Red Cell Seven

CHAPTER 1

“Jack’s gone,” Troy Jensen muttered to himself. “He’s really gone.”

Troy stared at the large photograph of his older brother, which was sitting on an easel in the middle of the church’s anteroom. Cheryl, their mother, was standing a few feet away with another woman. They were crying softly.

“You okay, son?” Bill Jensen asked as he moved to Troy’s side.

Troy cleared his throat. “Of course, Dad.”

Troy glanced at the two FBI agents who were standing in front of the anteroom door in dark suits. They were here on direct orders from David Dorn, the president of the United States. More agents were outside this room, in the main part of the church. In their dark suits, they blended easily into the large congregation that had gathered to pay last respects to Jack Jensen. Even more agents formed a perimeter outside the church in the picturesque countryside west of Greenwich, Connecticut.

But Shane Maddux wouldn’t have a problem getting through those defenses if he chose to, Troy knew. Maddux was eerily good at slipping through life undetected, like a specter, though he turned into a ferocious predator at the final, critical moment.

Troy had witnessed that fury firsthand, as well as Maddux’s ability to glide through the world invisibly. All of which had Troy carrying a 9mm Beretta in a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket. The first bullet was already chambered — a dangerous but necessary precaution. You could never be too careful if Shane Maddux had you in his sights. The coffin on the other side of the door was a testament to that harsh reality.

“It’s hard,” Troy admitted.

“I know.” Bill shook his head sadly. “One second your brother is sitting with us on the porch. The next he’s on the floor, dying.” Bill gritted his teeth as he gazed at the picture of Jack resting on the easel. “So help me God, I’ll find out who shot him. And no one will be able to help that person when I do.”

The deadly shot had come from a tree line hundreds of yards away as the three of them were sitting on the porch together, from across the horse fields of the Jensens’ sprawling property outside Greenwich. As Bill frantically called 911, Troy sprinted across the fields to chase down the shooter. But Jack’s murderer was long gone by the time Troy made it to the trees.

“Come on, Dad. We both know who killed Jack. It was Shane Maddux.”

“You can’t assume that, son. We never saw the shooter. The bullet came from the woods. That tree line is a long way from the house.”

“It was Maddux,” Troy said confidently.

“If it was Maddux, wouldn’t he have been aiming at you or me? That would make more sense. And if it was Maddux, we both know he hits his target. He doesn’t miss.”

“He was furious at Jack for saving President Dorn’s life. It was a revenge kill for derailing the assassination in Los Angeles. For calling Rex Stein at the last minute so Stein could deflect the bullet. It was for saving me in Alaska, too. And for calling the Navy jets out on that LNG tanker Maddux had heading for Virginia. That bullet was for all those things.”

“You knew Shane Maddux personally, Troy. I’ve only met the man a few times, and none of those meetings ever went long. But everything I’ve heard about him paints the portrait of an individual who takes emotion out of everything. And those meetings I had with him only reinforce my belief in that. His mind is so strong. Everything he does is motivated by purpose and objective, never by anger or retribution.”

Troy nodded. “He’s a focused son of a bitch.”

“It’s worse than that. He’s obsessed. He’s clinically insane.”

“I don’t know about that, Dad. If Maddux was insane, I don’t think he’d be able to—”

Troy interrupted himself as Karen Morris, Jack’s girlfriend, approached. She was a pretty brunette with a vivacious smile that wouldn’t show itself today. She and Jack hadn’t been together long, but they’d fallen deeply in love after surviving everything that had happened to them in Alaska and on the way there. Now their relationship was over before it had really gotten started.

“Hi, Troy.”

“Hey.” He slipped his arms around her and guided her cheek to his shoulder. She was trying hard to keep her emotions in check, but that wouldn’t last. He could feel her shaking. “It’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”

“Me neither,” he agreed softly.

“I wish I could have seen him one more time. I wish I could have told him how much I loved him one more time.”

“I know.”

Karen gave Troy a gentle kiss on the cheek. Then she turned to hug Bill as a single tear rolled down her face.

Troy’s gaze flickered back to the photograph on the easel. Jack had dark hair, brown eyes, and olive-hued skin. Troy, who at twenty-eight was two years younger than Jack, had blue eyes and dirty-blond hair that fell to the bottom of his collar in the back. They looked nothing alike, and there was a good reason for that. Both brothers had been told all along that Jack had been adopted just after birth — which was why they looked so different. But it was a lie, and the truth had finally spilled out into the open only recently. Troy loved Bill as much as a son could love a father, but he still hadn’t forgiven him for the long-standing deception. He wasn’t sure he ever could.

“You’re sitting with us today, Karen,” Bill said as he stepped back from their embrace.

“But I—”

“You’re sitting with us,” he repeated firmly. “You’re family now.”

She reached out and touched his arm gently in appreciation. “Thank you.”

Bill patted Troy gently on the shoulder as Cheryl walked away. “We have to get down to Washington as soon as the funeral’s over.”

“I know,” Troy said curtly.

“The plane’s waiting for us at Westchester.”

“I know.”

Bill exhaled heavily. “Are you ever going to forgive me, son?”

“I’m not sure,” Troy answered honestly. “What you did was terrible. Telling everyone Jack was adopted for so long. It made him feel like an outsider for thirty years.”

“I was a coward.” Bill took another deep breath. “I’m sorry, very sorry. I wish I could say that to Jack, but I can’t.” His lower lip trembled slightly. “Will you help me bury him, son? I need to know you’re in my corner today. I don’t know if I can get through the eulogy if I look down at you from the pulpit and I see that same expression in your eyes I just did.” He hesitated. “Are you there for me?”

Troy gazed at his father for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “I am, Dad.”

“Thank you. I mean that.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Troy asked as Bill started toward Cheryl and Karen.

Bill shrugged as he turned back around. “Do what?”

“Go to Washington.”

Bill nodded somberly. “I’ll be okay. But thanks for saying something. Your old man’s not as tough as he used to be, but he’s still—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh?”

“Are you sure you want to tell President Dorn everything?”

“Well, I gave him those files before we met with him at Walter Reed. I feel like I have to tell him everything at this point.”

“Do you think he’s told Baxter about Red Cell Seven?”

“I asked the president not to say anything to anyone about it. But I specifically asked him not to tell Stewart Baxter. In fact, I warned him not to.” Bill paused. “Unfortunately, David Dorn is a stubborn man, and Baxter is his chief of staff.”

“That’s why it was such a risk to give Dorn all those files about what RCS has done in the last forty years.”

“Of course it was a risk,” Bill agreed. “But the fact is we knew Dorn was trying to shut down RCS before the attempt on his life. By the time we’d met with him at Walter Reed after the assassination attempt he’d had a change of heart. I think reading those files helped him with that change.”

“I hope he still feels that way this afternoon, Dad. I hope he hasn’t changed his heart or his mind back the other way.”

“Me too, son.” Bill put his hand on Troy’s shoulder again. “Now help me bury your brother.”

CHAPTER 2

“You can’t be serious.”

“I couldn’t be more serious. Decus septum.”

“Whatever.”

“Protect the peak,” Agent Walker added tersely.

“‘Protect the peak’?” Agent Beam spread his arms wide. “What the hell does that mean?”

So the kid hadn’t heard that part of the greeting yet. Well, that was probably for the best, based on how he was acting. “Say what you have to say, Agent Beam. And do it before Santa comes with all your toys.”

Of course, it wasn’t like Walker knew what “protect the peak” meant, either. Agent Beam was a newbie, but Walker had been with Red Cell Seven for more than a decade. None of the other RCS vets to whom Agent Walker was close knew what it meant.

Supposedly, the words had been handed down as the second part of the cell’s formal greeting since its founding, four decades ago. Just like “decus septum” had as the first part. “Decus septum” made perfect sense even though it was spoken in Latin. Translated, it meant “honor to the seven.” “Protect the peak” made no sense despite being spoken in English. No one knew what peak had to be protected — or why.

“We’ve gotta do the right thing here,” Agent Beam spoke up. “And this isn’t it, goddamn it.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Don’t give me that. Don’t act all innocent, Major Trav—”

“What was that, Agent Beam? There’s no way I heard you right.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Agent Beam held up both hands, acknowledging his procedural blunder. Using real names in this situation was forbidden. “I–I mean, Agent Walker.” The younger man took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “You don’t have your go-ahead from COC. You’ve gotta wait. It’s your duty as an officer, Agent Walker. It’s your duty as a human being.”

“My duty, Agent Beam, is to acquire information any way I can. Do you understand?”

“But you can’t—”

“You heard the transmissions, Agent Beam. You read the transcripts.”

“It could all be bullshit.”

“You’ve been with us for six months and you’re going to tell me what’s bullshit?”

“Wait a little while. It might only be a few minutes before they call.”

“And it might be hours.”

“Have patience.”

“I don’t have time for patience, Agent Beam.”

Agent Beam smirked at the play on words as though it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “How could waiting a few minutes really matter, Agent Walker?”

Major Wilson Travers stared intently at the young man who was asking all the annoying questions. Travers was a tall, broad-shouldered African American soldier. He’d been protecting the United States for more than twenty years, invading Iraq as Marine PFC Travers in 1991. Agent Beam barely needed to shave, and he’d never been close to a battlefield — except on his high school field trips. Even more aggravating for Travers, Agent Beam was acting like a battle-tested veteran. The arrogance of it all was absurd.

“Forget minutes,” Travers said. “Seconds could make the difference in this—”

“That’s ridiculous. You have no idea if seconds could—”

“Don’t ever interrupt me again, Agent Beam.”

When it came down to it, Travers didn’t give a rat’s ass what this kid thought. And seconds absolutely could make a difference.

“Something big is on the way,” Travers said confidently. “I can smell it like a skunk in the woods, and we’re running out of time to stop it.” Trust your instincts, trust your instincts. “People are in danger, and my job is to protect them with any and all means at my disposal.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the stone wall behind him. “Believe me. That man in the next room knows what’s coming. Don’t let him fool—”

“He doesn’t know a damn thing, Agent Walker.” Agent Beam sneered. “You’re just manufacturing the situation out of thin air so you can—”

“It’s coming at us like a thunderstorm on an August afternoon, Agent Beam.”

“What you want to feel is your hands around his throat.”

“Easy, Mister.”

“You can’t act on feelings, Agent Walker. Besides, that man in the next room, as you called him, is really just a boy. He’s not even eighteen.”

It was Travers’s turn to sneer. “He’s at least twenty-four.”

“No way, Agent Walker. Those legendary instincts of yours are off on this one. You need to go on facts, not bullshit, especially when it comes to something like this. We’re talking about a man’s life here.”

“I’m the ranking interrogator,” Travers replied evenly. “I go on anything I want to, Agent Beam. I have that license and that privilege. And by the way, that is definitely a man in the next room, not a boy. I don’t care how old he is. Ten, ninety, or anywhere in between, it doesn’t matter. Age is defined by actions, not years.”

“What if you were wrong for once in your life?” Agent Beam shot back. “What if he’s done nothing? What if he knows nothing?”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“He’s a United States citizen, for God’s sake. I saw his birth certificate. I saw his social security card.”

“So what?”

“So what?” Agent Beam looked to the ceiling and exhaled heavily so his aggravation could not be missed or mistaken. “Despite your job, don’t you still have to remember little things like the Constitution and due process?”

“What I have to remember, Agent Beam, is that you probably still know the first song the band played at your high school prom.”

Travers glanced down at the nasty scar that ran the length of his right forearm. He’d suffered the wound saving the life of a seven-year-old Afghan girl as a car bomb exploded on a crowded Kabul street. Just one glance into the eyes of the parked car’s driver had told him what was coming. If not for his instincts working perfectly on that late afternoon half a world away, the eight-inch piece of metal that had impaled his arm would have sliced the girl’s neck open instead.

“And that you’ve never been in battle,” he added.

“You’re worried COC won’t give you the okay, Agent Walker.”

“Oh, yes they will. This is just red tape. Someone’s gone fishing in Montana, and I don’t have time for them to catch their trophy rainbow.”

“You’re sick. You want to torture that boy. That’s what this is really about.”

“You’re the boy,” Travers retorted, tapping Kohler’s chest hard. “That’s what this is really about.” He nodded over his shoulder at the stone wall. “I’m going in.”

Kohler stepped boldly between Travers and the doorway leading to the interrogation room. “I can’t let you do it, Agent Walker,” he said firmly, raising his fists and squaring up. “Maybe that guy in there doesn’t get due process in a court of law, but he’s getting it from me. You’re gonna wait for a call from the chain of command, even if it is a few hours away.”

It took all of Travers’s considerable self-control not to react. Kohler was a big blond kid who was only a year past starring in Ivy League football and dating its prettiest cheerleaders. But he wasn’t nearly ready to swim in the deep end of this pool. “Get out of my way, Agent Beam,” he ordered calmly. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“No, you bastard, I’m doing what’s right, and you know it. You’re the fool.” Kohler stuck out his chin defiantly. “Do you know who my father was?”

Travers nodded deliberately. “I do know, and I don’t care.” That was a lie. The only reason he’d allowed Kohler this much leeway and disrespect was entirely wrapped up in who the kid’s father was. “All I care about is keeping this country and its people safe. Nothing else.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You think you actually have a say in what goes on in the world. But you’re just a pawn, you stupid nig—” Kohler caught himself but not nearly in time. It was a massive gaffe. Still, he managed a smug smile. “You better watch yourself, boy.”

Travers stared into Kohler’s arrogant eyes for several seconds. “I’ll give you one more chance, Agent Beam. Step aside.”

“Fuck you!”

Travers glanced over Kohler’s shoulder at the stocky man standing in the corner, the only other person in this room. “Agent Smirnoff.”

“Yes, Agent Walker?”

“Attack.”

Agent Smirnoff raised a Taser gun and fired, sending 50,000 volts of electricity and 1.7 joules of power exploding through Kohler’s body. The young man dropped to the cement floor like a sack of dirt the instant the charged projectile struck him and began convulsing and begging for help with barely intelligible moans.

Travers nodded grimly. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks.” Agent Smirnoff gestured at Travers. “Don’t listen to that kid, Agent Walker. He doesn’t get it. You’re a good man.”

“I’m not worried about him.”

Agent Smirnoff’s real name was Harry Boyd. Travers and Boyd had known each other for nine years, but they never called each other by their real names when an interrogation subject was in the area — only as “Agent” followed by the agreed-upon liquor brand code of the day. It was all for the benefit of the kid in the next room. Travers just hoped that kid hadn’t heard Kohler call him “Major Trav.” Even that partial mistake could turn out to be deadly with these people.

“Welcome to my chain of command, Agent Beam,” Travers muttered as he leaned down and removed a small, clear plastic bag from Kohler’s shirt pocket while the kid continued to twitch and spasm. “You’ll be okay in an hour.” He glanced at the turquoise-hued powder inside the bag, then rose back up and tossed it to Boyd. Inside Red Cell Seven the newly developed powder was known as TQ Haze. “Take care of that delivery, will you, Agent Smirnoff?” He gestured at the floor as Boyd caught the bag. “Take care of our dribbler, too.” Travers’s cop friends had nicknamed what Kohler was doing “dribbling” because Taser victims resembled basketballs bouncing up and down on the hardwood. “Don’t let him swallow his tongue.”

“Like I said, Agent Walker, you’re a good man. If it was me, I’d hope he did choke to death.”

Travers patted Boyd on the shoulder as he passed. “We’re all in this together. And there’s good and bad everywhere.”

“Bad everywhere I’ll give you,” Boyd replied stoically. “I don’t know about good.”

Travers grabbed a plain black ski mask off a hook on the wall, slipped it over his head, and pushed open the door. Kohler was right, he thought as he entered the interrogation room. He was worried about not getting his okay from COC. But he was more worried about his country.

The subject stood on his toes in the middle of the dimly lit room, struggling to ease his nagging physical discomfort as best he could by constantly changing positions and shifting his weight. His frail wrists were lashed together above his head and secured to a large silvery hook that hung from the ceiling by a shiny chain. He was skinny with a dark complexion, and he had a shock of thick black hair. It was cold here in the basement — on purpose — and he was naked from the waist up — on purpose — so he shivered as he twisted beneath the hook. Other than a plain wooden chair, a chest of drawers, and a bucket, which were all stationed in one corner of the room, there was nothing else within the four stone walls except Travers and the subject, whose driver’s license claimed he was from Philadelphia — and more important, that he was seventeen.

“Hello, Kaashif.”

“Hello, sir,” the young man answered politely but miserably through his chattering teeth, watching Travers’s every move as he held his head back to ease the intensifying ache in both shoulders.

“So, you are the discoverer.”

“The what?”

“That’s what your name means, right? The discoverer.”

“I am not sure.”

“You’re not fooling me, you little son of a bitch.”

“I am not trying to fool you, sir.”

Travers moved across the room until he was standing directly in front of Kaashif. The young man was five-six, so at six-three Travers towered over him. “I’m going to ask you some very important questions this afternoon. I expect you to—”

“Why am I here?” Kaashif blurted out. “What have I done?”

“Easy.”

“I am so thirsty,” he gasped. “So thirsty. Please, may I have something to drink?”

They hadn’t given Kaashif anything since yesterday afternoon, so it had been almost twenty-four hours. He had to be pretty well dehydrated at this point. “Agent Smirnoff,” Travers called over his shoulder. “Can I have that glass of water for our guest?”

“Absolutely.”

Nathan Kohler’s ongoing agony from the Taser attack was still audible — which Travers liked. It made this situation even more frightening. He could tell by Kaashif’s expression that he was hearing those sounds of suffering coming from the other side of the open door. He had no idea who was in pain or why — only that someone was.

“How old are you, Kaashif?”

“Seventeen,” he muttered as he strained against the rope binding his wrists.

“That’s what your driver’s license says, but I don’t believe it. I say you’re at least twenty-four.”

“I don’t know why you are so hating me. It must be because I am a Mus—”

“Here you go.” Boyd tapped Travers on the shoulder. He’d also donned a ski mask before entering the interrogation room. They always wanted to leave open the possibility of letting the subject go. That couldn’t happen if the sub saw their faces. Then they’d have to kill him.

“We good?” Travers wanted to know.

“Oh, yeah.” Boyd handed over the glass and then headed back out. “Very good.”

Travers held the glass up to Kaashif’s lips and tilted. He nodded approvingly as the young man drank every drop. When the water was gone, Travers turned and hurled the glass against the wall, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. Then he picked up the bucket in the corner — it was filled with ice water — and doused Kaashif.

He waited for the frigid liquid to have its effect. When Kaashif was shivering and sobbing uncontrollably, Travers grabbed the young man’s chin and shook it hard. “What exactly do those transmissions mean?”

“I do not know what transmissions you are talking of. Please let me go home. I want to see my mother and father.” Kaashif’s sobs grew even louder. His trembling lips were turning dark blue.

“Why was your name mentioned in them?”

“It must have been someone else they were talking about. I am just a high school student.”

“High school’s your cover. You and I both know that.”

“No, that is wrong.”

“You started this year at this school, but there’s no record of where you were before that.”

“My parents moved down to Philadelphia from Toronto last summer. You can check it out.”

“You’re lying, you little bastard.” Travers shook Kaashif’s chin hard again. “When will the attack come?”

“What attack?”

“Where will it happen?”

“I do not know, I swear.” Tears began to roll down Kaashif’s face in fast-running torrents. “I told you, I am just a high school senior. How could I know anything?”

Travers grabbed a rope from one of the chest drawers and then moved back to where Kaashif was hanging. He tied the ends of the rope together so it formed a closed loop ten feet long, slipped one end of the loop over Kaashif’s head so it rested on the young man’s neck and shoulders, and then stepped back several paces. The rope sagged in the middle until Travers took a short piece of pipe he’d also snagged from the drawer, put the pipe into his end of the loop, and began to turn. The sag in the rope decreased as the head of the twist slowly approached Kaashif’s vulnerable throat.

“Tell me about the attack,” Travers demanded as the twist advanced. “That’s the only way you live.”

Kaashif turned his head slightly to the side as his upper lip curled, and he swallowed hard. “I do not know anything.”

“Save yourself, son. Why die? What’s the point?”

“I cannot save myself. I have no information. I should be taking a calculus test today. Please let me go.”

“I don’t have time for this. Tell me.”

“I do not know anything,” Kaashif repeated. His voice was shaking wildly.

“Tell me!” Travers roared. “Or so help me God I’ll kill you!”

As the rope closed in on Kaashif’s soft throat, he began to scream. Even through the screams, Travers could hear Boyd chuckling in the doorway.

Travers liked Harry Boyd. The man’s honor, bravery, and commitment to country could never be questioned. He was a hero, a true patriot, though few people knew how many times he’d risked his life to keep America safe — how many times they both had. And they’d become fast friends along the way.

Travers grimaced as Kaashif continued to scream and Boyd continued to laugh. Harry Boyd was a good man, all right. But there was nothing funny about this.

CHAPTER 3

“It’s the best cell phone ever,” the young salesman said confidently, smiling widely from behind the glass counter as he handed the young woman the device. “Fits perfectly in your palm, right? Screen’s way cool. And what it can do is epic.”

Jennie nodded. It did fit perfectly in her hand, and it was very cool looking.

“You’re just lucky we’ve still got a few left over from the national rollout last week.” His smile grew even wider. “You must be a naturally lucky woman. Pretty, too,” he murmured after a few moments. “Very.”

“Thank you,” she answered self-consciously at his forward compliment.

She had long jet-black hair, green eyes, light brown skin, and full lips that framed a high-cheekbone smile. Today she was wearing a low-cut blouse, snug jeans, and heels — edgy but not over the top. She’d caught the looks on her way through the mall to this store.

“Is this a last-minute Christmas gift for your boyfriend?”

Jennie recognized the intent behind the question — and the smile. She’d seen that smile many times from white boys. He was fantasizing about being with a Latina, but that was okay. She didn’t mind. He wasn’t being obnoxious about it, and guys were guys no matter the color of their skin. That was just the way of the world. She was only twenty-six, but she’d come to that conclusion long ago.

And she appreciated it when things were predictable. Predictability enabled one to prepare, and preparation was a key success factor in any endeavor.

“I’m getting it for myself, Chad.” He wasn’t bad-looking, either. “If I get it.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“I’m not sure yet,” she cautioned, glancing at her watch. She still had time. “Don’t count this thing in the sales column yet.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant the part about you not having a boyfriend.”

She grinned as she glanced at the camera in the ceiling corner, which seemed to be aimed straight at her, wondering. “Okay, I’ll take it. It’s a lot of money, but hey, so what?”

“Impulsive. Love it. What about dinner tonight? Can you be impulsive about a date with me?”

“Where are we going? Wendy’s?”

The guy’s happy expression disintegrated. “Is it that obvious I don’t—”

“I’m just kidding. And I wouldn’t care where we went. Besides, I like Wendy’s.”

“Hey, I can do better than that,” he said confidently, looking relieved. “I think I’ve still got a hundred bucks left on my third Visa card.”

They laughed together, and it felt right. A sense of humor, and he didn’t take himself too seriously. Good, because both of those things were requirements in a man for her. Jennie tapped the phone’s box as she gave him her sincerest smile. “Just ring this up, okay?”

“Sure.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her old flip phone.

He shook his head and snickered when he saw it. “Dinosaur.”

“I know, but can you transfer the numbers and the pictures over?”

“Absolutely,” he agreed as he took the old phone from her. “Let me get the SIM card out and work a little magic in the back. Give me a minute.”

When he’d returned and the new phone was ready, he started to hand her the plastic bag filled with all the ancillaries — case, cords, her old phone, receipt — but pulled it back at the last second as she went for it. “I should show you a few really cool apps before you leave.”

She shook her head as she checked her watch again. “No time. Gotta go. And I’m busy tonight. Sorry.”

“Come back tomorrow then,” he suggested, relinquishing the bag. “Seriously, it’ll save you a lot of time if I do it.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s your name?” he called as she headed for the front of the store and the huge mall beyond.

“Jennie,” she called back over her shoulder as she tossed her hair. “Jennie Perez.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she murmured as she moved into the mall and her heels began clicking on the tiles of the wide main corridor. “I know what you like.”

The Tysons Corner Center, known in the area as Tysons One, was a sprawling, multilevel mall located in upscale McLean, Virginia, just outside the Capital Beltway, fifteen miles west of the White House. One of the largest malls in the region, it was anchored by the big names: Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom. And with only a week to go until Christmas, the cavernous structure was jammed with shoppers searching for last-minute gifts.

“Wish I lived around here,” Jennie murmured to herself as she admired the big diamond on the finger of a woman who was walking past. Jennie lived farther west, in Sterling. It was an okay area, but it wasn’t anything like McLean. “Maybe someday.”

As she hurried toward the south entrance, zigging and zagging through the crowd, she took a few random pictures with the new phone. She had to admit the definition and color were much better than the old flip phone she’d been using. She tapped the reverse camera option on the touch screen and took a picture of herself.

“Ugh,” she moaned softly as she looked at the photo. “Do I really look like—”

Jennie stopped abruptly as she neared the entrance — six doors across, which led to the buffer lobby beyond, and then six more doors beyond that leading to the outside and a cold, gray December afternoon. Three men were just entering the mall from the buffer lobby. They were dressed in matching long black overcoats, and they wore baseball caps with the brims pulled low over their eyes.

Her gaze flashed right when something else caught her attention. For a few critical moments she was distracted from the entrance by a beautiful little girl who was coming out of a store. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old. She had long, shimmering blond hair and gorgeous eyes, and she was carrying a new doll in a large box. She was being followed by a man who was slipping a credit card back into his wallet and who must have been her father, given how proudly he was watching her.

As the three men at the entrance lifted guns from beneath their coats, Jennie spotted a security guard running toward them. Her eyes raced back to the little girl, who was clutching her new doll and smiling at it, unaware of what was about to happen.

Jennie wanted to run; every instinct inside her was screaming for her to get away and save herself. But she couldn’t. She had to help that little girl. She’d hate herself for the rest of her life if she didn’t. She’d never been a coward, and she wasn’t going to start being one now.

The black van pulled to a quick stop in the deserted Philadelphia alley. This location was twelve miles from the address on the driver’s license, and that was exactly how Travers wanted it. He wanted the young man to have a long way home — if that address on the license really was his home.

Travers glanced at Boyd from the back of the van. “Ready, Agent Smirnoff?” he called.

Boyd nodded. “Yeah, good to go. Nobody around, Agent Walker. You’re clear.”

Travers leaned over so he was close to the young man, whose hands were secured tightly behind his back. “We’ll be watching you, Kaashif,” he whispered through the heavy dark blue T-shirt, which was wrapped around Kaashif’s head so it covered most of his face. “You understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Kaashif murmured fearfully.

The young man still wasn’t sure he was going to be set free. Travers could tell by the frightened tone of his response. “I’ll be watching you, but you’ll never know when.” Kaashif probably thought that was an idle threat, but it wasn’t. “You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Guess you’ll have to make up that calculus test.”

“I shall.”

“Liar.”

“I am not a—”

Travers reached for the handle, yanked the van’s side door open, and pushed Kaashif roughly out onto the broken glass strewn across the pavement. “Clear!” he yelled to Boyd as Kaashif tumbled out.

Three minutes later Boyd pulled to a stop in another alley not far from where they’d ditched Kaashif. They needed to put plates back on the van so they wouldn’t arouse suspicion from local law enforcement. They’d removed the plates in case Kaashif had somehow gotten his blindfold off quickly once he was out of the vehicle.

Travers leaned back in the seat and rubbed his eyes as Boyd climbed out of the van. He still had that terrible feeling they were running out of time and that an attack was imminent. He grimaced as he listened to Boyd reattach the plates. Would the plan work before the attack went down? That was the key question now. Because his instincts told him the moment was at hand, and hell would rain down on the country if they didn’t do something soon.

CHAPTER 4

With a quick burst of automatic gunfire, the three men wearing long black coats murdered the security guard racing toward them. The older man tumbled to the mall floor on his stomach with his arms outstretched as the hail of bullets shredded his body.

Two of the men turned their weapons on the crowd while the third destroyed the security cameras overlooking the area. Then he turned his gun on the crowd, too.

Calm turned to chaos in a heartbeat. People in front of Jennie shrieked and raced past her or darted into stores for cover as the sound of the guns peppered the air. But for a few seconds, all she could do was gaze straight ahead. Her shoes seemed cemented to the floor as the terrible scene erupted in front of her.

At that point everything seemed to slow down, so she could see every detail of what was unfolding.

The father coming out of the store to Jennie’s right lunged for his daughter. But a bullet tore through him just as he reached his little girl, killing him instantly as the storefront glass shattered behind him when another bullet blew through it. The little girl screamed as her father tumbled to the tiles in front of her.

Jennie had been about to turn and run. But she couldn’t leave the little girl out there alone, helpless. So she raced the few steps to her and grabbed the girl’s tiny wrist.

As she did, she locked eyes with the assassin on the right. She’d heard the term “killer instinct” so many times, but she’d never actually seen it. Until now. The man had cold, dark shark eyes. And yet, as lifeless as they seemed, she could still see passion burning in them. “Come on!” she urged the little girl as the man pointed his gun at her. “Run with me! Run!”

As Jennie turned to flee, a bullet tore through her shoulder from behind. It sent her tumbling to the floor and the new phone spinning from her hand. She came to rest on the glass-strewn tiles exactly as the security guard had, on her stomach with her arms outstretched. And the little girl came down right beside her.

Jennie had never been to Alaska. In fact, she’d never been anywhere near it. But she’d read an article on the Internet about a man who’d survived a grizzly bear attack on Kodiak Island by playing dead even as the huge animal toyed with him. The awful pain in her shoulder spread quickly through her body, but somehow she managed to stay still and not moan.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered to the little girl as they stared at each other. She tried not to show any fear. The little girl was obviously terrified, and if Jennie showed fear, the little girl might start screaming. Then she wouldn’t have a chance. “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe. You must listen to me.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, closing her eyes as she’d been told.

She was terrified, all right, Jennie could see, but she was listening. Jennie shut her eyes and went perfectly still, too.

“Shoot her,” someone yelled from the distance.

“She’s already dead” was the response of the deep voice, from very close.

Even as the cold barrel of a gun brushed her cheek, Jennie didn’t flinch. Even as she smelled the leather of his shoes and the awful pain coming from the wound knifed through her body, she kept still. She just hoped the little girl could, too.

“Shoot her anyway. Make sure she’s dead. Come on!”

The cold metal withdrew from her face as the screaming in the mall faded and the awful sounds of the dying and the wounded rose. For a moment Jennie believed she was safe, that whoever was standing over her wasn’t going to obey the command.

But then the barrel of a gun pressed firmly against her back, slightly off-center to her spine. Somehow she fought the urge to scream.

CHAPTER 5

“A friend of mine told me it looked like a war zone outside with all the military personnel,” Bill said quietly to Troy as they entered the Oval Office. They’d been escorted by two Secret Service agents every step of the way since arriving on White House grounds. “And like Walter Reed Hospital in here.”

The level of security around President Dorn had been ratcheted up dramatically since the assassination attempt a few weeks ago in Los Angeles. Before the shooting Dorn was constantly complaining to the Secret Service that they were getting in his way and not letting him be himself by wading into crowds to shake hands and kiss babies. But those days were gone for good now, by the president’s own admission. The assassination attempt had affected him profoundly. For the first time in his life Dorn had met his mortality face-to-face, and he’d never again allow himself to be so vulnerable.

“Your friend was right,” Troy muttered back as the two agents who’d been tailing them finally turned around and left them alone.

To the right was a long table covered with medical devices and boxes of all shapes and sizes. Beside it was an adjustable bed, raised so whoever was in it would be sitting up.

“Come in, Jensens,” President Dorn called to them weakly.

He was sitting behind the desk across the room, in a wheelchair. The assassin’s bullet had barely missed his heart on that outdoor stage in L.A. It had been off target a critical fraction of an inch only because Rex Stein, Dorn’s former chief of staff, had lunged in front of Dorn at the podium just as the shot had been fired from a building across the street. It had killed Stein, but he’d saved the president’s life by deflecting the bullet with one of his ribs before it tore out of him and into the president.

A sturdy-looking nurse wearing a white uniform stood behind the president with her arms folded tightly across her chest. She looked uneasy to Troy, like she hated that, against his team of physicians’ stern advice, the president had still deemed himself well enough to leave Walter Reed two days ago and return to work in the West Wing. More to the point, he guessed she was worried that Dorn might keel over and die at any moment — on her watch — and that she’d be blamed.

Before following his father’s footsteps across the royal blue carpet emblazoned with the seal of the president, Troy subtly saluted the arrows the eagle clasped in its left talon.

“It’s good to see you again, Mr. President,” Bill said respectfully as he stepped behind the desk and shook hands with Dorn. “You’re looking much better, sir.”

Troy took his turn to shake hands, making certain to ease off on his normally firm grip. Bill, Jack, and Troy had met with President Dorn at Walter Reed after the shooting. Though he was obviously still weak, Dorn looked in much better shape and spirits than he had that day. He’d looked pretty close to going flatline then, but now he was getting back to being the “presidential floor model,” as Bill had always called him because of his dark good looks and commanding charisma. As liberal and dovish as Dorn had proven to be, Troy still had to respect the man’s courage and dedication to country. The nation had gotten a tremendous emotional boost watching him walk back into the White House two days ago on television, even if it had been slowly and with the help of an aide on either side.

The president had been in the process of shutting down Red Cell Seven before the assassination attempt, but that and the massive explosion of a huge liquefied natural gas tanker only ten miles off the coast of Virginia at almost the same moment as the shooting had apparently changed his thinking. If the tanker had reached the shoreline, countless thousands in Norfolk and Virginia Beach would have died. Thankfully, two Navy fighter jets scrambled out of the Norfolk naval base had destroyed the ship before it churned close enough for the terrorists commanding the craft to blow it up and inflict their devastation.

Thanks to Jack, Troy thought. Jack was the one who’d uncovered the LNG plot, and a lot of people had him to thank for their lives — though they didn’t know it. Then Maddux had taken his revenge, the bastard.

“Hello, Mr. President.”

Though Dorn looked better to Troy, his breathing was still measured and a little shallow. His movements were deliberate, and though he was trying hard to seem energetic, it was obvious that he was tired — physically and emotionally.

“Hello, Troy.” Dorn smiled up warmly as they shook hands, then he gestured over his shoulder. “Guys, that’s Connie. She’s here to take the reins of power in case I expire unexpectedly.”

Connie nodded stiffly to Troy and Bill, obviously not enjoying her momentary celebrity status or the president’s remark. “Hello.”

Dorn grinned wryly. “She thinks I came back to the White House too soon.”

He waved to her and then at the door. “Give us a few moments, please.”

Connie glanced nervously at the bed and the table beside it. “Mr. President, I’m not supposed to leave you at any—”

“Connie, if I collapse these men will get you back in here very quickly. They don’t want my death on their shoulders either, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But don’t go far.”

“No, sir.”

“And over there,” the president went on, pointing at the man who was sitting in a wingback chair a few feet away, “is Stewart Baxter, my new chief of staff.”

“We met Stewart at Walter Reed a few weeks ago,” Bill reminded Dorn. “He was there that day we came to see you.”

“Oh, right, of course.” Dorn’s grin faded as he watched Connie leave the Oval Office. “Stewart is replacing Rex Stein, God rest his soul.”

Baxter had a full head of snow-white hair, but other than that and a few shallow lines at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth, he looked extremely fit for a man who was almost sixty. His skin had a healthy glow to it, and there was no paunch above his belt.

“Hello, Stewart,” Troy said in a friendly tone as they shook hands. Baxter’s expression was locked in an arrogant smirk, as it had been at the hospital. “Good to see you again.” Baxter had a reputation in Washington as a man who got things done. Still, not many people liked him. Troy understood why. He gave off a very negative vibe. “I trust you’ve been well.”

“Did I meet you that day?” Baxter asked as if he wasn’t really interested, not bothering to get up from his chair to shake hands. “I remember your father but not you.”

Impossible, Troy figured. It hadn’t been that long since they’d met, and an Oval Office chief of staff was trained to remember everyone. Baxter was simply trying to establish dominance. It seemed like everyone in Washington was always doing that. Like everyone here was part of some inept wolf pack. It was one of the main reasons Troy hated this city. Everything here was about image, not results.

“I want to thank both of you for coming all the way down here today from Connecticut.” The president pulled the jacket he was wearing tighter around his thick sweater as he glanced out the window behind the desk into the cold, gray afternoon. “I know this is a sad day for you two. For me, too,” he added. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Bill nodded solemnly as he and Troy eased into the two chairs positioned in front of the big desk. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

“It was Jack who called Rex Stein on the platform in Los Angeles. That’s why Rex ran to me at the podium. Jack called him just in the nick of time.” The president glanced from the window to Troy. “Right?”

Troy nodded. “And if it weren’t for Jack, that LNG tanker would have made it all the way to Virginia. And I mean all the way to the beach.”

“So many people would have died,” Dorn murmured, looking past Troy.

“Including a lot of military personnel at our naval base there,” Bill said.

“Rex and Jack are heroes.” Dorn pointed at Troy. “You are, too, son.”

“Thank you, sir, but I—”

“I should have been better to Rex,” Dorn said. “He was right all along about me needing to be more careful, but I ignored him. I should have given him more credit. If I had, he might still be alive. I’ll have to deal with that for a long time.”

Troy glanced at Baxter, who didn’t seem swayed at all by the emotion in Dorn’s voice. He was picking at his fingernails and didn’t seem at all interested in his boss’s sentiment.

The president grimaced. “I learned a great lesson.” He held up a hand. “I’m not trying to say I’m turning into Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, or Attila the Hun. But maybe there’s more of a place for Red Cell Seven in our intelligence structure than I thought. In fact, maybe it should be one of the cornerstones from now on.” Dorn took a deep breath. “Jack was an inspiration for me in terms of changing my thinking on that.”

“And with all due respect, sir,” Troy spoke up, “the ironic part about what you just said is that Jack might have been even more liberal than you.”

“You’re the hawk,” the president spoke up, nodding at Troy. “Don’t think I didn’t spot that salute to the arrows.”

“Of course I am.” Troy had thought the president was looking at Baxter when he’d saluted the arrows. “You know that.” He glanced at Baxter. Dorn had mentioned Red Cell Seven by name a few moments ago. He wasn’t supposed to have told Baxter anything about the files Bill had given him. But he must have broken that promise. “And you know why, Mr. President.”

“Yes, I—”

“Jack wasn’t actually your son, was he, Bill?”

Troy’s eyes raced back to Baxter. It was the first time Baxter had spoken, other than to greet them. In his peripheral vision, Troy saw his father’s posture go defensive.

“What are you talking about?” Bill asked. “He was absolutely my son. He is my son.”

“He wasn’t your natural son,” Baxter went on. “He wasn’t your blood. See, that’s what I’m getting at.” The chief of staff gestured at Troy. “Not like Troy is. Jack was your wife’s natural son, but not yours.”

“No. He wasn’t,” Bill agreed tersely.

“And what ever happened to Rita Hayes?” Baxter continued. “She was your executive assistant at First Manhattan for so many years. Why’d she quit so suddenly, and where did she go? No one can seem to find—”

“What’s your point, Stewart?” Troy interrupted. When they’d shaken hands, Baxter hadn’t reacted well to a man thirty years his junior addressing him by his first name. So Troy did it again, this time loudly.

“Yes, Stewart,” President Dorn echoed. “What is your point?”

“We did background checks on you two before you came down here today,” Baxter answered, as though none of this should be a big deal and he didn’t see why everyone was getting so irritated. “Thoroughly, I might add.” He shrugged. “I’m just making certain we’re all on the same page, okay?”

“Okay,” Bill snapped. “Let’s do that. Let’s make certain we’re all on exactly the same page.” He gestured at the president. “Sir, Mr. Baxter should not be in here while we discuss Red Cell Seven. And this is nothing personal. This is not because of what he just said.”

“I’m the president’s chief of staff,” Baxter countered, glaring at Bill. “I’ll stay in here if I choose to. And in this case, I do. In fact, it’s critical that I stay, given the subject matter.”

“Then Troy and I are leaving, Mr. President,” Bill stated, starting to rise from his chair. “I will not discuss this topic in front of anyone but you, sir. It’s that simple.”

“No, no,” Dorn spoke up quickly. “Sit down. Please, Bill.” He glanced at Baxter. “I’m sorry, Stewart, but you’ll have to leave.”

“What?”

“I have to trust Bill on this.”

Baxter clenched his jaw as he stared back at the president. Finally he stood up and stalked across the carpet.

When he reached the door, he turned back and pointed at Troy. “Don’t let these cowboys put on their Red Cell Seven Stetsons any time they want to, Mr. President. Rope them in, like you were going to before you were shot. We can’t allow RCS to keep operating without putting some significant constraints on it. If we don’t, these guys will get this country in a lot of trouble.”

“Those people are idiots,” Kaashif said. “They couldn’t interrogate their way out of a paper bag.”

“Don’t be so sure,” the man driving the pickup truck warned.

“One of them was so stupid he used a real name during my interrogation.”

“How do you know?”

Kaashif rubbed his stomach. It was bothering him a little. “The other one became very angry when the name was spoken.”

“What was the name? Do you remember?”

“Uh, I think it was Major Trav.”

“That sounds like a partial.”

“Perhaps.”

“Could it have been Travers?”

Kaashif shrugged. “It could have been.”

“Think back. It’s important that you—”

“They have too many rules,” Kaashif interrupted, “too many regulations. They have chains of command and due process. They think their Constitution is so grand and so much better than the founding principles of all other societies. They think it makes them invincible.” He laughed confidently. “But what they think makes them so strong is precisely what makes them weak. They cannot react quickly because of their rules and regulations. They cannot be agile like we can, because their Constitution weighs them down. In time it will pull them all the way down. It will be their undoing.”

“Careful. Don’t be arrogant. That’s when we find trouble.”

Kaashif scoffed as the pickup truck moved through the cold, gray dusk settling down onto Philadelphia. “They thought I was actually scared.” He sneered. “I am never scared.”

“Did you tell them anything?” the driver asked. At thirty-four, he was ten years older than Kaashif. “Anything at all?”

Kaashif smirked. “I told them only that I will need to make up my high school calculus test. Which, I guess, I will have to do.” He rolled his eyes. “What a joke. I could take that test in my sleep and get one hundred percent.”

“You will definitely make up the calculus test.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you think he believed you were in high school?”

Kaashif chuckled caustically. “I am in high school.”

“Do you think he believed you were seventeen?”

“Absolutely.”

The driver pursed his lips as he checked his mirrors. He wasn’t as confident that things had gone smoothly in the interrogation. He had extensive experience with U.S. intel, and he knew how good they were. And he’d heard of a man named Wilson Travers who could supposedly see into the future. But if Travers was the interrogator and he could see into the future, why would he have allowed Kaashif to go free? It didn’t make sense. The driver checked his mirrors again worriedly. Still, he saw nothing.

“Everything must seem real. The illusion can never be discovered.”

“You worry too much,” Kaashif chided. “Enjoy life a little.”

“I don’t have time for that. Neither do you. That is not why we were put on this earth. We will enjoy ourselves in the next life.”

“Ah, you don’t know what you are talking about. So, how are my ‘mother and father’ doing?” Kaashif asked sarcastically.

“They went to the police this morning and filed a missing persons report. Just as concerned parents would do. As I said, the illusion must seem real. We will arrange for a reunion scene tonight. The story will be that you ran away from home for a few days because they are so strict. Everyone will believe it, most important the agents who interrogated you. They will believe you are too afraid of them to tell anyone the truth about what happened. It will be good.”

“They said they would be watching me. Well, they will see me go into the high school in the morning and come back out in the afternoon. But they will have no idea what I do at night. And then one morning soon I will go into the school, but I will not come back out. Not the way I went in, and they will never know how I slipped away. It will be exactly the way I did last week to see Imelda. That went off without a hitch, and no one ever knew I was gone from school for most of the day.” Kaashif laughed again, this time very loudly. “And they will never find me after that. I will be gone forever.” He nodded. “I will have beaten them, and hell will be raining down by that time. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to trample them. I only wish I could see their faces when the hour is upon them.”

“Just do your job. Don’t look at this as a competition.”

“Everything in life is a competition.”

“Keep your focus, Kaashif. Don’t make me—”

“Do you think the U.S. authorities will arrest the two who are playing my parents?”

The driver’s eyes narrowed. “I would, if I were they.”

Now it was Kaashif who checked his mirror. “And the attacks?” he asked. “What of the attacks?”

The driver smiled for the first time since he could remember. “As we speak, Kaashif, as we speak.”

Kaashif glanced over at the driver as his eyes widened. “The hour is upon them?”

“Yes. The decision was made this morning. Hell is already raining down.”

“I’m sorry for all that, Bill.” The president nodded at the door Baxter had just slammed shut. “Stewart can be downright unfriendly sometimes. I know it. But he’s what I need right now.”

“I understand,” Bill answered solemnly.

Troy had never seen his father like that. For a few seconds it had looked like Bill was going to come out of his chair at Baxter when the COS hit him broadside with that thing about Jack — and then piled on with the Rita Hayes reference. If Bill had, Baxter would have been sorry. Even though his father was more than three decades out of the Marine Corps, he was still in excellent shape. His father didn’t get angry often. But when he did and his temper was unleashed, things didn’t go well for the object of Bill’s fury.

“I did not ask him to run G-2 lines on you guys,” Dorn said. “In fact, I didn’t even know he had. You are obviously both above that kind of thing,” the president said, gesturing at them. “It won’t happen again. I promise you.”

“It doesn’t make me comfortable that your chief of staff is so against Red Cell Seven,” Bill said stoically. “But what makes me even more uncomfortable is that he knows about it at all. You promised me—”

“Don’t worry about Stewart. He doesn’t get this. And that’s putting it politely.”

“What have you told him?” Troy asked.

“Nothing. And I will tell him nothing. I made a promise to your father,” Dorn said, gesturing at Troy, “and I intend to keep it.”

Troy glanced at Bill. He didn’t want to be disrespectful, but there were people risking their lives out there every minute. They had to come first no matter what.

“I’m serious,” Dorn continued when he saw doubt in Troy’s expression. “Basically, all Stewart Baxter knows about RCS is its name. That’s all I told him.” The president hesitated. “But remember, he’s been around Washington a long time. Knowing Stewart as well as I do now, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had another source. He seems to have sources on everything.”

That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded like an easy way for Dorn to absolve himself of any guilt for giving Baxter information he wasn’t supposed to. There wasn’t any way Troy or his father could confirm or deny it, either. Baxter certainly wasn’t going to admit it if they asked him.

“Any chance Baxter could have set up listening devices in here?” Troy asked, looking around.

The president smiled wanly. “You guys really are para—”

“Any chance?” Bill interrupted. “I’m going out on a very long, very thin limb just by being here. I am violating procedure, and believe me, there are people watching this meeting from the cheap seats who question my view on this. But I’m confident it’s the right thing to do.”

The president shook his head. “No chance of any bugs. The Secret Service swept the office thirty minutes before you got here as part of their new routine since the assassination attempt. They found nothing, and I’ve been in here ever since.” Dorn began coughing hard, and Bill started to get up to help. But Dorn waved him off. “I’m okay,” he said as Bill eased back into the chair. “I need to know everything about Red Cell Seven. If you guys are more comfortable getting out of the West Wing and going into the private residence to talk about it, I understand.”

Troy and Bill glanced at each other and nodded.

“Let’s do that,” Bill said. “I’m sorry if that seems like overkill, but we have to be very careful.”

“No, no, that’s fine. I understand.” Dorn grinned. “Can one of you guys give me a push?”

“Let’s go, Harry,” Travers urged as he climbed back into the passenger seat. He and Boyd had stopped to fill up the van at a gas station outside Wilmington, Delaware, on their way back from Philly. “If we hustle we can make DC by seven.”

“Relax,” Boyd retorted as he opened a three-pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and gulped the first one down whole. “Man, that’s good,” he muttered, licking his lips as he reached forward to turn the key.

“You better cut down on that stuff, Harry. You’re starting to get a little heavy in the—”

Travers cut his jab at Boyd short. Something didn’t seem right. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but his sixth sense was suddenly going crazy. Trust your instincts. Then, through the windshield, he saw two young men sprinting for the van.

CHAPTER 6

“Isn’t this one of the places President Clinton brought that intern?” Bill asked. The large room was piled high with cardboard boxes identified by country name with black marker.

The three of them had ridden an elevator up to the third floor of the White House — from the kitchen on the ground floor — and then headed to this storage space, which was in a corner of the building. Troy had pushed Dorn’s wheelchair from the West Wing to the residence with three Secret Service agents hovering around them the whole way, including the ride up in the elevator.

The Secret Service agents were gone now. They were waiting in another room well away from this one. Bill had insisted on their leaving as a condition of talking to Dorn further about Red Cell Seven. The president had agreed, much to the intense aggravation of Richard Radcliff, the agent in charge.

In this room were stored many different china patterns, silverware sets, and crystal used for formal state dinners. The elevator the three men had just used ran directly between the ground floor and the little-used third floor. It didn’t stop on the state floor or second floor and was used mostly as a means of transporting the formal dining room ware. However, the still-lingering rumor was that, during the Clinton administration, it had also transported a covert human cargo named Monica, so she could come in through the kitchen mostly unnoticed and meet the president on the third floor, bypassing the other residence floors where she might run into someone she shouldn’t.

President Dorn shook his head. “I’m not commenting on that, Bill. Mr. Clinton was a tremendous president and a great man. It’s not for me to speculate on innuendo.”

“So, how much have you told your chief of staff about Red Cell Seven?” Bill asked.

“For the last time,” the president responded in a steely tone, “Stewart Baxter knows nothing important about RCS.”

“What exactly does ‘nothing important’—”

“Look,” Dorn interrupted sharply, “I can’t keep the FBI blindly looking for my assassin for much longer. I’ll have to let them know Shane Maddux was responsible. I won’t say that directly, of course. That could bring Red Cell Seven into it, and none of us want that. So I’ll whisper it to them anonymously somehow. The thing is, I’m going to have to do it soon. I can’t keep them tied up this way.”

Bill had told the president that Maddux was responsible for the assassination attempt, Troy knew. And he’d told Dorn that Maddux was involved with the LNG tankers that had been heading for Boston and Norfolk. He’d explained that Maddux had done all that to push Congress to give the U.S. intelligence infrastructure broader surveillance and investigative powers at home and abroad, and to incite the American public against terrorism at a time when Maddux believed the population was losing touch with 9/11. With people forgetting the devastation, Maddux believed the country was becoming vulnerable to another attack.

“It’s too much law-enforcement manpower to lock up indefinitely,” Dorn continued, “and they’re going around the clock.”

“Of course,” Bill agreed. “The public demands that the shooter be caught and punished. It terrifies people to think someone could get away with shooting their president.”

“Exactly.”

“Just give me a little longer,” Bill said. “Let me find Maddux and deal with him myself. I don’t want the FBI taking him into custody and giving him any incentive to talk about Red Cell Seven. I can’t have him rolling over on us.”

That made no sense to Troy. Maddux was guilty of terrible things, but he was a patriot. In Maddux’s eyes, Dorn was the traitor because he’d been planning to eliminate Red Cell Seven, as well as seriously limit what “official” U.S. intelligence agents could do to fight terrorism, including the torture of suspects to gain information — which Maddux believed was an essential interrogation tool. Therefore, Maddux didn’t consider it a crime to assassinate David Dorn. Maddux believed that the assassination would save Red Cell Seven and, by extension, the country.

Troy seriously doubted Maddux would ever give away RCS secrets. Even if he thought he could make a deal by doing it and avoid or lessen jail time.

More to the point, Troy doubted the FBI would ever catch Maddux — not alive, anyway. So RCS secrets were safe with Maddux. Troy couldn’t understand why his father would think any other way. But then, Bill was privy to much more information than he was.

Troy doubted anyone would ever take Shane alive. And if somehow his father managed to catch Maddux, he certainly wasn’t going to turn the man over to the FBI — which Dorn had to know.

“All right, Bill,” Dorn agreed, “a little more time.”

“How much are we talking?”

“I’ll let you know before I leak any information about Maddux to the FBI. But that’s all I can promise. Let’s just leave it at that.” Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “Bill, how many individuals defected with Maddux out of RCS?”

“Only a few, and I have people searching for them as well. But when we find Maddux, we’ll find the rest of them.”

Troy disagreed with that, too. But he kept his mouth shut.

Dorn eased back into the wheelchair. “Okay, guys,” he muttered after taking a deep breath. “Tell me everything I need to know about Red Cell Seven.”

Bill glanced at Troy. “Go on, son.”

And Troy glanced at the president. “I want to be as efficient as possible, Mr. President. What do you already know?”

“Your father gave me some information to review while I was in the hospital. It described certain of Red Cell Seven’s activities over the past four decades. And of course, over the last year, since my election, Roger Carlson would report to me face-to-face from time to time. On average, that was about once a month. But he never told me much. He was a crafty man.”

“Experienced,” Bill countered.

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“I do.”

The president shrugged. “I made the mistake of telling Roger I wanted very specific information. And that I was going to put a buffer between us.”

Bill shook his head. “I doubt that went over very well.”

“No, it did not. He was furious.”

“Knowing Roger, he probably took that as a signal that you were going to shut RCS down.”

“Probably,” Dorn agreed. “And that’s probably what initiated the plot to kill me.”

“I doubt it, sir,” Bill disagreed. “In my opinion Roger Carlson would never endorse a plan to assassinate the president of the United States. I believe that all originated with Shane Maddux, that it was his idea alone.”

“Don’t you think Roger told Maddux what I said?”

“Maybe, but I think Maddux was already planning it before Carlson would have said anything to him.”

“How would Maddux have known before Roger told him?”

Bill shot Troy a knowing look. “You don’t know Shane Maddux the way we do.”

“And I’m very glad of that.” Dorn gestured to Bill. “Did Roger tell you what I said to him?”

Bill pushed out his lower lip then shook his head deliberately. “No.”

“Mmm.”

It seemed obvious to Troy that Dorn wasn’t convinced by his father’s answer.

“Roger died of a heart attack,” the president said, “didn’t he?”

Bill nodded. “He was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car outside his townhouse in Georgetown.”

Troy and Bill had talked about Carlson’s death on the way down to Washington. They both suspected Maddux of somehow being involved. The thing was, the coroner had confirmed the cause of death as a heart attack. Despite that, they still weren’t completely convinced. But they’d agreed not to say anything about their suspicions to Dorn.

“How many agents does RCS have?” the president asked.

“Ninety-two,” Bill answered.

Interesting. A month ago Troy had heard the number was ninety-eight.

“Are they divided into units? I mean, how does that work?”

“We call them divisions,” Troy explained. “They include out-of-country terrorism, counterterrorism, interrogation, communications, and assassinations.” President Dorn seemed to have suddenly lost the little color he had in his face. “Are you all right, sir?”

“For a man like me, it’s hard to hear a word like ‘assassinations’ when it comes to activities carried out by people I’m ultimately responsible for. The word ‘interrogation’ doesn’t sit well with me, either, if I’m going to be completely honest. I’m pretty sure I know what that really means.” He glanced at Troy. “Do I? Do I know what it really means?”

“What exactly do you—”

“Do you guys torture people?”

“Yes, sir,” Troy answered candidly, “when we need to, when that option is appropriate.”

“Lord. When can that option ever be appropriate?”

Troy and Bill glanced at each other uneasily.

“Don’t worry,” the president spoke up quickly, “I get it. I get the whole lowest common denominator thing. At least, I do now. We have to fight them the way they fight us. Down and dirty.”

“That’s right,” Bill replied firmly. “But Mr. President, the beauty of Red Cell Seven is that you aren’t responsible for us in any way. It’s even better than plausible deniability when it comes to RCS. It’s genuine deniability. With all due respect to Stewart Baxter, RCS cannot get you in trouble, no matter what it does.”

Dorn shook his head. “In the end, Bill, I’m responsible for everything and anything that goes on in this country. I can’t use ignorance as an excuse.”

“Yes, you certainly can.”

“No,” Dorn snapped, “I cannot.” He nodded at Troy. “What division are you in?”

“Communications.” The president seemed relieved by the answer, though he shouldn’t have been. Troy had killed a few men. Everyone in RCS did, sooner or later, and so far it had been six years inside for Troy. “My division’s also called the Falcons,” he continued. “We deliver instructions and cash to other RCS agents around the world. We never use electronic messages or phones of any kind to communicate the most sensitive data.” He hesitated. “Why did you want to know what division I was in?”

“And what is your role in all of this, Bill?” Dorn asked the elder Jensen without responding.

“I’m a Red Cell Seven associate. Actually, I lead the associate pool.”

“What does that mean? What are associates?”

“We’re a network of RCS support,” Bill explained. “We’re not actually considered agents.”

“Be more specific.”

“Unlike the CIA, the NSA, or any other U.S. intel group that I’m aware of, Red Cell Seven receives no support at all from the federal government, funding or otherwise,” Bill explained. “We’re completely autonomous. We operate that way so there are no opportunities for our enemies, foreign or domestic, to prove we exist.”

“How would they do that?”

“Money trails. An organization like Red Cell Seven, with ninety-two agents constantly on the move around the world, requires a lot of cash to operate. If we took cash from the federal government and the link was discovered, some ridiculous liberal, left-wing Congressional investigation committee might use the evidence to put an end to what has been the most effective intelligence group the United States has ever operated. But we don’t. We’re autonomous. That’s why you can never be blamed.”

“What gives you the right to operate?”

Bill stared back blankly at the president for a few moments.

Troy’s eyes moved slowly to his father. He wanted to hear this, too. He’d always wondered the same thing.

“He didn’t tell you?” Bill finally asked.

Dorn raised both eyebrows. “He who?”

Bill cleared his throat. “You really don’t know?”

“Answer the question, Bill.”

“Your immediate predecessor, Mr. President. He had a meeting with you immediately prior to your inauguration, on the day of, in fact. He communicated several extraordinarily sensitive things to you just before you took the oath. It’s been that way for many years. That tradition is little known, but it happens every time a new president is inaugurated.”

“What did he tell me, Bill?”

“How would I know, sir? The subjects of that conversation are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. You were there. You tell me. If you can,” Bill added ominously.

“What did he tell me about Red Cell Seven? You know about that specific agenda item. I know you do.”

It was fascinating for Troy to watch this play out. Neither man wanted to blink. But one of them would have to.

“If you think I know, then—”

“What did he tell me about Red Cell Seven?” Dorn repeated sternly.

Again Bill stared back blankly for several moments. Finally, he gestured at Troy. “Troy’s my son, but he shouldn’t be in here if—”

“What did he tell me?”

Bill took a deep breath. “He told you that Richard Nixon founded Red Cell Seven by signing Executive Order 1973 One-E. He informed you that the Order established the cell and empowered Roger Carlson by name to move forward without any constraints whatsoever and without any threat of prosecution for anything he or agents reporting to him did. He was to protect the security of the country any way he saw fit, and he was given total immunity from any prosecution.”

The tiny hairs on the back of Troy’s neck stood up. Total immunity. Amazing.

“How many originals of that Executive Order did President Nixon sign?” Dorn asked.

“Two.”

“Where are they?”

Bill shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“I don’t.”

“Who does?”

“I don’t know.”

President Dorn’s eyes flashed. “Without those two originals, the cell could be vulnerable, Bill.”

“Agreed, but if someone tried to prosecute anyone inside the cell for actions taken on behalf of the cell, and one of those original Executive Orders was presented at the right time to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, whoever had tried to prosecute the agent would be in deep trouble. For instance, it would be an impeachable offense if the president of the United States were involved. And there would be no question about it. The chief justice is aware.”

When Bill finished, the succeeding silence seemed deafening to Troy.

“You need to find those two originals,” Dorn finally spoke up. “I do not want Red Cell Seven vulnerable in any way. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you have located them, you will let me know.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dorn eased back into the wheelchair. “Tell me more.”

“Since 9/11, Red Cell Seven has detected and derailed six major terrorist plots against the United States. Those plots weren’t mentioned in the information you read while you were at Walter Reed. All six attacks would have been catastrophic and would have caused major loss of life within United States borders. Two of them would have made 9/11 look small in comparison. And both of those attacks were being planned by groups who absolutely had the human assets, the financial capability, and the operational experience to execute them.” Bill paused. “No one outside RCS ever knew about them or what we did to stop them. Until now.”

“Do tell me about those…attacks.”

Troy heard cynicism in Dorn’s voice again.

“No,” Bill answered stubbornly.

“Why not?”

“I want you to maintain that genuine deniability I mentioned earlier.”

“Telling me about the attacks won’t jeopardize that. Last I heard it’s pretty tough to get me to testify.”

It seemed to Troy that the president was pressing his father because he didn’t believe him. Nothing had been said to that effect, but Troy could tell Bill also figured that was the impetus behind this line of questioning.

The room went deathly still again as Bill and Dorn glared at each other.

“There’s a town on the west bank of the Hudson River called Nyack,” Bill finally continued. “It’s about twenty-five miles north of New York City.”

“I’m familiar with it. Its nickname is ‘Your Gem of the Hudson,’ and it’s actually a village, Bill, not a town. It’s in the town of Orangetown.”

“Anyway,” Bill continued, “there’s a nuclear power plant north of there—”

“Which is actually in Clarkstown,” Dorn interrupted. “That’s the town north of Orangetown.”

“Thank you for the geography lesson, Mr. President, but—”

“Are you telling me terrorists were planning to attack the Nyack nuclear power facility?”

“And destroy it in a way that would have created an immense and deadly radiation cloud.”

“When was this attack supposed to have happened?”

“Two summers ago. If the terrorists had succeeded, they would have put twelve to fifteen million civilians at risk. It would have been far worse than the situation at the Fukushima plant in Japan in 2011 that was caused by the Tohoku earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. It would have been even worse than Chernobyl.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that—”

“In August of last year,” Bill interrupted, “seventeen Somalis were placed in solitary confinement at a top-secret prison the CIA maintains outside Athens, Greece. I know you’re familiar with that prison, sir. The Langley boys told you about it during your second meeting with them. That would have been the trip you took across the Potomac immediately after you were elected to ‘tour the CIA facility,’ as it was termed, I believe.” Bill gestured at the president. “Ask Wes Dolan about those Somalis. He’ll tell you. When he’s done confirming all that, ask him how I could know about those men being sent to Athens. They were the ones who were going to attack the nuclear plant.”

“That still doesn’t—”

“Last spring we discovered three nuclear silos in the Ukraine that still had active SS-19s in them. There was a plot under way to fire them. I know you heard about that.”

Troy’s gaze shifted to Dorn. He figured the president was going to come back at his father even more strongly on this one. Instead, Dorn slouched in the wheelchair, as if he were giving in.

“The Russians were supposed to have made certain the Ukrainians had all those nukes out of the silos and destroyed back in 1996,” Bill continued, “weren’t they, Mr. President?”

“Yes,” Dorn agreed quietly. “Red Cell Seven discovered those silos?”

“You’re damn right we did,” Bill said proudly. “And we kept it out of the press. If reporters had found out that several senior Ukraine officials had been bought off by certain wealthy rogue elements in the Middle East, we would have had a public relations nightmare on our hands.”

“And I would have had a political hurricane on my hands,” Dorn admitted. “It would have set U.S. — Russian relations back twenty years.”

“More like fifty.”

“Are those the two situations you were referring to earlier?” Dorn asked. “The attack on the Nyack nuclear facility and the issue with the SS-19s in the Ukraine?”

“Yes. Now, there have been other situations. Planes coming from Europe and Asia that were targeting skyscrapers and other facilities in the United States; embassy attacks; a dam on the Wind River in Wyoming that was going to be blown up and would have drowned an entire town. We took care of those situations as well as many others during the last decade. But none of them compare to what could have happened at Nyack and in the Ukraine.”

“For certain,” President Dorn agreed. “Of course, there was that LNG tanker headed for Norfolk as well.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed at Bill. “That would have been because of Red Cell Seven. That would have been on Shane Maddux’s shoulders.”

“Yes, it would have. But at least one good thing came out of that near-disaster.”

“Which was…?”

“No LNG tanker leaves any port in the world and heads for America without a United States naval escort. Not from Malaysia, not from Algeria, not from anywhere. And two hundred miles off the U.S. coast, all those ships are boarded by Marines. And they get fighter jet escorts from a hundred miles in, so nobody can fly a plane into the ship and blow it up. Rogue LNG tankers will never again be a threat to the United States.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

The room went quiet for a third time as everything Bill had described in the last few minutes sank in. It was the first time Troy had heard most of this. Information was disseminated only on a need-to-know basis within the cell.

“People think it’s just a coincidence that we haven’t had another terrorist attack inside our borders for more than a decade,” Bill spoke up after a few moments. “Well, it isn’t a coincidence, Mr. President. Not even close. And we must continue what we do exactly the way we do it, which is however we see fit without any interference. We can’t have our president trying to shut us down or limit our interrogation powers.”

“So you and the other associates provide the money.” Dorn’s voice was hushed.

“And the houses and the boats and the planes,” Bill explained, “along with doing our regular jobs.”

“My God,” the president whispered. “I had no idea this thing was so well organized.”

“It has to be.”

Dorn gestured at Bill. “Now that Roger is gone, are you effectively the leader of Red Cell Seven?”

Bill nodded deliberately after a few moments. “Yes.” He paused. “But I can’t keep doing it. I can’t lead RCS and be the CEO of First Manhattan. I don’t have the personal bandwidth, and worse, sooner or later someone’s going to figure out that I—”

“Mr. President!”

All three men flinched at the shout coming from the other side of the door and the loud knocking suddenly accompanying it.

“It’s Agent Radcliff, sir. I must see you right now.”

“Come in, come in,” the president called.

The Secret Service agent burst into the storage room, followed immediately by two more agents. All three men seemed distraught.

“For God’s sake, what is it, son?”

“There’s been an attack, Mr. President,” Radcliff explained. “It was out in northern Virginia, in McLean at that big Tysons One Mall.”

“What kind of attack?”

Troy heard footsteps running toward them.

“Shooters. Two to four of them, according to eyewitnesses at the scene. They had automatic weapons. Eight dead and twelve wounded so far. The men just walked through one entrance of the mall and opened fire. The place was jammed with people.”

Dorn cringed. “My God. Were they caught?”

“No, sir. Fairfax County Police and the state people found a couple of vehicles that were suspicious, but no persons in or around them.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Ten minutes.”

Stewart Baxter pushed his way past the agents into the middle of the room. “Mr. President, you need to get back to the Oval Office immediately.”

“Yes, of course, Stewart.”

Troy heard more footsteps hustling toward them.

“We don’t know if—”

“Mr. President!” Another agent burst into the room. “Sir, we have reports of more attacks. It’s the same thing as Tysons Corner. Huge malls. Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis. Shooters opening fire at crowds with automatic weapons. Seven attacks so far.”

The president glanced from Baxter to Bill and then back at Baxter. “Gentlemen, we are under attack.” He motioned to Radcliff. “Get me back to the Oval Office.”

As Radcliff wheeled the president out, Baxter pointed at Bill and Troy in turn. “Where were you pricks on this one?” He stared hard at them for a few moments, eyes flashing accusingly. “Nowhere, obviously,” he hissed as he stormed from the room. “Nowhere!”

CHAPTER 7

As Travers raced down the railroad tracks through the darkness, bullets strafed past. He turned and darted into the dense forest lining both sides of the double main line. Going into the trees was his only chance.

Three minutes ago he and Harry Boyd had been ambushed at the gas station. Boyd had been shot dead through the windshield by one of the men who’d attacked them back there. But Travers had escaped by hustling out the back of the van, then racing onto the tracks that lay at the bottom of a steep ravine at the edge of the gas station’s parking lot.

Now he was running for his life.

Kaashif and the driver glanced at each other when a DJ broke into the rap song playing on the vehicle’s radio to announce in a trembling voice what was unfolding across the country. Huge high-end malls were being attacked in big cities all over the nation.

When the announcer finished, they high-fived each other — just as they pulled into the short driveway of Kaashif’s “parents’” house.

“Stay with me,” one of the EMTs said loudly as they rushed the young woman toward the mall entrance where the three assassins had opened fire on the crowd eleven minutes ago. “You’re gonna make it,” he said as they guided the gurney around the security guard’s dead body. “Don’t give up.”

Jennie could barely make out the features of the man above her. Everything about him seemed out of focus, and she couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Had they given her drugs, or was her body shutting down? She couldn’t remember them giving her anything. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“The little girl,” she whispered. “Is she all right?”

The EMT leaned down. “What?”

Jennie couldn’t say the words again. Her strength was gone, and her eyelids slowly slid shut.

The EMT shook her shoulder gently as they guided the gurney through the outer doors of the mall lobby. But she was unresponsive.

“We’ve gotta hurry,” he urged his partner as they raced her toward the ambulance, “or we’re gonna lose her.”

“Looks like we may already have,” the other EMT responded dejectedly.

“No dogs,” Major Travers muttered thankfully as he dodged the trunks of leafless trees coming at him through the gloom. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t wide enough for a man his size to hide behind. “That’s good. A couple of Dobermans would have been a problem.”

Travers hurdled a wide stream, clawed his way up the steep bank on the other side, and then hustled into the trees. He had time — though not much. Still, that narrow window provided an opportunity. If they’d sent dogs out on him, the odds of success would have dropped drastically. And life was all about odds.

He stayed in top physical condition with the kind of insane workouts other men his age would have died from. But when it came to physical ability and stamina, working out was no match for youth. He knew that as well as anyone. Despite the heavy workouts, he knew he’d lost a step.

The key difference between most other men in their fifth decade and Travers: He accepted timeless truths and used experience and cunning to turn those truths to his advantage.

Sooner or later the two men chasing him like wolves — steadily and relentlessly — were going to catch up. That outcome was inevitable. He’d seen their faces back at the gas station during the chaos in which Harry had been killed. They were much younger, and they could certainly go longer and farther than he could. More important, they were hungry with much to prove, like most men their age.

And that would be their downfall. He would use that hunger against them.

The two assassins raced through the leafless forest of oaks and poplars with their pistols drawn, then on into the dense pine forest and the gathering dusk. They were closing in on Travers, the primary target of their mission.

“Don’t stop until both men have been neutralized, and bring me back the right forefinger of Harry Boyd as proof of your success.” That was the order from their superior, Shane Maddux.

The young man running second had Boyd’s finger stuffed in his pants pocket. Now he wanted Travers. Dropping that dead finger on the table in front of Maddux was going to be a proud moment. But snaring Travers was much more important because it would absolve him of his failure in Los Angeles.

As the two pursuers broke into a secluded clearing, Travers dropped down from above and slammed his right knee directly between the lead man’s shoulder blades. Most men would have crumpled to the ground out cold, but this kid was in tremendous shape. He remained conscious.

Travers could feel that natural, youthful energy and strength surging through the young body as he wrapped his arm around the assassin’s head so the face was buried in the crook of his elbow. Then he twisted wickedly, fast and hard. It was a shame to do this to such a valuable asset, but he had no choice. This fight was to the death.

The sound of the neck breaking was loud, like a dead branch cracking beneath a boot, and the kid died instantly without even a groan.

Travers dropped the lifeless body to the leaves and whipped around, then lunged immediately to the right just as the other young man fired his pistol. The bullet blew through Travers’s jacket and grazed his left side. But with all the adrenaline pouring through his system, he didn’t feel it. He lunged again as the young man aimed. But he beat the second bullet, too, and then chopped down like a sledgehammer on the wrist of his attacker so the fight became a hand-to-hand struggle when the weapon flew off into the woods.

The younger man caught Travers flush on the cheek with a brutally fast left, but Travers was leaning away when the punch landed, so the impact did minimal damage. Travers retaliated with a sharp elbow to the Adam’s apple, a powerful chop-kick down onto the right patella, and a knee to the groin. It was over that fast, and now Travers had a willing witness — though the kid didn’t realize how willing he was about to be.

Travers splayed the victim on his stomach on the wet ground like a deer carcass. Then he quickly broke the man’s right shoulder by straddling the lower back, grabbing the right wrist with his right hand, pressing down on the right shoulder with his left hand, and then rotating the young man’s arm all the way around on the axis as he held it straight out until the joint snapped as loudly as the other man’s neck had. Travers repeated the technique with the left shoulder and left arm, and now there was no risk of counterattack or escape. The kid was done. He wouldn’t even be able to make it to his feet without a herculean effort.

“You shouldn’t have fired at me so fast,” Travers hissed as the man beneath him cried out in terrible pain. “You should have taken your time. You always have more time than you think. And you shouldn’t have run so blindly into good cover like this.” Travers nodded respectfully and thankfully to the thickly needled limbs of the pine trees above him. Then he leaned down so his lips were close to the ear of the young man, who only now did he see was also African American. Up until this moment he’d been too focused on survival to notice. “Tell me who sent you.”

“I can’t,” the other man gasped. “You know that.”

“What’s your name?”

“No.”

Travers stood up, spread the man’s legs wide, and then kicked the scrotum again with the steel toe of his boot, as hard as he could. He’d popped at least one of the testicles with that strike, no doubt.

“Just kill me,” the kid moaned pitifully as Travers dropped his full weight down on the lower back once more. “Let me die.”

The pain was excruciating, Travers knew. But unfortunately for his victim, he knew how to keep it going, to keep him just on that edge, without letting him pass out. And he fully intended to do just that until he received the answers he sought.

“Please,” the man begged as he struggled for every breath. “I can’t take any more.”

“What’s your name?”

“I can’t— Okay, okay,” he yelled as loudly as he could when Travers started to stand up again. “I’m O’Hara.”

Travers eased back down onto the kid’s back. “O’Hara?” he murmured. “Ryan O’Hara?”

“Yeah,” the young guy gasped.

Travers hadn’t trained O’Hara like he had Nathan Kohler. Typically, he was only involved with one of every three new recruits. So it wasn’t like he’d recognize the kid. But he’d heard of him. “You shot the president in L.A.”

“Yes.”

“Shane Maddux sent you after me,” Travers muttered as his eyes darted around, as he tried to see anything through what little remained of the late afternoon light.

O’Hara had joined the RCS Falcon Division only recently, Travers knew, but he’d defected almost right away to join Maddux’s small gang of mutineers. That was what Travers had heard through the grapevine, anyway, and it was absolutely believable because that was the thing about Maddux: He had this way of convincing subordinates of anything, even something as insane as defecting from Red Cell Seven.

“You’re still working for him, aren’t you?” The realization rocked Travers. “Jesus Christ.”

O’Hara didn’t answer, didn’t confirm, but that was irrelevant. Travers took one more panic-stricken look around, then snapped the kid’s neck and took off.

As he ran, he skinned his pistol from the leather holster at the small of his back, chambered the first round, and let the smooth black composite barrel guide him through the forest. He hadn’t bothered to use the 9mm to take down O’Hara and the other kid, even though the odds had been two-on-one. He hadn’t wanted to kill them both right away so he could draw information — as he successfully had. But knowing Shane Maddux was involved in this made Travers draw his weapon even though he had no idea if Maddux was anywhere close or if he was half a world away. It felt as if he was close, and that was enough.

Trust your instincts.

So maybe it had been an instinct to draw his pistol, Travers realized — a survival instinct. Because once Maddux put you in his sights, he never stopped coming until the hunt was done and one of you was dead. Maddux had been involved in many hunts during his two decades in Red Cell Seven, and as far as Travers knew, the guy was still very much alive and free out there despite his defection — which meant all the other guys involved in those past hunts were dead. Travers had no intention of being Maddux’s next trophy.

He put his head down and ran faster. Shane Maddux was the only man in the world Wilson Travers truly feared.

CHAPTER 8

“Go, go, go!” shouted the leader over his shoulder as the van skidded to a stop at the outer edge of the strip mall parking lot.

Twelve minutes ago the three men in the back had opened fire with automatic weapons inside a huge Minneapolis mall that was now two miles away, spraying the holiday shopping crowd with a deadly hail of bullets. They’d killed nine people in the assault and wounded fifteen more, four critically.

When they were done, the three assassins had raced out of the mall and into this brand-new white van that the driver had waiting for them at the curb just outside the entrance.

“Come on!”

The three men piled out of the van and into the back of another van, which was parked in the spot immediately adjacent to the one they’d just pulled into, while the driver, who was the leader of the squad, raced from driver’s seat to driver’s seat. This second van was old, rusted, and painted a faded robin’s egg blue. The leader figured it would make for perfect cover with its dented sides and the ladder on top. He’d added that detail this morning just before the attack. He’d stolen the ladder from a painting company down the block from the Eden Prairie ranch house they’d been using for the last three months.

As the leader revved the engine of the second getaway vehicle, he glanced through the windshield. Two boys were straddling their bikes less than fifty feet away. Neither of them was more than ten years old, he figured. But they were both aiming cell phones directly at the two vans, obviously taking videos. They would die for it. And their parents would regret giving them such expensive toys at such young ages. Having so much money wasn’t a good thing. Flaunting it was worse. This population needed to understand that.

“Kill them!” he yelled, stabbing his finger wildly at the boys.

Two of the men jumped out of the back and fired. Job finished, they climbed into the van again as the leader sprinted to where the boys lay, grabbed their phones off the blacktop, and sprinted back to the van.

The chaos at the edge of the parking lot had attracted attention. A man coming out of a dry cleaner’s in the middle of the strip mall had witnessed the horrific scene of the boys being shot off their bikes. He’d called 911 immediately, contacting the emergency service as the leader was running back to the van after scooping up the boys’ cell phones.

Fortunately, a local policeman who hadn’t been called to the shooting two miles away was emerging from the post office beside the dry cleaner just as the witness was connecting with the 911 operator. The witness alerted the policeman to what he’d seen, and the cop made it to his squad car before the van had even exited the strip mall parking lot.

The chase was on.

Agent Radcliff burst into the Oval Office without knocking. “Mr. President,” he called loudly as he stopped just in front of the eagle woven into the carpet. “Sir, it’s important.”

“What is it?”

President Dorn sat in the wheelchair behind his desk, studying a piece of paper inside an open folder that Stewart Baxter had just placed in front of him. Baxter stood on one side of Dorn while Jane Travanti, secretary of Homeland Security, stood on the other. Travanti was tall and angular with straight blond hair cut short in a pageboy so it fell to just above her slim shoulders.

Next to Travanti was Wes Dolan, the director of National Intelligence. He was short, nearly bald, and had an all-business air about him.

A television sat on a table beside a wingback chair off to Radcliff’s left. It was turned on, but the volume was low, and no one seemed to be paying attention to it.

“You need to see something, sir,” he said, pointing at the TV.

“We’re about to go down to the Situation Room, Agent Radcliff. Can it wait a few minutes? I can watch whatever it is down there.”

Dorn looked exhausted, even more so than he had when Radcliff had wheeled him down here from the residence, and that had been only a few minutes ago. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes now, and he had a gaunt look about him, like he’d quickly gone from predator to prey. Or he had the weight of the world on his still-weak shoulders.

Which, of course, he did.

The president’s nurse stood near the table littered with medical supplies. She didn’t look much better. There was fear in her eyes, too, though it was a different kind. It seemed like she’d finally gotten the responsibility she’d been wishing for all her career — and now she was wishing she hadn’t.

Radcliff hustled to the wide-screen TV in his purposeful, ex-military stride and boosted the volume. The TV was already tuned to an all-news channel, so he hadn’t needed to run through the guide. Every news channel in the world had to be carrying this, he figured, as the sound from the two speakers grew quite loud. It was the story of the millennium.

“No, Mr. President, you need to see this now,” he called out over the newscaster’s voice.

“What are you doing?” Baxter demanded indignantly as he looked up from the folder. “We don’t have time for—”

“Minneapolis police are chasing a van they believe is carrying the terrorists who just attacked the Mall of America,” Radcliff explained in his most formal voice as he pointed at the screen and the view from above of a light blue van racing crazily around and past cars on a double-lane highway. “The Twin Cities airport is close to the MOA, and a chopper that flew over to cover the aftermath of the attack peeled off when they heard about the chase. They picked up the van’s trail a few minutes ago heading north. This is happening as we speak.”

“My God,” Travanti whispered as she moved slowly away from Dorn and toward the TV. “We must take them alive, Mr. President. We must be able to interrogate these people. All the others have gotten away. This could be our best chance to stop any more attacks.”

Dolan grabbed a phone on the president’s desk. “This is DNI Wes Dolan,” he barked at the White House operator. “Get me Rick Burns in my office immediately.” Dolan nodded to Travanti as he slipped a hand over the mouthpiece. “Burns is from St. Paul. He’ll know how to get to the cops out there fast.”

“Look at this, Dad.” Troy gestured at the TV. Through a Secret Service agent, the president had asked them to stay, so they were using a small room down the corridor from the Oval Office. Bill was speaking to someone over the landline in the room, and Troy had turned on the flat-screen bolted to the wall. “Jesus.”

Bill ended his call quickly. “What is it, son?”

Troy was standing beside the TV, and he pointed at a light blue van that was racing down a highway, weaving dangerously in and out of traffic with police cars in high-speed pursuit. The view of the chase was from above. “They think the guys in this van are the ones who just attacked the Mall of America in Minneapolis. They shot more than twenty people.”

“Sons of bitches,” Bill muttered as he rose and moved to where Troy was standing. “They’d better take these guys alive. I mean, they haven’t caught anybody else so far, right? Have they mentioned anything about that?”

“All the other shooters got away from the scenes. No reports of any arrests yet.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to interrogate at least one of these guys. What’s the latest count overall?”

“Eleven malls were attacked,” Troy answered. “All in big cities, and the attacks all happened within a few minutes of one another. No announcement from any terrorist group claiming responsibility, and no official confirmation yet. But there’s no doubt they were coordinated. Everyone agrees on that.” Troy glanced at his watch. “It’s been twenty-five minutes since the last one. Hopefully it’s over.”

Bill shook his head. “Maybe for today, but not for good. This is obviously not a suicide thing. Which means the plan is probably for these squads to carry out more attacks. Flying airliners into buildings is shocking, but this is much more effective. This is the nightmare scenario,” he added quietly.

“It shuts the country down,” Troy agreed. “No one’s going to leave their house if they think death squads are going to attack the mall they’re headed to.”

“Or the Exxon or the Ruby Tuesday or the Home Depot. See, that’s what they do next. They go to smaller, more specific targets. Maybe they hit nothing but Ruby Tuesdays for a few days and basically shut the chain down because no one will go there. And if they’re smart, they’ll take it to small towns, too. They show the country that no one is safe. The killings are obviously the worst part of the attack, but—”

“But it tears the economy to shreds, too,” Troy broke in, anticipating where his father was going with this, “especially at the holidays. Every mall in the country will be a ghost town.” He glanced from the screen to Bill. He was thinking about that accusation Baxter had hurled at them as Radcliff was wheeling President Dorn out of the storage room. “Had you heard anything about this?” he asked. Bill had been the de facto head of Red Cell Seven since Roger Carlson’s death a few weeks ago. He’d admitted as much to President Dorn a short time ago. “Anything at all?”

Bill watched the van dodge several cars. Then his eyes moved deliberately to Troy’s. “Had you?” he asked without answering.

After twenty-eight years of dealing with his father, Troy was accustomed to that habit of answering a question with a question. “I’m a Falcon, Dad. I don’t hear as much as you. The division heads seem to do a pretty good job of compartmentalizing. There’s some crossover as far as info goes, but not much. And remember, my leader was Maddux. He was especially good at that. He didn’t tell us anything.”

“Still.”

Troy shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What about a mutiny inside the ranks?” Bill asked. “What about some of the guys in Red Cell Seven defecting to go with Maddux?”

Troy nodded this time. “I’ve heard a little along those lines since everything went down, but I thought it was just crap. I figured Maddux was out there on his own with only that kid Ryan O’Hara.” He hesitated. “Is it true? Did more people go with Maddux than just O’Hara?”

Bill was about to answer when the van clipped the back of a tanker truck and veered left toward a railroad bridge abutment. “Look at this, Troy!”

“Oh my God.”

The leader struggled frantically to regain control of the van as it hurtled toward the concrete bridge abutment. He’d been distracted for just a split second as he searched on his iPhone for the best way to exit this road. But that single second had been enough. He’d nicked the back of the tanker truck with the van’s front bumper. He figured cops would be throwing down spike strips on the highway somewhere up ahead, no more than a few miles or so. So he had to get off fast or face the unpleasant prospect of four flat tires and almost certain capture — which was not an acceptable outcome. That had been made very clear by his superior many times.

He cursed loudly. He’d barely tagged the tanker, but it was enough to send the van careening to the left, out of control.

At the last moment he swung the vehicle to the right, narrowly avoiding an impact with the abutment, which would have disintegrated the van and killed them all. They raced beneath the railroad bridge, still out of control. The sudden twist in direction sent him and the other three men barreling back toward the truck trailer they’d just clipped. He wrenched the steering wheel back to the left. He had no choice. Otherwise they would have smashed directly into the trailer, which could be carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline.

The van fishtailed wildly for a hundred feet and then went up on its right two tires, beside the truck. For a few seconds the leader believed he could bring his vehicle back under control. But then it tipped over and everything turned to chaos. Bodies, weapons, and ammunition flew everywhere inside the van. However, the vehicle didn’t tumble. And that was key, the leader realized even as the crash unfolded. That gave them a chance.

The van slid along the highway on its passenger side as the truck driver jammed on his brakes. The big rig jackknifed, careened off the road, slammed into a wall — and exploded.

The van burst through the fireball and continued to slide down the broken white lane markers, finally coming to a halt several hundred feet farther along the highway than the still-burning truck, screeching to a stop amidst a cloud of smoke and sparks.

“Everybody all right?” the leader yelled.

His left wrist was bruised and bloody, but he ignored the pain shooting all the way up into his shoulder. Capture is not acceptable, he kept telling himself. They had to do anything to avoid it, because he wasn’t at all confident that one of the men in back — possibly two — would hold up under the scrutiny he knew they would quickly be subjected to. Some people were under the impression that United States agents went the torture route only in rare circumstances. Some people were sorely mistaken.

“Hey! Back there!”

“Saafir is gone,” came the groggy reply. “But Gohar and I are all right.”

“Are you certain he’s gone?” the leader yelled, slamming his shoulder against the jammed door to open it. “Give him a bullet if you aren’t.”

A gun went off immediately.

“Follow me,” he called, gratified that they were still obeying his every order. “Come on.”

As he tumbled to the pavement outside the van, a police car burst through the fireball and skidded to a stop twenty feet away. As the other two followed him out of the van and jumped to the ground, the leader calmly reached inside his jacket, pulled a grenade from one pocket, and tossed it at the police cruiser.

The cruiser exploded instantly, and the cop who’d just climbed out of it was engulfed in flames. The man staggered around for several seconds, arms outstretched in front of him as the blaze torched his body. Finally he dropped to the pavement on his knees, and then fell forward on his chest and face. His flesh began to boil on the asphalt as it peeled away from the bones in smoking chunks.

CHAPTER 9

“Okay, so maybe Shane Maddux is a little crazy.”

Troy was watching the tense standoff outside Minneapolis on the flat-screen. He’d seen a lot of gruesome things during his six-year career as an RCS Falcon, but the image of that cop’s body falling to the pavement, engulfed in flames, would stay with him forever. Just as the image of Karen kissing Jack’s coffin this morning would.

“I’ll give you that, Dad.”

“Oh, thanks,” Bill acknowledged sarcastically. “But I wish we’d found that out a long time ago. At least then we’d have a president who could deal with these lunatics at full strength.”

After killing the cop, the three terrorists had abandoned the van, raced past the still-burning tanker truck, and taken refuge beneath the railroad bridge. They were holed up behind a three-sided concrete barrier that gave them excellent cover, even against the army of law-enforcement authorities who had them surrounded.

“Looks like the cops out there got the word.”

“You mean about taking these guys alive?”

“I’m sure that’s why nothing’s happened yet. They could take out these guys in thirty seconds if they really wanted to, if they didn’t care about interrogating them. And they saw the one guy throw that grenade and kill one of their own. We all did. So everybody knows they’ve committed murder, even if they can’t be absolutely linked to the Mall of America attack yet. The authorities would certainly be justified in moving on them. But they’re waiting. And whatever’s going to happen probably won’t for a while. They’ll probably wait until dark to finish it.” Bill checked his watch. “It’ll be light in the Twin Cities for at least another hour.”

Troy was getting edgy sitting around waiting for President Dorn. With all that had happened and given how exhausted Dorn looked, Troy figured the odds were pretty low that they’d see him again today. At any moment some aide would come in to tell them to go home. Because Dorn had to focus solely on the “Holiday Mall Attacks,” as they’d already been tagged by the media.

He felt like a caged animal in here. He just hoped he never had to take an office job. He’d probably kill himself. Troy hated walls even more than he loved the outdoors, which was saying a lot.

“I get Shane,” he said quietly. “I mean, you have to be a little crazy to do what we do, you know, Dad? I think he deserves some understanding from us on that.”

Bill looked over like he figured Troy had suddenly gone off the reservation as well. Not as far as Maddux, but still off. “Have you lost your mind, too?”

“Maybe.”

“Easy there, son. I’ve got enough problems.”

“Maddux loves this country more than most people can possibly understand, Dad. He’s dedicated his entire life to protecting it. That objective drives everything he does.”

“According to you, he shot your brother. Does that deserve our understanding?”

“Well, I—”

“And he probably shot the mother of your child,” Bill added.

It was frustrating to argue with Bill, because he was damn good at making points. People always said his father could have been a top litigator if he hadn’t gone the investment banking route. “Maddux shot Jack because in his mind, Jack weakened the country. Killing Jack was simply getting revenge for America, and more important, making sure Jack never did anything again to weaken the country. If you think about it, it was actually a compliment. Maddux was worried Jack would strike again. It’s the same way Maddux looked at killing President Dorn. For Maddux, Jack and President Dorn were traitors. Neither one of those shootings was personal. It was only about protecting this country.”

“If I find out Shane Maddux really did kill your brother, one way or the other I’ll make him pay. That one’s personal for me. I’ll tell you that right now.”

“Dorn was about to destroy Red Cell Seven. You said it yourself, Dad. If not for Red Cell Seven, this country would have been hit by two major terrorist attacks that would have made 9/11 look small by comparison.” Troy glanced up at the ceiling. “No disrespect to the 9/11 victims.” He looked back at Bill. “Maddux thinks we’ve got to have RCS or we’ll be vulnerable to terrorists. He figures the other U.S. intel arms are so weighed down by bureaucracy, chains of command, and political correctness that they can’t move fast enough to be effective against enemies who can move at lightning speed and do whatever they want with no moral or ethical limitations. And that it’s becoming a bigger problem every day as Congress tries to dig deeper and deeper into what’s going on with us in the shadows. In Maddux’s mind, President Dorn might as well have been destroying our military.” Troy was fascinated to see how his father reacted to this one. “And believe me, I heard all that stuff about Executive Order 1973 One-E signed by Nixon and how we operate outside any laws or constraints. You and I both know that in this society, without that Order, Red Cell Seven would be vulnerable. Maybe even with it. He’s just doing anything he can to keep the cell safe.”

“He brainwashed you.”

“Hey,” Troy shot back resentfully, “that’s not—”

“I know, I know,” Bill said, backpedaling quickly. “Sorry, son, it’s just been a bad day. The older I get, the less I seem able to deal with the stress.”

Or the guilt, Troy figured. If Jack hadn’t wanted to prove he was part of the Jensen family so badly, he probably wouldn’t have gone to Alaska. Then he wouldn’t have gotten involved in a dangerous deal with a dangerous man — who’d ultimately killed him. And the reason Jack felt like he wasn’t part of the family and needed so badly to prove he was? Bill had lied to him all these years about who his mother was — lied to everyone.

“Look,” Bill spoke up, “when Red Cell Seven starts doing the same things terrorists are doing, that’s a problem for me. It’s that simple.”

“Shane has dedicated half his life to RCS,” Troy said again. “He was the leader of the Falcons; he was my leader. He knew Dorn had told Carlson it was over for RCS.”

“You know more than you’ve told me…don’t you, son?”

Troy shrugged.

“Why won’t you tell me everything?”

“Why won’t you?”

“Who says I won’t?”

They both knew how absurd the answer to that question was, so Troy didn’t even bother acknowledging the response. Bill couldn’t tell everyone everything — not even his son.

“All I really know, Dad, is that Maddux would do anything to protect this country. And on some basic level, I have to respect that conviction.”

“How can you say that? I mean, what about that LNG tanker?”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Dad. He’d do anything to make this country strong.”

“If that ship had made Norfolk, Virgina, half a million people would have died.”

“But Maddux was convinced Capitol Hill had forgotten how bad 9/11 was. He figured they needed a wakeup call. You know as well as I do he didn’t want to kill half a million Americans. He was sacrificing some for the greater good of the whole.” Troy glanced out the window. Night had fallen on Washington. He pointed at the TV screen as his eyes moved away from the window. “Apparently he was right. We were vulnerable. And now we’re paying for it.”

“Killing half a million innocent civilians isn’t the way to send a wakeup call,” Bill shot back. “Even with what happened today at those malls. Jesus, son, you should—”

“I know, Dad,” Troy interrupted angrily. “And I did something about it. That’s how I got myself thrown off the Arctic Fire in the middle of the Bering Sea. Remember? I figured out what was going on with Maddux, and I tried to stop him. Just like Charlie Banks did. And I ended up in thirty-seven-degree water who knows how far from land without a life preserver. Just like Charlie did. The only reason I’m here is that one of the crew took pity on me. And Jack came to save me.”

Bill nodded solemnly. “Right.”

“That’s why he’s dead.”

“I know. I’m sorry, son.”

“So maybe I have to share some of the guilt for that, too,” Troy said, sending Bill an accusatory glare.

Bill glanced away after a few moments.

“All I’m saying,” Troy continued, “is that in a very small way, I understand where Shane’s coming from. Especially now that I know how many attacks RCS has stopped over the last decade.”

“We didn’t stop what happened today at the malls,” Bill muttered dejectedly.

“No,” Troy agreed quietly, “we didn’t.”

“And I can’t endorse Maddux’s vigilante brand of justice, either. Roger told me about that little sideshow.”

“He only took out people who deserved it,” Troy argued. “He eliminated the scum who’d worked the system and dodged prison on a technicality. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles — and only ones he was absolutely sure were guilty. I don’t have a problem with that.”

“But how do you know that’s all he did? How do you know he didn’t take out a few people who didn’t deserve it along the way? People he had a personal beef with.”

“I don’t know, Dad, and I don’t care. Look, if you were so hopped up about what Maddux was doing on the side, and Carlson had told you about it, why didn’t you stop it?”

“Who says I didn’t try?”

Troy gazed at his father, wondering — about a lot of things. “I still don’t understand why President Dorn changed his mind about Red Cell Seven. I don’t get why he wanted to destroy it a few weeks ago and now he wants to keep it. Why all of a sudden he wants to make it a cornerstone of the U.S. intelligence program.” Troy hesitated. “And I especially don’t understand the one-eighty when it was one of the senior guys inside RCS who tried to assassinate him.”

“I can think of a couple of reasons.”

“Okay. Spin that out for me.”

“Over the last few weeks, he did find out how valuable the cell has been. He read those files I gave him, and he probably had his people do some more digging.” Bill nodded toward the Oval Office. “He probably knew about at least some of those attacks we stopped before we went in there today. And maybe he figured that if a senior guy inside it is willing to assassinate him to keep it going, maybe it is that valuable.”

“Maybe,” Troy said, still unconvinced. “What else?”

“Simple. He doesn’t want to get shot again.”

“So he’s trying to convince a rogue element he’s on their side?”

“Keep your allies close…and your enemies closer.”

“Yeah, yeah, but Shane’s smart enough never to trust Dorn no matter what he said or did.”

“Maybe we should be so smart. Maybe President Dorn is being more careful about getting rid of it this time. Maybe that’s what this is really all about.”

Troy raised an eyebrow and nodded. “See, now you’re on Maddux’s side.”

“I’m on the country’s side, son. That’s all. If that means I have to deal with shades of gray, so be it.”

“Why do you think President Dorn asked you where the two originals of Executive Order One-E were?”

“He was curious.”

“Come on, Dad.”

“It’s like he said. He knows Red Cell Seven is vulnerable without the original documentation President Nixon signed.”

“Or he wants to get his hands on the documents so he can destroy them. That’s why you mentioned impeachment possibilities. You wanted to scare him.”

Bill didn’t respond.

“Do you know where the documents are, Dad?”

Bill shook his head.

“So, how many defections did you hear about?” Troy asked after a few moments. His father would never tell him where the original Orders were, even if he did know.

“How many what?”

“Do I really have to—”

“Five,” Bill cut in. “I heard five RCS agents defected with Maddux.

“There were three from the Falcons, including Ryan O’Hara,” Bill continued, “as well as two from other divisions. You?”

“I heard—” Troy interrupted himself as the news anchor began speaking quickly in an animated tone. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing at the screen on the wall. “The guys under the bridge are shooting at the chopper.”

“Here we go,” Bill mumbled grimly. “This is it. I just hope the cops on the front line are ready for anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“These people are crazy, and they’re well-equipped,” Bill answered. “They aren’t like the normal idiots who shoot up places. Most local law-enforcement units around this country are completely unprepared for this kind of capability…and commitment.”

CHAPTER 10

“All right, all right!” the leader shouted at the other two men, who were still shooting into the air. The helicopter was moving off quickly. The eye in the sky had gotten the message. “Hold your fire.”

“What do we do now?” one of the men yelled, panic-stricken. “We can’t stay here forever.”

“We’ll be fine.” The leader smiled confidently. He nodded over their shoulders. “You see, help is coming already.”

The two men turned in unison to look, as if their chins were connected, completely convinced of the sincerity of their leader’s gesture. However, it was nothing more than an old playground trick.

The leader shot both of them in the back of the head as soon as they glanced away. As they lay sprawled on the ground, he put an extra bullet into each man’s brain.

When he was sure they were dead, he burst from behind the wall toward a line of police cars. He knew why the authorities had waited so long. He knew what they were doing, and he was too committed to the big picture and the greater good to allow them to derail it this quickly.

He’d been tortured once before by U.S. intel, and he wanted no part of another interrogation session like that. He much preferred a quick death over what would undoubtedly take many painful days to die. Besides, what was waiting for him on the other side was much more beautiful than this world. That’s what he believed, anyway.

He dropped his weapon and threw his arms up in the air in full view of the authorities. Then he began to jog straight at the center vehicle in the line of cruisers. He could see the faces and the expressions of the policemen who were stationed behind the line of cherry tops. They were confused by his actions. Where were his compatriots? What in the hell was going on? They had no idea how to react.

They should be shooting me now, he thought as he ran. I would be shooting me. But they are not trained well, and the chain of command has failed them. Some idiot five levels above these street soldiers still hasn’t made a decision on how to deal with this emergency, probably because it was being broadcast live for the world to see and they don’t want to be perceived as vicious and insensitive. So they are paralyzed.

Their hesitation allowed him to make it all the way to the center of the line before they finally raised their weapons and ordered him to stop. By then it was too late — and he pulled the cord.

The bomb in his backpack unleashed its fury, releasing a terrible blast that took eight policemen and women with him.

As Kaashif watched the man jog toward the line of police cars on television, he actually felt the exhilaration his brother in arms was experiencing. It was taking the form of a great rush in his chest and a tingling sensation that extended from his heart all the way to his fingertips and toes. The man on TV was doing the right thing. He was sacrificing himself rather than take any chance of giving away something during an interrogation. Of course, the cops had no idea what they were dealing with. They would in a second.

The bomb exploded, incinerating this brother as well as several police officers.

As the sound of it faded from the TV, Kaashif allowed his face to slowly fall into his palms, and he began to sob. They’d been planning this attack for almost three years. Now the first stage was complete, and its success had been nearly perfect. The Minneapolis squad was gone, but they hadn’t been apprehended, and every other team was back in hiding and accounted for. Seventy-three civilians were dead, and more than two hundred had been wounded. Even better, the United States population had run for cover. Reports were already coming in that with a week to go to Christmas, malls across the country were empty.

It was the greatest gift he could have received, and the tears would not stop coming. There were others in the house, and he could not have them see him like this, so he moved quickly to the bathroom and locked the door.

Then his tears flowed in earnest.

The rusty hinges creaked as Major Travers pushed open the wooden door of the tiny house he’d built deep in the woods of Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains.

It wasn’t really a house. It was a shack, and not much of one at that. It didn’t have running water, electricity, or heat — not even a fireplace. The stove was nothing more than a crude burner that was fired by a natural gas cylinder, when he remembered to buy one. So he usually ate the soup cold out of cans, when he remembered to buy them. And not many of the up-and-down planks that formed the four exterior walls of the relatively square floor plan rested flush against each other, and he’d never bothered to install insulation, so the place was drafty as hell. But it served its purpose. It was remote out here in the George Washington National Forest, as remote as any place could be within a hundred miles of Washington, DC.

Most important, as far as Travers could tell, he was the only person on the planet who knew about the place. The closest farm was several miles away, at the bottom of the mountains, so it lay outside the national forest. And hunters weren’t allowed to take game within the forest’s boundaries. Which didn’t preclude poaching by the locals, of course, but he’d never had a problem with anyone using the place. He always set up a few inconspicuous indicators when he left so he could tell if it had been used or inspected when he returned. But they’d never been set off, just as he’d seen tonight when he’d gotten here. He’d checked even though he was exhausted after the steep climb through the cold, dark, wet forest.

He built the shack himself five years ago. He’d snared the lumber and other materials from a construction site down in the valley along the river. Then he’d lugged the stuff up the side of this mountain in the dark, without even a path to follow on his trips back and forth to the pickup he’d left on the logging road that night. He’d robbed the site so there wouldn’t be any record of him buying anything at a store. Even if he’d paid cash, someone might still have remembered him. He was ultimately paranoid, he knew. But that had always proven to be one of his most formidable weapons.

Roger Carlson would have built him something out here if he’d asked, Travers knew. Carlson would have done anything for him. But then at least one other person would have known about it. As sad as it was for Travers to understand and accept, he couldn’t completely trust anyone, even Carlson. And that hadn’t been the old man’s fault. Travers just had a terrible time with it. The only person who’d come close to that level of trust was Harry Boyd — now Harry was gone, too.

Travers stepped inside the shack, flipped on the tiny flashlight he’d dug out of his pocket, and played the beam around the small, mostly bare room. It was chilly in here, but it wasn’t wet. A cold, soaking rain had begun to fall on the Mid-Atlantic an hour ago, as he’d been driving around DC on I-495—and he was glad to be in a dry place after hiking up the mountain in the dark. He didn’t use this place very often, only when he desperately needed to go underground. Given what had happened three hours ago in Wilmington, this was one of those times. Shane Maddux wouldn’t be happy when he found out his two young soldiers had been killed.

Travers stripped off his boots and the drenched poncho he’d worn up the mountain, tossed everything in a corner of the shack, and grabbed a rolled-up nylon sleeping bag off the table by the burner. He untied the bag and shook it hard to get rid of any black widows or brown recluses that had decided to make it home since the last time he’d been here — which was six months ago. Then he spread the bag out on the wooden floor.

It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but then maybe he deserved some discomfort, maybe even some pain. He’d failed miserably in his job today. The United States was under attack. Hundreds of people had been killed and wounded, and the population was terrified, much more so than it had been after 9/11. People were cowering inside their homes with their doors and windows locked. Families who owned guns felt only marginally more secure than the ones who didn’t. The men who’d carried out the attacks today were maniacs, but they were good. Only one team had been stopped — and they’d committed suicide. His gut told him this was going to be a long, hard campaign that might never end unless the country took unprecedented actions. Despite the brutal and ferocious nature of the attacks, Travers still wasn’t certain the federal government would take those unprecedented steps, which would delve deeply into the personal privacies America’s population held so dear.

When he was wrapped inside the sleeping bag, Travers flicked off the flashlight. As he lay on his side and listened to the rain falling on the roof, he stared into the darkness above him. Was Kaashif involved with what had happened today? His instincts told him yes. At least that gave him a place to start. He needed to get in touch with an associate. He needed cash and a secure location. This shack had its purpose, but he couldn’t conduct operations from it. It was too far from anything to be effective.

Travers shut his eyes and forced himself not to think of all the issues facing him. There would be plenty of time to think — and act — tomorrow. But right now he desperately needed to recharge his body.

Moments later he was unconscious. It was a technique he’d learned in the foxholes of Iraq and Afghanistan from an older Marine vet. The guy had taught him to force himself to get sleep in any situation. An exhausted soldier was a poor soldier, and the trick to the technique was turning off the mind and all the bad thoughts it fired at him when there were no distractions.

But Travers never turned off his mind completely. It was always there to warn him of danger.

He bolted upright in the darkness and peered around the shack’s interior. He couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed a presence. Unfortunately, the warning had come too late.

Before he could draw his pistol, someone stepped on his wrist, immobilizing it and his ability to draw his weapon. Then a brilliant light bathed his face, and he shut his eyes tightly against the powerful rays.

“We meet again, Major Travers.”

Travers recognized the voice. “How?” It was all he could think of to ask.

“Turnabout’s fair play, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what the hell you—”

He didn’t finish. The dart was fired from nearly point-blank range, and it dug deeply into the side of his neck. Electricity flooded through his body as he dribbled around the floor.

CHAPTER 11

“Are there any RCS associates who would help Maddux even though he’s gone rogue and they know it?” As the private plane eased down into the thick cloud cover toward Westchester Airport, it shuddered slightly. Troy buckled his seat belt when the turbulence hit. “And would they do it without telling you? Maybe do it even when you specifically told them not to?”

It had happened exactly as Troy anticipated. A few minutes after the situation outside Minneapolis ended with the last terrorist igniting a suicide bomb in his backpack and taking several law-enforcement people with him, a young aide had knocked on the door and informed them that the president would not be able to meet with them again after all. The guy apologized halfheartedly and then left the situation to four Secret Service agents, who had immediately escorted Troy and Bill off White House grounds. Because of the Holiday Mall Attacks, security had been tightened another notch around the president, and all visitors were being escorted out. Even some of the regular staff had been told to leave and not return until they were contacted.

“I hate to say it,” Bill admitted, “but all those things are possible. Maddux was smart about getting to know a few of the other associates even though Roger and I tried to block him from doing that. And I’m pretty sure he did them a few favors to entrench himself.”

“What kinds of favors?”

“One of the associates was having a problem with his daughter’s fiancé. The guy was abusive. He was beating her almost every night, and—”

“Don’t tell me,” Troy interrupted as the plane broke through the low clouds. He glanced out the window. It had been raining in Washington when they left, but it was snowing here in New York, he could see in the plane’s lights. “The guy went missing.”

“No, they found him all right. He was floating facedown in the East River. They pulled him out of the water down off Alphabet City in Lower Manhattan. It was ruled an accident, but nobody has any idea how he got in the water or what he was doing in that part of town. It’s a rough area, and he lived up in White Plains.”

“Jesus,” Troy muttered. Maddux had pushed the vigilante deal for his own purposes after all. After promising Troy he never had, the liar — if Bill was telling the truth. Mind games, Troy thought as the plane rocked again. Always the mind games in this profession.

“Another one of the associates was having a problem at one of the companies he owned. He was pretty sure the chief financial officer was defrauding him, but he couldn’t prove it.” Bill looked out at the thin layer of snow on the ground as the plane touched down. “What do you know — one day, out of the blue, the CFO walks into the associate’s office and voluntarily admits everything.” Bill glanced from the window to Troy with both eyebrows raised. “I wonder why.”

“Damn.”

“The guy’s face was badly bruised. He claimed he’d been in a car accident the day before. That’s what I was told, anyway. I was curious, so I checked. There was no record of a car accident where the guy said it happened.”

“Well, at least you know which associates they are. You can monitor them.”

Bill shook his head. “That might not be all of the associates who are helping him, and I can’t do anything about the ones I suspect are. These are very wealthy people, son. Each of the twenty associates has a personal net worth of at least a hundred million dollars, and most of them are much wealthier than that. It would be impossible for me to figure out what was going on in their personal finances without a SWAT team of forensic accountants analyzing and dissecting every wire and money transfer they’ve made in the last two years. And of course, that won’t be happening. I won’t ever get that kind of access even though I know them all very well.”

Every associate has a net worth of at least a hundred million dollars. The words echoed in Troy’s mind.

It was the first time he’d heard his father even vaguely put a number on the net worth. It was no secret that the family had serious money. His parents’ mansion outside Greenwich was over ten thousand square feet, and it sat in the middle of five hundred acres of pricey Connecticut real estate along with a stable full of expensive Thoroughbreds his mother loved to ride. The mansion’s back porch, which they were sitting on when Jack had been shot, was a hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep. And the family maintained several other homes around the world. Troy had used two of them when he was on missions — so had other Falcons.

He glanced around the beautiful interior of the plane. This was the family’s G450 they were flying on tonight. No wonder Bill could afford it.

“Can’t you just tell them not to help him?”

“I wish it were that easy,” Bill answered. “These people respect me as the leader of the associates, but they aren’t accustomed to being told what to do. And they’re very loyal when it comes to someone who takes care of a problem they’re having. Particularly like the ones I just described. They don’t like getting their hands dirty, if you get my drift. So they appreciate people who will and who will stay quiet about it.”

“Of course.”

“Which means Maddux has at least somewhat of a support system,” Bill continued. “When it’s only a few agents Maddux has with him, two or three associates would be plenty to support him. He’s smart. He probably wouldn’t have defected without arranging it. He’s a front-line guy, but he understands and appreciates the need for logistics.”

That was true. Maddux had always preached to Troy about the need for warriors to be well-supplied. How heroics and grit only went so far.

“There’s someone I want you to work with on the Mall Attacks,” Bill said as the plane turned off the runway and headed for the terminal. “Maybe you’ve run into him before on one of your missions.”

“Who’s that?”

Bill leaned toward Troy, as if he was concerned about listening devices on his own plane. “Major Wilson Travers,” he said quietly. “He’s in the Interrogation Division.”

Troy shook his head. “I might have met him, but those guys are pretty careful about not using real names around anybody they don’t know. Even Falcons.”

“He’s the best interrogator we have, other than Maddux, of course. Unlike Shane, Travers is completely trustworthy, and he’s a big, good-looking African American guy.”

“Agent Walker,” Troy murmured.

“What?”

“I think I know who you mean. Last spring I took cash and instructions to a guy over in Athens, Greece. I think that was Travers. He was with another guy. They called each other Agent Walker and Agent Smirnoff.”

It took three men to get Travers into the tiny cell. They’d tased him again several times on the ride to keep him subdued, but he was already recuperating. When they dropped him roughly on the wet cement floor, he tried to crawl after them. So they’d secured him to an iron ring that was affixed firmly to a wall of the room. One end of the chain was locked to the ring in the wall while the other was attached to a collar that was locked around Travers’s neck. They were taking no chances.

“That’s one tough bastard,” the man who’d tased Travers muttered as he locked the cell door.

Nathan Kohler nodded. “Yup.” He chuckled as he admired the bars of the cell. “I’m glad I had this thing made so strong. And I had that ring sunk into the wall.”

Baxter hurried into the Oval Office. He’d just finished a briefing with Homeland Security. The news wasn’t good. “Mr. President?” He stopped with the toes of his black leather tasseled loafers resting on the eagle’s tail. Dorn hadn’t even looked around when Baxter opened the door. He just kept staring out the window into the dark, rainy night outside. “Sir?”

“Yes, Stewart,” Dorn finally answered, slowly turning the wheelchair back toward the desk.

“I just finished my briefing with Jane Travanti and her staff.”

“Let me guess,” Dorn responded stoically. “We have no leads on any of the death squads. They all evaporated into thin air, except for the ones we think attacked the Mall of America in Minneapolis. And even though we have the remains of those men, we don’t know anything about them.”

“Not yet.”

“We never will, Stewart.”

“We’ve taken DNA samples and—”

“Did we at least confirm that they were the men involved in the MOA attack?”

“Yes, sir. Spent ammunition found at the mall matched the guns in their van.”

“But other than that, we have nothing. Correct?”

Baxter nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The president gestured at Baxter, then at Connie. “Will you two give me a few minutes alone?”

Baxter didn’t like the sound of that. “Mr. President, I don’t think you should be—”

“Enough, Stewart.” Dorn glanced at Connie. “Please go. Take him with you. I’ll call you in a few minutes. Don’t come back until I do.”

Connie looked quickly at Baxter for guidance. He pointed subtly at the door and nodded.

When they were both outside the office, Baxter took Connie’s hand in his. “Stay right here,” he ordered. “Wait two minutes and then go back in. I need to get something from my office and make a few calls. Then I’ll come back.”

“But, Mr. Baxter, the president said—”

“I don’t care what he said. You go back in there in two minutes. And when I get back, we’ll take him up into the residence together. In fact, I’ll call Mrs. Dorn on my way to my office. She’ll help us convince him. If the president doesn’t get some rest soon, he’ll die of exhaustion. I can’t have that.” He hesitated. “I mean, we can’t have that.”

Troy stared at the tombstone as snow fell on the graveyard, covering the freshly turned earth above the coffin. It was just before midnight, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep well. So he’d come out here after saying good-bye to Bill at the Westchester Airport. He rarely needed more than five hours a night, and tonight wouldn’t have been one of those nights even if he wanted it to be. He was tired, and tomorrow was going to be a long day. But he had way too much on his mind to get that kind of rest.

“I miss you, brother,” he whispered.

“I miss him, too.”

“Jesus.” Troy whipped around at the sound of the female voice coming from behind him.

“Sorry about that,” Karen said as she moved up beside him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m fine.” Troy glanced up through the darkness at the bare trees towering over the graveyard like sentinels — or ghosts. His heart was still pounding. He didn’t like graveyards to begin with, and hearing that voice out of nowhere had shocked him. “What are you doing out here?”

“The same thing you are. Trying to say good-bye to Jack.”

Troy reached out and took Karen’s hand. She’d been engaged to another Falcon — Charlie Banks — who’d been a close friend of Troy’s. Until Banks had been thrown into the Bering Sea from the Arctic Fire for the same reason Troy had — discovering that Shane Maddux was doing things he shouldn’t have been. Unfortunately, Banks hadn’t made it out of the water alive after he’d been tossed overboard by the four-man crew of the Fire who worked for Maddux. Banks hadn’t been lucky enough to have a brother race to Alaska to save him. His body had never been recovered.

Jack had begun his quest to find out what had really happened to Troy that night on the Arctic Fire—he hadn’t believed the official story — by contacting Karen. She lived in Baltimore, and Jack had shown up unannounced at her waitressing job in Fell’s Point on his way west, the night after he left Connecticut. When she understood how the same thing that had happened to her fiancé had happened to Troy, she’d made it clear to Jack in no uncertain terms that she was going to Alaska with him. And they’d fallen in love.

“I’m sorry for you more than anyone else,” Troy said, squeezing her fingers gently. “You’ve already gone through this once before, and it wasn’t that long ago. No one should have to deal with so much.”

“Thanks.” She smiled sadly as she nodded at the headstone. “He loved you very much, Troy.”

“I know. We had our challenges, but all brothers do.”

“He wanted to be your brother so badly.”

“He was my brother.”

“I think that’s why he went to Alaska when everyone else said you were dead, when everyone else told him he was crazy and to just leave it alone, even your father.” Karen shook her head. “He knew you were alive. Even I tried to convince him he was crazy, but he wouldn’t listen. And thank God, right? I think that’s why he figured you two were brothers even when your father had told everyone you weren’t. Jack figured only a brother could know that.” It was Karen’s turn to squeeze Troy’s fingers. “He was jealous of you.”

“No, that’s not…I mean, that was all overblown, Karen. He wasn’t really—”

“Oh, yeah, he was. You were the star of the family. You played every sport, and you were the go-to guy on every team. You were everyone’s All-American in high school and at Dartmouth, especially Bill’s. Jack lived in your very long shadow for a very long time.”

“Yeah, well, I—”

“How’s Little Jack?”

Troy shut his eyes tightly.

“Sorry,” Karen murmured. “I didn’t mean to—”

“L.J.’s doing great.”

“L.J.?”

“That’s my nickname for the baby.” Troy grinned. “Mom doesn’t like it much, but she’ll get over it. She’s been a big help. L.J.’s living at the house in Greenwich with her and my father.”

“I know. She told me today at the funeral. It’s meant a lot to her to have Little Jack around during this time. She loves taking care of him.”

During the last six years Troy had rarely made it home. But once in a while he had returned. Last year, on one of those infrequent trips, he’d met a woman from Brooklyn named Lisa Martinez while he was with friends at a club in Manhattan. A few months ago Lisa had given birth to Troy’s son and named him Jack because Jack had been the one who’d taken care of her during her pregnancy. Then she’d been murdered, and the Jensen family had taken in Little Jack.

“I should have taken care of Lisa while she was pregnant. It shouldn’t have been Jack.”

Karen shook her head. “How could you, Troy? You were always thousands of miles away keeping this country safe. You were an RCS Falcon. I get that. Everyone does.”

Troy glanced over at her when she uttered the word Falcon. “Charlie told you everything about RCS, didn’t he?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Did he?”

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you anything.”

“We were getting married, Troy. Come on.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Look, I’m not going to tell anyone anything Charlie told me about—”

“It’s not about you telling anyone voluntarily,” Troy interrupted. “It’s about you being forced to tell people. It’s about you knowing anything that makes you a target for other people who want to know. And that makes Red Cell Seven vulnerable.”

“Thanks so much for your concern.”

“I am concerned, Karen, believe me. You have no idea what certain elements would do to you if they thought they could get information out of you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly, letting go of his hand. They were quiet for a while. “What’s going to happen?” she finally asked.

“With what?”

“The attacks.”

Troy shrugged. “I don’t know. No one does.”

“Oh, come on. I know where you and Bill went today.”

“Who told you?”

“Nobody. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

Of course, he realized.

“It’s crazy,” she murmured. “The newspeople are talking about how these death squads could start shooting people anywhere, anytime, maybe even invading homes. I don’t think anyone will ever go outside again. Everyone will stay barricaded in their houses and shoot anyone who even steps on their property.”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be—” Troy interrupted himself when his phone rang. “Sorry, I need to take this,” he said, turning away and walking several paces off into the darkness. “Okay,” he muttered when he heard the bad news and the dangerous instructions. Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.

The President gazed steadily into the darkness outside. This had been the hardest day of his administration, the hardest day of his life. Even harder than the day he’d been shot. Once he’d gotten onto the operating table after taking the bullet, there was a definitive solution to the problem, and everyone was working to achieve it.

He let his face drop into his hands. No one seemed to know what the solution was here. No one even seemed able to tell him where to start.