rytter was a former member of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s national defence force. Morrow revised the wording so that it said: It is believed Rytter participated in the armored-car heist at Ramapo. The investigation continues. Morrow did not want any other details released.

Less than forty minutes later, Dimarco guided the NYPD’s unmarked Chevy along the Van Wyck Expressway. While Dimarco took a cell-phone call, Morrow considered Jack Gannon. That guy was good, always ahead of everyone on the story. Morrow admitted a begrudging admiration of Gannon. He was a relentless digger, so well sourced he was dangerous. Morrow would have liked to have been allied with him. They could have helped each other.

In another life, maybe, Morrow thought as his phone vibrated with a message: A text from his daughter, Hailey.I love u daddy, when r u coming home?

It stopped him cold.

He blinked at it, then rubbed his face, struggling to remember the last time he was with his family. Not long after unloading the news of his condition on Beth and Hailey, he’d rushed off to Nebraska then rushed back to New York and back to the case. Hell, he was unable to recall when he’d last held his wife and daughter. He was such an SOB for not considering their feelings.

Christ.

But he couldn’t just sit at home, accept his death sentence and curl up. He needed to rage against it, rage against the pain and exhaustion he sometimes felt. He needed to see this case through. The fight was keeping him alive.

He answered Hailey:Be home as soon as I can tonight.

They were now about two miles along the Van Wyck, when Dimarco ended his call and turned to Morrow.

“You okay, Frank?”

“Just a little jet-lagged from the flight.”

“That was Moe Malloy at American Centurion. He’s got his people on-site, ready and waiting.”

“Good.”

So far, the FBI had cleared Lester Ridley, a driver for the armored car company and an ex-serviceman. The search warrants had not revealed anything. In fact, his story that his family would help him with his personal debt had been verified.

But in the wake of the development with Erik Rytter, Morrow and Dimarco needed to reinterview Ridley and three other drivers with ex-military backgrounds, to determine if Rytter had any affiliation with American Centurion, or with any of its personnel through any military network or association.

Malloy had cleared a room for the two investigators who would talk to the guards one by one. Morrow flipped through the files. Ridley was up first, his attitude hardened by being in the crosshairs.

“Our apologies for putting your family through the wringer,” Morrow said.

“You assholes don’t care.”

“Hey!” Dimarco said. “You lied to us and gave us reason to look at you. You could’ve been charged with obstruction in relation to four homicides. Want to swallow that and cooperate? Now, do you know this guy?”

Dimarco slid Ridley photos of Erik Rytter: a recent one on a slab in Nebraska, in profile, without showing the damage from the bullet; a close-up of Rytter’s wrist with the cobra tattoo; and two others provided by German authorities.

Ridley shook his head.

“I never saw that guy or heard of him.”

“The tattoo?”

“Nope. Just like I told you before.”

Ridley had been with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

“We were trying to rebuild their country in the middle of a war and people were trying to kill us. I got in and got out. There was so much crap going on. I did my duty and came home. And that tattoo… Hell, everybody had tattoos.” Ridley held out his arms, sleeved in them.

It was going to be a long day.

Dimarco got fresh coffee for Morrow and for himself. Next up was crew chief Cal Turner, aged thirty-six, who’d been with the 82nd Airborne.

“Is he the shooter?” Turner stared at the photos.

“That’s what we want to determine.”

Turner took a long look.

“I was in Afghanistan chasing the Taliban.” He shook his head. “I knew a few German soldiers but not your guy there. He doesn’t ring a bell. But out there, you never knew who the enemy was half the time.”

“Tell us about contractors,” Dimarco said.

“I never paid much attention to that,” Turner said. “Sure, there was a lot of money to be made, but to me it’s a death wish. Why would you sign on to that? Just for a few more bucks. I’ll tell you something, the guys that did it had different DNA. They were wild, crazy, some of the best soldiers in the world. But if you got home intact, you’ve won. So why would you go back?”

Morrow got up and paced a bit while kneading the back of his neck until the door opened.

Lori Schneider, a driver, was next. The thirty-five-year-old mother of three boys had served with the U.S. Army’s 507th Maintenance Company.

“I was a mechanic,” she said. “I helped support Patriot antimissile batteries in Baghdad.”

Schneider said that she didn’t know Rytter or his tattoo, had never seen or heard of him until now.

“You really think he did it? He’s one of them?” She gazed at his picture, her chin crumpling. “I was close to our guys, to Ross, Phil and Gary. Being dead is too good for this fucker, way too good.”

“What about contractors?” Morrow asked. “Lori, what’s your knowledge of them from your tour?”

“I just did my job.” She shrugged. “I heard the stories, how they were always getting into trouble and were exempt from prosecution. Cowboys with guns. I just did my job and looked out for my team.”

The day had passed in large chunks and Dimarco wanted more coffee. Dennis Hagler, a driver for American Centurion, was the last ex-soldier they needed to talk to. Hagler had been a sergeant with the First Battalion, 87th Infantry.

“Our squad had a lot of casualties—IEDs mostly—but when we tangled with insurgents near the Tajikistan border with Afghanistan, we wasted them. I saw a lot of guys blown to pieces, but I never questioned the mission. I understood why we put it all on the line to do what we had to do. I’m glad they got Bin Laden, wish I was there to pull the trigger.”

“Does Rytter look familiar to you?” Dimarco asked Hagler. “Had you ever seen him around the depot or on any routes?”

Hagler scratched his chin then shook his head.

“No.”

“Does his tattoo look familiar?”

Hagler shook his head.

“We understand Rytter worked in Afghanistan and Iraq as a contractor. What are your thoughts on this and what’s happened?” Dimarco asked.

“Over there you heard rumors of some illegal stuff—Special Ops, Black Ops, creepy CIA ghost friends, that’s about it. Just a lot of beer talk,” Hagler said. “With Rytter, you think that the people who did this were ex-military looking for a big payday?”

“What do you think?” Morrow asked.

“Maybe. That’s one theory.”

“Got another?”

“Well, maybe they hit us for the cash to fund something?”

Morrow and Dimarco exchanged looks.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. It couldn’t be for the Taliban or al-Qaeda, that’s what the sheikhs are for. It would have to be something personal, maybe? I don’t know, some cause or crusade.” Hagler shook his head. “I could be wrong, it might be some ex-mercenaries looking for a big payday. Who knows.”

It was midevening by the time Morrow pulled his car into the driveway of his home in Westchester County. His body felt as if his weight had doubled.

In the kitchen he made a chicken sandwich, which he ate with a glass of milk. Then he had a sliver of his wife’s homemade apple pie. Beth was in the living room on the phone to her sister. She nodded that Hailey was upstairs. Morrow went to check on her, but heard the shower going. He went to his study and started reviewing files.

Rytter had given them a major break.

They needed to advance it.

He got an email from Art Stein about another appointment, then went back to his files, scouring them for anything he’d missed until his vision blurred, his eyes closed and he drifted off.

He was dreaming about an ocean beach, when he felt a butterfly caress on his cheek and woke to see his daughter.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

“Dad.” She knelt before him, her face a portrait of sadness. “Dad, how can I graduate, how can I go to college, get married, have kids, without you there?”

Morrow pulled her to him and she sobbed in his arms.

As he held her he realized he was still gripping the file for Donna Breen, Moe Malloy’s cousin, who’d informed them about Gina Saldino. A light flickered in a corner of his mind, something that Breen had told him about Saldino.

That she had a boyfriend who had been in Pakistan or someplace like that.

Could he be ex-military?

Could he be Erik Rytter?

41

New York City

Gannon’s 737 from Denver landed with a thud at La Guardia.

He took a cab directly to World Press Alliance headquarters.

As the car cut across Midtown Manhattan traffic, he consulted the checklist he’d started on the flight. His first priority was to learn all he could about Erik Rytter of Munich, the man FBI had identified as the dead suspect in Nebraska. Where did Rytter fit in with the heist, with American Centurion, with any part of the case? He’d search databases, records and archives. And although it might be prickly with some of them, he’d go back to all his sources for help.

Gene Bennett at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice was reluctant to talk to him, but Bennett had a line into the industry that reached inside American Centurion. He’d keep trying with him. Gannon would also sound out Brad West, with the New York State Police, and his wife, Anita, at Ramapo P.D.

It was 2:55 p.m., when he arrived at the WPA building.

In the elevator, he remembered Adell Clark.

He needed to thank her for tipping him off on Nebraska. Adell always came through. He’d go back to her, too, he thought as he hurried through the sixteenth-floor reception area. He had just made it to his desk and set down his bags when a news assistant trotted up to him.

“Hey, Jack, you’re supposed to join the editors in the story meeting now. They’re all in the conference room.”

The midafternoon story conference was in progress. Nearly a dozen senior editors were at the polished table in the glass-walled room with its panoramic view of Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. When Gannon entered and took a seat, attention shifted to him as if he’d been the subject of conversation.

“Welcome back,” Lisker said. “I was just telling Beland and everyone how we followed our hunch on that tip we had on the suspect out west.”

“Our hunch?” The tip “we had.” What? Did I fall down the rabbit hole? Lisker threatened to fire me and here he is taking credit—hell, stealing it—to cover his non-journalist ass. Look at him, attempting a smile as if smiling were the most unnatural thing for him.

A nod was all Gannon could manage.

“You knocked it out of the ballpark for us, Jack,” Beland Stone, the WPA’s executive editor, said. “A clean kill against our competitors. Your item from Nebraska was one of the finest examples of breaking-news feature writing I’ve seen in recent memory.”

“Thanks.”

“We got great pick-up,” Stone said. “And it got stronger in Europe after we updated with the German aspects. We need to keep in front.”

“We want you to continue being our lead reporter on the story,” Lisker added, still through his stupid grin.

“This is an important story,” Stone said. “We’ll keep hitting it from all angles. Where are the other suspects? Where’s the money? What did they want it for? Are they tied to other heists? What links this Erik Rytter, an ex-German soldier, has to the heist? How did they know to grab him?”

Gannon nodded respectfully to what was obvious.

“We’re putting everything we can on this story,” said Carter O’Neill, who ran the WPA’s domestic bureaus.

“All our bureaus in Germany are on it,” said George Wilson, who was in charge of WPA’s foreign bureaus. He leaned to a speaker. “Franz, can you update us?”

From Berlin, the voice of Franz Dalder, chief of the WPA’s German bureaus, echoed through the speaker.

“Yes, as I was telling you, our sources with the German national police inform us that they are helping the FBI with information on Rytter. He was a former soldier and then worked as a contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are trying to confirm if he worked for a private security firm subcontracted for Black Ops for the CIA.”

“This adds a new dimension to the crime,” O’Neill said. “Was the heist an operation to raise funds for a bigger attack? Remember, the 9/11 guys spent a lot of time in Germany.”

“We will investigate all theories and work with Jack Gannon,” Dalder said.

Margot Cooke, the WPA’s features editor, leaned forward, tapping a pencil into the palm of her hand.

“Jack, we discussed this, you’ve reported that there’s a key eyewitness. We should try to give readers an anatomy of the heist, take readers inside, put them in that truck stop, provide a portrait of how everyday life can change in a heartbeat.”

Gannon nodded.

Having just stepped off an early-morning four-hour flight across the continent, he had a lot to take in. When the meeting ended, he returned to his desk, grappling with a mix of fatigue, adrenaline and stress. He turned on his computer, took a breath and began sorting out what he needed to do.

Sources. Right. Sources.

He started by putting out calls, sending texts and emails to all his sources. Then he sifted through his messages, notes and files. Was he forgetting anything? Was he overlooking any aspect of the story? He could go home, but why bother?

Nothing was waiting for him there but the furniture. Besides, he’d never get a seat on the train. It was practically rush hour.

His line rang. The number was blocked.

“Jack Gannon, WPA.”

“Hey there, so you’re back from the great plain.”

Recognizing the woman’s voice, Gannon rolled his eyes and tightened his grip on the phone as if stepping into battle.

“Hello, Katrina.”

“Congratulations on kicking everyone’s ass on the story.”

“What do you want?”

“Wow, you’re cold.”

“I’m sorry, how nice to hear your voice.”

“Now, now, Jack. Come on, be nice.”

“Why are you calling?”

“Well, I wanted to take you out to dinner.”

“The last time we went to dinner, things didn’t go so well.”

“Come on, Jack, can’t we be adults about things?”

“Why do you want to take me out to dinner?”

“Aren’t we still friends?”

“What?”

“I thought we could talk.”

“About what?”

“Look, I heard a couple of detectives paid you a visit, something about a crime scene in Yonkers, and I thought we could compare notes. You know, team up. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours kinda thing?”

One bitter second ticked by, then another and another before Gannon cursed under his breath, shook his head and stared across the newsroom at nothing.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re a real piece of work.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to pump me as if I was one of your sources. You’re shameless, you know that. You’d probably sell your firstborn for a story.”

“Hey!”

“Goodbye, Katrina.”

Gannon thrust his face in his hands.

Katrina was getting close.

Those Yonkers cops who were pissed at him, what were their names? He searched his notes: Walsh and Mullen. Maybe they were her sources? Katrina could’ve called them, trolling for stories, and they tipped her to his work on Harlee Shaw?

One thing was certain: Katrina’s call was a double-barreled blast of reality. She was sniffing around on Harlee Shaw’s suicide, his mystery tip. She was breathing down his neck.

Jesus.

He rummaged through his files. He hadn’t even fleshed out who Harlee Shaw was. Not so far. He’d failed to track down any friends or family members. Here it was; the file on what he had, mostly through military records. Shaw was former U.S. Army, 75th Ranger Regiment, who saw action in Iraq. The military-records guy Gannon had talked to was chatty and hinted that after Shaw left the army, he may have been a contractor in Afghanistan. Gannon couldn’t confirm it.

Rytter was a contractor. What if Shaw was connected to Rytter? What if he knew about the heist and had been trying to tell Gannon about it? What if Katrina beat him on connecting the dots, confirmed everything and stole the story from him?

Stop this. You’re driving yourself nuts. Do something.

All right, he’d call Shelly Konradisky, the super, and ask if she’d heard from relatives about holding a funeral, or clearing the apartment.

Gannon reached for his newsroom landline when it rang.

Another blocked number. Katrina? Or, maybe one of his sources?

He took in a long, exhausted breath.

“Jack Gannon, WPA.”

A moment of silence, then Gannon said, “Hello, anybody there?”

“Sorry, are you the reporter who’s writing stories on what happened at the truck stop in Ramapo, the murders and the robbery?”

He didn’t recognize the caller’s voice: female, New Yorker, maybe his age. He had a digital recorder wired to his phone; he switched it on and the tiny red recording light glowed.

“Yes.”

“And you wrote this latest one, about the suspect they got in Nebraska, who is now dead?”

“Yes. Is that why you called?”

“No. I don’t make these sorts of calls.”

These sorts of calls?

The woman’s tone, her underlying nervousness, she had his attention.

“Why don’t you start by telling me your name and how I can help you?”

“I need to be anonymous.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to give you my name. Not now. But I have to know that you protect sources.”

“I do.”

“Are you required to give anyone the name of your sources?”

“Usually a senior editor, but they’re bound to protecting a source for our news organization, just like me. So why are you calling?”

“I need…” She paused to clear her throat then came back, her voice stronger. “I need to know a few things.”

A red flag went up.

Careful, Gannon warned himself, he didn’t know who was on the line, but sometimes criminals got calls into reporters to see what they knew, or what their police sources had told them, about the investigation into a crime. On this call, he wasn’t sure.

“What do you need to know and why do you need to know it?”

“It’s about the suspect they got in Nebraska.”

“What about him?”

“Is he the killer?”

The killer? Gannon thought it was a strange question. Weren’t all four suspects killers?

“What do you mean?”

“Is he the one who shot the FBI agent?”

Gannon held his breath at the way she’d asked— no, hurled—the question, propelling it with such raw intensity, barely containing her emotions.

“Can you tell me if he’s the one who killed Agent Dutton?”

Gannon’s gut screamed that this woman was viscerally tied to the case. She was either the agent’s widow, or someone else linked to the agent’s death.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“But you have sources, good sources who know what’s happening. You seem to know as much about this as the FBI. What do you think?”

Gannon assessed everything, then he asked a question.

“Do you know FBI agent Frank Morrow?”

A long moment passed.

“Yes.”

There it is. This woman is involved somehow.

“Have you and I met?” he asked.

He heard the caller swallow hard before she answered.

“Indirectly.”

“Are you the woman who witnessed the FBI agent’s murder?”

Another agonized stretch of silence passed.

“Swear to me and to God that you protect sources,” she said.

“I do.”

She waited.

“I was next to him when it happened.”

His pulse accelerated. Don’t lose her.

“It must’ve been horrible for you.”

“It was.”

“Would you consider meeting with me, just meeting, so we could talk further, maybe help each other?”

Another long moment passed with Gannon watching time tick down on the newsroom clock.

“I’ll consider it.”

Gannon heard movement on the caller’s end of the line.

“Wait! Wait!”

The line went dead, leaving him to fear that he’d lost his chance with the witness. He tried working, but his mood darkened. It was not going well. None of his sources had responded and he wasn’t getting anywhere.

After two hours, exhaustion was weighing on Gannon and he began gathering his things for the commute to his empty apartment in Washington Heights. He was thinking of grabbing a club sandwich at the Wyoming Diner before heading over to Penn Station, when his line rang.

“I called you a little while ago about Nebraska and protecting sources?”

“Yes, I remember. Will you meet with me?”

“If you agree to a few conditions, I’ll meet you tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’m listening.”

“No interview, no recording, no cameras. We just talk.”

“Agreed.”

“You give me your word?”

“I give you my word.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow with the time and location.”

42

San Francisco, California

At 2:45 a.m., Ivan Felk woke in his hotel bed.

He did not know why he had awakened until his secure satellite cell phone rang again.

The caller’s number was blocked.

He answered, heard four seconds of static, then an automated message: “The N.G.N.R.M. has sent you an important communication.”

Felk sat up.

Wide awake, he went to his laptop, logged on to his encrypted email account to find a new video attachment. He connected his headphones and turned up the volume. As it loaded, he braced for the worst.

The new footage was confusing. It focused first on another laptop screen, blurring as it sharpened to the online edition of the New York Times. The camera shook while zooming in on the date, confirming the recording had been made within the last twenty-four hours.

It then scanned headlines before locking on one that Felk already knew: Ramapo Heist Suspect Dies In Nebraska

The camera held the headline for several moments then the laptop lowered to the head and shoulders of a hooded figure who spoke in clear, accented English.

“This new communiqué from the New Guardians of the National Revolutionary Movement amends the fate of the invading criminals who are guilty of crimes against humanity.”

The camera panned to Felk’s men all kneeling on a barren concrete floor. They were skeletal as a result of being underfed. Their full beards accentuated their hollow eyes. Several large men in hoods worked at positioning the hostages’ hands behind their backs with flex-cuffs.

The hooded spokesman resumed.

“The news report shows us your recent failure and deteriorating ability to gather the funds necessary to pay the fine to spare the infidels from their execution.”

The camera pulled in on a cinder block set between the legs of the first kneeling hostage. Two men set his hands on top of it.

“To inspire you to deliver the fine in full by the deadline, the court has authorized us to begin prosecution by removing—”

“Oh, Jesus,” Felk said aloud in his quiet room as the captors spread the man’s fingers so that one index finger was exposed on the cinder block.

“—a finger from each man now.”

A large blade glinted, pressed down on the finger, swiftly crunched, as if cutting celery, severing it cleanly from the hand. Spurting blood cascaded over the cinder block as the man’s screaming pierced Felk’s ears.

“God, no. Damn it, no!”

The injured man’s hand was wrapped in a towel, the finger held to the camera, then tossed out of frame. Off-camera dogs yelped and Felk shut his eyes to the horror. For the next thirty minutes, he endured the screaming as one by one each of his men lost a finger, including his brother, Clayton.

Felk shook with rage as tears rolled down his face.

“I swear we are coming to get you and we will waste the motherfuckers. I swear to God.”

After it had ended, Felk sat on the side of his bed with his head in his hands until dawn broke over San Francisco. The entire time his thinking had been crystalline while hate-fueled adrenaline pulsated through him as if he were in a firefight.

He analyzed their situation.

The mutilations resulted from Rytter’s arrest and death. Rytter’s arrest must’ve arisen from information police possessed. What did they know? The press had reported early in the case that the FBI had a key eyewitness to the federal agent’s shooting.

If it was true, that witness had to be the woman beside him.

She’d looked right at Felk, pleaded for her life.

Why did I hesitate? Why? Why? Why? Fuck, I don’t know why.

It was a mistake to let her live.

What did she see?

Goddamnit.

By 5:00 a.m., Felk had summoned the others to a briefing in his room for 6:00 a.m. He showed them the grisly video, explaining its link to Rytter’s arrest, which had to be linked to the witness.

“What did the FBI get from her?” Felk said. “What could they know?”

“How can we be sure it’s her and not someone in our network who may have gone to the FBI for the reward?” Northcutt asked.

“Because anyone who knows anything of our mission is involved,” Felk said. “Everyone helping us has a connection to our men who are being held hostage. There’s no way in hell they would give us up.”

“So what could this woman have seen?” Unger shook his head. “We were so goddamn careful. We took shell casings. We left nothing—no DNA, no debris. We took out their security cameras.”

“We were covered in racing suits,” Northcutt said. “We wore helmets with dark glass, gloves. Nobody could see anything.”

“How close was this woman to you?” Dillon asked Felk.

“Less than three feet, maybe two,” Felk said. “She was on her stomach, on the floor, right beside the agent.”

“Why don’t we reenact it and see if that helps?” Dillon said.

“Okay, get the gear. Bring up my suit, gloves, helmet to the room. We’ll do this ASAP.”

Within twenty minutes Dillon had returned with a large sports bag. Felk stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers, then got into the one-piece leather racing suit. He pulled on his boots, strapped on his motorcycle helmet and tugged on his gloves.

“Unger, you’re the agent, get on the floor on your gut, here,” Felk directed him. “Northcutt, you’re the witness, get next to him here and turn your head like this.

“All right, I was standing like this and I put my gun on his head like this.” Felk slowly shaped the fingers of his right hand into a gun and lowered it to Unger’s head. “Northcutt, your head is turned facing Unger’s, so you’re watching the gun on him. What do you see?”

As Felk extended his gun hand, the cuff of his racing suit slipped back.

“Freeze,” Northcutt said, raising his hand to touch the Red Cobra Team 9 tattoo wrapped around Felk’s wrist. “I see your tattoo.”

Felk raised his wrist to study it in disbelief.

“Fuck!” Felk said. The others looked at their own wrists as if they were passports to doom. Felk tore off his helmet, unzipped his suit, cursing under his breath. He shoved his gear in the bag, dressed, went to his laptop and started working.

“What are we going to do?” Dillon asked.

“Stay true to our mission,” Felk said. “We’ve taken losses, but we’re not going to abandon our people. We’re handcuffed to the schedule of that armored car shipment to Oakland International. We’ve got to hang on for four days.”

“But we’re vulnerable, Ivan.” Unger took uneasy inventory of the others.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Felk said.

His anger rising, Felk rummaged through his other bag until he found Lisa Palmer’s photo-ID employee card for Good Buy Supermart.

He held it up to the others.

“This bitch will not bring us down!”

43

Queens, New York

Lisa.

That was the only personal information Gannon’s caller had given him when she phoned him this morning.

She’d set their meeting for 4:30 p.m. at a McDonald’s in the Rego Park area of Queens. Gannon’s dashboard clock read 4:15 p.m. As he guided his Pontiac Vibe along Queens Boulevard, he estimated he was eight blocks away; glad to take Queens traffic over Manhattan’s nightmare.

Nightmare.

He thought briefly of Katrina.

How did it go so wrong?

The fact she’d dumped him underscored the emptiness of his life. To hell with her, he thought as the golden arches came into view.

Concentrate on work.

He was onto something big here.

After parking and heading for the door, he checked out the news boxes on the street displaying the Post, the Times and Daily News. Each paper had a heist item on the front page. The story was still huge and Gannon could not afford to blow it. Sure, he’d gotten a few lucky breaks, but he’d invested a lot of sweat, too.

He’d worked it, no doubt about it.

As he stood in line for a small coffee, he hoped that “Lisa” wouldn’t stand him up. He understood that she was nervous and that this was an audition of sorts for him. He’d done a few of these dances with sources in the past and usually they went well. Usually, he got the story.

But experience taught him to never, ever take anything for granted.

He found an empty booth and flipped through a copy of the New York Daily News that someone had left. Then he checked his BlackBerry for updates. There were snippets here and there but nothing major. Lisa, his witness, was the story right now.

In their last call he’d started describing himself before she’d stopped him. “I know what you look like and you know what I look like. We met at Ramapo when I was with Morrow.”

Gannon kept a vigil on the after-school, after-work customers streaming into the restaurant. He studied the women who resembled Lisa before he spotted her entering the side door. She scanned the dining area and upon seeing him, she approached his table.

“Hi, I’m Lisa.” She had a nice smile, pretty eyes.

“Jack Gannon.” He stood, shook her hand.

“I’m sorry to have to meet here but we’ve got a lot on the go these days,” Lisa said. “I’m so thirsty. I just need to get a drink, can I get you anything?”

“No, let me get it for you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Please, I need a fresh coffee. Have a seat. What would you like?”

“Okay, a small Diet Coke, thanks.”

When Gannon returned with the drinks, it became clear to him by the warm casual way Lisa carried herself, without pretense, that this was her McDonald’s, and he was a guest on her turf.

“Thanks for coming out to Queens,” she said.

“Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.”

“This is off the record, not for print, or whatever you guys say.”

“Yes,” he said. “So can you tell me a bit about yourself?”

Lisa glanced out the window then at her hands.

“My husband was killed two years ago. He was a mechanic. He stopped to help a stranger fix their car on the Grand Central Parkway when he was hit by a truck.”

This added a new dimension.

“I’m so sorry.”

Lisa’s eyes shone. “It’s been hard, but we take things day by day.”

“I understand,” Gannon said. “My parents died together in a car accident several years ago in Buffalo, where I grew up.”

“That’s sad,” Lisa said.

“I take it you live in Queens?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you work?”

“I’m a supermarket cashier.”

Gannon smiled.

“My mother was a waitress much of her life.”

As they talked he found a lot to like about Lisa, she was blue collar, working-class, just like him. They quickly grew comfortable with each other as Lisa told him how she’d grown up poor in Queens, forgoing college to work, getting married, having two kids and then facing her husband’s sudden death. To Gannon, she was getting on with her life as a single parent with a kind of heroic dignity. After some twenty minutes, Gannon figured it was time to get down to business.

“So you witnessed the agent’s murder?”

“Hold on. It’s just like we agreed, you can’t take notes and you can’t report anything until I agree to an interview later. That’s our deal.”

“All right, that’s our deal.”

“Give me your word.”

“I give you my word.”

“The FBI would go nuts if they knew I was talking to you. But I’m a witness, not a criminal. I’m free to find out what I need to know.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Tell me about this case. You seem to have good sources. You seem to know everything.”

“Not as much as the FBI. Wouldn’t they keep you informed?”

“They’re guarded. After I helped them on this case, after they got what they needed, they seemed to have forgotten about me.”

“But they have victim witness programs.”

“They’ve got a process for keeping witnesses and victims informed after an arrest has been made. They’ll keep you updated on the status of a prosecution. But it’s different with a live investigation.”

Gannon nodded.

“They want it sealed so they can make arrests,” he said.

“Is this guy they got in Nebraska, this Rytter, is he the one who killed the FBI agent?”

“Why is that important?”

“I was on the floor next to the agent when it happened. Some of his blood splattered on me.”

“What?”

“Then the killer put his gun to my head. I begged for my life, he hesitated and one of the others pulled him away.”

Images swirled before Gannon. He was on the brink of a powerful story.

“And you helped ID the killer for the FBI?”

“I’m their key witness.”

“How? What did you see that identified him?”

Lisa shook her head.

“I don’t think I should say.”

She glanced at her watch, then toward the play area, as if she was here with someone else. Gannon sensed his time was running out.

“Didn’t they put you in any kind of witness protection?” he asked.

“They offered, but their thinking was that since the killers did not know my identity, they wouldn’t look for me, or any of the victims. The killers took all our cell phones and burned them. The FBI said they would flee the area, and what happened in Nebraska convinces me that they were right about that.”

“So what happened immediately after the murders?”

“The FBI took me to a hotel and got a psychiatrist to help me with the trauma and to remember details of the agent’s death.”

“Did the psychiatrist hypnotize you or something?”

“Something like that. Then we had an FBI agent live with us in our home for a while, but we really didn’t like it. Before all this we were preparing to move across the country, to get on with our lives after my husband’s death. I had debts. I had to sell our cabin, our only asset. It’s been complicated and stressful.”

“I see.”

“So it would give me peace of mind to know that the bastard who killed the agent and almost killed me is dead. Can you help me with that?”

Gannon looked at Lisa.

“I’ll work on it. But I need you to promise me exclusivity. I want to tell your story.”

“You give me your word that you will keep me informed on everything. Then, once we know the FBI has this thing under control, I’ll give you your interview. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Deal. How can I keep in touch with you?”

“I’ll give you my new cell-phone number, but it might not work all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before this happened, I had just sold our cabin upstate. We’re going up for one last visit to close it. The cell-phone service is not reliable up there and we don’t have a landline.”

Lisa’s attention shifted beyond Gannon to another part of the restaurant. She nodded to someone. Gannon turned to see a woman and two children coming to their table.

“Can we go now, Mom?” Ethan asked.

Smiling at Gannon, Lisa said, “This is my posse, Ethan and Taylor. And this is my friend Rita.”

Gannon shook hands with everyone.

“I have a niece and I’m guessing she’s about your age, Ethan.”

“Cool. What school does she go to?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, she lives in Arizona.”

“It doesn’t snow there,” Ethan said.

“Not too much.”

“Does Santa still go if there’s no snow?” Taylor asked.

“I’m pretty sure he does,” Gannon said, noticing Ethan’s pearl-handled penknife clipped to a small chain on his belt loop.

“I like your knife.”

“My dad gave it to me as a present before he died.”

“Oh, I see.”

“My brother lives in Buffalo.” Rita changed the subject for the kids. “I work with Lisa. Sorry, I looked you up on the internet, Jack. You used to write for the Buffalo Sentinel.”

“That’s right,” Gannon said and smiled at Taylor. “We get a lot of snow in Buffalo.”

“Do you have any kids, Jack?” Rita asked.

“No, no kids. I’m not married. Got a sister in Arizona and a niece.”

“Time to go, Mom?” Taylor asked.

“Time to go,” Lisa stood.

“Wait.” Gannon fished out a business card with all of his contact information and gave it to Lisa. “This is how you can reach me, or get word to me. There’s a toll-free number on there.”

“Could I have one? I collect cards,” Ethan asked.

“You collect sports cards.” Rita laughed.

“Sure, buddy.” Gannon stood and gave him one. “It might be worth something someday.”

Gannon sat down.

Watching Lisa leave with her children and her friend, he shook his head at what had just transpired, recalling when he first saw her at the Ramapo truck stop office, with her head on the desk, reenacting the shooting.

Now, seeing her walk across the McDonald’s parking lot, he was in awe of this young widow from Queens, who had just promised him an unbelievable story.

44

Brooklyn, New York

“I never saw her! I swear I never saw her!”

In the wake of the tragedy, the distraught driver of the B68 city bus had told police that he was northbound on Coney Island Avenue at Avenue Y when the woman appeared before him in the crosswalk.

“She was just there! She looked dazed. I couldn’t stop!”

The impact had hurled the woman some forty feet in the air to the hood of a cab. Blood gushed from her and she barely had a pulse when paramedics arrived and took her to Coney Island Hospital.

En route, she opened her eyes and asked for a priest.

The woman’s name was Gina Saldino.

Emergency staff first stabilized her then assessed her chances of surviving beyond twenty-four hours at less than ten percent. Gina was able to talk for short drug-hazed periods to Father Edwin Davis, the on-call priest who’d responded to her request. Once Davis understood what Gina was telling him, he’d summoned the two NYPD officers who were in the cafeteria completing paperwork on the incident. Gina Saldino was employed at American Centurion, the armored-car company.

“She says she has information about the heist,” the priest said.

The development set in motion a series of urgent cell-phone calls, emails and texts pinballing across the NYPD and the FBI’s New York Division.

Ninety minutes later, FBI special agent Frank Morrow and NYPD detective Al Dimarco arrived at Gina’s bedside, along with an agent who set up a video recorder. Her face was a net of abrasions, contusions. Her lip was split, her left eye was patched. Along with Davis, a doctor and nurse were present to monitor Gina’s vital signs as she struggled to unburden her conscience.

“My boyfriend is Tim Shepherd…ex-army…a private contractor for missions in Afghanistan…ghost work…Tim taken hostage with other soldiers for ransom…no government help…no one knows…secret mission was illegal…his friends showed me the video…horrible…going to decapitate him…they needed ransom money to save them…I gave them routes and schedules…to save them…his friends were going to take the money…American Centurion’s insured…no one would get hurt…no one would die…I’m so sorry…”

Her monitors beeped. The doctor grew concerned as she floated on clouds of grogginess. This was Morrow’s only chance and he pressed the doctor to let her continue.

“I took vacation,” Gina said. “Hid in an old friend’s apartment…Sheepshead Bay…tried to reach Raife…is Tim okay…? Raife didn’t answer emails…what happened…? Raife…no answer…I’m sorry for the guards…I knew them, Phil, Ross and Gary…the FBI agent, his poor wife, ohm God…my fault…can’t sleep…can’t think…I walk and walk…my fault…”

“Who is Raife? Who did you give routes to, Gina?” Morrow asked. “Give us names.”

“Rups. Raife.” She coughed. “Upshaw.”

“Who?”

“Raife Upshaw, his name is Raife Upshaw. Post office box in San Francisco.”

Alarms on the equipment monitoring Gina’s vital signs sounded as her condition worsened. The doctor and nurse took control, but things were looking bad. The alarms kept going.

The doctor shook his head.

Morrow and Dimarco left the room and immediately put out calls for information on Raife Upshaw.

Morrow alerted his squad to start the process for warrants on any postal box registered to Raife Upshaw in San Francisco, and for the immediate arrest of an individual known as Raife Upshaw for his role in the homicides of three guards and the assault on a federal officer.

This was a major break.

As Dimarco drove them over the Brooklyn Bridge back to 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, Morrow continued working the phone. His team had already alerted the San Francisco FBI, the San Francisco Police Department and the California Attorney General’s Office.

Morrow alerted his supervisor and reached out to the CIA, State and the Pentagon for help on an ex-U.S. soldier named Levon Upshaw working with private security teams contracted for operations in Afghanistan.

By the time Dimarco and Morrow reached the twenty-eighth floor, the FBI had a file on their target: Levon Raife Upshaw, aged forty-one, of the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo, California.

Upshaw had no criminal convictions, no arrests and no warrants. He had one five-year-old traffic offense for speeding, fifteen miles over the posted maximum.

Much of his work history was classified.

Upshaw studied engineering at Caltech but dropped out to join the Army Corps of Engineers, then became a member of Delta Force, eventually recruited into Task Force 88, joining one of the “hunter-killer” teams in the search for Bin Laden.

Then he left the army to take jobs with private security companies contracted to do high-priced work for governments around the globe.

“Put this guy on the same team as Erik Rytter and you get a sense that the crew behind our heist is our worst nightmare,” Dimarco said.

Upshaw’s California driver’s-license picture stared back at Morrow from his computer monitor. All the warrants they needed were nearly done.

“We’re gaining on them, Al,” Morrow said before taking a call from his supervisor.

“Frank, this is Crawford. We need you on the next plane to San Francisco.”

45

San Francisco Bay Area, California

The Upshaw home was in San Mateo’s North Shoreview neighborhood between the Bayshore Freeway and San Francisco Bay.

The small three-bedroom bungalow sat far back from the street on a deep, narrow lot. Through his binoculars, the San Francisco FBI SWAT commander saw movement in the house.

It was suppertime.

The San Mateo Police and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office had set up the outer perimeter. They had choked off traffic into the area and quietly cleared residents of all surrounding homes from the potential line of fire. The faint drone of highway traffic on the 101 echoed off the sound wall, and an ominous hush fell over the area.

The FBI’s SWAT team had taken positions around the house.

Given that the subject was wanted in connection with four homicides, including the death of an FBI agent, and given that the subject was ex-military, a firearms expert in possession of weapons, the team poised for a no-knock forced rapid entry.

The commander made final checks with the team leaders at the front and rear of the house.

All was good.

The commander said, “Go!”

Flash-bang grenades smashed through windows and heavily armed SWAT members in body armor charged through the front and back doors, shouting orders to: “GET ON THE FLOOR, NOW!” to the teenage girl, woman and man who were eating pizza.

“What the hell is this?” the man protested while on his stomach, as his hands were cuffed behind him.

After his sobbing wife and daughter were removed from the house, unharmed, he confirmed he was Raife Upshaw.

The SWAT team sat him at the kitchen table.

The smoke cleared, the chaos gave way to calm. Several agents in FBI windbreakers entered the house and began searching it while other agents entered the kitchen. Frank Morrow sat down across from Upshaw, placed warrants on the table and read him his rights.

“You’ll see in the warrant, Raife, we have you for being an accessory to the murders in New York. You might as well have pulled the trigger.”

An agent standing behind Upshaw, who’d inspected the former soldier’s tattoos, shook his head at Morrow, indicating no cobra tattoo on his wrists.

Unknown to Morrow, to the FBI, to just about anyone, Upshaw had endured many trials over his years as a soldier hunting terrorists. Once, he’d been captured and tortured by the Taliban. He was held for nine days before he escaped by killing three of his captors with his bare hands, nearly tearing the head clean off one of them.

The FBI, with their team jackets, cologne and spearmint breath, were an annoyance because Upshaw had no option to kill them. He exercised his right to remain silent with cold-blooded intensity.

This was an affront to Morrow and all that he stood for.

Since he’d looked upon the corpses of Phil Mendoza, Gary Horvath, Ross Trask and Agent Greg Dutton on the floor of Freedom Freeway Service Center, Morrow was consumed with one ambition: to find their killers.

Lisa Palmer’s eyewitness account gave Morrow a break, Rytter’s arrest in Nebraska got him closer and Gina Saldino’s deathbed confession got him here, at the burning edge of the truth.

As far as Morrow was concerned, his life and his death were linked to the men who died in Ramapo and the men behind the killings.

His supreme duty was to see justice done and put it all to rest.

Now that he was this close, he would not relent.

Morrow found a framed family photograph and set it on the table before Upshaw.

“Think of them, Raife. If you cooperate and tell us how we can find the others, we’ll take it into consideration.”

Upshaw said nothing.

Morrow leaned into his space.

“Do you want to sleep in a cell tonight?”

Upshaw said nothing.

“This is not about loyalty. Somebody already gave you up, Raife. That’s what brought this party to your home,” Morrow said. “Eventually, you’ll be identified to the world as ‘one of the plotters against America’ in the armored-car heist. You’ll be helpless in a cell while reporters and patriots hound your wife and your daughter. Your husband’s a traitor. Your daddy’s a terrorist.”

Morrow let out a long sigh.

“And the fact you put your life on the line for this nation, risked it all in some backwater shit hole chasing the enemies of America, will be flushed away, Raife.”

Not far off they heard a computer printer. An agent brought Morrow several articles from New York newspapers about the heist in Ramapo and Rytter’s arrest. Morrow scanned the articles and placed them before Upshaw.

“Interesting you would have these on your computer, Raife.” Morrow scratched his chin. “I’m sure we’ll find all kinds of enlightening evidence once our cyberpeople take it apart, along with every aspect of your life.”

Upshaw said nothing.

He never asked for a lawyer, he barely reacted. For nearly two hours Morrow carried on what amounted to a monologue.

Then Upshaw said, “I want immunity.”

“We’ll need your information to determine if that is even possible.”

“I want immunity.”

“Give us the information and we’ll raise immunity with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

“I had no part in the heist.”

“And you can prove this?”

“I will prove I was in California when it happened.”

“Did you plot it?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to us, Raife.”

“I had no part in it.”

“Gina Saldino says otherwise.”

“Gina who? Never heard of her.”

“She sent you schedules and routes for American Centurion.”

Upshaw shook his head.

“You have a post office box in San Francisco.”

“That’s not against the law.”

“She mailed you information about routes and schedules. Who did you give the routes to, Raife?”

“That never happened.”

“Who are the players?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t take me in circles, Raife.”

“I don’t know.”

“That isn’t much of a case for immunity, Raife. We are going to go through your phone records, computer records, bank records, everything in your life that touches you. Your balls are in a vise and I’m going to tighten it. You’re going to hear them pop, Raife.”

“All I did was secure a self-storage locker. I don’t know why or for whom. A friend of a friend asked me to do a favor—that’s it.”

“Where? Where is this locker?”

“In Daly City, JBD Mini-Storage, unit ninety.”

For the next thirty minutes Morrow tried to extract more information from Upshaw.

It was futile.

The FBI took Upshaw into custody and released his wife and daughter.

“We’ll see how your information plays out, Raife.”

Investigators then moved swiftly to obtain and execute warrants on JBD Mini-Storage, unit ninety, where they seized a cache of motorcycles, M9 Beretta pistols, M4 carbines, clothing, wiring, hardware. When they found the C4, they called the bomb squad.

The storage facility’s security camera provided images of four men and a California license plate of a van backed to the unit. The plate showed the van was rented at San Francisco International Airport by a Devon Farrell of Toronto. The Ontario driver’s license copied at the rental agency for Devon Farrell was counterfeit. Further checks showed a Devon Farrell was a guest at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco on the Embarcadero waterfront.

“That’s across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank,” Morrow said as his squad headed to the hotel. “What are the odds they were setting up to hit one of the trucks there?”

Unlike with Upshaw, the FBI needed to make a swift low-key takedown without SWAT. Showing warrants and badges got the attention and cooperation of the hotel’s management who let Morrow and several agents wait in Farrell’s room. Two SFPD detectives were strategically positioned down the hall. They’d waited about two hours when Morrow got a heads-up over his radio seconds before the locked clicked.

In a heartbeat, two agents seized Farrell, got him to the floor, handcuffed him then positioned him on the king-size bed.

Morrow held up his FBI ID and proceeded to read Farrell his rights.

“You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”

Farrell didn’t speak as his fingerprints were rolled on the window of a portable scanner and processed.

“Tell us about that tattoo around your wrist.” Morrow held up a copy of the sketch from Lisa Palmer’s description. “Looks just like this one.”

Farrell said nothing while agents searched his room. It didn’t take long before the prints confirmed Farrell was Lee Mitchell Dillon; age, twenty-six, of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided more background on Dillon. “What a surprise,” Morrow said, reading the information on his phone. “You’ve seen action in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces Joint Task Force 2. I bet you know Erik Rytter. Things didn’t end well for him.”

Dillon said nothing.

“Where are your other friends, Lee?” Morrow asked. “Are they in this hotel?”

Morrow’s attention moved from Dillon to the hotel phone-message pad an agent held up between the fingers of his latex-gloved right hand. Morrow stepped closer, reading notations beside the names Unger, Ian and Ivan.

“Would these be the room numbers of your friends, Lee?”

Morrow raised his walkie-talkie.

The cable car for the California Street line stopped in front of the Hyatt.

As Ivan Felk walked around it toward the hotel’s entrance, he grew concerned. Among the taxis, shuttles and parked cars in the circular driveway were four sedans that bore rear dash-mounted emergency lights—the hallmark of unmarked police cars.

What’s going on?

The lights weren’t activated, no one was in the cars, but muted police cross talk spilled from the open windows. Felk tried to decipher the coded chatter without being obvious, but the radios were too low.

Wary, he entered the hotel, reviewing the team’s last steps for risk factors. They’d drilled in the morning, rechecked the armored-car route then met at the Plaza across from the Ferry Building to go over the mission again. Then they parted, intending to meet up at the hotel bar about now.

The guys should be in their rooms, or arriving, Felk thought as the escalator delivered him to the mammoth lobby. He looked for any connection to the units out front but saw nothing at the registration desk, nothing at the reception area and nothing by the bar.

Felk joined the throng of tourists waiting at the elevators. Judging by the accents of the conversations, they were likely a charter group from Europe. The chime sounded, doors opened and he squeezed into the next elevator car.

Most of the people joining him inside were silver- and white-haired travelers, excited at having just returned from Napa. Except for the man in front to his left, who was subdued. He was about Felk’s age, the same height with a solid build and an earpiece in his right ear. Felk figured him for a tourist on an audio-guided walking tour, but after deeper assessment of the man’s haircut, his jacket with an ever-so-small bulge consistent with a shoulder holster, Felk pegged him for what he was.

A cop.

The doors closed and the glass-capsule elevator car rose. Floor by floor the open-terraced balconies that ringed the massive soaring seventeen-story lobby sailed by. A tinny transmission leaked from the cop’s earpiece, just loud enough for Felk to hear because of his proximity.

“…they got our guy in room 1640 and we’ve got to…”

Felk’s eyes widened slightly.

That’s Dillon’s room near the top floor.

“On my way,” the cop said softly into the walkie-talkie wired to his earpiece.

Felk swallowed. What the hell—they got Dillon?

Every instinct told him police were here to take them down.

They’re moving on us right now.

As the elevator slowed for its first stop, Felk saw clear across the expanse to the lobby’s distant far side at the moment— Damn, that’s Northcutt walking to his room.

Felk calmly excused himself around the cop to get off on the seventh floor with two giggling seniors. The cop stayed in the elevator. Felk went to the balcony and focused on Northcutt, who was one floor below and half a football field across from him.

He could not risk shouting a warning and it was too far to run.

Felk took out his encrypted cell phone and called Northcutt’s phone. Northcutt was ten paces from his door when his phone rang. Come on. He saw Northcutt answer while fishing out his room key.

“Yes,” Northcutt said as he inserted the plastic key into the lock.

“Do not go in!”

“What?” Northcutt pushed the door.

“It’s me. Step away from your door—”

Too late.

Northcutt stepped into the room. As the door started closing behind him, Felk saw shadows move, then, through the phone, he heard Northcutt’s shout drowned out by desperate scuffling.

Everything went quiet.

But Felk’s connection to Northcutt’s phone remained live. He heard breathing for one moment, two, three, four—damn—then Felk shut his phone off. And even though his was untraceable, he removed the battery to kill any chance of tracking his signal.

Shit! Fuck! Christ!

All the saliva evaporated from his mouth like he was in a firefight. They were under attack and they were losing.

Fuck!

Felk dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. Don’t go to your room! Get out, now! He had his laptop in his satchel, passports, cash and credit cards, nothing in his room but clothes, toiletries, fucking fingerprints and fucking DNA.

Fuck!

He got back on the elevator and descended to the lobby, went to a public phone and called Unger.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“About a block away from the hotel.”

“Don’t go to your room!”

“What’s up?”

“DO NOT GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

“Okay, what’s going on?”

“Enact the withdrawal plan now!”

Some ninety minutes later, Felk and Unger were at a sandwich shop table near gate five, in the post-security area of Oakland International Airport’s terminal one.

Felk’s concentration was welded to his laptop’s screen and keyboard as he worked. Unger pretended to read the copy of USA TODAY that was concealing his face. In fact, he was scanning the area for threats.

Earlier, Unger had nearly lost his breakfast as they passed through security. He’d made a comment about lost luggage when the security officer asked about his all-but-empty new travel bag and new toiletries. Unger had kept the sleeves on his denim shirt buttoned to the cuff and struggled to remain calm, but his stomach had spasmed.

They’d made it through. They were lucky—this time.

Every move was a high-stakes risk now. Sooner or later the FBI would identify them. Sooner or later their pictures would be everywhere. They’d have to run forever. The mission was falling to pieces.

“You haven’t answered me. What are we supposed to do now, Ivan?” Unger kept his voice low. “They got Rytter, Dillon and Northcutt. It’s only a matter of time before they get us. It’s over, done. Finished.”

Felk’s nostrils flared as he worked. He was consumed with rage so intense it blinded him to all reason. Even the logic he understood was overtaken by the bile and vengeance coursing through him. It shot from the images that assailed him—images of Clay and the icy water, his mother’s funeral, his father’s suicide, the degradation of his men, the video of dismemberment, the threat to behead his brother.

Nothing could save them now.

It all came back to the witness.

It had to be because of her—no, it was because of her.

Their sacrifice, their blood, all their rescue work destroyed because of this fucking supermarket clerk.

Lisa Palmer’s New York State driver’s-license photo stared back at Felk. He’d contacted intelligence sources who’d provided him with her home address in Queens.

Felk turned the laptop for Unger to see.

“This is our target,” Felk said. “She will suffer beyond comprehension for what she’s brought down on us.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“She’s an enemy combatant.”

“What are you talking about, Ivan? I thought we were going to disappear.”

“I need you for one last mission.”

Unger’s eyes filled with fear and the realization that Felk was losing his sanity, just as a boarding call for their United flight was announced.

Direct to La Guardia in Queens, New York.

Like Dillon, Ian Northcutt had been identified through his fingerprints.

Northcutt, like Dillon, had the cobra tattoo around his wrist.

And like Dillon, Northcutt had refused to speak to Morrow.

Upon searching Northcutt’s room and trash, agents found notes about the Federal Reserve Bank. Morrow noticed in the case files that a snapshot obtained by German police of Erik Rytter showed him in combat fatigues with his arm around Northcutt, against a scenic mountain range.

Morrow’s team and a second team with the San Francisco police waited in hotel rooms for the two other men.

All they had were aliases, no photos, no IDs. The San Francisco FBI’s Evidence Response Team was standing by for the warrants needed to collect fingerprints and DNA from the toiletries. Other investigators tried tracking credit card and phone records for the rooms and the names used by the guests, which were aliases.

Hours passed without either of the two men showing.

During the whole time, Dillon and Northcutt never voiced a single word.

“These cobra guys are bound to their code,” Morrow told NYPD detective Al Dimarco later over the phone. “It looks like they were going to hit the Federal Reserve Bank across the street. They had enough firepower to make it a military operation. At least we stopped that and we got three of them.”

We’re tightening the noose.

Morrow, standing at a window in the FBI’s San Francisco office, ran a hand across his face as he took in the city’s skyline.

But we still have two unknown killers at large.

46

Queens, New York

Hours later, across the country from where Upshaw, Dillon and Northcutt had been arrested, a rented Chevy Tahoe SUV rolled through Lisa Palmer’s sleeping neighborhood at 1:46 a.m.

“There it is. Eighty-seven, eighty-seven,” Felk said. “Take it slow.”

They crept by a two-story wood-framed house with a Ford Focus in the driveway. The front yard had a waist-high steel fence displaying a small sign for Vital Guardstop Security Systems.

“Take the next left—” Felk opened his laptop “—and go for five or six blocks before circling back.”

Unger was uneasy as he drove.

According to the information they’d obtained, Lisa Palmer was thirty-one, widowed, two small children, worked as a supermarket cashier.

She was the FBI’s key witness, Felk was certain. He was the only one who’d seen her face up close.

This was insane, Unger thought as he guided them through the edges of Rego Park.

So much was at stake. They hadn’t even done a basic recon of the place. They had no idea how well it was secured, or if there were patrols. It might be under surveillance. Hell, she could have cops in her house with her as part of some kind of witness protection. Unger was deeply committed to Felk, the team and the mission, but this was nuts. The mission was over.

“Okay, take us back to the house,” Felk said. “I need to work on the security system.”

“Why are we doing this?” Unger said.

“She’s the enemy. I told you.”

“I think we should forget it.”

“She has to pay—this is retribution.”

“Maybe you’re beating yourself up for not removing her at the start. Maybe you’re taking this witness thing too personally.”

Felk stared at him.

“What did you say?”

“This does not help us.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Felk dragged his hands over his face. “This bitch should not be alive! We’ve lost this whole fucking operation because of her—our people will die because of her! And you think we should just walk away?”

“We have to accept what’s happened.”

“I do. We’re at war and she needs to suffer, like our people have suffered. She has to pay for what she did.”

“But this is a suicide mission.”

“Our lives have been a suicide mission, Nate! Shut the fuck up and pull up to her goddamn house now! That’s an order!”

Unger moved the SUV near the house.

While Felk changed into dark coveralls and boots with covers, Unger eyeballed parked cars lining the street for any telltale sign of a police car. Then Felk concentrated on his laptop. He used techniques he’d learned from intelligence experts to disable Palmer’s home security system. He searched for Palmer’s home wireless network; they’d named it “Palmer4” and it displayed on his laptop. He used a CIA program he’d obtained from a friend that was able to decrypt their password and bypass her internet security walls. Palmer’s home security system had a base station connected to Palmer’s landline. The keypads, motion detectors and sensors on the doors and windows were all linked via wireless. The security company was remotely monitoring the system 24/7 through Palmer’s landline, but Felk disabled the wireless sensors and detectors without triggering any alarms on the company’s master console.

“Done.”

Felk opened the equipment bag he’d picked up earlier from a military friend in Brooklyn. Felk slipped on a small wireless headset that was linked to a walkie-talkie. Unger slipped on a headset as well, then adjusted the digital emergency scanner that was monitoring police radio chatter in the area.

“Test one, two, three.” Felk tested their communication system.

“All good. Loud and clear,” Unger said.

Felk slid a bone-handled hunting knife with a ten-inch blade into his pocket, tugged on latex gloves.

“You listen for police and keep me posted. This won’t take long.” Felk got out and headed to the house. He took a few steps, then, like a cat, slipped into the darkened backyard.

He went to a rear basement window and carefully removed the exterior exhaust vent for the dryer. He reached inside and using a small mirror and penlight, unlatched the window with surgical smoothness.

“Okay, I’m in the basement,” he whispered into his headset to Unger.

“All clear out here.”

Felk slipped on a small headlamp and moved toward the stairs, constantly checking his surroundings with each step, pausing to listen for any movement in the house.

Quickly and soundlessly he searched the basement, then headed for the stairs to the main floor. He was careful to place his foot on the part of the wooden stair secured to the side, which reduced creaking.

In silence he ascended to the small hall landing area near the back door. His light found small sneakers, jackets, caps, school backpacks then a corkboard with a calendar, dates marked; some sort of drawing.

Moving on to the kitchen he detected traces of pepperoni and onion in the air. An empty pizza take-out box was set on a counter, near a rubber trash bin and recycle tub, all staged as if they were to go out in the morning.

On the counter next to car keys and a second key ring, he saw a hand-written to-do list and he studied it. They were leaving in the morning. Where? Thinking, he stepped back to the corkboard and the calendar. Tomorrow’s date was marked “We go to the cabin.” Felk realized the drawing next to it was a map from Queens to a lake in upstate New York.

Felk considered it before moving on.

Outside, Unger glimpsed curtains moving in the darkened second-story window of a house several doors down.

A man with a phone in his hand searching the street?

“Felk?” Unger whispered. “I think we’re being watched by a neighbor. Step it up.”

“Roger,” Felk whispered.

He moved with care throughout the main floor. It was neat and empty. Scrutinizing the small office area, his interest went to a file. Flipping through it, he recognized real estate papers, a Post-it note with contact numbers, names, an agent’s business card and one for Jack Gannon, a national reporter with the World Press Alliance in Manhattan.

Felk cursed to himself.

He waited until his heart rate leveled then went to the stairway, relieved the stairs to the bedrooms were carpeted. Again, he took pains to place his foot at the side of each step to minimize creaking.

He killed his headlamp when he reached the top.

By his count there would be three people sleeping on this level.

Slowly he reached for his knife.

The nearest bedroom door was open. He controlled his breathing as he inched toward it. He could start with the woman, slip in, hand over her mouth, tell her who he was and why she was going to die just before he plunged the blade into her throat, up to the hilt, just as he did at the militia camp in the mountains.

Killed six of them in their sleep.

Never knew what hit them.

Felk stood at the darkened doorway and let his eyes adjust to inventory the bedroom. The figure in the bed was large enough to be an adult. Steady breathing.

It had to be her.

Felk tightened his grip on his knife, feeling his rage swirling. As he prepared to step toward the bed, a watery explosion sounded.

A toilet had just been flushed.

He’d missed the line of light under a door—a bathroom door.

With nowhere to hide, Felk retreated to the stairs, descended a few, his eyes at floor level. Bright light flooded the hall and a small girl in a pink T-shirt left the bathroom, shut off the light and padded right in front of Felk.

Outside, Unger’s eyes locked on a marked NYPD unit cutting slowly across the intersection half a block from his SUV.

“Jesus!”

In the house, a woman’s groggy voice called from the bedroom Felk had wanted to enter.

“Taylor, is that you, hon?”

The girl turned and went to the bedroom.

“Yes.”

“You feeling okay?”

“I just had to pee and I think my tummy’s a little sick from the pizza, too many pepperonis.”

“Get in bed with me, sweetie, and get some rest for our drive in the morning.”

Felk reassessed.

He’d give it fifteen minutes for them to fall asleep, then do them both, then the second kid.

Unger’s pulse soared.

A second NYPD car rolled down the street, side searchlights raking over the houses.

“Abort, Felk! Police out front!” Unger whispered, slouching down in the rental.

He held his breath and didn’t move as light shot through the SUV accompanied by faint police radio traffic as the patrol car passed.

The neighbor must’ve called.

Far down the street Unger saw uniformed officers, flashlights sweeping, going house to house, checking front and back doors.

“Abort now! Abort now! Meet me at the rendezvous point.”

Once it was clear, Unger reached under the instrument panel, disconnected his lights, started his rental and drove off without being seen. He drove about a quarter mile to a Mobil gas station.

Unger had quit smoking in high school, but went inside and bought a pack of Lucky Strike. Outside, he reconnected the lights. Then he lit a cigarette and drew on it while waiting for Felk. He hated the taste, got out, crushed it under his foot. Then he went back inside and got a Coke and some gum.

Felk was leaning against the car, waiting for him.

“Did you do it?”

“No, I’ve got a better plan. We’re going to need a few things.”

Felk showed Unger the picture of the map on the corkboard he’d taken with his cell phone before he left.

“We’ll do it there tomorrow. The bitch and her pups will suffer a long, slow agonizing death.”

47

New York City

Gannon arrived at the WPA newsroom about 1:15 p.m.

This was his day off, but he couldn’t let go of the story. Not when he was about to deliver Lisa’s eyewitness account.

It would be an emotional powder keg, he thought, stopping off at the editorial post office boxes. WPA reporters still got snail mail, mostly from businesses selling something, or groups seeking coverage, or kooks ranting. Today, Gannon found three pieces of junk mail and a small padded envelope waiting in his slot.

The return address, scrawled in block letters in blue felt-tip pen, hit him like a bullet:

Harlee Shaw. #1021 Oceanic Towers. Yonkers.

The envelope was plastered with stamps of U.S. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. There was no zip code for the WPA—it had been added in ballpoint pen. He tore it open, nothing inside but a memory card about the size of a stick of chewing gum. He went to his desk, fired up his computer and inserted the card. He plugged in his earphones, cranked up the volume.

The card contained a single item: a video labeled Classified.

Gannon glanced around for privacy then clicked on it. The video opened with a man in his thirties sitting alone talking to the camera.

“If you’re seeing this, then I’m dead. I came to you because I followed your stories with the World Press Alliance. You do good work, and after we talked on the phone I figured you for being someone I could trust.

“I never meant for things to happen the way they did. I’m so sorry. I’m very messed up. My name is Harlee Edward Shaw. Sometimes they call me Sparks. I grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. I enlisted in the U.S. Army and was with the 75th Ranger Regiment. I saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan. After three tours, I left the army to work for private security companies contracted for covert ops.

“Nearly six months ago our last mission was a horrible failure. Our team was sacrificed for an illegal ‘ghost’ operation. This is our story.”

The video cut to a jerky night-vision montage from a helmet-cam point of view, showing footage of members of a military unit jumping from a plane at night, parachuting into rugged terrain.

The video cut to soldiers on foot patrol at night, moving quickly at the edge of a settlement. Shaw’s off-camera voice mixed with the breathless voices and sounds of the footage.

“We’re now in a denied zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We’re here to support local friendlies by removing several hostile leaders aligned with al-Qaeda.”

Suddenly the camera shakes as the video flares with orange flashes and deafening earth-shattering explosions. Tracers rip through the night, inches from the camera, twanging-whizzing-plunking mixes with shouting, cursing and screaming.

“We’ve been ambushed!”

Shaw gets down, digs in with his buddies. They return fire, fighting back as explosion after explosion tears up the world around Shaw. A hot, muddied clump lands on his lap, the camera turns to—a human face—there is only the face—eyes open wide, mouth an O of surprise.

The mouth is moving, gasping!

Shaw screams

“Billy! Oh, God, Billy!”

Shaw’s agony overtakes the fury of battle.

The video cuts to dawn and Shaw narrates.

“Billy’s gone, Kleat’s gone and Big John. They’re all gone. The enemy outnumbered us. They overran us in the night. Six survivors of the squad retreated to a new position. Three of our men were killed; six of our team were captured. From our location we could see the enemy celebrating their victory by desecrating the corpses of our fallen men. It went on for days.”

The video jumps to a long grainy shot of three bodies hanging from a bridge, then dragged naked through a public square while laughing children followed. Townspeople urinated on the corpses, then they were dismembered; village dogs carried off body parts, others were burned.

“We wanted to get our six men out. Through surveillance we determined their location and launched a night-rescue attempt. Again, we came under heavy fire, were repelled. Luckily we took no casualities and retreated. We had no support. Promised support never showed. We realized we were set up, sacrificed. So we began a long hike from the zone to the nearest coalition outpost. We wanted to regroup and rescue our men. Along the way we met an international aid group that agreed to serve as our go-between with the insurgents and the local clan leaders.

“Eventually, word came back to us that our men were being held by assholes calling themselves the New Guardians of the National Revolutionary Movement. They said our guys had been tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity and had been sentenced to beheading unless we paid a twelve-million-dollar fine. Now, as I make this video, the deadline to pay is nearly upon us.

“When we turned to our contractors to reach out to coalition governments for help, we were warned that we had most likely ‘committed unsanctioned acts of war,’ and that we were contractually bound to silence, and disclosure of any information would lead to our prosecution. This thing never happened, they told us—which meant our men had been left to die.

“This was a betrayal. It was unacceptable to us. We took action. We quietly reached out to our friends for support and launched Operation Retribution. Our objective was to take strategic military steps against the powers who sacrificed us, to obtain the ransom and save our men.”

The video cut back to Harlee Shaw in his Yonkers apartment and panned the newspaper reports on the four killings in the Ramapo heist.

“But I could not go through with it. It was meant to be bloodless, but I knew people would die. Too much was at stake. I backed out. I’m so sorry, for deserting my people, for everything that happened the way it did, for the guards, the agent. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our guys overseas or even if they’re still alive. God help them and God help me. All I can see is Billy’s face on my lap—he haunts me.

“Mr. Gannon, I leave it all with you now.

“Goodbye.”

The video ended.

Gannon cupped his hands over his face. This was unbelievable. How would he approach the story now? He had to report this. But there were complications.

He took stock of the newsroom.

He’d have to go to the senior editors. They’d likely have to call the WPA’s lawyers. All right, before he went to the brass, Gannon looked at the memory card, then back at his monitor. He immediately duplicated the video and emailed a copy to his private online account.

The instant he finished, his landline rang.

“Jack Gannon, WPA.”

“Hi, it’s Lisa, from the other day.”

“Lisa. I thought you were out of town.”

“We’re north of Albany at a little place call Hudson Falls, on our way to our cabin,” she said. “I’m ready to give you the interview tomorrow, so why don’t you come up tonight. I’ve got your card. I’ll text you directions before my phone goes out of service. It’s about a four-hour drive. There’s a good motel you can stay at. We can talk in the morning.”

“Great, I’ll leave this evening. But why the sudden change?”

“I thought it would be good for me now, you know.”

“No.”

“Well, since they got the other three guys in San Francisco.”

“What?”

“I just heard it on the radio news. I figured you knew?”

Gannon looked around then went online. His news alert had been turned off. He typed a few commands and there it was—damn—the Associated Press had just moved a story quoting law enforcement sources in San Francisco stating that three people had been arrested in the Bay Area in connection with the murders of three guards and an FBI agent during a 6.3-million-dollar armored car heist in New York. The arrests followed the death of another suspect, Erik Rytter, a German national with a military background who was fatally wounded struggling for a state trooper’s gun after a traffic stop in Nebraska.

“I just got it now.”

“That makes four,” Lisa said. “That means they got all of them. That was our deal, so I’ll tell you my story in the morning.”

Gannon spotted Lisker across the newsroom, storming his way.

“Yes, send me the directions,” Gannon told Lisa. “I’ll be there tonight. Wait! Is there any contact number or email for you? Didn’t you say something about poor phone or internet service?”

“There’s none in the area where our cabin is. We can meet at the motel café. I’ll put the time and stuff in my directions.”

“Gannon!” Lisker shouted. “Conference room! Now!”

Hal Ford, Carter O’Neill, George Wilson, Margot Cooke and Lisker had gathered at one end of the table, huddled around the teleconference speakerphone.

“How did we get skunked by the Associated Press?” O’Neill asked. “Gannon, did you have any inkling of this?”

“No, nothing.”

“How the hell did we get such a butt-whooping?” O’Neill asked.

“They’ve got good sources in the Bay Area, Carter,” the voice of Jasmine Lane, the WPA’s San Francisco bureau chief, crackled over the speaker. “They’re strong here, but we’re chasing it.”

“We break news, not learn it from competitors,” O’Neill said.

“Jasmine, do you want us to send Gannon out to help?” Lisker said.

Gannon objected and was shaking his head.

“No, let us work on it,” Lane said. “We’ll match it and advance it.”

“Jasmine, this is Jack. I’ve got calls into my sources. I’ll send anything I pick up. I also have a couple of breaking elements that I need to discuss with everyone here.”

“Thanks, Jack. Any help will be appreciated,” Lane said.

Margot Cooke, the WPA’s news features editor, said, “With four suspects arrested, it sounds to me that the FBI may have them all now.”

“Looks that way,” Ford said.

“So,” Cooke continued, “if it’s winding down, we’re going to want to get into the anatomy of the heist. Jack, can you draft something for us?”

“Yes, but first, there’s something you have to see.”

Gannon quickly explained to the editors who Harlee Shaw was, his connection to him and Shaw’s suicide. Lisker pursed his lips but said nothing as Gannon then inserted the memory card in the conference room laptop and played Shaw’s video. As it ran, a few jaws dropped and a few heads shook. Afterward, the editors started into a debate on what to do.

Didn’t the WPA have an obligation to tell the FBI it had received this video? Was it not a case of domestic terrorism? But was it the role of the WPA to be a police informant? Didn’t journalists have a duty to be mindful of national security? Didn’t the WPA have a moral right to find out who the hostages were and alert their families? What impact would this video have in the investigation? Would reporting it have an impact on the lives of the hostages? Did the FBI know? Was the video authentic? How could they confirm it? What if the FBI was planning a news conference to say it had cleared the case with these latest arrests? What if the FBI released details of the heist and stole the WPA’s thunder?

Gannon then compounded matters when he revealed his developing exclusive with Lisa, the eyewitness.

“Here’s what I think,” he said. “We have a chance to put this all together,” Gannon said. “Given the nature of Shaw’s situation, my gut tells me that we’re the only ones who have his video. I feel the same about the witness. I don’t think anyone can catch us now.”

“After what just happened with AP in San Francisco,” Wilson said, “I wouldn’t be so cocky, Gannon.”

“Normally I would agree,” Gannon said, “but I think we may be holding the biggest pieces of this story in our hands right now.”

“What’re you getting at?” Lisker said.

“In his video, Shaw says six guys survived. Shaw’s dead, four have been stopped. That means there could still be one more at large that no one, except maybe the FBI, is aware of. Or—” Gannon held up a finger “—or maybe they picked up associates of the group, which makes all of our speculation meaningless. Bottom line, this might not be quite over yet.”

“What do you propose we do?” O’Neill asked.

“We pull out all the stops to learn more about the San Francisco arrests,” Gannon said. “We get our Washington bureau to pump national security sources on the video and the ‘illegal mission’ in Afghanistan.”

“Then what?” Ford asked.

“You give me twenty-four hours to go upstate and get the witness exclusive. We write what we know, then tell the FBI that we’re going with the story, tell them what it is, ask for comment and then we let it go as our exclusive?”

Gannon glanced at all the editors as they considered his proposal, then he looked at the wall with the time zone clocks.

“I like that approach,” Cooke said.

“By seeking comment we’re alerting the FBI to what we have, I think that’s fair,” O’Neill said.

Lisker grabbed his BlackBerry and started a message.

“I’m alerting Beland. Gannon, you’ve got twenty-four hours to pull this all together.”

48

Lake George, New York

Maybe the worst is behind us.

After talking with Jack Gannon, Lisa echoed the same hope she’d had the last time she’d driven on this highway, when she’d signed the papers to sell the cabin.

It was over a week ago, but it felt like a thousand lifetimes as memories pulled her back…to Ramapo and…the gunfire…the killing of the guards…the agent beside her…the killer is on them…the agent’s eyes…I love you, Jennifer…the warm bloody spatter…the killer drilling his gun into her…she sees Bobby…he tells her to fight…it’s not your time…fight for everything that matters…

Bobby.

She missed him, ached for him as she glanced in her rearview mirror at Ethan and Taylor, sleeping.

Lisa blinked back her tears as she drove.

She was seething at the killers.

What gave them the right to destroy lives? Who were these animals? She hated them, thanked God they were caught. Three arrested in San Francisco and one dead in Nebraska; the tally was now four, the radio news report said.

Four. It was done.

Lisa had found a degree of comfort in the outcome. And if the FBI got them because of her help, she was glad. But she prayed she would never have to face those murdering bastards again.

Not in court, not anywhere.

Not ever.

She questioned whether she should’ve called Chan or Morrow to let them know that she was going out of town. “Keep us informed of your whereabouts in case we need to contact you,” they’d told her at the outset. But they seemed to have forgotten about her, or were slow to confirm with a phone call what she’d already learned on the case from the press. She dismissed the thought of calling the FBI.

It was over.

She needed to look after her kids, move on with their lives.

As Lisa drove she embraced the beauty of this secluded section of the state. The magnificent Adirondacks rose in the west. Vermont, with its rolling Green Mountains, was a few miles east. She felt safe here, sheltered and ready to do all the things she needed to do. She looked forward to seeing Jack Gannon again, to telling him her story. She liked him.

He was a good guy.

Talking to him, letting the world know exactly what happened would be therapeutic for her, it would help her heal. She could close a chapter of her life and start living the next one by focusing on everything that matters.

…fight for everything that matters…

She glanced in her rearview mirror again.

Ethan and Taylor had awakened and were peacefully watching the scenery roll by.

Her angels.

On the seat between them was the handmade wooden box holding the marble cremation urn containing Bobby’s ashes. Ethan and Taylor each rested a hand protectively on it in a scene that warmed Lisa’s heart.

Yes, she thought, concentrating on the road ahead, maybe the worst was now behind them.

49

Lake George, New York

Following several hundred yards back of Lisa’s car, in a rented SUV, Ivan Felk adjusted the tuning dial on the dash-mounted radio.

“Did you hear that?”

“Just the tail end before it cut out,” Unger said from behind the wheel.

It was a few seconds after the hour and one static-filled station’s newscast had led with something about “the armored car heist in Ramapo.”

Felk found a clearer station in time to hear a fuller news report, which summarized the Associated Press story.

“…three people have been arrested in San Francisco in connection with the murders of three guards and an FBI agent during a 6.3-million-dollar armored car heist in Greater New York City. The arrests follow the death of another suspect—Erik Rytter, a German national with a military background who was fatally wounded while struggling for a state trooper’s gun after a traffic stop in Nebraska…”

After swallowing the news, the muscles along Felk’s jawline spasmed and he glared at the mountains.

“Three? Who else did they get?” Unger asked.

“Maybe Dante, or Upshaw, all because of her!” Felk glowered at Lisa’s Ford far ahead in the distance then slammed both palms violently on the dash. For nearly half a mile, his anger faded into the tense hum of the SUV’s radials on the asphalt. Unger tightened his grip on the wheel.

Thinking.

Police actually had three of their people. They should get out of the country, now. It was worse than Unger thought.

“Ivan, what if she’s leading us into a trap? What if they’re watching us? We could still pull out…the mission’s over.”

“It’s not over. Not while I’m breathing.”

Felk dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

His squad was decimated, his other men, his brother, were all facing death. Clay’s pleas on the video, and Felk’s own from the frozen pond in Ohio pierced him—“Don’t let me die! Ivan, please! Don’t let me die!”—Felk’s world was in ruins because of that bitch.

No, it would not end here. No goddamn way. He would not fail in this critical operation because of a fucking cashier from Queens.

“What do we do, Ivan?”

“We finish her, then we salvage the mission.”

“Salvage the mission?”

“We already have more than six million overseas. We offer them the six million, a million per man. They won’t turn down six million in cash.”

“But there’s only the two of us.”

“We get our people in Kuwait to hire contractors to join us and then we’ll carry out the mission and waste these motherfuckers.”

“What about our guys here?”

“When we rescue our people overseas, we’ll regroup and devise plans to help our men taken prisoner here. But first—” Felk’s eyes blazed at Lisa’s car “—first, we’re going to collect our payback up there.”

50

Lake George, New York

By the time Lisa and the children had reached the turnoff for the cabin, the afternoon sky had dimmed. Rolls of dark, ragged-edged rain clouds gathered above the mountains.

The threat of a storm hung over them as they traveled along a secondary road that wound through sweet-smelling forests for two miles before coming to an intersection. It gave access to the cabins scattered for miles in the vast wooded reaches along Lake George’s eastern shore.

The crossroad was marked by Hallick’s General Store.

The one-story framed building, with its overflowing flower boxes, was run by Jed and Violet Hallick, who lived thirteen miles away in Southbay. The store had a single gas pump and offered fishing supplies, outdoor gear and groceries in this isolated corner of the region. Their nearly napping dog yawned a welcome from the base of the pay phone on the shaded porch as Lisa and the kids entered.

The bells on the transom rang.

“Mom, can we roast hot dogs on the fire tonight?” Ethan asked.

“If it doesn’t rain,” Lisa said. “We’re going to need buns.”

“And chips, too!” Taylor said.

“And a few other things I forgot at home.”

While the kids explored the store, Lisa collected her items and put them on the counter where an older man was reading the New York Times.

“Hi, Jed.” Lisa gave him a bittersweet smile.

Jed Hallick removed his bifocals. He was an understanding man who’d watched Bobby grow up here summer after summer.

“Sorry to hear you sold the place, Lisa.”

“It hurts, but I had to do it.”

Seeing the sadness behind her eyes, Jed shifted gears as he rang up her purchases. “Vi and the church ladies will be out Tuesday to box up what you want to sell and donate. I’ll have Brett get out there with the truck then, too.”

He bagged up her items and patted her hand.

“You take care, Lisa. It looks like we’re in for a whopper of a storm tonight.”

“Jed, you were part of what Bobby loved about this place,” Lisa said before she and the kids left. The transom bells rang behind them.

The next stretch from the store to the cabin was just under half a mile, but the old dirt road sliced through forests so thick they blocked the light. In some spots it was treacherously narrow, with sudden valleys and small cliff edges. Leafy branches slapped at Lisa’s car while loose gravel popcorned against the undercarriage.

It was as if they’d entered another world.

Lisa stopped at a small, weatherworn sign with the name Palmer hand painted on it. As dust clouds swallowed her car, she inched off the road onto an earthen strip overrun with shrubs.

Through the trees they glimpsed the lake and their cabin.

It was so beautiful here, she thought. They were so lucky to have had this.

The cabin was built in the 1940s with ten-inch hand-hewn pine logs. The lakeside wall was made of floor-to-ceiling glass and offered a sweeping view of the water. French doors opened to the deck, with inviting Adirondack chairs and a path to the dock.

Inside, the cabin had hardwood floors, a stone fireplace, a spacious living room and dining area that flowed to the kitchen. The fridge and stove were powered by batteries and solar panels on an exposed hillside.

At the rear of the main floor were two small bedrooms and a bathroom. The master bedroom was upstairs in the loft. It overlooked the living room area and the lake windows.

No phone, no internet, no TV, a world away from the city.

“Out here you’re off the grid,” Bobby used to say.

They unloaded the car.

Ethan carried his father’s urn and tenderly set it on the hearth before helping carry other things in. After they’d finished, Taylor said she was hungry. So was Ethan.

“Can we roast the hot dogs now?” he asked.

Outside, dusk was approaching, but the rain was holding off.

“Let’s go for it,” Lisa said.

She went to the fire pit near the deck, heaped some kindling within the circle of stones, piled firewood nearby and got things started. The kids helped bring everything to the picnic table. They each had their own roasting stick. As they cooked their hot dogs, Ethan tried to teach Taylor how to burp.

“Swallow some air, like this.”

“Ethan, stop that!” Lisa said before she burped on purpose, making everyone laugh.

After they ate their hot dogs and chips, they toasted marshmallows.

Night fell, but the rain held and they snuggled around the fire in sleeping bags listening to the crackling as the flames painted their faces in yellow and orange light.

“I wish we didn’t have to move to California,” Taylor said.

“I know,” Lisa said. “This is hard and scary for all of us, but I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Ethan said. “A lot of good things have happened to us here, but a lot of bad things, too, like Dad, and the new stuff.”

“We’ll talk—” Lisa swallowed “—we’ll talk about it some more tomorrow.”

She watched the fire in her children’s eyes, thinking how much she needed them and how you can take nothing, not even the next moment in life, for granted.

“Mom,” Ethan said. “Tomorrow we’re going to put some of Dad’s ashes in the lake and around the cabin, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that way no matter who owns the cabin, or takes over, it will always belong to Dad and us, sort of, right?”

The flames reflected the tear tracks glistening on Lisa’s face.

“Yes, always.”

Thunder rolled, splitting the sky.

Lisa felt a raindrop as one sizzled on the fire, then another.

“Okay, time to get inside! Grab what you can!”

The rain came in torrents.

They watched the storm over the lake for half an hour before Lisa got Ethan and Taylor into bed. Then she hauled herself to the loft, exhausted. She had a lot to do in the morning. Jack Gannon was coming to interview her. After that, she needed to start sorting and storing things. Lisa went through a mental checklist as she listened to the rain hissing on the lake.

It was hypnotic.

She felt herself sinking for seconds, minutes, hours, she didn’t know how long. She fell asleep unable to stop her thoughts of recent days from assailing her. They replayed over and over again until she was unsure if she was thinking them, or dreaming them, or dreaming about tape.

Duct tape?

Weird.

Its distinctive peel when pulled hard from the roll.

It sounded so real.

Lisa was thinking about it, hearing it.

She woke.

Odd.

Was Ethan playing with duct tape?

It was still storming. Lisa got up and peered down from the loft, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She saw nothing unusual.

Deciding to check on the kids, she went down the loft stairs, puzzled over what was making that noise.

Lisa switched the light on and froze.

Her stomach contracted.

Ethan’s and Taylor’s eyes, wide as saucers, pleaded to her.

Duct tape covered their mouths.

Their hands were taped in front of them. Their bodies and legs were bound to the kitchen chairs that were turned from the table. Tears streamed down their faces, snot flowed from their noses. The polished blade of a large hunting knife glinted as it gingerly scraped along Ethan’s quivering throat.

Nate Unger was holding the knife. He was wearing latex gloves and watching Lisa.

Ivan Felk was sitting next to Lisa’s children, glaring at her.

He was wearing latex gloves and holding a gun.

Oh, Jesus.

Lisa saw the cobra tattoos on their wrists, exactly like the one on the man who had murdered the agent and had held a gun to her head.

“No! Please, no!”

Lisa flew to her children.

Felk smacked Lisa’s face, sending her to the floor. Pulling her by her hair, he then hoisted her up as Unger gently brushed his knife over Taylor’s neck, her screams muffled by tape.

“God, no! Please don’t hurt my kids!”

Felk shoved Lisa into a chair and bound her with tape.

“Please, leave us alone! Please! We’ve done nothing.”

Lisa continued pleading until he pressed a strip over her mouth. Felk nodded, and Unger, who had a holstered gun strapped to his leg, lifted Taylor, chair and all, and carried her to her bedroom.

Lisa began thrashing, screaming under her tape. Unger returned for Ethan and carried him off to his room.

Felk positioned himself in a chair opposite Lisa.

“Here’s how this will go,” he said. “We’ll remove the tape from your mouth, you’ll cooperate. We’ll finish things and leave. Fair enough?”

Lisa nodded.

Unger ripped the tape from her mouth.

Felk held up her lost supermarket ID.

“You were there, on the floor beside the cop,” Felk said. “What did you tell the FBI?”

Seconds ticked by as Lisa grasped the gravity of every aspect; the men had not covered their faces, which meant she could clearly identify them. They wore gloves.

Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us!

Her mind spun until Felk yelled at her

“What did you tell the FBI?”

“Your tattoo—I described it—it was all I saw.”

“What else?”

“That’s it—that’s all I saw. Please let my children go.”

“What else does the FBI know?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying!”

Felk nodded to the children’s rooms.

“Want me to send my friend in there to bring back pieces of your pups? Maybe start with a finger and an ear, the same way the motherfuckers in Afghanistan are doing it to my people?”

“Don’t you touch them! I swear I don’t know! The FBI didn’t tell me anything!”

“Did we leave anything behind?”

“I don’t know!”

“How did they get to our people in San Francisco?”

“Please, I don’t know.”

“DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME!”

Felk thrust his tattooed wrist to within inches of her face.

“This is the symbol of good men who sacrificed everything for people like you. But now these men are going to die because you, an insignificant piece of nothing from Queens, got in the way.”

Felk drew his face to Lisa’s.

“I should’ve fucking wasted you when I had the chance. It’s a mistake I won’t make twice. You’re going to suffer the same agony my men and my brother have suffered, long and slow. This is my vengeance.”

51

Lake George, New York

Ethan’s fists were clenched in fear.

Stop bawling, he told himself. Stop shaking.

From his room where he was bound to the kitchen chair, he heard the creeps yelling at his mom. He squeezed his fists tighter and ordered himself to stop crying.

You have to get free.

He had a plan and the key to it was in his right hand.

Before the creeps had come into his room and grabbed him, they’d made a noise, which woke him. He’d seized his penknife from his nightstand. The creeps never made him open his hands when they taped his wrists in front of him. Guess they figured he was just a scared little kid.

You stupid jerks. I’ll show you.

Ethan could feel his knife, the pearl-handled beauty, like it was part of him.

He very carefully moved it around just so and after a couple of tries managed to open the sharp little blade. He regripped the knife and began cutting at the tape around his wrists, forcing them apart until the tape gave way, freeing his hands.

Yes!

He sliced at the rest of his bindings, yanked the tape away, stood up and went to the door. He opened it a crack, saw the creeps swearing at his mom. If Ethan stepped into the hall to free Taylor, they’d see him.

We need help now.

He got dressed so fast, put on his shoes, his jacket, quietly unlatched the big window next to his bed and slipped out.

He gulped air.

The rain drenched him and he headed for the winding dirt road, glancing back at the cabin, his heart wrenching at leaving his mother and sister behind, but a voice told him to run.

He ran as fast as he could, praying a car would come.

Anybody.

He didn’t dare stop.

The rain had turned the road to greasy mud. He tried to stay on the shoulder, to get traction from the gravel there, but he fell twice. Soon his legs grew numb from running and falling. His sides and lungs ached. Fear had evaporated all his saliva, and his throat was ragged from panicked breathing.

His prayers for a car were in vain.

No one lived near them. His only hope was to get to Hallick’s store.

He slowed to a trot, then walked as fast as he could. Fear compelled him to keep moving until at last he saw a light in the distance and found his second wind. The light got bigger as the store emerged. Its darkened windows signaled it was closed while the sign on the door confirmed it.

He reached the pay phone out of breath.

Doubling over, he waited until he could breathe and talk, then picked up the handset. There was a dial tone. Ethan punched 911.

“Washington County Emergency—” static “—your emerg—”

“Hello! I’m at Hallick’s store and some bad guys are— hello!”

Static drowned the call.

Ethan hung up and pressed 911 again.

Again static.

Is it the storm doing this?

He tried three more times without success. Tears stung his eyes; he couldn’t think until he remembered the card that reporter Jack Gannon had given him. It was in his jeans.

It had a 1-800 number.

Ethan found the card and tried it, not understanding why the line rang clear, but it did, loud and clear.

Static-free.

“World Press Alliance, New York,” a night news editor answered.

“My name is Ethan Palmer. I’m ten years old. Some guys are trying to kill my mom and sister right now! I got away and we need help. I need to talk to Jack Gannon.”

“Whoa, hold on, son. Where are you? Is there a number, address?”

“At our cabin by Lake George. I’m at the pay phone at Hallick’s store.”

“Can you give me the number on the pay phone?”

The editor kept Ethan on the line and used other phones to make emergency calls.

52

Lake George, New York

Some ten miles south from where Ethan stood, Jack Gannon was in the Evergreen Rise Motel making notes on his laptop for his interview with Lisa in the morning.

He’d put on his sweatpants and a T-shirt, and was digging into cream cakes, potato chips and ginger ale as he worked. Junk food was a weakness when he was on the road, or stressed.

Gannon had been delayed leaving Manhattan and was glad he’d checked in just before the storm hit. Funny, he was just now thinking how the motel clerk had told him he was at the edge of the zone for wireless service, when his cell phone rang.

Is that ESP? He shrugged as he answered the call.

“Gannon.”

“Jack, its Neal at the night desk. You’re not going to believe this.”

As the night editor explained, Gannon got up and started fumbling for his clothes, the map to Lisa’s cabin and his car keys.

“Christ, I’m fifteen minutes from there. I’m leaving now.”

“Be careful. We got the New York State Police and some locals rolling.”

“Call Frank Morrow at the FBI. Here’s his cell.”

Gannon rushed to his Pontiac Vibe and roared off for Hallick’s store and Lisa’s cabin.

53

Lake George, New York

As Lisa’s hopes melted she took stock of her life, all that was good, all that she’d endured and all that she’d dreamed.

It wasn’t right. She did not deserve this. Ethan and Taylor did not deserve this.

We’ve already lost too much.

As Lisa regarded the bastards who wanted to take away everything from her, her fear turned to anger. She had to fight.

Fight for everything that matters.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“We bled and died for our country overseas, then we went back to hunt terrorists and do dirty, secret jobs for our governments. They betrayed us and left our men to die.”

“What’s that got to do with me and my kids and the decent people you murdered?”

“Collateral damage. They got in the way of our war on terrorism.”

“You’re not at war with my children!”

“Shut up!” Unger said.

“You dishonor all the brave people who gave their lives overseas. You’re not soldiers!”

“I said, shut the fuck up!” Unger said.

“Soldiers don’t terrorize little children. You’re criminals, murdering cowards, and you’ll burn for what you’ve done.”

Felk left for the door, came back and dropped a shovel on the floor in front of Lisa.

“Time to go, bitch!”

They cut her from her bindings and marched her from the cabin into the woods and rain at gunpoint. Felk held his gun on Lisa. Unger kept his holstered and carried the shovel, guiding her by flashlight. They progressed along through the thick forest until they came to a meadow.

“Dig,” Felk said. “About three feet down. We’re going to bury you along with your two pups. No witnesses. No trace. No nothing.”

Unger tossed the shovel on the ground, stepped back, withdrew his gun and trained it on Lisa. Felk stood opposite, keeping her at gunpoint. Both were just out of reach for her to swing the shovel at them.

Lisa trembled as the shovel’s spade bit into the wet earth.

54

Lake George, New York

Gannon’s headlights raked through the night rain across the small parking lot at Hallick’s General Store and found Ethan huddled in a corner of the porch.

He was sheltered but soaked and shivering.

Gannon hurried him into his car and blasted the heat.

“Are you all right, Ethan?”

He shook his head.

“They’re going to hurt my mom and sister.”

“Who are they? How many? Do they have guns?”

“Yes, they have guns. I saw two big men. I think they’re the same people my mom saw hurt people at the truck stop.”

“Okay, listen, we should wait. Help is coming—”

“No! It’ll be too late! You have to do something now!”

Gannon rubbed his chin, thinking hard. Could he live with himself if he sat there when he could’ve helped?

“All right,” he said. “You stay here at the store until the police come. Tell them I’ve gone to the cabin. I’ll get as close as I can to see what I can do.”

“Drive to the great big round rock, it’s like a ball,” Ethan said. “Then walk from there so they won’t see your lights.”

Gannon found the round rock and parked. The flashlight in his glove compartment had dead batteries. He got out and started walking through the darkness along the twisting dirt road unable to believe what had unfolded.

He had no idea what he was going to do. He had no weapon; he’d taken a firearms course in Buffalo for a story, but he hated guns. He could be facing two armed men with military training. Murderers. He shoved his concerns aside. Lisa and her eight-year-old daughter were in there and he had to do some—

Gannon stopped dead.

Was that a voice?

Senses heightened, he concentrated on his surroundings, when he saw it—a flash of light in the forest and voices.

Was that it?

He was close enough to the cabin for it to be them. Lisa’s directions had said there were no other neighbors nearby.

Gannon strained to see in the rain and darkness. He left the road and inched through the woods toward the light and the voices. He fought to be as careful as possible, not to fall, or make noise. The rush of the downpour helped deaden his advance and he drew close enough to see two men, one holding a flashlight and a gun, the other holding a gun. Between them a woman with a shovel was digging.

Jesus.

It was Lisa.

Gannon took a long deep breath and swallowed hard. He had no time to think.

I’ve got to do something.

Lisa had dug an oblong hole well over two feet deep into the soft earth.

Through her prayers, tears and rage, emotions swirled.

God, please don’t let the children suffer.

We’ll be together soon, Bobby…

“Deep enough.” Felk nudged Lisa with his gun. “Get in there and get on your knees.”

Lisa sobbed as she got into the hole.

“Don’t hurt my children.”

“Go get her pups, Nate,” Felk said.

Unger tramped off to the cabin, following the path lit by his flashlight, while Felk lowered himself, keeping his gun on Lisa.

“We’ll do them in front of you, so it’s the last thing you see.”

“No, please.”

They heard Unger’s boots on the cabin’s wooden deck, heard the door as he went inside, then rapid movement on the deck again as Unger shouted into the woods.

“The boy’s gone!”

“Gone? What the—”

Felk turned from Lisa and a blurred force shot from the darkness, knocking Felk to the ground. Fueled by some overwhelming power and lightning instinct…fight with all you have…Lisa seized the shovel and before either man knew what had happened she’d clubbed Felk’s head three times, and was moving on the stranger.

“No! Don’t! It’s me, Jack Gannon!”

She turned the blade of the shovel and again she beat Felk with such frenzy Gannon had to pull her away. He used the flashlight to find the gun and remove all rounds as they saw light flashing as Unger came crashing through the forest.

“Ivan, he’s gone!” Unger approached the hole, panting. “I don’t know how he got free. I taped—”

Unger’s last thought was wondering what caused the explosion of stars before everything went dark—not knowing that the flat steel back of Lisa’s shovel had landed full force on his face.

With Unger on the ground, Lisa smashed him with the shovel several more times before Gannon could stop her.

Both men were unconscious and bleeding profusely. Gannon had removed the rounds from Unger’s gun.

“It’s all right,” Gannon told Lisa. “Ethan got away. He got to the store and called for help.”

Lisa was sobbing.

“He’s safe at the store. Help is coming,” Gannon said.

While Gannon gripped the shovel and kept watch on the men, Lisa ran back to the cabin, took care of Taylor and returned with the duct tape. They bound Felk and Unger, who were still bleeding badly but semiconscious.

Lisa, Taylor and Gannon watched over the killers in the rain.

No one spoke. There were no words.

Twenty minutes later, the headlights of the first sheriff’s car poked through the trees and Gannon signaled the deputy with the flashlight.

Epilogue

New York City

The incident at Lake George was news for weeks.

Press agencies across the United States and around the world reported on it with Canadian, German, British journalists, and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Kuwait, highlighting local elements.

But the definitive stories came from the World Press Alliance, which produced an exclusive series that dissected Ivan Felk’s Operation Retribution and everything it had touched.

Jack Gannon led a team of WPA reporters who examined Ivan Felk and the men behind the attack, chronicling their lives and careers as elite ex-soldiers contracted by shadowy, global security firms for secret missions.

The WPA posted parts of Harlee Shaw’s video online and analyzed Red Cobra Team 9’s disastrous operation into the forbidden zone. They revealed how it had spawned the 6.3-million-dollar heist in New York and the plot to hit the Federal Reserve in San Francisco before a widowed, single mother of two from Queens brought it all to an end.

Twice, Ivan Felk had held a gun to Lisa Palmer’s head, Gannon wrote in his profile of her. The first time was when she’d witnessed the murder of FBI agent Gregory Dutton; the second time when Felk hunted her down to her family cabin in Upstate New York, where he’d forced her to dig graves for herself and her children in his plan to eliminate her as a witness.

“I shouldn’t be alive,” Lisa said in the interview. “Something told me to fight, that it wasn’t my time.”

Gannon detailed how ten-year-old Ethan Palmer used his penknife, a cherished gift from his late father, to escape and call for help, in a story that illustrated her family’s refusal to be defeated.

“Everyone faces hardship, but you have to keep going,” Lisa said.

Gannon wrote how Lisa had made the heart-wrenching decision to leave Queens with her children and start a new chapter of their lives. He did not disclose the new location in the article.

In the weeks that followed, Gannon learned how authorities had concluded that Lisa would be eligible for the two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward that had been posted in the heist, once the surviving suspects had been convicted of their crimes. Her wish was for the reward to be shared with the families of the guards and agent who had been murdered.

The FBI’s ongoing investigation reached around the globe. Working with police in Kuwait and Pakistan, agents made more arrests and were able to recover much of the cash stolen from American Centurion.

The Times of London, quoting intelligence sources, broke stories on how shortly after the WPA’s news reports had exposed the unsanctioned military action in the forbidden zone, coalition forces launched surgical air strikes against “terrorist strongholds” in the region.

The strikes ensured an end to the hostage ordeal involving Red Cobra Team 9.

No one survived the bombings.

The activities in the disputed territory raised disturbing questions about potentially rogue intelligence operations, which led to a probe by the United Nations, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and calls for congressional hearings.

In New York, there was talk that the WPA’s series was a leading contender for a Pulitzer, and Gannon was approached by two publishers to write a book on the case. The morning he went to Lisker to request a leave of absence, he was surprised: Lisker’s office had been cleared out.

“When Beland got wind that he was going to take a job with an investment firm, he ordered him to leave forthwith,” Carter O’Neill said. “Dolf Lisker was never quite attuned with the craft, Jack. Not like you.”

With the case cleared, FBI special agent Frank Morrow took a long lunch one day and walked to Ground Zero, where he looked back on his life. Reflecting on September 11, he was grateful that he was given proper time to say goodbye. He booked a few weeks off, then, with Beth and Hailey, drove south along the East Coast. By the time they’d reached the Keys, Morrow had decided to undergo chemo and take that three percent chance at hope. They spent their days talking and watching the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.

Some months later, after she’d sold her house, on the day before she was set to leave Queens with her children, Lisa Palmer met Gannon for coffee at one of the outdoor plazas near Penn Station.

“I just wanted to thank you for everything, Jack.”

“How are you and the kids doing?”

“Better, with all this behind us.” She smiled.

“Listen,” he said. “I don’t know much about karma, but with all you’ve faced so far, I’d say you deserve nothing but the best for the rest of your life.”

She kissed his cheek and smiled.

“If you ever get out to California, feel free to stop by.”

Lisa Palmer had a nice smile and that’s what Gannon remembered long after she left him standing alone on the busy street across from Madison Square Garden.

As he walked back to the office, he accepted what he was: a loner. It took him much of his life to realize that he would always be alone to do what he did best: search for the truth.

He’d searched for the truth where it concerned his sister, Cora, and he searched for it behind every kind of injustice he’d encountered because that’s where the story was.

And he would always find the story.

At that moment, near La Guardia’s runways in the East River, on Rikers Island, Ivan Felk lay on his cot in his cell.

He was sore, still recovering.

His face was permanently scarred from the beating Lisa Palmer had given him. He was awaiting trial on four first-degree murder charges and a long list of related charges. Under federal law he was likely to receive the death penalty.

Last week, Felk heard how Unger had hung himself in his cell.

This morning, reading an old copy of the Washington Post from the library, Felk learned about the air strike.

Forgive me, Clay.

Everybody and everything was gone now.

But it was not the end.

The Post also carried one of Jack Gannon’s features, the one about Lisa Palmer. Felk stared at her photo for hours, absorbing her, slowly devouring her the way a snake swallows its prey.

No, this was not the end.

Death penalty cases were long, complex. They’d take years, maybe even decades. And in that time, they’d move Felk constantly, to court, to his cell, even to other facilities. And in that time, he’d study, he’d learn.

Then he’d execute his escape.

No, this would never be over.

* * * * *

Acknowledgments

and a Personal Note

The Burning Edge is loosely inspired by a true case, a commando-style armored car heist that I’d covered many years ago while working as a crime reporter. Other aspects of the novel were drawn from real-life situations that I, or others I knew, have experienced. But I won’t go into any of it here.

It’s too personal.

I want to thank Special Agent Anne Beagan of the FBI’s New York Division who patiently suffered many questions from me to ensure my work of fiction rang true. If this story worked for you, it’s because of Anne’s kind help. If this story fell short for you, then blame me; the mistakes are mine.

Many thanks to Amy Moore-Benson, Miranda Indrigo and to the incredible editorial, marketing, sales and PR teams at Harlequin and MIRA Books in Toronto, New York and around the world.

Wendy Dudley, as always, made this story better.

Very special thanks to Barbara, Laura and Michael.

It’s important you know that, in getting this book to you, I benefited from the hard work and generosity of many people, too many to thank individually here. I am indebted to everyone in all stages of production, the sales representatives, librarians and booksellers for putting my work in your hands.

This brings me to what I hold to be the most critical part of the entire enterprise: you, the reader. This aspect has become something of a creed for me, one that bears repeating with each book.

Thank you very much for your time, for without you, a book remains an untold tale. Thank you for setting your life on pause and taking the journey. I deeply appreciate my growing audience around the world and those who’ve been with me since the beginning who keep in touch. Thank you all for your very kind words. I hope you enjoyed the ride and will check out my earlier books while watching for my next one. I welcome your feedback. Drop by at www.rickmofina.com, subscribe to my newsletter and send me a note.

Rick Mofina

Copyright © 2012 by Highway Nine, Inc.