Trident's First Gleaming

3

The darkened sky dumped rain on the roof of a church in Dallas while Chris stood behind the pulpit and opened his Bible to St. Mark 9:14–29. As he looked out across the congregation, a beautifully familiar figure entered the church and took a seat at the end of a pew near the back.

Hannah. It’s been years.

She lit up God’s house with a devilish grin.

He smiled, too, wanting to run to her and greet her, but he had a sermon to finish. “Jesus approached his disciples,” he continued, “where they were gathered around arguing with a group of people. A father explained that his son was possessed by an evil spirit. The boy had seizures — foamed at the mouth, scratched and bit people. Sometimes the evil spirit caused the boy to throw himself into fire and water. The father asked Jesus’s disciples to cast the evil spirit out—”

Chris’s parents had told him about the terror they’d felt when he was held hostage in Damascus. As he gave his sermon, he thought of their pain. And his own.

“—And so it is with us,” Chris summarized. “With a little bit of sincere faith, we can perform stellar miracles.”

The head minister had given Chris the useful advice to include personal anecdotes in his sermons, helping the listeners connect to his messages more easily, but now only the horrors of war came to mind, and Chris dared not share them, so he concluded his sermon.

Three women, including Hannah, lingered to talk to Chris. In the back, men and women socialized with each other, and the rest filtered out the door. “I really enjoyed how you explained the story of the father and his son,” a not scantily endowed woman in a lemon-yellow jumpsuit said.

Chris politely thanked her. Her husband was an alcoholic and had frequent brushes with the law. Chris and Reverend Luther had helped her out more than once when her husband was incarcerated. Many of the members had come to Chris and Reverend Luther for counseling regarding personal challenges. Some people have the misconception that only good people attend church, but churches are like hospitals — they are for the sick and afflicted, and in this world, everyone is sick and afflicted.

A second woman, wearing a flowery rose-red dress, also complimented Chris on his sermon. She was a single mother struggling to raise her teenage son, Ben. Chris’s peripheral vision spotted Ben. Todd Koak, a middle-aged member of the congregation who never minded his own business, cornered the kid. On any given day, Ben was a little awkward, but now he seemed particularly uncomfortable. “Excuse me,” Chris interrupted Ben’s mother then walked to where the young man and Todd stood.

“When are you going to talk to a recruiter?” Todd asked.

“I don’t think I want to,” Ben replied

“It’s your duty as an American to serve.” Todd spoke loudly with a voice full of pride and authority.

“I think we’ve already done enough,” Chris said, patting the boy’s shoulder.

Todd ignored Chris. “We have to—”

“How many days did you serve in the military?” Chris interrupted.

Todd took a step back. “I think you know.”

“But does Ben know?”

Todd was silent.

“Todd, tell Ben how many days you served.”

Todd looked at his watch. “I almost forgot. I have to go.” He lowered his head and wormed out the door.

“How many days did he serve, Pastor Chris?”

Chris held up his hand and gestured: zero.

“I want to go to college,” Ben said.

“You’ll be a kick,” Chris said, stopping himself before he uttered a word that wasn’t very pastoral. “You’ll be a kick-butt college student.” Chris gave him a friendly fist bump that brightened Ben’s countenance as if he’d just found a hundred-dollar bill. It seemed Ben hadn’t experienced much of that type of male camaraderie, so Chris made a mental note of engaging Ben like that more often.

After most of the congregation cleared out, Hannah strolled over to Chris. Her smile radiated like a supernova. “I thought it was some kind of sick joke until now. You really did become a preacher, didn’t you?”

Chris basked in her warmth. “Long time, no see.”

“Doesn’t seem like so long ago.” Then she whispered, “You can’t really enjoy being with these people.”

“I’m happier than I’ve been in years.”

“I can see they aren’t too into reality, a lot of them are overweight, and they waste what little money they have in that wicker basket that was passed around.”

“They’re trying to do the right thing,” Chris explained, trying not to let her get under his skin.

“The right thing won’t get done by sitting here.”

“You’re welcome to come more often — see what it is we do here.”

“I expected better from you,” she said. “Not this.”

Chris narrowed his eyes at her. “You didn’t come all the way out here just to insult my congregation, did you?”

“Motorcycle bomb in Pakistan,” she began, “shooting in Iraq, car bomb in Syria, IED in Afghanistan, suicide bombing in India, ambush in Somalia — take your pick. In case you’ve forgotten, the terrorists are still at war with us.”

“But you didn’t come all the way out here to tell me that.”

“Of course not.”

Chris understood. “You can’t give me details until I agree to sign on the dotted line.”

“Same old, same old.”

“Why me? Why now?”

“Uncle Sam is cutting back on personnel, and too many missions have spread us too thin.”

“So why me?” he persisted.

“You know Syria better than most, your Arabic is native-like, you have a knack for solving problems like no one I’ve ever seen, and you shoot like the Devil. Your skills at demolitions are second to none. I’d have to recruit at least two men to come close to doing what you do, but I can only recruit one.”

Chris still found it difficult to become excited about her proposal. “I don’t know.”

“Most of all, I need someone I can trust, and you’re at the top of my list. I’ve got bad vibes about this mission, and I want to make it home. Not in a body bag.”

So it’s Syria again.

Years ago, Chris would’ve been thrilled at the prospect of the kind of mission she implied, but he enjoyed the peace of not having to wade through the cesspools of the world, chasing its refuse. He was helping people where he was. And he was safe. “I’d like to help you, Hannah. I really would. But you want me to leave my calling here without knowing more than you just told me. It’s wanting a lot.”

Her face appeared calm, but behind her eyes, her mind seemed engaged in an internal debate about what to say next. Then the internal debate stopped. “After you left Iraq, Professor Mordet was transferred to a prison, and a few weeks later, he escaped.”

“If you didn’t have my full attention before, you have it now.”

“Mordet is now head of Syria’s cyber warfare unit, and we think he’s planning a major attack against the US. He has outsmarted a lot of people, but he didn’t outsmart you. You’re the best person I know to stop him.”

“I’d like to help, but you’re asking me to quit my job here—”

“You don’t have to quit preaching. Just take a three-week vacation. Think about it.” She handed him a sheet of La Quinta Inn stationery with her room number handwritten on it. “This is where I’m staying. I’ll be checking out tomorrow morning. Meet me in the lobby at 0700 with your bags ready to go. I have an extra ticket for you to fly with me to Langley, where you’ll be briefed on the details.”

Chris touched his prosthetic ear. He wasn’t angry about what Mordet had done to him, but he was still angry about what Mordet had done to Young.

“I need you, Chris.” There was a sincerity in her words that pulled at his heart strings. Hannah wasn’t the type who needed protecting, but Mordet was the type who needed stopping, and he might never forgive himself if he let something bad happen to her.

He took the paper and put it in his pocket.

Hannah turned and cruised to the door — her body erect, leading with her breasts, a Venus de Milo with swinging arms. Her hips swayed to and fro in a hypnotic rhythm. Then she was gone.

4

Chris stood there, silent for a while. He heard someone nearby speak but didn’t catch the words.

“You okay?” the head minister, John Luther, asked, placing a hand on Chris’s forearm.

Chris groaned. “I don’t know.”

Pastor Luther waited quietly. He was a good listener, and Chris wished he could listen as well as Pastor Luther. He wished he could do a lot of things as well as Pastor Luther. People commented on Chris’s big heart, but next to Pastor Luther, Chris felt like his heart was twenty-two sizes too small.

“Uncle Sam wants me back,” Chris said quietly.

“It must be important.”

Chris tried to think critically about the situation. “Or maybe it’s just a wild hawg hunt.”

“How can you know?” Pastor Luther asked calmly.

“I can’t know until after I accept the mission.”

“And then if you find out it’s an important mission?”

“I don’t know.”

Pastor Luther nodded.

After Chris left the Navy, he’d returned to Harvard to finish his degree and completed his internship under Pastor Luther, who’d invited him to return to work for him after graduation. “In the eleven months I’ve been your assistant pastor, I’ve really felt at home with the congregation,” Chris said.

“You’ve brought a lot of new members to our fold and found some of our lost sheep. You have talents that I don’t have. Is she asking you to quit?”

“She’s asking me to take a three-week vacation.”

“You two were friends?” Pastor Luther asked.

“Colleagues,” Chris replied. “And friends.” The admission came out shy, almost embarrassed.

“I see.”

“I don’t want to go,” Chris said, “but something terrible might happen if I stay.”

“I don’t want you to go, either.”

“But if the Lord wants me to go, and I don’t go, I’m concerned about the consequences,” Chris said. “Not just for myself but for others. Since Hannah walked through that door, my whole world turned upside down. My old job and this job seem in conflict. She’s a colleague and a friend, but there were moments when I wished we could put the world on pause and see if we could be something more.”

“God hears you.”

“But right now, I’m afraid I can’t hear Him. Why would the Lord bring me all the way here to this peaceful place — just to send me back to war? Why would I walk away from Hannah just so she could walk back in? I want guidance, but I’m afraid that I only want to hear the guidance that I want to hear.” While Pastor Luther seemed to have a hotline to God, Chris experienced both good and bad reception days.

“Where does your friend live?” Pastor Luther asked.

“Virginia.”

“It must be important for her to come way out here to Dallas.”

“She said it’s a matter of national security.”

“This was the Lord’s church before you and I arrived. And it’ll be the Lord’s church long after you and I are gone. I’ll be happy to cover for you until you return.”

“Will you pray for me while I’m away?” Chris asked.

“Certainly.”

“I’ve never been too afraid about physical death, but I am afraid of spiritual death.”

“I just have one favor to ask of you,” Pastor Luther said.

“Sure.”

“When you go back to the kind of work you used to do, old habits will return — it’s inevitable. Much of that can be forgiven. I don’t like killing, but I understand that’s what a soldier must do for his country, and I won’t tell you how to do that part of your job. But I saw how she looked at you and how you looked at her. If you fall into serious transgression, I can’t support you. And if you want my recommendation to preach elsewhere, I won’t be able to give it.”

“I understand,” Chris said. “You told me the same before I started work here. I agreed with you then, and I agree with you now.”

“God expects more from you and me. We are His ambassadors. We are His anointed servants. If you marry her, you two can procreate to your hearts’ desire, but until then, you abstain.”

The conversation was awkward for Chris, and he guessed it was awkward for Reverend Luther, too, but he was grateful for Reverend Luther’s straight-shooting character and unflinching dedication. “Yes, sir. I’ll be careful.”

“Shall I pray?”

Chris nodded.

They bowed their heads, and Pastor Luther prayed to protect Chris from harm, both physical and spiritual. “Please keep all cruelty, hate, and murder out of Chris’s heart, even during battle…”

Chris had spent the whole night preparing for his journey back to black. After only a couple hours of sleep, he called a taxi that first took him to Pastor Luther’s home. In the dawn light, a spring wind graced new maple leaves with movement, and tree branches sent off an armada of flat fibers that whirled through the air like helicopters. Patches of fresh St. Augustine grass replaced the winter’s dead, and a cardinal pecked for food in the flowerbed where a small rainbow of petunias and lantanas bloomed. Chris rang the doorbell.

Pastor Luther’s wife answered the door. “Good morning, Chris. You just missed him. He left to visit Zeke Jackson in the hospital.”

“That’s all right. I just needed to drop some things off for him, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” she said warmly. “I was expecting you.”

Chris nodded. “These are the keys to my house and car. And I’ve included some instructions and important papers in this file.” Chris handed the keys and file to her.

She smiled as she took them.

“My will is in the file, too,” Chris added as an afterthought.

Mrs. Luther froze for a moment, as if it was her first time sending a man off to combat. “Don’t worry about your things,” she said. “We’ll make sure they’re taken care of until you return.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll miss you,” she added.

“I’ll miss y’all, too.”

She wrapped him in a hug. She started to release him but then hugged him again — tighter — as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to keep hugging or let him go. Finally she released him. “Be safe,” she said.

Chris walked away with a wave good-bye, not knowing when — or if — he’d see her and her husband again. She waved back, standing in the doorway until Chris’s taxi pulled away.

He considered himself unworthy to be treated so kindly. As a SEAL, he worked on Sundays, deceived and killed people, but that was all part of the job, and he didn’t feel guilt over it. While in the Teams, he’d never gotten any tattoos and never drank. But he’d swore like a sailor and had sex with a number of women. In the Teams, the guys teased him about his high moral standards, but compared to Reverend and Mrs. Luther, he felt as far from the Lord as angels could fly.

It was reassuring to know that, in spite of all the darkness on the earth, there were still places where the sun shined. Although he felt sadness at leaving, he also felt a calm peace that what he was doing was right.

The taxi driver dropped him off at the La Quinta Inn. Inside, people were eating their continental breakfasts, checking out, and hurrying to catch their rides. Hannah was nowhere in sight.

Chris hadn’t eaten, and he didn’t know when he’d find another chance to eat, so he grabbed some breakfast, sat down in the back of the lobby, and ate — keeping his eye on the entrances and exits.

Always know your escape routes. Stay away from the windows in case a car bomb goes off.

His old mindset was coming back to him already.

He finished eating and looked at his watch: 0658. Only two minutes. Maybe I have the wrong hotel. He checked the sheet of paper. The hotel was right. Maybe I remembered the wrong time.

Then Hannah arrived at his table. “I’m happy you showed,” she said with that twinkle in her eye. “The taxi is on its way.”

A fresh burst of oxygen filled his lungs. “I was worried I had the wrong time.”

The cab took them to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where they caught their flight to DC. As tempted as he was to engage Hannah while he had her alone, after such a busy night preparing for the trip and being unable to sleep, Chris needed a nap. Besides, he didn’t know when he’d have another opportunity to sleep.

His eyes grew heavier as he tried to relax, his body more and more lethargic. He had only one more thought, a remembrance of a Proverb, before he drifted off.

Be not afraid of sudden fear.

5

Chris woke up at 1335 as they touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He followed Hannah to the short-term parking lot, where they located her yellow Mustang convertible, and twenty minutes later, they arrived at the CIA headquarters in Langley. It wasn’t Chris’s first visit, but he couldn’t help spending a moment to get an overview of the layout. The front building was unchanged from the last time he’d been there, the original concrete structure still in place. The glass and steel New Headquarters Building, however, lay to the west. Conversations inside couldn’t vibrate the specialized glass, thwarting outsiders from eavesdropping with laser microphones.

Hannah parked in a side lot. She didn’t lead him through the front entrance, where the CIA seal was inlaid in the granite floor and a marble Memorial Wall stood with 103 stars carved into it.

Instead, she led him to a side entrance, where she showed the guard her ID, handed him her car keys, and signed in. Hannah gave Chris a temporary badge. He put it on and followed her through a maze of halls. Hannah worked for Special Operations Group (SOG), which conducted high-threat military and intelligence operations that the US government might deny knowledge of, such as when SEAL Team Six had raided bin Laden’s headquarters. SOG also utilized Army Delta Force operators and others. When Chris and his teammates had rescued Young, they’d been working with Hannah under SOG.

It was a world in which Chris had once been comfortable, but now he experienced reverse culture shock. He’d expected becoming a pastor was going to be different — attending religious classes at Harvard, praying often, reading the Bible daily, attending frequent church meetings, maintaining high moral standards, and so on — so he’d experienced little shock in the transition from SEAL to pastor. He hadn’t expected returning to the world of black ops would feel like a new experience, but he felt like an alien landing on a new planet. Even the pace of walking was faster than he remembered. He increased his speed to keep up with Hannah. They reached a room with an armed guard posted at the door. Hannah showed the guard her ID, and he opened the door for her.

Inside was a conference room with a feast laid out on the table. A slightly overweight man in his fifties wearing a suit jacket, slacks, and cowboy boots greeted Chris. “Howdy, Chris. Welcome to the family.” His fatherly voice rose and fell with a slow sweetness like molasses. “I’m Jim Bob Louve.”

Chris held out his hand to shake Jim Bob’s, but Jim Bob hugged him instead. The overabundance of affection caught Chris off guard.

“Thought you might be famished, and since I was having a late lunch,” Jim Bob said, “well, please, sit down and join me.”

Chris thanked him and took a seat at the table with Hannah. Another man already sat across from them looking at papers in a file.

Jim Bob seated himself at the head of the table. “Help yourself,” he said.

The other man continued to look at his papers rather than grab some lunch, but Jim Bob and Hannah reached for plates. Chris put fried chicken, cornbread, coleslaw, black-eyed peas, and fried okra on his — southern cooking was one of his favorites. He waited for Jim Bob to eat first.

“Don’t be shy, dig in,” Jim Bob said. “Oh, I almost forgot. Where are my manners? Chris, this is Victor.” His hand gestured toward the quiet man, who glanced up from his papers. Victor had that thousand-yard stare like so many combat veterans Chris had known. “Victor was a case officer like me. Until we made the switch to SOG.”

Chris nodded.

“You worked for SEAL Team Six in Iraq, didn’t you?” Victor asked.

“I’m not aware of any such unit,” Chris replied. Maybe SEAL Team Six was public knowledge now and had a history of working with the Agency, but Chris wasn’t used to casually discussing such things with strangers, and Victor was already rubbing Chris’s rhubarb. Maybe he was testing Chris to see if he had loose lips.

“Oh, right,” Victor said. “But you were part of Task Force 88, Operation Snake Eyes?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny such a task force or operation.”

“On 12 September 2009, you killed a number of Syrian insurgents while rescuing a kidnapped CIA technician named Young Park.”

Chris felt even more uncomfortable, but he said nothing.

Victor leaned forward in his chair. “That mission cost you your right ear, and now you wear a prosthetic.”

Now Chris was pissed at having his personal history laid out so casually, but he hid his irritation out of respect for Hannah and Jim Bob — and because he didn’t want the others to think someone could get him riled so quickly. “Piercing and tattoos are so yesterday,” Chris said with a grin. He chewed a hunk of warm chicken breast. It tasted almost as good as home cooked.

Jim Bob chuckled. “Now Victor, you should show Chris more hospitality than that,” he said in that fatherly tone.

“Yes, sir,” Victor said, straightening in his chair.

“This chicken ain’t half bad,” Jim Bob remarked.

Hannah hungrily bit chunks out of a drum stick and chewed the meat quickly before swallowing. She cleaned off the remaining meat from the bone before moving on to a wing. She’d become so immersed in her eating that she seemed oblivious to her surroundings.

“Victor, would you give our non-disclosure agreement to Chris so he can take a look at it?” Jim Bob asked.

“Yes, sir.” Victor produced a form from his file and politely passed it to Chris.

Chris wiped his hands before taking it. He’d signed such agreements before, but he still took the time to read through it. Centered at the top were the words Secrecy Agreement. In the middle of the paper was a watermark of the CIA seal. After several pages of text, near the bottom, Chris signed and dated the contract. He gave the papers to Jim Bob, who signed and dated the last lines as a witness before returning the form to Victor, who placed it in his file.

“Wonderful,” Jim Bob said. “Victor, would you cut the lights and start the presentation?” He spoke it casually as if they were in an everyday business meeting instead of a secret government operation briefing. Jim Bob seemed so comfortable with it all that Chris guessed he’d probably been at it for close to a couple of decades.

“Yes, sir,” Victor replied. He flicked a switch on the wall, and a projection screen descended from above. Then he pressed a button on a remote control, and a projector mounted in the ceiling came alive. After dimming the lights, he began the brief. On the screen materialized a photo of a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). “This is the Navy’s newest UAV, codenamed Switchblade Whisper,” Victor explained. “With its wings collapsed, the UAV is stored in a canister small enough to fit in a backpack. Or the trash tube of a submarine underwater at periscope depth.” Victor showed a computer graphics simulation of a submarine. “The Switchblade Whisper in the canister is ejected from a submarine’s trash tube, floats to the surface, and launches into the air, where each wing flicks out like the blade of a switchblade. In the submarine’s combat control room, the operator controls the Switchblade Whisper’s flight, conducting reconnaissance and surveillance. Visual data is encrypted and streamed live back to the submarine. The drone also backs up the gathered intelligence, so even if the live stream is compromised, intelligence can still be retrieved from the Switchblade Whisper itself. Then it flies back to the submarine, retracts its wings, and splashes down in the water where it floats until the submarine’s diver retrieves it.”

The technology was impressive, but in Chris’s experience, technology without brave boots on the ground was always a goat-screw. He patiently listened for what his role might be.

Next, Victor displayed an actual photo of a submarine. “Three days ago, off the coast of Syria, the USS Mississippi took part in a covert mission during which they launched the Switchblade Whisper. The Mississippi was in the process of collecting critical intelligence when the Switchblade Whisper’s live streaming went out, and the Mississippi lost control of the UAV over land near the port city of Latakia, Syria. We need to retrieve that drone.”

Chris looked over at Hannah, but she was currently more engaged in her coleslaw than the brief. Maybe she already knew more about the mission than him. “I still don’t understand the urgency of this mission,” he said.

Hannah stopped eating her coleslaw and wiped her mouth. “I recruited an asset who was a technical analyst for Syria’s cyber warfare unit. He reported that the unit’s commander is Professor Yushua Mordet. During the Switchblade Whisper’s surveillance mission, it experienced a malfunction, and Mordet exploited the malfunction by jamming satellite and submarine signals to the Switchblade Whisper. He fed the Switchblade Whisper’s internal navigation system false information that it was being attacked. Then he gave the drone navigation data, spoofing a landing back on the submarine, so the Switchblade Whisper would actually land in Syria. But Mordet lost control of it before he could land it.”

The gears in Chris’s mind turned to figure out what could happen if Mordet got that data.

“I left a payment for my asset in a prearranged drop,” Hannah went on, “but he never picked it up.” She paused. “His head and some other body parts were found in the parking lot of an international food market. Mordet is obviously still trying to get his hands on the Switchblade Whisper, and we have reason to believe he’s going to use the technology to attack the US.”

Jim Bob cleared his throat. “We recently discovered that similar technology used in the Switchblade Whisper is being used by the same government contractor to protect utility and transportation information technology in New York, Virginia and Washington, DC,” he said. “We believe that Department of Defense weapons systems are also vulnerable. But the Department of Defense and Washington, DC disagree with our assessment. If Mordet gets ahold of the black box on the Switchblade Whisper before we do, we think he is capable of using that crypto, security and authentication to hack into the Department of Defense and DC’s critical infrastructures.”

“Do we have specific information about attempted hacks on the US that we can trace to Syria?” Chris asked.

“The FBI’s Computer Investigation and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center discovered a Syrian hacker cell breaking into New York City’s electrical grid,” Hannah said, “and the agents stopped the cell before they succeeded in introducing a virus into the system. Now New York is changing its utility and transportation IT security systems, but the Department of Defense and Washington, DC deny there is a credible threat. The Secret Service has contacted the DC mayor about concerns of an attack against the White House, and the mayor has agreed to reexamine the threat.”

Chris shook his head. “Reexamine the threat? What if Mordet acquires the black box on the Switchblade Whisper, and he figures out an algorithm capable of breaking into their IT systems?”

“Exactly. He could obtain our military’s secrets, destroy computers and satellites, shut down electricity and water, and cause billions of dollars of damage,” Hannah said. “Change all traffic lights to green, for example. DC has the second-busiest rapid transit system in the U.S. and the second-busiest train station — Mordet could reroute them for derailing and head-on collisions. I don’t know exactly what his plan is, but I do believe he’ll cause as many human deaths as possible.”

Chris’s nostrils flared, and his eyes opened wide. “We have to stop him.”

“Our cover will be as Adventure Tours, scouting for a new thrill for our wealthy clientele,” Jim Bob said. “The four of us will fly to Cyprus, where we’ll board a yacht and sail to Syria. From there, we’ll drive up a mountain and recon the location near Tishreen Lake where intel reports say the Switchblade Whisper should be. A tracking device was designed into the black box, and we’ll have a GPS tracker to help us pinpoint its location. Then we’ll return to the location at night and retrieve the black box and as much of the plane as is practical to carry. What we can’t take out with us, Chris, you will destroy with explosives.”

Chris didn’t react. There was nothing to say, only to do. His background seemed a perfect fit for the mission.

“Then we’ll sail out of Syria with the Switchblade Whisper,” Jim Bob continued, “and transport it to the USS James E. Williams, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, anchored in international waters near Cyprus.” He met Chris’s gaze. “The purpose of this mission isn’t to kill people, but if our lives are in danger, we’ll need you to help us shoot our way out.”

“You mean kill people,” Chris said. He hoped the op would go down smoothly and there wouldn’t be a need for killing. But with Mordet involved, that seemed unlikely.

“Yes, do what you have to do. Since our government doesn’t want to be overtly associated with this mission, if we are compromised, the United States will deny any knowledge.”

6

After the briefing, the four of them went to pick up their gear. Then Hannah escorted Chris to the Special Operations Group armory, where a smorgasbord of weapons made his mouth water. He’d forgotten the special bond he felt with firearms that transcended the physical world.

“What would you like for dessert?” she asked, standing in front of racks of pistols, revolvers, submachine pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. Hannah grabbed an HK P30 9 mm pistol and HK416 assault rifle. “These two are mine.”

Chris smiled approvingly.

“You can look and touch, but you can’t take,” she said, holding her HK416 out to him.

He took the HK416 and pulled back the charging handle to make sure there wasn’t a live round in the chamber. “Nice balance of durability and accuracy.” He turned on the EO-Tech optical sight. It magnified everything to three times its normal size.

“You broke some hearts when you left Iraq,” she said too casually to be casual. “Why’d you go?”

He continued to study the weapon. He flicked the fire selector switch on the weapon between safe, semi, and full auto. “You don’t really want to know.”

“I only wanted to know, but now I really want to know.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I’m so stupid? Or because you’re so smart?”

“Forget about it.” He gave the HK416 back to her.

“Now I can’t forget about it. You built up the suspense.”

She wasn’t going to let it go, and he trusted her, so he gave in. “Okay. You remember that op when we rescued Young?”

“Yeah.”

“After I joined the Teams, I always felt incomplete. Often thought about what it would be like to become a minister. After we rescued Young, I’d had enough of the Teams. Then when Young was going through some emotional issues, the psychologist worked with him, but Young was still suffering. I took him to the chaplain, and that made a significant difference. I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives like that, so I got out and went back to Harvard to study theology.”

Hannah shook her head. “Just like that?”

“It’s something I always wanted to do. And I got tired of chasing dirt-bags.”

“You really are nuts.”

“Why’d you sign up for the Agency?” Chris asked.

“A way out of East LA’s poverty, crime, gangs and drugs. After the director gave me my spy school diploma, I never went back.”

He handed her back her weapon. “Why’d you stay in? You could do other things.”

Hannah discovered another HK416 and handed it to him. “I miss my family, but I have no desire to live in that world. You guys are my family. This is my world.”

“I’ve got to admit, I missed the camaraderie. Never found anything like it again.” Chris examined his HK416. “I need some bling on this bad boy.”

A small, wizened man stepped into the armory. “I’m the armorer,” he said with a voice that sounded like Yoda.

“I’d like to put a Micro Aimpoint sight and a VTAC two-point sling on it,” Chris said. It would allow him to see a red dot in the small scope without the enemy noticing. The sling was just for ease of carrying and the freedom to use both hands on other tasks.

Yoda’s eyes sparkled at the idea. “How soon do you need it?”

“The sooner the better, sir.” Chris picked up a Glock 19 Gen-4. The compact pistol was small enough to conceal without compromising accuracy. It looked brand new, including the plastic sights that might break off under severe conditions. “And I need a pair of Heinie LEDGE Straight Eight sights for this one. I’ll need to zero it to twenty-five meters.”

Yoda’s brow furrowed. People zeroed rifles, but most people didn’t zero pistols. Chris wasn’t most people. He examined the magazine well in the grip, and there was a gap where debris could enter and seep into the trigger mechanism, jamming it. “And a grip plug on the Glock to keep the dirt out.”

“You really know your weapons,” Yoda said.

Chris smiled and handed over the weapons.

Yoda held the Glock in one hand and cradled the HK416 like a child. “I’m going to miss you two.” A hint of sadness crept onto his face before he walked away with the pistol and carbine.

Chris turned to Hannah. “Can you get me on the Farm tonight, so I can do a little shooting?”

Hannah laughed and shook her head. “I knew you weren’t that far out of the game, Reverend. I’ll see what I can do.” She stepped out of the armory, her fingers already flying across her cell phone. Chris guessed she was calling the head of staff at the CIA’s secret training facility.

Half an hour later, they loaded weapons and gear into a green SUV before descending further into the abyss of covert ops. They stopped at a nearby convenience store and loaded up food for later before driving south.

“What’d you do this morning?” Hannah asked.

“Before joining you? Just the usual.”

“The usual?”

“What, did you bug my place or something?” he asked playfully.

“If I did, would I have to ask?”

“Said a prayer. Fifty push-ups, fifty sit-ups, thirty-minute run. Then I read the Bible for half an hour before breakfast.”

“You still shoot much?” she asked, changing the topic.

He shrugged. “Hardly at all.”

“Don’t your firearms get lonely?”

“Don’t own any,” he said.

“Don’t own any? Is that what they taught you in preacher school?”

“It was a personal choice,” he said with a chuckle. “I loved shooting. But after years at Six, it became more work and less joy. Then when I studied to become a pastor and all, I didn’t have time for it. Shooting was no longer a priority.”

“What would you have done if someone broke into your house or something while you were home?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a good thing I’m rescuing you from all that religious brain-washing,” she said, her tone no longer so relaxed.

He’d heard comments like that before, and he wasn’t angered, but he was curious. Especially when it came to her. “Why do you dislike religion so much?”

“The fact that two adults like us can’t agree on the existence of God is evidence to me that He doesn’t exist. You were born wealthy, and your parents were, too. I inherited caca. When so much is given to you and everything’s blowing your way, it probably seems like God is walking around the neighborhood, but in El Este de Los Angeles, there is no God — if there was, he’d carry an AK and wear a bullet-resistant vest.”

Chris didn’t want to argue with her. They were both headstrong, and arguing would lead nowhere, so he didn’t say another word, hoping her mood would improve. After several minutes, he thought of something positive to shift the conversation back into safe territory. “If the rest of the spooks could operate like you, I wouldn’t care if the whole Agency were atheist.”

“You know you may have to kill someone on this mission, right?” She glanced over at Chris, then back at the road.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

“No. I just know that things might get hairy and bullets start flying.”

“On most of the best ops I’ve been on, no shots were fired. Get in, accomplish the mission, get out.”

“I hope this turns out to be a best op,” she said, “but I won’t bet all my money on it.”

“That’s why we’re riding all this way out to the Farm.”

She laughed. “Touché.”

After a two-and-a-half-hour ride, they reached the rolling hills and evergreen forests surrounding the Farm. There they passed high fences topped with concertina wire. NO TRESPASSING government signs were posted on the fences at regular intervals. Behind one fence, a guard carrying an M4 watched them and spoke into his radio mike while he stood beside an olive-colored Humvee with a machine gun mounted on top. Inside the Humvee, another guard sat in the driver’s seat.

At the front gate, a sign read: ARMED FORCES EXPERIMENTAL TRAINING ACTIVITY. The cover name for the CIA’s Camp Peary, a.k.a. “the Farm.”

Hannah steered an S through concrete barriers before stopping at the sentry box. Under the watchful electric eyes of surveillance cameras and sensors, Special Police Officers checked them and their vehicle before waving them through. Hannah drove over a large metal plate, a hydraulic barricade that could pop up in emergencies to block the entrance.

Soon they passed the restricted residential area for Agency instructors and other personnel. A couple minutes, later they went by the compound where new CIA recruits received some of their field training.

Finally, Hannah stopped and parked at a shooting bay that faced outdoor target holders. Chris and Hannah unloaded the SUV. He placed a spotting scope on the firing line and pinned up targets at varying distances. He returned to the firing line, lay in the prone position, and fired five shots at the closest target, twenty-five meters. Then Chris leaned to his side and looked through his spotting scope. The five shots had created a crater in the bottom left corner of the cardboard backing, but they hadn’t even hit the paper. Chris adjusted his sights. He fired five more shots, then checked the spotting scope again. This time, he’d hit the paper, but it was still on the white, outside the black rings, so he adjusted his sights again. Then he hit near the bull’s-eye. His heart said, Hardy-har-har.

“Look how happy you are,” Hannah said.

“Do I look happy?” he asked.

“Like a sailor in a whorehouse.”

“I just realized how much I miss shooting.” He smiled as he prepared to shoot again.

“I’ll be to the left of the berm killing steel, amigo. Smoke ’em.” She walked away to shoot steel targets in the adjacent shooting bay.

Now that Chris could hit the paper at twenty-five meters, it was easier to do the real business of zeroing at one hundred meters. After repeating the process of shooting, examining his hits, and adjusting his sights, he finished zeroing his rifle at one hundred meters. His barrel, like most barrels, slanted at an upward angle to compensate for the immediate drop of the round leaving the muzzle. The rifle’s outer covering appeared straight, but the actual barrel inside slanted up. As a result, the round would travel from low to high and then drop low again, like traveling the arc of a rainbow.

As a child, he’d always been fascinated by firearms. Owning a BB gun had reinforced that fascination, but as an adult in BUD/S training, he’d outshot his classmates, and he’d thought he might have a gift. When he’d outgunned his SEAL instructor in a contest, he’d realized he had a special skill. Not only did he enjoy shooting, but his gift filled him with grand pride. Deep down, he felt a spiritual connection to firearms. But after becoming a preacher, he’d forgotten all that. Now the skill, pride and spiritual connection came back to him.

At the initial arc of the rainbow, his bullet would now strike a couple inches low at twenty-five meters. It’d rise to dead-on at one hundred meters, and the bullet would drop a few inches low at two hundred meters. At three hundred meters, he’d have to aim for the enemy’s neck in order to hit him in the gut.

Chris fired out to the various targets kneeling and standing. Next, he shot on the move, practicing reloads as he went and throwing in some malfunction drills for good measure. When he was satisfied, he did the same with his pistol out to fifty meters. Then Chris joined Hannah. He mostly shot steel with his rifle but did some transitions into shooting pistol. Next, Hannah took him to a range where the steel moved: disappeared, appeared, panned left, and panned right. He shot better than she did, but he wasn’t shooting as well as he used to.

When the sun dropped out of the sky, Chris mounted a light to his rifle. He became so absorbed in shooting that he lost track of time. Hannah went into the truck and dug into the supplies for food; he thought he’d shoot for a little longer before grabbing a bite himself, but soon he forgot about eating, too. While Hannah rested in the vehicle, he continued to squeeze the trigger until he ran out of bullets. He dumped the empty ammo boxes into a trash barrel.

Chris placed his weapons into the SUV, waking Hannah. She rubbed her eyes and adjusted her seat forward.

“You ready?” she asked.

He nodded and climbed into the passenger seat, not saying a word. He needed more time at the range, but time was the one thing they didn’t have.

He could feel her eyes on him. “Okay, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Chris remained quiet.

She started up the SUV. “Is it one of your weapons?”

“No,” he replied. “Weapons are Jedi level.”

Hannah pulled out of the shooting bay and left the firing range. “The ammo?”

“It’s me,” Chris said.

“What do you mean?”

“My shooting.”

“You were smoother than me. Smooth is fast,” she said.

She was right about the importance of shooting smoothly. Chris had been in numerous gunfights where his opponent had acted more quickly but Chris’s efficiency of motion and exacting aim — smoothness — had killed his enemy before his enemy had killed him. Even so, Chris had once faced an enemy who was equally smooth, and in that situation, Chris had only survived because his opponent’s smooth actions were slower than his. “Smooth is fast, but slow is dead.” His head ached, and his body felt warm, almost feverish. “I’m not near enough the shooter I used to be. And there’s no more time to close the gap.”

“You’ll figure out a way to close the gap. You always do.” She reached over and patted his hand.

Chris closed his eyes as she drove, but he couldn’t rest. And he couldn’t shake the dark cloud of discouragement that hovered over him.

It was late when they arrived back at the Agency in Langley. They unloaded their gear, bagged and tagged it so it could be loaded on the plane with the rest of their kit for a military flight out ahead of them. Chris and the others would be flying under civilian cover, so if his weapons, explosives, comms, and other black gear were sent to the wrong place, he wouldn’t find out until they arrived in their area of operations.

Once the task was completed, Hannah drove them to their hotel in nearby Hampton. The pair entered the hotel and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where both their rooms were.

They stopped in the hall outside Chris’s room. He didn’t want to go in alone, but he wanted to do the right thing and say good night. He searched his mind for some middle ground but found none. While he thought about what to say, the silence grew more and more awkward.

“Thank you,” he finally said. “For today.” He tried to think of something else. “And for this mission.” He was sincere about his gratitude for her, but he wasn’t sure about the mission, especially after his performance on the firing range. Despite his concern, there was no turning back now.

7

In the evening, in the port city of Latakia, Syria, a middle-aged Chinese intelligence officer named Bo Geng strolled behind a twenty-something curvaceous prostitute called Farah. She led him into a cheap, dilapidated hotel. Although prostitution was officially illegal in Syria, the police turned a blind eye. Most of the women, like Farah, were from Iraq, refugees unable to work legally in Syria, so they turned to hustling. Others were pressured by family members in Iraq to become call girls in Syria. Their customers came from all over the Middle East, where moral codes were much stricter. Bo had paid the equivalent of four hundred dollars for an evening with her.

Before stepping inside the hotel, he looked for any signs of police or his own intelligence agency. He’d been filing false reports for more money and time to spend on Farah, and he was in no hurry to return to China. And he was certainly in no hurry to spend time in a Syrian jail.

Bo flipped the light switch, and cockroaches scurried across the dingy floor. The light was dim, but he could see well enough. He locked the door behind them.

Most of the wallpaper in the room was missing, revealing a concrete wall that crumbled in patches. Large chips of the vinyl floor were gone, and long cracks formed a giant spider web. The bed frame was rusted, but the tattered sheets appeared clean.

His eyes ravaged Farah from her scuffed knee-high boots to her frayed hip-hugging jeans to her tight, faded teal-colored T-shirt. She liked to suck in her gut, but it wasn’t enough of a gut to deter him. Even though her skin had a dirty complexion, he liked the darkness of it. He embraced her, but she pulled away and motioned for him to wait. Farah’s hands explored the outside of his trousers, stopping at his back left pocket, where he had a pair of handcuffs he’d used with her the night before.

“So you want that again?” he asked in Arabic. His hands quivered with anticipation as he pulled out the handcuffs. The danger of being caught by Syrian authorities or Chinese intelligence increased his excitement.

Farah smiled. From her worn handbag, she pulled out her own pair of handcuffs, raising the ante. Much of the black paint had rubbed off the metal, clearly used before, but they were new to him. If the police or his superiors busted through the door, he’d be hard-pressed to explain away what was happening. He was a fast runner, though.

Bo felt a rise in his trousers. “What do you have in mind?”

She sat on the bed and handcuffed one of her hands to a bent metal pole decorating the headboard. She giggled, and he quickly approached her to put his handcuffs on her free hand.

She motioned for him to stop.

Is she teasing me? “What’s wrong?”

“Handcuff yourself to the bed,” she said.

“You are a creative woman,” he said. If I handcuff myself to the bed, there’ll be no running away. But the police and my chief have no reason to come here. I ran a surveillance detection route before coming here. No one knows I’m here. And I can handle Farah. He handcuffed his hand to the bed.

Farah lay down on top of him, burying his face with her bosom, tantalizing him. She pressed herself hard against him until he couldn’t breathe. He thought he might suffocate, but Farah backed away, and he inhaled. Then she pummeled his face with her chest again. This time, with his free hand, he tried to pull up her shirt, but she moved away, escaping his grasp and allowing him to catch his breath. She unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. Then Farah sandwiched Bo between her and the bed, but this time he could breathe and enjoy.

Click. Bo’s other wrist was cuffed to the bed, and Farah’s hands were free. She smiled and pulled off his trousers. He was so aroused that his emperor was ready to enter the palace.

“Now I want you to beg,” she said.

“I’m not going to beg,” he said pompously, tugging at his cuffs.

“No, you must beg.”

“I’m not begging.”

“I can see you need some time to think.” She giggled.

“Okay, okay, I’ll beg.”

“You better hurry.” Farah walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

“Please. I’m begging.”

“You don’t sound very sincere,” she said. “I’ll just freshen up while you become sincere.”

“Please. I beg you.” He waited, but there was no reply. He heard the shower running. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want you more than life itself. I’ll do anything for you.”

“That’s more like it,” her voice called. The bathroom door opened.

Bo grinned. Then a stranger appeared in the doorway. Bo’s grin dissolved.

In the doorway stood a man with longish, black curly hair and a handsome face — he looked like a movie star. In his hand, he carried a brown leather satchel. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” the man said.

The man gave her a fistful of money, and she put it in her jeans pocket, avoiding Bo’s gaze. She brushed past the stranger, grabbed her handbag, unlocked the door, and ran out of the hotel room.

Once she was gone, the man locked the door again.

“Who are you?” Bo asked.

“That is not important now.” Condescension filled the man’s voice. “What is important is who you are.”

“I am a businessman with China National Petroleum Corporation.”

“Yes, Mr. Bo Geng. That is your cover story. I want you to tell me who you really work for.”

Bo’s heart rate sped up, and he started to sweat. “What are you talking about?”

“You are from the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China, no?”

Bo didn’t like how the stranger talked down to him, and he felt that the stranger was talking down to China. “Who are you?” he spat.

“I am the commander of Syria’s cyber warfare unit, but you should be asking ‘what do you want?’”

“What do you want?”

“I want what you want,” the stranger reasoned.

“I don’t understand.”

The stranger smiled. “I want to bring America to her knees. Maybe not for the same reasons, but we both want the same thing.”

Bo looked at him, puzzled. “Who are you?”

“I am the one who devours the souls of humans. The one who grows spiritually stronger with each bite. I am the one who will use the Switchblade Whisper to feast on America.” He stroked his satchel.

Bo didn’t know what was inside it, and not knowing made his gut queasy. “I know nothing about any Switchblade Whisper.” His statement was partly true. He knew what the drone was and that the Syrians had brought it down, but he didn’t know where or why.

The stranger smiled again. “One of my people betrayed me and sold information about my cyber-warfare unit to you. Of course, he is no longer with my unit, but you sent an encrypted message to your superiors.”

Bo pulled against his handcuffs, and they rubbed against his skin and bones, but he couldn’t free himself.

The man stepped closer to the bed. “We decoded your message. And you claimed you found a piece of the aircraft. I want to see the piece and know where you found it.”

“I lied,” Bo said. “I lied so I could get more money. And so China wouldn’t send me home. I didn’t find anything.”

“Is there anyone else looking for the Switchblade Whisper?” the stranger asked.

Bo swallowed. “Chi Lee. He is with the PLA Special Forces.”

“Is he working alone?”

His hands flapped in the cuffs. The more he tried to ease them, the more they tried to take flight. “I don’t know.”

The stranger stepped closer to the bed, his body pressing against it. “I believe that you have every reason to tell the truth. But I am not sure that you truly believe that.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Bo said.

The man stroked his hair like a new pet. “I believe you.”

Bo recoiled out of disgust and whimpered. “Please unlock my handcuffs.”

The stranger’s eyes were dark and void of emotion, like two black holes. “I have one more question: if Chi Lee does obtain the Switchblade Whisper, how does he plan to transport it to China?”

Mentally, his nerves mixed in a blender. “I’m telling the truth — I don’t know. Please let me go.”

“Okay, since you are not answering my last question, I will help you.” The man opened his satchel and pulled out a set of knives. “The small one is a paring knife, excellent for removing skin. Next, the long carving knife is used for slicing thin cuts of meat. Oh, maybe you will appreciate the irony of this next one.” He pointed to another blade. “A Chinese cleaver, used for chopping through bone. And the last is a boning knife, which does what its name implies.”

Bo’s mouth was dry, and his head felt like it was on fire. Screaming, he yanked on his handcuffs.

8

In the morning, Chris, Hannah, Victor, and Jim Bob took separate routes to make sure they weren’t under surveillance by any of the foreign spies that often targeted Langley. After shaking any tails and making sure they were “clean,” they would rendezvous at the Montreal-Trudeau Airport, where they’d assume their new identities.

Unlike traveling abroad, Chris was on his home turf and had the advantage of blending in more easily and noticing anyone who exhibited a marked appearance or behavior — such as a foreign operative whose dress was too casual or too formal in comparison to the other people in his environment, a commuting salary man without a bored look on his face, or anything else out of the norm. Also to his benefit, surveillance would probably only be solo or a small team rather than a large team, such as the KGB used in Russia during the Cold War to observe suspected CIA officers.

Chris took a taxi to a nearby hotel, briskly walked in the front door, and quickly walked out the back. If enemy agents were following him, they’d struggle to keep up. He didn’t want to be obvious and turn around to look for a tail, so he checked the window reflections. No one suspicious. So far, so good.

From the rear of the hotel, Chris hailed another taxi. As he sat down and told the driver where to take him, he observed the hotel door to see if anyone came out. When the taxi driver pulled away from the curb, the hotel door remained still.

No surveillance vehicles seemed to pursue, but Chris remained alert as his taxi dropped him off at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport — the busier the airport, the easier it was to disappear into an ocean of people. DC was also a hotbed for spies, so the farther from DC, the better. From there, he flew to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Inside JFK, Chris switched carriers and hopped on a plane to Montreal, Canada.

In a restroom stall of the Montreal-Trudeau Airport, he changed into a green polo shirt with Adventure Tours embroidered on the left breast. He proceeded to the security gate, where he showed his navy blue Canadian passport with his alias—Chris Grey—written inside. He placed his wallet on the counter between them. In it, he had a Montreal driver’s license, Visa card issued by Canadian Tire, a business card with working phone number and email address that the Agency manned daily, and a Tim Hortons card, the Dunkin’ Donuts of Canada. In his carry-on, there was a Canadian edition of the Bible and some business papers.

After passing through security, he found a seat in the Swiss International Airlines lobby near the gate for Zurich, the next stop on their circuitous journey to Latakia, Syria. Chris wore the face of any other tired traveler, but he maintained situational awareness, watching out for anything that didn’t belong.

Hannah arrived at the gate, wearing her green Adventure Tours shirt, carrying a drink, and strutting as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But Chris knew better — Hannah was switched on, too. She sat down next to him. Any moment, Victor and Jim Bob were due to arrive wearing their Adventure Tours shirts, too.

Hannah took a sip from her straw. “You ever know a shooting instructor named Ron Hickok?” she asked randomly.

Ron was the toughest SEAL instructor Chris had had at BUD/S. Later, he’d taken an honorable discharge from the Navy and opened a gun school called the Blaze Ranch for military and law enforcement personnel and US citizens. Teaching guns was his true destiny. Before he’d agreed to teach Chris beyond the advanced levels, he’d sworn Chris to secrecy. Chris hadn’t understood why, but he’d wanted to learn, so he’d agreed not to talk about his training. “Is there anyone in our business who doesn’t know Ron?”

“I’d heard of him; that’s why I signed up for one of his courses. When I first arrived at the school, someone must’ve said ‘hi’ to me, but I didn’t notice, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known it was Hickok because I’d never met him before.”

“Why are you talking to me about Ron Hickok?”

“That asshole kicked me out before I even started training — just because I didn’t return his greeting. My boss tried to smooth things over on the phone, but Hickok refused to accept me.”

Chris gave her a patient smile. “I’m assuming there’s some point to this.”

She made a punching motion. “He’s lucky I didn’t give him optic surgery.”

“What he lacks in personality, he more than makes up for with firearms talent.”

“Guess so. Victor learned under him.”

Chris sat up in his chair. “So that’s the point. This is about Victor.”

She nodded.

“You ever hear of Flash-Kill?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s Hickok’s move that kills his target so fast that the rest of the world seems to slow down. He was legendary for using it in Iraq.”

Chris leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Did he ever teach it to Victor?”

“I heard he never taught Flash-Kill. The only one who ever used it was Hickok.”

“So why are you telling me all this?”

“Because Victor is dangerous.” There was a slight quiver in her voice. “And I don’t trust him.”

Chris nodded. “I don’t know him enough to trust him, but I don’t know enough to like him, either.”

“Do me a favor,” she said. “If he somehow manages to stab me in the back, kill him.”

“Love to.” He spotted Victor ambling to the gate and smiled at him. He knew she didn’t literally mean stab her in the back, and he knew that she was joking when she said kill him. At least he hoped that was the case.

Victor arrived and stopped next to Chris and Hannah. “What were you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” Hannah said.

“You were both just exercising your lips?” Victor said.

“Are you infatuated with my lips?” Chris asked in a friendly tone, teasing him.

Victor stared at him. “No.”

Jim Bob arrived then, and when he saw Victor arguing, he scolded him in his fatherly tone. “Play nice, Victor.”

Chris wasn’t looking forward to the sixteen-hour trip, wishing he could use the time for more shooting practice. While he sat on the plane getting softer, the tangos would be out running and gunning and getting harder. It was frustrating.

Just after 1630 hours, they boarded their plane. Jim Bob had a carry-on bag, but he couldn’t lift his arms above his head to put it in the overhead compartment, so Victor helped him.

Chris and Hannah sat down, the seats around them still empty. “What’s wrong with Jim Bob’s arms?” Chris whispered.

“He was captured by Hezbollah, and they tied his arms behind his back in torture positions,” Hannah replied.

“So his arms are normal except for motion above his head?”

She nodded. “Jim Bob stalled, giving them false intelligence and unclassified information.”

“How was he released?”

Hannah snapped her buckle into place. “He wasn’t. He escaped.”

Impressive. “How’d he do it?”

“He faked appendicitis, and when two guards came in to look at him, he snatched one of their weapons and shot his way out. Before escaping the compound, he came across Victor’s cell and freed him.” Hannah opened the in-flight magazine and looked at the schedule of movies.

“Hmm…” Chris made himself as comfortable as he could. He wasn’t interested in watching a flick, though. He had other things to do. While he couldn’t physically practice shooting, he could visualize himself shooting, increasing his biological performance and helping him to close the gap between the shooter he was now and the shooter he could be. Russian scientists had learned about the technique when they’d performed an experiment on three groups of Olympic athletes. The first group received only physical training, the second group received seventy-five percent physical training and twenty-five percent mental training, and the third group received half mental training and half physical training. After the training, the third group performed the best.

Chris closed his eyes and went into a monk-like trance, thinking about his combat mind-set — switching on the killer instinct he’d learned in the Teams, from Ron Hickok and during actual firefights. He imagined the basics of marksmanship: stance, draw, grip, trigger control, sight alignment, follow-through, reloading, and clearing malfunctions. Then he practiced tactics in different locations — plane, building, car, grove of trees — where he used movement and cover to his advantage. He continued visualizing each part of the triad: combat mind-set, marksmanship, and tactics. Chris became so absorbed in his training that he missed the in-flight meal. When he needed a break, he called a flight attendant to bring him his food. She obliged him with his meal and a Swiss smile. Chris returned the friendly expression before chowing down.

9

As Jim Bob had mentioned, they weren’t flying directly to Syria. Instead, they boarded an Agency yacht in Cyprus. An Adventure Tours flag flew from its mast. Chris and the others went below to check their gear. The Agency had already loaded their weapons, communications equipment, and other covert items into hidden compartments concealed by secret panels. His Camelbak was in plain view, though, as well as some other survival gear that would go well with his cover as adventure guide. And help keep him alive.

Chris located his compact Glock pistol in its Raven Kydex holster. He made sure the weapon was loaded before attaching his pistol holster so it rode on one hip with two magazine holders on the opposite hip. He concealed both with his untucked shirt. The others concealed their pistols, too. They kept their rifles and other black gear stored in the hidden compartments, out of sight until they were needed. If this were an overt assault, they’d be bristling with armor and other heavy assault equipment, but this was a covert infiltration, so they traveled light — such was the tradeoff of weapons and tactics.

Once everything was accounted for, Chris and Victor climbed up to the main deck. “Cast off the stern line,” Victor ordered.

Chris didn’t like the cold tone of voice he used with him. It contrasted sharply with the respectful attitude he showed toward Jim Bob. Even so, he cast off the line. They still had a job to do.

Hannah and Jim Bob joined them on the deck, and all four entered the bridge, where a debonair pilot in his seventies steered them away from the dock. The hair on his head was darker than his distinguished grey beard, and he wore a classic nautical captain’s hat.

Hannah kissed him on the cheek.

“Hannah!” the man exclaimed with a smile that was beyond big.

Her kiss and his smile made Chris feel a twinge of jealousy, but he brushed it off.

Jim Bob turned to Chris. “Mr. Wolfeschlegelaltona, here, is The Most Interesting Man in The World,” Jim Bob said proudly, quoting the phrase from a Dos Equis commercial. “He can make dead men tell tales.”

Chris couldn’t remember the man’s name, let alone pronounce it, so he only focused on the first part. He nodded and smiled.

Wolf spoke, his voice a deep baritone, “I don’t always pilot boats, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.”

Chris was amused by Wolf’s jovial attitude, and if Hannah trusted him, Chris figured he could trust Wolf, too.

Once everyone was properly introduced and settled, the team rehearsed their false identities and played poker for several hours, until the yacht came within twelve nautical miles of Syria, west of Latakia. Wolf called Latakia Radio in Arabic. “We are at point Sierra Charlie and have a reservation with the Syrian Yacht Club and wish to approach Latakia.”

Getting the go-ahead, Wolf proceeded into the harbor. To the north, part of a sunken ship stuck up from the sea. After passing the wreck, Wolf steered toward a tall black and white building on the shore. There were a handful of yachts and a dhow in the harbor; the rest were mostly fishing vessels. Meanwhile, Chris and the others checked their cell phones to make sure they all had comms with each other. When the yacht reached the dock, two armed Syrian immigration officers were waiting. Both were muscular and had serious expressions on their faces. The older-looking of the two had a thick moustache.

After Chris and Victor tied the yacht to the pier, the immigration officers came aboard, and Wolf handed Moustache his passport and some paperwork. Chris, Hannah, Jim Bob, and Victor handed over their passports so Moustache could compare the passport photos with the real faces. He stopped at Jim Bob and asked, “Did you visit Israel before this trip?”

Answering in the affirmative would be grounds for not being admitted into the country. “No, sir,” Jim Bob said politely. “Was I supposed to?”

Moustache shook his head. “What is the purpose of your trip?”

“We’re with Adventure Tours. We serve an elite clientele who are willing to pay large sums of money for unique travels filled with adventure around the world. Now we’re scouting Syria, hoping to include it in one of our tours.”

Moustache turned to Wolf. “Show me your logbook.”

Wolf calmly led Moustache to the bridge and showed him the book. After examining it, the officer went below. Chris and the others followed. Moustache opened their luggage and rifled through the contents. As he was making a mess of Hannah’s suitcase, he found something that made him stop.

Moustache homed in on one section of Hannah’s suitcase and examined it — her undergarments. He has an underwear fetish!

“You can have one, if you want,” Hannah said. “But you can’t have them all because I need something to wear.”

Moustache frowned then abruptly left the stateroom and ascended topside. He collected their money, stamped their passports — good for fifteen days — and attached an entry/exit card before hastily departing with his partner. Customs and immigration only came to the yacht club by appointment, and when their business was done, they didn’t stick around. Moustache and his partner hopped in a government car and departed.

Chris’s team arranged for Wolf to stay on board, and the other four climbed down a ladder and onto the pier. The warm, familiar scent of kebab halabi filled Chris’s nostrils, fresh tomatoes and Aleppo pepper wafting together. He inhaled deeply, dragging in its comfort, and a mass of Arabic voices filled his ears like sweet honey. The air was dryer here than in Dallas, relaxing him. He’d forgotten how much he liked it here. Syria could be poster-perfect. And scrotum-shrinkingly scary. He refocused his attention on his teammates.

Hannah, Jim Bob, and Victor joined Chris, stepped off the pier and walked across the beach with him. Although the customs and immigration officials worked for the Syrian government, the marina was privately owned and operated. The private security guard staring through his office window might intimidate hooligans and thieves, but he didn’t intimidate Chris. Behind the office area was a restaurant, the source of the palate party aromas.

Minutes later, two taxis picked up the four of them and their luggage. The taxis dropped them off at the entrance to the front lobby of the Afamia Rotana Resort. “We’ll check in before meeting in my villa,” Jim Bob said.

After checking in and picking up their card keys, they carried their bags into two adjacent two-room villas. Chris and Hannah shared one villa with separate rooms, and Jim Bob and Victor shared the other.

Chris and Hannah walked into the wide, well-lit space, passing a marble bathroom. Hannah continued to the window and looked out over the terrace. “With this view of the Mediterranean Sea and temperatures in the seventies, it’s perfect for a vacation,” she said.

It was ironic that he was with such a fearlessly gorgeous woman at a beach resort and yet they had such a dangerous job to do. “The Mediterranean looks better with you here.”

Delight spread across her face. “It’d look even better with both of us in the water.”

Chris smiled. “Syria would never be the same.”

She set her bags in a corner of the bedroom. “Sometimes I wish we could put the world on pause.”

Chris put his luggage in the opposite room and met her in the living room. “I was just thinking the same: What if we could put this mission on pause and just go for a swim?”

She picked up the television remote control and pressed a button. She laughed, but it seemed forced and cut off. If the look in her eyes meant the same thing he felt, it was an unresolved longing.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she reopened them, the look was gone. “We better get going.”

It saddened him, but he dutifully packed the unresolved longing back in its box and pushed it to the back of his mind. Consciously, he focused on the positive: being with Hannah on a mission was better than no time with her at all. “Yep.”

They left their villa and walked toward Jim Bob and Victor’s. As Chris and Hannah neared the other villa, Victor’s voice drifted through the thick shrubbery surrounding its terrace. Chris caught a glimpse of Victor through the foliage. He stood alone, talking quietly into his cell phone, but he wasn’t speaking English. They must’ve taken the wrong way, reaching the back of the villa instead of the front. Victor spotted them and stopped his conversation. Chris and Hannah changed direction and headed to the front.

“You recognize what language he was speaking?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“It sounded like he said Ras al-Basit, the name of a town near here,” Chris whispered. “The rest sounded Chinese. Why would he be speaking Chinese?”

“He seems to show more goodwill toward his Chinese phone caller than you. He’s been acting like you’re interrupting something. Thank you for agreeing to help me out on this one.”

Being around her delighted him. “Thank you for asking.”

They knocked on the front door of the villa. Jim Bob answered it, invited them in, and handed Hannah and Chris each a set of keys. “I’m giving both of you sets of keys to the SUV, courtesy of the Company. Inside are hidden compartments for your rifles and other goodies. Victor and I will take the van. We’re going to take a look at the mountain area near Tishreen Lake where reports say the Switchblade Whisper went down.”

Chris nodded, intensifying his focus on the mission.

“Then tonight, we’ll go back to retrieve it,” Jim Bob continued. “And Chris, you’ll blow up what we can’t carry out. Hannah, you’ll protect Chris while he blows the demo. Victor and I will carry the drone back to our vehicle. From there, we extract as planned.”

Chris and Hannah agreed.

Soon they were outside, and Hannah took the wheel of the SUV, and Chris sat shotgun as they followed Jim Bob’s vehicle out of the parking lot heading east until they turned right on Sports City Road. On their left, buildings rose high into the sky. A light breeze swayed the palm trees and alfa, Esparto grass, on the median dividing traffic lanes. To their right lay the ocean under an azure sky. They turned left onto Al Mahabba before reaching a roundabout and exiting to Route 1. The number of concrete high rises decreased, and farms appeared. The vehicles turned right and continued northeast, passing through a small town. After five klicks, the road narrowed, and they reached a military roadblock.

“Syrian Army,” Chris said. He felt uneasy, but he didn’t show it.

Jim Bob halted his van.

Hannah pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. “Not a good sign,” she said.

Jim Bob appeared to be trying to negotiate his way through the roadblock.

Chris continued to display a poker face, but his gut twisted. This could all go south very quickly.

“Maybe they already found the Switchblade Whisper,” Hannah said.

Jim Bob turned his vehicle around.

She followed him as he headed back. “We need to get farther up the mountain,” she said with a hint of frustration in her voice.

Chris’s gut continued to churn. Even so, he maintained a positive attitude. “We just have to find another route. There has to be more than one way to the top of this mountain.”

When they reached Route 1, they drove northeast, looking for another way to the top. Nine klicks later, just after Route 1 narrowed, they found a paved road to the east and turned onto it. After a few curves, the road straightened out, leading them to the base of a mountainous area. When the paving ended, they continued along the dirt road, climbing in elevation for a klick until Jim Bob slowed, pulled off the road, and stopped. Hannah parked behind him.

Jim Bob and Victor stepped out of their van and joined Chris and Hannah in the SUV. “This is about as close as we’re going to get by vehicle,” Jim Bob said. “We can wait until nightfall to retrieve the Switchblade Whisper and hope it is still up here. The darkness will cover our movement, but if anyone catches us, no matter what story we give, we’re going to look suspicious. Or we can go now and use our Adventure Tours cover until we reach the Switchblade Whisper. Of course, if the Syrian Army catches us with it on the way back, smooth talking won’t do us much good. We’ll need to do some smooth shooting.”

“Let’s go now,” Victor said.

Jim Bob looked at Chris.

“I’d rather do a nighttime op than a daytime op, but it’s your call,” Chris said, meeting Jim Bob’s gaze. Whatever the decision, he hoped there’d be no need for shooting. He still hoped for a perfect op.

“I’m easy,” Hannah said. “Whatever you guys decide.”

“All right,” Jim Bob said. “Saddle up. We’ll pick up the Switchblade Whisper and go straight to the yacht.”

Jim Bob is a brave man. Or an idiot.

10

“It should be about four klicks east of here,” Victor said with a nod. He looked back down at the GPS tracker and gestured to the others to follow — Jim Bob, then Chris, and Hannah bringing up the rear. Wearing their green Adventure Tour polo shirts and brown slacks, they still carried their concealed pistols. They stepped through long grass and wildflowers, passing myrtle bushes flowering with small explosions of white.

Victor signaled with two fingers: two kilometers to go. After the four crossed a dirt road, young fir trees surrounded them but not so many as to block out the fading sunlight. Thorny broom bushes scratched Chris’s left leg, but the scratches were the least of his worries.

Once Victor gave the one-kilometer signal, Jim Bob motioned for everyone to spread out. They continued for nearly the whole kilometer but found nothing. They backtracked — still nothing. Hannah wandered north then disappeared. Minutes later, she returned and signaled them to follow her. She led the crew through heavy vegetation until she stopped and pointed to a long grey shape at the base of several charred tree trunks. A grey angled line, too straight for Mother Nature and more like the wing of something manmade, broke the uneven lines of foliage.

They neared a wing. Its skin was glassy smooth, and there was no fuselage that they could find, part of the stealth design of the Switchblade Whisper. They’d found it. The starboard side had broken near a sensor pod, and the port side of the main structure and wing had broken into much smaller pieces. Among the wreckage were broken directional cameras that, when working, were used for projecting the surrounding environment onto the skin of the aircraft — making it virtually invisible.

Jim Bob pointed to a meter-long length of wing and gestured for Victor to take it. Then he disconnected the black box and placed it in his backpack. “Okay, Chris, blow it up,” Jim Bob said.

Victor turned to head back, but Hannah grabbed his arm and stopped him. He growled. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going with the Switchblade Whisper,” she said.

“Your job is to stay here and protect Chris while he rigs the demo.”

“You stay here and protect Chris,” she said calmly.

“How am I supposed to carry this and guard him at the same time?”

Hannah took the length of wing from him. “I’ve got the wing.”

He glared at her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked innocently.

“I just don’t like the sudden change in plans,” Victor said.

“It’s all right, Victor,” Jim Bob said. “Let her carry the wing. You guard Chris.”

Jim Bob headed out, and Hannah followed.

Victor turned to watch Chris, who pulled a satchel charge of the highly classified explosive heptanitrocubane (CL-20) from his backpack. Packing more punch than TNT or HMX, CL-20 was the best non-nuclear explosive that money could buy. Chris attached the satchel to the main body of the Switchblade Whisper. From his left pocket, he removed a rectangular case made of high-impact plastic and opened it to expose a padded interior. He unfolded the pads, revealing a blasting cap. Chris inserted the blasting cap into the CL-20. Then he crimped the blasting cap into two timed fuses—two is one and one is none. Next, he screwed two fuse igniters tightly onto the fuses. With his left hand, he grasped the igniters, and with his right hand, he tugged on the lanyards until he heard them snap. The pungent odor of cordite smoldered a trail up his nostrils. Fifteen minutes till boom-time.

“Fire in the hole,” he said. He turned to see if Victor had heard, but he was gone — they were all gone! Jim Bob and Hannah were probably hurrying to load the wing and the black box into the van, but Victor should’ve stayed and covered Chris’s six.

“Hey, you! Stop!” Fifty meters south, a middle-aged Syrian soldier in a tight-fitting uniform waved at Chris.

Ignoring the soldier, he tried to put some distance between himself and the Switchblade Whisper. If the soldier saw the drone and the explosives planted on it, Chris’s cover would be blown, they would frisk him and discover his pistol, and then his Adventure Tours cover wouldn’t mean squat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soldier raise his rifle. Chris kept walking away when a shot rang out, and the round popped the sound barrier as it barely missed his head, causing his sphincter to tighten. He’d experienced different kinds of being shot at, ranging from an ineffective enemy having no idea where he was to an effective enemy zeroing in for the kill, and this was the latter.

His heart beat faster, and he felt like he wasn’t getting blood to his head. His breathing became more rapid, and he craved oxygen. The commotion of birds in the trees became as loud as if they were perched on his head. With his physiology sped up, the soldier and leaves in the breeze seemed to move in slow motion. He’d thought with all the experiences of war, he’d assimilate quickly, but he’d thought wrong — he was shocked to find that he’d regressed to being a virgin SEAL.

Chris’s hand shook as he managed to draw his Glock and turn to face the man. Only the stippling on the pistol grip and his white-knuckled grasp kept Chris’s sweaty hands from losing the weapon. He tried for a shot to the upper torso, focusing on the soldier’s neck in order to compensate for the distance, but he failed to ensure that he could see the sights of his trembling pistol when he squeezed the trigger.

The first shot struck the soldier in the shoulder. The man dropped his rifle and spun around with a yelp before he retreated. Before Chris could escape the area, a square-shouldered soldier came into view pointing his rifle at Chris.

Slow it down and aim, Chris tried to calm himself. This time, he carefully aligned his sights across the soldier’s neck. He coolly pulled the trigger back until the weapon fired. Pop. In the chest. Pop. Another in the chest. One moment the soldier was full of life, and now he was dead — like a marionette with its strings suddenly severed. It made him nauseous.

There was no time to dwell on his reversion to virgin SEAL or his nauseated stomach. The other soldiers would soon outnumber and outgun him, and he didn’t want to stick around for face time with the grim reaper.

Isn’t someone from my team going to come back and help me?

He ran through the broom bushes that had scratched him before, but now he didn’t feel their thorns. He recognized the dirt road they’d crossed before—a couple more klicks to the vehicles. He hurried across the road, but twenty-five meters to the north, a black-hooded figure walked toward him carrying an AK. So close to government troops, Chris could only guess the Black Hood was with the anti-government forces, possibly al Qaeda. Black Hood noticed Chris and pulled up his rifle to take aim. Chris fired the first shot, rushing it. He missed, but Black Hood lowered his weapon and ran away.

Must’ve scared him off.

Two more Black Hoods reared their heads and blasted in Chris’s direction. Chris reined in his runaway breathing and heartbeat. He took an extra moment to aim at the right hood before squeezing the trigger. Pop. The man twitched once before thudding to the earth. The other Black Hood switched to full auto and sprayed his AK at Chris. Amid the terrifying noise, Chris’s left thigh was hit. Caught off balance, he fell. I’m shot! He shot me in the leg! The enemy was down, too, but he wasn’t dead. Chris would be dead if he didn’t do something soon. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his leg, he brought his pistol up and skipped the easier upper torso shot in favor of a more difficult shot — head. Pop. Black Hood ate dirt. His body went into what looked like an epileptic seizure before becoming still. Pain-filled panic punched through him.

As Chris turned to take a look at his own injury, he spotted an odd assortment of electronics on the ground. He checked his thigh for blood but only discovered electronics spilling out of it. For a moment, he felt like a wounded cyborg until he realized that the AK round had struck the cell phone in his thigh pocket. Some pieces of phone were sticking out of his leg, but the phone had deflected the bullet. Luckiest man in the world—or so he thought, until the woods rustled to the north with more Black Hoods, and the woods to the south chattered with advancing Syrian soldiers.

Chris crawled between the white flowering myrtle bushes. One piece of phone was particularly painful, and he pulled it out so he could move without being stabbed by it. The sounds of angry men intensified. He glanced to the south where six soldiers broke through the forest. Men’s voices chattered from the north — seven more Black Hoods. He had become an ass sandwich.

For the first time in years, he was afraid — an emotion he’d known intimately. It was okay to be afraid, that was human, but it wasn’t okay to let the fear take control of him; he had to control the fear.

Breathe. Respiration was one of the most basic elements to human functioning, and through it, he controlled the fear. He formed his lips into a tight circle to direct the flow of oxygen straight to his lungs and slowly inhaled as much air as his lungs could hold. Then he slowly released it all. He breathed with the rhythm of swimming long distance; it was his rhythm. With each breath, his pulse rate slowed and his body temperature became normal. Although he’d controlled the fear, he was no match for the superior enemy forces still closing in. Then he remembered his training as a minister at Harvard and the mentorship of Reverend Luther. He remembered God. And he prayed.

The bushes wouldn’t protect him from bullets, but they might conceal him from enemy eyes. Shots were fired from the south, then the west. Chris’s heart picked up speed again as the firepower increased in volume and intensity. He suddenly realized they weren’t shooting at him. The soldiers and Black Hoods are shooting at each other!

He crawled through the bushes until he reached the long grass and wildflowers. If I can just make it to the SUV, I’ll have mobility. And the HK416’s salvo.

Chris moved forward and winced. One of the pieces of electronics worked its way out of his leg, but another seemed to be digging in deeper. Sweat stung his eyes, and tree roots and rocks bruised his knees. He pulled the last bloody piece of cell phone out of his leg before he finally neared the SUV. His spirits rose — until he realized he wasn’t the only one who’d reached it. He fell flat as three Syrian soldiers approached the vehicle on foot.

His muscles tensed, and he tasted the salt of his sweat. Can I take them? Armed only with a pistol, it would be risky. Maybe I should wait them out. But more soldiers were likely to arrive soon. If they search the area, I’m done for. It would be better to fight them when there were only three than when there was a whole platoon. Now I have surprise on my side — later, I may not. He quietly ejected the partially spent magazine from his Glock and replaced it with a full magazine — fifteen rounds. He aimed at the head of the soldier nearing the SUV. Chris exhaled, waiting for his lungs to expel all the air, waiting for the motionless pause of his upper body before inhaling. As he neared the right moment, his finger slowly drew the slack out of the trigger. In his peripheral vision, he saw the soldier reach for the SUV door handle. Chris’s lungs had deflated. He squeezed the trigger, trying not to anticipate the loud report, trying to let the shot surprise him.

BOOM!

The suddenness of the explosion jolted even Chris. It took out the Syrian soldier and his buddies, and a hunk of metal whizzed by, nicking Chris’s shoulder. The heat burned hot enough to nearly singe his eye-lashes, and the earth shook. What happened? He glanced at the sky for an aircraft that could’ve fired a missile — nothing. Suicide bomber? It was a possibility. But the timing… The soldier had been just about to unlatch the door…

Victor. Chris’s surprise turned to the urge to shoot Victor for trying to kill him. But he wasn’t sure Victor was the culprit, and killing him in anger would be akin to murder — especially for a minister.

Now that the explosion had been heard for miles around, there was no need to be quiet. Chris rose to his feet and quickly limped past the smoking twisted metal and dismembered bodies. Half of a soldier, stinking of burned flesh, hung suspended from a tree. It was disgusting to look at but mesmerizingly morbid at the same time. He forced his head to turn away out of respect for the dead soldier.

The blood rushed to his head, and his nostrils flared as he descended the mountain.

That explosion was meant for Hannah and me.

11

Chris activated the compass of his Pathfinder watch. He briefly pressed the light button while cupping the watch face with his hand to limit the amount of light that escaped. He wanted to bandage his wound, but he wanted to put distance between himself and the enemy forces behind him.

For several hours, he persevered down the mountain. He hoped Hannah and Jim Bob were okay, but he couldn’t muster the same hope for Victor.

A wave of weariness swept over him. As a child prisoner, his body had become weak, and his time in the Teams had torn him down frequently, but he’d forgotten all that. He’d forgotten what it was like to be exhausted in his bones. Since leaving the Navy, he’d kept himself fit, but now he felt physically unprepared for the rigors of combat. Even so, he knew the power of his mind, and he willed himself to press on.

Finally, he made it to the bottom of the mountain. A sting in his thigh reminded him of his wound. He found some cover behind a thick tree, leaned against it, and examined his wound. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but he had a Moby Dick-sized bruise that was swollen and tender, so he bandaged his leg with a simple first aid packet from his pocket.

After bandaging his wound, he resumed walking until he spotted an Iranian-made Tira — Farsi for gazelle. The window was partially opened, so he reached in and unlocked the driver’s door. He climbed inside and re-locked the door, then opened his pocketknife and jammed the blade in the ignition as far as it would go. He angrily pounded the handle with the heel of his hand, driving the blade for the heart. Then, as if it were a key, he turned the handle. The Tira started.

He peeled out on the loose gravel, heading back toward the city. The original plan was that the four of them would take the Switchblade Whisper directly to the yacht. Because that was also the most logical choice for Victor’s escape, Chris headed for the marina. Fury replaced his exhaustion, and he stomped the pedal and drove like a madman. Realizing he might draw unwanted attention, he eased off the gas.

Stay in control. You don’t know for sure this is Victor’s fault, and even if it is, you can’t kill him in anger.

When he arrived, he parked at the Syrian Yacht Club and stepped out into the dark silence. There was no sign of the van Jim Bob and Victor had used. The restaurant had closed, and there was only one light on in the office building. He’d have to sneak past the guard to reach the yacht.

He crept up to the office and peered inside. The guard’s body lay face down in an inky puddle on the floor with a black spray of stains on the wall behind him. It was ghastly to look at, but the sight pulled at his eyes for attention. He turned away rather than treat the deceased as some kind of freak show.

It had to be Victor.

Then his heart sank. Part of him acknowledged that Hannah could’ve conspired with the bastard, but Chris didn’t want to believe that. She was his friend, and he cared about her — enough to leave his congregation to risk his life on this mission. Then again, maybe Hannah, Victor, and Jim Bob were all in on this together. Toxic fumes rose from his being, but he still wasn’t sure who to direct them at.

When he reached the pier, he wasn’t shocked to find the yacht missing; what was a shock was the body floating on the dark bay under the moonlight. The ocean licked the sides of the pier as Chris proceeded to get a closer look. He was reluctant to identify the body, hoping it wasn’t hers, but he had to know for sure. He stepped forward close enough to recognize the corpse: Wolf. Chris wanted to puke, cry, and kill someone at the same time — the mix of emotions acidic on his tongue. He exhaled forcefully, trying to expel some of the poison.

Who did this? Why?

Chris needed answers. Wolf’s killer, or killers, could be anywhere. Whoever it was had to have a reason for killing Wolf and taking the Agency yacht. Chris went over what he knew in his head. The focus of their mission had been to recover the Switchblade Whisper, particularly the black box, and destroy what they couldn’t take with them. Mordet was also after the drone, and other enemies of America would probably be interested in acquiring it, too, if they knew about it. Then he remembered overhearing Victor’s cell phone conversation in what sounded like Chinese.

Maybe Victor is working for them. If so, he could’ve already handed it off to the Chinese and escaped via the Agency yacht, but during Victor’s phone conversation, he’d said what sounded like the city of Ras al-Basit, which had a marina large enough to park a yacht. That was fifty klicks north. Realizing there was little more he could learn in Latakia, he decided to sail to Ras al-Basit.

Chris’s eyes skimmed the docks, looking for an easy boat to break into.

There. Just down the pier.

He quietly made his way onto the yacht then checked to see if it had fuel. The tank was three-quarters full. That would work. He hotwired it quickly and sailed north with his lights off, following the coast.

The night air and rocking of the sea calmed him. But after ten klicks, another boat came in his direction from the north. He changed course to head farther out to sea, but the boat shifted direction toward him. He had a better view of it now, and it was roughly the same size as Chris’s. As it got closer, he identified it as one of the Zhuk-class patrol boats that Syria had acquired from Russia. It moved closer. His first inclination was to try and outrun it, but even if his boat was faster, he couldn’t outrun their bullets. “Stop!” a voice called out on a megaphone.

Chris slowed the yacht to a stop and touched his right hip, feeling his shirt covering the concealed pistol, but he also remembered his role as a minister.

I can shoot it out now, or I can try to talk my way out of this. I’ve already shed a lot of blood. God, help me, please. He raised his arms in surrender, hoping to talk his way out. The patrol boat pulled up beside the yacht. A uniformed machine gunner on the bow aimed his weapon at Chris, as did another man carrying an AK-47. The stern machine gun was unmanned, and in the pilothouse, dim lights illuminated the pilot.

The man with the AK ordered the machine gunner to hang out bumpers to protect the boats from damaging each other. As the gunner abandoned his gun, Chris thought shooting them might actually be the better option. The man with the AK motioned to Chris. “Come here!”

Chris slowly walked to midship.

The gunner barely finished hanging the last bumper before the two vessels came together. “Tie up the boat and then tie him up!” AK commanded. The gunner proceeded to secure the patrol boat to the yacht, and AK motioned for Chris to board his boat. “What are you doing out here by yourself on this yacht so late at night?!

Chris hopped from his yacht onto the patrol boat. The man with the AK aggressively walked toward him. Chris proceeded cautiously with his hands up.

AK closed the gap between them. “Why don’t you answer me? Are you deaf?” He shouted the last bit, shoving the gun toward Chris’s chest.

Chris didn’t enjoy killing, but he didn’t want to be tortured and hung from a tree for the whole world to see, either. In the absence of divine intervention, Chris chose frogman intervention. He dropped his hands from the surrender position and his left hand slapped the AK away. Meanwhile, his right hand drew the pistol. He fired low from the hip, so he wouldn’t shoot his other arm before he could pull it out of the way. Two shots struck AK in the lower gut, and he fell on his back.

The gunner turned and ran for his weapon.

Now Chris had both hands on his pistol as he placed his sights on the gunner’s back and blasted him twice before he could reach the machine gun. The gunner’s back arched as he fell forward.

Then Chris hurried to the pilothouse and threw open the door. The pilot chattered frantically into the radio, but Chris popped him in the head, ending the transmission. On his way off the patrol boat, he administered the coups de grace for the gunner and AK. He’d wanted to avoid a fight, but they hadn’t left him a choice.

He returned to his yacht and sailed north. He wasn’t a random killing machine, and he didn’t carry the emotional baggage of being one. It was part of his job — a necessary evil. He didn’t have the luxury of carrying that baggage while simultaneously trying to help Hannah and Jim Bob. Although he attempted to stay positive about the situation, the light in his heart dimmed.

Over an hour later, when Chris arrived at the Ras al-Basit Marina, the darkness in the sky had surrendered to the morning light. There were some fishermen in their boats and on the pier but no sign of security.

When he saw the Agency yacht in the harbor, his heart brightened. Not knowing if Victor was still on it, he docked his vessel with one eye on the Agency yacht. After tying up, he wanted to draw his pistol, but he didn’t want to attract unwanted attention, so he kept it holstered as he walked quietly across the pier. Carefully observing his surroundings, he boarded. As he descended the ladder from the main deck to the lower cabin, he drew his pistol. Inside, blood splatter stained a wall — most likely Wolf’s blood. Chris searched for any traces of intel about where Hannah, Jim Bob, or Victor might be but found nothing significant. For a moment, he thought the bloodstains might be Hannah’s, but the thought distressed him, and he banished it. There was no sign of Victor or any clues. It was empty.

Chris went ashore and found a vehicle — a white sedan without maker markings. He commandeered the white sedan and drove southeast into town. With each building and road he passed, he found no new clues, and more and more, he realized he had no idea where he was going. He exhaled his frustration, but he couldn’t blow it all out.

At the north end of Ras al-Basit, the road curved around to the east. Another road headed north, following the Mediterranean coast. He passed the intersection and drove east before slowing and making a U-turn. Then he made the turn north before taking another U-turn. This time he turned around south toward Ras al-Basit, where he’d just come from. He was driving in circles. Chris pulled off the road and stopped the sedan. Hannah was still missing. As was Jim Bob. And Victor.

Failure squeezed the energy out of him.

He folded his arms, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply before saying a prayer. After he said amen, the disappointment and negative feelings flowed out of him. Serenity flowed in. The sun broke the horizon, its rays entering his windshield and warming the air around him. The warmth embraced him like some omniscient mercy. He’d relied more on his SEAL skills than his minister skills thus far, and he was more imperfect than perfect, so he didn’t feel worthy of mercy, but he accepted its embrace anyway.

More cars passed by, leaving him exposed like a deer in an open field waiting for hunting season to begin. He spotted a grey van heading south and followed it. The van took him back into Ras al-Basit, where Chris allowed a black Mercedes to pull in between his sedan and the van. At a traffic light, the van dragged it, waiting for a red light, so anyone behind would be forced to stop, then just before the light changed, the van passed through the intersection — maybe the driver was trying to ditch possible tails. The Mercedes ran the light and sped aggressively past the van. Chris stepped on the brake, and his sedan came to a standstill. As he waited for the light, the van pulled farther and farther away. Two cars entered the road behind the van, creating more obstacles between him and his target.

“Come on, please,” he begged the light. He could run it, but if Victor was in the van, he’d be checking his rearview mirror and notice Chris’s move. When the light finally turned green, he stepped on the gas. A large cargo truck pulled out in front of him before he could pick up speed. Chris wanted to pass it, but there were too many cars coming from the opposite direction. Soon he lost sight of the van.

When the opposite lane cleared, Chris passed the truck. Next, he overtook the two vehicles, but the van was nowhere in sight.

Did it already make a turn? Where would it go? Was that even the Agency van?

If it was, someone would have had to drive it, and another someone would’ve had to drive the yacht in order for both to arrive in Ras al-Basit. In such a scenario, there would be at least two people involved. Once again, he wondered if Jim Bob and Hannah were Victor’s co-conspirators.

Chris sped back to the marina and was relieved to find the Agency yacht still moored there. Whoever brought the Agency yacht here is likely to need it again. He spun the steering wheel to the right, then straightened out, but he had to collect himself so he wouldn’t fly into the marina like a flaming banshee. He eased off the accelerator.

He parked the sedan in a place that provided some concealment, but he’d stolen the sedan from the same parking lot, and the owner might return, so he exited it. He could wait outdoors, but passersby might spot him and become suspicious of his loitering, so he hid below deck in the cabin of the Agency yacht.

For breakfast, he scarfed down an energy bar and washed it down with water from his Camelbak. The morning wore on slowly, and images of home drifted into his mind. I’d be a lot safer if I packed up and went home to the States. But I can’t abandon Hannah and Jim Bob now.

In the afternoon, the noise of vehicles came and went from the direction of the parking lot. Voices and the sounds of boats came and went, too. He ran out of water, so he filled his Camelbak from the yacht’s supply.

It’d been hours, and isolation crept in as awareness of the situation around the yacht became stale. He peeked above deck — the blue-black sky dimmed with the quickening of evening. There was no sign of the Agency van in the parking lot. A group of well-dressed young partiers boarded the yacht to his right. The partiers couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether they were preparing to get underway or staying docked.

He returned to the cabin. It had become dark, but he didn’t want to turn on the light. It was too risky. He sat on the couch in the main cabin and prayed for Hannah’s and Jim Bob’s safety and for guidance about what to do next. Fatigue crept into his prayer, his mind wandered, and he had to start his prayer again from the beginning. On the third time of restarting his prayer, he thought about the possibility that Hannah and Jim Bob were kidnapped, and his thoughts strayed to his own experience as a kidnapped child — and how it had changed the course of his life.

12

A quiet rustle startled him, and he realized he’d fallen asleep — and that someone had boarded the yacht. He opened his eyes, but the cabin was dark. He snapped to his feet, and the light came on. Chris’s arm twitched to just short of drawing his pistol. It was Victor, carrying a grey travel duffel bag in his left hand, and his reaction was similar to Chris’s. As they both recognized each other, they didn’t draw, but their hands remained near their pistols.

“What are you doing here?” Victor asked.

“Where are Hannah and Jim Bob?” Chris asked. “And the Switchblade Whisper?”

Victor stood silent, and his face was expressionless. His fingers wiggled slowly and deliberately, as if stretching before drawing and shooting his firearm.

Chris waited, staring at him. He, too, stretched his fingers. Moments later, footsteps sounded on the upper deck. The footsteps descended the stairs.

“Chris, you made it!” Jim Bob exclaimed. “I was so worried about you!”

“Well, I’m a little confused right now,” Chris said slowly. “Maybe you can help.”

“Confused?” Jim Bob said in his fatherly tone. “Are you injured?”

“Where’s Hannah?”

“I thought she was with you.” Jim Bob’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

Chris took a breath. “That’s not the response I was hoping for.”

“What response were you hoping for?” Jim Bob replied with concern in his voice that contrasted the emptiness of his words.

“The truth.”

Jim Bob appeared confused. “The truth?”

“Why don’t we start with the exploding SUV?”

Jim Bob gestured with open palms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Somebody planted explosives in the SUV, rigged to go off when the driver’s door was opened.” Chris’s jaw clenched. “That was meant for Hannah and me.”

“Oh, my,” Jim Bob said. “Who would do such a thing?”

“I thought it was Victor, but seeing you here is making me rethink things.” Chris tried to place the pieces of the puzzle together. “Victor could’ve taken me out when I finished planting the explosives. With his skill as a gunfighter, he’d be the logical choice — make sure the job was done right. Why didn’t he?”

Jim Bob shook his head.

Chris tried to put himself in Victor’s shoes. “I can only guess that maybe Victor isn’t the greatest fan of fratricide. I don’t doubt that he could’ve killed that guard in the office at the Latakia Marina. But who killed Wolf?” Chris pointed to the bloodstain on the wall.

Victor looked at it, and the edges of his mouth sagged. But Jim Bob didn’t look at it.

Chris’s voice became louder. “You can’t look at it, can you, Jim Bob?”

“Look at what?” Jim Bob gave a cursory glance at the bloodstain on the wall before returning his gaze to Chris. “I looked. You see? I looked.”

“Cut the good-ole-boy crap, and tell me where Hannah is!”

Jim Bob stopped speaking.

“Hannah isn’t with either of you, so that means she isn’t with either of you,” Chris said. “But you and Victor sold the Switchblade Whisper to the Chinese, didn’t you?”

Jim Bob sighed and shook his head. “What you’re saying is madness.”

“I’m sorry Hezbollah kidnapped and tortured you. I’m sorry the Agency didn’t rescue you. I would’ve been happy to risk my life to free you. Both of you,” Chris said.

“That’s just the way things happen,” Jim Bob said, his lips becoming taut.

“But God knows that doesn’t excuse you for putting Hannah in danger. And I know.”

“I’m not responsible for Hannah. I didn’t want her on this mission. Somebody upstairs wanted her.” Jim Bob fidgeted. “I don’t know if it was some equal opportunity horseshit or if somebody wanted her out of their corral for a season — maybe somebody didn’t trust me and wanted her to play mommy to us. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t get the green light for this mission without bringing her.”

“You tried to blow us up and left me on that mountain for dead!”

Jim Bob shook his head and motioned for Chris to cool down. “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that she wanted you on this mission, and when I objected, she threatened to walk out.”

“Where is she?”

Jim Bob sighed. “I’d guess that she’s looking for you, but since she obviously hasn’t found you, I’d say she’s looking for the Switchblade Whisper.”

“And where is that?”

Jim Bob’s mouth twisted. “Victor, the stench is getting worse. It’s past time to take out the garbage.”

Chris shifted his gaze to Victor, who slowly put his duffel bag on the deck but otherwise kept still.

Jim Bob looked at Victor. “You didn’t want to do it before. But now do you see where that road has taken us?” Jim Bob said.

“Why don’t you kill me yourself, Jim Bob?” Chris asked.

“Jim Bob is a hero,” Victor said. “You’ve disrespected him enough.”

“He disrespected himself.”

Victor took a deep breath. “You know, Ron Hickok taught me personally.”

“Ron taught a lot of people. If I perish, I perish.”

Victor remained cold. “You don’t seem too concerned. But you should be.”

“Since I became a pastor, I’ve become closer to God than ever before in my life. I can’t think of a better time to die,” Chris said. “You, on the other hand, would be better off not drawing that pistol.”

Victor grinned. “Why’s that?”

“If you draw, I’ll be forced to draw, too, and I’ll do all I can to kill you. On the other hand, if you succeed in murdering a man of the cloth, it’d be better if you’d never been born.”

The corners of Victor’s smile drooped.

“There is no God,” Jim Bob hissed.

Victor’s eyes stayed on Chris. But he made no move toward his gun.

“Victor.” Jim Bob shook his head. “If we let Chris go, he’s going to peddle this loony story of his around Washington, and he’s going to find someone loony enough to buy it. Then you and I will pay for his lunacy.”

“I can’t go to jail,” Victor said. “I can’t go to jail.”

Jim Bob grinned as if he’d already won.

Victor’s shoulder twitched, but his pistol hand moved, too, as he went for his gun.

Chris performed as efficiently as he could, but he needed speed, too, and he wasn’t fast enough. As his hand grasped the pistol handle, Victor had already brought his pistol out of its holster. As soon as Chris’s muzzle cleared the holster, he rotated the muzzle in Victor’s direction while bringing the weapon up to fire. Without thinking, Chris squeezed the trigger. He should’ve heard or felt his weapon fire, but a tunnel blackened everything except Victor. His first round struck Victor in the knee.

Chris felt like he was outside of his body, deaf and motionless, when the second shot fired. It struck Victor in the pelvis, making him crumple like a paper ball. Victor lost his aim and brought his head down into Chris’s line of fire. Chris’s third shot hit Victor in the skull.

Pop. The heat of a bullet creased Chris’s brow. He twisted toward Jim Bob until the duplicitous good-ole-boy appeared in a blur. Jim Bob’s next projectile parted Chris’s hair.

Chris returned fire, punching Jim Bob in the chest. His next shot cracked Jim Bob’s nose, spraying a pink mist. Jim Bob fell forward, and his chin bounced off the deck.

Shaken and angry, Chris tried to take long, slow breaths — tried to rein in his pulsing adrenaline. “May God have mercy on your souls.” He said the words out of obligation, but in his heart, he hoped they burned in Hell.

Although he should’ve been worried about how the partiers in the nearby yacht would react to the shots fired and about how he was going to find the Switchblade Whisper, he could only worry about one thing.

Where are you, Hannah?