Red Cell Seven

CHAPTER 12

Troy followed the doctor into a private room of the Fairfax County Hospital in northern Virginia. He stopped just inside as the door to the busy corridor outside swung slowly shut behind him. He glanced at the young woman who was lying on the bed with her eyes closed and her arms at her sides as the sounds from the corridor faded away. Then he checked the room carefully, as though something sinister might be lurking.

He hated hospitals as much as he hated graveyards. But it was the prospect of death that got to him here, not the finality of skeletons in the ground beneath him. He’d dedicated himself to protecting lives, often risking his own in the process. Death winning was always extremely personal for him.

He understood that it was all an exercise in delaying the inevitable — that death eventually conquered everyone. But it was the length of that delay that was crucial. He was committed to keeping good people alive as long as possible, any way he could. It was what mattered to him most.

He’d tried explaining all that to Lisa once, but it hadn’t come out exactly right. Still, she’d cried and hugged him when he was finished.

That was the night she’d gotten pregnant with L.J. He was convinced of it.

The irony of his resolve was that he killed people in order to prolong life. And he’d do it again if the situation required it. He had no problem killing evil to preserve good. He didn’t see that as a conflict — which was how he could relate to Maddux in a distant way.

Troy took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. He hated the smell of hospitals. It wasn’t the odor of antiseptics that hung everywhere that so offended him. It was the occasional stench of sickness and death overpowering the antiseptics.

He’d only gotten three hours of sleep last night, but he felt fine. He’d decided on taking this detour to Washington last night right after Bill had ordered him to go to North Carolina.

He took one more careful look around the room before refocusing on the young woman. Bill had tried talking him out of coming here, but Troy was glad he’d come.

The woman’s body was connected to a web of tubes that led off in different directions to several machines, and it was eerily noisy in here with the beeping and whirring of the devices. Despite the noise and the seriousness of her wounds, she seemed to be resting peacefully.

She was very pretty, and as Troy gazed at her features, he noticed that she strongly resembled Lisa. She had the same sharp, sculpted facial lines; beautiful light-mahogany skin; and long, wavy jet-black hair. She probably had that same wonderful smile, too, he figured as he looked at her high cheekbones and full lips. Hopefully, she’d recover from this tragedy so she could smile that smile again.

He missed Lisa, he realized as he stared down at Jennie, more and more each day. The hole in his heart her murder had left wasn’t healing the way it was supposed to, but he couldn’t tell anyone. He was the tough brother. Jack was the son who had worn his heart on his sleeve.

Though Troy couldn’t prove it, he believed Maddux had killed Lisa execution-style in her Brooklyn apartment a month ago. Since Troy had heard the stories yesterday of how Red Cell Seven had saved the nation so many times, he better understood Maddux’s unwavering resolve to do away with anyone who got in the cell’s way — including the president.

But none of that could make up for Maddux ripping Lisa and Jack out of his life. He would avenge their deaths if he ever had the chance. He’d sworn that oath to himself on the way down here this morning on the plane. Bill was right. Those two murders were personal.

At least Maddux hadn’t been a total monster, Troy figured. He hadn’t murdered Little Jack after killing Lisa. There was at least that measure of loyalty.

“How many times was Ms. Perez shot?”

“Twice. Once in the shoulder,” the doctor explained, reaching over his shoulder to show Troy the spot, “and once in the middle of the back.” This time he reached beneath his armpit and around his torso to point out the location of the entry wound — which was just to the left of the upper spine.

Doctors and nurses did that a lot, Troy had noticed. They pointed to body parts as they spoke. It seemed like they were constantly reminding themselves of the human anatomy as much as they were showing others what was going on. It was probably something they picked up in medical school. He’d been stitched up enough times to recognize the habit, and maybe that was another reason he hated hospitals — because he’d been in them so often. Sometimes to heal his own wounds but more often to visit others who’d fallen victim to something he’d been able to avoid.

“She’s lucky,” the older man continued. “It’s a one-in-a-million wound.”

The doctor was tall and silver-haired. He reminded Troy a little of Bill, but his tone was more amiable. So was his manner. “What do you mean?” he asked as he moved close to where Jennie lay.

“She’ll live despite the bullet she took in her back. Somehow no vital organs were hit. She was very lucky.” The doctor grimaced. “The shooter didn’t know what he was doing.”

“I doubt the shooter was actually aiming,” Troy countered. “If I’ve read the preliminary reports on these attacks correctly, it was a spray-and-get-away deal. It was like that with all eleven attacks, from what I understand. I doubt any of the death squads were in the malls for more than fifteen to twenty seconds before they split.”

“I think they were on the scene for longer than that at Tysons.”

“Was there a witness who said that?” Troy asked. “I didn’t hear about one.”

“No.”

“And the cameras set up to watch the entrance were shot out early, so those tapes are worthless.”

The doctor held his hands up. “Believe me, I agree with the spray-and-get-away theory as far as her shoulder wound goes. But it doesn’t jibe with the one in her back.”

“Why not?”

“There was gunpowder on her jacket.”

Troy glanced at Jennie, then back at the doctor. “Are you saying the assassin put the gun right up against her body with that shot?”

“Yes. And she was lying thirty feet inside the entrance when the EMTs got to her. Whoever shot her in the back would have had to run into the mall where she was lying. You know, after she’d been hit in the shoulder from the initial burst. That alone probably would have taken longer than fifteen seconds.”

“Are you saying the shooter was making sure she was dead?”

“When the authorities get the ballistics report back from the lab concerning the bullets that were found at the scene, I think the evidence will show that at least several of the rounds were fired from a pistol. Probably a twenty-two, judging by the wound. I’ve seen enough of them to recognize it,” he added ruefully.

“A twenty-two? Are you saying these guys used pistols to carry out the attack, Doctor?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, I’m saying they used automatic weapons initially, probably small machine guns. Most of the wounds in the other victims are consistent with those kinds of bullets.” He nodded down at Jennie. “However, the one in her back isn’t. And two other victims at Tysons had wounds that I believe were inflicted by the same pistol.”

“So after they mowed people down, at least one of the guys went farther into the mall and executed people he thought were still alive.”

“Yes. He was making absolutely certain those people were dead.”

“Because they didn’t want to be identified.”

“I assume.”

“But there were others who were wounded and weren’t executed.”

“They were farther from the entrance, much farther. Maybe whoever it was got nervous. Maybe he knew there were other survivors, but he realized he needed to get away and figured the ones farther in couldn’t ID him anyway.”

“Right,” Troy agreed. “It just seems so crazy that the wound in her back didn’t kill her, that it didn’t hit anything vital.”

The doctor shrugged as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “Like I said, it’s a one-in-a-million wound. Now let’s get out of here before she—”

“Did the assassin shoot the others the same way from close range?” Troy reached around his back and pointed to the spot the doctor had. “Did he put the pistol barrel in the same spot on the other two?”

The doctor hesitated. “Um…yes, I believe that’s right.”

“And those victims died.”

“Uh, yes.”

Something didn’t sound right. “Is that strange? Does that—”

“She’s a real hero,” the doctor interrupted, smiling wanly.

“Why?”

“She saved a six-year-old girl’s life.”

“How do you know?”

“The little girl told us. She lost her father in the attack, and Jennie saved her after he was shot right in front of her. Fortunately her mother wasn’t at the mall at the time, and the little girl’s with her now.”

Troy glanced down at Jennie. The more he looked at her, the more she reminded him of Lisa. “How long do you think until I can talk to her?”

The doctor bit down softly on his lower lip as he thought about it. “I’d say a couple of days. Probably,” he cautioned after a few moments. “She’s coming around really well so far. But it might be more.”

“Okay, well, I’m going to have a team of bodyguards up here in fifteen minutes.” Troy was worried that if the word got out she’d lived, someone might try to finish her off. She’d been closer to the attackers than any other survivor, and if he could jog her memory effectively, he might get something vital out of her. “They’ll be with her around the clock,” he continued, “until I say so. If you need to move her to a quieter area of the hospital, Doctor, I fully understand. In fact, I recommend it.” Troy pulled his pistol from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and chambered the first round. “But let’s wait until the team gets here to do that,” he added, slipping the now-battle-ready gun back into its leather cave and then pulling out his cell phone and pressing the number of a contact on his list. “Until then, I’ll stay with her.”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you, son?”

“I’m with the National Intel—”

“I know what they told me before you got here. I got the official story.” He paused. “But who are you really with?”

CHAPTER 13

Shane Maddux moved down the basement steps quietly. Even though she knew he was close, he still wanted surprise on his side. He always wanted surprise on his side.

But what he really wanted was shock. Shock had the power to paralyze, mentally and physically. That paralysis made his victims weak and engendered honest responses. And in this case, he could get that shock because she had no idea who he had with him.

At five-six and 140 pounds, Maddux was a small man. But he wasn’t bitter about it. He had been, as a kid, when the class studs smacked him around for kicks in the hallways of his public high school, then ran all over him on the athletic fields in the afternoon. He could admit it now that his place in the world was rock solid and he couldn’t be more certain of himself and his objectives.

In fact, at this point he regarded his lack of size as an advantage. Being slight enabled him to slip through life undetected, like a specter sliding through the shadows. His uncanny ability to do that had done nothing but bolster his reputation as a coldly efficient killer — which he’d become over the last decade. To mythical proportions in some circles of the intel community, he knew.

His natural stealth convinced others he was close when he was far away. It scared them to death even when they swore it didn’t, which gave him an advantage at the moment of truth. They were already so terrified of him by the time he was actually upon them that they froze like deer in the headlights. For Maddux, for anyone in this line of work, success was all about having as many advantages as possible.

He was the ultimate survivor, too — which ran his spook reputation even farther up the flagpole. Intel people everywhere swore up and down they’d seen him die in a hail of bullets or pushed from a plane at twenty thousand feet without a parachute or go below the surface of the water somewhere and not come back up. But then they swore they’d seen him alive after that. So he was like a cat, they’d rant. Except that it seemed he had a hundred lives, not nine.

Maddux knew all this from personal experience, not just from hearsay. He’d been sitting in the back room of a Paris café one night a year ago with two Russians he’d recognized as low-level intelligence officers. They kept telling him about an American Special Forces agent they referred to as “the Ghost” or “Le Fantôme” over and over as he conversed with them in perfect French. And he kept buying them vodka, getting them drunker and drunker and convincing them he was only a boring avocat from the town of Angers who had come to Paris for holiday to enjoy time away from a nagging wife. He told them he was fascinated to hear as much as they would tell him about the wild world of international intrigue. So they’d told him all about Le Fantôme as he’d gotten them drunk. Very quickly he’d recognized that the man they were talking about was him.

When he grew tired of talking, he’d shot each of them in the heart with a twenty-two pistol from point-blank range. He’d done it during a particularly loud song being played by a band out in the main room, after wrapping a thick cloth napkin around the barrel of the gun to make certain no one heard. After shooting them, he’d slipped out the back without anyone knowing.

He’d read about the murders in Le Monde the next morning. And he’d realized from the article that he was completely insulated from discovery. The inspectors were appealing to anyone who might have any information about the killings to come forward. So they obviously had no leads. No one did.

Not even the waitress who’d served them. She hadn’t because she couldn’t. Maddux had killed her later that night as she was walking home, just to be safe. He’d strangled her in an alley and enjoyed it. He was self-aware enough to realize that he was a psychopath. But he believed that sickness only gave him another advantage. He’d justified her murder as simply a necessity for keeping him, and therefore the United States, safe.

Maddux moved into the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs and glanced into the mirror above the sink. He grimaced and looked away quickly. This was the only part he didn’t like. His was a face only a mother could love. He’d gotten over his small stature — but never that face. It was twisted and ugly.

He washed his hands, slipped into a pair of rubber gloves, then moved back out of the bathroom and approached her. She was in her mid-thirties, slightly overweight, and had light brown wavy hair. Two hours ago he’d lashed her to an uncomfortable wooden chair in the middle of this room and left her here to soften up. Apparently it had worked. She was already sobbing beneath the gag and the blindfold.

He ran the backs of his gloved fingers gently down her cheek, and she jumped at the unexpected touch, shocked by his presence — exactly as he wanted. She hadn’t heard him coming, and now he knew that her heart rate had spiked into the stratosphere. And the major shock was still to come.

It was eerie how good he was at sneaking up on people. It was a natural talent he’d possessed ever since he could remember. Since even before high school when, only a few days prior to graduation, he’d snuck up on this one stud who’d been particularly evil to him in the hallways — and killed him at dusk with a knife in the dimly lit parking lot after baseball practice.

That wasn’t his first murder. And even then, he knew it wouldn’t be his last. He liked killing bad people, and that was the key. They had to be evil. As long as they were, he had no conflict. He couldn’t admit to himself in high school how much he enjoyed killing, but he could now.

Maddux moved behind the chair and untied the knot of the bootlace at the back of the woman’s head that secured the gag — an orange practice golf ball. It was made of hollow plastic and had holes in it so it resembled Swiss cheese. He’d run the long lace through two of the ball’s holes that were opposite each other, and the combination had made a perfect gag. The lace had left two raw marks at the corners of her mouth that were probably causing her great discomfort. But that was none of his concern.

“Where will the next attacks come?” he demanded as he put his hands on the arms of the chair, leaned down close, and stared into her almond-shaped eyes from close range. “Tell me, Imelda Smith. Don’t make me ask twice.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Answer my question.”

Tears spilled from Imelda’s eyes as she looked up at him helplessly. “What attacks are you talking about? I don’t know anything.”

Maddux had been torturing people for more than two decades, and at this point he quickly recognized the veracity of the responses — or lack thereof. Based on what he saw in her eyes and what he heard in her tone, she was lying. This woman was directly involved in what was already the worst terrorist attack the United States had ever suffered. And it was still going on.

He’d snatched Imelda yesterday afternoon from the kitchen of her small home in Manassas, Virginia — less than thirty miles from the attack in Tysons Corner. Then he’d transported her two hundred miles to this beautiful, remote home built in the hills of central Pennsylvania. So far she seemed to be quite the actress, and incredibly committed to the cause.

Imelda was going to have that commitment tested this afternoon. She was about to face a sacrifice far more excruciating than her own death.

“Don’t lie to me,” he warned. “I’ll go easier on you if you tell me the truth and you do it quickly. Time is important to me.”

“I’m not lying,” she sobbed. “I swear.”

“Are you telling me you don’t know anything about what happened yesterday?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What happened yesterday?”

Maddux rose up slowly. “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it.”

“I’m not playing anything. Please let me go,” she begged. “What are you going to do to me?”

Maddux walked out of the room and into the next without answering. When he returned he was clutching the hand of Imelda’s five-year-old son. This was the shock factor Maddux had been waiting to spring.

He wasn’t disappointed with her reaction.

Parkview elementary school was nestled into a quiet, blue-collar suburb of Springfield, Missouri, in the south-central part of the state about two hundred miles from St. Louis. The school was attended mostly by the sons and daughters of parents who worked at the Chrysler plant a few miles from the school. Or for the Union Pacific Railroad, which operated a large freight yard close to the Chrysler factory.

It was a few minutes after noon, central time, and the cafeteria was filling with kids. Kindergarten classes let out for the day before lunch, but the first and second graders were in the big room enjoying their brown-bag meals or the hot lunches that had been prepared by the cafeteria staff. Third and fourth graders would be coming in at twelve-thirty to eat, thirty minutes after the younger children, as they always did. It was the next-to-last day of classes before school let out for the holidays.

Today’s hot lunch was pizza and fries along with a packet of sliced apples and a pint of whole milk. It was a popular lunch, and many of the kids had convinced their parents last night to give them money to buy it when it was posted at five p.m. yesterday on the school website.

The room was noisy. Kids were happy because they were at lunch. It was always a highlight of the day. And they were looking forward to their vacation and the toys they were hoping to get.

As the joy of the season rolled through the cafeteria, three men slipped through a side door of the building that opened onto the playground. Once inside, they pulled gray ski masks down over their faces as they hesitated in a short, narrow hallway just outside the big room. When they were ready, they drew their automatic weapons from beneath their coats, burst through the hallway door, and sprayed the room with bullets.

Thirty seconds later they were sprinting across the playground to their initial escape vehicle and its waiting driver. Three minutes later they’d switched vehicles at a nearby strip mall, ten minutes after that they’d switched again, and within half an hour they’d made it back to the apartment complex on the other side of town where they had been holing up for the last three months.

Yesterday the team had opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd at a huge mall in the suburbs of St. Louis and thrown the city into chaos as part of the initial, coordinated attack at that and ten other malls around the country. Now the team was independent, as were the other nine death squads still operating. They were much like a wolf pack roaming the landscape for the next kill — which they’d found in the elementary school. There were so many “soft” targets to choose from, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. But they had to be careful, too. They wanted to remain free to kill for as long as possible. So, for the next few days they’d be eating fast food and playing video games at the apartment complex. Then they’d hunt again.

Sixteen people at Parkview Elementary had died immediately in the terrible attack. The body count included twelve children, two teachers, a cafeteria staff member, and a security guard who was armed with a 9mm pistol. Forty-two had been wounded — seven critically.

One young couple had lost both of their children in the attack — a boy in the second grade and a little girl in first.

Imelda’s face drained of color when she saw her little boy, and she began straining wildly at the ropes securing her to the chair. “If you touch him, if you so much as scratch him, I’ll kill you!” she shouted as despair morphed into rage. “I swear to God I’ll kill you!”

Unaffected, Maddux handcuffed the little boy to a vertical pipe leading to the house’s water heater, and he began to cry. “You won’t have that chance.”

“Then they’ll kill you!” she screamed as her rant turned maniacal. “They’ll rip you apart limb from limb for this!”

When the little boy’s wrists were snapped tightly to the copper pipe, Maddux’s gaze rose triumphantly to hers. “‘They’?” he asked as he stalked to where she sat and leaned down close again. “Who do you mean, ‘they’?”

“I didn’t mean it,” she hissed before she spat in his face. “I misspoke, you animal.”

“I don’t think so.” He smiled sadistically even as he calmly wiped her warm saliva off his skin. She probably assumed he’d strike her after spitting on him that way. So it would scare her more when he didn’t. “I know exactly what you meant. You meant the men who killed all those innocent people at the mall in Tysons Corner yesterday.”

“What people?”

He chuckled as he moved back to where the little boy stood. “Don’t give me that, Imelda. Talk to me, or your son dies.”

“Get away from him!”

“Mommy!” the boy shouted as Maddux skinned a long knife from the sheath hanging off his belt. “Mommy, help me, please.”

The long, serrated blade glistened in the light of the lone bulb dangling from the ceiling. Maddux stepped behind the boy, grabbed him by the hair, pulled his chin up, and placed the blade at his tiny throat. “Talk to me, woman. Tell me what you know.”

Her rage evaporated as the tip of the blade punctured her son’s soft skin. “Don’t kill him.” Blood seeped from the wound and dripped down his neck. “Oh, God, don’t kill him. Kill me instead.”

“Mommy! Mommy, help me!”

“Talk to me!” Maddux shouted, raising his voice as his predatory instincts reached the surface and his blood boiled. “Tell me everything.”

“I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything.”

“I’ll give you one more chance, Imelda.”

“Mommy, Mommy. I’m scared!”

“I swear I know nothing.”

“Mommy, I—”

Maddux drew the razor-sharp blade deliberately and deeply across the boy’s throat. The boy gurgled for a few moments as he mouthed words soundlessly. Then he exhaled heavily one final time, his tiny chin fell to his chest as Maddux let go of his hair, and his body crumpled to the floor — twisted in an awkward way around the pipe.

The woman’s tears began to flow like swollen rivers running to the sea. “You, you…you are the devil.” It was all she could gasp. For several moments she hyperventilated, unable to speak as she barely maintained consciousness. “I hate you.”

“Get in line.”

“You will pay.”

“We’ll see.” She probably wished she could pass out, but she wouldn’t. Her breathing was already turning more regular. “Now you’ll talk to me,” he whispered as he moved behind her, bent down, and put his lips to her ear. “Now you’ll tell me everything I want to know.”

“You can do anything you want to me now.” Imelda sobbed loudly. “I don’t care anymore about anything.”

“Yes you do, sweetheart. Oh, yes you do.”

“You really are the devil,” she whispered. “No person could be this evil.”

“The term is committed,” Maddux said. “No one can be this committed. And yes, I am. Now, who carried out those attacks yesterday? Who killed all those people in Tysons Corner?”

“I will tell you nothing.”

He moved in front of her again. “You know, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” she whispered, “but you’ll never get it out of me. You think you’re committed to your way of life, but you have no idea.” She glanced down at her dead son. “I won’t trade what I know for anything. Nothing you could do would change that.” She nodded at the boy’s body. “I’ve already proven that.”

For a few moments Maddux stared at Imelda in complete and utter awe. The mother-child relationship was the strongest bond in nature as far as he was concerned. No other came close in terms of loyalty and sacrifice. But she’d watched her son die — her most critical life’s work had been snuffed out in front of her, and she could have saved him. But she hadn’t.

Maddux’s awe turned to fear. It was an emotion he rarely experienced. Now he knew how committed these people were to their objective; now he understood what they intended to do. They meant to change America’s way of life forever, to reverse the freedoms its people had enjoyed for hundreds of years. They meant for everyone to fear for their lives every moment of the day. They wanted to turn the idyllic American existence into a nightmare ruled by paranoia, and they didn’t care what it took to do it.

What made this all so powerful for him was that he suddenly realized they might succeed. These were people of unprecedented will. They would do anything for their cause. The proof of that had unfolded right here in front of him. They would sacrifice their sons and daughters for the cause, even watch as they died. For them the whole was so much more important than any of the pieces.

In America that wasn’t necessarily true anymore. Many of the pieces believed they were infinitely more important than the whole. Perhaps that incredibly selfish me-first and live-for-the-moment attitude that seemed to dominate American society was the bellwether signal of the nation’s ultimate and unavoidable demise. Maybe now he understood what the country was up against. Maybe the enemy wasn’t these people. Maybe the country’s true enemy was itself. He blinked several times. And how did you fight that?

“Have you ever heard the name Jack Jensen?” he asked as once more he leaned down with his hands on the arms of the chair so his face was very close to hers. It was time to end this. He had to get to North Carolina.

“Maybe.” Her tone was hollow now, almost robotic.

“Tell me the truth and I’ll make sure you die quickly. You won’t suffer.”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“Did your people kill him?”

The woman stared straight back into Maddux’s cold eyes. “I won’t tell you. You can do anything you want to me, but I won’t tell you.”

CHAPTER 14

“Hello, Dad.” Troy was just pulling away from the hospital in the backseat of a cab headed for Dulles Airport. He needed to get back on the G450 and get farther south. The other two men accompanying him on tonight’s mission were probably already in North Carolina. “How are you?”

“Busy.”

The number that had come up on Troy’s phone was his father’s private cell — Bill carried two at all times; however, not many people had the digits to this one. Still, Troy assumed Bill was calling from his corner office that overlooked Wall Street from ten floors up. He had a First Manhattan board meeting later this afternoon.

Last night on the flight up from DC, Bill had admitted that the funeral and all that was going on with Red Cell Seven hadn’t given him much time to prepare. He was worn out, physically and emotionally, so his drive to prepare wasn’t what it should have been. After they’d taken off from Reagan Airport, he’d reviewed a few files covering the bank’s performance but then quickly closed the laptop and shut it off. Typically, Bill used every spare minute to get things done, so it was unusual to see him do that, especially with the board meeting looming.

First Manhattan meetings weren’t chummy, softball-question-only affairs like they were at some big, publicly held companies. Bill had packed the board with tough independent thinkers. And the culture of striving for perfection from the top down was reflected in the firm’s consistently strong earnings. First Manhattan had become Wall Street’s gold standard, and Bill had driven the firm to that level with his unparalleled work ethic and steadfast determination. But the quarterly meetings were still stressful. He was held accountable by that board.

“I’m sure you are busy, Dad. I know those board meetings are tough.”

“Thorough,” Bill said tersely. “Did you hear about the latest attack?”

Troy grimaced. “No.” What was it this time? “I just left the hospital in northern Virginia. I saw that young woman who survived the Tysons attack. Now I’m heading for—” Troy stopped himself. “Well, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, what happened? They hit another mall?”

They’d discussed this possibility last night on the plane after Bill had turned off his computer. They’d both assumed the death squads wouldn’t wait long to strike again. Apparently, they’d been right.

“No. This time they attacked an elementary school in a quiet suburb of Springfield, Missouri.”

“Bastards,” Troy whispered. “They’re making a statement, Dad. They’re telling the world that everyone in America is vulnerable.”

“This is as bad as it gets.”

“What happened?”

“First and second graders were eating lunch when three guys in ski masks entered the cafeteria from a hallway and opened fire with automatic weapons. It was the same story as the malls except this was a school.”

“Was there a guard?”

“He was killed, shot through the back.”

“He was running away?”

“Yes.”

Troy gritted his teeth as he imagined the terrible chaos and the carnage. These were well-trained killers with automatic weapons. Some poor security guard with a pistol was no match for them. You really couldn’t blame the guy for running. “Anyone caught?”

“No. Apparently, these guys aren’t just excellent killers. They’re escape artists as well. Every individual attack is meticulously planned. They have lots of vehicles they’re willing to abandon, which don’t give us any clues when we find them. They must have plenty of places to hole up, too. My guess is they aren’t using hotel or motel rooms, because they’d be easy to spot at those places. They’re using apartments or, more likely, stand-alone houses they’ve been living in for a while, so people around them don’t notice anything different now that the attacks have begun. They may even have families with them who have no idea what’s really going on, or are plants and are in on it. Either way, it helps these guys camouflage themselves. The only positive I can come up with in all of this is that it’s a fairly big operation, which means there’s a meaningful money trail somewhere. There has to be.”

“There always is with something big.”

“And I’m in a uniquely good position to find it,” Bill pointed out. “I’ve already got people on it.”

“Have you talked to the chairman again?” Troy asked, using the code they always used — on landlines or cells — to refer to President Dorn.

“No,” Bill answered curtly. “And I don’t see any reason to. As always, we’ll go our own way. If he wants to talk, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise we stay independent, as we always have.”

Troy wanted to push. He wasn’t convinced David Dorn had really changed his view on Red Cell Seven the way he claimed, especially after Stewart Baxter had slammed them so badly yesterday in the residence right after word of the initial attacks had come down. Plus, Dorn had pushed so hard on the specific whereabouts of the original Executive Orders Nixon had signed. Dorn had claimed he wanted to make sure the cell wasn’t vulnerable. But his agenda could easily be exactly the opposite.

Troy wanted to push, but he held off. His father already had a full plate today. And cell phones could never be trusted.

“I bet the chairman’s meeting with his guy right now. I bet he’s telling his guy everything you told him yesterday. That guy’s a snake. Truth be told, I’m not so sure about the chairman, either.”

“Easy,” Bill cautioned. “We don’t want to assume anything.”

“Dad, I—”

“I hear you, son, and I’m running some deep-water G-2 lines as we speak. He did it to us. Now it’s our turn to do it. If anything’s down there in the depths, we’ll find it — and at the appropriate time, use it. I promise.”

“I don’t trust that guy or the chairman. I know I should because of who he is and where my loyalties should lie, given what I do. But I don’t, Dad. I fully understand and appreciate the oath I took six years ago. But I’ve got a bad feeling about all this, and I trust my gut.”

“As you should, son. What about your visit to the hospital?” Bill asked, switching gears. “How’d that go?”

Troy glanced out the cab’s window at the airport tower in the distance, aware that he’d hit a sensitive topic for his father. You were always loyal to the president as far as Bill was concerned. Full stop — which was what made that question he’d considered asking a few moments ago so compelling.

“It was kind of strange, in a couple of ways.”

“How?”

“The doctor said something interesting.”

“What?”

“He said the woman was shot in the back from point-blank range.”

“That’s ridiculous. Those attacks were spray-and-away deals. We know that.”

“That’s what I told him.”

“But?”

“She has two bullet wounds, one in her shoulder and one in her back. The doctor figures the wound in her shoulder was caused by a bullet fired from an automatic weapon during the initial burst. But he thinks the second one, the one in the middle of her back, was made by a bullet from a pistol that was literally pressed against her body when it was fired.” Troy waited for a response or a reaction from the other end of the connection, but nothing came. “Dad?”

“Yeah, was there anything else?”

“The doctor said the wound in the middle of her back came from a one-in-a-million shot.”

More dead air from the other end. What the hell?

“What did he mean by that?” Bill finally asked.

“That the wound should have killed her. Several vital organs are located right around the area where the bullet entered her body, but it didn’t hit any of them. It was like the bullet had eyes in terms of avoiding anything life-threatening. Hell, he said I’ll probably be able to talk to her in a couple of days.”

“Huh.”

“I put bodyguards outside her room. I don’t want the terrorists sneaking into the hospital to finish the job.”

“Good idea.”

“Who knows, Dad? Maybe she saw something that’ll help us catch the bastards.”

“Did you tell the guys you put in there to shoot to wound if there’s an attempt?”

“Absolutely. They get it. We’ll want to interrogate that guy immediately, and they understand that.”

“Did you tell them to get the guy out of there fast? We don’t want local authorities or any of the Feds getting him, because they won’t use the right techniques to assure answers.”

“The guys I put there to protect her understand, believe me, Dad. They’ve got a van in the hospital parking lot, and they know exactly who to call and where to take anyone they snare.”

“So, what’s his name?”

“Who?”

“The doctor.”

That was an odd question. “Uh, I think it was Harrison. Why?”

“I may want to talk to him.”

“Why would you want to—”

“You said there was something else,” Bill kept going. “You said your visit to the hospital was strange in a couple of ways. What was the other thing?”

Troy hesitated. The airport was getting close. Maybe now wasn’t the time to go into this.

“Son?”

“The woman who was shot,” Troy answered hesitantly.

“What about her?”

“She…she reminds me of Lisa.” Troy took a deep breath. “She actually looks like Lisa.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, son. I know where you’re going with this.”

Troy hadn’t expected that. He’d been ready for a tough response or no interest at all. “I’m not. It’s just—”

“There’s nothing you could have done for Lisa. You were on a mission for your country. You were thrown off the Arctic Fire. You were fighting for your own life. You couldn’t have saved hers. You were thousands of miles away when she was killed.”

“She was killed because she knew me, Dad. I can’t ignore that.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“I do.”

“She could have stepped in front of a bus on Fifth Avenue, Troy. People die in many ways for many reasons. It was her time. I know you think it was Maddux, but it might not have been. We simply don’t know for sure, and you can’t assume anything. It could have been just a random act of violence. Her neighborhood wasn’t great.”

“Come on, Dad.”

“You can’t get mired down in the emotion of it. It wasn’t your fault. You have to put it out of your mind.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

Troy heard impatience creeping into his father’s voice for the first time, but he had to say this. He had to hear himself say it. “I loved Lisa.”

“You barely knew her.”

“I barely know anyone, Dad.” The words had come from his mouth without his even thinking about them. “I don’t have time. I never stay in one place long enough.”

“Son, you’ve got to—”

“We had a connection. It was real. I…I was actually thinking about asking her to marry me, and not just because of L.J.” The cab slowed down as it pulled up to the Dulles main terminal. This was the hard part. “I told her I was completely committed to her before I took off. But I…well, I was with a woman in Mexico before I went to Alaska.” He hated himself for that. “I can’t believe I did that.” The silence was deafening. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

“I know how you feel,” Bill finally spoke up quietly. “I understand. In fact, I more than understand.”

Unbelievable. Troy had never gotten that kind of compassion out of the old man — or that kind of subtle though clear admission to committing a wrong himself.

“Troy?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t get killed tonight. You hear me? You come back safe.”

“I will.”

“Your mother couldn’t handle it if you were gone, too. She just lost one son. She can’t lose another.”

Troy smiled wryly. He’d never heard this kind of worry from his father, either.

“Troy?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I couldn’t handle it, either.” Bill paused several seconds. “There, I said it.”

After climbing out of the cab Troy was still distracted by the conversation with his father. For a few seconds he didn’t notice anything unusual as he walked into the terminal. Finally it hit him, and he stopped to take it in. The show of force inside the terminal was incredible. He’d never seen so many police and military personnel in a U.S. airport at one time. Many of them had their weapons drawn as they moved about the huge building, even though there was no immediate emergency.

Life in the United States had changed forever.

Maddux had taken nearly an hour to thoroughly clean up the basement of the Pennsylvania house. Not that anyone official would ever come looking for anything, but he wanted to make certain the place was spotless out of respect for the associate who’d made the site available. The man wouldn’t have been very happy if he’d known what had happened here today. But fortunately, he hadn’t asked, so Maddux hadn’t needed to lie. Besides, Maddux had taken care of an abusive fiancé for the man — permanently — so what was he really going to say? He had the man by the balls, and they both knew it. And the man had to know Maddux wasn’t using the house for R&R.

Maddux chuckled. That was always a problem with getting into bed with the devil. It felt good at first, but there was no such thing as divorce when it started feeling bad.

He liked being the devil. He always had. And you had to like a job to do it well.

Imelda’s interrogation had ended up yielding nothing of significance except the fascinating revelation that she’d recognized Jack Jensen’s name. What she’d said was irrelevant — that she did recognize it. She could easily have been lying. It was the look in her beaten eyes that was important. They couldn’t lie, and they told the same story. Imelda had recognized the name.

She hadn’t told him anything more, and he’d done everything in his power to get her to talk. He’d done things to her that most men he’d tortured hadn’t been able to stand up to and had quickly begun to babble information to try to stop the horrible suffering they were enduring any way they could. In some cases, those men had been tough intelligence officers, even battle-tested terrorists.

He admired her for that — just as he admired her for allowing her child to die in front of her rather than yield information. Too bad she was on the wrong side of this fight. She would have been a valuable addition to his team.

In the end he’d strangled Imelda and stared deeply into her eyes as her life’s light faded while she’d strained pitifully against the ropes binding her to the chair. He always stared deeply into his victim’s eyes at the end. He thought maybe he’d see the answer to it all as the last breath left the body. He hadn’t so far, but he wouldn’t stop looking.

This house was two hundred miles from Manassas, Virginia, where Maddux had kidnapped the family. And it was completely isolated in a dense pine forest. So he was confident that the odds of anyone showing up here as part of an investigation into the disappearance of Imelda and her child were zero.

Despite Maddux’s confidence that tonight’s murders would remain forever unsolved, he’d taken extra precautions to ensure it. He’d cleaned everything twice and buried the bodies in a pre-dug grave forty miles to the west on a lonely ridge before returning to the house to make absolutely certain everything was perfect. He wanted it to shine when the associate arrived next time with his wife. The man was showing amazing loyalty by continuing to support him even though Bill Jensen had put out the word to stop. And the man’s wife was obsessive about neatness. He definitely didn’t want her finding anything down here.

Three of the twenty associates were still supporting him, despite Bill’s warning. It was the pinnacle of loyalty as far as Maddux was concerned. Of course, he’d done those personal favors for two of them, so their loyalty couldn’t be held in the highest regard. There had been quid pro quos in those instances. But he hadn’t actually done anything for the third associate who was remaining loyal. That man just believed everything Maddux told him — probably because he was too scared not to.

The great thing was that the three associates who were still secretly supporting him had homes in enough places around the world to keep him operating efficiently and effectively. More important, they were supplying him with cash as well. There’d been a suitcase waiting for Maddux in an upstairs bedroom with ten thousand dollars in it. That would tide him and his followers over for a while. And there would be more money to follow, he’d been assured.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made certain the incoming number was familiar before answering.

“Are you serious?” Maddux clenched his jaw. “All right,” he muttered angrily. “I’ll call you back in a little while.”

He slid the phone back into his pocket, grabbed the suitcase full of cash off the dining room table, and hustled for the door. Ryan O’Hara was dead. The bodies of O’Hara and the young man who had accompanied him had been found in a clearing in the Delaware woods outside Wilmington. The clearing was a mile from where Harry Boyd’s body was found alongside a white van.

Suddenly Maddux needed to get to North Carolina quickly. A leisurely drive south from Pennsylvania had turned into a sprint. If he pushed, he might make the farm by midnight.

CHAPTER 15

Night had fallen on central North Carolina some time ago. Even though Troy and the two men who were with him had been here for a while, they continued to watch and wait. They wanted to be as sure as possible of the enemy’s numbers before they attacked. Being outnumbered wouldn’t stop them — unless they determined that the defending force was overwhelming. They simply wanted to be as prepared as possible.

The location they’d chosen for their reconnaissance was a large, flat rock atop a slight ridge just inside a tree line several hundred yards west of the sprawling horse farm’s main house. Cover and visibility were good. Unfortunately, so far, their recon wasn’t paying dividends. They were ninety percent certain the mission’s target was on the property. But that was the extent of what they knew, and there were several buildings to consider as objectives. Two vehicles had come and gone since they’d taken up this position beneath a grove of tall oak trees several hours ago, but they’d gleaned little from the activity. People had gotten out of the vehicles and gone into the main house. The same people had come back out a few minutes later and driven off.

After reboarding the Jensen G450 at Dulles Airport outside Washington, Troy had made the short flight south to Raleigh, where he’d met the two men who were with him tonight. They were also RCS agents — from the Counterterrorism Division. Bill had arranged everything after assuring Troy that both men were loyal to Red Cell Seven and nothing else — that there was no risk whatsoever of their being somehow secretly allied with Shane Maddux.

Troy had never met them before, didn’t know their names and didn’t want to — just as it was clear they didn’t want to know his. These men were members of a different RCS division; it was safer to partition sensitive information such as real names as much as possible, and all three of them understood that. It was how they’d been trained from day one.

Tonight Troy’s code name was Agent Montana, and the other two men were Agents Idaho and Wyoming.

The main house was a large, three-story brick structure ringed by a halo of tall maple trees. A hundred yards to the other side of the house from where they were hiding were two barns and a guest cabin. Between the tree line and the house were open pastures with blanket-wrapped horses grazing beneath what was a star-laden but, as yet, moonless sky. Once they left the cover of the trees and started crossing that pasture, they would be vulnerable to anyone watching the open ground with night-vision capability. And it wasn’t a stretch to suspect that people in the houses or the barns would have that capability. In fact, it was almost a given.

Another vehicle — the third of the evening — moved quickly up the long, paved driveway from the left and skidded to a stop in the circular driveway before the house. The headlights remained on and the engine continued to run while Troy watched through his night-vision glasses. Two men climbed out of the older SUV and hurried inside. A few moments later what looked to be the same two emerged from the house, climbed back into the SUV, and drove back down the driveway.

When the taillights disappeared, Troy scanned the shadowy horizon before him from left to right. The nearest house that was not part of the farm was a mile away, and behind him were fifty thousand acres of national forest. The sounds of gunfire wouldn’t be audible to neighbors if a battle broke out, which was good. Red Cell Seven did not want interference from local law enforcement.

He glanced up at the sky. A full moon would be rising within the hour. Yesterday’s storm had cleared out of the East Coast and been replaced by a high-pressure system that had fallen out of western Canada. Temperatures had dropped along with it — drastically. Gusts accompanying the system had nighttime windchills in the low twenties as far south as Georgia. They were a day late, Troy figured. The gusts and the cold didn’t bother him, but clouds and rain would have made much better cover for tonight.

“All we really know is there’s been no net increase in manpower,” Troy said quietly. “Of course, we still have no idea how many people were on the property when we got here.” He gestured at the sky. The horizon off to the left was already starting to brighten. “We’re gonna have a lot more light on the matter very soon.”

“I say we go,” Agent Idaho suggested.

“Absolutely,” Agent Wyoming agreed.

Troy hopped down from the rock and grabbed the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun leaning against a tree. It was the same type of weapon the other two men would be carrying. He’d brought all three guns and plenty of extra clips with him on the G450 into Raleigh. That was another advantage of flying private, along with coming and going whenever you wanted. You could carry guns on board and not have to worry about it.

The MP5 used 9mm rounds, which would be largely ineffective against body armor. However, Troy and the other men were not trained to shoot at center mass — between the throat and waist — as most law-enforcement and military personnel were. RCS agents were trained to fire at the head, because most individuals didn’t wear helmets in situations they were involved with. A head shot was obviously more difficult, but also much more effective.

All three submachine guns were outfitted with sound suppressors, which slightly reduced the velocity of the round and therefore its effectiveness, but Troy was willing to give up a certain amount of firepower in exchange for stealth. Hopefully they could neutralize the individuals inside without using guns. But if it turned out otherwise, these weapons outfitted as they were would enable them to pick off enemies one at a time without alerting others. All three guns were also equipped with dual magazine clamps.

“All right, let’s go.”

As the men broke from the trees and approached the tall, four-slat fence, they spread the distance between themselves to make for more difficult targets in case they were being glassed.

“Just confirming we have full license from COC tonight,” Agent Idaho called over in a low voice as they dropped down off the fence and began jogging toward the main house. “Is that correct?”

“That is correct,” Troy confirmed. “If you acquire a target and you believe you are in danger, shoot to kill. Don’t bother asking about intentions.”

“Roger.”

Troy motioned to Agent Idaho by tapping his right ear. Then he veered off from the other two men until he was fifty feet away and then flipped a switch on his belt that engaged the mobile intercom system they were using tonight. “Testing Idaho, come in, Idaho.”

“I got you, Montana.”

“Testing Wyoming, come in, Wyoming.”

“I got you too, Montana.”

Troy veered back toward the other two men as they headed across the field past three horses grazing peacefully on the scraggly grass. He glanced at his watch. It was after midnight.

The Ford Explorer was ten years old and looked every bit its age. The fenders were rusty, its dark blue paint was chipped and fading, and the front seats were in desperate need of reupholstering — the cloth covers were ripped, coffee stained, cigarette burned, and smelled like mildew. But the truck could flat-out fly. Maddux kept the engine and the transmission in perfect condition. He always kept pristine what couldn’t be seen. It was one of his “live by” rules. He believed that things that couldn’t be seen were much more important than things that could. Image was unimportant. Effectiveness was everything.

Too bad he couldn’t fully take advantage of the vehicle’s speed tonight, he thought as he came out of a long, gentle left-hand curve in the middle of the North Carolina countryside east of Raleigh. He couldn’t risk being pulled over. Not with all the guns in the back. Some bored hillbilly cop might want to search the vehicle for anything he could plunder. Then there’d be an ugly incident. Maddux didn’t have any problem with killing a cop if he was getting in the way of what the country needed. It was the time being pulled over would take up that would be the problem. As far as he was concerned, time was life’s most precious gift and was never to be wasted.

It had been a long trip from Pennsylvania, and his interrogation of Imelda seemed like days ago now. He couldn’t shake the fact that she’d watched her child die without giving up any important information. He had no doubt that she was involved in the mall attacks somehow, or at least knew a great deal about them. But she hadn’t said a word. She was an amazing patriot — for the enemy.

Maddux glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. He’d make the Kohler family farm in ten minutes.

A solitary individual, tagged Agent Bridger for the evening, knelt in the thick brush beneath the tree line fifty yards north of where Troy and the other two men had been watching and waiting. Agent Bridger grabbed the nightscope off the ground and watched as Troy and the other two men jumped the fence and headed across the field past the horses toward the main house of the farm.

Troy had no idea he was being watched, but that was for the best. Hopefully there would be no need to intervene. Hopefully everything would go smoothly and Troy would rescue Major Travers without incident.

Agent Bridger stowed the night-vision glasses. It was time to follow Troy and the other two agents. Staying here wouldn’t help them if things got hot in one of the buildings across the pastures.

Troy and the other two men had searched the cabin and the first barn. There was no one in the cabin and nothing in the smaller barn except two horses. After rapidly overpowering a lone individual in the second, larger barn, they’d hog-tied and gagged him. Troy was fairly sure the guy had no idea what was going on. But it was better to neutralize him and come back later, after the fireworks were done, if there were any. So they’d stuffed a rag in his mouth and left him in a corner of a stall with a big mare who looked terrified, too.

Now they were headed for the main house.

A covered porch wrapped around all four sides of the huge home. As they burst out from behind three old maple trees and raced up the wide set of stairs at the back of the structure, a silhouette appeared at the door and fired. The lone bullet missed, and whoever had just fired disappeared. Surprise was no longer in their corner. The sound suppressors on the MP5s had quickly become irrelevant.

Shrill, muffled voices rose from inside as Troy pressed himself against the bricks beside a window. With the butt of the MP5 he broke out several panes of glass. Then he unloaded his first clip of twenty-five rounds into the darkened room beyond with an across-and-back motion. He had no desire to be shot at, but, in a way, he was glad that person at the door had fired first without yelling out for any ID. They were completely justified now. No question.

As Troy quickly switched clips on his gun, Agents Idaho and Wyoming crashed through what was left of the window. When the new clip snapped into place on the underside of the barrel, he dove through the window and rolled, following the other men into what turned out to be a large formal dining room. He scrambled to his feet and quickly glassed the area. It wasn’t much of a dining room anymore. Everything was basically shot to hell.

He motioned to the other agents and then stabbed in the air at the curving double staircase to their right. They nodded and, with their submachine guns leading the way, raced for the steps. They had to make certain the upper floors were clear first. They couldn’t have enemies trapping them in the basement, where they figured the target was — because as far as they could tell from the recon there were no exterior steps leading out of the basement and back up to the ground.

Troy pressed his back to the wall outside the large kitchen as Agents Idaho and Wyoming sprinted up opposite staircases, came together on the landing at the top, and then disappeared. Troy quickly became aware of how alone he was. For the next few minutes, as Idaho and Wyoming made certain the two floors above were clear, things could get dicey down here depending on the number of adversaries in the house. Because they definitely knew they were under attack now.

Troy kept the barrel of the gun swinging back and forth in front of him as he listened intently for any sounds of a battle breaking out above him.

Maddux could feel the coming combat. He’d always had that sixth sense about battle. He figured any warrior worth his weight in gold on the field did.

He had no reason to believe anything was amiss. He’d received no alerts from the farm. But Bill Jensen must be aware by now that something was wrong, and had probably put three and three together.

As if on cue, Maddux’s cell phone pinged. He grabbed it, scanned the SOS message, tossed the device back on the seat, swung the truck left into the farm’s driveway, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. He’d made it in the nick of time.

CHAPTER 16

“Mr. President?”

Dorn glanced away from the darkness outside the Oval Office. He’d been staring into it sadly for the last five minutes. “Yes, Stewart.”

“Sir, it’s after midnight.” Baxter was leaning into the office from the corridor through the open door. He hadn’t bothered knocking. After all, he was the chief of staff. There was no need for him to be bound by rules others had to obey. At this point he made most of the rules when it came to dealing with the president, and in many instances knew more about what was going on than the president. In fact, Dorn would be lost without him. No, the president wasn’t going to say anything about violating protocol. He’d better not, anyway. “Why are you still awake? You need to get to bed.”

“You sound like my mother, God rest her soul.”

“Nevertheless.”

The president shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to keep the First Lady up. I’d just toss and turn.”

“You need your rest, sir. With all due respect, the First Lady can rest anytime she wants to. Maybe it’s her duty to stay awake with you and keep you company once in a while if you need that.” Baxter hesitated. “She wasn’t shot in the chest a few weeks ago, either.”

Dorn shook his head at Baxter’s audacity. “Come in, Stewart.” He motioned at the chair in front of the desk. “Sit down. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I could actually use your company right now.”

As Baxter walked across the eagle, he glanced at the pretty, young African American nurse who was sitting in a chair beside the president’s temporary bed, reading a magazine. She looked up and smiled sincerely, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He didn’t have the bandwidth to get to know everyone in Washington, DC.

“What’s bothering you, sir?” Baxter asked as he eased into the chair.

“What do you think is bothering me, Stewart? Christ.”

“Of course, but what part of it is bothering you so much that you can’t sleep? Which,” Baxter continued quietly after he’d leaned slightly forward so the nurse couldn’t hear him, “I feel it’s my duty to inform you, could ultimately affect your judgment very negatively. And therefore negatively affect the lives of three hundred and sixty million people in the United States of America. Not to mention another six-point-four billion people outside this country.”

Dorn gave Baxter a prickly grimace. “It’s been nearly a day and a half, Stewart, and we have no leads. Law-enforcement departments around the country have gotten thousands of tips about suspicious people in hotels, motels, apartments, houses, schools, and malls, but none of those tips have led to anything, much less arrests. We don’t know who’s committing the attacks, we don’t know who’s behind the attacks, and we don’t know what they want.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but we know exactly what they want. In the short run, they want to disrupt our way of life. In the long run, they want to destroy it.”

“The point is, Stewart, Americans are terrified to leave their homes. People are dying, our economy is grinding to a halt, and I can’t seem to do a damn thing about it.”

“Patience, sir.”

“Patience?” the president asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

“We’re doing everything we can, Mr. President,” Baxter said confidently. “Everyone’s involved at the federal level who should be involved, and they’re all completely focused. The FBI, Homeland Security, CIA domestic assets, and the DNI are all putting everything they possibly can into this crisis. My staff and I are making absolutely certain of that on a minute-by-minute basis. My staffers are constantly in touch with those people.”

“It’s not getting us anywhere.”

“It hasn’t even been thirty-six hours, sir. We will find the people who are responsible for these crimes quickly and bring them to justice. I promise.”

“You do? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Quickly?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, now I feel better.”

“Sir, I—”

“‘Quickly’ would have been today, Stewart.”

“You can’t expect miracles, Mr. President.”

“Why not?” Dorn snapped. “The taxpayers spend over a trillion dollars a year on defense and homeland security at the federal level, and who knows how much more on local law enforcement. Damn it, I have to expect miracles.” He was seething. “The American public demands that I expect miracles in this situation. And they should.”

“Easy, sir.” The strain had to be incredible, and Dorn was just letting off steam. That’s all this was. “We’re doing everything in our power. No one can second-guess you.”

Dorn slammed his open palm down on the desk so it banged loudly and the nurse jumped. “I don’t care about being second-guessed,” he said. “I don’t care about perceptions or using this situation to our advantage politically or blaming the Republicans for it somehow. I just want arrests. I want this to stop.”

“I’m doing everything I can for you, sir.”

Dorn shut his eyes tightly. “I know you are, Stewart,” he agreed softly. He moaned and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard.”

“It’s all right. I know it wasn’t personal. I know you’re feeling it.”

The president shook his head forlornly. “Those bastards shot elementary school children today, Stewart, six- and seven-year-old defenseless children.”

“It doesn’t get any worse than that, sir.”

“And we didn’t catch the bastards.”

“No we didn’t.”

“There was an armed guard on duty.”

“Those kinds of guards aren’t equipped to take on what hit that elementary school today. That man had no chance.”

“Children were mowed down at that school by submachine guns.”

Baxter nodded. “I know,” he agreed quietly. “It’s…well, it’s just awful.”

“And do you know what the worst part of it is?”

“Well, I—”

“They didn’t shoot themselves when it was over because they felt so horrible for what they’d done. This wasn’t some kind of onetime, wild-rage event uncorked by years of bullying or mental illness or a fight with a spouse. This was a cold-blooded, calculated attack by assassins who right now are probably picking their next target, which might be a home, a store, even a church or a synagogue.”

“I hear you, sir.”

Dorn glanced at his laptop, which sat on his desk. It was still open to the page he’d been studying before he turned around in his wheelchair to stare out into the darkness out of despair. “Do you remember the DC Snipers, Stewart?”

“Of course. That happened in 2002. I believe it was in October of that year, specifically. I remember it very well. I was down on K Street doing the lobbying thing. It was my last year doing that.” Baxter prided himself on his steel-trap memory. He worked at it, too. In what little spare time he could find, he finished crossword and Sudoku puzzles with a passion because a neurosurgeon friend had told him the brain was like a muscle in a way and puzzle workouts were very good for the memory area. “And if I’m not mistaken, you were a junior congressman from Vermont who was excessively worried about global warming, the spotted owl, and rain forests in Brazil.”

“Bravo, Stewart.” The president clapped several times slowly. “You have an amazing memory.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Baxter appreciated Dorn’s recognizing that, even if he was being sarcastic about how he did it. The president wasn’t nearly as effusive in his praise about it as Baxter believed he should have been. He wasn’t as effusive in his praise about a lot of things his COS did as he should have been. But he was getting better, and they’d only been working together for a few weeks. Another week or two and the president would be acting more respectfully.

“There were two of them,” Baxter continued. “John Allen Muhammad was forty-one years old, and Lee Boyd Malvo was just seventeen. They were basically a couple of coward drifters who murdered innocent civilians with a hunting rifle from long range. They shot people in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia as the victims were coming out of restaurants and stores, filling up their cars at gas stations, or just sitting at a bus stop. They used Muhammad’s car as a moving sniper’s nest. The kid would lie in the back of the vehicle on his stomach and shoot through a hole in the trunk where the keyhole was. They cut away part of the backseat so he could do that. Then Muhammad would drive away as soon as Malvo had shot someone.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in 2009,” Baxter continued, “and Malvo was found guilty of multiple murders and is in prison for life with absolutely no chance of parole. He was spared the death penalty because of his age at the time of the killings.” Baxter shook his head sadly. “What happened to their victims is terrible, Mr. President. But at the end of the day, the system worked.”

“Did it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself.”

“What? What did I say, Mr. President?”

“You said they were a couple of coward drifters.”

“So?”

“Do you remember how long it took to catch them?”

Baxter pushed his lower lip out as he thought about it for a few moments. “It was no more than a week.”

“It was twenty-three days, Stewart.”

“Oh.” Baxter glanced at the young nurse. She was staring down at her book, but she didn’t seem to be reading. Her eyes weren’t moving. They seemed locked on one spot on the page in front of her.

“And,” the president went on, “right up until the end, right up until a concerned citizen called the police about two guys he happened to notice sleeping in a rest stop on Interstate Seventy, eighty miles west of here, late one night because he thought they looked suspicious, everyone believed those maniacs were riding around in a white van. Well, it turned out they were driving a blue Chevy Caprice.” Dorn gestured at the laptop. “The point is that two drifters with no money and very little sanity completely avoided capture for twenty-three days while they murdered ten people and critically injured three more in a fairly small and congested geographic area of this country. And all that time the FBI, the Virginia state police, the Maryland state police, the DC police, and who knows how many other county and local law-enforcement personnel were looking everywhere for them.” He paused. “But they couldn’t find them. The cops set up roadblocks, they went door to door in some neighborhoods, they begged for the public’s help. But they still couldn’t find them. It took a lucky glance by a concerned citizen. Otherwise those two might still be out there killing people.” The president put a hand to his chest, to where the bullet O’Hara had fired had entered his body. “The men who attacked our country yesterday and today are members of well-trained, well-supplied death squads. I’m convinced of that. They aren’t drifters with a few dollars left in their wallets.” Dorn’s voice was shaking. “If it took George Bush more than three weeks and a lucky break to find the DC Snipers, how in the hell am I ever going to find the assassins who shot up eleven malls and killed all those children in Missouri?”

Baxter glanced at the nurse again as Dorn ended his speech. It was obvious she wasn’t reading her book anymore. She wasn’t even trying to fake it. She was staring at the president openmouthed.

“Excuse me, Miss,” Baxter said.

Her eyes raced to his. She was mortified to have been caught staring at Dorn so hard. “Yes, sir?”

“Please leave us.” The woman stood up immediately and bolted for the door. She didn’t protest at all. “Stay right outside the office,” Baxter called as she hurried out. “Don’t go far.”

“Yes, sir,” she called back as she closed the door behind her.

“Mr. President—”

“I should have completely backed Red Cell Seven right from the beginning,” the president interrupted. “I should have given them everything they wanted.”

“No way,” Baxter retorted. “They’re cowboys. They’re going to get you in very bad trouble if you don’t do something about them. They’re a cancer on your presidency. They could end up bringing you down.”

“If I’d shown them more support, this damn thing might never have happened. They might have found out about these death squads and stopped them before they ever got started.”

Baxter rose slowly out of his chair. His heart was suddenly pounding. He had to do this. “I must tell you something very important, sir.”

“What is it?”

“You need to understand that what I’m about to say comes from a friend I’ve known and trusted for a very long time. He’s been in this town a long time, and he’s always been right when he’s told me something like this.”

“What is it?” Dorn demanded again.

Baxter took a deep breath as he put his hands down on the front of the president’s desk and leaned over it. “Shane Maddux wasn’t operating on his own in Los Angeles, Mr. President.”

Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “How do you even know who Shane Maddux is?”

“Don’t worry about it, sir,” Baxter snapped. “Worry about this instead.” He leaned even farther over the great desk and pointed at the president. “The order to assassinate you came from well above Maddux. It came from Bill Jensen.”

Dorn gazed at Baxter for several moments. Finally he shook his head slowly in total disbelief. “You’re wrong, Stewart. Bill Jensen is a fine man, a man of principle. He would never be involved in something like that. That’s ridiculous.”

Baxter rose back up off the desk and raised one eyebrow. “Is it, Mr. President? Is it really that ridiculous?” He hesitated. “Or does it make perfect sense? Is that what’s really bothering you tonight?”

“What are you saying?”

“I gave you those background checks covering Bill and Troy before they got here yesterday. I know you read them. You read everything I send you.”

“So?”

“So you saw that section in the report about Rita Hayes, Bill’s executive assistant at First Manhattan. She’d been with him for a long time before she disappeared a few weeks ago. And they had been intimate. They had sexual relations, and the information I have is that she was about to tell Bill’s wife, Cheryl, what was going on. And then she disappeared.”

Dorn gazed up at Baxter but said nothing.

“Now no one can find Rita Hayes.” Baxter leaned back down over the desk. “Are you still going to tell me that Bill Jensen is a fine man?”

CHAPTER 17

Troy kept moving through the spacious first floor, swinging the hot end of the MP5 from side to side as he cruised forward. He had to make absolutely certain there was only one stairway to the basement from this floor of the house and that this level was completely clear of resistance.

“Come in, Idaho,” he muttered. “What’s going on up there?”

“We’re going through the last couple of rooms on level three, and then we’re good to go. Wyoming’s going through the attic right now.”

“Well, hurry up. It’s getting kind of—Jesus!”

Someone darted from left to right in front of him, at the far end of the long hallway he’d just turned down for the second time. The warm body raced through the living room to Troy’s right and continued out of the house after bursting through the front door.

Troy had almost fired, but managed to hold up at the last instant. He hadn’t tapped the target because he couldn’t make out a weapon and the guy wasn’t acting in a hostile manner. In fact, he was running away as fast as he could. The red-orange image in the upper left-hand corner of Troy’s left lens was quickly growing smaller through the living room window, and they weren’t in the business of killing civilians.

It sounded awful, but sometimes that made this job very hard. Facing live-or-die snap decisions was an inevitable part of this life, and you could never be a hundred percent sure of the target’s intention if you fired first. Troy had been trained to err on the side of protecting himself, but occasionally the training didn’t kick in. Hesitating could cost him his life one day. That was an inevitable reality. Worse, it might cost someone else theirs.

Troy kept reminding himself that they weren’t a hundred percent certain Wilson Travers was even here. He’d only been quoted ninety percent, and that terrified expression on the face of the guy they’d tied up a few minutes ago in the barn kept haunting him. The guy had no idea what was happening, it was obvious. Travers might be a thousand miles from here by now — or dead.

Even at ninety percent confidence, this could all be a massive snafu, and the individual who’d fired at them as they were coming up the porch steps might have done so in self-defense, thinking this was a home invasion. It was probably that guy who just took off — which meant the cops were on their way. Unless there were people here who didn’t want cops involved, and that guy was a defector.

Troy took a deep breath as he pushed forward. There were always so many possibilities and unknowns — and so many opportunities to make wrong decisions. Wrong decisions here didn’t result in getting fired or being docked a week’s pay. This was life and death. Civilians didn’t understand that — they couldn’t.

“You okay, Montana?”

“Yes,” Troy answered. “Just hurry up, will you? We’re probably on the clock at this point. Somebody just took off out of here like a bat out of hell.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, but no worries. He was a civilian.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Troy really had no idea, but they had to finish this thing off. Rescuing Travers was that important, for one crucial reason that he couldn’t relate to the other agents — because he didn’t know himself. It was that classified. “Just get down here.”

“We’re close.”

Troy suddenly had a very bad feeling. He hated it when that happened, because he was usually right.

He swung around and aimed when he thought he felt a pair of eyes burning into his back — but there was nothing behind him except an empty hallway. He exhaled heavily. “Stay cool,” he muttered, “stay cool.”

Agent Idaho broke back onto the IC. “All right, all right, we’re done. All clear upstairs.”

Troy hustled back to the base of the double staircase outside the dining room as the other two agents hustled down the same side toward him, one after the other.

“They’ve got to be in the basement,” Idaho said, “if they’re here at all.”

“But there’s no exterior exit out of the house from down there. No steps from down there back up to ground level. We confirmed that before we came in. And I can only find one set of stairs to the basement here on the first floor. Any overlap stairs up there?” Troy asked, pointing up with his thumb. “Were there any stairs from levels two or three that skip this floor?”

“No, and we checked everything including closets.”

Troy shook his head. “Why would they trap themselves down there?” This didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.

Wyoming shrugged. “Quid pro quo?”

“Explain that, will you, Caesar?”

“They’re letting us come down. They’re going to negotiate their way out once we’re down there. They’re gonna use Travers as trade bait for freedom. We surprised them, and now they have no choice. He has no choice,” Wyoming added. “He has to negotiate.”

Troy shook his head. That didn’t sound right, either. “We won’t negotiate. He must know that.” Troy gestured ahead. “Come on, let’s do it, but careful as we go. This could be an ambush. Maybe that’s why they’re holing up in the basement.”

The three men hustled down the hall to the basement door and then descended the steps quickly, spreading out as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs, ready for anything.

Maddux sprinted up the porch stairs. As he crossed the wide wooden slats, he marveled at how silent he was, even as he moved quickly. If he’d been a heavy man, the boards would be creaking and groaning and they might hear him down in the basement. Yes, it was good to be small.

He knew they were down there because he’d just gotten another text — the last one he would receive, he was sure. By now his partner had almost certainly been captured and they were in the process of freeing Travers. But that was fine.

Maddux chuckled softly as he headed down. They hadn’t planned it this way, but it was working out perfectly. Timing wasn’t everything in life. Training, skill, and smarts were the primary keys to success. But timing was still damn important.

The only thing Troy and the other two RCS agents encountered at the bottom of the basement stairs was Nathan Kohler. He stood in front of a small but solid-looking prison cell with his arms folded across his chest defiantly — unarmed. Behind Kohler and the narrowly spaced, vertical iron bars was Wilson Travers, who was chained to one wall of the cell by his neck.

Troy recognized Kohler immediately. He was an arrogant prick. Worse, he was a bigot. He didn’t flaunt his racial hatred, but it wasn’t hard to detect if you dug only slightly below the surface. Especially after a few beers, which Troy’d had the unfortunate opportunity to share with Kohler a month after Kohler had joined the Falcons. The only reason Kohler had gotten into RCS, Bill had explained to Troy last night, was because of his father, Douglas Kohler. Until his death a few months ago, Douglas Kohler had been the senior United States senator from North Carolina — and a Red Cell Seven associate.

As in all walks of life and no matter how hard they tried to avoid it, Troy thought regretfully as he stared at the blond young man, a few bad apples managed to make it through into RCS. For the most part it was an amazing crew of good and dedicated people. But over the last six years Troy had met three or four men he could have done without — Nathan Kohler being one of them.

“Open the cell door, Nathan,” Troy ordered. He recognized Travers, too. Travers had indeed been the man Troy had delivered cash and instructions to in Greece. “Let Travers out.”

Troy gestured at the lock on the cell door. “Come on, hurry up.” He wanted to get out fast. They’d leave Kohler locked in the cell and then make an anonymous call when they were far enough away so someone could come and get the kid out. “Now, Nathan.”

Agent Idaho covered Kohler with his MP5 while Agent Wyoming covered the stairs in case anyone tried coming down from the first floor. Neither of them had fired a shot yet, so each man had a full magazine as well as another full clip in the clamp alongside the active one.

“Why’d you do this?” Troy asked. Time was of the essence, but he wanted to know. “Why’d you turn on the cell?”

“Fuck you and your father. The nigger stays where he is.”

Troy shook his head in disbelief. Bill and Douglas Kohler must have been very good friends. “We have full license from COC tonight, Nathan.”

“You mean from your father.”

“Do you understand what that means?”

“It means you can screw me—”

“It means I have the authority to use any and all force necessary to get Major Travers out of here. It means I can kill you if I want to.”

“Yeah, well, fuck yourself. Go ahead and shoot me.”

Troy moved to where Kohler was standing and held his hand out. “Give me the keys. I don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not giving you—”

Troy hammered Kohler’s gut with the butt of his gun and sent the kid groaning and sprawling to the cement floor. Kohler coiled into a fetal position as Troy leaned down, rolled the kid to one side, and grabbed the set of keys beneath him.

As Troy rose back up, he was aware of Agent Idaho falling limply to the floor, followed immediately by Agent Wyoming. They’d both been shot through the head. Blood was already pouring onto the floor from gaping wounds just above their ears. They weren’t even twitching, the shots had been so perfect.

Then there was a blade at Troy’s throat.

“Hello, Mr. Jensen,” came a calm voice from behind him.

Shane Maddux. Troy recognized the voice immediately. The man had been his superior for six years. Now he knew who had turned Nathan Kohler against Red Cell Seven.

“Hello, Shane.”

How did Maddux do it? Travers and Kohler had been the only other people down here — Troy had believed. He and Agent Wyoming had checked the entire basement thoroughly — while Idaho had watched Kohler — and there were no stairs other than the ones the three of them had descended from the first floor. Now Troy understood why Kohler hadn’t resisted or tried to run. Maddux wanted them all down here.

“No formal address?” Maddux asked. “No more Major Maddux?”

“You don’t deserve a formal—”

“Drop the gun, Troy.”

Troy allowed the submachine gun to slip from his right hand where it had been hanging next to his leg. It clattered to the floor.

There was no point resisting. Maddux was far too good a killer. If he sensed the slightest defiance, that blade beneath Troy’s chin would slice his throat, and nothing much else would matter after that.

“Pick up the gun, Nathan,” Maddux ordered sharply. “Get up. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Kohler crawled to where Troy’s MP5 lay, grabbed it, and groaned again as he struggled to pull himself to his feet.

“Open the cell, Nathan.”

Kohler looked at Maddux like he was crazy. “What?”

“We’re taking Major Travers with us.” Maddux nodded at Travers. “Get him out of there. Make sure he’s still cuffed before you let him out of the ring.”

“Why are we taking him with us?” Kohler demanded as he grabbed the keys back from Troy and slid one of them into the lock.

“Major Travers has something very special I want. We need him to lead us to it.”

Kohler swung the cell door open and moved to where Travers sat on a narrow bench. When he was satisfied the cuffs securing Travers’s hands together behind his back were tight on both wrists, Kohler unlocked the metal collar around Travers’s neck. The chain that connected the collar to the ring anchored into the wall snaked to the floor.

“Toss me that gun,” Maddux ordered as Nathan followed Travers out of the cell.

Kohler bent down and grabbed the gun lying beside Agent Idaho’s body, then lobbed it to Maddux. Maddux released Troy, caught the submachine gun, and quickly slid the knife back into a sheath on his belt.

Maddux motioned toward the cell with the gun. “Get in there, Troy.”

“Not going to kill me?”

“I would,” Maddux answered, “but I don’t want to piss your father off now that he’s calling the shots.”

The explanation sounded hollow. Why would Maddux be worried about that? He’d killed Jack. He must know Bill was already out for revenge. “You killed Jack. You really think you could hurt my father more than you have?” And how would Maddux know that Bill was calling the shots at Red Cell Seven? He might assume, but he shouldn’t know.

Maddux stared at Troy for several seconds like a statue, without breathing. Then he nodded subtly as his eyes narrowed. “So that’s what you think. You think I killed Jack.”

“I know you did, Shane.”

“Of course,” Maddux whispered to himself.

“You killed Lisa Martinez, too, along with my brother’s friend.”

“They saw my face. I had to kill them. It was a matter of national security.”

It was insane, but for a moment Troy actually understood the explanation. For Shane Maddux that would have been a matter of national security because in Maddux’s demented mind he probably considered himself the primary protector of the nation’s security. “But you didn’t kill my son. You didn’t kill Little Jack. I wonder why.”

“You know why.”

Troy swallowed hard as he stared at Maddux.

“You didn’t kill my son because you’re loyal to me, Shane. We’ve been through hell and back together, and that’s why you spared L.J. And that’s why you aren’t going to kill me now.”

A sad grin crept to Maddux’s lips. “I didn’t kill your son because it wasn’t necessary, Troy. How I feel about you had nothing to do with that decision. And it has nothing to do with why I’m letting you live tonight. Letting you live is strategic. I don’t want to piss your father off.” His eyes narrowed. “In fact, Troy, I don’t care at all about you. You are simply an individual who served under my command, and that’s as far as it goes. That’s as far as it’s ever gone. You should understand that. For your own good,” he added somberly.

Troy started to speak, but Kohler slammed the butt of the MP5 he was clutching into Troy’s gut and sent him tumbling to the floor in agony.

Kohler smiled down at Troy smugly. “How’s it feel, you prick?”

Troy grabbed his stomach and tried desperately to breathe. He should have anticipated that one.

As Kohler bent down to drag Troy into the tiny cell, a bullet smashed into his chin, burst through his throat, and blew out the back of his neck.

As Kohler collapsed onto him, Troy saw Maddux pull a small silver ball from his belt and hurl it to the floor. The ball exploded on impact, and the room was instantly clogged with thick, pungent smoke. Troy grabbed the MP5 Kohler had just taken from him, hurled the kid’s body aside, struggled to his feet, somehow found Travers in the haze, and then emptied the second magazine of the MP5 into the basement all around them. His stomach was still killing him, but adrenaline and the will to live overpowered the pain.

“I’m Troy Jensen,” he yelled into Travers’s ear from close range as he reached into his pack, grabbed another double set of magazines, and reloaded. “I was sent by COC to get you out of here.” If he hadn’t been a foot away from Travers when the bomb went off, he wouldn’t have been able to identify him. The smoke had gotten that thick that fast. “We gotta get out of here. Stay close. Don’t lose me.”

As soon as the device Maddux hurled to the floor exploded, Agent Bridger raced back up the steps to the first floor, bolted for the front door, and then sprinted away past the tall maple trees. Bridger didn’t stop running until after recrossing the pasture and making it back into the forest that bordered this side of the farm.

The agent was a former city police officer and knew how to handle a gun, had actually fired in self-defense twice on the streets. But Bridger had never shot anyone, much less taken a life.

Bridger rested against a tree and sucked in air while gazing back through the trees. No one had noticed Bridger sneak down the basement stairs with a pistol leading the way, least of all the poor man who was lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with blood pouring from a head wound. In the moment there had been no way to know if he was dead, and no way to check.

But the guy Bridger had shot, the blond one who’d hit Troy with the butt of the submachine gun, was definitely dead. Bridger had always pulled excellent marksman grades — and the bullet had nailed that guy who’d belted Troy. Then that little guy had detonated the smoke bomb, and chaos had ensued.

Agent Bridger leaned the MP5 against a tree and holstered the 9mm that had killed the guy in the basement. Bridger had grabbed the submachine gun off the floor before racing up the steps. It had been lying next to the guy with the head wound at the bottom of the stairs.

Bridger knelt down and took a deep breath.

Mentors on the police force had warned that the first kill was always tough to handle. They were right. Taking a human life, no matter who it was, had a powerful impact on anyone with a conscience.

It had been the right thing to do. Killing that guy had saved Troy’s life. But somehow that didn’t make the death any easier to accept.

Karen wiped the tears from her face, picked up the MP5, and kept going through the trees.

“Why did you leave me, Jack?” she whispered as she moved across the dead leaves blanketing the forest floor. “I miss you so damn much.”