Arctic Fire

CHAPTER 1

Troy Jensen was a daredevil. He always had been. It seemed as if nothing of this earth could stop him.

“You want me to go in there?” he asked in flawless Spanish. He was fluent in Russian and several Chinese dialects as well. He pointed tentatively at the fence, doing his best to convince the two older men he was scared. It was more fun that way. “Through that gate?”

The grizzled Mexicans exchanged crazy smiles.

“Sí,” one of them answered, trying to hide his guilty, nearly toothless grin. He was worried the young American might see it and then see the light. He gestured excitedly at the gate to distract Troy. “Sí, sí. Vámonos.”

“Take you with this thing,” the other man offered in broken English, doing a better job of masking his own dentally challenged grin than his brother as he held out a rusty, bloodstained sword. This man still had most of his teeth, but they were crooked and yellow. “You will need it.”

Troy took the sword just as a beautiful, dark-haired young woman trotted up and handed him a bouquet of flowers. “Gracias, señorita.”

“You’re welcome,” she answered shyly. “Buena suerte.”

“I don’t need luck,” Troy answered confidently, lifting the sweet-smelling bouquet to his face as he stared over it into the Spanish angel’s dark eyes. “But I will need a kiss when this is done.”

“Sí,” she murmured. “I will give you.” She glanced warily at the huge animal that was pacing around and snorting on the other side of the fence. “If you live.”

“No,” Troy said softly but firmly as he gave her that penetrating gaze they all seemed to love. “I want a kiss even if I die.” He hesitated. “Maybe your touch would bring me back,” he whispered. “Please, señorita.”

He saw her imagining the fantasy. Then he saw her desire burning behind the fantasy. He loved being able to tempt her that way. He couldn’t deny it.

Nature had blessed him with rugged good looks, a bravado women adored, and the ability to touch their hearts and souls quickly and deeply with his soft words and that haunting gaze. He used those blessings whenever he could.

The young woman tried to hide a guilty smile of her own from the two older men. “I will kiss you no matter what happens.”

Troy nodded. “What is your name?”

“Selena.”

He gave her another one of those gazes just for good measure. “I love it.”

“You’re incredible,” she whispered as she turned to go.

He watched her walk away sexily, reliving their moment. He loved her caramel skin; those full lips; the erotic gleam flashing in those dark, exotic eyes; the way her long black hair shimmered in the sun; and that amazing passion she so naturally exuded. He’d been taken by all of it many times — for a night.

Regret rose in his expression when he thought about how Lisa had been the only one to ever really touch his heart, but how he hadn’t delivered on his promise to marry her. How that bothered him…but not enough to make it right, because here he was wanting this woman.

But Jack was taking care of Lisa. He was making it right, at least for now. Troy pictured Jack knocking on Lisa’s apartment door back in New York and holding the baby in that nervous way, and he almost smiled. Jack was the best brother anyone could have, even if he wasn’t blood.

Troy’s regret faded quickly as he strained to catch one more look at the Spanish angel before she disappeared into the crowd.

Then his gaze flashed to her father and uncle. They knew what he was thinking, and he knew how much they hated it…but to hell with them. They were trying to get him killed.

“Go on, gringo,” her uncle muttered gruffly as he pulled the gate open just enough for Troy to pass through. The people hanging on the fence began shouting and screaming in anticipation as soon as he did. “Get in there.”

Troy handed the bouquet to a little girl in a tattered dress who was standing by the gate. Then he patted her gently on her small head and stalked into the ring with just the rusty sword at his side.

Troy Jensen was only twenty-eight years old, but he’d already done more than most people would in a lifetime. He’d conquered the Seven Summits by climbing the tallest mountain on every continent, including Everest. He’d circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat, alone, twice. He’d slipped into remote areas of Russia and Mongolia to fly-fish for taimen — the world’s largest and rarest trout — risking lengthy prison sentences by illegally crossing several remote borders. And now he was entering this makeshift ring in the slums of Nuevo Laredo to fight a frothing, wild-eyed bull in front of several hundred bloodthirsty spectators — all of whom, he figured, were betting on the bull.

Back home in Connecticut, people were whispering that he was obsessed with the edge, that maybe he even had a death wish.

So Troy knew it had come as no surprise to anyone when he’d called a week ago to tell his mother, Cheryl, that he wasn’t coming to Greenwich next month for Thanksgiving because he’d joined the crew of an Alaskan crab boat. She was the Arctic Fire, and she was sailing out of Dutch Harbor for the season. The tiny port lay west of mainland Alaska on the Aleutian Islands, which stretched across the Bering Sea toward Asia like a lion’s tail.

Dutch Harbor was little more than an isolated outpost. It was one of those glaring examples of why the global positioning system had been invented. Still, every autumn it served as the starting gate for the most prolific crab hunt in the world.

Troy was looking forward to hunting king crab on the Bering Sea. It was the deadliest job on earth, and it would be another box he could check on his daredevil list. But first he wanted that Spanish angel’s kiss…and everything else that went with it.

He gestured to the massive midnight-black bull as it snorted furiously and tore at the bone-dry soil with its hoof. “Bring it on!” he shouted to the animal as the crowd roared. “Show me what you got!”

And it did. It rushed him as soon as he yelled to it, picking up speed fast for such a huge animal.

Troy dodged the long, sharp horns as the beast thundered by. But his expression turned steely as a cloud of dust swirled past an instant later. Plunging the rusty blade into the bull’s neck with a kill thrust was going to be harder than he’d anticipated.

But that was fine, he told himself as he watched it wildly shake its head and turn to charge again. He didn’t like easy; he never had. Nothing easy was really worth fighting for. His father, Bill, had taught him that a long time ago.

As the bull tore at the ground again, Troy noticed a man hanging on the fence of the small ring. The man was trying hard to blend into the crowd around him, but he couldn’t. Everything about him looked authentic — except his teeth. They were too straight and too white. It was a tiny disparity hanging along that crowded fence, but Troy had been trained to pick up on tiny disparities.

He nodded subtly to the man, who nodded subtly back from behind his sunglasses.

Troy’s eyes flickered back to the bull, which was starting its second charge. That man hanging on the fence could turn out to be so much more dangerous than this bull. The animal’s agenda was obvious, and its actions were reasonably predictable. But the man on the fence could turn out to be a wolf hiding inside a suit of soft sheep’s wool. He might say all the right things when they met later, but he might not mean any of them.

Troy was going outside the chain of command, which was strictly forbidden. But he was convinced that Red Fox One had gone insane, so he believed he had no choice. He believed he had to ignore his orders because the country had to come first no matter what. Those were his father’s words too. And the orders from Red Fox One clearly did not put the country first. They were crazy orders from a madman who could not be obeyed.

One of the bull’s horns nicked Troy’s chest as the animal blew past again. It tore his shirt wide open and drew a long, thin swath of blood, much to the crowd’s delight. He’d been thinking about those orders from Red Fox One. And he’d been trying to decide whether or not to trust the man who was hanging on the fence. Those distractions had nearly cost him his life.

“Come on, Toro,” he muttered as he blocked out everything around him the way he’d been trained to do. So it became just the bull and him, and all other sights and sounds faded to nothing. “Come on, you bastard!”

“Tri-State Securities,” Jack Jensen belted out angrily into the phone above the bedlam of the trading floor.

He was in a terrible mood. In the last ten minutes his bond portfolio had gone down over a hundred grand. He was short on a few big positions, and out of nowhere the Fed had flooded the financial system with cash. Bond prices were up across the board as interest rates plunged, and he’d been forced to bend over and grab his ankles while the situation unfolded on him out of nowhere. Now it was just a question of when to stand up and where to run.

“What do you want?” he demanded sullenly. Too late he recognized the caller’s number.

“To remind you about this afternoon, son,” came the gruff response.

Jack took a measured breath. He’d been hoping like hell Bill had forgotten about what was on tap for later. “Yeah, OK.” But that had been a pipe dream. Bill Jensen never forgot about anything.

“Three o’clock at the house. That leaves us two hours to get to the airport and get prepped.”

“I’ll be there,” Jack agreed grudgingly, worried that Bill might hear the dread creeping into his voice.

“Wheels up at five. That way we’ve got plenty of daylight left.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack mumbled, eyeing a pretty blonde woman on the equity desk who was shouting orders over the bulkhead at her trader.

He wanted to ask her out, but she was from a well-heeled Greenwich family and that could prove risky. She might find out that he hadn’t actually been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That the spoon had slipped past his gums a few months later. She might consider him an imposter at that point, and that would be a nightmare.

“Five o’clock, I guess.”

“Don’t make it sound like your execution, Jack.” Bill chuckled. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s a daylight tandem jump, for Christ’s sake. You’ll be hooked to the instructor. You’ll be as safe as a baby kangaroo in its mother’s pouch. All you’ve got to do is enjoy the ride down. The instructor does all the work.”

Bill had definitely heard his fear. “Yeah, sure.” And he was enjoying it.

“Next month you’re doing a night solo with me.”

“The hell I am.”

Bill laughed. “Just get to the house by three.”

“I’ll be there already.”

“You better post, son.”

“OK. Look, I gotta take this call.”

Jack hung up abruptly, then leaned back and rubbed his eyes. There was no other call coming in. He just didn’t want to talk to the old man anymore. He hated to think about being hurled out of a perfectly good airplane fifteen thousand feet above the ground, even if the instructor was going to do all the work on the way down. Heights scared the hell out of him.

“Was that your dad?” Hunter Smith asked.

Hunter and Jack sat next to each other on the Tri-State trading floor. They’d prepped together, joined the same fraternity at Denison, and then become bond traders in New York City after graduation. They’d been best friends for a long time.

“Yeah, that was Bill,” Jack muttered. “Why the hell did I pick up the damn phone?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t. He still would have found you.”

Jack managed a wry grin. “You’re right, Hunt. He probably would have sent his marines over here if I hadn’t answered. He’s gonna make me jump out of the plane one way or the other today, even if it kills him.”

“And the irony is you’ll be the one who gets killed.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Why do you think he wants to get you up in the sky so badly?” Hunter asked, grinning.

Jack winced as he checked one of the four computer screens staring back at him from the bulkhead. Now he was down over two hundred grand. It was wild how fast Wall Street could slam you. “He likes seeing me scared out of my mind.” Thankfully, his portfolio was still up over four million bucks for the year. “It gets him off, especially when he knows he’s the one who’s scaring me.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to build a bridge between you two after all this time,” Hunter suggested. “It makes sense.”

“That’s not it. He couldn’t care less about building a bridge between us. He told me he’s having the whole thing recorded.”

“People always do that when they skydive. What’s the big deal?”

“He’s gonna grab that CD right after we land, pop it in the TV in his den as soon as he gets home, and laugh his ass off while he watches me scream bloody murder all the way down.” Jack shook his head. “Then he’ll show it to all his blue-blood buddies this weekend so they can see what a coward I am at fifteen thousand feet and get a good laugh too.”

Hunter shook his head. “You’re being too hard on him.”

“Bullshit.” Jack stared at the blinking screens in front of him. It was time to stop the bleeding. He wasn’t risking any more of that four million bucks of profit he’d killed himself making all year for Tri-State. “I’m not being hard enough on him.”

“Come on, Jack. It’s not that he wants to see you scared.”

“You know, you’re right, Hunt.” As he dialed a trader who could save his ass, it occurred to Jack that he was jumping from this bloodbath the same way he’d be jumping from the plane later on: panic-stricken. Hopefully he’d make out better then. “It’s not that.”

“Good man,” Hunter said encouragingly. “Now you’re getting somewhere.”

“It’s that he likes thinking Troy’s a better man than me,” Jack muttered softly enough that Hunter wouldn’t hear. “He loves Troy and he hates me. It’s that simple.”

CHAPTER 2

Twenty-foot waves and fifty-knot gusts roared across the open ocean as darkness closed in on the Arctic Fire. A bad storm on the Bering Sea could be a terrifying ordeal even for a veteran crab boat captain. For any normal greenhorn it was a nightmare that made him wish to God he hadn’t been lured off dry land just by the prospect of making fast money.

But Troy wasn’t any normal rookie. Fear wasn’t an entry in his personal dictionary, and his only use for money was basic survival.

“How long we got?” Troy yelled over his shoulder. “How long till this storm goes nuclear on us, Speed Trap?”

“Five minutes!” Bobby Mitchell shouted back. “Ten, tops.”

Mitchell was a strapping twenty-three-year-old with long blond hair any glam-metal rocker would have been proud of. His nickname was Speed Trap because over the last two years he’d chalked up five speeding violations — as well as a DUI and a resisting arrest over in Seward a month ago. Not surprisingly, he was driving on a suspended license. But then, so was half of Alaska.

“That’s what they were saying on the radio right before I came out here.”

“What are we supposed to get?” Troy shouted over the haunting wail of a powerful gust that was whipping through the mountain of huge crab traps stacked high beneath them. “How crazy at the top?”

“Thirty-foot waves and eighty-knot gusts,” Speed Trap answered. “Maybe worse.”

“No problem.”

Surviving this storm wasn’t going to be any worse than climbing Mount Everest in that blizzard two years ago, Troy figured, or fighting that crazy bull in Nuevo Laredo last month. The bull had charged him eleven times with those razor-sharp horns before he’d finally driven the rusty sword deep into its muscular black neck. After it collapsed on the dry dirt, he’d made certain its carcass was carved up and its meat given to the poorest people in the neighborhood.

Then he’d gotten that kiss from the Spanish angel. Then he’d met with that guy who’d been hanging on the fence. Then he’d gotten everything else from his angel. Then he’d kissed Selena’s forehead as she was still sleeping and headed to Alaska.

“It’ll be all right, Speed Trap!” Troy yelled reassuringly. “We’ll be fine.”

“Glad you think so,” Speed Trap yelled back. “But you don’t know the Bering Sea like I do.”

The Arctic Fire had been on the hunt for king crab going on two weeks. This was the worst weather yet, and the storm couldn’t have come at a worse time. With all of her traps back on deck and her surfaces coated with ice, the ship was top-heavy. Terribly vulnerable to rolling over in the rough seas and sending her crew plunging into the thirty-seven-degree water where they’d die of hypothermia in minutes without time to scramble into their orange survival suits — if they didn’t drown first.

A frigid, salty spray whipped Troy’s unshaven face as he crawled along the top of the carefully constructed mountain of steel-framed rectangular shapes. Several of the giant seven-hundred-pound traps on the bow’s starboard side had torn loose. As the greenhorn, it was Troy’s job to resecure the expensive gear so it didn’t tumble over the side and sink to the bottom, lost forever. As the rookie on the boat, it was his job to do whatever the captain told him to do.

With her live tanks full of crab, the 118-foot vessel was grinding through the gale toward a processing plant in Akutan. If there weren’t too many dead crabs in the tanks when they unloaded, this hunt would gross the ship a million dollars.

Half of that would go to Captain Sage Mitchell.

Another $250,000 would go to the captain’s brother, Duke, who was the ship’s first mate and chief mechanic.

And the last quarter of a million would be split equally among the remaining crew members: Troy and the other two deckhands — Speed Trap and his older brother, Grant, both of whom were the first mate’s sons. Bottom line: the three of them could each earn over eighty thousand bucks for two weeks of work.

The thought of the money made Troy grin even as the ship plunged toward the trough in front of the next wave. It had been risky to sail with these cowboys, but in the end it was going to be well worth it. When he’d gotten to Dutch Harbor three weeks ago, his checking account had seventy-three dollars in it. The balance was fourteen cents the day they’d sailed. And he didn’t have credit cards. They weren’t allowed.

He could have asked his parents for money, but he hadn’t done that since graduating from Dartmouth six and a half years ago, and he wasn’t about to start now. He had too much pride. Besides, going to Bill might draw attention. His father was well known in certain circles — some obvious, some not.

“Move your ass, Troy!” Captain Sage bellowed from the bridge.

The bridge was eighty feet to the stern, and Captain Sage was warm and dry in there with Duke, protected from the driving sleet and slashing winds behind a thick pane of reinforced glass. But Sage could still shout orders to his crew through a series of rusty speakers that were positioned around the deck.

“Hurry up or we’re gonna lose four or five of those traps!” he yelled. “If we do, we’re gonna lose you too, you son of a bitch. I guarantee you that, Troy.”

Troy glanced over his shoulder. Speed Trap was clinging to the crab trap mountain like he was part of it. He had a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes that was quickly morphing into one of sheer panic.

“Let’s go, you mothafuckers!” Duke shouted, grabbing the microphone from his brother. “Now!”

“Holy sheeeiiiiit!” Speed Trap screamed like a terrified kid taking that first incredible plunge on a killer roller coaster as the Arctic Fire heeled dangerously to starboard and the trap in front of Troy almost went crashing into the sea. “I can’t go any farther. I can’t, man!”

“Move it, Troy!” Sage yelled, grabbing the mike back from Duke. “Damn you, Troy Jensen, get to those traps!”

“Help me!” Speed Trap pleaded as the ship began scaling the face of a twenty-five-footer. It was the biggest wave of the storm so far. “I can’t hold on much longer. My fingers feel like they’re gonna rip off.”

“Just stay there!” Troy ordered. Speed Trap was worthless. He was petrified to the point of paralysis. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t leave me!”

“Stay put! I won’t leave you out here.”

Troy hustled to the edge of the mountain, which rose thirty feet above the deck, and moved onto the trap that had barely stayed aboard moments ago. He hadn’t bothered to hook into one of the bright yellow harnesses that would secure him to the ship by a long tether and keep him aboard in case what he was crawling on went over. He hated how the harness and the tether restricted his ability to move and react. He liked being mobile. He always had.

Speed Trap hadn’t hooked up either, and Troy knew why. He was a veteran of these hunts and didn’t want to look like he was more afraid of coming out here on the mountain than the greenhorn. He was regretting that show of bravado now.

Troy took a deep breath and slid over the edge of the man-made cliff as the Arctic Fire hurtled to the top of the big wave, blew through the crest in a foam explosion, and then pitched forward and began barreling down its spine. Butterflies raced through his gut as he clutched the side of the trap he’d just been kneeling on and stepped the toes of his rubber boots on one that was two down from the top.

The mountain had been built with a slight stair-step feature to it all the way up each side as the crew had stowed the traps back on board when the hunt was finished, instead of rebaiting them with cod and throwing them back into the deep to catch more crabs. They’d built it like this so they could get a toehold if necessary. Like Troy desperately needed one now.

He spotted the problem right away. Two stout ropes and a chain hung limply from the trap just behind and five below the one he was standing on. He could tell it was loose enough that if he didn’t resecure it quickly, the Arctic Fire was going to lose more than just a few traps to the storm. She’d lose at least twenty to thirty because this particular trap was a key to the entire side of the mountain. And if the mountain crumbled, he and Speed Trap would be hurled overboard in a steel avalanche. They’d probably be crushed to death before they even hit the water.

With a smooth, pantherlike move, Troy reached the loosely tethered trap and moments later had it resecured. The critical trap would still move a little as the ship plowed through the rough seas, but it shouldn’t go over and start that avalanche now.

A quick pull and a leap and Troy was back atop the mountain. He grinned when he spotted Speed Trap still hanging on for dear life right where he’d left the kid.

Troy hadn’t gotten to know Speed Trap or the other three men aboard the ship that well since they’d sailed from Dutch Harbor, but they seemed like decent enough guys. They weren’t very talkative, but there wasn’t much time to talk. Just hour after hour of sinking traps to the bottom and hoisting them back to the surface after they’d snared more crabs.

It had been a hell of a grind as the traps kept breaking the surface teeming with the goods, and none of the crew had gotten more than a few hours of sleep a day. Even Troy had to admit that he was exhausted as their run across the Bering Sea was ending. But the money was going to be incredible.

He wouldn’t be sticking around for the ship’s second hunt of the season. Red Fox One had already communicated that in a coded message he’d sent to the Fire yesterday. After this run, Troy was headed to Eastern Europe.

As Troy got to where Speed Trap was crouched, his eyes flashed to the right, and for a moment he didn’t believe what he saw. Something inside him wouldn’t let his brain process the terrifying sight.

But it all turned hair-raisingly real when Captain Sage’s panicked command blared through the speakers. It was the first time Troy had heard fear in Sage’s voice.

“Get off the traps, get off the traps!” Sage yelled as he sounded the ship’s foghorn. It was the ultimate warning. “Now!”

Through the sleet whipping across the ocean in the twilight, Troy saw the gigantic wave bearing down on them. If it hadn’t been so terrifying, it would have been beautiful.

“We don’t have time to get off the mountain,” Speed Trap gasped as he gazed in shock and awe at the seventy-foot rogue roaring toward them. “We’re gonna die, Troy.”

CHAPTER 3

Jack wasn’t a daredevil like Troy, but he didn’t back down from a challenge either. He just preferred having both feet planted firmly on the ground when he poked fate in the face, thanks to his acute fear of heights and his healthy respect for nature. Once he was more than fifteen feet up, he started getting nervous. Right now he was fifteen thousand feet up, and his heart felt like it was going to burst, it was pumping so hard.

“Come on, Jack!” Bill yelled as the jump supervisor slid the door open. The hum of the plane’s twin props turned into a roar, and a cold wind whipped through the fuselage. “Let’s go. This is it.”

Jack had been dreading those words ever since they’d gotten into Bill’s Mercedes a few hours ago and driven to the small airport outside Greenwich, Connecticut, to prep for the jump. “This is it.” It had a terrifying ring to it.

Despite his fear of heights, Jack had forced himself to jump out of this same plane last month when Bill had shamed him into doing this same crazy stunt. But that jump had gone off during the daylight, and it had been a tandem jump. Back in October, Jack had been tightly secured to the instructor, who’d done all the work on the way down.

But this was a night jump, and Jack had to rip the cord himself. Technically, he needed more tandem jumps to qualify for a solo, especially a night solo. But the guy who ran the place was looking the other way.

Bill must have greased his palm, Jack figured. Money seemed to be Bill’s answer to everything.

“Bill, I don’t know if I want to—”

“Don’t go there!” Bill shouted, anticipating what Jack was about to say. “Don’t embarrass me.” He moved quickly to where Jack was sitting and pulled him roughly to his feet off the wooden bench that ran along one wall of the fuselage. “Damn it, Jack. Don’t make me throw you out of that goddamned door.”

Bill and Cheryl had adopted Jack when he was only a few months old. He was thirty now, but in all that time he’d never told Bill about the terrible fear of heights he’d lived with ever since he could remember. It had been decades since the old man had served in the Marine Corps, but he’d never lost the semper-fi attitude. Phobias simply weren’t acceptable in the Jensen family, especially with a blood son like Troy around who wasn’t afraid of anything.

Jack had been hoping all day that by some miracle of God his fear of heights would evaporate or the crystal-clear weather would turn terrible — even though there wasn’t a low-pressure system within five hundred miles. But neither prayer had been answered.

“Look, Bill, I don’t have enough experience for this. Come on, you know that.”

“You walk to the jump door, throw yourself out of the plane, count to five, and rip the cord. There’s nothing to it. Any idiot could do it.” Bill glared at Jack. “Any idiot with guts, anyway.”

“This is insane.”

Jack could feel his body seizing up like an overheating engine at the thought of taking even one step toward the door. He saw the jump supervisor roll his eyes over Bill’s shoulder, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be shamed into doing this. Not like he’d been shamed into doing that tandem jump last month when he’d almost had a heart attack during the first few seconds in the air. What if he couldn’t find the cord? What if the chute didn’t open? This was life and death, and he wasn’t going to tempt the ultimate degree of fate just for Bill’s entertainment.

“I’m not doing it,” he said firmly.

“You will do it!”

“No I won’t. Don’t think just because—”

Bill grabbed him with both hands and wrestled him toward the door. He was more than twice Jack’s age, but he was still a big, strong man, and he’d caught Jack completely off guard. They were only a few feet from plunging into the night before Jack even realized what was happening.

Just when it seemed they both would tumble into the darkness, Jack threw an arm around Bill’s neck, stepped in front of him with one leg, and flipped him to the floor of the plane. Then he quickly retreated from the door. It was the first time he’d ever fought back, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. The move had been purely instinctive, brought on by his terror of being hurled into the night sky fifteen thousand feet above Connecticut.

Bill struggled awkwardly to make it back to his feet in his jumpsuit. When he was up he shook his head and stared at Jack. “Why can’t you be more like Troy?”

Then he turned, staggered to the open door, and plunged into the darkness.

The Olympian was three football fields long, and the four massive domes rising from her main deck were each twelve stories high. She was carrying more than 135,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas in those four holds, which for all intents and purposes made her a huge refrigerator, keeping what in nature desperately wanted to be a gas, a liquid.

In its liquid state, LNG took up less than 1/600 the volume it did as a gas. With an energy content of more than fifty-five Hiroshima bombs, the Olympian was one of the deadliest ships on the ocean. If one of those domes were suddenly pierced and the cargo detonated as all of that liquid instantaneously reverted to gas, the resulting fireball would destroy a city if the ship were close enough.

The leader smiled thinly as he stood on the Olympian’s bridge and peered past her domes into the darkness. That city was going to be Boston. In a few hours he and his crew would sail this massive cargo of LNG into the harbor — after presenting all necessary credentials to the waiting team of law enforcement officials, and then passing a rigorous onboard inspection. Then a Gulfstream 5 would come screaming from the sky and slam into hold 2 or 3. The horrible impact would instantly ignite that deadly fireball as the ship churned slowly along with a helpless flotilla of small-boat escorts. And millions of people would die.

Detonating an LNG tanker near a coastal city wasn’t a particularly creative idea. Federal, state, and local authorities had been worried about the possibility for years, and they were extraordinarily careful each time one of the huge ships approached the United States. The key to executing this mission was having all of the correct authorizations — which they did, thanks to a series of bribes the leader had made to a well-placed individual in the United States.

Money was the American’s Achilles’ heel, he believed. You simply had to identify the weakest link in the chain and then offer him enough cash. The American wouldn’t care that so many people had died, only that his bank account had grown much larger. Americans really were capitalist pigs. The one who’d sold him the authorizations certainly was.

It had been a long, exhausting voyage from Malaysia, and he had only a few hours to live. But in death he and his squad would become idolized immediately and revered forever. He couldn’t wait to spot that plane streaking toward the Olympian and see the first instant of the explosion just before he was incinerated. He wanted to die. The other side was better. He’d been told that for a very long time, and he was ready to enjoy his harem of beautiful virgins.

“It will be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” the leader murmured. “It will be a masterpiece of red and orange.”

A moment later he lay dead on the floor of the bridge with his neck cleanly snapped.

The Navy SEAL who’d just carried out the execution lifted his wrist to his mouth. The rest of the crew had been killed a few moments ago by other members of his team. “All clear,” he called loudly into his watch as he began to familiarize himself with the ship’s control panel. “Let’s get the bodies ready for the chopper.”

CHAPTER 4

Troy grabbed Speed Trap by the neck of his orange poncho and half dragged, half pushed him across the traps as fast as he could. The air temperature was just twenty-seven degrees, and the spray whipping off the ocean combined with the sleet pouring down from above had made the top of the mountain treacherously slick. It was a situation made even more dangerous by the ship’s steep angle of descent as it dived toward the bottom of the deep trough. Still, Troy and Speed Trap made it up the mountain to the forward masthead.

As the ship flattened out, Troy rushed Speed Trap into a harness. Then he grabbed another one and put it on himself as the ship began to climb.

The Arctic Fire wouldn’t go up and over the mammoth wave that was bearing down on them. She was too long and heavy and the wave was too tall and narrow. She’d go through it, instead. She’d try, anyway.

At least the rogue was hurtling straight at them, Troy thought as he stared in awe at the huge wave. If it had been coming from either side, the ship wouldn’t have a chance. The Fire would roll, and that would be that. It would take all of Captain Sage’s skill, but the ship still had a chance with this wave coming straight at her bow.

As hell came hurtling down on them, Troy grabbed Speed Trap, took a deep breath of precious air, and shut his eyes tightly.

For several terrifying seconds he felt like a rag doll inside a tornado, and at the same time, as if he were encased in ice on the dark side of the moon. The ferocity of the wave and the bitter cold of the seawater cost him his grip on Speed Trap and forced a bloodcurdling scream from his lips. It was the first time Troy could ever remember thinking that the candle of his life was actually about to go out.

A second later the rogue blew past and Troy fell for what seemed like an eternity. When he finally crashed onto a trap, he opened his eyes, gasped several times, and took a quick inventory of his body. It didn’t feel like anything was broken, but he was shivering so hard maybe he couldn’t tell.

Then there was a throbbing in his left temple, and he pressed his hand to the spot. Blood covered his fingers when he checked them, but he was relieved by the sight of it because now he could feel the pain in his forehead — but no pain anywhere else. Given the awesome power of what had just slammed the ship, the wound was minor.

Maybe Red Fox One was right, Troy realized as he stared at the blood. Maybe he was untouchable. Maybe there was something otherworldly about it, as crazy as it sounded. He’d never believed in any of that, but what other explanation could there be? He always survived these life-or-death situations.

Troy glanced up from his fingers. The foredeck was a disaster area. More than half the ship’s traps had been hurled overboard in the chaos. And many of those that remained aboard were now nothing but useless hunks of twisted steel.

As Troy staggered to his feet, a flash of adrenaline surged through his body and he caught his breath when the awful realization hit him. Speed Trap was gone.

“Where the hell is he, Troy?” Captain Sage bellowed through the speakers. “Did he go over?”

“Find my boy!” Duke cried, grabbing the microphone. “Please, Troy, find him.”

Troy had already torn his harness off and was sprinting through the destruction. The ship was still pitching in the storm, but eerily, the waves had calmed and the winds had quieted now that the rogue was gone.

Then he spotted the tiniest tinge of yellow on the port side of the bow and raced for it. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

As he reached the edge of the deck, Troy dropped to his knees atop a trap that was still in good shape. He peered over the side, and staring back up at him was the terror-stricken but very much alive face of the first mate’s younger son.

Speed Trap was hanging from the ship literally by a thread, by what little remained of the shredded yellow tether that had connected the harness to the mast. At any moment it could break away from the trap it had somehow snagged onto and the kid would go plunging into the waves. Then the Bering Sea would finish the job and claim another victim.

Troy reached down, grabbed the harness with both hands, and carefully began pulling Speed Trap back aboard. He held his breath, afraid that the ragged strap would snap at any second.

But it didn’t.

As soon as Speed Trap was back on deck, he jumped to his feet and hugged Troy tightly. “Thanks,” he sobbed as tears of relief and joy streamed down his face. “You saved my life, for Christ’s sake, you saved my damn life! I’ll never be able to repay you. Thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, pal,” Troy muttered as Duke’s sobs of relief blared through the speakers. “You’re welcome.”

Jack leaned against the Mercedes waiting for Bill to appear at the front door of the jump school. It was chilly out and the wind was blowing hard, much harder than it had been when they’d arrived a few hours ago.

He crossed his arms tightly over his chest. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant ride back to the mansion. They’d actually had an OK conversation on the way over here — which was unusual because they didn’t have many conversations to begin with and the ones they had were usually brief and unfriendly. But they weren’t going to say anything to each other on the way home. He knew that.

Jack glanced up at the stars hanging in the cloudless night sky. He and Bill had been at it for so long maybe they just didn’t know another way anymore. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fact that they weren’t really related, that they were adoptive father and son. Maybe they wouldn’t have liked each other even if they had been blood.

“Bullshit.” Jack kicked a pebble across the nearly empty parking lot and then looked up. “Bill loves Troy.” The only other vehicle in the lot was the owner’s Explorer. “And it’s all because Troy’s his real son.”

Jack pushed off the Mercedes when Bill came through the door. He could hear gravel crunching beneath the old man’s boots as he walked across the lot. “Bill, I don’t know what—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Bill snapped, aiming his key at the car. The lights flashed as the lock on the driver’s side clicked open. “In fact, I don’t ever want to talk about it.”

Jack reached for the passenger door. “It’s just that—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Bill demanded.

“What do you mean?” Jack lifted the handle, but the door didn’t open. “I’m getting in.”

“Not after that performance. Not after you embarrassed me up there on the plane like that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get another ride,” Bill called gruffly as he climbed in and turned the car on. “Or walk.”

Jack’s mouth fell open as Bill slammed the car into gear and sped off, sending a hail of gravel flying across the parking lot behind him.

“What a prick,” he muttered as he pulled his jacket around himself tightly and started to walk. “What a goddamned prick.”

CHAPTER 5

Shane Maddux had been living in the darkest shadows of the global intelligence world for so long he’d almost forgotten how lonely and terrifying most people would find his existence. How it would probably send most nine-to-fivers head-on into a brick wall of hysteria to have to worry about assassins lurking around every corner and behind every door.

But he’d gotten over the mortal fears of the masses long ago because his love of country superseded his concern for self. Not many individuals could say that and honestly mean it, and he was quietly but intensely proud of how unselfishly dedicated he was to protecting the United States of America.

At any cost and any sacrifice.

That was his personal mantra, and he lived it every day.

Maddux glanced up in his naturally guarded way as Roger Carlson limped into the small, plainly decorated living room and eased onto the sofa on the other side of the dusty coffee table. It was the first time Maddux had ever felt uncomfortable about one of these meetings, and they’d been meeting like this for two decades. For twenty years Shane Maddux had run the Falcon division of Red Cell Seven for Roger Carlson.

“Hello, Shane.” Carlson spoke up first as he usually did.

“Hello, Roger. It’s good to see you.”

Carlson was the only person in the world Maddux ever met with regularly, but that was fine. In fact, it was perfect. The deal he and Carlson had forged over the past two decades enabled Maddux to take what he wanted from the world with no strings attached and little risk of reprisal. It made him the ferocious apex predator he’d always dreamed of being as a kid when the bullies had kicked his ass around the playground like a soccer ball — and laughed at him while they were doing it. The apex predator he’d always dreamed of being as the priest had forced him into that dark, tiny closet and attacked him after he was too scared and paralyzed from his claustrophobia to even scream.

“It’s good to see you too, Shane,” Carlson said in his gravelly Georgia drawl. “Congratulations on nailing that situation headed for Boston Harbor. The Olympian is now in the capable hands of our Navy SEALs. Your Falcons came through again.” Carlson’s eyes lit up. “They’re amazing.”

“They are good,” Maddux agreed, careful to show no emotion. Sometimes his Falcons were too good. Sometimes they needed to better understand the rules and their orders — one of them in particular. But he was taking care of that. “When did it happen?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“Did we get the plane too?”

Carlson nodded. “It was a civilian G5. The guy ran for Europe, but one of our aviators from the Reagan intercepted him and shot him down in the North Atlantic. Played a little cat-and-mouse with him for practice and then took him out,” Carlson explained. “There’s a recon team heading for the crash site now. Our pilot used a new laser technology to shoot the G5 down so there was no fireball. If there were helpful documents on that plane, the recon guys will find them.”

“Good,” Maddux said quietly. Once again he was careful to show no emotion. There might have been documents aboard the G5 that could pose a problem for him.

“It is good,” Carlson agreed. “It’s damn good, and President Dorn sends along his heartfelt congratulations. He’s more impressed every day with how valuable you and your Falcons are. He’s amazed at how you can find a needle in a haystack in the middle of a field at night when no one else can find the haystack. When some of our people can’t even find the damn field, for Christ’s sake.” Carlson shook his head. “My God,” he said quietly, “can you imagine if your guys hadn’t gotten you the word on that ship? It would have been a nightmare for the president to handle an attack of that magnitude in his first year of office.”

“It would have been hell for him,” Maddux said fiercely, as Carlson rested his cane on the sofa.

There was no way to know for certain if the president had really sent along his heartfelt congratulations, if indeed the president was even aware of what could have happened in Boston Harbor. He’d never met any of the presidents. That was Carlson’s area.

But that was all right. Maddux didn’t care about accolades, and he didn’t need much money — just enough to survive.

All he really needed was loyalty, because without loyalty the psychological infrastructure of trust disintegrated. When trust disintegrated, conditions turned to chaos and an every-man-for-himself situation developed — which never turned out well for anyone, including the country. And in Maddux’s mind the country was as much of a living, breathing entity as any human being living within its borders.

That was why he’d taken the ultimate step against two of his Falcons. There simply had to be trust, there simply had to be loyalty, even if the orders coming from above seemed at odds with the best interests of the country. Even if those orders seemed insane.

Maddux’s eyes narrowed. There had been a loyalty issue with two of his subordinates, and he had recently learned there was a loyalty issue with the president of the United States. And that was a problem for Red Cell Seven, a massive problem. A subordinate disobeying an order was one thing, but the president of the United States being disloyal was so much another. Maddux had felt comfortable addressing the first issue without seeking Carlson’s approval. But he wasn’t nearly as comfortable going after this second issue that way.

He would if he had to, though. He was committed to the path he’d already started down in the event Carlson didn’t get on board quickly — as incredible as that was.

“It would have been more than hell for him,” Maddux added. “It could have destroyed him. Then you both would have been sorry.”

“I don’t work at the pleasure of the president,” Carlson responded evenly as his expression turned to stone. “I don’t care who the president is. I’m indifferent about the man and his politics. You know that, Shane, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”

“Did you look into that situation we discussed the last time we met?” Maddux asked, boldly ignoring Carlson’s rebuke.

“Of course I did.”

“I can find out if you didn’t.”

Once in a while Maddux reminded Carlson that, despite the extreme secrecy involved, there were opportunities for checks and balances. And that he could take advantage of them if he chose to. He and Carlson trusted each other as much as two people in this situation could. But the remote possibility of distrust had to exist too.

It was an odd but essential paradox to their relationship. It was like God needing the devil for His warnings of fire and brimstone to be their most convincing. The possibility for personal disaster had to exist in any relationship for everyone involved to truly stay in line. Nothing in this life was pure, and anyone who believed in that fairy tale was stupid or naïve.

“I know you can, but that’s not why I did,” Carlson answered. “I looked into it because you asked me to and for that reason alone.”

Maddux gazed at Carlson. The old man had formed Red Cell Seven forty years ago and run it ever since. He knew as much about what was happening in the world on a minute-by-minute basis as any person on the planet. He dealt constantly with every intel agency the United States operated, and his name was spoken with reverence at the Pentagon and the CIA. The few times it was actually spoken. Only a handful of senior officials knew who Carlson really was, and even fewer were aware of the immense power he wielded.

Carlson seemed like a calm, unassuming man who could blend into any background. But that was his cover and far from reality, Maddux knew. Despite his advancing age, Carlson could still act like a lion in its prime. He could still make a Brooklyn Mafia boss look like a petty thief and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs look like a private first class. And that was why Maddux was so worried about this meeting.

Maddux had gone outside the chain of command only a few times in his twenty-year career as the leader of the Falcon division, and he’d gotten away with it each time. But this target was different, very different. If Carlson ever found out about this work-around, there’d be hell to pay, and Maddux would probably pay that debt to the devil with his life. So he was praying to God everything was going off without a hitch — even though he wasn’t at all religious.

“Which Falcon actually broke the Boston situation for us?” Carlson asked. “Was it Troy Jensen?”

“Yes,” Maddux answered, making certain his eyes remained glued to Carlson’s.

“He’s been one of your top people for several years.”

“He has,” Maddux agreed brusquely. He wanted to get back to the other thing. “Roger, we need to talk.”

Carlson’s expression turned serious. “What is it, son?”

Maddux loved that over the last two decades Carlson had become his surrogate father. He’d hated his own father for a host of brutal reasons — almost as much as he hated that priest — and he hadn’t shed a tear when the man had died of lung cancer a decade ago. He couldn’t have gone to the funeral even if he’d wanted to because it would have been a perfect opportunity for his enemies to identify him. But his relationship with Carlson had allowed him to easily disengage from his father’s painful struggle, and feel no guilt at all for doing so. He and Carlson had their moments, but he loved the old man.

Which made all of this so much harder.

“Everything all right?”

Maddux appreciated how Carlson had recognized instantly that the subject change involved something crucial. “Is President Dorn really on our side? Can we really trust him?”

Carlson eased back onto the couch and groaned. “This again, Shane? I told you, I looked into the situation. This is turning into an exhausting topic.”

“Sorry, Roger, but I’m getting a lot of intel indicating that President Dorn believes Red Cell Seven is more of a liability to him and his administration than an asset. There’s even some evidence that he wants to shut us down. And that’s coming from several sources.” Exhausting was one of those code words Carlson used when he felt disrespected. And disrespecting Roger Carlson was very risky. “Including my Falcons,” Maddux added. He hadn’t communicated that eye-opener to Carlson yet, and he knew it would have a dramatic impact.

“That’s ridiculous,” Carlson snapped. “I can’t believe you’d say that. I can’t believe you’d use your Falcons to manipulate me.”

“What? Are you questioning my team’s credibility? Are you questioning mine?”

“Sorry,” Carlson said quickly, grimacing apologetically. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Incredible, Maddux thought. He’d never seen the old man back off anything so quickly. There had to be at least a kernel of doubt in Carlson’s mind too.

“Look, Shane, we’ve been over this several times. President Dorn’s only been on the job for nine months. The Oval Office still has that new car smell for him. Wait until the one-year anniversary. Everything will be fine by then. I promise.”

“But if the president’s so damn appreciative of us figuring out what was heading for Boston, how could he have any doubts about how valuable we are to him and the country? I wouldn’t be picking up any of these rumors.”

“Have patience, son,” Carlson advised paternally. “Give Dorn a little more time. He’s young and, unfortunately for everyone, very inexperienced. He’s new to how things work in Washington. He wasn’t a senator or a congressman before he was elected commander in chief. He was a damn civil rights lawyer. He’ll come around.” Carlson chuckled softly. “You’re putting too much faith in those guys of yours, Shane. Your Falcons aren’t always right.” His laugh grew louder. “There was that one time fourteen years ago when one of them was wrong.”

In the twenty years they’d known each other, Carlson had rarely used humor to deflect anything. That wasn’t his style. “Did you really tell the president what could have happened in Boston?” Maddux asked.

“Of course.”

Maddux still had his doubts, but he knew he wouldn’t get anything more out of Carlson. Despite how close they were, their relationship had its limits. It had to. “I hope so.”

Carlson held up a hand. “I have something that’ll take your mind off what you’re hearing.” The older man reached into his suit pocket and pulled out an envelope, then tossed it onto the coffee table in front of Maddux.

Maddux grabbed the envelope and tore into it like a wolf tearing into a fresh kill. When he’d finished reading what was typed on the single sheet of paper inside, he looked up gratefully. “Thank you.”

“Enjoy it, Shane. You deserve it.”

Maddux knew he should have left it at that, but he couldn’t. He’d trained himself to keep his eye on the ultimate objective, but there were still times when he needed to make his peace too. “Be careful of President Dorn. I know you think there’s no problem with him, but my information’s coming from three sources, Roger. When it triangulates like that, there’s an excellent chance it’s accurate. In fact, I’d say the odds are almost a hundred percent at this point.”

“Don’t worry, Shane, everything’s fine.”

“Roger, I—”

“It’s fine, Shane. Trust me.”

Maddux slipped the envelope into his coat pocket and stood up. “I do trust you, Roger. You don’t even have to say that.” He started for the basement stairs and then hesitated. “I’ve never begged you for anything, but I’m begging you for this, Roger. Please look into it one more time.” If Carlson did as Maddux asked, there would still be time to stop the train even though it had already left the station. If not, Maddux would move forward unilaterally. He loved the old man, but he loved the country more. “I’m telling you. President Dorn wants to destroy us.”

CHAPTER 6

As quickly as the storm had erupted, it had died. The sleet and snow were gone; seas had settled back to long, gentle swells of eight feet; gusts had calmed to less than thirty knots; and the Arctic Fire was cruising steadily toward a big payday in Akutan with only forty nautical miles left to go.

Troy stood at midship on the starboard side of the vessel, near the crane that pulled the traps back aboard. He shook his head. He still couldn’t believe what had happened. He’d dodged another bullet.

The bridge was only thirty feet behind him, and he could see Sage and Duke up there through the reinforced glass yelling at each other, furious at losing so much expensive equipment to the sea. He couldn’t hear them, but they were doing a lot of finger-pointing and waving, like they always did when things went wrong. Evidently they’d already put the fact that their nephew and son had cheated death by a yellow thread well into the rearview mirror.

Troy stared into the darkness shrouding the ocean, thinking again about how Speed Trap had come so close to death — but he hadn’t. How they’d been standing right beside each other when the huge wave had smashed into the ship, but he’d come out of it so much better.

The same thing had happened before. He’d survived situations like that unscathed or barely bruised while others around him had been badly hurt, even killed. He hated to admit it because it was unnerving, but maybe Red Fox One was right. Maybe he was untouchable; maybe he was the ultimate survivor.

He leaned on the deck wall next to the crane and glanced toward the stern. Even though the sun had set, he could make out the shadowy shapes of the ever-present seagulls. And hear their sharp cries as they hung a few feet off the surface behind the ship, moving gracefully up and down with the waves. The same flock had been with them since they’d left Dutch Harbor, patiently waiting for any scrap of bait or piece of crab that might come their way.

It looked so peaceful to be a seagull, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t peaceful or easy to be any wild creature, Troy knew. Every day was a brutal struggle to survive, and there was no help for the sick or wounded. Only the strong made it, and that was nature’s law. It was a cold reality, and it didn’t necessarily work well for the individual. But ultimately it worked for the species, and that was the only thing that mattered to nature.

It was the same way for the United States. All that mattered was that she got stronger every day, even if brave men and women had to die. But the pain and agony those men and women endured was worth it if their sacrifices ensured the survival of the country and its place as the world’s only superpower.

Troy touched his forehead. The gash he’d suffered in the chaos of the storm was only an inch long, but it was deep and he’d needed seven stitches to pull it together. He’d done the job himself with a sewing needle and black thread he’d found in an emergency kit on the Fire’s galley wall. He grinned as he thought about watching in the mirror as the needle plunged in and out of his skin. He was just glad his mother had no idea what had happened. She might have rented a boat in Dutch Harbor herself to come out here and get him if she had.

He knew his decision to sail on the Bering Sea had come as no surprise to his family, but that it was a bitter disappointment for her. She had hoped that after making it to the peak of Vinson Massif on a frigid Antarctic afternoon two months ago and completing the Seven Summits, he was finished tempting fate and had finally chased the daredevil demons from his soul.

She’d told him all of that very directly. She’d also told him that she wanted him to follow his father’s footsteps into New York City’s world of high finance. Bill Jensen was a Wall Street superstar, and she assumed her husband could get Troy any job he wanted at the huge bank he ran.

But Troy had made it clear to her then that a move to Manhattan still wasn’t in the cards. That he still wasn’t ready to trade in the razor’s edge for a suit and tie, a cramped Upper East Side apartment, and a ride on a crowded six train down to Wall Street every morning. There were too many challenges left on his daredevil list, he’d told her over the phone from a distant corner of the world he wouldn’t identify.

Maybe his mother was right, Troy thought to himself as he gazed into the darkness shrouding the Bering Sea. Maybe the razor’s edge was finally getting too sharp.

“Troy?”

He whipped around, startled by the voice. He’d been a world away. “What?”

Sage and Duke stood beside each other in front of him. They were big-boned, broad-shouldered men who were each over six feet tall. Looming behind them was Speed Trap’s older brother, Grant. Grant was a man-mountain who stood six-seven, weighed 270 pounds, and had even longer, starker blond hair than his kid brother. Speed Trap was nowhere in sight.

“We gotta talk, Troy,” Captain Sage said.

It was strange to see the captain out here on deck. Since they’d left Dutch Harbor, Troy couldn’t remember seeing Sage anywhere but on the bridge. “What about?”

Sage kicked at a crab leg lying on the deck, and Duke looked away.

Something in the back of Troy’s mind clicked. He didn’t like those looks in their eyes. “Hey, what the hell’s—”

“You’re going over,” Sage interrupted in a steely voice. “You can jump, or we can throw you over. It’s up to you.”

Troy straightened up. His senses were instantly on full alert, and his pulse was racing. Sage and Duke were passing a death sentence. Their expressions were grim, but he could see that they were committed to carrying it out.

“So you don’t have to pay me? Just so you can save eighty grand?”

“That was a lot of traps we lost,” Duke mumbled in a hollow voice. “And eighty grand’s a lot of money.”

Troy’s eyes flashed back and forth between the two men, searching for compassion from one of them. But he didn’t find it. “This is how you thank me for saving Speed Trap’s life?”

“It’s a raw deal,” Sage agreed.

“A raw deal?”

“Yup.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“Yup.”

“Over eighty grand. That’s what this comes down to?”

Captain Sage stared steadily into Troy’s eyes for several moments. Then he shook his head slowly. “This ain’t over eighty grand,” he whispered. “You and I both know that.”

How could Sage possibly know that? The question raced through Troy’s mind as he brought his fists up.

Then it hit him. There’d been a sly wolf hiding inside that suit of sheep’s clothing after all. The man hanging on the fence in Nuevo Laredo had rolled over on him. The man had said all the right things when they’d met, but he’d been lying the whole time.

Red Fox One was behind this execution.

CHAPTER 7

Jack sat at the table in Bill and Cheryl’s kitchen, thinking about what had happened in the plane as he gazed at his laptop and then at a tall glass of red wine standing beside it. He was going to spend the night here. His cramped apartment was another half hour away, and he didn’t feel like driving after what had happened.

The fact that Bill had turned around and picked him up had been surprising. Shocking, really. They hadn’t said a word to each other all the way home. But getting the ride had been a lot better than hiking all the way back to the mansion to get his car.

As he glanced out the wide bay window and into the darkness, he heard someone coming down the long hallway toward the kitchen.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Hi, Cheryl.” He stood up and gave her a kiss on the cheek as she passed him to get a glass of wine for herself. “What are you doing still up?” He eased back into his chair, relieved that it was Cheryl and not Bill.

She was tall, slim, blonde, and elegant. She was fifty-eight but looked ten years younger.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She ran her fingers through his dark hair lovingly as she sat down beside him with her wine. “So what happened? Why did I have to make Bill turn around and get you?”

Of course, Jack realized. They must have spoken after Bill roared away from the small airport, and she’d shamed him into going back. She was the only one in the world who could.

“I chickened out,” he admitted. He wasn’t proud of it, but he wasn’t going to lie. “But damn it, I hate heights and I’m not qualified to solo, especially at night.”

“Bill had you jumping out of that plane by yourself?” she asked incredulously. “At night?”

He didn’t want to be that whining kid. He’d never accepted pity, and he never would. “It’s done,” he said quietly. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

She gazed at him for a few moments as she sipped her wine, and then she gestured at the laptop’s screen. “Anything interesting?”

Jack pointed at the article he’d been reading on the New York Times website. “We blew away some mountain town in Afghanistan yesterday that was supposed to be a terrorist base.” He’d seen a quick story about it yesterday afternoon on Yahoo! but the Times article had more details. “We blasted the place to hell with cruise missiles, but it turns out all we did was kill a bunch of innocent civilians. No terrorists.”

“You got a problem with that, Jack?”

Jack and Cheryl glanced up in surprise as Bill walked into the kitchen in his precise military stride. Neither of them had heard him coming down the long hallway.

“Yeah, I do,” Jack answered, impressed as always by how quietly Bill could move despite his size. “A few of them, actually.”

“Now, boys,” Cheryl murmured uneasily.

“Like what?” Bill demanded as he sat down in the chair opposite Jack’s.

“To start with, we killed a bunch of innocent civilians. And, according to the article, that included some kids.”

“How do you know those people were all innocent?”

“The article said they were just townspeople. They probably didn’t even know the United States existed.”

“And you believe the article?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll never learn,” Bill muttered.

“Want something to eat, dear?” Cheryl asked as she rose from the table and headed for the refrigerator. “A sandwich maybe?”

“That would be great, honey. Thanks.” Bill reached across the table, pulled the laptop in front of him, and quickly scanned the story. “Consider the source, Jack,” he said when he was finished. “It’s the damn New York Times. It’s the most liberal rag in the country. It’s even worse than the Washington Post.”

“Are you saying the Times manipulated this story? That they aren’t telling the truth?”

“I’m saying they have an agenda. Senior people at that newspaper want us out of Afghanistan. Everyone knows that. If you want the straight dope, read the Journal.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Bill.”

“And you’re being naïve, Jack. But what else is new?”

“Wait a minute,” Jack snapped. “Are you saying it’s OK to kill a bunch of innocent kids as long as we kill a few terrorists at the same time?”

“Those animals don’t care when they do it to us,” Bill retorted, “as they’ve demonstrated time and time again.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be better than them?”

“It’s a lowest common denominator situation, Jack. You have to fight these people on their level. Force is the only thing they understand. They’re like dogs. You can’t show compassion for them. The minute you do, they take it as a sign of weakness and they attack.”

“Well, I was never very good at math, so I don’t know much about all that lowest common denominator stuff. But I don’t think you can justify killing kids for any reason.”

“Why not? They grow up to be terrorists. Kill ’em while they’re young, I say. Before they kill us.”

Jack stared at Bill like he was crazy. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Jesus Christ. I can’t even begin to understand that way of thinking, especially when kids are involved.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Cheryl pleaded as she pulled cold cuts and a jar of mayonnaise from the fridge and headed for the counter beside the sink. “We’re not going to solve the world’s problems at our kitchen table tonight.”

“I agree, Cheryl,” Jack called over his shoulder. “There’s no reason to—”

“Got any other problems with this?” Bill interrupted as he tapped the screen.

Jack tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. Sometimes Bill pissed him off too much. It had felt damn good to throw the old man to the floor of the plane up there in the sky, he couldn’t deny that. It was pure macho bullshit, and it was incredibly stupid. But it still felt good.

“You’re damn right I do.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s not even our country we’re shooting up,” Jack said. “I mean, it’s gotten to the point where we treat the rest of the world like our private gun range. We bomb anybody we feel like bombing whenever we feel like it. We don’t even go to the United Nations anymore to get permission.”

“Get real, Jack. We are the United Nations. Why do you think the damn building is in Manhattan?”

“We should still be going through the proper channels. We should be doing it the right way. We’re the good guys.”

Bill groaned loudly. “So we’re supposed to stand by and play it straight while these maniacs who’ve been told that harems of virgins are waiting for them on the other side if they wipe us off the face of the earth train to do it? Is that what you’re saying? Do you really think we’re gonna get permission to bomb the hell out of someplace from a bunch of neutral pansies? Do you really think other countries that don’t have a dog in the fight are going to vote like that in plain sight so these heathens who’ve taken a blood oath to kill anyone who does can see them do it?” he sneered. “Hell, we’re the most powerful country in the world, the most powerful country to ever exist. And you’re right. We are the good guys, we aren’t the evil ones. We shouldn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission to do anything.”

Jack saw that vein on Bill’s right temple pumping like mad, the way it always did when he started getting really worked up. “Maybe if we tried a little compassion and understanding first, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about wiping each other out.” Jack knew exactly how that sounded to Bill — like giant fingernails screeching down a giant chalkboard — but the chance to see that vein really go crazy was too tempting. “Know what I mean?”

“Christ,” Bill hissed. “Let’s get you some sutures for that poor heart of yours that’s gushing liberal blood all over the cowardly left wing.”

“A path of escalation never works,” Jack fired back. “It can’t. Revenge is our enemy. History shows us that.”

“Well, isn’t that profound? Why don’t you tell that to all the kids who lost their moms and dads on 9-11?”

Cheryl grimaced as she fixed the sandwich. “Bill, I don’t think Jack’s saying that we should—”

“And my last problem,” Jack cut in, “is that we’re throwing six hundred billion dollars down the defense black hole every year while we go another trillion bucks in the red. At least, that’s what the government tells us we’re spending annually on guns and ammo. It’s probably twice that when you take into account all of that black ops crap our intel people are up to just for fun. We could probably balance the damn budget if we blew up the Pentagon.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Tomorrow morning I’ll probably read about how some super-secret US unit broke into an apartment somewhere in the Middle East and killed another suspected terrorist leader using some wild new personal cloaking device.” Jack spread his arms wide. “And for what? So another prick with a death wish can take his place? It never ends this way, Bill. The war keeps going on forever. That’s the point.”

“The only way it ends is if we wipe them out. That’s the point, you idiot.”

“Bill!” Cheryl spoke up sharply. “Please.”

“So we murder an entire population to kill a few bad apples,” Jack said. “That’s your solution to world peace?”

“It’s the only solution we’ve got.”

“How could we live with ourselves?”

“Happily. I know I could. And I’m not alone, Jack. You might be surprised how many people in this country agree with me and would be willing to use almost any means necessary to wipe out those people.”

“OK, Adolph.”

Bill glared at Jack. “You have no idea what it takes to run the greatest country in the world,” he said in a grave voice, working hard to maintain his composure. “You have no idea how difficult it is to keep the United States safe and how many terrible decisions a few of our leaders have to make every day to do it.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he actually had to say this. “You live in your beautiful little world in Greenwich, Connecticut, Jack. Protected by men and women of honor who do things you don’t want to know about half a world away so you can live in that beautiful little world. People who would laugh at your fear of heights because they do things that make jumping out of a plane at night look like walking a poodle through Central Park on a sunny afternoon.” He inhaled deeply. “You accept their protection freely and completely even as you despise and denigrate them. It’s pathetic, Jack.”

Cheryl moaned. “Please don’t do this, Bill.”

“Those people you’re talking about love what they do,” Jack answered. “They love their high-tech weapons and their licenses to kill. They love to murder and mutilate just for murder and mutilation’s sake. Most of them don’t even care if they get paid as long as they get to kill or torture somebody once in a while. They’re sadists.”

“Those people,” Bill hissed emotionally, “have more guts in their nose hairs than you have in your entire body. Maybe someday, if you and I are both really lucky, you’ll understand that.”

Troy nailed Sage in the face with a powerful right cross, sending the Fire’s captain crashing to the wet, slippery deck. A split second later he took out Duke with a swift, sharp uppercut to the chin.

But before he could spin back around to face Grant, the huge young man barreled into him from the side and sent him crashing to the deck too. Troy tried to get up, but Sage slammed him in the back of the head with a metal bucket. The impact didn’t knock him out, but it rendered his arms and legs temporarily useless and he keeled over. He was aware of Grant and Sage picking him up and tossing him over the deck wall, but there was nothing he could do about it.

As he hit the water and the shock of the freezing temperature revived him, a terrible thought flashed through Troy’s mind. Maybe this was how Charlie Banks had died too. Not on Mount Everest last year as Red Fox One had claimed.