Trident's First Gleaming

13

Chris wanted to kill Jim Bob again, but resurrecting him just to drill him in the face once more wouldn’t bring Chris closer to finding Hannah. Chris had searched through the pockets of dead men before, but Iraq was so many years ago that his senses had forgotten what it was like, and now it felt like he was doing it for the first time. Jim Bob and Victor appeared to be asleep except for the awkward positioning of their bodies and that Victor’s eyes were still open. His unblinking eyes unnerved Chris, so he closed them. Jim Bob and Victor made no snoring or breathing sounds that sleeping men make. In spite of the morbidity of frisking dead men, Chris put aside their humanity and focused on his objective: gather intel.

He searched Victor’s body first, looking for anything that might give a clue as to Hannah’s whereabouts. Victor’s pockets were warm, and the muscles in his legs were at rest and unresponsive, as if he’d fallen into a drunken stupor. Chris discovered a cell phone along with a set of keys. Then he examined Jim Bob’s body and found his cell, too. At any moment, the late-night partiers on the other yacht could call the police and report the gunshots fired — time wasn’t on his side. After pocketing the phones and keys, he opened Victor’s duffel bag and looked inside: Jim Bob’s laptop, Victor’s handheld GPS tracker, an HK416 with a configuration similar to the one Chris had lost in the explosion, and magazines of 5.56 mm ammo. He zipped it back up and carried it by its shoulder strap before scurrying up the ladder to the main deck.

Topside, he observed the young partiers from the corner of his eye. Their mood had sobered, and they were watching him, but when he turned his head toward them, they turned away.

Should I kill them before they contact the authorities? It wasn’t a priestly thought, but it was a legitimate SEAL thought, though he felt guilty for thinking it.

He walked swiftly to the van and tried one of Victor’s keys in the door. It opened. Chris hopped in and drove. Stepping harder on the accelerator, he increased the distance between himself and Jim Bob’s and Victor’s corpses.

If I were Hannah, where would I go?

He switched on Victor’s GPS tracker and waited for the main screen to pop up. When his eyes returned from the GPS to the road, he saw the road had curved and he was heading for a ditch. He steered quickly and recovered. He glanced at the GPS again. It displayed a map icon and tracking icon. Touching the tracking icon led him to another screen where he saw an icon labeled SW — Switchblade Whisper. A map highlighted his current location. After touching a green button, a violet arrow showed the road and direction he should take to follow the Switchblade Whisper. It had already traveled northeast into Turkey.

Using the GPS to calculate distance, he figured it would take him sixteen minutes to reach Highway One then fourteen minutes to the border. But he didn’t have a visa for entering Turkey. He’d have to find a way to sneak across. During the first minutes in the dark solitude of the van, he felt sleepy and just wanted to close his eyes for a moment, but he didn’t dare for fear of drifting off.

On the yacht, Jim Bob had spoken in his fatherly tone, telling Chris that his accusations of foul play were crazy. When Chris was little, his father had thought he was crazy. The week after his rescue, he’d been sitting in the living room on the couch reading a book when his father interrupted.

“What are you reading?”

He looked up from his book. “The Three Musketeers.”

“Oh, do you like it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yes.”

“You remember the psychiatrist who you talked to when you came home?”

“I don’t remember his name.”

“He said that you told him a voice spoke to you, saying you would be rescued, but no one was around.”

Chris nodded. The voice had said, Fear not. On the morrow when the night cometh, you will be saved.

“Sometimes when people become tired and weak like you were in the well, they see things or hear things that aren’t really there. They have hallucinations.”

Why don’t they believe me? He wiggled his fingers anxiously. “It wasn’t a hallucination. It was real.”

“It might have seemed real, but you were tired and weak.”

“I know what I heard.”

“You know what you think you heard,” his father said. “But God doesn’t speak to children like that.”

“He spoke to me!”

“Son, the psychiatrist is worried about you. You can’t tell people things like this because they might think the wrong things about you.”

His mother stepped into the living room. She gave his dad the death stare. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to talk some sense into him,” his father said, his voice agitated. The psychiatrist thinks he has schizophrenia and wants to see him again — run a PET scan and fMRI.”

“He’s not going to medicate my son,” she said. “The psychiatrist isn’t experienced in spiritual matters.”

“I don’t want him to medicate Chris, either.”

“But you’re trying to tell him that what he heard wasn’t real,” his mom pressed.

They were talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t tell me that you believe him, too,” he said.

She raised her voice. “I wasn’t there, okay? But yes, I believe him.”

“Come on. God doesn’t speak to kids.”

“Jesus did. And Chris is a lot closer to Jesus than you or me. We’ve always felt that.”

His father paused for a moment. “Events in the Bible happened a long time ago.”

“Are today’s events so much different?” she asked.

“Well, he can’t go around telling people he heard God, or they’re going to think he’s a lunatic and put him on medication and turn him into a walking vegetable!”

She turned to Chris, ignoring his father’s outburst. Her eyes softened. “Honey, I believe you.”

His parents rarely argued, and while he hated hearing them go at each other, he loved that his mother believed him.

She continued, “You had an experience that was special — like the pearls on a necklace. But some people don’t appreciate how special pearls are. You can only share special things with special people.”

Chris could still hear her voice in his ear and sighed at the memory. He’d felt so alienated when his father had thought him crazy, but his father had questioned Chris’s sanity because he didn’t understand. And Jim Bob had questioned Chris’s sanity because he wanted to shake his conviction that he’d been double-crossed. Chris wondered if he was brain deficient for becoming both a SEAL and a minister, but he held on to his conviction anyway.

He glanced back at the GPS tracking monitor. When he returned his eyes to the road, a man was in the middle of the intersection riding a donkey across Highway One. And he was naked except for his boots and the charred remains of a shirt around his shoulders.

I must really be losing my mind. He blinked. Still there.

It was so surprising he almost forgot to slam on the brakes. The wheels screamed horrifically as they locked up and slid. The naked man lifted his legs, saving himself from being crunched between the vehicle and the animal. The donkey fell over and brayed loudly enough to be heard for kilometers. The man rolled across the little hood, and his white buttocks briefly pressed against the windshield in front of Chris’s face before he slid at an angle and landed in the road.

Both Chris’s engine and the vehicle came to a stop, but the lights were still on in the dark night. The naked man stood with his privates in full view now. His mouth opened wide, and he screamed at Chris, but the donkey brayed so incessantly that Chris couldn’t understand him.

Chris tried to start the engine, but it just stuttered. He tried again. No luck.

The naked man limped over to Chris’s window. The donkey fell silent. “Where in the hell did you get your driver’s license?” the naked man demanded in a New York accent. He was short, bald, and looked like an angry Elmer Fudd. “Walmart?!”

Chris stared at him in disbelief. “Who are you?”

The naked man’s brow furrowed in the middle. “What?”

Chris rolled down the window a couple of inches so they could hear each other better. “Who are you?”

“I’m the guy on the donkey you almost killed,” Elmer Fudd said, indignant. “Who are you?”

Chris tried to start the engine again, but it wouldn’t turn over. “I’m the guy whose engine won’t start,” he said with frustration.

“I can’t stay around here. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Why don’t you pop open the hood, and I’ll take a look at it,” Elmer Fudd said.

Chris watched the man carefully. What could an American be doing way out here in a country fighting a civil war? He could be faking the New York accent, but it sounded real enough. Chris hadn’t met him in the Teams. Maybe he was Delta Force. Or CIA. Maybe one of Jim Bob’s goons. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing out here, and right now, I’m not feeling too much peace on earth and goodwill to men.”

“Name’s Sonny.” He held out a hand to shake.

Chris ignored it but hesitantly responded, “Chris.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any spare clothes, would you?”

Chris shook his head, but he reached under the seat and felt around for a poncho he’d seen Jim Bob stash there when they’d first arrived. He rolled down the window the rest of the way and handed Sonny the raingear.

He put the poncho on and smiled.

Chris couldn’t help but return the smile. Something about this guy was oddly comforting. He handed Sonny a compact yet powerful, flashlight.

Sonny took it and examined it. He eyed Chris suspiciously.

It looked like they both needed a change of fortune, and maybe a little faith was the ticket. Chris rolled the dice and pressed the hood release.

Sonny hurried to the front, lifted the hood, and flashed the light around the engine.

“How’s it look?” Chris called.

“Some of the electrical connections in your fuel injection on the air intake side got knocked loose,” he answered.

“Can you fix it?” Chris asked anxiously.

“I hope so.”

Arabic voices sounded from the woods to the west, breaking the still night. “Friends of yours?” Chris asked.

“Probably an al Qaeda tracking team,” he said casually.

Chris’s pulse burned through three stages of rocket fuel. “How do you know?”

“Lucky guess.” A sedan shining its high beams stopped fifteen meters behind them. “Friends of yours?” Sonny asked this time.

“Police,” Chris said matter-of-factly.

“How do you know they’re police?” Sonny closed the hood, hurried to the passenger side, and waited.

“Lucky guess.”

Chris unlocked the door and let him in. Sonny stared at the long, grey travel duffel between them.

From behind, a PA system sounded. “Police, surrender yourself now!” At the same time, muzzles flashed, and shots rang out from the woods.

Chris turned the key again. The engine started. The fecal matter was about to hit the rotating oscillator, and Chris wouldn’t be able to drive and shoot effectively at the same time. And he wasn’t about to give this stranger a weapon. “You drive.” He climbed over his travel duffel and Sonny.

No sooner had Sonny settled into the driver’s seat than he drove around the lifeless donkey. Then he stomped the gas, and the van leaped forward. They sped north on Highway One, passing through a spattering of vertical dark lines, trees in orchards. The van stank of astringent sweat. Chris didn’t know if it was his, Sonny’s, or both.

Chris unwrapped his rifle. Al Qaeda on foot were no threat, but now the police were a clear nuisance. The fastest way to disable their vehicle would be to take out the driver, but Chris had no reason to kill a cop. He aimed through the van’s back window and squeezed off four rounds. The window blew out, and Chris’s bullets struck the police car engine. The shots wouldn’t disable it, but they’d deliver a message.

The police swerved off the road and stopped following. Message received.

“That was easy,” Sonny said with a nod.

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Where you heading?”

“As far from here as possible. You?”

“Turkey.”

“Turkey’s good,” Sonny said.

At normal speed, it would take about fifteen more minutes to reach the border, but Sonny wasn’t driving at normal speed.

Forests of trees materialized on both sides of them. Chris turned and surveyed a large, shimmering light emerging behind them.

“We’ve got company again,” he said calmly.

“Not driving in jeeps, are they?” Sonny asked.

The glaring orb neared, and it split into multiple lights, a swarm of headlights racing after the van. “How’d you know they’d be driving in jeeps?”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Sonny accelerated. The forest on the left opened up to orchards with fewer trees and a handful of residences.

Now Chris became irritated, and he didn’t hide it in his voice. “AQ tracking team?”

“AQ revenge team.” Sonny glanced at Chris’s GPS tracker. “That’s an interesting piece of equipment. Who you following?”

Chris turned it off and put it in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. “Amelia Earhart.”

As the road veered right, Chris leaned to counteract the effect of the centrifugal force tugging on him. Weaving back and forth through both lanes, the men in the jeeps weren’t concerned about rules of the road. AK-47s fired on full auto, pecking holes in the van like the fangs of angry rattlesnakes. One round hissed past Chris’s head and struck the front windshield of the van.

Chris aimed for the driver in the closest jeep, but he wasn’t a hundred percent the shooter he used to be. Even if he was, adrenaline overrode his fine motor skills, the van veered, centrifugal force pulled him, AQ weaved, and the darkness worked against him. He missed. Then his muzzle hissed two-round and three-round bursts through his sound suppressor — still no satisfaction. The bullets’ smokeless powder smelled like chocolate, charcoal, and metal, and the hot empty shells ejected from the side of his rifle, hitting Sonny, who howled and rained f-bombs.

Chris stretched out his two- to three-round bursts to five-round bursts. Sonny’s verbal tirade increased in volume. One of the smoldering shells bounced off Sonny, hit Chris in the neck, and landed inside his shirt on the flesh of his shoulder. It burned, but he had more pressing issues to deal with. He nailed the driver in the nearest jeep. Although the road curved, the jeep didn’t. It headed for an off-road rendezvous with a tree.

“AQ is after you, not me, buddy,” Chris said. “You better start doing some explaining or start doing some walking.”

“I’m the one driving,” Sonny pointed out.

“I’m the one shooting,” Chris said coolly.

Sonny shook his head and scowled. “AQ is trying to imbed themselves in Syrian antigovernment forces, but I kind of distracted them. Now AQ wants my head on a stick. You can guess my opinion on the matter.”

Chris didn’t inquire further; instead, he refocused on the enemy. The AQ vehicles kept coming. Another jeep took the previous one’s place. Al Qaeda loomed large, Leviathan with too many heads to hack off. He and Sonny needed to break contact and escape. He shot as well as he could, and Sonny pushed the van as fast as he could, but they couldn’t escape the beast.

14

The tangos in the nearest jeep pressed forward more militant than the others. Their AKs rattled without pause, even as a small pickup truck pulled up alongside the jeep. A tango standing in back of the truck seemed to be wielding a rocket-propelled grenade.

“RPG!” Chris warned. He tried to shoot the RPG thug, but he rushed the shot and accidentally hit a tango sitting in the passenger seat.

The RPG launched with a swoosh, a white tail of smoke trailing behind it.

Sonny pinched a tight curve to the right, Chris falling against Sonny. The rocket passed their van on the left side and pounded the trees with an explosion, its shockwave knocking the van.

Chris crawled away from Sonny, but now the same tango in the back of the pickup truck brought out another RPG to launch. Something told Chris that, this time, the RPG wouldn’t miss. He felt like a little bug about to be stomped by a giant. He said a silent prayer.

Meanwhile, bullets hammered the van. Their shooting concerned him, but the RPG concerned him more. A near miss from a bullet wouldn’t kill him, but a near miss from an RPG would.

The van slowed just before they hit a hairpin turn to the left. RPG Thug couldn’t take a clear shot, but the van was too top-heavy, and its side wheels caught air. “We’re gonna roll,” Sonny warned.

Chris struggled against centrifugal force by making his way to the outer edge of the passenger seat, hoping to redistribute some of their weight and prevent them from tipping over. He didn’t know if his weight would make a significant difference, but he did whatever he could to survive. The two-wheel ride seemed to last a minute but was probably only a few seconds. The van came back down on all four wheels.

The road straightened again, saving them from another two-wheel adventure but giving RPG Thug an easier shot. The straightaway gave Chris an easier shot, too. Aiming through the truck windows at RPG Thug’s upper body, he squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Oh, Lord. In all the excitement, he hadn’t noticed he’d run out of ammo. Frogmen called it a dead man’s click for obvious reasons. Although he couldn’t catch his breath, he felt a strange serenity. He regretted not being of more assistance to Hannah, and he regretted not having time to tell his congregation good-bye.

Lights from a large truck illuminated Chris and Sonny, approaching them head-on. Sonny veered to the side, narrowly avoiding it. The truck slowed but hit the smaller pickup with a horrific crack.

The al Qaeda jeeps didn’t lose a beat, and the vehicles behind continued their pursuit. Then another tight curve shook the heat off al Qaeda’s firepower. Chris’s right index finger depressed the button on the side of his rifle to eject the empty magazine. Simultaneously, his left hand drew a full magazine and inserted it firmly into the HK416. As the van slowed and swerved, the jeep sped up. The van didn’t tip onto two wheels this time, but the jeep gained on them. Chris seated a new bullet in the chamber of his rifle.

After Sonny pulled out of another hairpin curve, the jeep closed the gap. The decreased distance suited Chris fine for shooting. When the road straightened into the middle of a small town with buildings on both sides, Chris let out a controlled three-round burst, pounding the jeep’s driver. They pursued for a moment longer before slowing. Sonny accelerated, pulling farther away, but more al Qaeda overtook the decommissioned jeep.

“What’d you do to piss these guys off?” Chris asked.

“They were born pissed off.”

Upon exiting the small town, they gained elevation, climbing the mountain into the woods. Although al Qaeda outnumbered Chris and Sonny, they could only fit two vehicles abreast on the road. Now they only followed single file, and they seemed hesitant to near the van. But they still followed.

“We’re nearing Turkey,” Sonny said as they reached the top of the mountain.

“If we stop now and head out on foot, al Qaeda will spread out in the woods and outflank us,” Chris said. “Even if they don’t catch us, they’ll make so much noise that they’ll alert nearby border patrol units and we won’t be able to sneak into Turkey.”

“If we stay on this road, we’re five minutes away from getting trapped between the Turkish border crossing station and AQ.”

“We could try to lose them, but on these country dirt roads, we’re more likely to lose ourselves in a dead end that isn’t on the GPS. If you have an idea of how to get out of this, now would be a good time to let me know.”

Sonny didn’t respond.

The sky became lighter as they sped down the northeast side of the mountain. With a rocky terrain to their left and a hundred-meter plunge to their right, there was no room for a missed turn. A medium-sized pickup truck and sedan attacked from behind, rifles blazing. The truck rammed into the back of the van, pushing it toward the cliff. The van’s wheels spun in loose gravel as it slid toward the edge of the drop-off. Somehow, Sonny kept the van on the road. Chris fired at the AQ driver but struck wide.

The truck came in again to ram them, but this time, Sonny swerved into the left lane and slammed on the brakes. The AQ truck passed on the right, but the sedan rear-ended Chris and Sonny. Chris lost his balance and bumped his head on the windshield.

“Aagh!” He regained his firing position and stitched up the driver in the sedan. Another one down.

Chris glanced out the front of the van to see where the AQ truck was. Sonny sped up and pressed the front right corner of his bumper into the left rear corner of the truck, just behind its tire. Then he turned hard into the truck. Its rear tires lost control and slid. The more the driver accelerated, the more he spun out and lost traction, until Sonny pushed him off the cliff, narrowly turning away before the van went over with them.

A large truck tried the same technique on the van from behind. Chris plugged the driver with one shot, and Sonny sped into a curve in the road. The large truck continued forward, soaring off the cliff. Chris felt his heart rise to his throat as if it followed AQ down the plunge.

When they reached the road at the bottom of the mountain, Chris counted four AQ vehicles still behind them. Sonny sped through a small farming community while Chris faced their rear, exchanging fire with the enemy.

Chris turned around to see how close they were to the border. They’d already reached the straightaway to the Kasab Border Station. Ahead, one lane was open, and two others were barricaded. A car sat idling in the open lane. Sonny stomped on the accelerator and punched through the nearest barricaded lane.

Chris faced the rear again. AQ came directly behind, shooting everything in its path, including the border station. Soon a Turkish border patrol SUV pulled out and pursued AQ. Shooting broke out between them, and minutes later, the chase spilled into the town of Yayladagi. Turkish police seemed prepared for trouble and joined in the chase.

An AQ rifle sprayed in Chris’s direction, and the air around him lit up with a snap-crackle-pop. Chris ducked.

Sonny cursed. “Shoot these monkeys!”

Chris tried to regain a firing position. “Turkish border patrol and police in my background. Don’t have a clear shot.” Al Qaeda continued shooting at everything in front of and behind them. Rounds punched through the dash and the windshield of the van. Wind roared through a hole in the glass the size of a horse’s patootie. He couldn’t shoot, but he could navigate. He took the GPS out of his thigh pocket and turned it on.

Abruptly, Sonny turned wildly to the left, throwing Chris into the passenger door. One of the hubcaps rolled off behind the van.

A beat-up white truck cut them off, then, and Sonny whipped around it, causing an oncoming car to squeal to a stop. The road dipped then rose, and all four tires caught air. When the van came down, its bumper scraped the road, shooting sparks into the air. Its engine whined.

“I need some directions here!” Sonny spat out the words.

The GPS finished calculating their location. “At the next street, turn right,” Chris said.

Sonny tried to slow down for the turn, but he was still going too fast and ended up in the opposite lane, scraping a parked car. Sonny stomped on the accelerator, and the engine roared. The van tugged forward.

Chris looked behind — AQ was still there.

“Did we lose them?” Sonny asked.

“Nope. Still on us.”

Chris turned to the front and saw an elderly woman crossing the street. Sonny drove around her. Chris turned behind to see if she made it across the street, but AQ drove through her like a plastic doll. There was no time for silent prayers or emotion for her.

“At the next street, turn right.”

“You’re taking us in a circle,” Sonny growled.

“The Turkish border patrol and cops want al Qaeda more than they want us. I’m giving the cops what they want.”

Sonny turned right. He avoided hitting any more parked cars but did lose another hubcap. The van picked up speed and caught air again. When the van came down on its bumper, the bumper fell off and crunched under the van’s wheels.

Al Qaeda fired a barrage of lead, and smoke rose from the engine. “What’s that?” Chris asked.

“Trouble.”

“Turn right again.”

At the next road, Sonny did as Chris instructed. They’d driven 180-degrees and were heading south to Syria, but now more law enforcement converged on al Qaeda and were shooting at them without any love.

“Another right,” Chris said.

Sonny turned the steering wheel, and they traveled down the same streets again, continuing in the clockwise direction. The police presence continued to grow. AQ must’ve seen the writing on the wall because they finally stopped shooting at Chris and Sonny and broke off from the deadly circle. The border patrol and police ignored Chris and Sonny, going after AQ instead.

“See?” Chris laughed, and Sonny joined in.

Then their smoking van came to an unexpected stop. “This van was becoming an eyesore anyway,” Sonny said.

“I’m gonna need some new wheels.”

Sonny looked down at his poncho. “I need some clothes.”

“Enjoy your shopping spree.”

“Enjoy your donkey-killing spree.”

Chris concealed his HK416 in the travel duffel, exited the van carrying the bag on his shoulder, and walked swiftly away from the vehicle so no one would connect him with the bullet-riddled van. He looked down at his GPS and touched the tracking icon. While it began calculating Switchblade Whisper’s coordinates in relation to him, he looked up from the monitor and noticed a taxi heading their way, so he flagged it down. When he turned back to see if Sonny wanted to share the ride, he was gone. For a moment, he wondered if Sonny was real, but there was no way those bullets and RPGs were anything but.

The taxi stopped next to the curb, and Chris hopped in. The GPS unit showed the Switchblade Whisper on the move, heading on a northerly route about an hour ahead of him. Chris didn’t know many Turkish words, so he told the driver in English to head north on the highway, but the man didn’t understand. He tried Arabic. The driver understood Chris that time. Chris looked around to see if anyone noticed him leaving in the taxi. At the moment, no one seemed to be following him.

He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes for the first time in what felt like ages. Hannah’s face permeated his mind. Where are you, Hannah? He didn’t want to believe that she was dead, but so much time had passed, the likelihood became more difficult to dispel. She had trusted him to help her, and he was determined to follow through on his promise.

Jim Bob had said he thought she was probably hunting down the Switchblade Whisper, and if she was still alive and free, Chris’s guess was the same. If the Chinese were transporting the Switchblade Whisper by vehicle, as Chris had surmised, they might drive the whole way to China, but driving would take too much time, and they’d have to risk customs and immigration inspections at multiple border crossings. Maybe the Chinese planned to link up with a ship. Going by sea would still require considerable time to reach China, and if that was their plan, they probably would’ve already sailed from Syria rather than drive out of their way to Turkey. It seemed flying out of Turkey was the most probable method of extraction.

He forced his eyes open and leaned toward the driver.

“Keep heading north,” Chris told the man in Arabic. “There’s a little something extra in it for you if you hurry.

At the mention of a bonus, the driver smashed the accelerator down to the floor, and the taxi punched forward. Chris fell in and out of a light combat sleep along the way — his senses were ready to wake him at the sign of anything unusual. Just north of Iskenderun, the sun glistened off the ocean to his left. On the edges of his consciousness, he and Hannah ran barefoot and carefree on the ocean-cooled sand.

Chris awoke as the taxi stopped in front of a three-story building decorated with faience panels at the main entrance and capped with a triangular roof. He checked his GPS to figure out exactly where he and the Switchblade Whisper were. According to the GPS, Chris was at the Adana gar, a railroad station in the city of Adana, but the Switchblade Whisper had continued north on the highway, and now he was only half an hour behind it, but the clock was ticking, and he was losing the time he’d gained.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“I can’t go farther today,” the driver said.

Chris argued with him, but the driver refused, so he paid him and got out of the car. He checked for Turkish authorities on his six but saw none. He smelled bad, but a Turkish woman stared hungrily at him, and he realized he didn’t look nearly as ragged as he thought he did — or he smelled like a kebab. She had two small children and more luggage than she could handle. He wanted to take a minute to help her with her luggage, but he didn’t have time to spare.

Then he hailed a new taxi, and the driver gave him a discount to take him over five hundred klicks northwest, passing Ankara, Turkey’s capitol. He looked down at the GPS. The SW symbol stopped moving at the Esenboga International Airport. Panic churned in his belly. If the Chinese boarded a plane, he’d lose them, and he still didn’t know where Hannah was.

15

For several minutes, the Switchblade Whisper remained stationary about a klick northeast of the main terminal. Chris directed the cab driver toward its location, but the main road diverged away from the Switchblade Whisper. There didn’t seem to be a public road between Chris and his destination, so when the taxi reached a private road leading to the northeast, he told the driver to take it.

At the end of the road was a shipping company and a parking lot filled with a fleet of trucks and trailers. Now Chris was within three hundred meters of the Switchblade Whisper.

“Stop in front of the office building,” he commanded.

When the taxi came to a rest, Chris paid the fare and jumped out. He wanted to run but didn’t want to attract attention, so he swiftly walked instead. He crossed the shipping fleet parking lot and found another road that appeared to lead toward the target and followed it until he arrived within a hundred meters of his destination. Only a private airplane hangar stood between him and the Switchblade Whisper.

The noise of nearly half a dozen AKs opened fire, then at least a full dozen rattled off.

Where are you, Hannah?

He ran the length of the hangar, unzipped his travel duffel, and pulled out his HK416. Turning the corner, he discovered a small runway that seemed connected to the larger runway. He took cover behind a plane and some SUVs just as six Chinese fired north at a dozen Arabs, some from inside vehicles and others on foot.

Chris scanned their faces for anyone he might recognize.

Professor Mordet.

Chris’s soul shuddered. Although he knew that good was more powerful than evil, he couldn’t shake the funk of fear the man’s presence conjured.

Truckloads of reinforcements, roughly thirty men, arrived next. Chris didn’t know if the reinforcements were from Turkey’s local bad guys, al Qaeda, or someone else entirely.

It appeared that the plane belonged to the Chinese, and they were attempting to fly the Switchblade Whisper out on it. As the Chinese fought to board the airplane, Mordet’s men fought to stop them. Even though Mordet’s men outnumbered the Chinese, the Chinese held their ground, battling for their lives.

Standing beside the hangar, Chris was too close to see if there was a sniper on top of the building, and the situation was unfolding too fast for him to do a detailed recon of the area. His gaze darted around, landing on an SUV whose tailpipes emitted thick exhaust fumes. The SUV’s location corresponded with the location of the Switchblade Whisper icon on Chris’s GPS.

When the fighting increased in intensity, he’d use the distraction to break cover and run behind the Chinese to the SUV. He hoped the two groups would be too busy combatting each other to notice him. Or if they did notice him, they’d have a difficult time breaking engagement to chase him. Nerves gripped his body. It would be risky, but letting the Chinese or Mordet get away on a plane with the Switchblade Whisper was unacceptable. He’d never be able to track them once they were airborne. If he was going to make a move, now was the time.

As soon as Chris sprang forward into action, his nerves settled. More often than not, it was the waiting before the action that caused him the most anxiety. Chris approached the SUV, and a Chinese driver with cropped hair became visible through the tinted windows. The vehicle’s electronic locks clicked. Continuing forward, Chris brought his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The SUV window blew out, and Chris’s bullets pinned the occupant to the interior. His rifle only emitted the noise of compressed air, blanketed by the chatter of the AKs. Another Chinese man sprang up inside the rear of the SUV. Chris blasted him through the glass.

Two hisses of air came from behind, and then two bullets whipped past him.

Somebody got the drop on me.

Neither of the shots seemed to have hit him, but it was possible he was too jacked up on adrenaline to notice. The source of the rounds was too quiet for the 7.62 mm enemy rounds; it sounded more like friendly fire from a sound-suppressed weapon. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted someone advancing toward him, rifle aimed forward and shooting.

Hannah! Her shots dropped a Chinese shooter who’d been aiming at him. Then she hurried toward the SUV.

Chris reached through the busted driver’s-side window and opened the door. Then he unceremoniously dumped the driver on the tarmac before scooting over the console and taking his place in the passenger seat — he was primed for more shooting. The key already rested in the ignition, and the engine was running, ready to go.

Hannah hopped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. In the back of the SUV, something bulky lay hidden under a blanket. Chris crawled into the back to make sure the Switchblade Whisper was indeed where the GPS showed it to be. He lifted the blanket and saw the piece of wing and black box — the Switchblade Whisper.

“It’s here.” Then he shoved the bullet-riddled Chinese body out of the vehicle.

A hole blasted through the windshield, the bullet just missing him. Hannah shifted into drive and burned rubber. Chris returned to the passenger seat. The wind whistled through the hole in the windshield.

“You know your way out of here?” he asked.

“No.” She drove south. “You?”

“Not yet.” He examined his GPS and spotted an exit in the southeast corner of the runway. He pointed out the window. “There.”

She veered southeast and departed the runway.

“Turn right.”

She cranked on the steering wheel, and the SUV squealed around the corner.

“Take the left fork.”

Hannah swung the SUV left. The road cut straight through wide-open farmland for half a klick.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.

“Did you miss me?”

He pointed to a street on the right, directing her. “I did. I was worried, but I hoped that if I found the Switchblade Whisper, I’d find you.”

She turned down a long farm road, picking up speed easily. “I went back to the mountain to search for you, but the place had turned into a war zone. I was afraid something happened to you, but I figured you’d stay with the mission and track down the Switchblade Whisper, too.”

Chris looked behind to see if the Chinese or Mordet were following them, but they weren’t. He exhaled in relief. “I was lucky to meet you in Iraq,” he said softly. “And I was lucky you walked into my church in Dallas.”

She grinned. “Was it luck?”

He checked his GPS to see how close they were to the nearest US embassy. “I still hope we can put the world on pause someday.”

She smiled and pressed harder on the accelerator. “Me, too.”

The road they were on curved widely to the west then connected to the main artery, Ozal Boulevard, south of the airport. There was still no sign of the enemy behind them.

“I can navigate to the Embassy in Ankara,” he said. “We’ll see if they can transport us out of here with the Switchblade Whisper.”

“Let’s do it.”

“How’d you track it?” he asked. “I had the GPS.”

She pulled out a tracker similar to the one Chris had taken from Victor. “On the mountain, when I carried the wing, I planted my own tracking device. She paused for a moment and glanced over at Chris. Her eyes mellowed. “I told Jim Bob and Victor to wait for you, you know. But they wouldn’t. Then back at the resort, they invited me to their room, but the whole situation made gave me an uneasy feeling, so I told them I had to use the restroom first. Instead of going to the restroom, I bugged out.”

“Like a true ninja.”

She tilted her head at Chris’s GPS. “How’d you get that?”

Chris explained his trek down the mountain and back to the yacht, where he found Wolf murdered.

“Those bastards,” she blurted out. “Wolf was a good friend, and he saved my bacon more than once. Tell me you killed them both. Tell me you killed those bastards!”

Remembering what he’d done to Victor and Jim Bob brought no remorse or joy. “I killed them both.”

“Good.”

They passed the gecekondos, condos constructed hastily on the edge of Ankara, and after half an hour, they reached the heart of the city and passed mosques and government buildings until they reached the turnoff to the embassy. They pulled into the entrance and stopped in front of a large black security gate that remained closed.

“Do you have appointment?” a Turkish police officer asked. Another cop stood next to him. Both were dressed in black, wearing Turkish police insignia on their ball caps and shirts. Each wore a utility belt with pistol, ammo, radio, and other items. Just outside embassies around the world, the host nation was responsible for protecting the premises.

“Yes, we’re here to meet with the ambassador,” Hannah said.

“Do you have copy of appointment?” the officer asked.

“No,” Hannah said.

“What time is appointment?”

“Five minutes ago. We’re already late, so if you don’t mind…”

He looked at his clipboard and shuffled through papers. “What is your name?”

“Hannah Smith.”

The officer glanced through his papers before pointing to his clipboard. “I sorry, I don’t have appointment here.”

“There must be some mistake,” Hannah said. “Call him, please.”

“May I see passport, please?”

Hannah handed it to him.

“You, too.” He pointed at Chris.

Grudgingly, Chris handed over his passport.

The officer studied both documents. Then he made a call in Turkish on his radio. He had an earphone in his ear connected to the radio.

Chris and Hannah waited.

Finally, the officer returned their passports, and the gate opened.

Hannah drove through, only to be stopped by a second black gate. The first closed behind them. With a concrete wall to their immediate left and a small concrete security building to their immediate right, the only conventional way out was through the security building door.

Chris remained patient for the first fifteen minutes, but each subsequent passing minute made him feel like a caged animal. He stepped out of the SUV and knocked on the security building door, but no reply came.

“In case you forgot about us, we’re still here!” Chris called. No one responded, so he returned to the SUV. “If they don’t hurry, I’m going to climb on top of our SUV, jump onto the building, and lower myself into the embassy.”

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,” Hannah said.

He imagined someone dropping a lever and closing the walls on them. “I feel like they’re about to squash us like two halves of an orange. Make orange juice,” he said.

Another fifteen minutes later, voices and shuffling feet emanated from the security building. The door flew open, and a young armed Marine and three armed Americans wearing civilian clothes and flak jackets surrounded Chris and Hannah. The leader was the oldest of the three men in civilian clothes. He appeared to be in his early fifties, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. “Put your hands up where we can see them!”

Chris and Hannah raised their hands. Then the front doors of their SUV opened, and M4 barrels were pointed at the pair. “Step out of the vehicle slowly!” Salt-and-Pepper commanded. It wasn’t clear who the men in civilian clothes were, but Chris guessed they were diplomatic security, tasked with protecting the embassy and its people.

As Chris and Hannah eased out of their vehicle, Chris contemplated making a break for it. As if Hannah could read his mind, she shook her head. On the roof of the security building stood another armed American in civilian clothes. Chris recognized him as a guy nicknamed Two-Face. During Army Ranger training, he’d cracked his temporal bone, which paralyzed one side of his mouth and left him with a permanent snarl. When he’d earned a spot in Delta Force, a.k.a. the Unit, the guys gave him his nickname. There were three main squadrons in the Unit: Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. Two-Face was from Bravo Squadron. Later, in Iraq, Two-Face and his mates had operated alongside Chris and his Team as members of Task Force 88.

Two-Face was the only one kind enough not to aim his rifle at Chris. “Evening, Reverend.” He remembered Chris’s call sign.

“Evening, Two-Face,” Chris replied.

“Some nasty rumors floating around that you murdered some Agency boys in Syria, mate. Went out in a flash message to numerous embassies, in case you showed up.”

“Murdered?” Chris swallowed hard, feeling the gravity of the charge and wondering how word traveled so fast.

“I don’t believe any of it, but as you can see, some people in the embassy are pissing themselves.”

“So that’s what this welcome party is about?” Chris asked.

Two-Face nodded. “Afraid so.”

“Hannah wasn’t involved, so you can release her.”

“I don’t know all the details,” Two-Face said. “I just think you two should let these gents do their job — clear up this misunderstanding. If you choose to escape, I can’t vouch for the others here, but I won’t try to stop you.”

Salt-and-Pepper seemed upset that Two-Face wasn’t going to stop Chris from escaping. “Put your hands behind your back!” he ordered.

Hannah shrugged her shoulders and put her hands behind her back. The Marine, sweat beading on his brow, snapped a pair of handcuffs on her.

No SEAL had ever been held prisoner of war, and Chris wasn’t about to break that tradition, but the embassy was not the enemy. “What exactly are we being arrested for?” he asked.

Nobody answered.

“Just humor them,” Hannah said. “The faster you let them put the handcuffs on, the faster we can sort this out.”

Chris sighed and put his hands behind his back. The handcuffs trembled as the young Marine put them on Chris. He removed Chris’s Glock from its holster and took his pocket-knife from his pants. Chris was feeling more and more like a trapped tiger, and more and more, he wanted to lash out at his nearest aggressor.

Salt-and-Pepper and his posse escorted Chris and Hannah through the small security building and out the back door. They walked outside along a road and into the back of the embassy, where they entered a brightly lit hallway.

Now what?

16

Salt-and-Pepper sat across a table from them with his back to the door. Except for the table and chairs, the small, cold room was empty. The mirror on the wall was probably one-way so the interrogation could be videotaped and observed from outside the room.

“You seem to know who we are, but we don’t know who you are,” Hannah said.

“I’m Tristan Nichols, Deputy Ambassador,” Salt-and-Pepper said.

Tristan was impressive — a leader who wasn’t afraid to step out of the office and dirty his hands. Even so, Chris had to know: “Why are we being held here?”

Tristan leaned forward. “I want to ask you and your accomplice some questions about the deaths of two Agency men in Syria.”

Chris’s brow furrowed. “Accomplice?”

“You shot Maximilian Wolfeschlegelaltona and Victor Shivlin before shooting Jim Bob Louve in the face. Late-night revelers on a nearby yacht heard the gunshots and called the police and an ambulance. Maximilian’s corpse was discovered in the waters of Latakia Marina, and Victor’s was located on a yacht in Ras al-Basit, but Jim Bob survived. The bullet broke his nose before glancing off and entering below his eye, where it stuck in his upper jaw. He is still in a lot of pain, but he says you and Hannah stole the Switchblade Whisper and sold it to the Chinese. The Agency sent out a flash message to bring the two of you in, dead or alive.”

Chris couldn’t believe his ears. He explained what had really happened.

After patiently listening, Tristan asked, “Then where is the Switchblade Whisper?”

“In the back of the SUV under a blanket,” Hannah said. “Unless you left it in a no-parking zone.”

Tristan frowned. “I didn’t leave it in a no-parking zone. It’s safe here inside the embassy parking lot.”

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of holding us and the Switchblade Whisper here,” Chris said. “The Switchblade Whisper already had a GPS tracking device imbedded in its black box. Hannah affixed her own tracking device to the drone. The Chinese probably did the same.”

“I’ve heard a lot of bullshitters in my career, but you are one of a kind,” Tristan said.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Chris said. “But you do need to search the Switchblade Whisper for any tracking devices and take them far away from here.”

Hannah cut in. “A terrorist named Professor Mordet is trying to get his hands on the technology in the Switchblade Whisper. If he succeeds, he’ll hack into the United States’ critical infrastructures and cause as much damage and loss of human life as possible.”

Tristan stood and looked down his nose at them. “Both of you are truly special. I hope they send you to some deserving place like Leavenworth. Nobody is going to break into the embassy parking lot. There are three concentric circles of protection around this facility, starting with the outer fence and the vehicular barricades. The latest technology monitors this place twenty-four seven. And there are two Turkish policemen out front, a Marine, three diplomatic security officers on duty, and me.”

“Hell is made up of concentric circles,” Chris said under his breath.

Tristan stood. “I think we’re finished here.” He walked out the door, slammed it shut behind him, and locked it from the outside.

“You think the deputy ambassador will figure out trouble is coming before it arrives?” Hannah asked. “If Mordet doesn’t lose all his men fighting the Chinese, he will have enough to storm this embassy.”

Chris tried to wiggle his hands out of the handcuffs, but they were too tight. “I’m afraid the deputy ambassador has too much faith in Jim Bob’s version of events and concentric circles.”

“Sorry.”

“For what?” He stood, walked over to the wall, put his back to it and knocked. He moved over and knocked again, repeating the process.

“For dragging you into this.”

“I’m a big boy.” He knocked on the door and other walls.

Hannah stood and strolled up to him.

He put his lips close to her ear and whispered, “Metal door can’t be broken. Opens inward, so we can’t kick out the lock. And the walls seem solid.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” She spoke softly, her breath heating his skin.

“Ceiling seems weak, from the looks of it. If we stand on that table, we can probably break a hole through it, climb up, cross over to the next room, and bust down. Hopefully it’s not locked from the outside, too.”

“Break out of here while they’re videotaping us through a one-way mirror?”

Fatigue was catching up to him. “Maybe they’ll get bored and stop watching us?”

“Maybe Mordet and his men will give us a diversion,” she said.

“Hope it doesn’t come to that.” He eyed a chair to sit in, but his butt was sore from sitting in vehicles since Syria, so he lay down on the floor on his stomach to rest for a moment.

They’d been waiting for what seemed like hours. Hannah seemed bored and took the same position lying down. After a few minutes, she smiled. His body warmed at the sight, even in the chilly interrogation room.

“You’re smiling,” he said.

“I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“When you and I were first stationed together in Syria,” she said, “you and that Syrian gal seemed pretty serious. Caused a bit of a stink on base — people worried that she was a spy. What happened to her?”

“Her parents were opposed,” Chris explained. “Eventually, she sided with them. It upset me at the time, but it was for the best. Our line of work isn’t the greatest support for maintaining romantic relationships — you know, keeping secrets, frequent overseas deployments, and when we’re home, we’re not home — individual schools, platoon work-ups. Few women can accept that lifestyle, let alone live it.”

“After you got out of the Teams, didn’t you meet anyone at college?”

Chris grinned. “Yeah. One of the kindest I’d ever dated. I was interested in finding a spouse, but she wasn’t ready.”

“No one in your church?” she asked.

“There’s a buttercup in Dallas.”

“Well?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and the grin left his face. “She’s married.”

Hannah smiled. “I guess I have you all to myself.”

He chuckled, not knowing how seriously to take her. “How about you?”

She beamed. “Okay, there was the torero from Spain.”

“What’s a torero?”

“He was a matador — his tight little butt fit nicely in those tight pants. In Spanish, their costumes are called traje de luces, the suit of lights.”

“So what happened with you two?” Chris asked.

“His family is all Catholic, and he wanted to marry me, but I don’t believe in marriage. Haven’t seen him in about a year. Lives in Madrid. We’re just friends.”

“Are you seeing anyone now?”

She shook her head.

His calling as a minister didn’t prevent him from marrying, but since Hannah wasn’t the marrying type and he couldn’t cohabitate, a relationship with her seemed to be a dead-end road. Even so, he couldn’t help wanting to spend more time with her, and a part of him couldn’t help but wonder if, in time, she might change her mind.

Her chocolate-brown eyes glistened, giving him enough bliss to forget about the mission and remember how tired he was.

She seemed to read his mind: “Just close your eyes for a moment; recharge your batteries.”

He did, just for a moment…

17

He was thirteen years old in Syria.

It was an afternoon just days after he’d been rescued, and he stood behind a wall near a doorway to the living room, eavesdropping on his parents.

“We can’t wait forever,” his father said.

“It’s too soon,” his mother said.

“If you won’t tell him, I will. It’s better he hear it from us than from someone else.”

“He needs more time,” she said.

“You mean, you need more time.”

“Give it a rest.” She seemed to notice something in the window and turned to examine it — Chris’s reflection.

He’d gotten in trouble for listening in on a private conversation once before. He wanted to walk away and act like he hadn’t heard anything, but it was too late for that. He trudged into the living room.

Instead of being angry, his mother’s shoulders drooped. He waited for her to scold him, but she didn’t, so he turned to walk away, but she said, weakly, “Chris.”

He turned and faced her. Her eyes glistened. “The day you were kidnapped,” she said, “the same terrorists kidnapped your friend, Nikkia, too.” She took a deep breath — then another.

“They rescued her, didn’t they?”

She shook her head. “Nikkia didn’t survive, honey.”

Chris stood there stunned. After what felt like minutes, he forced himself to speak. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Tears rolled steadily down his face as if they would never stop.

His mother swallowed hard. “I wanted to, honey. I really did. I just didn’t know when to tell you. Or how.”

“I wish I could see her,” he cried.

His mother stood up from the couch, walked over to him, and hugged him. “I wish I could see her, too.” Her voice lost its steadiness. “I wish I could see her, too.”

The news of Nikkia’s death had hit him like a bomb, shaking the earth beneath his feet, pulling at his limbs, sucking the oxygen out of the room, and paralyzing him. He closed his eyes again, wanting to shut out everything — wanting to know why he’d never see her again. When his eyes opened, he was looking into a pair of startled chocolate-brown eyes, and the ground was still shaking. He’d fallen asleep, but he didn’t know for how long. All he knew was that the air was full of smoke and debris. He coughed.

Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. His ears rang like they’d been boxed, and he couldn’t hear anything more than the ringing. His heart pounded; fear struck. He scanned the room to find the door. Blackened, it hung by a hinge.

There must’ve been an explosion. It’s the only explanation.

He tugged at his handcuffs, trying to free himself before an assault team could enter the room and start shooting, but no one came. Not yet. He could see the room across the hallway, flayed open as though a mortar round had hit it.

His frogman training kicked in, and without thought, he struggled up to his knees and helped her to her feet. Still suffering the aftershock of the blast, he lost his balance but managed to remain upright. “Nikkia, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“What?” she asked groggily.

“Trouble is here!”

As he started to comprehend what was happening, the ringing in his ears lessened slightly. AK fire chattered from outside the embassy, answered by Turkish shouts and a scream. The sounds of gunfire came more frequently now — and louder. Mordet’s men must’ve entered the gate and were shooting their way to the building.

Chris peeked out of their room and down the hall toward the front of the building.

The racket of combat continued to increase. His pulse picked up speed, so he sucked in a deep shot of oxygen and calmed himself until an armed man appeared, shooting at Chris before he could react. He ducked back inside the room. “Come out with your hands where I can see them!” the terrorist yelled in Arabic.

Another AK shot rang out in the hall. Now it sounded like there were two tangos. In the back of his mind, he knew he might not survive, but he clung to hope, anyway. He looked at Hannah, who flashed him a brittle smile.

An AK poked into the room then. Chris prepared to head-butt the terrorist in the face. But when the tango entered, Chris realized the tango wasn’t a tango at all. He was Sonny.

Sonny saw Chris’s fighting eyes and body stance. “Don’t Taze me, bro,” he said in his pained nasal New York accent.

Hannah stared at Sonny. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Super Jew,” Sonny replied, sticking his chest out.

Chris wasn’t sure he could trust him — he didn’t even know who Sonny worked for — but he wasn’t going to turn down a rescue, and now wasn’t the time for a conversation. “The naked man on the donkey,” he explained. “Sonny.”

Sonny pulled out some keys. “Two-Face gave me these and told me to get you two out of here while he evacuates the dip-dunks.” Sonny unlocked Chris’s handcuffs. Chris looked at his watch: 2018 hours. He pressed the compass button on his watch and quickly checked his bearings — it was time to go, and he didn’t want to end up lost.

Sonny unlocked Hannah’s handcuffs. “Tangos are overrunning the embassy,” he said. “Don’t have much time.” He poked his head into the hall and looked both ways. “Let’s go.” He ventured out of the room. Chris and Hannah followed.

Just outside the door, they stepped over a motionless wide-eyed Arab leaking crimson on the vanilla tiles. Chris’s arms and hands fought to regain proper circulation, but he managed to pick up the terrorist’s AK. Sonny quickly ushered them to the back of the building. Chris motioned for Hannah to follow directly behind Sonny so Chris could protect their flank. They hurried single file down the hall.

Chris glanced over his shoulder. Two terrorists moved into the hall. Now the stakes were much higher than defending himself. Now he was defending Hannah and Sonny, and he’d rather die himself than let them get hurt.

“Contact, rear!” Chris shouted, pivoted and took aim while standing.

“Contact, rear!” Hannah and Sonny echoed.

The fear of failing his teammates cranked the panic throttle wide open, and anxiety flooded over Chris. Both terrorists brought their AKs up to their shoulders to fire. The faster terrorist presented the most immediate threat. Chris’s sights wobbled over the tango’s head while his finger quickly took out the slack in the trigger. All his senses screamed to jerk the trigger the rest of the way before they jerked theirs, but in the back of his mind, Ron Hickok’s voice calmly said, Squeeze. Chris’s finger exerted pressure straight to the rear without causing the rest of his hand or more than the trigger to move. The first terrorist’s head flopped back, and he back flopped to the floor.

The second terrorist fired. One round stung Chris’s shoulder, and wall plaster sprayed the side of his face. The throttle of fear closed tightly shut, leaving Chris in serenity as he squeezed the trigger again. And again. The second terrorist’s gut bent like it’d been hit by a baseball bat, and his head sprayed blood. The firing stopped.

The possibility that a shot might have killed Hannah or Sonny reopened the fear throttle. He wheeled around to see if they were injured.

Hannah and Sonny appeared fine. They burst through the exit at the end of the hall. Chris sprinted behind them, moving through the door before it closed.

Outside the main building and under the evening firmament, they were still inside the consulate compound — trapped like rats without an escape hole. To the south lay the German embassy, and beyond the trees and fence to the east stretched a busy multi-lane boulevard that ran from the northwest to the southeast.

From the west, three Arabs armed with AKs approached. When they noticed the trio, they abruptly halted with surprised looks on their faces. Before they could act, Sonny shredded the Syrian closest to him, and Chris terminated the man on the opposite end. Then Sonny and Chris converged on the poor bastard in the middle, filleting him with AK fire. The three Syrians hardly had time to know what hit them.

Chris gave Hannah his weapon before hurrying toward the three dead Arabs. As he reached the bodies, the main parking lot came into view. It held only a few vehicles, including the SUV with the Switchblade Whisper. Around it gathered a mob of nearly thirty terrorists, some celebrating by shooting their AKs in the air. There were too many of them, and Chris was too poorly equipped to take them on. Enjoy the celebration. This ain’t over yet.

Several tangos noticed Chris and broke away to chase him. He snatched an AK from one of the dead terrorists and slipped around the corner of the main building, out of sight. Chris ran into a cluster of trees. Sonny had already scaled the fence and was on the other side providing cover with his weapon. Next to him lay Hannah’s weapon while she made her way over the fence.

Chris wished the AK had a sling so he could strap it on his back, leaving his hands free to scale the fence, but it didn’t. The space between the black vertical iron bars on the fence was too narrow for him to squeeze through, but they were wide enough for him to hand his AK to Sonny, so he passed it through. Then he jumped and grabbed the horizontal rail near the top of the black fence. He pulled himself up and maneuvered over the spiked fence posts, which weren’t as sharp as they could be and weren’t razor-edged like concertina wire. Even so, one of the spikes snagged the inside of his pant leg, preventing him from descending. He became an easy target for the bad guys who’d just turned the corner of the building.

While Chris struggled to free his leg, Sonny and Hannah’s AKs spit heat at the tangos. Chris wiggled loose from the spike and dropped down beside Sonny and Hannah. He prepared to fire, but no one was left standing to shoot.

18

Vehicles crept along Ataturk Boulevard, their headlights illuminating the trio as they walked down the street with their AKs. Chris could feel the rubberneckers’ eyes on him, and while he was used to working covertly, here he was out in the open on foreign soil. Although Turkey was an ally, the polis wouldn’t be too pleased about three Americans running around the streets carrying AK rifles. He gripped the rifle tighter in his sweat-dampened palms.

Sonny used the lull in traffic to cross the boulevard. Hannah and Chris followed. In spite of the slowdown, the cars in one lane sped along as if they were oblivious to the situation or just didn’t care. After the trio dodged vehicles from both directions, they reached the other side. They passed between what looked like a broadcast studio building and a concert hall. The parking lots were empty, and only faint moonlight illuminated the crepuscular interiors of the buildings. Nearby, they found refuge in a cluster of evergreens. There they lay prone in a tight triangular defensive position covering the 360 degrees around them.

Because most of his gear had been confiscated by the deputy ambassador and his boys, Chris felt impotent without it. He tried not to dwell on the seeming hopelessness of the situation. Instead, his brain simmered for solutions.

He ejected the magazine from his AK and pressed down with his thumb on the top bullet of the magazine. He knew from the magazine’s size and shape that it could hold thirty rounds. His thumb sank deep in the magazine before he felt strong resistance. “I’m not injured, but I’ve only got half a magazine,” he whispered.

“Same,” Sonny said.

“I’m fine,” Hannah reported, “less than a full magazine.”

“Reverend and Infidel,” Sonny said with a smile, guessing their identities. “Reverend’s shooting and his uncanny ability to find a way to win and Infidel’s rep as a top spook are legendary. Unit guys still talk about you two. In a good way.”

Chris tested Sonny to see if he was who he said he was. “Two-Face must trust you a lot to give you the keys to the embassy.” Two-Face was in the Unit’s Bravo Squadron, so Chris purposefully gave the wrong squadron to see if Sonny would correct him. “Were you with him in Charlie Squadron?”

“I served in Alpha Squadron, but Two-Face was in Bravo,” Sonny said. “They call me Mr. Sunshine.” He smiled in the moonlight. “Because of my cheerful disposition.”

“Now that’s a name I recognize,” Chris said. “Not from your cheerful disposition but from how you terrorize terrorists.”

“Two-Face and I were both Rangers,” Sonny said. “Finished Selection together and entered the Unit at the same time.”

“Okay, boys. Enough chitchat. We need a phone,” Hannah said. “There’s an Agency station less than a klick from here. If I can call them, maybe they can help.”

“The deputy ambassador confiscated my lock-picking tools,” Chris said, “but if you think it’s worth the risk of setting off an alarm, I can break a window to get us inside the concert hall to use a phone.”

“Hopefully the fracas across the street will be enough to keep the neighborhood distracted,” Sonny said, “but a silent alarm will make for a long evening.”

“It’s worth the risk to me,” Hannah said.

Chris took them out of the trees and to the concert hall building, where he thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the nearest window, breaking it. No alarm sounded, but it was still possible the building had a silent alarm. He poked out the larger shards of glass before running his muzzle along the inside edges of the frame, clearing much of the remaining pieces. Finally, he maneuvered through the opening, trying not to touch the inside edges of the frame. Hannah and Sonny brought up the rear.

No guards had arrived. Yet.

Chris traversed the hall quickly until he found an office area. He motioned to one of the phones. “Knock yourself out.”

Hannah laid her AK across the desk, sat down, and made a call while Chris and Sonny stood guard.

Within minutes, Hannah turned to Chris, covered the mouthpiece on the phone, and said, “I’m getting the chief on the line now.” She waited for a moment before she spoke into the receiver: “Yes, sir. Our embassy in Ankara has been overrun by Syrian terrorists.” Then she paused. “I don’t know if the ambassador was in the compound or not,” she said. “I don’t know if the deputy ambassador actually made it out alive or not. I don’t know if anyone made it out alive other than us.” After another pause she said, “Yes, I’m still with Chris, and we have another person with us who works for the government, but what does that have to do with the embassy being overrun? There is sensitive equipment in an SUV parked inside the embassy that the terrorists can use to launch cyber attacks against the US!”

A police siren sounded.

“What does my location have to do with the embassy?” Hannah asked.

The siren became louder.

“No, I will not be put on hold!” Hannah slammed down the phone.

The sound of the siren became stationary in the direction of the embassy. From the same direction, someone shouted in Turkish over a PA speaker — probably a Turkish cop. An AK rattled, and the shouting stopped. Then the siren ceased. Engines started and vehicles seemed to be rolling away.

“Maybe the tangos are moving out,” Chris said.

Sonny held out his ring of keys. “Good. Because I’m guessing we’re not getting any Agency help on this one.” He turned to Hannah, and she shook her head. “So if the ragheads bug out, the compound will be clear for us to access the TOC. One of these keys should let us inside.” The TOC building was the Tactical Operating Center for the embassy compound. “We might find your weapons, ammo, and GPS tracker there. Hopefully some goodies for me, too.”

“We’d better hurry,” Hannah said. “Police will be swarming the embassy any minute, and we can’t let the tangos get away with the Switchblade Whisper.”

Chris opened the nearest window and climbed out. It was standard operating procedure not to travel the same path twice. No point in giving the enemy a chance to lay a booby trap or ambush, waiting for a SEAL’s return. “It’ll take time if we travel south around the German embassy,” Chris said. “After the attack on the US Embassy, all the embassies in the area are probably on alert, and the Germans won’t be pleased to see us armed with AKs near their compound.”

“But if we enter from the north, we risk bumping into the main force of the tangos or arriving police,” Hannah said.

“We’ll just have to take the same route back,” Sonny said.

Chris and Hannah nodded in agreement. So much for SOP.

After crossing the boulevard, Chris climbed over the same spiked fence. I hope we’re not walking into an ambush. When his feet touched the ground inside the embassy and no booby traps went boom, he thanked God. He probably should’ve felt the danger of their situation more, but his body was weary, and his nerves were numb. He covered the area with his AK while Hannah and Sonny climbed over. Maybe his opponents were waiting for them to join him in their kill zone before they launched their ambush. Hannah and Sonny arrived, but there was no ambush.

19

All over the fence now, Chris led them across the compound in search of the TOC. Car tires burned like misshapen donuts from Hell, long, flaming tongues tasting the paint of the vehicles as smoky flames gutted the interiors, casting impish shadows in the parking lot. Beyond the broken windows of the main building, the flaming interior raged from hot white in the center to burning yellow, fiery orange, and caldron red before fading into the black abyss of night. Except for the fires, the compound was eerily quiet. Chris led them across the compound in search of the TOC.

He stopped in front of the steel door of a small building that was separated from the others and hadn’t been burned — most likely the TOC. Sonny tried his master key, but it didn’t work. He kicked the door under the doorknob and reinforced lock. The door opened a crack. Sonny stepped to the side, and Chris took a kick at it. With a loud thud, the door budged open more, but it was still locked. “My turn,” Hannah said. When her kick struck the steel, it sounded like thunder. The door flew open, taking it off one of the hinges. It dangled on the remaining hinge like scrap metal. Chris had known she had it in her; even so, it was heart-juddering to behold. He held back a chuckle as Sonny stood slack-jawed, staring at her. Hannah walked through the door as if she’d done nothing special.

“United States Government!” she shouted when inside. “We’re here to help!”

“Damn, she’s hot,” Sonny said.

The trio proceeded through the building methodically clearing their way with their AKs. In one room, video of the compound streamed live on a panel of monitors. Beyond the surveillance room, they reached the armory, where Chris and Hannah found their weapons and ammo.

Chris was infectiously upbeat to reunite with his old friends: HK416 and Glock 19. Feelings of power and safety rushed through him once again, that spiritual connection energizing him. He took care of his weapons, and they took care of him. His firearms instructor, Ron Hickok, had once confided that he had a similar feeling for his firearms, and he’d said it was a necessary bond to achieve a level of shooting that transcended the capability of the individual and the weapon as separate entities.

Next to his weapon, he found his lighter among other items. He didn’t smoke, but he carried the lighter as a memento from darker days and a survival tool.

Chris liberated his ammo along with extra from the diplomatic security’s cache. Hannah did likewise. Sonny inspected an M4 rifle and compact .45 pistol. He took them and laid down his AK with a look of scorn.

“Commie piece of shit, anyway,” he grumbled.

They grabbed assorted grenades, breaching explosives, holsters, rifle slings, backpacks, energy gels, and more. Hannah found the most important pieces of gear — the two GPS trackers. She kept hers and tossed Chris the one he’d taken from Jim Bob and Victor. On a nearby table, they also located Jim Bob’s laptop and Victor’s cell phone.

“I’ll take you two as far as the gate,” Sonny said.

“You’re not coming with us?” Chris asked.

“Your mission isn’t my mission, and I need to get back to the Unit.”

Chris tried to enlist his aid. “You saw what Hannah and I are up against. That same threat is on its way to America.”

“Wish I could help. I’ll tell JSOC what you’re doing and see if they can provide assistance.”

Chris didn’t expect to be able to change Sonny’s mind. If the roles were reversed, Chris would do the same. “Okay.”

They finished gearing up, and true to his word, Sonny walked with them to the gate. In front of it, there were two bloody bodies — Salt-n-Pepper and Two-Face. Chris crouched down to check their vital signs: “They’re dead.” Chris looked up at Sonny, but his eyes remained on Two-Face, his expression unreadable.

Wailing sirens from a fleet of police cars sounded in the distance.

“Hannah and I can’t stick around here any longer,” Chris said. “I’m sorry about Two-Face.”

Sonny didn’t flinch.

“Sonny, you going to be okay?” Hannah asked.

“Do I look like I’m eating an ice cream sandwich?”

Hannah hushed; the sirens became louder.

“The three of us are going to find the pieces of shit who did this,” Sonny said. His voice was calm. “And I’ll go Guantanamo on them with a butcher knife and a brown rat.”

Chris knew the pain of losing friends in combat, but everyone grieved differently, and they grieved differently for different comrades. Some looked to Heaven for help, some drank, some immersed themselves deeper in their work, and some vowed revenge. For the loss of Two-Face, Sonny’s way of grieving was clear.

20

Assuming the point position, Chris jogged north through the city on foot, trying to create distance between his team and the embassy before the police arrived. He ran through a stretch of trees off Balli, the one-way road that ran south, to conceal their movement. Soon sirens came their way. The flashing lights of patrol cars lit up an area seventy-five meters ahead of Chris’s position. Before the patrol cars turned the corner, Chris dropped to the ground behind a tree. He looked back at Hannah and Sonny. They shadowed his movements, hiding on the ground behind trees. During the day, it would be easier for the police to spot their hasty attempt at concealment. Chris hoped the night would hide their sins.

Some people had better senses than others: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Similarly, Ron Hickok said that some people had a better sixth sense than others. On a number of occasions since childhood, when Chris sensed someone was watching him, he turned around to check, discovering his sense to be accurate. On occasion, he looked at someone who turned around to catch his gaze. If a Turkish cop was one of those with a heightened sixth sense, he wouldn’t have to see Chris and his teammates to sense they were there. Chris flushed all thoughts from his mind except for one: I am tree roots. He imagined the stillness of wood and felt the richness of the soil against his bark as he became one with the earth. He became so engrossed in his transformation that the growing intensity of the police lights and sirens disconnected from him. The lights flashed brighter, and the sirens blared louder — wrestling with his concentration and threatening to expose him. Chris clung to his metamorphosis. The patrol cars passed.

Hannah whispered the obvious. “We need a car.”

Chris opened his mind again, and the human thoughts returned. Move. They reached a gaggle of cars, many of them white Fords, perched alongside the road. The Turks bought more Fords than Americans did. He scanned for older models, easier to hotwire, but many were newer, equipped with modern anti-theft devices — and the windows were rolled up tight. Chris finally spotted an older model white Ford sedan. He tried the door handle. Locked. Next, he punched out a rear passenger window with his rifle muzzle and reached through to unlock the driver’s door.

Without missing a beat, Sonny opened the driver’s door, got in, reached over, and opened the front passenger door. Chris took his place beside him in the passenger seat, and Hannah sat in the back next to the seat with glass in it.

Sonny used his pocketknife blade to turn the ignition, but the car didn’t start. He unscrewed the cover over the steering wheel column. After tinkering around inside, the vehicle started. He revved the engine, but he couldn’t turn the steering wheel.

Chris opened his knife, leaned over and stuck it between the steering wheel and the top of the steering column. He snapped the steering lock, freeing the steering wheel.

Sonny frowned.

Chris and Hannah checked the screens on their GPS trackers again.

“The tangos have probably already removed whatever tracking devices either of you have on them,” Sonny said.

“And maybe they haven’t yet,” Chris said. “Drive us north until we can make a U-turn south.”

“You know this is a one-way street,” Sonny said, “and we’ll be going the wrong way.”

“Humor me,” he said. “We’ll be off the one-way in a flash.”

Sonny did as he was told.

Chris gave more directions.

Sonny made a U-turn and drove southeast on Ataturk Boulevard. “We’re going to pass by the embassy,” he grumbled. The police had swarmed around the embassy gates but still hadn’t entered. Maybe they knew what had happened to the first guy to arrive on the scene and were trying to figure out whether the terrorists were still inside or not. Sonny continued driving south.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived in the town of Golbasi, east of Mogan Lake. “My GPS shows the Switchblade Whisper stopping here in Golbasi,” Hannah said.

“Mine shows they continued south toward Syria,” Chris said.

“Just great,” Sonny interjected.

Chris showed his GPS tracker monitor. “Either they found one of the devices or both.”

“While we’re in Golbasi, I’d like to check it out,” Hannah said. “Turn left up here.”

Sonny turned off the main road and went east. He passed houses topped with clay, red-tiled roofs.

“This is a residential area,” Chris said.

“Maybe it’s an ambush,” Sonny said.

“Stop here,” Hannah warned. “We’re getting too close. We’re almost a hundred meters away.”

Chris pulled out the lighter he’d been carrying since his childhood abduction and flicked the lid anxiously.

Hannah read the distance on her GPS: “Fifty meters. Forty.”

They passed more houses.

“Thirty meters,” she said

“If this is an ambush,” Sonny said, “I won’t be pleased.”

“Twenty meters.”

Chris put away his lighter. “Only one way to find out.”

“Ten,” she said.

Sonny slowly applied the brakes. “Where is it?”

Hannah pointed to a white Renault parked in the driveway of a house. “The GPS tracker reads that it’s right there.” The lights in the home were on. Hannah stepped out of the car, strolled over to the vehicle, and laid down next to it. She tinkered underneath the vehicle before returning with an object in her hands. She got into her seat in the back and said, “Let’s go.”

Sonny released his foot from the brake and eased away from the curb.

Hannah looked at the tracking device in her hand. “I guess Syria is next.”

Sonny drove past the house with the Renault, made a couple turns, and returned to the main road. “Chris and I were lucky to blast through the border checkpoint terminals the first time,” he said.

“We might not be so lucky if we try that a second time,” Chris said.

“I know where the gaps are in Turkey’s border security,” Sonny said.

“Outstanding,” Chris said.

Hannah nodded.

Sonny made a pit stop in Golbasi to stock up on water before driving south. They drove straight through the night taking turns: one driving, one sitting as lookout/navigator, and one sleeping. In the early morning, Sonny came to a stop on the side of the road within sight of the Kasab Border Crossing Terminal. Turkey had beefed up security with barricades, canines, and extra guards. It seemed that the Turkish border patrol were doing thorough searches of each car leaving the country.

“There are more border patrol here on the main road than on the mountain,” Sonny said, “so our odds of sneaking around them are better if we hump over the mountain.” He turned around and backtracked away from the border patrol and further inland. Then he found a small road that led up a mountain on the border. “With all the recent shootings, the Turkish border patrol will have itchy trigger fingers, but they can’t shoot what they can’t see.”

“Turkish border patrol can shoot us for breaking the law, but we can’t shoot a NATO ally for upholding the law,” Hannah said.

Sonny flicked off the car lights. “That’s part of the challenge.”

“What’s the other part?” Hannah asked.

“In Syria, their border patrol shoots anything that moves,” Chris said. “If the shooting starts now, we may never reach Mordet in one piece, let alone with enough ammo to stop him.”

“I can get us past Turkish border patrol,” Sonny said with a serious face full of confidence.

“I’ll get us past Syrian border patrol,” Chris said.

Hannah nodded her head in agreement.

Sonny seemed to hesitate for a moment. Allowing Chris to lead them on the Syrian side was trusting Chris with his life. Sonny nodded in agreement, too.

The snaking paved road became a dirt road. Five klicks south of Yayladagi, on the Turkish border, Sonny drove the car off the road and into a grove, where he parked the vehicle. “We’re going to have to hoof it from here.”

They exited the sedan, gathered branches of evergreen needles, and camouflaged the car — not enough to conceal it from close, prying eyes but enough to conceal it from someone at a distance.

Sonny took the point. After him came Hannah then Chris. At a moderate pace, they hiked four klicks up the mountain, heading south toward Syria, until Sonny slowed.

If he saw something, he would’ve signaled, so we must be approaching a danger area.

Insects and occasional birds chirped but not nearly as loud as Chris’s heartbeat.

The trio slipped into a gully and continued slowly, lowering to a crouch. After fifty meters, Sonny quickly dropped to the earth. Hannah and Chris followed suit. Chris looked around, narrowing his gaze to try to spot the source of what spooked Sonny. There was no sound of rustling in the bushes or on the ground. A small, dark figure, an animal, swiftly waddled toward Sonny, who rose to his feet. The animal didn’t stop. Sonny spread his legs, and the animal passed under them. Hannah also rose to her feet and spread her legs. The dark little beast stood about one foot high and one foot across. Chris had already risen to his feet. He spread his legs apart to allow the animal passage. He turned to see if it would come back and harass them, but the creature disappeared around a bend in the gully.

Sonny resumed their journey at a crouch. Twenty-five meters later, he gradually lowered onto his hands and knees and signaled that there was a person ahead. Sonny led them in a crawl.

On top of the mountain, a few hundred meters above Chris and his teammates, a guard stood with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Although the sky was dark, the guard’s silhouette was darker, causing him to stick out. It wasn’t clear if the guard was facing toward the three or away from them. If the guard had chosen a spot ten feet down the mountain from his current position to stand, his silhouette would’ve been hidden by the darkness of the mountain. The pounding in Chris’s chest shot up his neck until it throbbed in his ears, hammering his skull.

The three followed the slanting gully to the right until Sonny low-crawled through a dip in the right bank, taking them out of the gully. Rather than go up the mountain and pass near the guard, they travelled a horizontal path on the mountain, creating distance between themselves and the guard. Tall, grassy weeds helped conceal their movement. After a hundred meters, the guard was no longer in sight, and Sonny eased into a ravine. The trio rose to a crouch, moving faster but still slowly, and followed the bottom of the ravine up the mountain. As they neared the top where two ridges dipped like a saddle, they dropped down on their bellies and crawled over the saddle, careful not to silhouette themselves against the sky. On the other side of the mountain, they slithered on their stomachs down into another ravine.

In the ravine, they patrolled at a crouch until they reached the bottom of the mountain, where they could walk upright. Finally, they crossed into Syria. Chris assumed the point and avoided the danger areas while finding safer routes.

The sun still lay hidden, but it changed the dark sky to grey as Chris and his team patrolled west until they arrived south of a Syrian town named Duz Aghaj. They stole another vehicle and headed south. Hannah drove the first leg with Sonny riding shotgun and Chris in the back.

Chris sucked on an energy gel pack and checked his GPS: seven and a half hours to Al-Bukamal. Located near the southeast end of the Euphrates River in Syria, near the Iraq border, Al-Bukamal was where Professor Mordet’s French plantation stood. He remembered the night he and his teammates had hidden in a field of wheat and first seen the back of that two-story building and its expansive roof. Each floor had those thin, white wooden columns, wide porches, and French doors. Still in Chris’s memory, the French colonial plantation house seemed so eerily out of place near the humble farmhouses that sat on small plots of land to the south. He had an uneasy feeling, but he tried to put it out of his mind and catch some sleep while it was his turn to rest. They still had a seven-and-a-half-hour drive, and there was no point to wearing himself out before they arrived. He was going to need every ounce of strength to stop Mordet from hacking into the Switchblade Whisper’s secrets and attacking America.

For thirty minutes, Hannah drove down Syria’s west coast until they passed Latakia.

Sonny made conversation, but the macho tone of his voice suggested that he was enamored with her.

“Where you from?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“I’m from New York,” he said with his chest sticking out.

“I figured that,” she said.

“Queens,” he offered up more.

She was the ultimate spook, pulling information out of people without even trying. “I grew up in Hawaii,” she said.

“Were you born there?”

“Born and raised,” she said.

Hannah had told Chris that she was from East LA, but now she was telling Sonny that she was from Hawaii. Question marks popped up in Chris’s mind, but only Hannah could answer them, so he ignored them and drifted to sleep.

Two and a half hours later, they switched roles. Chris took the wheel. He knew the roads, so he didn’t need a navigator, so Hannah only needed to keep a lookout for trouble. Sonny slept in the back, snoring loudly like a twenty-mike-mike auto cannon.

Hannah checked her cell phone. “The embassy attack is on the Internet news. Shortly after, some Turkish border patrol officers and innocent bystanders were killed at the Kasab Border Crossing Terminal.”

“Mordet,” Chris said.

“We really need to stop him.”

“Most definitely.” Chris wiped the sleep out of his eyes as they travelled east through the middle of Syria. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something,” he said, changing the topic. “Before I fell asleep, I heard you tell Sonny you’re from Hawaii.”

“Oh?” she said casually.

“But you told me you were from East LA.”

“Okay,” she said.

“So which is it?” he asked.

“Which what?”

“Are you from LA or Hawaii?”

“Which do you prefer?”

He felt awkward but pressed on. “That’s not what I asked.”

“Okay,” she said.

Chris modified his question. “Why would you tell us two different stories?”

“The less information you know, the better. If you’re ever captured, they’ll make you tell everything you know about me and everyone else so—”

Chris cut her off. “They won’t take me alive.”

Hannah became silent for a moment. “You depend too much on it.”

“On what?”

“Truth.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Truth is subjective and relative.”

“You really believe that?”

“Don’t you?” she asked.

“Truth is objective and absolute. It’s not so complicated.”

“Sometimes I like complications,” she admitted. “But most people believe what they want to believe. And …that is their truth.”

“What about you?” he asked. “What do you believe?”

“Whatever helps me thrive. That is my truth.”

They became quiet for a minute.

“You think Sonny would ever allow himself to be captured by terrorists?” she asked.

“I don’t know of any Unit guys who’d allow themselves to be taken alive. Sonny seems to have that same attitude.” Chris paused. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah replied. “I guess it would depend on the situation. After what Mordet did to your ear? After what he did to Young, and worse, my asset? Either we take Mordet down or die trying because I won’t be a warm meal for that maniac. He’ll have to eat me cold.”

21

In the afternoon, Sonny kept watch and an eye on the GPS tracker. “The signal just disappeared,” he said.

Chris drove. “Are you sure?”

“The GPS tracker shows our location on the map, but the device’s signal is gone.”

Chris drove to the Euphrates River and followed it south. Then he rolled into Al-Bukamal. “We should probably find a place to stage our gear,” Chris said.

“Sounds good.”

He drove them to a run-down part of town where he found a motel and parked in back. “I’m going to rent us a place,” he said.

“You need backup?” Sonny asked.

He smiled. “Not this time.”

“Good. I’ll wake up Sleeping Beauty, then.” Sonny winked, and Chris just shook his head.

Minutes later, he returned with a key. Hannah and Sonny exited the car, and Chris escorted them on foot to a run-down motel that rented rooms out by the hour. Inside the room, he unlocked the door, reached in, and turned on the light. A cockroach scurried away. The small, dingy room for two felt cramped with the three of them inside, but it could’ve been worse. They took turns showering in the worn and rusted bathroom.

After they’d all freshened up, Hannah said, “I want the Switchblade Whisper’s black box.” Determination was etched across her features, hard and cold like marble.

“I want to kill Mordet,” Sonny added.

“If this op is successful, there’ll be no shooting,” Chris reminded him. “We’ll insert quietly, grab the black box, and exfil like ninjas. If it hits the fan, there’ll be no air support or QRF, so we’ll be on our own.”

“Can’t blame a guy for wanting,” Sonny said.

They made plans while preparing their gear.

“I nominate Chris to be point man on this,” Sonny said. “He’s been here before, and he knows the area best.”

“Agree,” Hannah said.

“Most of the people in this area would rather kill an American than look at one,” Chris said. “They won’t ask to hear our cover story. And it’s possible that Mordet will be waiting to ambush us.”

“We’ll need to carry a lot more than pistols,” Sonny said.

Chris and Hannah agreed.

After staging his gear, Chris studied the GPS again and again to make sure he knew the area. Preparations complete, they waited until midnight, when they loaded into their stolen sedan and motored to the edge of town.

Hannah kept her eyes on the street as Chris drove. “It’s too quiet,” she said.

“Like they’re expecting us,” Chris said.

Chris parked the car beside a small school. Others had parked their vehicles there, too. They stepped out of their car, and carrying their rifles and some grenades, Chris led them quickly across the school grounds to a dark patch of weeds under trees blocking the moonlight. They lay there for fifteen minutes to make sure no one was alerted to their insertion, while a pair of flies buzzed around them.

When it seemed no welcoming committee was on its way, Chris slipped across a paved street and descended concrete stairs to a filthy area that seemed like a cross between a parking lot, a backyard, and a road. Half a burned-out car lay in the weeds. Like many places his missions had taken him, it was difficult to figure out where one property ended, another began, and where public property was.

They turned a corner and stepped over concrete bricks scattered on a walkway made of large concrete tiles. Then they passed between two houses. Weeds poked up between cracks in the concrete. They descended another flight of steps to a dirt road that led uphill. The sound of footsteps crossed behind one of the houses, but it wasn’t clear who, what, or exactly where.

Chris led them through the maze of buildings. Thinking about finding Mordet’s plantation sped up his breathing and heart rate. It had been years since he’d infiltrated the area, and this was the first time he’d passed through the city on the way to the plantation. The source of much of his anxiety was his desire to keep his teammates safe.

Someone darted across the alley up ahead, then he was gone. Not good. Chris hand signaled the sighting back to Hannah who signaled it back to Sonny. Then someone else passed. Not good. Once more, Chris passed back the signal. Did they see us insert? Probably not. Do they know we’re coming? Mordet might’ve put them on alert. Do Mordet’s friends know when we’re coming? Probably not.

After patrolling past a public trash receptacle, they turned down another alley. Suddenly, a young man in his twenties appeared carrying an AK. He aimed the AK at Chris. It happened so fast that he had no time to think — only time to react. It was the kid or Chris, and if the kid took Chris out, he might take out Hannah or Sonny, too, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. He fired twice into the kid’s chest and once to his head. Chris’s sound suppressor was quieter than a rifle shot, but it wasn’t silent. Someone had probably heard the noise but wouldn’t know that it was a rifle shot. If that someone discovered the body, the real shooting would begin, sooner rather than later. There was no time for gazing into his belly and contemplating the tragedies of war, and there was no time to feel sorrow for the kid or his parents, who’d never get to say good-bye. Even if there was time, Chris couldn’t carry such burdens of sorrow on top of the burdens of keeping his friends alive and accomplishing the mission. If Chris wanted his friends to survive, he had to keep his head in combat mode.

He moved swiftly to the body, picked up the AK, handed it to Hannah, and signaled for her and Sonny to guard him. Chris picked up the bloody kid using a fireman’s carry and went back to the public trash bin. He raised the lid and dumped him inside — for a minister, such a burial was unthinkable, but for a SEAL, such a burial was necessary. Chris locked compassion and mercy inside a box, and replaced them with ruthless efficiency. He grabbed the AK from Hannah and tossed it in with the kid before closing the lid.

Chris resumed walking the point. They crossed an asphalt street and kept close to the buildings to stay out of the moonlight. He was careful not to walk too close to the buildings, though. If shooting broke out, bullets would have the tendency to skip along walls until they struck someone. He didn’t want to be that someone.

They turned another corner, passed through an empty lot, and climbed up some stairs. Most of the buildings were shaded variations of white or grey. The whole city was starting to look the same.

Am I traveling in circles?

He wanted to check his GPS but disciplined himself not to — a lit screen would draw too much attention to him. Instead, he made a mental note of the business signs written in Arabic above store entrances and used them as landmarks.

The shops and other buildings gave way to farmland, first on the right side of the road, then the left, until they traversed through fields and passed farmhouses. The trio made their way into a patch of date palm trees that bordered Professor Mordet’s land. The trees would give them cover and concealment. Chris lay down behind a palm tree, and Hannah and Sonny joined him on the ground. They observed the front of the two-story French colonial plantation house. This time, its presence lacked the eeriness of last time.

“Something is different,” Chris whispered, but he couldn’t quite discern what it was.

“Maybe you’re different,” Sonny said. “It’s been awhile since you’ve been here.”

“Maybe.” Then he remembered: the heavy hand of gloom that had pressed down on him the last time he was here; it wasn’t pressing down on him this time. Maybe Mordet isn’t here.

A guard sat on a large wooden chair outside on the first floor porch with an AK lying across his lap. There would be at least one other guard on the back porch and one inside. Chris and Sonny circled around to the left of the guard, and Chris administered him his last rites.

Hannah linked up with Chris and Sonny, and they crept around to the back, but there was no guard there. They continued around the building until they reached a door on the side of the house, and Chris picked the lock without any difficulty. Chris opened the door. It all felt too easy.

Sonny rushed in and commanded the living room. Hannah and Chris followed. The fancy furniture and French windows looked the way he remembered. They methodically scoured the first floor. This time, he had only two teammates, and it took more than twice as long to clear the rooms. Although Hannah was talented at room clearing, more than many military guys, her Agency training and experiences didn’t focus on it; rather, her training and experience focused on recruiting agents in hostile countries and using those agents to gather intelligence. Even though room clearing stretched Hannah’s job description, her ability to run with the big dogs was impressive. First deck clear.

Similarly, they worked through the upper deck until they reached Professor Mordet’s room. This time, the heavy feeling wasn’t present. Chris checked the doorknob. It turned.

He pushed the door open, and Sonny stormed inside. Hannah moved behind him, and Chris brought up the rear. The bed was made and there was no sign of Mordet.

“Where is he?” Sonny asked.

Chris shook his head.

They searched his room and the rest of the second floor for intelligence and put a laptop, flash drives, DVDs, papers, and other materials in their backpacks.

Minutes later, they worked through the first deck, including the kitchen.

Hannah opened the refrigerator. “There’s no food in here,” she said. “He’s not likely to come back anytime soon.”

Sonny grabbed a container of bottled water and took a drink. “Maybe he eats out a lot.”

Her eyes shifted to an odd-looking squat white pot sitting on a counter plugged in to a wall. “Whoa,” she said.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

She walked over to the pot and opened the top. “Looks like a dehydrator.” She took the top off. Inside were three trays stacked on top of each other. The top tray was clean. She pulled the first tray off and examined the second tray — nothing. In the bottom tray she found something — a piece of dried meat.

Sonny reached for it. “Beef jerky.”

“You don’t know who that might be,” Chris said.

Sonny appeared confused. “What?”

“Professor Mordet likes to eat people,” Hannah explained. “Let me bag that.”

Sonny’s confused face twisted into disgust. “What in God’s name?”

“Not in God’s name,” Chris said. “About as far from God as Satan can hide.”

She opened drawers and looked inside them.

“Who do you think it is?” Chris asked.

She found a Ziploc bag, sealed the dried meat in it, and pocketed the bag. “We’re going to find out.”

They examined the living room and dining area before Chris checked a storage closet. It was bare except for an old shirt hanging from a hook. Chris pushed aside the shirt. Mounted on the exposed wall was a security alarm monitor. Two small lights were blinking red like machine gun fire: armed and alarm.

22

Chris ran into the living room. “We tripped an alarm!”

Hannah dropped a pillow on the couch. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Go, go, go!” Sonny shouted.

Chris glanced out the front window. Truckloads of men armed with AKs rolled up the road toward the plantation.

“They’re out front!” he said. “Take the back door!” Hannah was closest to the back door and reached it first. She unlocked it, threw it open, and dashed. Sonny and Chris followed close behind.

Outside, Chris’s feet hit the dirt at a sprint. They’d covered the first twenty-five meters through open territory when someone shouted in Arabic, “There they are!” A truckload of men gave chase. More truckloads followed. Chris had a vague sense of shots being fired, but he didn’t know if he’d felt the heat or heard the pop. In that moment, he was more worried about getting run over by a truck than getting hit by a bullet. The engine noises became louder, the vehicles getting closer. Before the trucks could strike them, though, the trio diverted into a patch of palms. The trucks stopped, and the occupants jumped out to pursue Chris’s team on foot.

Chris ran as fast as he could, but it didn’t seem fast enough, especially when he exited the cover of the trees and hauled ass through an open field, exposed to gunfire. Now his pursuers were close behind. They had the advantage of numbers, but Chris had the advantage of being scared. He pumped his thighs harder and faster. His feet struck awkward angles in the furrowed field, and he stumbled but didn’t fall.

He weaved around one farmhouse then another, using the buildings to block incoming bullets. One truck full of Syrians sped parallel to their right flank. The noise of AK rounds reported from their location. This time, he heard the distinctive sonic snaps of slugs that were meant for him.

The trucks turned onto a dirt road that threatened to cut off their escape.

We have to make it across the road. If we can make it to the city buildings ahead, we’ll escape their line of fire.

Noise and heat in the air increased like the inside of a popcorn popper. Chris dug deep inside of himself to muster every last atom of strength as he bounded over the road ahead of Hannah and Sonny.

Gotta lose these AKs.

Hannah and Sonny followed close behind. Chris passed between two buildings then cut a diagonal route left through the first block of buildings in the city, giving his team some protection from the enemy’s sight and bullets. They bolted through an outdoor market, closed for the evening.

Then they cut a right diagonal and ran straight under an arch. In front of them, a road stretched seventy-five meters until it reached a three-story-tall sandstone minaret. Chris’s eyes swiftly followed from the base to the shaft and up to the gallery on top. Instead of a call for prayer, a flash of light and a bang emitted from inside from the gallery.

Something that felt like a hot knife sliced the side of his neck. “Shit!” he yelled.

He spun 180 degrees, retreated, and bumped into Hannah. He grabbed her and pulled her under the arch and around the corner. Damn. Given the choice between fighting one sniper or truckloads of militia, Chris chose the sniper. He gestured toward the sniper’s location and signaled for Hannah and Sonny to defend his flank while he tried to take out the threat. He crawled behind a car parked on the curb. Lying on his belly, he poked his head and rifle around the tire until the minaret gallery came into view. Pushing farther, he spotted the gallery window opening and the sniper. Only the sniper’s upper shoulders and head were exposed. The sniper was no dummy. Chris would have to attempt a head shot, and if he didn’t shoot accurately and fast enough, the sniper would nail Chris’s head in the dirt.

He hardly had time to briefly assess the situation. The surrounding buildings blocked the wind, so a breeze wouldn’t cause his round to drift. Then he calculated the approximate distance and height of the sniper’s head from the ground. He adjusted his aim. There was no time to wait for the calm pause between his lungs inhaling and exhaling, so he held his breath to keep his lungs still. He squeezed the trigger efficiently — slow enough not to jerk it and throw off his aim but fast enough to have a fighting chance. He felt helplessly suspended without control in the fraction of a second before the truth be known.

A metallic crack sounded above his head. A sniper bullet hit the car bumper. His heart skipped a beat, but he was in a zone, and it didn’t matter.

The rifle’s butt stock recoiled sweetly in his shoulder. He already knew the result before he saw it. Perfect. The sniper’s bloodstained head slowly descended below the window sill.

Remembering the sniper’s first shot, Chris touched his neck — no blood. Weird. He crawled back out of his position.

“I can’t believe you said shit,” Hannah whispered.

Chris stood up to a crouch, still mostly concealed by the vehicle, and scanned the area. A ladder led up to the ledge beside the arch. He climbed up to the ledge and poked his head around the corner, looking out over the arch. A second-floor window in a building to the right had the best strategic field of fire to cover a large area. Chris saw the safest route to reach the position. He wasn’t the only one who recognized the strategic value of the window. Someone poked his AK out of it and panned toward him. Chris took a shot before the man in the window could take his. The man slumped out of sight.

Chris slid back down the ladder. He climbed up on the roof of a car, and Hannah and Sonny followed. Chris jumped from the car, grabbed a ledge, and pulled himself up to the second floor. Now they were terribly exposed to multiple angles of fire: street avenues, windows, doorways, building corners, and surely more places he couldn’t see. He had to move quickly to exit the danger zone. When he arrived in front of the second-floor strategic window, he came face-to-face with another man wielding an AK. Shit. He didn’t even aim, jerking the trigger four times at point-blank range. The man shook like a scarecrow in a windstorm. They were still exposed outside on the ledge, and he didn’t wait for the man to fall out of his path. He jabbed him with the HK416 muzzle and knocked him to the floor.

Chris bounded inside — a bedroom. He capped a round in the skulls of the two bodies on the floor, stepped over them, and turned a corner.

He followed a staircase down, but before he reached the landing, another man appeared. Chris and the man fired at each other at the same time. One round grazed Chris’s shoulder, but Chris’s round tore into the guy’s chest, followed swiftly by a second round. The man tumbled backward down the steps, out of sight. Chris rounded the corner of the landing. The body lay on its back on the stairs, his head pointed to the bottom. Chris administered the coup de grace — he would take no chances of tangos rising from the dead.

Chris climbed the steps and hooked up with Hannah and Sonny in the bedroom. “With all the activity here,” he said, “the rest of the neighborhood seems to know the strategic value of this window. Now this spot doesn’t seem like such a great idea anymore.”

“But this is prime real estate to knock the piss out of them,” Sonny said. “Then they’ll leave us alone, so we can get out of here.”

“I agree,” Hannah said.

“Okay,” Chris said. “Hannah, take that corner on the first landing and watch the stairs to the bottom floor and the front door. If they toss a grenade up the stairs to the landing or you get in too much trouble, retreat upstairs here to Sonny’s position.”

“I want this window,” Sonny said.

“It’s a magnet for bullets,” Chris said.

Sonny raised an eyebrow. “Find your own window, bitch.”

Chris couldn’t help but smile. He shifted his attention back to the situation. If he took the exposed ledge outside to the left, he could crouch down in a dark corner between the buildings. Although it wouldn’t protect him from bullets, he should be able to spot the bad guys before they spotted him. Most of their attention would be directed away from him, toward the window, anyway. It was probably a risk worth taking. The tangos in the trucks would show up any moment.

It’s now or never.

“All right,” Chris said. “Coming through.” He passed Sonny, stepped out the window onto the ledge, and crept several meters to the place where two buildings pressed against each other. He crouched down.

The faint sound of a sound-suppressed rifle came through the bedroom window. It sounded farther away than Sonny’s position, so Chris figured Hannah had added a corpse to the stairs.

Ahead on the ground lay a T-section of dirt road. A man poked his head around a building, but his gaze remained on ground level, never rising to the second floor. Chris took him out with a head shot. The HK416 produced no flash, and its sound was no louder than the puff of a BB gun. Next, a burly guy with a machine gun jogged into the T-section, oblivious to the kill zone he’d just entered. Sonny planted him in the middle of the street.

More men with AKs appeared. Chris watched them carefully, noting that either their eyes stayed at ground level or they looked up at Sonny’s window. It was as if Chris were invisible in the shadow of the second-story ledge. As fast as the AKs arrived, Chris and Sonny dropped them. Several moved in from different locations, turning left and right — confused. Chris shot them from the front, side, and behind. Soon bodies littered the area.

The sound of someone sneaking around the corner drew Chris’s attention. It sounded like two, maybe three of them. He grasped a grenade, pulled the pin, and eased the spoon so it wouldn’t fly off and make any noise. No sense in exposing his position. He cooked off two seconds, leaving only two seconds on the fuse, then gave it a sidearm toss. The men barely had time to shout before it exploded.

Chris’s heart pumped more adrenaline, which fed euphoria to his brain. He recognized the feeling. Just as he began to enjoy the slaughter, he mentally pulled himself back — there should be no joy in killing. This is a job.

On the ground in front of him, someone opened a shop door. That someone crouched and neared the doorway to take aim at Sonny’s window, but Chris had a clear shot at the crouching man. Chris gave him a sudden rug nap. At the same moment, Sonny opened fire on a position that Chris couldn’t see.

Then a man emerged who was tall like the man who’d kidnapped Chris as a child, the man whose lighter Chris carried in his pocket. His name was Kalil, more commonly known by his nickname, Little Kale. But Chris hadn’t seen Little Kale’s face then, and he had no idea what he looked like now, other than that he was impressively tall.

If you want a piece of us, come on. Come on.

Tall Man snuck between buildings toward Chris’s position. Chris aimed, but Tall Man ducked behind a truck. When he reappeared, Chris aimed, but Tall Man passed behind a pillar, blocking Chris’s shot. Then he was gone.

Chris wanted to curse, but he held back.

No one else ventured into the kill zone. Initially Chris experienced disappointment that there were no more opponents to waste. There should be no joy in killing. They’d already stayed longer than they should in the same location. Even though it seemed as if no more challengers would come, it would only take one talented shooter, someone who knew the environment better than Chris, to put an end to his evening, or an end to one of his teammates — forever. Tall Man had escaped, but he could be the one to bring back that talented shooter. Chris told Sonny he was coming in off the ledge. They closed the shooting shop and eased out of the building.

Patrolling through the streets, Chris’s rifle and backpack weighed heavier, and he was unsteady on his feet — the extended firefight had drained him. He turned around to make sure Hannah and Sonny were still with him. They dragged their steps a bit. All three of them were tired. Even so, they had to get out of there.

23

Before sunrise, they returned to their hotel room and cleaned their gear and topped off their ammo and water — ready to go again. Hannah excused herself to make a quick phone call.

When she returned, she put away her phone and turned to Chris. “You remember when we were in Iraq and my Syrian asset helped track down Mordet?”

Chris took the bullets from a nearly empty magazine and inserted them in a partially used magazine, so he’d have one whole. “Yes, his code name was Viper.”

“Well, I just talked to him, and he said he has some information. He agreed to see what more he can find out before meeting with us for dinner tonight at 1800,” she said.

“Just like that?”

“For the usual price,” Hannah said.

Chris finished loading his magazine. “Sounds a little too good to be true, but what other choice do we have?”

“He found Mordet once before,” she reminded him.

“Viper is known for being ideologically promiscuous.”

“But he’s loyal to money.”

“Anyone with money,” Chris said. “When you go to this meeting, he might already have sold you to Mordet.”

Hannah shrugged. “Anything is possible. You and Sonny can tag along in case things go south. Unless you have a better idea.”

He didn’t have a better idea, so he nodded.

During the morning and afternoon, they took turns: one resting on the bed and two standing watch and analyzing the intelligence gathered at Professor Mordet’s plantation. They were unable to figure out the password on his laptop to access his information, and the rest of the materials they’d gathered yielded little information. Chris sighed. What a waste.

As the time of their meeting approached, all three holstered concealed pistols. They departed the hotel room and drove to a nearby town, where they located the restaurant — the Mesopotamia. On the outside of the building, rows of large limestone blocks in white, tan, light orange, and basalt black alternated like good, evil, and in-between. Indoors, tall arched windows filled the Mesopotamia with light. The restaurant might not seem to be a likely target for a suicide bomber, but Chris chose a table farthest from the windows just in case someone decided to make boom-boom. And in case trouble started inside the restaurant, he noted where his escape routes were, including through a window and the back through the kitchen. He looked at customers’ hands first and then their faces — searching for danger — but no one showed any signs of malice.

Sonny pointed to a table in the corner. “I’ll take the table over there and cover you two,” Sonny whispered before veering off.

They sat at their tables, and Chris glanced at his watch—1730. Better to be early before someone had time to set up an ambush than to be on time and discover that an ambush has been sprung.

At 1745, Viper strolled through the front door and casually looked around. He was in his thirties with thick, wavy jet-black hair, like some kind of Syrian playboy. He spotted Hannah first and then Chris. Viper’s lips shifted between a smile and a frown. He stopped at their table. “Our dinner wasn’t until six o’clock. You’re early,” he said in fluent English.

Hannah stood and grinned. “You’re early, too.”

“Who is this?”

“He’s with me.” Hannah hugged Viper loosely, and his lips settled into a smile.

Chris smiled as genuinely as he could fake.

“Please, sit down,” she said.

Viper took a seat across from Hannah. “The steak here is to die for.”

“I haven’t come all the way to Syria for steak,” Hannah said.

“Of course not. Do you have the money?”

“Yes, but you know what I need first.”

“Of course,” he said as if it were a game.

A waitress came to their table with menus, but Chris, Hannah, and Viper already knew what they wanted and ordered. The waitress brought Viper and Hannah Al-Shark, malt beers. Chris had ayran, a salty yogurt beverage.

Hannah’s eyes focused on Viper like lasers. “What did you find out about Professor Mordet?”

“After you first captured him in Syria and interrogated him, he was transferred to another facility, where he escaped within a few weeks.”

Hannah sipped her beer. “Just recently, we saw him in Turkey. Do you know where he is now?”

“America,” Viper said.

Her jaw dropped slightly, but she covered it up quickly. “How’d he get into America?”

“A year ago, he set up a dummy film production in France and ordered a silicone mask from Hollywood. He paid ten thousand American dollars for it — it came with silicone arms, too.” Viper chuckled. “Some Chinese guy used a cheaper version to fool airport authorities in Hong Kong once. The one Professor Mordet ordered makes him look like an elderly white man. Iranian intelligence is always helping out Syrian intelligence, and Iran made him one fake Canadian passport to go with the mask identity and another one that matches his picture without the mask. He didn’t know when or where he’d use it, but he wanted to be prepared when the opportunity arose. I don’t know which passport he would’ve entered America on. Maybe he snuck across the border from Mexico or used some other method.”

“Where was he headed to in America?” she asked.

Viper took a sip of his beer. “I don’t know.”

“This information is hardly worth our drinks,” she said.

“He flew off on some jihad against the US.”

Hannah rolled her eyes at the man. “I could’ve figured that much.”

“Professor Mordet works with a guy named Little Kale.”

Chris anxiously fingered the lighter in his pocket, but he tried not to show any feelings on his face.

It couldn’t be the same guy. No way.

The waitress brought their food. “Now we’re talking,” Hannah said.

After days living almost exclusively on energy gel, Chris could hardly wait for a warm meal. The waitress placed his plate before him: kibbeh, minced balls made of lamb, pine nuts, onion and bulgur wheat. The kibbeh waded with herb-roasted tomatoes and citrus in warm yogurt sauce. His mouth watered. Using his fork, he stabbed into a ball, splitting it and releasing a wisp of steam. Despite how hungry he was for a warm meal and how heady it looked, he couldn’t eat — not while something more important burned inside him.

Chris put down his fork. “Can I ask a question?”

Viper looked at Hannah, and she nodded.

Chris’s heart raced like a Formula One race car. Breathe. He tried to slow it down before he spoke. “What do you know about Little Kale?”

“He’s a thick-witted thug in the shabiha,” Viper said. “Shabiha are the ‘ghosts,’ an armed militia that work for the Al-Assad family. Little Kale started out as a smuggler for the shabiha, sneaking food and cigarettes into Lebanon to sell on the black market for insane amounts of money. The shabiha would pay a cut to the Assads. Coming back the other way, he smuggled drugs, guns, and expensive cars from Lebanon into Syria — all sanctioned by the Assad family, who, again, received a cut.”

“And then?”

Viper took another drink. “Over the years, Little Kale tried to score bigger deals, but he lacked charisma and political savvy. His talent lay elsewhere — kidnapping and killing. As he racked up more and more snatches and hits, his reputation spread, but his inability to gain followers, connect with peers, and impress superiors hurt his career. He was frequently passed over for promotion. He stayed in the shabiha like a beast harnessed to a plow.”

“Did he have a family?” Chris asked.

“His home life was worse. His only child committed suicide, and his wife wanted a divorce. He wouldn’t give it to her, so she left to live with her parents.”

Chris took a sip, trying to remember anything he could about the man. “How’d he come to work for Professor Mordet?”

“The shabiha had become too powerful,” Viper continued, “and in the 1990s, the Assad family shut them down. Professor Mordet was a mercenary who needed a thug, so he hired Little Kale to work for him. Little Kale bristled at answering to someone younger than him and detested Professor Mordet’s … culinary choices.”

“Culinary choices?” Chris already knew something about Mordet’s cannibalism, of course, but he wanted to know what intel Viper had.

“When Professor Mordet was a kid, he was in a plane wreck and ate his sister. Since then, he has continued to eat people.”

“Years ago, when I spoke to him, he told me he ate human flesh, but he said his sister left to find help and froze to death. As if he didn’t actually eat his sister. Are you sure?”

“Positive. Her name was Ha’la.”

Maybe Mordet was embarrassed that he’d eaten his sister. Such a seemingly insignificant detail could be a key to a weakness of Mordet, but they would have to find him first in order to exploit it. Chris sat forward on the edge of his seat. “Did Little Kale go to the US with Professor Mordet?

“I don’t know.”

“You got an address for him?”

Viper seemed hesitant.

“Address,” Hannah repeated sternly.

Viper tapped his cell phone screen, as if searching, before reading off the address.

The three ate their meal in virtual silence, and when they finished, Viper left the table first. After he was out of sight, Chris looked Hannah straight in the eyes. “While we’re in the neighborhood, I’d like to visit an old acquaintance.”

24

Hannah drove as they went on a vehicular recon of the two blocks surrounding Little Kale’s house. There seemed to be no danger spots in the outer area, so they drove in for a closer observation. The lights were out. “Doesn’t look like anyone is home,” Hannah said.

She parked nearby before the three of them un-assed the vehicle and walked to Little Kale’s house. Chris picked the lock on the back door, and they slipped inside. He lived like a slob with food crumbs and wrappers on the floor and a pungent odor in the air. Chris’s skin itched as if little bugs were crawling all over him.

They cleared each room and found no sign of him, so for the next ten minutes, they searched for information. They confiscated a laptop, papers, and other materials.

Back at their motel room, Hannah handed Little Kale’s laptop to Chris and said, “You’re the most fluent in Arabic.”

Chris powered up Little Kale’s laptop, but he needed a password to proceed. He typed numbers in order: 1, 2, 3… Nothing. Next he used the Arabic word for password. After trying more combinations, names, and other words and phrases, he typed killer. The image on the monitor changed from the security screen to the desktop.

Next, he clicked open the email and searched through messages. He also checked the email trash folder, where he found a user name for a jihad website: kalil9/11. Chris launched the web browser and checked the history of websites visited. There he found a travel webpage. He clicked on the login button and typed in kalil9/11 for the username and killer for the password. The screen paused while the laptop processed something. A new page appeared on the screen. “Maybe Little Kale didn’t stick around to fight us because he had a plane to catch this morning,” Chris said.

“You found his itinerary?” Hannah asked.

“He used a local agent to book his tickets online.”

Hannah peered over Chris’s shoulder. “Viper was right. This Little Kale isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

Chris translated the Arabic on the monitor. “Final destination — Washington, DC.” Although Americans might get a sense of security from the government’s no-fly list, for experienced terrorists like Professor Mordet and Little Kale, the no-fly list was something they wiped their asses with.

“I’ve got to call someone,” Hannah said.

Chris and Sonny made sure they were ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Hannah used her cell phone to make her call. “This is Hannah Andrade. I need to speak to the chief about an attack on the US.” She hit the speaker button, so Chris and Sonny could hear their conversation, and they waited. A man with a baritone voice wasted no time in telling her what was on his mind: “Hannah, you and Christopher Paladin were captured in Turkey for selling the Switchblade Whisper to the Chinese, the attempted murder of Jim Bob Louve, and the murder of Victor Shivlin and Maximilian Wolfeschlegelaltona. Then you instigated an assault on the embassy to free yourselves. A lot of good people died.”

Sonny’s face and muscles tensed as if he were about to crawl through the phone and punch the guy. Lucky for the chief this wasn’t a face-to-face or Chris might have beaten Sonny to it.

“Jim Bob and Victor tried to kill us before they sold the Switchblade Whisper,” she said. “Then Chris and I recovered it—”

The chief cut her off. “You have to come in and straighten this out personally.”

“I went into our embassy in Turkey to straighten this out personally,” Hannah shouted, “and Professor Mordet razed the embassy and stole the Switchblade Whisper! Now he’s in the US, and soon he’s going to use the black box to figure out how to hack into the nation’s critical infrastructure. The Secret Service is worried about a possible attack on the White House, and I’m concerned about how many Americans this madman is going to kill! And who’s going to stop Mordet if I’m in some embassy rotting under custody again or dead?”

“I’ll send your message upstairs,” the chief said.

Hannah took a deep breath. “You have to do more than that. You have to make them listen.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I hope so. America depends on it,” she said.

“I understand.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Jim Bob sent your alias and Paladin’s along with your real identities to the Department of Homeland Security. If you try to use those at a US airport or other port of entry, they’ll flag you.”

“Can you get us new passports then?” she asked.

Chief was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. People are very emotional right now, and Jim Bob is fanning the flames. But I’ll talk to some people upstairs and tell your side of the story.”

“Straighten it out with me! Right here, right now, damn it!”

“Where are you?”

Hannah shrank and, in a rare moment, seemed fragile. “You’d rather believe Jim Bob, wouldn’t you? Anything that would mean you aren’t in danger.”

“Hannah?”

“You’re tracing the call right now, aren’t you?”

“I can help you,” the chief said.

She hung up. She dragged her feet to the chair and sat. Tears shone in her eyes, and the Hannah Andrade whose spirit once filled the room now looked small.

Chris gently put his hand on her shoulder. “If we can infiltrate a foreign country, we sure as hell can infiltrate our own.”

Sonny nodded in agreement, adjusting his rifle and puffing out his chest, trying to look macho. “We just need someone in the DC area who is good with computers — a tier one hacker.”

Chris’s mind raced to figure out the next step. “Young Park is a tier one hacker.”

“Is that the Agency tech you rescued?”

Chris nodded.

“I heard stories about that,” Sonny said.

“Still works for the Agency as a contractor,” Chris said. “He’ll help us analyze intel from Jim Bob, Little Kale and Professor Mordet.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“In Virginia, not too far from Langley, just across the Potomac from DC,” Chris said. “Still sends me Christmas cards.”

Hannah wiped her eyes. “Then let’s get out of here.”

25

Over nine hours later, the sun brightened the horizon as the trio docked a stolen boat at Larnaca Marina in Cyprus, where they were fortunate enough to find an open berth at a crowded dock. After tying up their vessel, they passed through customs and immigration. Although they wouldn’t be able to use their passports in the US because American authorities were looking for them, their passports were still good overseas. Even if the US contacted Interpol to be on the lookout for the three, it would take time before other countries received the information — and then not all of them would enter the data into their system and not all would check.

They caught a taxi that took them down a palm-tree-lined promenade that marked the beginning of a fifteen-minute trip to Larnaca International Airport. They’d ditched their weapons in the ocean rather than try to smuggle them, and Chris was keenly aware that they were unarmed.

“Well, we made it this far,” Hannah said after they passed through security.

“You two need passports with new aliases for the US,” Sonny said, “and I should probably get a new one, too. Know anyone who can help us out in that department?”

“We’ll have better luck in Italy,” Chris said. “Lots of US travelers we can pickpocket.”

Sonny flashed a mischievous grin. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

They boarded a Cyprus Airways flight and touched down at Italy’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in the afternoon. Inside, Chris examined an airport map. “We’ll find easier marks in the bars,” he said. “These two bars in terminal one are close together.”

Hannah put her jacket over her right hand to conceal it. She’d use the right hand to pickpocket with while the left hand served as a distraction. Then she walked over to the trash and fished out a newspaper. On their way to terminal one, Hannah shifted into high gear, as if she was moving in on a possible doppelganger. She homed in on a shorter woman with blonde hair, instead of black. The blonde walked timidly. Hannah didn’t seem concerned about the differences. She gave her luggage to Chris and moved in for the hit.

The woman’s passport visibly stuck out of the side pocket of her purse. As Hannah walked past the woman, she pretended to read the newspaper in her left hand while using it to help cover the movement of her right hand as it swept over the woman’s purse. In the next moment, the passport was gone, hidden by Hannah’s jacket over her right hand, and the woman had no idea she’d just been ripped off. Chris had only pickpocketed in training, but it seemed Hannah had real-world experience. She made it look so easy, putting the pressure on Chris and Sonny not to screw up. After the blonde’s path diverged from theirs, Hannah took a look at the passport. Then she nodded with a wry smile.

Sweet.

They moved through the terminal, trying to find potential marks for Chris and Sonny. At the Culto Café Chocolato, they didn’t spot anyone who looked like Chris or Sonny, but the place was rather full of people, so they went in, ordered drinks, and sat down at a table where they had a panoramic view of the restaurant and the terminal outside the front door. They paid for their drinks in advance so they could leave at a moment’s notice.

Chris had an orange juice and Sonny and Hannah drank local Moretti beers. “Why don’t you drink?” Sonny asked before taking a swig from his glass.

“Not interested,” Chris answered.

“Just a sip.”

“No, thanks,” Chris said.

“Why, is it a religious thing?” Sonny persisted.

“Well, I’m a minister. Even if I wasn’t, my grandfather was an alcoholic. I loved him, and we were alike in pushing things to the limit, and I was always concerned I could become an alcoholic, too.”

“You steal cars and boats and kill people, but you won’t have a sip of alcohol. You’re a strange bird.”

Chris shrugged. Since he normally only emptied the pockets of people he’d captured or killed, he strategized with Hannah about the best way for him to pickpocket an unknowing living mark. As part of their strategy, Hannah readied some change.

“When I drop the change, the man will bend over to help me pick it up. That’s when you lift his passport.”

Chris nodded.

Then his doppelganger passed outside the front of the bar with something in his back left pocket the shape of a passport with its blue edge sticking out. Chris’s heart pulsated as he and Hannah left their seats and followed. Hannah passed the man and dropped her change. Chris’s heart beat faster and faster. When the man bent over to help her, Chris brushed against him from behind, removed the passport, put it in his pocket, and kept walking.

Minutes later, Chris and Hannah reunited with Sonny in the café. Chris drew the passport out of his pocket and looked at it. “Croatia,” he said. “Damn. This is no good. I can’t use this to get into the US without a visa. Croatia?”

Sonny and Hannah frowned.

“We’ll just have to find someone else,” she said. “Let’s try a new bar.”

They switched over to the other bar and poked their heads in. Inside, a John Malkovich lookalike sporting a moustache and wearing a suit jacket sat alone at a table drinking. Sonny smiled. His turn.

“I’ve got this one,” Hannah whispered. “Trust me. You guys can take another table and watch.”

While Hannah talked up Malkovich and bought him more drinks, Chris and Sonny sat at the table and scanned the area inside the bar and out for Chris’s double. Soon Hannah was laughing with Malkovich and touching his chest. Then she said she was going to be late for her flight, jumped up, paid her tab and rushed out. Chris and Sonny took their cue and departed the bar, too. When they were well out of sight of the bar, Hannah handed Sonny his passport — United States. An hour later, they lifted a passport for Chris.

Chris quickly dropped off the Croatian passport at the information desk. “Somebody lost this.” As Chris walked away, the desk attendant called the Croatian man’s name over a loudspeaker.

They found a secluded corner without surveillance cameras and sat down. Hannah put on makeup, making her eyes look bigger, similar to her passport photo. Then she applied makeup to Chris, to make his nose seem thinner, closer to his lookalike. She offered to help Sonny, but he balked: “Get that crap off me. I ain’t no faggot.” She tried to explain, but he refused.

“Are you prejudiced?” Hannah asked.

“Call it what you want,” he said. “I hate krauts, micks, niggers, limeys, honkies, spics, wops, pollacks, frogs, injuns, sweaties, cheese heads, mountain monkeys, camel jockeys, rutabagas, commies, kikes, nips, chinks, dinks, flips, and curry munchers, too — I hate them all.”

Chris felt like Hannah looked — as if someone had tossed a flashbang in the room.

“What?” Sonny asked. “Did I leave someone out?”

Hannah shook off his comment and checked her cell phone for ticket information. “Today Air France has the most flights of any airline to Washington Dulles International Airport, but all their planes left this morning. We can fly the next Brussels Airlines out of here if we hurry and get a connecting flight to DC.”

Chris and Sonny nodded.

The three of them rushed to the counter, purchased their tickets in seats away from each other, checked in their bags, passed security, and caught their plane. Chris tapped his finger on his armrest while he studied his passport and the immigration stamps inside. Know your identity.

26

At 1500 hours, they touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport. The clock was ticking down to when Mordet would attack the US, but Chris didn’t know how much time remained on that clock. They still had no idea what, specifically, he was plotting.

Once deplaned and inside the airport, they approached immigration separately. Chris went first. Focus. Believe your identity. He put on the tired, bored look he wore in so many countries, the one that helped him blend with his surroundings.

“Welcome home,” an immigration officer with studious eyes greeted him. They chatted minimally, and Chris walked through without incident, stopping just outside immigration. He pretended to search for something in his bag while he surveyed his teammates.

The same officer examined Hannah’s passport. Then he studied her. He seemed to focus on her hair. Again, he looked at her picture. He spoke, but Chris couldn’t hear what he said.

A broad smile lit Hannah’s face as she replied and proudly flipped her hair. The officer frowned, but Hannah glowed as she spoke again. He waved her through.

A little while later, Sonny came through a different line. The immigration officer, a woman with an angry face, questioned him.

Sonny returned her angry face with the same, and his lips said, No.

The grumpy lines in her forehead sank, as she appeared to ask more questions.

Sonny’s face upped the grumpiness. His voice became louder, but Chris still couldn’t hear his words.

Her eyes moved from Sonny’s face to his photo then back to his face. The moustache.

Their voices became audible to Chris, and people from the other lines stared at them. Sonny gave her an irritated look, and his voice blared: “It’s this neat invention they call a razor! You ought to try one sometime! Your upper lip ain’t looking so smooth!”

“Are you getting smart with me?” she snapped.

“No, ma’am! I thought we were exchanging beauty tips!”

She smacked his passport closed and stabbed him with it. “Next!”

Chris tried not to chuckle as he picked up his carry-on and headed toward baggage claim. Chris, Hannah and Sonny each picked up their bags and passed through customs independently, reuniting outside the airport at the nearest taxi stop.

“How much money you guys got?” Hannah asked.

“I’m down to twenty dollars and some change,” Chris said.

“Well, I had a donkey,” Sonny said.

Chris smiled.

Hannah handed each of them a wad of money. “We’ll have to buy fake IDs, weapons, and some other essentials.”

“Where do you get all this money?” Chris asked.

“I’ve got a Visa under a fake identity that I keep for such emergencies,” she said. “The Agency doesn’t know about it, but after we clear our names, I’ll tell them to reimburse me. I just made a cash withdrawal from the airport ATM.”

Chris and Sonny thanked her.

They caught a cab. Chris didn’t call Young — preferring to surprise him rather than becoming the surprisee. They travelled thirty minutes east to Annandale, Virginia, just south of Langley. Chris told the driver to circle Young’s neighborhood. They couldn’t spot any surveillance, so Chris had the driver drop them off.

Chris knocked on the door and noted it was made of wood and equipped with a deadbolt lock — average for security. A faint light emitted through the peephole. He pressed the button next to the door and heard a bell. The faint light disappeared. Someone was watching him — Chris hoped it was Young. Although they kept in touch, he hadn’t actually seen him since the rescue. The door opened and Young answered. Chris’s eyes were drawn to his prosthetic ears — they looked so real. His hand and lower arm were lifelike, too. Chris remembered Mordet, and his resolve steeled.

“Dude, I was worried about you,” Young said. “People are freaking out about you all. Come inside.”

After they entered, Young locked the doorknob, deadbolt, and chain. Chris introduced Sonny and brought Young up to speed on what was happening.

Then it was Young’s turn. “Right now, there’s a battle going on about Hannah — Jim Bob’s cronies and protégés are out to get her, but others in the Agency are on her side. No one knows you guys are back in the States now, though.”

“And no one can know,” Chris said.

“Sure.” Young led them farther into the house. They passed the dining room, where instead of a dining table, there was a pool table. Chris remembered playing pairs those years ago, Little Doc and him versus Hannah and Young. A small smile crept onto his lips and then faded fast. There wasn’t time to reminisce.

Young led them into his living room, and they sat down on a sofa and overstuffed chairs. The trio handed over the laptops, flash drive and other intel, filling up the coffee table.

“This is what we took from Jim Bob, Victor, Mordet, and his man Little Kale. We think Mordet is here in the States to launch an attack, so we need you to help us figure out how to stop him before he does.”

“And then there’s this.” Hannah handed him the meat jerky in the Ziploc.

“What’s this?” Young asked.

“Who’s this?” Hannah corrected him. “One of Mordet’s leftovers. Can you get this analyzed, so we can find out who Mordet has been munching on?”

Young stared at the bag. “Son of a bitch.” He shook his head and put the offending object on the coffee table with the other items.

“I’m going to ask my assistants to help me on what you’re giving me. It’s too much for me to work on alone.”

Hannah nodded in approval. “As long as it stays—”

“Confidential,” he finished for her. “Of course.”

“Do you have any firearms we could borrow?” Chris asked.

Young shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t carry anything,” Young said. He rummaged through a drawer before pulling out a pamphlet. “But you all must be starving.” Young held it out. “Here’s a delivery menu for a pizza place nearby if you want.”

Hannah took it. “That sounds good.”

Young moved the computer equipment to his office, which took up one wall and a quarter of the living room. Then he started up Jim Bob’s, Little Kale’s, and Professor Mordet’s laptops.

Twenty minutes later, a knock came at the door — two sets of two knocks, actually. Although it sounded like a coded knock and Young didn’t seem alarmed, Chris’s muscles tensed. Being unarmed didn’t help, so he looked for weapons of opportunity — a chair seemed the most likely candidate. It’d be bulky to wield but would make a solid hit on whoever it struck.

Young went to the door, looked through the peephole, then returned to his table and retrieved the bag of jerky. The knock came again before Young unlocked the door and opened it. He passed the bag outside. Then he closed the door and locked it.

“Your assistant?” Chris asked.

Young returned to his desktop computer. “One of them. Right now, the others are logged into Jim Bob’s, Professor Mordet’s, and Little Kale’s laptops by remote.”

Chris looked on anxiously. “Does it look like you’ll crack them?”

“Little Kale’s is the easiest. Simple password.”

The pizza arrived minutes later, and Hannah opened the boxes on the kitchen table. The saucy fragrance was the holy grail of food. Chris offered Young a slice.

Young used one hand to type. “No, thanks. I already ate.”

The trio downed pizza slices almost as fast as they could lift them to their mouths.

“Looks like Little Kale tried to delete documents,” Young said, “but my assistant is reconstructing the data from the laptop’s disk sectors.”

Chris swallowed a bite. “What about websites he visited?”

“We’re finding those in the history cache of his browser while we reconstruct deleted emails.”

One by one the pizzas disappeared.

“This is interesting,” Young said.

Chris, Hannah, and Sonny stopped chewing, and their ears perked up.

“On Little Kale’s computer, a location and date keep popping up,” Young said. “Washington, DC in four days. Could be a target and the date of attack.”

Chris wiped his mouth. “That doesn’t give us much time.”

“What about Professor Mordet’s laptop?” Hannah asked. “Have those things appeared there, too?”

Young continued tapping on the keyboard. “His laptop appears clean, but we’re still searching it.”

“And Jim Bob’s?” Chris asked.

“Jim Bob used standard Agency tradecraft to hide his work, but we’re familiar with that and found a UBS bank account.”

“I don’t know whether to be surprised at how much the Chinese actually forked over,” Chris said, looking over Young’s shoulder at the account details, “or surprised at how little the Switchblade Whisper was worth to Jim Bob.”

“Did Jim Bob spend any of it?” Hannah asked.

Young’s mouse clicked a few times. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Probably wasn’t in much of a condition to make a withdrawal after Chris shot him in the face,” Sonny said with a chuckle.

“We better do our old buddy a favor and take care of his money for him,” Hannah said, a grin spreading across her lips.

“How much?” Young asked.

“All of it,” Chris and Hannah said in unison.

“Where should I send it?” Young asked.

“Open a new bank account just for that money,” Hannah said. “If we send it to an Agency account, a charity, or anywhere else, Jim Bob will try to negotiate for the money’s return. We need to keep it out of his hands.”

“While we’re at it, we should contact the FBI,” Chris suggested. “They’ll be jazzed to take him down.”

“I have a good friend in the FBI,” Hannah said.

Sonny clapped his hands. “Jim Bob is in for a stonking huge surprise.”

Victor’s phone vibrated on Young’s desk. Everyone looked at it. Chris grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and copied the number from the caller ID. He placed it on the desk next to Young’s keyboard. “If you get a chance, see if you can find out about this phone number. And any other numbers that call Victor’s phone.”

Young nodded.

Chris sat back in his seat, his energy sagging. The long mission, jet lag, and a belly full of pizza were bound to take their toll. Hannah and Sonny seemed to move in slow motion, too. In contrast, Young typed furiously as if he could keep at it forever. The three made a watch schedule, and Chris stood the first watch while Hannah and Sonny slept. Young refused to rest and worked through the night.

27

In the morning, they found themselves at Young’s kitchen table, eating breakfast. It was now only three days before Professor Mordet might launch an attack on DC. During breakfast, Hannah made phone calls.

“We need weapons,” Chris said.

Sonny grunted in agreement.

“First we need to go to Portsmouth,” Hannah said.

Sonny scrunched up his face. “What’s in Portsmouth?”

“Fake IDs,” Hannah answered. “We’re still wanted by Homeland Security, and we’ll need the fake IDs to stay off their grid.”

“Do you know somebody in Portsmouth then?” Chris asked.

“I know of someone, but I don’t know him personally,” Hannah said. “The Agency usually takes care of these things for me, but now that the Agency isn’t supporting us, we have to shop the black market.”

When breakfast was done, the trio bought burner cell phones at a nearby shop and took a taxi three hours south to Portsmouth. The homes there were cared for — houses painted and grass cut — and the people seemed like every day Americans, their clothes were clean, and guys wore their pants up around their waist instead of down around their ass cracks. But small groups of young men hung out around town when they should be in school or at work. Chris didn’t have to know that Portsmouth had one of the highest crime rates in Virginia to know that something was wrong — he could feel it.

The taxi pulled into a motel parking lot. Hannah paid the driver, opened the door, and stepped out. “Here we are.”

Chris and Sonny followed her across the parking lot. She glanced down at the monitor on her cell phone then up at the room numbers on the doors. Finally, she stopped in front of a room situated as far from the motel’s front office as possible. Hannah knocked, and someone looked at them through the peephole.

“Hi, Walter,” Hannah said. “I’m Hannah. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

The door opened a crack with the security pin still latched. “You didn’t say anything about those other two on the phone,” a raspy voice said. The smell of tobacco seeped from his mouth.

“All three of us need IDs,” Hannah whispered.

“You look like cops.”

Hannah was patient with him. “Nothing I can do about how we look.”

“I don’t need more trouble with the law,” Walter said.

“If I kick down this door, will that convince you that we’re not cops?” Sonny asked.

Walter hesitated. “Okay, but just one of you in here at a time.” He unlocked and opened the door.

“One at a time, my ass,” Sonny said, pushing open the door. Hannah and Chris followed him into the room.

“Hey!” Walter shouted.

Chris locked the door behind them.

On a table were stacks of blank cards, opaque polycarbonate strips, an embosser, laptop, laser printer, magstripe skimmer, and some already-completed fake IDs. In one corner was a suitcase and a duffel bag. In another corner, Walter had his portable photo studio set up.

Hannah looked at Walter impatiently. “Well?”

“How do we know this guy can even make a Virginia driver’s license?” Sonny asked.

“He can,” Hannah replied.

Walter nervously motioned for her to sit down in front of the camera to take her picture. His anxiety infected Chris, who looked out through the peephole. “Two black males and a Caucasian in their twenties lingering outside our door. Friends of yours?”

Walter clicked the camera. When he pulled his fingers away, his hand was shaking. “No. You’re next.”

Chris took a seat for his photo, and Sonny walked over to the window, parted the curtain slightly, and peered outside. “Three against three doesn’t hardly seem fair,” Sonny said.

After Walter snapped Chris’s picture, he took Sonny’s photo. He kept his sour face and refused to smile. Then Walter picked up his cell phone.

“Don’t!” Chris ordered. “Don’t touch that phone!”

Walter reluctantly put the phone down and went to work on his PC.

“You got a gun in here?” Sonny asked Walter.

The man’s hands trembled so much that his fingers jiggled the keys on the keyboard.

Sonny searched the nightstand drawer.

“Please, don’t,” Walter said.

Next, Sonny checked under the pillow. He pulled out a Glock 19 pistol. “You might appreciate this.” He handed it to Chris.

It was the original factory model. There was no round in the chamber, and it didn’t look like it’d been fired at all. “That’ll work,” Chris said. It was worth around five hundred dollars new, but he dropped six hundred on the bed.

“That’s generous,” Sonny said.

Hannah put a hand on her hip. “Can you guys let Walter do his job so we can get out of here?”

Chris stuck the pistol in his waistband. “No problem.”

Soon Walter handed over the licenses. They looked them over: good. Hannah paid Walter, who seemed happy to receive his money but not totally soothed. She called a taxi.

Chris, Hannah, and Sonny stepped out of the room and put on sunglasses. The three loiterers seemed surprised — maybe they were expecting to jump Hannah alone. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going, man?” the guy wearing a polo shirt asked, moving closer to Chris.

“I ain’t your buddy, so back off,” Chris said firmly.

Polo and his two buddies moved in closer with Cheshire grins on their faces. The man in front of Hannah was particularly full of smiles.

Chris scanned the line of motel rooms and the parking lot for any onlookers. He didn’t want to risk causing a scene, and he knew Hannah and Sonny felt the same, but they didn’t want to have their asses handed to them, either. Reading the confidence in the three thugs’ body language and their forward movement, they’d already decided to make a scene. The best way to win a fight was surprise, speed, and violence of action.

Sonny grabbed Mr. Smiles by the crotch and lifted him off his feet.

“Heeee!” the man wheezed.

Hannah kicked Cornrows in the solar plexus, knocking him out of his left shoe and catapulting him into the parking lot where he landed flat on his back. His left shoe lay in the parking lot like that of a lost child.

Chris pulled out his new Glock and pistol-whipped Polo. He toppled to the asphalt.

Sonny lowered Mr. Smiles to the ground. As he hunched over, Sonny pulled Mr. Smile’s head down and smashed his knee into his face. He collapsed.

“This place is happening,” Sonny said. “We’ll have to hang out here more often.”

Again, Chris scanned the hotel rooms and parking lot for any onlookers. “If someone calls the cops, we may spend more time here than you’d like.”

“That taxi driver sure is taking his time,” Sonny said, checking his watch.

Hannah looked anxious, too. “He should be here any minute.”

Not a minute later, a taxi came to a stop in the parking lot, and the driver stared oddly at the three men lying on the ground as if they’d fallen from the sky.

Chris hopped inside the car and offered an explanation: “Crack heads.”

Hannah and Sonny joined him inside and closed the doors. While Hannah gave the driver directions, Chris and Sonny used their cell phones to scour the Internet for pistols, rifles, and ammo. The driver dropped them off at a car rental place, and the three rented a grey SUV.

That evening, they returned to Young’s house with IDs, an SUV, weapons, and ammo. “We’ll have to zero our weapons tomorrow,” Chris said. The others agreed.

“Anything new?” Hannah asked Young.

“Victor’s phone keeps ringing,” he said, “and I got word that Jim Bob’s condition improved enough so that he was flown back here to Virginia Hospital Center.”

Sonny looked from Hannah to Chris, and that wicked smile returned to his face. “I guess it’s time we paid the patient a little visit.”

28

The next day, they zeroed their weapons and planned their visit to Jim Bob and how they’d clear their names. In the evening, disguised as doctors, Chris and his teammates slipped into Jim Bob’s suite at Virginia Hospital Center. The three stood over his bed observing his bandaged face. He was hooked up to a monitor that displayed blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygen, respiration, and heart rhythm. A calm wave rolled across the monitor showing his vitals. As if he sensed the trio’s presence, he opened his drowsy eyes.

Chris and the others were still wearing surgical masks and hats to blend in and conceal their identities, but Chris didn’t bother to disguise his voice. “Remember me?”

“Chris?” Jim Bob’s speech was slow, probably numbed by painkillers. “You’re the one who did this to me.”

“You did it to yourself.”

“How’d you get back to the States?”

“Surprised?” Chris asked.

Jim Bob shifted in his bed and grunted in pain. He looked at the others. “And Hannah. But who is this third person?”

Chris gave Jim Bob no more information than he needed.

Jim Bob’s eyes bobbed from person to person. “Are you here to kill me?”

Chris stared through him. “Should I?”

His gaze searched the room as if looking for an escape. “If you’re not here to kill me, then why are you here?”

“I can think of three million reasons,” Chris said.

Jim Bob coughed. “Pardon?”

“You heard me.”

Jim Bob was speechless for a moment. “What have you done with my retirement money?”

The cell in Chris’s pocket vibrated. “Recently Victor’s phone has been ringing almost nonstop. Some Chinese guy leaving angry messages. Hmmm.” Chris picked up the phone and turned on the speaker before answering it. “Hello?”

“Victor, you piece shit,” a man with a Chinese accent said. “We transferred three million dollars to Jim Bob’s Swiss account for Switchblade Whisper, but we still don’t have Switchblade Whisper!”

“Jim Bob is right here. Would you like to talk to him?” Chris asked.

“Yes, stupid ass!”

Chris put the speaker near Jim Bob’s mouth, but Jim Bob didn’t say anything.

The Chinese man’s voice became louder. “Jim Bob, you give back Switchblade Whisper or return three million dollars! You not keep both!”

“This phone is not secure,” Jim Bob said.

“What you mean, phone not secure?” the Chinese man demanded. “Victor say your phone special CIA secure phone!”

Jim Bob’s heart rate on his EKG remained calm. “No, your phone is not secure.”

“This most secure phone in China! You better—”

Chris pressed the “end” button, cutting off the Chinese voice.

“I gave the Chinese the Switchblade Whisper in Syria,” Jim Bob said. “I can’t be responsible for them losing it.”

Victor’s phone vibrated again.

“All that trouble with the Chinese over what?” Hannah asked. “Three million dollars that’s no longer in your bank account.”

Jim Bob groaned. “What do you want from me?”

The phone continued to vibrate.

“A better question would be, ‘What do you want from me?’” Hannah replied.

“I want my three million dollars!” Jim Bob sputtered.

“Don’t overexert yourself.” Hannah sighed and Jim Bob’s EKG spiked.

“I want my three million dollars!”

“Call off your dogs and clear our names,” Hannah said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re the one who stole the Switchblade Whisper and sold it to the Chinese for three million dollars. You killed Wolf, and when you two tried to kill Chris, he shot you both in self-defense. Then in Turkey, Chris and I recovered the Switchblade Whisper and took it to the US embassy, but you framed us, and we were falsely imprisoned. As a result, Professor Mordet attacked the embassy and took the Switchblade Whisper. And in two days, he will launch his attack on the whole country.”

Jim Bob spoke in a wounded tone. “You make it sound like I did something wrong.”

“Like I said, correct me if I’m wrong.”

Victor’s phone vibrated again in Chris’s pocket.

Jim Bob seemed to contemplate his options. “I’ll call off my people and clear your names, but I want my money, my laptop, and Victor’s phone.”

“You don’t get your laptop or Victor’s phone,” Hannah said. “That’s insurance for us in case you renege.”

The conversation appeared to have tired Jim Bob. He smiled faintly. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“You have no idea.” She nodded at Chris, and he answered the vibrating phone and turned on the speaker phone again. “It’s over, Sonny,” Chris said into the phone.

“You hear that piece shit, Jim Bob? It’s over,” Sonny said in his Chinese accent. Then he switched to his Queens, New York, accent: “How was I? Was I good?”

Jim Bob’s eyebrows twisted. He pointed his finger at the third person in the room. “Who is he?”

“Oh, right,” Hannah said, tapping her finger against her chin.

The third person pulled out a badge. “I’m Special Agent Frank Garnet with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Jim Bob Louve, you are under arrest for espionage against the United States of America, selling top secret defense information to aid a foreign government—”

Jim Bob’s EKG peaked violently, and he froze for a moment. Then he gagged hard.

Agent Garnet spoke into his hidden microphone. “We need medical assistance, ASAP!”

29

Later that evening, Chris, Hannah, and Sonny returned to Young’s house. Minutes later, a knock sounded on the door. Young answered it and accepted a large manila envelope. He closed the door and locked it. “It looks like the analysis of Professor Mordet’s meat jerky has arrived.”

Chris’s stomach turned before Young even opened it, and the warm air in the apartment made him feel light-headed. He wanted to know, but he didn’t want to know.

Young opened the envelope and took out some documents.

“Who was it?” Hannah asked.

“It’s someone I haven’t heard of,” Young said.

“Who?” Sonny asked.

Young read the name: “A Ron Hickok?”

Hearing that Ron was dead wrenched Chris’s gut and set his skin on fire. He had to sit down before he fell down.

“The Ron Hickok?” Sonny asked in disbelief. “Can’t be.”

“The brief bio here states he was the lead instructor at the Blaze Ranch,” Young said. “Disappeared three months ago.”

Sonny sighed. “I took some classes from Ron.”

“Why would Ron Hickok have anything to do with Mordet?” Hannah asked.

Sonny was quiet for a moment. “Maybe Mordet passed himself off as someone he wasn’t.”

“But how could he kill Hickok?” Hannah asked. “The only person who could kill Ron Hickok was Ron Hickok.”

“Maybe Mordet tricked Ron into teaching him Flash-Kill,” Sonny suggested.

Hannah shook her head. She turned to face Chris and started to say something but stopped.

Tears clouded his vision, but he was too numb to wipe them away.

Hannah stared. “You knew him. He trained you, didn’t he?”

Thinking became a burden, and words became unattainable, floating in some distant cosmos.

“Why wasn’t it in your service record?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was Ron’s idea to expunge my record of ever training with him,” Chris said, his voice barely a whisper. “He didn’t want anyone to know, and he never explained why.” Now the tears were streaming down his cheeks.

“He taught you Flash-Kill,” Hannah said softly. “Didn’t he?”

Chris’s skin became hot, and the room began to spin. He needed fresh air. He rose out of his chair and wobbled before regaining his balance. He put one foot in front of the other and headed for the back door. As he entered the kitchen, the doorknob seemed so far away and the house felt like it was tilting. He reached for the blurry doorknob and turned it, but the door wouldn’t open. A hand unlocked the door, and he was helped through by someone — Hannah.

For a while, he sat under a tree in Young’s backyard. He glanced back at the house. Hannah stood inside watching him through a window. She had enough sense to give him his space but cared enough to keep an eye on him.

30

Chris wasn’t hungry and skipped breakfast. He felt disconnected from his body — and the world. Ron Hickok had been his SEAL instructor during First Phase of BUD/S training, and he’d taken a special interest in Chris — as if Ron had seen something in him that he couldn’t see inside himself. In Second Phase, new SEAL instructors replaced the First Phase instructors, and in Third Phase, Chris found himself outshooting his SEAL pistol and rifle instructors. It was then that he’d realized he had a special gift. Years later, he’d had the opportunity to take shooting classes from Ron; in contrast to other SEAL shooting instructors, Ron challenged Chris. Ron didn’t subscribe to any one religion, but he was intensely spiritual and often he seemed to teach directly to Chris’s soul. Ron wasn’t married, and he treated Chris like a son; Chris loved him like a father.

Ron had always seemed invincible, but Mordet had killed him, and Chris’s own mortality struck him like a sledgehammer — Mordet might kill him, too. How could God allow this to happen? He didn’t ask in anger; he just didn’t understand why Ron had to die. Although Chris believed becoming angry at God was preferable to ignoring God, he valued his relationship with deity more than he valued anger.

Hannah tapped Chris on the shoulder with a chocolate-flavored energy bar, bringing him back to reality. “You should really eat something,” she said, “so you can maintain your energy level.”

She was right, and he nodded. He ate the bar, but his taste buds, too, were numb, and he couldn’t taste the chocolate. Even so, he forced it down.

They spent most of the rest of the morning poring over the intel and analyses, and just before noon, Sonny stepped out of the living room to answer a call. Young announced, “I might have something.” His hand flew over the keyboard. “Just a minute.”

Chris nodded and turned to the television, where CNN was on. He watched for a few minutes to see if they were reporting anything related to Mordet. Nada.

Sonny came into the room then, a broad smile on his face.

“What?” Hannah asked. “Who was on the phone?”

“JSOC,” Sonny said. “The Department of Homeland Security has cleared our names.”

Before Hannah could respond, Young spoke. “Finished restoring deleted files, and on Mordet’s laptop, I found this photo.” He grabbed a printout from his printer and showed it to them: a painting of an eye held between a monster’s teeth.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

Young studied the picture. “Looks like some sort of evil eye.”

“But what does it mean?” She crossed her arms, thinking. None of them knew.

For the rest of the day, they spread out across the living room, helping Young sift through more data and analyses to try and figure out the meaning of the painting and what Mordet was planning. They left the TV tuned to CNN, playing at low volume while they worked.

Just after five p.m., they had a few loose threads but nothing substantial yet. Chris happened to glance at the TV when a CNN BREAKING NEWS banner flashed across the scene.

“This just in,” a news anchor began, “the Baltimore-Washington International Airport has lost power, and there have been reports of explosions. CNN Center is working hard to find out more.” The network showed a live video of the airport. “Witnesses on the ground confirm that the entire airport is dark, inside and out.” Then she repeated the same information.

Everyone in the room shifted their gaze from Young’s computer to the TV.

Chris looked at the others. Their eyes were all glued to the TV.

“We now have an unconfirmed report that a passenger plane was shot down,” the reporter added. “On the phone with us is a witness, Jeremiah Whitmaier, talking to us from inside the airport. Jeremiah, what can you tell us about the situation?”

“All of a sudden, the lights went out in the building and outside on the runway, and then I heard explosions,” Whitmaier said. “A plane was making a landing, but then it seemed to pull out of the landing and crashed at the end of the runway.”

“Would you say it was shot down?” the reporter asked.

“No, I didn’t see anything, and the plane wasn’t on fire or anything like that.”

“Where do you think the explosions came from?” she asked.

“They seemed to come from outside,” Whitmaier said.

“Thank you, Mr. Whitmaier.” The reporter turned to the camera. “And we’ve just received a phone call from a witness inside the terminal at BWI,” she said. “What did you see, sir?”

“The whole airport is dark,” the witness said. “No runway lights or anything. People are saying a plane was shot down.”

“Did you see a plane shot down?” the reporter asked.

“No. We only heard that air traffic control is redirecting flights to Ronald Reagan Airport for safety.”

Another reporter interviewed an airport official who said that the emergency generators for each airfield had been blown up and that a plane carrying fifty-four passengers had crashed. Airport emergency personnel continued to fight to rescue possible survivors.

Washington Dulles International Airport was also experiencing a blackout and explosions, and there were rumors that a plane had been shot down there, too. All aircraft scheduled to arrive at Dulles were now being diverted to Ronald Reagan, as well.

Chris’s chest tightened. The mass hysteria — and destruction — was just beginning.

“We should go to BWI,” Sonny said excitedly.

“And do what?” Hannah asked.

“Stop Mordet.”

“I want to stop him, too, but we don’t know where he is.”

“We need more information,” Chris said. “And a plan.”

He looked back to the TV, where the reporter was continuing her coverage. “We just received word that a plane crashed at Ronald Reagan Airport — this is terrible. We’re going live to an eyewitness there. Nancy, can you hear me?”

“This is Nancy. The lights went out, and there’s no electricity, and then there was an explosion, and a plane came down — oh, no.”

“Can you hear me?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, no! Another plane is coming down in flames! And two planes just hit head-on on the runway! They fell from the sky! Those poor people. They fell out of the sky!” Screaming and shouting sounded in the background. Then came a loud crashing noise.

“Nancy, can you hear me?” the reporter asked. “Are you still there? Can you hear me?” The reporter paused, worry creasing her forehead. “I hope Nancy is okay. I hope everyone is okay, but we just lost contact with Nancy.”

The news report shifted to show live video from a helicopter. Cars below were jammed bumper to bumper and hardly seemed to move.

Hannah’s phone rang, and she answered it. She spoke in hushed tones into the receiver. After hanging up, she looked to the others. “Agent Garnet says that the terrorists hacked into air traffic control and are purposely directing planes to fly into each other in a narrow corridor of airspace above Ronald Reagan Airport.”

“The attack wasn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow,” Sonny said.

Young sat at his computer monitoring air traffic over Ronald Reagan Airport. “Why would Mordet need to gain access to the Switchblade Whisper’s black box just to wreak chaos on the airports?”

“What do you mean?” Hannah asked.

“I mean it doesn’t take a special algorithm to do what he just did. The pilots communicate with air traffic control on 1090 MHz — anyone can access that. The Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast isn’t encrypted or authenticated. Anyone with Internet access can monitor air traffic using planefinder.net or another website.”

“Are you saying that anyone could do what he just did?” Hannah asked.

“I’m not saying anyone is as insanely brilliant as Mordet, but I’m saying he didn’t need the black box from the Switchblade Whisper to do what he just did.”

“If he didn’t need the black box, why’d he go through so much trouble to get it?”

Chris heaved a breath. “Because this is just the warm-up.”