Arctic Fire

CHAPTER 33

Jack couldn’t believe his eyes when Ross Turner emerged from the seaplane at the dock on Puget Sound. For a few seconds he didn’t think it was really his old friend. He figured the huge man squeezing through the narrow door and stepping down onto the plane’s pontoon was actually a pilot Turner had hired to fly down from Alaska. The man didn’t look anything like the tall, skinny, clean-cut kid Jack had known at Denison.

Jack didn’t believe it was Turner until Turner stepped up onto the dock and introduced himself loudly to Karen, then gave Jack a bear hug that squeezed most of the air right out of his lungs. And the friendly slap on the back after the hug was so powerful Jack almost took an unplanned plunge into the sound’s icy cold waters.

The last time Jack and Turner had seen each other was eight and a half years ago in New York. It had been a month after graduation, and they’d met for lunch in Manhattan at the Racquet Club, thanks to Bill, who was a member of the exclusive establishment. The next day Turner was leaving for Alaska. A year of hunting and fishing, and then he was coming back to the lower forty-eight to go to Harvard Law School. At that lunch Turner had still looked like the guy Jack had met in the Denison dormitory on the first day of college. He had still been a toweringly tall string bean with stooped shoulders.

But now Turner looked like the massive brown bears he hunted. He had a huge chest and broad shoulders, his brown hair fell well below his collar in the back, his dark red beard was full and curly, and his voice had gone lower. He even looked an inch or two taller to Jack.

After taking off from Puget Sound, they’d flown over open ocean with the Canadian and then Alaskan coasts off the right wing in the distance — until they’d reached Dutch Harbor. The town had less than four thousand full-time residents and existed solely to support the fishing fleet.

“So, tell me why you drove all the way across the country to Seattle instead of flew,” Turner said as the three of them walked down a side street of Dutch Harbor through a raw, late-afternoon mist. Turner’s seaplane was secured to a dock a few blocks behind them. “Why take all that extra time, Jack?”

“I was worried that if Karen and I flew commercial and I used a credit card to pay for the ticket—”

“Somebody would spot you,” Turner interrupted. “Yeah?”

“Bingo.”

There were only a few bars in Dutch, and, according to Turner, they were all dives. But at least the one they were headed for right now — the Fish Head Pub — was off the beaten track, Turner had claimed.

As much as anything around in Dutch Harbor could really be just off the beaten track, Jack had figured as they’d taxied to the dock a little while ago. As far as he was concerned, everything in this tiny town was way off the beaten track to begin with.

“So, it’s that serious?” Turner asked.

“I almost got hit by a van on Broadway a few days ago, and I’m pretty sure the guy was aiming for me.” Jack nodded at Karen. “And a few minutes after I met up with her in Baltimore, we got chased by two guys who jumped out of an SUV and started shooting at us without asking any questions.”

“Holy shit,” Turner muttered.

“That’s what we thought.” Jack hadn’t mentioned anything to Turner about what was in the black box they’d retrieved from the cabin outside Bemidji. He figured it was better for Turner if he didn’t know about all that. “So we drove.”

“So this is more than just finding out if what happened to Troy is different from the official version you got?”

Jack took a breath and winced. The pungent odor of fish was everywhere in this town, and he still hadn’t gotten used to it. “It didn’t start like that, Ross, but that’s how it’s turned out. Look, I’ll tell you the whole story right now if you really want to—”

“I don’t want to hear the whole story,” Turner said matter-of-factly as he stopped walking and motioned for Jack and Karen to do the same. “I don’t care about any of the other stuff. In fact, the less I know the better. I just want to get this meeting with Bobby Mitchell over with. You’re an old friend, Jack, and I want to help you with Troy if I can, if there’s anything to find out.” He glanced down at the ground and kicked at a pebble on the wet street. “Look, I got busted for cocaine possession a year ago,” he mumbled, “and I can’t get in any trouble while I’m on probation. I could lose my guide license if I did, and I can’t have that. I’d have to leave Alaska, and I’d shoot myself before I did that. This is my home now.”

Jack and Karen exchanged a subtle glance as Turner kept staring down at his shoes.

“Well, look,” Jack said, “I don’t want you to—”

“It’s OK, Jack. I want to do this for you. Like I said, you’re an old friend. And there was that time you pulled my ass out of the sling. The cops were going to arrest me for that DUI. I still can’t believe you talked them out of it. That wouldn’t have looked good on the law school apps.”

Jack glanced over at Karen, who was smiling tenderly at him. He liked that smile. “How the hell did you get this meeting for us with Mitchell?” he asked, still thinking about how surprised he was that Karen had been able to cast her spell on him quickly and completely. He cared about her so much already, and he wondered if she had those same feelings for him. She’d acted like it at the bar in Missoula the other night, and then later in the room. But she’d seemed distant yesterday on the drive from Montana to Seattle. “I thought the captain of the Arctic Fire didn’t let his crew talk to anybody.”

“I didn’t get this meeting for us,” Turner answered. “It’s just gonna be Bobby Mitchell and me in there. You guys are gonna wait outside, because if Mitchell sees you two with me, he’ll probably run. I didn’t tell him I’d be dragging an entourage. And, by the way, people in Alaska tend to be pretty skittish to begin with.”

“OK,” Jack agreed. “But how’d you get to him?”

“We have a mutual friend, and we all like to hunt browns.” Turner glanced at the entrance to the Fish Head. It was just a few doors up the street. “And I think Bobby Mitchell wants to talk. It’s just a gut feeling, but I think he’s got a story to tell. It sure sounded like it when I spoke to him on the phone.” Turner glanced around the area before going on. “I’m betting the captain of the Arctic Fire threw two people overboard,” he continued. “Maybe he did it to save a greenhorn’s share of the haul money. Or maybe he did it for another reason, now that I’ve heard about those people blasting away at you in Baltimore without even talking to you first. Either way, maybe Bobby’s getting amped about getting caught up in something bad. Maybe he figures it would be a good idea to tell somebody about it now so he doesn’t go to jail for murder. So I can verify his story after the cops pick him up.” Turner shrugged. “Or maybe he’ll walk out of the bar as soon as I bring it up.” He tapped Jack on the chest. “If he does, then you’re stuck, because that’s all I got for you. You understand?”

It would suck if Bobby Mitchell turned out to be a dead end, but Jack understood that Turner would have hit his limit as far as helping them at that point. “Yeah, I got it.”

Turner started to move off, but then he turned around. “Are you both carrying weapons?” His gaze flickered back and forth between the two of them.

They nodded.

Jack spoke up. “That’s another reason we drove to Seattle.” He’d explained to Turner in the plane that Karen was an ex-cop. “We both wanted our guns.”

“Good. Now I’m gonna give you some really good advice on surviving in Alaska. If you follow these three rules, you’ll be good to go. First, don’t be afraid to use those guns you’ve got. Don’t die with them in your belt. Too many people make that mistake up here. They aren’t for show. Second, always be ready for the weather to change, and not for the better. It can always snow harder here, and the winds can always blow stronger. Always assume it will get worse, not better.” He hesitated. “And this is the most important rule of all. Never, and I mean never, ask a man what his last name is in Alaska. Let him tell you, let him volunteer it. If he doesn’t, don’t worry about it and walk away without looking back when you and he are done.” Turner paused again. “An old man in a bar told me all that the first week I got here, and I’m glad he did. He was exactly right.”

As Jack watched Turner head up the street toward the Fish Head Pub, he quickly committed the three rules to memory.

“You shouldn’t be out in the open like this.” Stein was sitting behind the big desk of the hotel’s top-floor suite, going through the president’s detailed dossier for the next few days. “You’ll be vulnerable on an outdoor stage like this,” he observed, speaking up as he pointed at the line item on the dossier and then a picture of the venue on the opposite page of the thick green folder. “I think you should make this speech inside. We’ll have much better crowd control if you’re inside.”

Dorn lay on his back on the comfortable king-size bed with his hands behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling fan that was rotating slowly above him. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to talk to the Secret Service again. I want their take on this venue one more time.”

“I’ll make it easy for you, Rex. They don’t want me doing it there either. But it doesn’t matter. I’m the commander in chief, and what I say goes.”

“If the Secret Service says not to—”

“The people of California love me. They don’t want to hurt me. They want to be close to me. Besides, I’m as popular as any president in the last hundred years. Look at the numbers.”

“I’ve seen the numbers, Mr. President.” Stein glanced through the window beside the desk, out over Los Angeles, so Dorn would be certain not to see his frustrated — and slightly disgusted — reaction. He still couldn’t tell if the man was that arrogant or that naïve. “But it only takes one nut job.”

“Go be useful, Rex,” Dorn said.

The man from Vermont was so sickeningly full of himself. And it was getting worse every day. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Call Daniel Beckham and find out if he’s gotten that list from Roger Carlson yet.” Dorn sat up and swung his stocking feet to the floor. “The one that’s supposed to detail all of those Red Cell Seven assets I’m interested in.”

Stein gazed at the ocean in the distance. It was sparkling beneath the late afternoon sun. He’d tried to reach Roger Carlson twice today. Once on the regular number and once on that number he’d been given at that first national security briefing in Langley, Virginia. But he still hadn’t heard back.

“Make that call, will you, Rex?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right now, Rex. Make it for me right now.”

CHAPTER 34

Turner pointed at Speed Trap’s chest. “Is that one of his canines?”

Speed Trap pulled a thin silver chain out from beneath his plain gray T-shirt and let the tusklike trophy tumble from his fingers. “It is.”

“Damn.” Turner’s gaze intensified as he watched the sharp four-and-a-half-inch bear tooth swing back and forth across the kid’s chest at the end of the chain. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been tracking grizzlies up here for a while. That’s impressive.”

“How’d you know there was a tooth on the chain?”

“If I shot a bear like that, I’d do the same thing,” Turner answered, tapping his own chest. “And I saw the outline of it beneath your shirt,” he admitted. “How many rounds did it take to put that beast down?”

“One.”

“Wow.”

“I dropped him right where he was standing with my thirty-thirty, man. The bullet hit his head and his chin hit the ground. It was my best shot ever. The guide said it was a one-in-a-million pop because most times even a thirty-caliber bullet just gives them a headache and makes them mad. Their skulls are that tough.”

“That’s right,” Turner agreed. “Well, like I said, it’s damned impressive, pal.”

“My guide thought so too.”

“I wish I’d been your guide that day, Bobby.”

For the last ten minutes Speed Trap had been telling Turner the story of shooting the massive, nine-foot Kodiak bear as they sat at the small, smoky bar of the Fish Head Pub. Turner was listening closely to the story of the hunt and seemed to be sincerely appreciating and enjoying every detail as they sat there drinking beers — which Turner was paying for.

It had been over a year, and Grant still hadn’t bothered to listen to the whole story of what had happened on Kodiak Island that day. Grant always walked away whenever the topic came up, and Speed Trap knew exactly why — because his Kodiak bear was so much bigger than any bear Grant had ever shot. And Grant couldn’t stand his little brother beating him at anything, especially hunting.

“Actually, Ross, people call me Speed Trap.” He liked that handle so much more than Bobby. It made him sound important and daring. Bobby made him sound like a little boy.

Turner broke into a wide smile after taking several gulps of cold amber from his tall, twenty-two-ounce glass. “Got a few tickets under your belt, huh? So you like going fast?”

“I love it. I always wanted to win Daytona, you know? I always wanted to drive one of those cars for a living. Shoot, what I really wanted to do was fly fighter jets.”

“Me too,” Turner agreed. “But I was too tall. So what kind of rig you got?”

“An F-one fifty.”

“Of course you do.”

“But it isn’t stock anymore, if you know what I mean. I made a few changes to the engine and the transmission and it goes now, man. I mean, it fucking flies.”

“I bet.” Turner took another long look at the tooth hanging from Speed Trap’s neck. “Well, Speed Trap, people call me Griz.”

It was Speed Trap’s turn to smile broadly. “I can see why.” He could feel the beer starting to kick in, and he chuckled loudly as he thought about Turner’s nickname. “You look like a damn grizzly bear, and a Kodiak at that. Not some inland midget brown that eats nothing but bugs and berries.”

“Yeah, well, I—”

“Did you really come to Dutch to talk about bears?” Speed Trap asked out of nowhere. “Or are you here to talk about something else?”

Turner stared intently at Speed Trap for a few moments. “What do you mean?”

“I called Wilson Keats right after you called me the other day.”

“And?”

“And he said you’d been asking around about the Fire for the last week. He said you talked to some of your friends on the state force over in Anchorage about what happened to Troy Jensen. He said you talked to some of the Coast Guard guys about it too.”

Turner nodded deliberately. “Yeah, I’ve been asking around. I’m not going to lie to you, Speed Trap.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s the deal?”

Turner took a long guzzle of beer. “OK, here it is. I go back a ways with Troy’s older brother, Jack. I’m doing him a favor on this.”

Speed Trap finished what was left in his tall glass and put it down on the bar. Then he leaned back in his stool. He appreciated Turner being a no-bullshit guy.

“Want another one?” Turner asked, pointing at Speed Trap’s empty glass.

Speed Trap wanted Turner to appreciate that he was a no-bullshit guy too. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“You don’t have to bribe me with beers.”

“I’m not,” Turner answered firmly. “I’m just trying to find out for an old friend what happened to his younger brother.”

Speed Trap thought about what was at stake here. This could end up being a mistake, he knew, but if Troy was still alive out there somewhere, he wanted Turner to find him. Troy had saved his life that night on the Arctic Fire, and he’d never forget the huge debt he owed the guy for as long as he lived. No matter what Sage and Grant did to him, he’d never forget.

Jack grabbed Karen’s arm as they stood at the end of the alley down the narrow street from the Fish Head Pub. “Oh, Christ.”

“What? What’s the matter?”

Jack gestured at the two guys who’d just sauntered past them. One was a man-mountain with long blond hair, and the other was short and wiry. But the little one still looked to Jack like he could hold his own in a fight. In fact, he looked like he could hold his own in a fight with the devil. “Look at that jacket,” he said, pointing at the guy with the long blond hair.

“Arctic Fire,” she whispered as she read the flowing white script that was embroidered on the black jacket beneath the colorful image of the ship bursting through the top of a wave. “What do we do?” she asked breathlessly. “We can’t just leave Ross in there.”

“We’ve gotta go get—”

“What’s wrong?”

Jack and Karen whipped around. Turner was now towering over them. He’d exited the pub through the back door by the restrooms after taking a leak and walked up the alley behind them.

“Look at that.” Jack stabbed excitedly in the air at the Arctic Fire jacket, which was about to disappear into the Fish Head Pub.

Turner glanced at the jacket and the man wearing it. Then he put one hand on Jack’s shoulder, the other on Karen’s, and leaned down so his mouth was close to their ears. “We’ve gotta get out of here, boys and girls. And we’ve gotta get out of here now.”

They were so close to the United States now the leader swore he could smell it. He swore he could smell the scents of trees and dirt and fresh water drifting eastward toward the ship on the wings of the prevailing winds. He was so close to guiding the Pegasus to its target, he realized anxiously. He was so close to changing world history forever.

He knelt down on the bridge and touched the dark, round scar on his forehead to the metal floor. Please, he prayed. Please let this happen.

“What did you tell that guy at the bar?” Maddux demanded angrily.

“What guy?” Speed Trap asked innocently. His wrists and ankles were tied tightly to a chair in the Arctic Fire’s galley, and he was terrified. Over Maddux’s shoulder he could see Sage and Grant watching from the doorway.

“Whoever it was that you met at the Fish Head,” Maddux snarled. “I want answers, and I don’t want to have to ask twice. I don’t have time for this.”

“I didn’t meet anyone there. I swear to God.”

“Liar!”

“No, no, I just went there to have a beer by myself. That’s all!”

“That’s not what the bartender said.”

“Huh?” Of course the bartender would remember him talking to Turner, Speed Trap realized. Who was ever going to forget a guy like Ross Turner? “Oh, oh, him,” Speed Trap said loudly, trying to make it seem like he’d just remembered Turner. “He was just some guy in the bar. He was there when I got there. I’d never seen him before in my life and — Oh, God!” Speed Trap gasped.

Maddux had nailed him with a crushing right fist to the stomach that felt like a bowling ball had hit him squarely in the gut going a hundred miles an hour. Maddux was small but he packed a hell of a punch, and for what seemed like an eternity Speed Trap couldn’t breathe. Finally, the air began seeping back into his lungs as Maddux grabbed his long blond hair and roughly pulled his head back.

“It hurts, it hurts,” was all he could gasp as he stared up helplessly into Maddux’s cold eyes. “It hurts so bad.”

“But you can keep it from hurting again if you tell me everything you told that guy.”

“We just talked about a bear hunt I went on last year when I shot this trophy bear on Kodiak.” Speed Trap tasted blood as he spoke. “That’s all. I swear it was.”

“Did you float a raft out the back of this ship to Troy Jensen the night he went over the side?”

Speed Trap shook his head hard. “No, no,” he answered, trying to watch Maddux as the man walked behind him. But he couldn’t turn his head far enough to see what was happening. “I’d never do that. I’d never—”

Speed Trap’s lies were interrupted when a clear plastic bag came down over his head roughly and wrapped tightly around his neck. Within seconds he could feel himself starting to suffocate as the plastic went down his throat deeper and deeper with every breath. But there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was watch Sage and Grant watch him pass out. All he could do was pray they’d help him.

“Mr. President,” Stein began as soon as he moved past the Secret Service agents who were posted inside the suite doorway of the Los Angeles hotel, “you’ve got to listen to me.”

“What is it?” Dorn snapped as he straightened his tie in the mirror. “What do you want now, Rex?”

“I spoke to the agent in charge, and she’s very concerned about this speech tomorrow. You’ve got to reconsider. It’s not too late to move the thing inside.”

“This is California, not Texas. People are born here with a big liberal ‘L’ stamped on their foreheads. You know, ‘medicinal’ pot, hippies, Hollywood, and all of that. No one’s coming after me out here, I assure you.”

Stein could hear the rage creeping into Dorn’s voice for the first time since he’d taken on the job as chief of staff. But he didn’t care. His number one responsibility was to do what was best for the country, and therefore what was best for the president. If Dorn wanted to get angry, so be it.

“Sir, I’ve got to—”

“No more,” Dorn hissed, ordering the Secret Service detail outside the suite and into the hallway with a curt wave. “That’s it,” he continued when the door was shut and they were alone. “You raise this issue again, Rex, and I’ll fire you on the spot, so help me God. You’re really becoming a major pain in my ass.” Dorn hesitated. “Maybe I’ll fire you anyway. The powers that be who hired you for me a year ago can’t control me anymore. I’m too popular. It’s my show now, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Stein stared at the president, wondering what he was supposed to do. Dorn was right. He could do anything he wanted now and none of the party heavyweights could do a damn thing about it at this point.

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“Did you call Beckham?” Dorn demanded. “Did you find out if Carlson sent the information over to him?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well I suggest you do, damn it. When I give you an order like that I expect you to carry it out immediately. One more screwup like that and I will fire you, Rex. And I’ll make sure you never work in Washington again.” Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “I never liked you, but at least I respected you.” He shook his head. “But I don’t even respect you anymore. Now get the hell out of here.”

“You OK?”

“I’m fine.”

Jack and Karen were standing on the dock where Turner’s seaplane was lashed, waiting for the big man to come out of the general store that overlooked the pier. He was inside, using cash Jack had given him to pay for the spot the plane had been using.

Karen hadn’t looked up when he’d asked her that question, Jack realized. She usually looked him straight in the eye whenever she answered him about anything…but not this time.

“I’m glad Troy’s alive,” she said softly.

“Could be alive,” Jack reminded her. “The only thing Ross said was that Bobby Mitchell admitted to floating a raft to Troy out the back of the Arctic Fire the night the other guys threw him overboard.” Jack was trying to be low key about all this, but he had to admit he was damn excited. Just the possibility that Troy might still be alive had sent his spirits on a rocket ride. “But Mitchell couldn’t tell if Troy made it into the raft. It was too dark.”

“I guess we’ll find out. But I’ve got a really good feeling about it, Jack. I think you’re going to see Troy again.”

“We both know the chances are still so small,” Jack cautioned. “Mitchell said they were still forty miles northwest of Akutan when they threw him over. Even if Troy made it into the raft, the thing could have flipped over or sunk or just headed out to sea.”

Karen shook her head. “It didn’t sound like Ross thought that was the case while we were walking over here. He seemed to think with the winds and the tides that were going on that night the raft would have gone to shore somewhere east of here. He said he’d checked into all of that, and he was pretty sure the raft wouldn’t have been taken out to sea. Right?”

She was still looking down at the ground. “What is it?” Jack moved in front of her. “You seem…well, you seem kind of sad.”

“It’s nothing.”

He ran his fingers through her hair. They’d made love the other night in Missoula when they’d gotten back from the bar. It had been awesome, and afterward he’d held her in his arms until they’d gotten up a few hours later to drive to Seattle. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to hold her like that too. They’d fit together all night like two puzzle pieces, which was a new experience for him. Every other time he’d held a woman all night, he’d gotten up in the morning with a stiff neck and an arm that was fast asleep.

He hated to think it, but it was almost as if she now regretted what she’d done. And that was going to hurt so badly if it was true. He’d already started missing her when she was gone for just a few minutes. He was hooked on her, and he didn’t like thinking that she wasn’t hooked on him. Especially after she’d told him she was the other night. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d change her feelings like that so quickly. But, when it really came down to it, he didn’t know her that well.

“It’s something, Karen.”

“I was just wondering what I’d do if somehow Charlie’s still alive too.” She touched Jack’s arm. “I guess I’d have a problem on my hands. I guess we both would.”

He couldn’t even bring himself to think about that possibility. “Well, I guess—”

“Come on,” Turner called loudly as he emerged from the store’s entrance. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go find Troy.”

Jack watched Karen hop down onto the pontoon and climb into the plane. He shook his head. How could he possibly hope that Charlie Banks was dead? How could he be that terrible a person?

“You’re not shooting my son!” Duke yelled at Maddux as he barged his way past Sage and Grant into the Arctic Fire’s galley.

Maddux swung the barrel of the pistol quickly away from Speed Trap’s forehead and straight at Duke. It stopped Duke in his tracks five feet from his son, who was still tied tightly to the chair and beginning to sob.

“It’s a matter of national security,” Maddux answered matter-of-factly. Speed Trap had just finished telling him everything. “Your son must die.”

The kid had admitted floating the raft to Troy that night on the Bering Sea, and to telling a man named Ross Turner the same thing a few minutes ago at the Fish Head Pub. He’d also informed Maddux that Turner was working with Jack Jensen and that they were heading out in a seaplane right now to look for Troy. If those two found Troy first, everything Maddux had worked so hard to execute might be stopped a foot short of the goal line, and Roger Carlson would have died in vain. Maddux simply could not accept that outcome.

“I have no choice, Duke.”

“Please don’t kill me,” Speed Trap begged, starting to cry hard. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not killing him!” Duke shouted. “Don’t worry, son,” he called past Maddux.

“I have to,” Maddux said evenly. “And if you try stopping me, you’ll all be killed by the men waiting for me on the dock.” He nodded to the dock side of the ship. “Speed Trap too, so what’s the point? You might get me, but they’ll definitely get you. And it won’t be pleasant. They’ll make you pay.” He glanced quickly at each of them in turn. “You know me, you know what I do, and you know I’m telling you the truth. Don’t fuck with me. You’ll live to regret it…and then you’ll die.”

Duke shook his head as he glared at Maddux. “I don’t care. You can do whatever you want to me, but you’re not killing my son.”

“Get back, brother,” Sage urged. “We knew what we were getting into with these people. We didn’t have a choice. We owed the bank so much money from that other boat that sunk.” He shook his head sadly. “Speed Trap shouldn’t have gotten involved in this, Duke. He shouldn’t have thrown that raft out the back of the ship. It’s terrible, but it’s his own damn fault.”

“Troy saved his life,” Duke shot back angrily, taking a step at Maddux. “What did you expect my boy to do?”

“Get back,” Maddux ordered. “Now.”

Maddux was worried he was going to have to shoot Duke too — which could cause a major problem because Sage might not be able to handle seeing his brother go down. A nephew was one thing, but a brother might be different. And Maddux had to get out of here. Jack Jensen and Ross Turner were widening their lead on him with every second. He could feel them getting ahead, and he could feel himself starting to panic — and he never panicked.

“Let him go!” Duke shouted, taking a step toward Maddux, then two steps back when Maddux brought the gun up quickly with his finger on the trigger. “Please.”

“Stay back!” Sage yelled.

“Don’t kill me!” Speed Trap screamed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. But I’ll never tell anyone.”

“See,” Duke yelled, “he’ll never say anything! He’ll never say a word!”

Maddux swung the gun at Speed Trap and then back at Duke, who came at him again and then retreated again.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me. Please, God, don’t kill me!”

“I can’t have this,” Maddux muttered to himself. “I can’t have this right—”

The explosion shocked everyone as the chair Speed Trap was tied to tumbled backward with a loud crash. The gunshot had sounded incredibly loud inside the galley. Even Maddux had thrown himself to the floor out of instinct when the bullet blasted from the gun.

Maddux scrambled to where Speed Trap lay. He was still secured to the chair, which had crashed to the floor, and Maddux tried to find a pulse in the young man’s wrist and then in his neck. But there was none in either place. The single, well-aimed bullet had blown Speed Trap’s heart to bits, and he was dead.

Maddux glanced up at Grant, who was still aiming the smoking gun at his younger brother. “Good job, son,” he muttered to Grant approvingly as he stood up and moved to where Sage was standing with his hands to his face. “Get this ship out on the Bering Sea right now, Sage. And I mean right now.” Maddux glanced down at Duke, who’d crawled over to Speed Trap and was sobbing pitifully as he rested his head on his dead son’s bloody chest. “I might need you out there.”

Maddux patted Grant on the shoulder as he went by. “Good job,” he repeated. “The United States thanks you.”

When Maddux emerged onto the deck of the Arctic Fire, he glanced up just as a seaplane roared overhead. He knew who was in that plane.

It occurred to him as he signaled to the three men who were waiting for him on the dock that the man who’d just flown overhead was risking everything to save his brother. And that the man below had just killed his brother in cold blood.

CHAPTER 35

“Red, red, red,” Karen shouted excitedly as she pointed down at the ground through the late afternoon sunshine. She was sitting on the right side of the plane, directly behind Jack, who was in the front seat opposite Turner. “Red at two o’clock!”

“I see it, I see it,” Turner confirmed as he banked the seaplane a few degrees right so they were heading due east toward what Karen had spotted. The mass of material lay on the ground at the end of a brittle-looking wooden pier. The pier extended into the wide inlet behind the barrier island and the Bering Sea. “That’s what Bobby Mitchell told me to look for. He said red was the color of the rafts on the Arctic Fire. He said his Uncle Sage always had orange survival suits, yellow harnesses, and red rafts.”

“I don’t know if it’s a raft.” Jack stared down at the crumpled mass lying on the sand by the end of the dock. “But it sure is bright red.”

Everything seemed to be falling together, but he had to be ready for a dead end too. If he didn’t and Troy wasn’t in that lonely house a hundred yards inland from the pier, he’d be devastated. He’d always had the habit of preparing himself for disappointment, not anticipating success, because he never wanted to feel vulnerable. And he still couldn’t let go. He’d finally thought he could in that Montana bar the other night, when he and Karen seemed to be doing so well. But now she was being so distant. At least he knew why, though that didn’t help much.

“Great spot, Karen,” he called over his shoulder above the hum of the two propellers.

“Thanks.”

Other than her excited call about what was lying at the end of the pier a few moments ago, that was the first word she’d spoken in the plane.

After taking off from Dutch, Turner had pointed the nose of the seaplane east-northeast and then hugged the top of the Aleutian archipelago. They’d flown past Akutan and Mt. Gilbert, and then Turner had brought them down to three hundred feet as they reached the west end of Unimak Island. Since then they’d been skimming along the north side of the island looking for anything that might lead them to Troy.

Using the Arctic’s Fire’s approximate location as a starting point — which Speed Trap had given Turner at the bar in the Fish Head Pub — he’d done some rough calculations using winds and tides from that night. The calculations indicated that the best chance of spotting anything was on the north side of the island chain between the east end of Unimak Island and Nelson Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula.

If this turned out to be a dead end, it would be too dark to spot anything else once they were up in the air again, Jack realized. They’d have to cover the rest of the search area tomorrow, if the weather cooperated — which it wasn’t supposed to.

Turner landed the plane on the calm waters of the inlet in front of the little two-story house, which was in desperate need of repair, Jack saw as he jumped from one of the plane’s pontoons down into the shallow water Turner had taxied to. His heart was starting to pound hard. Mostly because he was close enough now to the mass of red material Karen had spotted to see that it was indeed a deflated raft — but also because he’d never done anything like this in his life and he was loving it.

Now he understood why Troy was constantly challenging nature. It was crazy to be out here in the wilds of a remote place like this. Maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as climbing Mount Everest or as remote or exotic a destination as Nepal, but it was still exciting as hell. And it was a lot better than sitting at Tri-State Securities trading bonds. If there was one thing he’d figured out from all of this, he knew he never wanted to work another desk job again.

“Everybody got guns?” Turner asked as he came around the front of the plane and slogged out of the shallow water. He was holding an over-and-under shotgun.

And, Jack saw, Turner had a .44-caliber Magnum in his wide belt. The thick, black handle protruded ominously. “Yeah, I’ve got my nine millimeter,” Jack answered with an impressed grin. Ross Turner was one damned intimidating presence. And Jack was damned glad he was here with them.

Turner pointed at Karen. “You?”

She gestured at the small of her back. “I’ve got my thirty-eight.”

“OK, let’s go.”

Jack pointed at the small, weather-beaten house as they walked toward it. “Why do people live like this, Ross?”

“What do you mean?”

“There isn’t a town anywhere near here. Hell, there probably isn’t another house that near here. Who lives like this?”

Tucker shook his head grimly. “People who really don’t want you to ask them what their last name is.”

As they closed in on the house, the front door burst open and an older woman dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt rushed out onto the porch brandishing a shotgun. She looked pretty weather-beaten herself, Jack noticed, but she certainly wasn’t lacking in the guts department.

“What do you want?” she demanded angrily, aiming the weapon at Turner before he could raise his gun.

“Easy, ma’am,” Jack called out loudly, stopping quickly and holding both hands out with his palms facing the porch. “We sure don’t want any trouble.”

“What do you want?” she asked again.

“I’m looking for my brother, Troy.”

“Never heard of him and never seen him,” the woman answered. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“What about that raft?” Jack asked, motioning over his shoulder toward the pier. He didn’t want to let this go. It had felt like Troy was so close. “We think it’s the kind he would have been in.”

“That’s just an old raft from my husband’s fishing boat.”

“What boat? I didn’t see any—”

“He’s out on the ocean right now,” the older woman interrupted, stepping forward and swinging the shotgun in Jack’s direction. “So I’m alone, and I got a real itchy trigger finger when I’m alone.”

It felt to Jack as if his heart actually dropped out of his chest just then. He’d been so ready to see Troy, so certain that they were seconds from reuniting. And he realized that no amount of prepping himself for disappointment would have been enough to ease the sadness he was suddenly experiencing. Apparently, they were going to have to head back to Dutch Harbor and try looking farther east tomorrow.

But he’d come so far.

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to—”

“I told you,” the woman said, bringing the gun up and aiming it directly at Jack’s chest, “I don’t know who he is.”

“I believe that’s our cue to leave,” Turner said quietly, backing off two steps very slowly. “Let’s go, Jack.”

“OK, OK,” he murmured softly. “Well, I’m sorry we bothered—”

“Hello, brother.”

Jack’s gaze flashed to the left as a slim figure stepped out from behind the worn, gray shingles on that side of the house. “Troy!”

“Jackson!” It was the nickname Troy had used for Jack since their playground days.

They hustled toward each other and hugged hard, slapping each other on the back and shoulders over and over.

“Sorry for that cat-and-mouse crap,” Troy apologized, “but I had to make sure who it was.”

“No problem. God, you’re thin,” Jack said, still experiencing the overwhelming wave of emotion that had hit him as soon as Troy had stepped out from behind the house. He brushed tears from his eyes and cheeks as he finally pulled back from their embrace. “I knew you weren’t dead. I knew it, goddamn it!”

“What are you doing here?” Troy asked as he wiped away tears of his own.

“Saving your ass.”

“Yeah, yeah, but why? Why are you here?”

“We heard you were washed off the Arctic Fire by a rogue wave.” Jack shook his head. “I knew that wasn’t true when I found out that the other four guys aboard the Fire were OK. I was convinced you would have been the last to go off that ship, not the first. So I came here to find out what really happened.” He pointed at Turner. “This is an old friend of mine from Denison. His name’s Ross Turner.”

“Hey, Ross.” Troy waved at Turner. Then he smiled and nodded at Karen. “Hey, Karen.”

“Hello, Troy.” Her eyes were watery too. “I’m so glad you’re OK.”

“You’re not the only one,” Troy agreed with a roll of his eyes. “Beeeelieve me.”

Everyone laughed loudly, even the woman on the porch.

“I remember your name,” Troy said, pointing at Turner. “I remember my brother talking about you.”

“Ross lives here in Alaska,” Jack explained. “He’s been a big help getting me this far, let me tell you.”

“Thanks, Ross,” Troy called out. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“No worries, pal,” Turner called back. “Your brother’s a good man. I wanted to help him any way I could.”

Jack put a hand on Troy’s bony shoulder and smiled. “By the way, Troy, we really are brothers. Half brothers, anyway.”

Troy’s eyes opened wide. “What?”

Jack quickly explained what Bill had told him in his office on Wall Street. And then they hugged again…even harder this time.

“I can’t believe it,” Troy muttered, shaking his head. “This is awesome.”

“We got that box from the Bankses’ cabin in Minnesota,” Jack said. He gestured toward Karen. “She got your letter and told me about it. We stopped at the cabin on the way out here.”

“Any problems?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll explain later.” Jack would tell him about the cop when they had more time.

“Did you read what I put in there?” Troy asked.

“Every word. It’s incredible.”

“Yeah, well, that guy Shane Maddux is crazy. I mean, really crazy. What about President Dorn?” he asked worriedly.

“He’s OK,” Jack answered, “as far as we know, anyway. There wasn’t anything on the news when we left Dutch. We haven’t heard about any kind of assassination attempt.”

“What about an LNG tanker blowing up in Boston Harbor?”

“No.”

Troy’s shoulders sagged. “Thank God.”

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, did you call someone after you read the stuff?”

“Who was I supposed to call, brother? And not get arrested or thrown into an insane asylum. And not get Shane Maddux and Roger Carlson very, very pissed off at Karen and me.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Troy admitted.

“Candidly,” Jack continued, “I wasn’t sure you really wanted her to contact anybody. I couldn’t figure out why you’d write it all down and then put it in a box. I couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t report Maddux yourself.”

“I put all that in there in case I was killed. I had a feeling something was up, and I wanted Maddux to go down if he murdered me. I was going to take out Maddux before he could shoot President Dorn, but I never got the chance. He took me out first.”

“He thought he did,” Jack said defiantly. He was remembering what Hunter had said at the memorial service. “But you’re one of those untouchables, brother. I swear you are.”

“Maybe.” Troy gestured at the house. “There’s no landline here, and cell phones don’t work this far out. But we need to talk to people fast. I’m sure Maddux is still planning to kill Dorn. It’s just a matter of time, I’m telling you. He hates the guy.”

“We can be back in Dutch Harbor in less than an hour. You can make your calls from there. Let’s grab your stuff and go.”

Troy chuckled as he pulled the pockets out of his jeans and then spread his arms wide. “You’re looking at everything I own.” He nodded toward the front porch. “Before we go there’s someone you need to meet.” Troy grabbed Jack’s arm. “But hurry. We’ve got to make those calls soon.”

As they were climbing the porch steps toward where the older woman was standing, Jack had to catch Troy. He was weak, and it was strange for Jack to see him so fragile. He’d always exuded so much strength and energy.

“This is Betty,” Troy said, smiling affectionately at the older woman, who was still holding her shotgun when they made it to the porch. “Betty, this is my older brother, Jack.”

Jack stepped forward and hugged the woman gently. He loved the way it had sounded when Troy had said the word “brother.” It was accurate now. “Thanks for taking care of him, Betty.”

“She sure did take care of me,” Troy agreed. “She was basically my nurse. I would have died without this woman. I didn’t even wake up for a few days after I got here.”

“Actually, it was almost a week before you woke up,” Betty corrected him in her gravelly voice, balancing the gun on her forearm as she pulled a pack of Camels from her coat pocket and lit one. “I was worried he was gonna catch pneumonia,” she explained, stuffing the cigarettes back into her pocket, “but he fought it off. There were a couple of bad nights, but he’s a strong kid.”

Troy smiled. “I think it was your fish chowder that saved me, Betty.” He glanced at Jack. “I couldn’t even pick up a spoon for a day or two after I woke up. She had to feed me.”

“How’d that feel?”

“Pretty pathetic.” He put a hand on Betty’s shoulder. “But thank God she was here.”

Jack pointed at the ocean beyond the wide inlet and the barrier island, then at the raft. “So Troy washed up on the beach over there?”

The woman exhaled a thick cloud of cigarette smoke as she shook her head. “My husband found Troy when he was out fishing. He was about five miles offshore when he spotted the raft and pulled him in.”

“And your husband’s out fishing again?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, he’s gone a lot.”

Jack gazed at the deflated raft. He’d noticed how Troy hadn’t mentioned Betty’s last name when he’d introduced her.

“Thanks, Betty,” Troy whispered into the older woman’s ear as he hugged her. “We’ve gotta get going, but I’ll be back to see you soon.”

“You better.”

He kissed her on the cheek, and then he and Jack moved carefully back down the stairs after Jack had given her another hug as well.

“You all right, brother?” Jack asked.

“I could use five thousand calories a day for two weeks, and a month of R and R,” Troy admitted, moving as fast as he could in his weakened condition. “But we don’t have time for that. Do we, Jackson?”

“No, we don’t.”

“How did you and Karen hook up?” Troy asked as they headed for the seaplane with Turner and Karen lagging behind a little to give them privacy.

Jack explained how Turner had pointed him toward Baltimore — and Karen.

As Jack finished explaining, Troy broke into a huge grin. “You like her, don’t you, Jackson?” he asked quietly.

“What?”

“I can tell what’s going on with you two,” Troy said good-naturedly. “It’s obvious.”

“What’s obvious?” Jack demanded defensively. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re into her, and don’t even try denying it. I saw the way you’ve been looking at her.”

“I haven’t looked at her once in the last five minutes.”

“No, it’s been twenty times in the last two.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“She’s into you too, brother.”

Jack’s eyes raced to Troy’s. “You really think so?”

“I knew it!” Troy pumped his fist several times quickly. “I knew you liked her.”

“I more than like her,” Jack admitted as he leaned toward Troy. “But how did you know?”

“I’m your brother.”

Jack glanced over. “Yeah, right.” He thought again about how it sounded so good to hear that — and to realize it was true after all the years of thinking he was adopted.

Troy patted Jack on the shoulder. “Well, good for you. I’m really glad you found each other. Charlie would be glad too. And I mean that.”

Jack wondered if Karen had heard him. Troy had said it pretty loudly. “Thanks.” He wanted to look back at her, but he didn’t.

“So how are Lisa and Little Jack?” Troy asked.

As he was about to answer, Jack heard a thumping in the distance that sounded like the heartbeat of a giant. Seconds later, two small black helicopters appeared on the horizon out of the dusk. They were skimming thirty feet above the water’s surface.

“Jesus Christ!” Troy stopped short and stared intently for a second at the two choppers that were bearing down on them. “Everybody back to the house!” he shouted. “Now! Go, go!”

“What the hell?” Jack yelled as they all turned and sprinted the way they’d just come. “What’s going on?”

“Those are the new MHs!” Troy shouted, already breathing hard. “Those are Special Forces’ Little Birds, and they are very dangerous machines. I’d recognize them anywhere, even from that distance. And I’m sure Shane Maddux has something to do with them. That’s his style. Believe me, they aren’t coming to save us.”

Jack held Troy’s arm as they loped along, trying to support him. “Shouldn’t we try to get to the plane and get out of here?” He was worried Troy was going to fall as they ran.

“Negative,” Troy replied decisively. “Even if we somehow got airborne, they’d shoot Turner’s plane out of the sky like it was a hot air balloon floating through a summer evening. It’d be a turkey shoot.”

“Jesus.”

“We’d never make it into the air, anyway. Those things will be here in a few seconds. They’re damn fast.”

“Why didn’t we hear them before now?”

“They’ve got six blades up and four on the back. The more blades a chopper has, the quieter it is. They’re built for stealth…and killing.”

They were still twenty yards from the house when the lead chopper roared overhead and laid down two lines of withering fire ten feet apart. The bullets barely missed Jack, Troy, and Turner as they blew by in exploding parallel paths. But Karen shrieked loudly and tumbled to the ground just as the second helicopter — trailing directly behind the first one — held up and hovered above them.

Jack turned around to help her, but Troy grabbed him by the shirt collar and tried to keep dragging him along toward the steps leading up to the porch. “No, brother!” he yelled as Jack struggled against him. “It’s too dangerous out here. These are serious motherfuckers. We need to be inside and behind cover to have any chance.”

“I’ve got to get to her,” Jack shouted above the roar of the engine above them and the hurricane-force winds whipping down all around them. “I can’t leave her out here.”

A rope dropped from the right side of the hovering chopper as the other one roared back around from the far side of the house only a few feet off the ground. Two figures dressed in black dropped quickly down the rope, one after the other, as the first chopper settled to the ground two hundred feet away from the house. It landed directly behind the spot where the two men had just hit the ground. The rope blew wildly around beneath the still-hovering helicopter without the weight of the men on it.

As Jack whipped his Glock.9 mm from his belt and ripped free from Troy’s grasp, there were two loud blasts from his right. He raced for Karen, who was trying desperately to get to her feet, when one of the two men who’d just dropped down the rope hurtled backward. He’d been hit in the chest by a blast from Turner’s shotgun.

Jack squeezed the trigger of his Glock four times in rapid succession, and he dropped the other guy who’d slid down the rope from the hovering chopper. But not before the man raked Turner’s huge body with machine-gun fire.

Turner hurtled backward as the chopper above Jack descended suddenly until it was only a few feet above him, sending him sprawling to the ground. When he looked up through blowing dirt and sand, he saw another man jump from the helicopter, grab Karen, heave her into the chopper, and then haul himself back up into it.

“No, no!” he shouted as the helicopter lifted up and raced away. He fired every round left in his clip at the helicopter as it disappeared into the fading light above the Bering Sea, but that quickly Karen was gone. “Damn it!”

Four more men raced through the twilight at Jack and Troy from the second helicopter. Jack dashed to Turner’s body and ripped the .44-caliber Magnum from his belt. “Brother!” he shouted as hurled the gun at Troy.

Troy caught the .44 neatly out of midair and in the same motion dropped to the ground and began firing as Jack grabbed Turner’s shotgun and fired at the men too.

At the same moment, two shotgun blasts exploded from an upstairs window of the house, and one of the men racing at them went down. Then Troy put another one of them to the ground just as Jack saw another figure toss something at the window.

The top floor of the house exploded a second later.

And then a brilliant flash exploded directly in front of Jack. His nose filled instantly with the foulest stench he’d ever smelled, and then everything went black.

CHAPTER 36

As Jack came to consciousness, he heard someone shouting but he couldn’t really understand the words — or see anything. The anesthetic released in the explosion outside had been terribly powerful. His head was pounding like it never had. Like on top of having the worst hangover ever, his brain was being split in two by an ax with each word being yelled. Then the words began to make sense, but he still couldn’t make out the images around him. Everything was still a blur.

As his vision finally began to clear and the pounding subsided a little, Jack realized that he was tied tightly to a chair, and that Troy was secured to another chair a few feet away. A small man dressed all in black stood directly in front of Troy. Jack recognized him right away. He was the man who’d been walking beside the tall guy with the long blond hair wearing the Arctic Fire jacket in Dutch Harbor.

“What information did you give away, Troy?” the little man yelled. “And who did you give it to?”

“Screw you.”

“Address me properly. I am your leader. I am Red Fox One.”

“Fuck you, Maddux. You aren’t my leader anymore.”

So this was Shane Maddux, Jack realized as he glanced away from Maddux and toward the only other person in the room. This man was standing by the doorway of the cramped living room holding a small machine gun with both hands. He was dressed all in black too. But, unlike Maddux, his face was obscured by a ski mask.

“You just signed your brother’s death warrant,” Maddux said gravely. “You shouldn’t have said my name, Troy.”

“You’re gonna kill us both whether he knows your name or not. Don’t act like you aren’t.”

“But I might have been humane about it.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You love it. You can’t wait to torture both of us.”

“I need to know what information you’ve given away and who you’ve given it to,” Maddux demanded again as the tone of his voice turned urgent. “And I need to know now!” he roared. “Do yourself and your brother a favor. Tell me quickly and I’ll have some sympathy for you.”

“No.”

Maddux motioned at Jack. “Do you really want to see what I’m capable of doing to him?”

“Fuck you, Shane,” Troy snapped. “You just threw a grenade at a sixty-year-old woman and blew her to bits. Do you think I really have any doubt about what you’re capable of doing to my brother?”

“She killed one of my men. She had it coming.”

“Too bad she didn’t kill you too.”

Maddux moved several steps over so that he was standing in front of Jack. “This won’t go well for you, and you have your brother to thank.”

“Fuck you, Maddux,” Jack said defiantly, making certain the little man understood that he knew his name. “Do you really feel OK about killing that poor woman upstairs?”

“She’s inconsequential to my life or to the well-being of the United States.” He raised both eyebrows and shrugged. “She had to die for the good of the whole. It’s as simple as that.” He shook his head. “She was probably a criminal, anyway. So we’re better off without her.”

“You’re sick. I feel bad for you.”

“Don’t feel too bad, because I’m going to—”

Maddux’s words were drowned out by the blast of a large-caliber bullet. The man clutching the machine gun stumbled back against the wall, spraying the ceiling with bullets as his finger constricted on the trigger.

As the machine-gun fire stopped, an older man stepped through the front door into the living room, aimed a revolver at the masked man, and calmly fired a head shot. Blood exploded from the man’s head, and he keeled over limply as the older man swung his gun smoothly at Maddux.

“You bastard,” the old man whispered. “That woman you killed upstairs was my wife.”

Jack trained the .44-caliber Magnum on Maddux, who was now tied to the same chair Jack had been tied to only minutes before. Troy had lashed Maddux to the chair and then told Jack to watch him carefully before going somewhere with the old man. “Where’s Karen?” he asked.

Maddux laughed loudly. “You’ll never get anything from me I don’t want you to get.”

“Where the hell is she?” Jack demanded again.

“You’re wasting your time,” Maddux retorted arrogantly.

“He’s right,” Troy said as he moved through the front doorway and into the living room. He was followed by the old man, who gazed at Maddux sullenly while he stood over the body of the man he’d shot a few minutes ago. “You’re wasting your time, Jack.”

“So what do we do?”

Troy lifted the crude wooden box he was carrying and gestured at Maddux. “Get him to tell us everything we want to know.”

“You just said it was a waste of time trying to get him to talk.”

“No. I said what you were doing was a waste of time. But I know how to get to him.”

“We’re not torturing him,” Jack said firmly, stepping between Troy and Maddux. “We’re not torturing anyone.”

“We’re doing what we need to do, Jack. Get out of my way.”

“No.”

“Are you out of your mind?” the old man asked incredulously. “This guy killed my wife. There really isn’t anything left of her upstairs. I saw a few fingers and a leg, but nothing else I recognized as human. That’s all I have left of her, and you have sympathy for him?”

“I have no sympathy for him at all,” Jack assured the older man compassionately. “But we can’t sink to his level. We have to do the right thing here.”

Troy stepped toward Maddux, but Jack intercepted him. They were standing face-to-face in the middle of the room.

“I’m not letting you do this,” Jack said evenly. “I don’t know what you think you’re gonna do to him, but I can’t let you do it. We have to let the system work, Troy.”

“There is no system for a man like Shane Maddux. Who would we turn him over to? He has immunity from everything, Jack. He really is bulletproof, at least from the United States government. If they prosecute him, every other agent who has his kind of immunity quits because they can’t trust what they’ve been told, and then the country’s fucked. Believe me when I tell you that we’d have chaos on our hands if that happened. There are plenty of very brave men and women out there protecting us who need that immunity. Our enemies would take immediate advantage of it if we took it away from them.” Troy shook his head. “Shane Maddux will never be prosecuted for anything, Jack. He’ll go free a day after we turn him over to the authorities, if not sooner. Then you and I are fucked.” He pointed at Maddux. “Because that man would never stop looking for us until he found us and killed us.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jack,” Maddux called defiantly from the chair. “Let him torture me.” He laughed loudly. “He won’t get anything out of me.”

“You can’t imagine what that guy was going to do to you,” Troy said, nodding over Jack’s shoulder at Maddux. “And he wouldn’t have given a damn about how much pain he was causing you. In fact, he would have enjoyed watching you suffer.”

“I don’t care.” Jack couldn’t give in to this. It went against everything he believed in.

“Just like I don’t care about what’s happening to Karen right now,” Maddux said. He laughed harshly. “They’ve probably got her bent over something and they’re all taking turns on her. I just wish I could too. But I’ll get my chance at some point. Troy’s right. I have immunity from everything.”

“Get out of my way,” Troy ordered.

“I bet they’re doing her real good right now!” Maddux shouted at Jack. “And there’s nothing she can do about it. She’s just got to take all of them any way they want to take her and deal with it.”

Jack shut his eyes tightly, trying to block out what Maddux was yelling.

“And then they’ll kill her real slow when they’re done with her,” Maddux continued. “So maybe I won’t get my chance with Karen after all. But that’s OK. I’ll just do it to some other bitch I feel like doing it to. Yeah, I’ll do it to—”

“Shut up, Maddux!” Jack shouted. “Shut your fucking mouth!”

“What’s wrong with you, Jack?” the old man demanded. “How can you protect this prick? Did you hear what he just said?”

“He can handle doing nothing because he’s a goddamned faggot!” Maddux roared. “That’s what’s wrong with Jack Jensen.”

Jack clenched his teeth, calling on all of his self-control. “Let’s just get him out of here and turn him over to someone.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? There’s no one to turn him over to.” Troy shook his head. “Jackson, what’s wrong with you?”

“I can’t let you do it, Troy.”

“But I can,” the old man said firmly, placing the barrel of his pistol against Jack’s head. “Give up your weapon,” he demanded calmly, “or I shoot. I swear to God I shoot. I can’t watch this any longer. Five, four—”

“Give me the gun, Jack!” Troy shouted. “Don’t let him shoot you. He just lost his wife. He’s not thinking straight. He’s gonna kill you, for Christ’s sake.”

“Three, two—”

“Jack! Drop the fucking gun.”

“One—”

Jack’s gun banged loudly on the floor after he dropped it.

“You did the right thing,” Troy muttered breathlessly. “Now get out of my way.”

Jack turned around and watched Troy approach Maddux. He could barely feel the steel barrel of the pistol the old man was still holding to his head. He could barely feel anything at this point. He was completely numb, physically and emotionally.

“What do you think you’re gonna do with that?” Maddux asked smugly, staring at the wooden box in Troy’s hands.

Troy smiled thinly. “I found your diary, and shame on you for keeping one. You always told us Falcons never to write anything down. But you broke your own rule, and now you’re going to pay.” Troy held the box up so Maddux could get an even better look at it. “I just made this thing, and I know it doesn’t look very good. But it’ll work just fine.” He placed the box on the seat of the empty chair beside the one Maddux was lashed to and pulled a dark plastic trash bag from his back pocket. “Now,” Troy said calmly, “tell me what I want to know.”

“Fuck you, asshole. You’ll never get anything out of me and you know it.”

They were defiant words, but Jack had seen a chink in Maddux’s armor. He’d seen that slight wince as Maddux looked at the box sitting on the chair beside his.

“Where’s Karen?” Troy asked as he opened the bag. “Tell me now or I put you in that tiny, tiny space you can’t stand. The same tiny space that priest put you in when you weren’t a good little boy. When you wouldn’t do all those terrible things he wanted you to do in that room beneath the altar.”

Maddux licked his lips over and over and shook his head hard. “No. Fuck you.”

Jack saw how fast Maddux was starting to breathe. Troy was getting to him.

“Where and when is President Dorn going to be shot?” Troy demanded. “Is there another LNG tanker coming at the United States? Where’s Karen? Tell me everything, Shane, or your head goes in the box. That hole in the bottom of it is for your neck. See, I put the bag over your head, then the box over the bag, and suddenly you’re in that closet that priest made you go in.”

“No, no!” Maddux shouted as he began to strain frantically against the ropes holding him to the chair.

“Claustrophobia,” Troy hissed. “That’s what’s waiting for you inside the bag and the box. You can’t take the tiny, dark spaces. I know it because I read it on those pages. You did all those terrible things for the priest because you couldn’t handle the darkness in the closet, and you hated the way you thought the walls were coming in on you. Like he told you they were. You couldn’t handle the thought of him making you go back in there.” Troy moved toward Maddux with the bag wide open. “And you still can’t.” He hesitated a few inches away as Maddux strained desperately against the ropes and moved his head wildly from side to side. “Now where’s Karen?”

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Jack grimaced as he watched Troy roughly pull the bag down over Maddux’s head. Then Troy picked up the box off the chair, closed it on Maddux’s head using the hinges, and hooked it shut.

For several seconds Maddux managed to remain calm. Then he began to shout and scream from beneath the bag and the box, and suddenly he and the chair went tumbling over. As he hit the floor, his screams grew louder.

Instinctively, Jack took a step forward to help.

“Don’t move,” the old man ordered, grabbing Jack’s arm and pulling him back. “Stay right where you are, son.”

After listening to thirty seconds of screaming and shouting, Troy removed the wooden box from Maddux’s head and then pulled the bag off. “Now talk,” he ordered firmly. “Tell me everything.”

Maddux couldn’t spill his guts fast enough. In a matter of seconds he’d told them everything.

First, he told them where Karen had been taken. Then he gave them details of President Dorn’s imminent assassination. Then he told them that the Pegasus was heading for Virginia Beach, not Savannah, and that the huge ship had almost reached its target.

When Maddux was finished answering Troy’s questions, Jack stepped forward as the old man let the gun barrel drop. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the bastard who was still sprawled on the floor tied to the chair. “I’ve got one more question.”

After Maddux had answered it, Jack glanced at Troy. “What now?”

“We find the Arctic Fire. Fast!”

“How?”

“We take that chopper outside.”

“Can you fly it?” Jack asked incredulously.

“I sure can, Jackson.” Troy smiled. “I can fly almost anything.”

The leader of the small band of desperate men sailing the huge ship westward gazed ahead through the darkness. The Pegasus was only hours from reaching the Atlantic Coast of the United States of America. They were going to make it after all. He could feel it.

Stein stared through the darkness at the ceiling fan, which was rotating slowly above him as he lay on his hotel room bed down the hall from the president’s suite. He had a terrible feeling about this, like no feeling he’d ever had before. He hated David Dorn now, but the man was still the president of the United States.

He ran both hands through his gray hair and swallowed hard. What would he do at that critical moment if it actually occurred? He honestly didn’t know.

Emotionally, that was tearing him apart.

CHAPTER 37

“There she is,” Troy called out as he pointed through the helicopter’s windshield toward the lights in the distance. “That’s got to be her. She’s supposed to be the only ship in the area.”

One call to the Coast Guard station on Kodiak, a quick call back moments later from the CG, and they had the Fire’s position. Captain Sage had only gotten about thirty miles outside of Dutch Harbor, and the chopper was coming up behind the ship quickly.

“You ready, Jack?”

There were no doors on the chopper, just open spaces where the doors definitely should have been as far as Jack was concerned. As he peered cautiously down over the side of the helicopter at the dark ocean they were skimming across, he held on to his seat with a death grip. They were only thirty feet above the water’s relatively calm surface, but thirty feet was thirty feet. It was twice fifteen, and the chopper was bouncing around in rough turbulence, which made everything even more gut-wrenching.

“Yeah,” Jack answered in a hollow, unconvincing voice, more to himself than Troy. But he had to go over the side if he was going to save Karen. “I’m ready.”

After Troy had removed the box and the bag from Maddux’s head, and Maddux had answered all of Troy’s questions, he’d told them that Charlie Banks had to be dead. That there was almost no chance he could have survived the way Troy had. It had been a year. Someone would have heard something by now. And Speed Trap hadn’t floated a raft to Charlie.

The Coast Guard was heading for the Fire too, by air and sea. But Jack and Troy weren’t waiting for them. Every second was precious, and they had to get to the ship and get on it as soon as possible — if they were going to save Karen.

“You really think we should have left Maddux with that old man at the house?” Jack was trying to think of anything but how he had to go over the side to get down to the Arctic Fire. “You know he’s gonna kill Maddux.”

“If he does, then I don’t have to.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re really going back to that house after this to kill him?”

Troy nodded regretfully. “I told you. We don’t have any choice. If we turned Maddux over to someone, he’d be free almost right away, and sooner or later he’d come after us. We’d live the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. And we probably wouldn’t see him until it was too late, no matter how hard we looked. If Maddux doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be. He has the infrastructure available to him to remain invisible as long as he wants. That’s what people don’t understand. You could never stay hidden like that, Jack, but Maddux can. He has fanatics around the world who’ll help him do almost anything.”

“Why didn’t you just kill Maddux before we took off?” Jack hated to admit it, but what Troy had just laid out scared the living hell out of him. He’d already been nervous because they were racing over the ocean with no door between him and the water, but now that speech had him really thinking. “Why make it so you have to go back?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone in cold blood, even that bastard. I…I…” Troy faltered.

“What?” Jack asked loudly. “What is it?”

“I hope the old man does kill him.” Troy grimaced. “That’s a terrible thing to say, but I do.”

Jack had been wondering about this since he’d found out that Troy was in Red Cell Seven, and now seemed like an appropriate time to ask the question. “You ever killed anyone, brother?”

“We’ll talk about that someday, Jackson. I’ll tell you everything. But not now.” Troy pointed at the ship. They were almost to it. “This is gonna have to be fast!” he shouted over the roar of the rotor and the engine. “There’s only one of you, and surprise is the only advantage you’ve got. You can’t hesitate at all when we get close. You’re gonna have to be on the rope and ready.”

“Jesus,” Jack muttered. His heart was already pounding so hard his vision was blurring with each beat.

“I wish I could do it for you!” Troy yelled. “But somebody’s gotta fly this thing.” He reached over and patted Jack’s leg. “Maddux said they didn’t leave any Special Forces guys behind on the Fire after they dropped Karen off.” He grimaced. “But if you think you see one of those guys, get over the side of the ship right away and throw yourself in the water. They’ve got too much training on you. The Coast Guard will pull you out of the water when they get here.” He hesitated. “Unless, of course, the sharks get you first or the SF guys shoot down the CG chopper.”

“Jesus,” Jack muttered again. He wasn’t finding this outdoor stuff at all exciting or invigorating anymore. All of a sudden trading bonds at Tri-State was looking pretty good again.

When they were a hundred yards off the Arctic Fire’s stern, Troy patted Jack’s leg again. “Time to go over! Come on, pal.”

Jack glanced down at the water again and instantly felt his body seizing up the same way it had on the plane that night over Connecticut after the jump door was open. The thought of even tossing the rope over the side of the chopper was paralyzing him.

“Come on, brother! You’ve got to do it.” Troy grabbed Jack’s chin and pulled it left so they were staring into each other’s eyes momentarily as the helicopter barreled ahead. “Show me something, Jackson!”

Jack gazed back into his brother’s piercing stare. Troy was right. He cared about Karen too much to let this stupid phobia control him. He’d asked her to come along with him on this crazy ride, and it was his responsibility to get her out of what he’d gotten her into. And he needed to show Troy that the little brother wasn’t the only one in the family with guts.

He tossed the rope over and watched it drop sickeningly fast down toward the water. That was where he had to go.

Maddux stole through the back of the house and into the night. There were no ties that could bind him permanently. Troy Jensen was as good as any man alive at securing a prisoner, but it didn’t matter. Harry Houdini was a rank amateur compared to Shane Maddux when it came to escape.

He’d thought about killing the old man, but then decided against it. He had nothing against the guy, and, in a small way, he felt bad for killing his wife. The woman had fired on him and killed one of his men during the battle, but she’d been protecting her home. If she hadn’t been shooting at him, he wouldn’t have tossed the grenade at her. It had been a kill-or-be-killed situation in battle, and that was all.

Maddux took a deep breath. He had a long trek ahead of him, but that was all right. He was back in the shadows where he felt completely comfortable, and he loved it. There were enemies to kill.

When Jack dropped to the deck of the Arctic Fire, Grant was on him before he could even draw his pistol. In seconds, Grant had him pinned to the deck wall near the crane and was lifting him over the side as Troy circled above in the helicopter, unable to help.

But just as Grant was about to toss him into the frigid water, Jack got his right arm free, whipped Turner’s .44 Magnum from his belt, and slammed the big man in the head with it. Grant crumpled to the wet deck just as Duke emerged from a doorway beneath the bridge.

“Don’t move!” Jack shouted, leveling the huge pistol at the man as he sucked in air. “I’ll shoot you where you stand if you do.” He’d had enough. He had to help Karen if she was still alive, and he didn’t care what he had to do to find to her. If he had to shoot this man, so be it.

“Please don’t shoot,” Duke begged, throwing his hands in the air.

“Where’s the girl?” Jack shouted.

“I’ll take you to her,” Duke called.

Moments later Jack and Karen were in each other’s arms. She’d been hit in the thigh during the initial helicopter attack on Unimak Island, but the wound wasn’t life threatening and Duke had bandaged her up after Maddux’s people had dropped her off on the Arctic Fire.

“Thank God you got here,” she murmured. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t.”

Jack smiled down at her as he shook his head in disbelief. “My brother’s a pretty amazing guy.”

She smiled back at him. “So are you, Jack.”

Ten miles, the leader realized as he stared sadly through the night-vision binoculars. Two fighter jets were streaking toward the Pegasus through the darkness. Just ten short miles and they would have plowed into the sands of Virginia Beach. That was how close he’d come to changing world history.

He saw a flame erupt from the wing of the fighter to the left, and he knew that the remainder of his life could now be measured in seconds. They could have boarded the ship, but the United States military had decided to send a message to any other would-be terrorists. And that message was clear: they weren’t afraid to blow an LNG tanker to hell.

The explosion was felt as far away as Washington, DC.

“I can’t get through to him,” Jack muttered as he looked over at Troy. They were standing on the bridge of the Arctic Fire and Jack was using the ship’s phone. “He must be asleep. It’s late on the East Coast.”

“Try him again.”

“You sure Dad’s on our side?”

Jack had explained to Troy about the white van on Broadway, how the thing had almost run him down right after he’d left Bill’s office that day. How it seemed like too much of a coincidence. But Troy had dismissed any notion that his father would be behind anything like that. He’d explained that Bill was a Red Cell Seven associate, but that he wasn’t so fanatical that he’d try to kill his own stepson.

“You sure he’s going to want to stop this assassination?”

“Dad would do anything to stop the president of the United States from being assassinated,” Troy answered firmly. “He may not agree with Dorn’s politics, or even like the guy, but he’d never want him dead.” Troy hesitated. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, OK, Jack?”

“OK.”

“You don’t know Dad like I do.”

Jack couldn’t argue with that. “Tell me who else to call,” he urged. “We can’t wait any longer.”

“I don’t trust anyone else,” Troy replied. “Who knows how deep the conspiracy goes?”

“Well, we know if we don’t call someone, President Dorn’s going to be shot.” Jack gazed at Troy intently. “What the hell are we supposed to do? You got through to Naval Ops in Norfolk and told them about the Pegasus. They listened to you.”

“That’s black and white,” Troy explained. “Norfolk Naval Ops has to put planes in the air as soon as they get a call like that from someone like me. They can’t ignore it. It’s standard procedure. And if there’s an LNG tanker out in the Atlantic where it isn’t supposed to be, they board it or blow it up. It’s as simple as that.” He shook his head. “But if we call the wrong person about President Dorn being assassinated, the message might not get through to people who can do something about it. And by calling without knowing exactly what’s going on, without knowing exactly who we’re talking to, we could give people inside the conspiracy a heads-up that we know about it. And, again, we’ll have people after us we don’t want to have after us. They might not be as deadly as Maddux, but it still won’t be a situation we want to deal with.”

Jack stared at Troy for a few moments longer. Then he grabbed the bridge phone and dialed Bill’s number again.

Stein’s cell phone began to vibrate just as President Dorn began his speech. The street in front of the stage was mobbed, and people were hanging out of windows and off trees just to get a glimpse of David Dorn. It was just seven o’clock in the morning, but the people of Los Angeles had turned out en masse to see their president.

Stein pulled his phone out of his suit pocket and read the first few words of the urgent text message from Bill Jensen. Just as Dorn’s deep voice began reverberating through the huge speakers on both sides of the wide stage.

Stein didn’t bother finishing the message. He threw the phone down, jumped out of his seat on the left side of the stage, and sprinted for the president.

Ryan O’Hara took a deep breath as he stared through the telescopic sight that was mounted atop his favorite rifle — an Accuracy International L96 he’d owned for a while. He never missed with this weapon.

He exhaled half the breath he’d just taken as he caressed the trigger gently with his finger. President Dorn had just started his speech.

It wouldn’t go on for much longer. O’Hara had a perfect shot at the president’s chest from here, from just under two hundred yards away. The leader of the free world was about to die. This was one of the easiest shots he could have.

As O’Hara squeezed the trigger, he was aware of someone running toward the president in his peripheral vision.

Stein didn’t hear the explosion of the bullet being fired, but he felt it rip through his chest just as he reached the dais and threw himself in front of Dorn. As he lay sprawled on the stage floor, he began to taste blood and a terrible sadness overwhelmed him. He wasn’t sad about his own death. He was sad that David Dorn was lying beside him. The bullet must have passed through him and into the president — or the shooter had fired again. Either way, Dorn had been hit too.

As his eyes shut for the last time, a small smile still tugged at his lips. He hated Dorn, but he’d still tried to save the president’s life. He was a true patriot. They would write good things about him in the history books.

CHAPTER 38

Jack and Karen sat side by side on a wooden bench outside the Anchorage hospital. It had turned very cold this afternoon, but they were wrapped up in warm down jackets. And they were enjoying the crystal-clear night sky that was full of glittering stars.

“You sure you’re all right?” Jack asked. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he’d rescued her, and they’d snuck out of the hospital a few minutes ago, after visiting hours were over. “I don’t want you to overdo it, OK?”

“My leg’s a little sore. But I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you’re fine. Remember, I get that one.”

“OK, it’s a lot sore.” She slipped her arm into his and rested her head on his shoulder as they sat on the bench. “But I don’t want to go back inside yet. I don’t want you to leave. I’m not over being taken away from you like I was yesterday. I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again.”

Jack turned his head and gazed straight into her eyes as she picked her head up off his shoulder. She was one tough person…and one incredibly beautiful woman. “Look, I don’t know if this is the right time to tell you, but—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “Troy told me. Charlie’s definitely dead. Shane Maddux made that very clear.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he said gently.

She reached out and touched Jack’s face. “I’ll always love Charlie,” she murmured.

“I know you will.”

“But I’m looking forward to us. I feel like I know you pretty well already, but I can’t wait to get to know you better.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. I think you’re incredible, Jack. I can’t wait to spend lots of time with you.”

He gazed into her eyes for several moments more. Then he leaned forward to kiss her. But just as their lips were about to touch, she pulled back quickly. He frowned at her good-naturedly. “Hey, what the—”

“Look at that,” she said excitedly, pointing up at the vivid greens and yellows that were dancing across the sky above them magnificently in dazzling waves. “It’s the northern lights. It’s arctic fire.”

CHAPTER 39

Jack, Troy, and Bill stood in a hallway in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, waiting exactly where they’d been told to wait. They’d been standing here for nearly thirty minutes and they were getting impatient. They would have walked out by now if they’d been iced like this by anyone else.

“I’ve got to ask you a question,” Jack said as he glanced at a nurse who was hurrying past. He’d wanted to ask this for a while, and now finally seemed like the time.

Bill glanced up, obviously aggravated by the delay. He’d been jingling the change in his pocket loudly for the last few minutes as he’d stared down the corridor. “What’s on your mind, son?”

“Son.” It was starting to sound right to Jack. He and Bill still had a long way to go, but they’d spent a lot of quality time together over the last few weeks, and things were finally getting better between them. A lot better. Though Jack still wasn’t calling Bill “Dad” yet. He wasn’t quite there, even though Bill had mentioned it several times this week.

“Why did you tell me I wasn’t really adopted that day in your office? Why’d you pick then to drop the bomb?”

Bill thought about his answer for a few moments. “You may find this difficult to believe, but I don’t know for sure.”

That was difficult to believe. But then maybe Bill wasn’t as hard a man as Jack had always assumed. Maybe the emotional waters ran deep beneath that tough CEO exterior, but maybe they were there nonetheless. How could he really know if Bill was always so calculating, if he always had hidden agendas and ulterior motives? After thirty years, he and the old man were just now starting to understand each other.

“Subconsciously,” Bill continued, “maybe I actually wanted you to go to Alaska. I know I warned you not to, but maybe I really did. Maybe I figured knowing you were blood might help you at some critical moment, that it might give you that extra boost just when you really needed it. I do believe the mind works on many levels at the same time, most of which we’re not even aware of.” He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.” He patted Jack on the shoulder. “All I do know for sure is that if you hadn’t gone to Alaska, Maddux would have tracked Troy down to that house and killed him. He would have overpowered that poor woman in a heartbeat if you and Ross Turner hadn’t been there.” He paused. “And I’d only have one son now.”

“That’s right,” Troy said heartily. In the last few weeks he’d gained back all the weight he’d lost, and he was his typical, energetic self. “I owe you my life, Jackson.”

“Thanks, brother.” Jack glanced back at Bill. “Why didn’t you call Roger Carlson to find out what happened?”

“Carlson didn’t know,” Troy answered for Bill. “Maddux was already way off the reservation by going after Charlie and me like he did. He was doing more and more things like that outside the chain, without telling Carlson what was really going on. The assassination and the LNG tankers were the shining examples.”

“And Roger wouldn’t have told me about Troy even if he had known,” Bill added. “God rest his soul. It’s just too bad he had that heart attack.”

Jack glanced down the corridor both ways before saying anything. “Why wouldn’t he have told you? I mean, you’re an RCS associate, for crying out loud.”

Bill shook his head. “It didn’t matter. Those were Roger’s rules. The country always came first. No exceptions. I wasn’t actually a member of Red Cell Seven. Therefore, I still couldn’t know something so crucial even though it involved my son.”

Jack couldn’t accept that. He was black-and-white about a lot of things, and this was one of them. Family would always come first for him. Karen believed that with everything she had, and she’d convinced him to think that way too.

“Have they found Rita yet?” Troy asked.

“No. And I doubt they ever will.”

“Think she’s dead, Dad?”

“Damn good chance, I’d say,” Bill said grimly. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, Maddux always covers his tracks.”

Bill gestured at Troy and then Jack. “Which is why both of you must be very careful at all times. Never let your guards down. He’s out there somewhere, and he’ll be coming at some point.”

Jack’s eyes flashed around. He was searching the shadows constantly these days.

“So she was Maddux’s plant, huh?” Troy asked.

“She was,” Bill replied, “and I still can’t believe it. More than thirty years with me, and she turns out to be a spy. It’s almost more than I can—”

“Gentlemen.”

The three of them glanced in the direction of the voice. Stewart Baxter was calling to them from down the hallway. Baxter was President Dorn’s new chief of staff. He was a big man with an ego to match.

He waved to them and snapped his fingers twice. “This way, please. Hurry up.”

A few moments later Jack, Troy, and Bill were standing at President Dorn’s bedside after shaking hands with him carefully.

Jack stared at the president as he lay on the bed with tubes running in and out of him everywhere. The bullet had torn through his right lung after killing Rex Stein. It had been three weeks since the assassination attempt, and the president was still pale and drawn, but he would survive. If not for Stein deflecting the bullet slightly, the doctors and the forensics experts had determined President Dorn would have died on that stage in Los Angeles too. He looked terrible, but he seemed in good spirits.

“Thanks for coming,” he said feebly.

“No problem,” Bill answered for the three of them.

“Let’s keep this short, sir,” Baxter encouraged.

“Take a walk, Stewart.”

“Sir?”

“Leave us,” Dorn ordered in as strong a voice as he could muster. “I want to be alone with these men.”

“But—”

“Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Baxter was gone, Dorn smiled at the three Jensens and chuckled softly. “Well, well. Two liberals and a neocon. Exactly what I’m looking for. This way it’ll be two to two at crunch time.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll get to all that in a minute, Jack,” the president said. “But first I want to thank you guys for saving my life. I understand each of you had a part in it. Second,” he continued before they could say anything, “I want to tell you that I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I’ve come to a couple of very important conclusions.”

“Which are?”

“I don’t want death knocking on my door again anytime soon, Bill. Not for another thirty or forty years, anyway. I love my family too much. I love life too much. So I’m going to be much more careful about my personal security going forward.”

Bill nodded approvingly. “Good. I may not agree with your politics, but you need to stay alive. You are the president of the United States, and you are my president, sir. I don’t want you dying on my country or me.”

Dorn reached out and touched Bill’s arm. “Thank you. That means a lot to me, a lot more than it did a month ago.”

“What’s the other conclusion you came to?” Jack asked.

“I’ve decided this country needs men and women in the shadows after all,” the president answered gravely. “Lots of them, maybe even more than we have now. I’ve decided that I was a fool for wanting to destroy Red Cell Seven. Staring death down has a way of making you see how wrong you were on a lot of things. I know it has for me.” He shook his head. “You know, that first LNG tanker almost made it into Boston Harbor, and the second one came within ten miles of Virginia Beach. I know both of those crews had help from Shane Maddux. But I also know that neither of the ships would have been stopped if Red Cell Seven hadn’t come through.” He nodded appreciatively to Troy and Jack. “More importantly, since I’ve been able to sit up a little during the last week and start working again some, I’ve had a chance to dig into what Roger Carlson did over the last four decades. I’ve read through a lot of files, and I’ve spoken to a few very senior people at the CIA and the DOD who know the truth. What I found out is incredible. If the American public had any idea how many times RCS has saved this country, they’d be amazed.”

“And terrified,” Troy added.

“Right.” President Dorn smiled wanly. “So let’s make sure we don’t tell them. I can’t have a panic on my hands.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is incredible what Roger accomplished,” Bill said. “I’m glad you’re finally seeing it that way, Mr. President.”

“I didn’t appreciate it before.” Dorn paused. “But I do now.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Maybe in a strange way I even understand why Shane Maddux was trying to kill me.”

“In a very strange way,” Bill said quickly, shaking his head hard. “Killing the president of the United States can never be—”

“I know, Bill,” Dorn agreed with a wry grin. “Believe me, I’m not crazy. I’m not advocating my own assassination. The point is, Maddux was doing what he thought was right and necessary to protect this country. As misguided as he was, he was willing to do anything to make this as strong a nation as possible.” The president paused as he took several labored breaths. “Ultimately, he was a bad apple, clinically insane probably, but I can’t punish all of the outstanding people in Red Cell Seven just because of him. RCS must continue to exist. In fact, it needs to get stronger.” He glanced up at them. “That’s where you guys come in.”

“How?” Jack asked.

“I want all of you working for me.” Dorn gestured at Bill first. “I want you taking over Red Cell Seven immediately. I want you taking over for Roger Carlson.”

Bill put his hands up. “Mr. President, I can’t just—”

“I know, I know. You feel a loyalty to your shareholders at First Manhattan. You feel like you can’t just quit your job like that when you’re the CEO of a huge Wall Street firm. You think that might crater the stock.”

“Well, I—”

“I know, I know,” Dorn broke in again exactly the same way. “You’re too modest to say it, but that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Anytime any CEO resigns suddenly there are questions.”

Dorn raised both eyebrows. “But I thought you put America in front of everything, Bill, even your family. I thought even as just an RCS associate you were committed to that loyalty.”

Jack glanced at Bill. He could see his stepfather struggling for an answer. Just like that Dorn had boxed him in, and it was an unusual sight. Jack had never seen Bill like this, and it was actually a little satisfying. Dorn was good, even in his weakened state.

“Let’s do it this way,” the president suggested when he saw Bill was about to speak up. “Keep your CEO title for now. In the next few weeks you’ll announce an orderly transition, which will take enough time to placate the stock markets. But you’ll take over Red Cell Seven immediately. You can do two things at once. You are right now.”

“But I’m not sure I’m the right person,” Bill argued gently.

“You’re exactly the right person,” Dorn countered. “You’re an ex-marine. You already know a great deal about Red Cell Seven. You already command a great deal of respect in multiple circles in New York and Washington. And, most importantly, I trust you completely.” He laughed hard for a few seconds, but it was too painful and he ended up groaning and shaking his head. “I’m entrusting my life to a Republican. I never thought I’d do that.” He gestured at Bill. “And you might actually be an even more effective economic advisor if you aren’t the CEO of First Manhattan. You can be even more candid with me.”

“How about these two?” Bill asked, gesturing at Jack and Troy. “You said you wanted all of us working for you.”

The president’s eyes moved deliberately to Troy and then Jack. “I’ve thought a lot about this, and I want you two men to be my personal ghosts in the shadows. You’ll be deep, deep undercover. The only people in the world who’ll know what you’re doing will be your father and me. I’ll call you my Gray Men. Troy will no longer be a Falcon.” Dorn smiled mischievously. “And Jack, you need a job anyway, so it works perfectly for you.”

Jack laughed. “I do need a job. But I’m not sure about being a Gray Man. This is right up Troy’s alley, but it sounds a little crazy for me. I’m not trained for that.”

“From what I understand, you did pretty well in Alaska.”

“Still.”

“I’ll convince you,” Dorn assured Jack as his gaze turned intense despite his weakened condition. “The icing on the cake for me is that you’re a liberal, Jack. Though, like me, maybe not as much of one as you were a week ago,” he said, smiling grimly. He gestured at Bill and Troy. “So you can keep an eye on these two for me. You can make sure they don’t go too far to the right when I’m not looking.” He smiled a little. “You three won’t have to worry about the bad guys killing you. You’ll probably kill each other first.”

They all chuckled for a few moments.

“My biggest regret,” Dorn said as their laughter faded, “is that I didn’t appreciate how good a man Rex Stein was. I treated him like shit, but he still saved my life.”

“He was a patriot,” Bill said.

“He was a patriot,” the president agreed. “And I didn’t understand how important that really is until I was lying on that stage with blood pouring out of me. It’s all about trust at this level. Nothing is more important,” he said in a hushed voice. “And that’s why I want the three of you to work for me. I trust all of you completely.”

CHAPTER 40

“I failed.”

Maddux nodded to O’Hara. “You did fail, Ryan. But don’t feel bad about it. We got what we wanted. Red Cell Seven survived. President Dorn no longer wants to shut it down. I got that from a very good source this morning. It’s definitely true.”

“Good.” O’Hara stared down at the ground. “Still, I wish I’d finished the job. I take pride in hitting what I aim at.”

“You did hit him.”

“I was aiming for his heart, not his lung.”

Maddux nodded appreciatively. “Well, the primary goal was achieved. And it took a superhuman, suicidal effort by Rex Stein to save Dorn.”

“It was a superhuman effort,” Randy Hobbs agreed. “I was shocked the guy could move that fast. I couldn’t believe it when he tore across the stage like that.”

Hobbs was short and wiry, like Maddux, with thinning brown hair cut very short. He and Maddux had been close friends for a long time, and Hobbs was the man who’d accompanied O’Hara to Los Angeles while Maddux was in Alaska hunting Troy.

“You just got a little unlucky.” Hobbs chuckled snidely. “Look at it this way, kid. You got a two for one, and that must be some kind of presidential assassination record. It took Oswald three shots to get Kennedy and Connally in Dallas. Unfortunately for us, you killed the other guy.”

Maddux sneered. “Like it was just three shots in Dallas.”

“Like it was just Oswald,” Hobbs added quickly.

The three men broke into loud laughter as they stood beneath a secluded grove of oak trees in the Missouri state park. Back here in these woods at this time of night they were miles from anyone. They could enjoy a good laugh without worrying about anyone hearing them.

“What are you going to do now, sir?” O’Hara asked Maddux when their laughter finally faded.

“The same thing I’ve been doing, Ryan. I’m going to make sure the elected officials of this country never forget what happened on September 11, 2001. I’m going to make sure those officials keep giving the leaders of the United States intelligence infrastructure everything they need to protect the citizens of this country. I’m going to make sure the doves don’t build a nest under the eaves of Capitol and start making us vulnerable again with all their bleeding-heart liberal bullshit. I’m going to make sure no one even considers shutting down Red Cell Seven ever again.”

“By engineering what look like foreign terrorist attacks against the United States?” Ryan asked evenly. “By scaring those elected officials on Capitol Hill out of their damn minds with more rogue LNG tankers sailing into American harbors?”

“By doing whatever it takes.” Maddux’s eyes roamed to O’Hara’s by way of Hobbs’s. “You got a problem with that, kid?”

O’Hara stared back at Maddux for several moments. “No, sir,” he said, shaking his head as he reached for his pocket. “No problem.”

Before O’Hara’s fingertips got to his pocket, Hobbs had whipped a pistol from his belt and leveled the barrel at O’Hara’s head. “Easy, kid.”

“It’s information for Shane,” O’Hara said calmly.

“Take it out slowly, Ryan,” Maddux ordered.

O’Hara withdrew a folded piece of paper and handed it to Maddux as Hobbs slid the pistol back into his belt.

Maddux pulled out a small flashlight and scanned the piece of paper after he’d unfolded it. “Very nice, Ryan,” he said appreciatively.

“What is it?” Hobbs asked.

“A list of suspected Chinese spies who are living and operating in this country,” Maddux answered. “I’m staying in the assassination business as well,” he said, slipping the paper into his pocket. “And, based on this list, it looks like I’ll be busy, Randy.”

“I got it from a contact of mine at the Office of Naval Intelligence,” O’Hara explained. “There’s more to come. Apparently, the Iranian list is pretty long too. I should have that one for you next week.”

Maddux nodded at O’Hara and then gestured at Hobbs. “I told you he was good, didn’t I?”

“I figured that out in Los Angeles two minutes after I met him,” Hobbs agreed. “Actually, it was less than that.”

“Then why’d you pull the gun on me a few seconds ago?” O’Hara demanded.

“Training, boy,” Hobbs replied with a gleam in his eyes.

O’Hara pushed his chin out defiantly. “Well, watch it, pal. And there’s no need to call me ‘boy.’ I know I’m black.”

“Easy, Ryan,” Maddux urged. “There’s no need for that.”

“He’s just young,” Hobbs said condescendingly as he glanced off into the darkness. “Ryan’s a good boy, but he’s still got a lot to learn. We’ll teach him, though. We’ll—” Hobbs stopped short as he turned back toward the other two men. O’Hara was now holding a pistol to his head. “What the hell?”

“You know I was the shooter in LA,” O’Hara explained. “I can’t have that, boy.”

Hobbs’s gaze flashed to Maddux. “Shane?” he mumbled in a gravelly whisper, suddenly panic-stricken.

“Sorry, pal. There’s nothing I can do.”

“My God, Shane, I—”

Hobbs collapsed to the ground as soon as O’Hara pulled the trigger. Spasms racked his body for several seconds as he moaned pitifully, and then he lay still.

“He was a good man,” Maddux said as he stared down at the dead body. “But he was expendable, and he was past his prime.” Maddux smiled thinly. “I liked the way you got pissed at him there at the end, Ryan. Good acting. It put him at ease. It made him think he was better than you.”

“It’s what you told me to do, sir. And he reacted just like you said he would. He looked away, and it gave me plenty of time to pull my gun.”

“Well, I’ve won a lot of money off him at poker, so I had an advantage. He always looked away from the bet when he had a good hand.” Maddux laughed softly. “You know, I almost believed you myself when you asked me what I was going to be doing now. If you crash and burn out of RCS, Hollywood could be an option.”

“Thank you, sir, but I don’t plan on crashing and burning out of Red Cell Seven.”

“Excellent answer.” Maddux pointed down at Hobbs’s body, then into the darkness. “Throw him in the river at the bottom of the hill, will you, Ryan? Weigh him down with a few rocks so his body doesn’t show up for a while. I know you’re not religious, but say a prayer as he disappears, OK?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep me as up to date as you can with what’s going on in Red Cell Seven, all right? Without making anyone suspicious, of course.”

“I will,” O’Hara promised. “In fact, there’s some kind of announcement coming in the next few days. I spoke to another Falcon and he thinks we’re about to find out who’s going to replace Roger Carlson.”

Maddux nodded. “Good. Let me know as soon as you find out.”

“So, where you headed?” O’Hara asked as Maddux took a step into the darkness.

“I’ll tell you this time,” Maddux answered after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “But don’t ever ask me that question again.”

“Yes, sir,” O’Hara agreed solemnly. He understood his mistake. He wouldn’t make it again.

“I’m going to Chicago, Ryan. I’ve got some unfinished business there. Then I’m going to kill a few spies. After that, who knows?” Maddux raised one eyebrow. “Maybe I’ll go shopping.”

“Sir?”

Maddux patted O’Hara’s shoulder. “Call me when you have that list of Iranians.”

“Yes, sir.”

O’Hara watched as Maddux disappeared into the darkness, and then he chuckled as he bent down to pick up Hobbs’s body. That was one scary son of a bitch, he thought to himself. Maybe someday he’d be half as good.

CHAPTER 41

“I killed a man outside that house in Alaska.”

“He was about to kill you, Jack.”

“Still.”

“Would you rather be the one in the ground right now?”

Jack shook his head. “No, I would not.”

“Then you did the right thing by killing him first.”

Jack and Troy were sitting on the huge back porch of Bill and Cheryl’s mansion looking out over the horse pastures as they drank hot coffee. It was a chilly, though not bitter cold, December afternoon. Not nearly as cold as that day in Minnesota, Jack remembered.

“It’s still strange to think about taking a man’s life, about him never taking another breath.”

“Do you think about it a lot?” Troy asked.

“It’s the first thing I wake up to every morning.”

Troy nodded. “That’s how it was for me the first time too,” he admitted. “But I got past it.”

Jack glanced up at the dark clouds scuttling low across the sky. Christmas was a week away. “How?”

“I killed again,” he said quietly as he took a sip of coffee. “The second time was easier. It didn’t bother me nearly as much.”

“Jesus,” Jack whispered. How could it not bother him as much? Could it really get easier? And if it did, was that a good thing?

“Hello, boys,” Bill called loudly as he came through the French doors and sat down with them. “How’s everything?”

“Good,” Troy said. “How about you?”

“I’m making my announcement tomorrow about stepping down from First Manhattan. I’ll stay on for six months, but my COO will be taking over the day-to-day responsibilities immediately. He really already has. You all right, Jack?” Bill asked.

Jack had been thinking about probably having to kill again if he was a Gray Man. It must have been obvious that something was bothering him from his expression. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Mom says dinner should be ready in about an hour. When’s Karen getting here?”

Jack leaned forward in his chair and gazed at the tree line in the distance. “She just sent me a text. She should be here in a few minutes.”

“Good. I like her a lot. I hope it works out for you two.”

Jack stared carefully at that spot in the trees a moment longer, and then he looked over at Bill. “Thanks, Dad. That’s really—”

The thirty-caliber bullet struck him squarely in the chest, and he tumbled backward over the chair.

There’d been someone hiding in that tree line after all, Jack realized as he gazed up at the sky. His chest hurt so much.