Goliath

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

—Helen Keller

“I have no regrets. I acted alone and on orders from God.”

—Yigal Amir, assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

CHAPTER 2

2 October 2009

State College, Pennsylvania

The main campus of Pennsylvania State University and its bordering town of State College lie in the Nittany Valley, a serene countryside of flowing hills, rural neighborhoods, outdoor malls, and dairy farms, enveloped by the mountains of central Pennsylvania. The name “Nittany” comes from the Indian words meaning “protective barrier against the elements,” and may have originated from the tale of a mythical princess, “Nita-Nee,” who led her people to safety within the Pennsylvania valley. Upon her death, Mount Nittany itself is said to have risen to mark the princess’s grave.

Gunnar Wolfe shuts down the lime green tractor and stares at the mountain range stretched out before him on the distant northeastern horizon. The fading afternoon sun has bathed the sloping landmark in shades of purple.

Closing his eyes, he draws in a deep, intoxicating breath.

The serenity of the mountains soothe Gunnar’s soul as the sea once had, long before it had become a battlefield. Resting his arms on the wheel, his chin on his forearms, he gazes at the hills, imagining them to be a series of majestic tsunamis, their cresting fury threatening to wipe out the valley—and what little sanity his existence has been clinging to over the last seven years, four months, ten days, fourteen hours … .

Gunnar had grown up on the dairy farm back when its borders encompassed more than a hundred acres. He and his cousins had milked the cows by hand back then—sixty pure Holsteins—each animal twice a day. Looking back, he sees it as a happier, simpler time—long before his father had purchased the milking machines—long before his mother had died. Gunnar closes his eyes, refocusing his mind, this time counting the years since the accursed drunk sophomore had run into her as she walked home from church.

Twenty years, three months, sixteen days, two hours … .

During his years in prison he found he could not remember her face, but then he had returned to the farm, and the memories came rushing back.

A cold autumn breeze clears the tractor’s exhaust, bringing with it the smell of hay and manure and, atop them, the indefinable air-flavor of the coming of a long Centre County winter. The leaves have already begun turning, welcoming back the Penn State alumni, whose presence on the eve of a football weekend is already clogging Routes 322 and 26 with thousands of family campers. For the next forty-eight hours, the Nittany Lion fanatics will overrun the secluded campus town, choking the restaurants and blitzing the bars as they frolic along College and Beaver Avenues, reliving the best years of their adolescence, back when the object of getting drunk was to have fun, rather than to dull the senses just to ease the pain of adulthood.

Happy Valley. Gunnar loves State College the way he loves the coziness of a fireplace and quilt on a snowy day. Something about the town has always made him feel safe. Perhaps it is the campus itself, a haven of students nestled within a mountain valley—a place where the memories are good, the pressure limited to studying for exams, or working on Pop’s farm, making sure the heifers have all been fed.

Or maybe it’s that State College is about as far as one could be from the ocean, from Special Ops, and from Rocky Jackson.

The thought of his ex-fiancée causes the bile to rise to Gunnar’s parched throat. Restarting the tractor, he grinds the ancient gears and shifts the plow into first.

Four more rows. Forty-eight minutes. Two thousand, eight hundred, and eighty seconds … .

Gunnar finishes a row and turns, aiming the rickety bucket of bolts in the direction of the barn. Cutting the dried fields yields the hay they will need for the cows’ feed mix, enough to get them through the looming winter. Years, months, hours, days … there are no days off for the dairy farmer. Dawn greets Gunnar each morning in the milking parlor, where he cleans the cow’s teats with an iodine-and-water solution before hooking each animal up to the milking machine. It takes the machine five minutes to drain a cow’s udder. If organized right, the five machines could finish the entire herd in just under two hours. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty … one hundred and twenty cows, each cow producing six gallons of milk a day. Six gallons, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four … the collected milk runs through an FDA-approved tube directly into a temperature-controlled tank, to be transferred to a refrigerated tanker truck that delivers the product to any one of several local processing plants. Milk the cows twice a day, then keep them moving from one grazing field to the next, supervising six and a half hours of their eating and drinking, all the while maintaining a strict breeding schedule for each member of the herd.

Gunnar is thankful for the busy days, the work helping to keep his mind off alcohol. He had never been much of a drinker, not during his college years, and never during the Army’s Special Forces training. I will keep my mind and body clean, alert, and strong, for this is my debt to those who depend upon me.

Hooah.

It was only after leaving prison that he had turned to booze.

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer … if your self-identity should happen to fall … ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall …

A year of living on the streets, a year of waking up in his own piss and vomit. Hitting bottom and lying in it, still full of anger and guilt, he had finally found his way back to his father’s farm. Two months in a treatment center, a lifetime commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous, and a busy schedule had allowed him to piece together an existence, one day at a time. But the hurt was still there, always festering just below the surface.

The irony of his life is something Gunnar Wolfe grapples with daily.

I will live my life, one day at a time …

As a child, Gunnar had always been afraid of challenges. An introvert, he rarely allowed himself to compete in sports, though laboring on his father’s farm had developed his physique beyond those of his peers. While his father encouraged his only child to follow in his footsteps, his mother pushed him to get more out of life. She encouraged him to read, and bought him a steady supply of inspiring adventure stories. She drove him to a gym and hired a trainer. She enrolled him in karate and pushed him to play high school sports, where he earned All-State honors in football and basketball.

Slowly but surely, the blossoming adolescent began to come out of his shell.

It was the tragedy of his mother’s death that ultimately changed Gunnar’s life. Two weeks after the funeral, the eighteen-year-old Penn State freshman announced that he was switching majors, from agriculture to engineering. Harlan Wolfe, upon learning of his son’s “blasphemous” decision, threatened to cut off all tuition money, prompting Gunnar to join Penn State’s ROTC program, affording him the opportunity to live on campus.

In Gunnar’s sophomore year, his old high school coach urged him to try out for football, the lonely teen surprising everyone by earning a spot as a fourth-string tight end. By his junior year, he had moved up to second string, his last-minute touchdown catch against Michigan State helping the Nittany Lions to another bowl appearance.

It was also during his junior year that Gunnar attended the U.S. Army’s Airborne School. ROTC training was nothing compared to his first taste of true Army discipline. For three long weeks he endured hours of seemingly endless running and calisthenics, the grueling exercises sandwiched between the finest parachute training on the planet.

Gunnar hated heights. Static-line jumping from a C-141 into eleven hundred feet of total blackness was more frightening beforehand than fearsome in the doing. His relief after the fifth and last jump was almost embarrassing.

By summer football camp of his senior year, Gunnar was a different person. Gone was the last trace of the timid farm boy, in its place—a focused athlete with a warrior’s mentality. The coaches noticed, too, promoting the two-hundred-and-forty pound walk-on to the first-team, awarding him a full scholarship. Though Penn State would fall short of a repeat Rose Bowl appearance, Gunnar would receive second-team all-American honors, and was considered by many pro football scouts as a second- or third-round draft pick.

The NFL would have to wait.

Four years after his mother’s death, Gunnar Wolfe stood in uniform at his graduation, prepared in body and mind to attend the sixteen-week Infantry Officer Basic Course (IOBC, Second Battalion, Eleventh Infantry Regiment) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Coach Joe Paterno filled in for Gunnar’s estranged father, Harlan, who stubbornly refused to attend the ceremony.

The Infantry Officer Basic Course is designed to produce the world’s best infantry lieutenants. In essence, it is a war-fighting course, every aspect of training intended to prepare the newly commissioned officer for combat. IOBC training has zero tolerance for anything less than a total physical and mental commitment to excellence.

“Wolfe, you can’t coast through life-and-death decisions! Shit or get off the pot! Is that understood?”

“Roger, Sergeant Gardner!”

Sixteen weeks. One hundred twelve long days of being tired, wet, and hungry. For Gunnar, it was just a preview of to what lay ahead.

Ranger School.

It takes a special breed to make it in the United States Army’s Special Forces, and the Rangers are considered the junkyard dogs of the SOF community. Masters of special light infantry operations on land, sea, and in the air, their origins can be traced back to the early 1670s, when the Rangers of Captain Benjamin Church helped end the Indian Conflict of King Phillip’s War. Years later, five hundred Rangers, known as Morgan’s Riflemen, fought under George Washington. Their cunning and deadly aim with the rifle inflicted great losses on the British troops, making them the most feared corps of the Continental Army. The motto, “Rangers lead the way,” was coined during World War II, shortly after D-day, when a general wanted to know who the tough guys were. When the men responded, “Rangers, of course,” the general uttered the now-famous reply, “then lead the way, Rangers!”

For Gunnar, Ranger School turned out to be the most intense “withholding” training he had ever endured, “withholding” referring to the total lack of adequate water, food, and sleep. Over the next sixty-one days he endured and survived freezing temperatures, mental exhaustion, and physical exertion that was often beyond the point of abuse. He lost twenty-five pounds of muscle and fat from his already-trimmed physique, but successfully maintained a positive attitude, even though his fellow officers and enlisted Ranger schoolmates were decimated by flu, hypothermia, broken ankles, twisted necks, worn-out tempers, and a simple loss of intestinal fortitude, ironically assisted by surreptitious low doses of cholera.

Upon graduating from “hell,” Ranger-Qualified Gunnar Wolfe reported to his first assignment as a platoon leader with the First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Eighty-second Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Over the next two years he would lead his men on a half dozen successful training missions all over the world.

It was during a routine free-fall parachuting exercise that he would impress the man who would soon become his surrogate father.

The military employs two types of parachutes, both different than those used in recreational sky-diving. Troops use the classic round chute with a static-line deployment, the Army trusting its troops with a weapon, but not with the steering of a parachute. Attached to the plane, the parachute opens the moment the trooper jumps, allowing for almost no free fall, little error, and even less maneuverability, with a hard landing to boot.

A light rain was falling on the morning of April 16 when Gunnar and his fellow students boarded the C-130 to begin the first in a series of bad-weather parachute-training exercises. Colonel Mike “Bear” Jackson was the commander overseeing Gunnar’s regiment—his job—to instruct Special Ops Forces to free-fall in rough weather conditions using ram-air canopies, rectangular quasi wings far more maneuverable than the ungainly troop chutes, and possessing significant forward speeds.

Of all training activities, Gunnar hated parachute jumping the most. He had lost control of his bowels during his first jump back in Airborne School, and had never taken to the idea of free-falling in storm clouds from thirteen thousand feet.

Gunnar’s best friend, Bill Raby, was first up. An experienced jumper, Raby made the fateful decision to leave his jump position to offer another Ranger a final word of encouragement. Buffeted by high winds, the transport dipped, causing Raby to stumble. Before anyone could react, the commando’s pilot chute caught on the hydraulic lift, loosened, and was immediately sucked into the tailgate’s gaping opening. As Gunnar watched helplessly, his friend was lifted off his feet like a rag doll, the powerful airstream flinging him facefirst against the hydraulic lift before yanking him clear out of the plane.

Unconscious, entangled within his parachute’s suspension lines, Bill Raby hurtled toward the earth like a ground-seeking missile, his speed quickly accelerating to more than 150 miles per hour.

Colonel Jackson was on his feet when he was pushed aside by Gunnar Wolfe, who leaped out of the plane as if he were Superman. Soaring headfirst in a steep vertical dive, the former farm boy-turned-human projectile flew after Raby at a death-defying speed, intent on saving his friend’s life or dying in the process.

Plunging through rain that felt like thousands of stinging bees, Gunnar adjusted his trajectory, aiming for that speck in the lead gray distance he prayed was his friend. At 9,000 feet, the tumbling object became the unconscious commando. At 3,500 feet, Gunnar reached out and caught the man, then fumbled as he attempted to pull the cut-away handle that would disconnect Raby’s main chute. As the main chute released, the drag pulled the pin on the reserve chute.

Gunnar fell away, pulling his own rip cord as Raby’s canopy blossomed open—a mere 650 feet from the ground. Moments later, the two student commandos found themselves knee deep in mud on a pig farm, two miles east of the drop zone.

Hooah.

Gunnar’s high-speed heroics not only saved Raby’s life, but forever bonded him to Colonel Jackson. He was the type of warrior Jackson wanted under his command. Brave. Compassionate. Patriotic. A true leader.

In other words, everything the Bear had always wanted in a son.

Under Jackson’s watchful eye, First Lieutenant Gunnar Wolfe was assigned to lead Second Platoon, Charlie Company, the First Ranger Battalion’s top company. Here he learned the art of demolitions and explosives, as well as advanced hand-to-hand combat.

Two years with First Battalion was followed by the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) course. Another six months spent completing Q (Qualification) Course at Fort Bragg, immersed in guerrilla-warfare training. Four months later, the Bear had him, on orders, transferred to SCUBA School in Key West, Florida, where he learned the art of military SCUBA diving. Then it was on to Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL (BUDS), to go through formal SEAL training.

“What is it you want, Wolfe?”

“Sir, I want to do whatever it takes to protect my country and her interests abroad.”

It soon became obvious to all that Colonel Jackson was grooming his young protégé to be the ultimate soldier—the ultimate killing machine.

A broken ankle forced the Bear’s “cub” to take a much-deserved leave. Laid up in Key West, the former engineering major resumed work on a design for a remote submersible he had toyed with at Penn State, a fast, stealthy two-man vessel that could be used to transport SEALS deep behind enemy lines. Computer tests on Gunnar’s designs impressed his superiors. Patterned after the contours of a hammerhead shark, the vessel was not only “theoretically” capable of advanced maneuvers, but speed to boot.

The schematics eventually found their way to the Navy’s Warfare Division in Keyport, Washington.

After nearly a year away from Special Ops, Gunnar returned to active duty. When the Gulf War broke out a few weeks later, Detachment Commander Wolfe found himself on board a transport plane with the rest of his twelveman infiltration unit, bound for Kuwait.

The next seven years would be a blur. Mission after covert mission, his muscles twitching with adrenaline, his gut tightening in fear as he unleashed a calculated highly trained fury upon the enemies of his country.

Military dictatorships. Guerrilla forces. Cause-intoxicated rebels.

Gunnar was the consummate Army fighting machine, a trigger man for the long arm of the law—the United States military.

Join the Army. See the world. Protect democracy.

And Gunnar saw everything. Violence and hatred. Greed and corruption. Famine and pestilence. Bloody conflicts entangled with so much history, so much death, that right and wrong, good and evil no longer existed, only greed and hatred commanded the politics of the moment.

Gunnar might have been a well-trained fighting machine, but he was still an American soldier, and American soldiers live by a creed.

Soldiers fight to make a difference.

Soldiers kill bad guys.

Soldiers do not kill children.

After seven years of violence, the Army’s most capable stallion finally bucked his riders.

You do not shoot a champion racehorse after it tires of winning, especially one with an engineering background who understands the intricacies of combat. The Bear, now commander in Chief of the United States Special Operations Command, arranged for Gunnar’s transfer to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport, knowing full well he was not just salvaging the career of a superior soldier, he was playing the role of matchmaker.

At first, the change of scene had worked. Gunnar was assigned to head the team constructing the SEAL Hammerhead minisub based on his own designs, and even the challenge of converting the two-man submersible to a computer-operated vehicle did not seem to faze him.

Or maybe he was just trying to impress his new CO, a fiery woman who made his blood boil and his groin melt. When their unbridled passion turned to love, Gunnar thought he was in heaven.

And then he was called to the Pentagon—to a private meeting to discuss the true purpose of his remotely operated minisubs.

His new identity shattered like glass.

What is it like to wake up, look in the mirror, and realize your life has been one big lie, that everything you were taught to believe in is wrong, that your existence has been corrupted to the point that you suddenly realize you are not the cure for the infection, but the disease itself.

Something snapped inside him. And in that single moment of clarity, he realized what he had to do.

Readying the computer virus had been the easy part—the decision whether to actually go through with the treasonous act had been the challenge.

“Wolfe, you can’t coast through life-and-death decisions! Shit or get off the pot! Is that understood?”

“Roger, Sergeant Gardner!”

A Special Ops warrior knows better than to hesitate. Gunnar had hesitated. In the delay, someone else had acted, someone close. They had not only stolen $2 billion dollars worth of biochemical computer ware, but had set him up as the fall guy, using a false money trail to paint him a traitor to his family and friends.

Gunnar had a strong suspicion who the real traitor was, but he had refused to turn the man in. And so the judge had come down hard upon the former Special Ops commando.

“Gunnar Wolfe, this court has found you guilty. Although you have served your country bravely in the past, your refusal to cooperate in our investigation leaves me no choice than to sentence you to the maximum penalty for your crimes …”

Ten years. Gunnar felt as if he was falling from a precipice. He turned to face Rocky, shocked at her expression. His fiancée actually seemed … relieved.

As they led him away in restraints, only the Bear had the stomach to look him in the eye.

When it comes to assigning the guilty to a correctional facility, the Bureau of Prisons has its own hierarchy. Nonviolent and white-collar offenders are sent to level-one camps—dormitory-style prisons often dubbed “Club Feds.” Medium-security prisons fall into categories two, three, and four, the level of security increasing progressively. Vocational training is emphasized in these institutions, where inmates get their first real “education” about life in prison.

Level-five institutions house the most violent criminals. These are society’s outlaws, the unreformable—career criminals with violent pasts. Sociopaths. Murderers.

Gunnar Wolfe had been accused and convicted of a crime that had given the Defense Department a public black eye. There would be hell to pay, and the former Special Ops guru was going to pick up the tab.

Despite his service to his country, the Bureau of Prisons assigned him to Leavenworth—the oldest, toughest level-five correctional facility in the nation.

First-timers are rarely sent to Leavenworth. Most of the twelve hundred inmates imprisoned there have spent half their lives in other prisons, finally earning their way into the “Hot House.”

As he rode to Leavenworth in the prison van, his last glimpses of the outside world obscured by bars, Gunnar Wolfe realized his life was over. He had lost his country, his comrades, his commanding officer, and the woman he loved; and now, somehow, he had to bury his emotions and toughen up, or be eaten alive.

Gunnar and the other “fish” passed through the yellowed limestone administration building in leg irons and tether chains, the “black box” severely limiting their movements. When entering a maximum-security prison, an inmate has an immediate decision to make. Will he allow himself to be used and abused? Is he willing to fight? Every move, every expression, every action or reaction is scrutinized.

As the electronic gate closed behind him, the farm boy from Pennsylvania didn’t care if he lived or died.

Leavenworth is composed of four cellblocks and a center hall that connect to a main rotunda like spokes on a wheel. The hellhole prison sits on twenty-two acres, and is surrounded by a four-foot-thick brick wall, which rises thirty-five feet above the yard and descends thirty-five feet below it. Strategically placed atop the wall are six gun towers.

Within the yard are basketball courts, tennis courts, a weight-lifting pit, and other recreational fields. The prison hospital and disciplinary unit (hole), as well as the four-story UNICOR building (housing a textile shop, furniture factory, and printing plant) can also be found there.

Seventy percent of the inmates at Leavenworth are assigned to two-man cells. Pulling a few strings of his own, the Bear artfully arranged to get Gunnar into a single cell, a status usually reserved for protective custody, medical reasons, or inmates too violent to have a cellmate. It would be the last break Gunnar would get for years to come.

Like most maximum-security prisons, Leavenworth is a concrete jungle. Prisoners have a wolf-pack mentality, body language often determining the difference between predator and prey. Cons, like beasts, herd themselves along racial and ethnic lines.

At the top of the food chain are the gangs, classified by law-enforcement personnel as Security Risk Groups. Latin Kings, Muslims, Crypts, Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood, La Cuestra Nuestra Familia (the Mexican Maha)—all well-organized groups, motivated by the desire to survive and the spoils of illegal prison activities.

Then there are the “wanna-bes,” individuals in the protracted process of seeking formal gang membership. Those convicts are often linked to the most violent prison yard episodes as they attempt to impress their recruiters.

Drifting through the jungle like solitary rabid animals are the sociopaths and psychos. You never knew when one of these lifers might slip out of his twilight zone and attack. Look at one of them the wrong way during breakfast, and you could find a shiv in your belly before lunch.

Like the jungle, prison has an unwritten code for survival. Leave your cell in the morning and you enter a world where it is take or be taken, kill or be killed, never knowing for sure if you will return to the relative safety of each night’s lockdown.

Every movement watched. Every weakness probed. Society’s worst predators, always evaluating, instinctively separating the strong from the weak, the focused from the distracted.

Though an elite physical specimen and highly trained fighter with a hundred different killing reflexes, Gunnar entered Leavenworth Prison an emotional wreck, his self-identity gone, the injustice of his situation, combined with years of guilt from his actions in the field robbing him of his will to survive. Severely depressed, he drifted through his first hours of hell like a zombie.

He might as well have been a bleeding fish tossed into a swimming pool full of sharks.

Gunnar’s first “mud check” happened during his second day. Inmates at Leavenworth are permitted to roam the yard relatively unchecked. Anthony Barnes was a lifer, a “J-Cat” (needing mental treatment) doing 104 years for kidnapping and murder. He had just been transferred to Leavenworth after spending eighteen years at the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut, where he had killed three inmates; two because they were black, one because the man had made the mistake of refusing him sexually. Barnes was being actively recruited by the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most savage of the white prison gangs. Before gaining his lifetime membership to the AB, he was required to “make his bones”—killing another person targeted for death by the “Commission.”

The Commission had targeted Gunnar.

It is unusual for the Aryan Brotherhood to go after Whites, but tensions between the AB and the Muslims had been rising of late, and the outnumbered Aryan Brotherhood were not looking for a war, they just wanted to end “soldier boy’s” misery before their Black and Hispanic rivals could get to him—

—killing him out of “kindness.”

The eyes of the jungle watched as Gunnar walked the yard, his mind doing “hard time,” his psyche unable to come to grips with the sudden reality of a prison sentence too unfair to accept, too long to imagine. As Barnes approached, the other road dogs instinctively backed off, leaving the new inmate on his own.

The shank in Barnes’s hand was an eight-inch piece of metal, ingeniously taken with great patience from the back of a radio. One end, ground against cement, was as sharp as a razor. The other end was wrapped in cloth for a firm grip by hands that had crushed many a throat.

His mind preoccupied, Gunnar never saw the man coming. Only when the blade penetrated his lower back—millimeters from a classic kidney stab, did Gunnar’s commando instincts finally take over.

Ignoring pain that would paralyze a normal man, Gunnar pivoted to face his assailant. Looping his left arm over and around both of Barnes’s arms, he pinned them in a viselike grip while the heel of his free hand exploded into the convict’s face, shattering his occipital bone. Passing on the temptation to crush the larynx, Gunnar opted to slam his shoe sideways against the medial section of his attacker’s right knee, tearing the collateral and cruciate ligaments from the bone, crippling his would-be assassin.

From that day forward, the former Ranger was regarded as a convict, a prisoner who was to be respected. A week’s stay in the hospital was followed by the mandatory twenty days in the hole.

Naked and in the seclusion of darkness, he reflected on the hypocrisy of his life.

Who am I?

I am a son, scorned by his father. I am a man loathed by the woman I love. I am a fool, betrayed by his best friend. I’m an American, imprisoned by his country. I am a soldier, forced to kill children.

I am a piece of meat. am scum. I am a walking corpse waiting to be buried so that I may be judged by God.

I am an island.

I have not led a good life. I deserve to be punished. I have allowed myself to be used. I have betrayed my parents. I have betrayed myself.

I have betrayed God.

Guilt and self-loathing burned deep inside Gunnar’s being, consuming all other emotions. He thought about killing himself, but was afraid.

Gunnar held no fear of death; in fact, he welcomed an end to his anguish. What petrified the former farm boy from central Pennsylvania was the thought of having to stand naked before God, wearing only his sins.

And though he feared God, he was not a religious man. He had no belief in the power of absolution. He alone was responsible for his actions, and he alone could absolve himself from sin. Somehow he would find a way to cleanse himself, somehow he had to make amends for his crimes.

But first, he had to survive.

And so Gunnar Wolfe hardened himself on the inside, stuffing all his anger and fear and remorse into a mental lockbox, tossing away the key. He refused to receive visits from the Bear and would accept no mail. He spoke only when spoken to by the guards. When he wasn’t pumping iron, he was walking the yard, a constant scowl on his face.

Rumors about the former Special Ops officer spread quickly through the prison grapevine, fed by clerks who had read his file. It was said he could kill three men armed with shanks before the first drop of his own blood hit the floor. The legends only grew wilder over time.

Choo Choo Rodriguez was a Latin King disciple and one of the toughest cons in Leavenworth. He was serving three consecutive life sentences for hacking his girlfriend and her parents to death with a machete. Choo Choo announced to his peers that he would be the one to claim the “Ranger boy’s cherry.”

Hours later, the body of the six-foot-six, 282-pound Rodriguez was found in the laundry room—eviscerated—his intestines looped around his neck.

No one else would challenge the former Army Ranger during his stay in Leavenworth.

It was not Gunnar who had killed Rodriguez, but Jim Kennedy, a corrections officer hired by the Bear to look out for his boy.

Message delivered.

During the fifty-seventh month of his sentence, an uprising between the Muslims and the Aryan Brotherhood broke out in Gunnar’s cellblock, during the warden’s inspection. Two guards were stabbed and killed, the warden held at gunpoint by a deranged Anthony Barnes. Two Correctional Emergency Response Teams surrounded the cellblock, but were held at bay by the threat on the warden’s life. Just as it seemed like events were spinning out of control, a trained killer, a former Army Ranger, stepped out of the shadows and snapped Barnes’s neck, taking several bullets in the process. The warden was rescued, the threat ended.

Gunnar’s sentence was commuted a week later. On a clear Kansas day in November, he walked out the gates of Leavenworth a free man—his tortured mind still very much imprisoned.

The next year had been a blur. Gunnar had been an elite fighting machine, trained to take out his enemy, but now the enemy was inside his own skin. Self-loathing led to booze, the booze to painkillers.

There are only three places an addict ends up. Rehab, jail, or dead.

Having spent time in prison, Gunnar opted for death. Fortunately, the overdose landed him in rehab.

Two months later, he returned to Happy Valley, prepared to live out his life—one day at a time.

The Bell 206L-4 Longranger light utility helicopter soars over Beaver Stadium, then northeast beyond a dense woods before reaching farmland. Clouds of brown dust and flecks of hay kick up as the machine lands between the silo and the barn.

Seventy-two-year-old Harlan Wolfe hurries out from his kitchen toward the world-filling noise. He adjusts his suspenders with one hand, holding the Smith & Wesson 12-gauge with the other, his initial shouts of protest drowned out by the shrieking blades. Cursing under his breath, he sees a woman remove her headphones and hand them to the pilot before exiting from the opened passenger door.

Commander Rocky Jackson-Hatcher brushes debris from her naval dress uniform. Climbing down from the aircraft she turns—coming face-to-face with the barrel of a shotgun, and the man who, years earlier, had nearly become her father-in-law.

The pilot reaches for his sidearm.

Rocky waves, signaling him to take off. “Mr. Wolfe, it’s me—”

“I know who you are. I ain’t senile.”

“Would you mind lowering the gun?”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I need to speak to Gunnar.”

“Come to twist the knife?”

“This is official government business—”

“Piss off. Gunnar don’t want nothing to do with you and yours—and neither do I. Now get off my land ’fore I call the cops.”

“Call the cops. I’m not leaving until I speak to your son.” She pushes past him, entering the farmhouse. “Gunnar? Gunnar Wolfe—are you in here?” She heads into the kitchen, the aroma of roast beef and potatoes instantly setting her stomach to growling. Pulling back the sun-yellowed curtains, she looks out the window and sees the distant tractor.

Gunnar negotiates the last turn, the setting sun at his back turning the dried field a golden brown. He is halfway across the acreage when he spots the woman waiting by the fence.

Son of a bitch … Gunnar throttles up, then changes his mind and shuts off the engine. Screw it. Make her walk.

Rocky stares at the tractor, which has stopped moving less than a quarter mile away. Goddamn the man. She waits another few minutes, then, cursing under her breath, unbuttons her coat and climbs over the wooden fence, her black dress shoes sinking heel deep into grass, mud, and manure.

Gunnar watches, his heart pounding. The golden hair, shorter now, is pressed neatly beneath her hat. He feels his groin stir as she gets nearer.

She approaches the tractor, slipping and sliding in the moist earth, looking up at him through angry eyes. “We need to talk.”

Gunnar swallows the ball of bile burning its way up his throat.

“Don’t just sit there, say something.”

“Screw you, lady. Six years, and you think you can just waltz back in here and say we need to talk?”

“What would you like me to say? Enjoy your stay in prison? Meet any new friends? You betrayed your country, Gunnar. I’m here to give you a chance to—”

Gunnar restarts the engine, slams the tractor into gear, and floors it, the spinning tires shooting mud into the air.

She brushes mud from the front of her skirt, then curses as she wipes the olive brown cowshit from her fingers and back across the fabric.

Gunnar parks the tractor and storms into the farmhouse, his blood boiling. Entering the kitchen, he sees his father watching from the window.

“So? What she want?”

“Don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m taking a shower.”

Harlan watches his son storm off. The old man opens a cabinet, setting another place at the dinner table.

A violet dusk has enveloped the farm by the time Rocky stumbles out of the field. Removing her shoes, she enters through the kitchen door.

Harlan is at the stove, boiling a pot of green beans. “Supper’s in ten minutes. Go upstairs and clean yerself up, you smell like somethin’ the cat dragged in.”

Rocky starts to say something, then thinks better of it. She heads out into the living room and climbs the wooden stairs in her stocking feet, hearing the familiar pattern of creaks. Entering the guest bathroom, she slams the door, unable to pull it shut within its swollen doorframe.

Gunnar hears the noise. He finishes toweling off, then slips on a pair of jeans and a sweater. He runs a comb through his wet black hair, then pauses at the bedroom door. Fingers his two-day growth, checks his breath, curses himself, then walks to the bathroom door and pushes it open.

She is standing in her slip, washing the manure from her skirt. He stares at the taut muscles in her back and legs.

Rocky never looks up, She can feel him staring at her figure.

“Enjoying the view?”

“Why are you here?”

“Orders, from my father. If it was up to me, you’d still be in prison.” She slips her skirt back on and turns to face him. “We have a situation. The Navy’s giving you an opportunity to make up for some of the damage you caused. My orders are to bring you to Washington.”

“What for?”

“You’ll be debriefed in D.C. The chopper’s refueling.” She glances at her watch. “Should be back in half an hour. Get your gear.”

“Forget it.” He walks out.

“Forget it? Hold it, mister—” She follows him down the stairs, her stockinged feet nearly slipping out from under her on the polished wood floor. “What do you mean forget it? Goddamn you, Wolfe, you owe—”

He spins around at the foot of the stairs, his face close enough to smell her scent. “I owe? Who do I owe? I’ve stepped in more blood than a butcher and have more Purple Hearts than a cow has teats, and do you know what I have to show for it? A dishonorable discharge and five years in prison. The only thing I owe is some serious payback to the asshole who set me up.”

“If that’s true, then you may finally get your chance.”

He feels his chest tighten. “What are you talking about?”

She stares into his gray irises, noticing the stress lines around the eyes. “Someone built the Goliath.”

“Bullshit—”

“Bullshit? I was there, asshole, I was aboard the Ronald Reagan when she sank.”

Rocky’s words jolt him like a live wire. “A carrier? We lost a carrier?”

“Not just the carrier, the entire CVBG.”

“My God.” He rubs his forehead, struggling to digest the information. An American carrier fleet packs more military might than all but a handful of nations in the world.

Rocky adjusts her skirt and sits on the bottom step. “Information’s being kept on a need-to-know basis until the Navy completes its salvage operation. The Ronald Reagan was carrying a dozen nuclear warheads.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Gunnar leans against the rail. The house is silent, save for the ticking of Harlan’s grandfather clock. “Are you certain it was the Goliath?”

“I saw it, Gunnar. It looks exactly the way we designed it.”

“Who built it? When did the attack occur?”

“The attack took place about a week ago. The rest of your questions will be answered on the flight to Washington.”

A week ago? If Sorceress was activated, then … Gunnar closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I think it may already be too late.”

“Excuse me?”

“There may not be much we can do to stop it.”

“Eight thousand sailors died, Gunnar. You think we’re just going to sit back and …” She wipes away tears, her face flushing in anger. “They killed my husband.”

“Your husband?” Gunnar looks up at her, at a loss for words. “When did you—”

“What difference does it make? All hell’s breaking loose. I haven’t seen this much panic in Washington since the nine-one-one attacks. Now get your gear, I have orders to deliver you to D.C.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll contact the MPs, who will drag your sorry ass on board the chopper in shackles.”

“He ain’t goin’ nowhere, not ’til he eats.” Harlan Wolfe enters the hall from the kitchen, a carving knife in his hand. “Gunnar, go and get your stuff. And you”—the old man points the blade at Rocky—“you get in the kitchen and help me put supper on the table.”

The thunder of the helicopter’s rotors echoes in the distance.