“You still have the drive, right?”
“Yes. But it’s encrypted.”
“It can be decoded.”
“I need a hard copy.”
Jack removed the folder from his desk and held it in his lap. “No. I’m sorry, Tiffany, but I can’t put you in that kind of danger.”
She knew Jack was only looking out for her safety. Her father would have done the same. But she’d anticipated this and it was now time to pull her trump card. “I already made a copy.”
The silence in the room was thick and ear-piercing. Finally Jack said, “You know I could have you arrested.”
She’d anticipated that, too, and she called his bluff. “But you won’t.”
Jack sighed. “Where is it?”
“Someplace safe.”
Jack opened a drawer in his desk and placed the folder in it. “Tiffany, be careful, okay? You have no idea what kind of power you’re dealing with. This government is as close to omniscient as anything on earth.”
Suddenly Tiffany felt like she’d willingly placed a bright-orange target on her back, stood in the middle of a forest full of huntsmen, and waved her arms and hollered like a maniac. “I guess the word for the day is cautious, huh?”
Jack tightened his mouth. Concern etched lines in his brow. “No, it’s invisible. Something you should make every effort to be.”
FIFTEEN
• • •
Andrew Murphy was comfortably situated behind his desk in the bunker. He’d demanded that he have his own office space for private calls and meetings. The work he did with the CIA was far beyond top secret or need-to-know. Far more important than just lives depending on it. Lives were expendable, commodities to be sacrificed to achieve a greater good. And the greater good was at stake. His work and the work of so many teetered at the edge of the plank. And one man stood on the other end, inching closer, almost within arm’s reach to give just a little shove and send the whole operation into oblivion. Decades of research and trials and accomplishments, years of successful missions and dedicated men’s lives, gone. Wiped out. Exposed and crucified.
He couldn’t let that happen. That’s why he needed Patrick. Sure the guy was unstable; his loyalty had been compromised, his trust undermined, but Andrew held the one card that would win the whole hand. Patrick’s weakness had always been his family—that’s why he’d flunked out as an operative, that’s why he’d proved Nichols wrong and made the man look like a fool.
But Andrew was no fool. He knew how to control people and get what he wanted out of them. And Patrick was quite possibly the only man in America equipped to pull off this next mission. It would be his last; Andrew would see to that.
His mobile vibrated against the desk. It was McGrath back at Langley. Andrew hit the Talk button. “Yeah.”
“The drive’s been located and files decoded.”
“Where?”
“Stockton’s office.”
Andrew cursed and hit the desk. “Who?”
“His daughter.”
“Are you sure?”
“We got her on video coming and going.” There was a brief pause. “She gave the info to someone else.”
“You gonna tell me who?”
“Her supervisor, Jack Calloway.”
“Are you sure she talked?”
“Not 100 percent.”
Andrew ran his hand over his face, then forked his fingers through his hair. His face felt flushed. “Okay, get the drive and any other info the girl has. I want printouts, copies, anything that she made of the files. Then see that she is taken care of. As for Calloway, watch him for a couple days. He does anything suspicious, anything, take him out and get whatever info he has.”
• • •
After leaving the filling station, Karen decided to stay on US 30, a much less traveled road than the interstate and one less frequently patrolled by state troopers. As she drove, she barely noticed the world outside the cab of the truck. Her thoughts were not on the fields stretching in every direction, flat as a calm sea all the way to the natural horizon, nor on the cloudless expanse of sky above dotted with birds and scarred with unraveling contrails. She scarcely took note of the occasional farmhouse and barn set back off the road, posing quietly for another postcard moment.
Her thoughts were on Jed and Lilly, where they were, and if they were safe or not. US 30 meandered through rural America all the way to the east coast and cut right through Pennsylvania. At times it was four lanes and moved along swiftly, but then it would narrow to two lanes and be stop-and-go through a town or city.
Karen’s thoughts were also on the thumb drive in her pocket. What information did it contain? How damning was it that men were willing to die and kill for it? Could the exposure of such information truly bring down an entire government?
As before, she felt she needed to get rid of it. She fished it from her pocket and held it in her hand. It would be easy to toss it out the window. It would either be ruined by rain and the eventual snow that would cover it, or some highway hitchhiker would find it lying along the shoulder. He’d try it on some computer only to discover the contents encrypted. He might then turn it in to the police, where it would eventually find its way to the FBI and possibly wind up in the hands of the wrong people.
No, she had to do the right thing. Men died to get Jed the drive. Jed himself had put so much on the line so she would have a chance to get the drive into the hands of the right people. She couldn’t just abandon it now.
She placed the drive on the console between the front seats, then checked the mirrors. At once, her chest tightened and insect legs tickled the back of her neck. A state trooper trailed her, keeping pace about a hundred yards back. Karen checked her speedometer. She wasn’t violating the speed limit. Heat radiated up her neck and into her cheeks. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He had no reason to pull her over. She told herself in her most convincing voice that he was just on patrol, no need to panic. His lights weren’t flashing, so he had no intention of pulling her over. She was going the speed limit, so he had no reason to pass her.
Slowly, though, the patrol car closed the gap until it was just twenty or so feet from her rear bumper, and Karen could make out the markings on the hood. It was a Nebraska state patrol car. And as the car closed the gap between them even more, she could recognize the driver’s face behind his mirrored sunglasses: the trooper from the diner.
What was a Nebraska trooper doing in Indiana? How had he come to be on the exact same road she was? He had to be following her.
She willed herself to relax, but it was useless. Her muscles were as tense as steel cords. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, upper lip, and chin. Her heart hammered under the seat belt.
Then, as if the cop could read her mind and found there her most intense right-now fear, the flashers on the cruiser lit up.
• • •
No one ever called him Rhett Earl James. Even when he was a child, most everyone called him Jimmy. His mom had some kind of fascination with Rhett Butler and insisted her firstborn son share the same name. His daddy allowed her that one pleasure but the day Rhett was born declared his son would never be called that hideous name; he would be Jimmy. His father died shortly after that, and two years later his mother remarried a hard man, a violent man, a man who never called Rhett anything other than boy.
Now, everyone who mattered called him Nighthawk.
Out of high school, Jimmy joined the Navy and went on to become a SEAL. There, he trained to become invisible, both at night and in the full light of day. To blend into his surroundings and become one with his environment, to observe with patience, to watch, to learn. And he could move swiftly and silently when the time was right.
Then he was sent to North Africa on a mission to rescue an aid worker abducted by Muslim troublemakers. The mission went south and he returned to the States damaged, both physically and mentally. They told him he had PTSD. They told him he’d never fight again. He was too unstable.
>
But when the agency found him and recruited him and retrained him, he was once again a protector of the nation he loved. He was once again useful. Civilians—the folk who went about their lives, worked their jobs, loved their families—never knew men like him existed. If average citizens knew the fine line the security of the country rested on, they wouldn’t be so casual about the way they lived. They wouldn’t take their freedom and safety for granted.
It was men like Jimmy who served as the firewall for the rest of the population. They worked behind the scenes, unseen, invisible. It was their job, their duty, to head off threats, to thwart evil plans, to prevent assassinations.
And Jimmy was on one such mission now. He’d been told the target would be at Pier 33 in San Francisco. He had no problem locating him. Despite his official US Parks shirt and hat, the man looked military. The way he moved, the way he held his shoulders, the way he scanned the crowd and buildings. This was a man who’d been trained to survey, to take in his surroundings and quickly assess a situation.
Jimmy’s orders were to not engage the target unless the man broke protocol. He was only to observe and report his observations to the boss. If needed, he was to engage with only enough force to deliver the target to the appropriate location. He was not afraid of a confrontation. He was younger and no doubt quicker than Patrick. He had complete faith that in a hand-to-hand engagement he would be the superior fighter. He’d killed more than a few men with his bare hands.
Jimmy had followed Patrick into Alcatraz and now he stood with the basement door open and stared down into the murky hole. Without wasting any more time, he eased onto the first concrete step, the second, and the third, forcing himself to move his legs, to take each step. When he’d gotten to the sixth, he let the door close above him and allowed the dank crypt to swallow him.
• • •
When Jed was a little more than fifty feet from the staircase, the cellar door opened with a low moan, then closed with a soft click. Light footsteps descended the steps.
SIXTEEN
• • •
Jed stopped, pressed his back against the wall, and listened. It had to be the man with the sunglasses. Jed was right about him after all. Unless some national park worker saw him enter the stairwell and decided to find out what business a coworker had in the subterranean dungeon. But an employee would have a flashlight, certainly standard equipment for navigating the maze of dimly lit corridors beneath the prison.
As the footsteps neared, Jed tensed and held his breath. Slowly, careful not to make a sound, he slipped into one of the old cells and backed into a darkened corner.
• • •
Though Jimmy did not enjoy the darkness, he’d spent enough time in it as a child to hone and sharpen his other senses. His stepfather used it as a form of punishment. Locked in the closet, Jimmy would sit by the door, near the line of light between the door and the wood flooring, pull his knees to his chest, and listen to the sounds of the beating the jerk gave his mother. He’d separate every sound, the tearing of fabric, the smack of flesh, the moans, the grunts, the sniffles, the cries. The swearing. So much swearing. Finally, when it was over, he’d listen to his mother whimpering and apologizing, groveling. He hated his stepfather. It was one of the motivating emotions that drove him to the Navy. He was so full of anger and hatred he needed an outlet. The SEALs gave him that outlet.
Now, listening as he moved, he methodically separated the sounds of dripping water, tiny feet, and the brush of clothing. He zeroed his ears in on the clothing. Then on the faint whisper of breathing. It was him, the target. He was ahead about twenty feet. He’d just slipped into one of the cells.
Jimmy stepped slowly, his sidearm in one hand, the other feeling along the wall. And he listened. He was so good at listening.
• • •
The footsteps stopped at the first cell, shuffled, then continued, pausing every several feet until they arrived at the cell in which Jed hid. A man swung around the corner and stepped through the doorway, a handgun extended at arm’s length and gripped by both hands.
Jed raised his own weapon. They were no more than five feet apart. Darkness obscured the man’s face, but Jed could tell by his backlit outline that the guy was young, much younger than Jed.
At first, neither man said anything. The raised guns, trained, ready to fire, were all the information they needed. They turned a slow circle, each taking small steps to the right. Neither wavered; neither blinked.
Finally Jed said, “There’s no way we’re both getting out of this, you know.” He didn’t want to shoot the kid. There had been enough killing.
The younger man said nothing. He stared at Jed, eyes wide, lips tight. A thin film of sweat now covered his entire face.
“Are they making you do this?” Jed said, continuing to match the kid’s sidestepping circle.
Still, though, his adversary did not respond.
• • •
Jimmy could have killed Patrick ten times over in the minute they’d spent circling each other. Patrick had made the mistake of talking. Talking diverted your attention from the target, from the task at hand, from the fractions of seconds involved in a showdown like this. He could have pulled the trigger and lodged a bullet in Patrick’s head before Patrick’s brain had even registered the movement of Jimmy’s trigger finger.
But he hadn’t because he’d been ordered not to. And because he didn’t believe Patrick would fire. It wasn’t in his psychological profile. The man didn’t thrive on violence like some of the operatives did. Some were just animals with no minds of their own, no free will, no conscience. They were useful, sure, but they were also dangerous. The handlers had too much control. It wasn’t natural.
Patrick was more like Jimmy. Thoughtful. Intelligent. And from what Jimmy knew of the man, he assumed Patrick wanted nothing to do with this lifestyle. The last thing he’d do was kill; it would remind Patrick too much of what he was trying to escape.
Jimmy had the advantage here because he knew more about Patrick than Patrick knew about him. He held his weapon steady, the barrel staring at Patrick’s forehead.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Patrick’s handgun discharged.
• • •
Jed ducked right as he pulled the trigger. He’d missed intentionally, placing the bullet just inches from the side of his foe’s head. He knew the man did not expect him to fire and that the concussion of his gun and muzzle flash would take him by surprise, cause him to flinch. And that flinch was all Jed needed.
Leaving the guy no time to recover, Jed brought his forearm down hard on the man’s wrists. The gun snapped loose and rattled to the concrete floor. But before Jed could square himself, the man spun and landed a booted foot to the side of Jed’s head. The room burst with light, then went dark. Jed stumbled into the wall, his head spinning, his thoughts stuttering. His ears rang and his vision went blurry. He nearly dropped to his knees but was able to steady himself against the wall. The guy was young and quick. Quicker than Jed.
The man attacked again and followed the kick with a series of punches to Jed’s ribs and kidney area. He then grabbed Jed’s head with both hands and head-butted him just above the right ear.
Now Jed did drop to his knees. The dungeon wheeled around him, turned and turned. He thought he might vomit from the vertigo. Another kick and another blow to the head, this time midforehead. Jed knew he had to stay conscious. If he lost it here, the man would kill him. But his thoughts were jumbled, and disorientation overcame him.
But one image held steady in the midst of the barrage of blows. Lilly. His daughter. His baby girl. She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling, her blonde hair moving gently in the breeze. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t.
From somewhere deep inside, that place where body and heart and spirit all comingle, Jed dug up strength he didn’t know he had and cried out to God to give him the power to use it. He caught the man’s foot with both hands and turned hard, flipping his entire body and rolling to
his side. The man lost his balance and hit the damp floor hard.
Jed didn’t wait for another opportunity; he needed to take advantage of this one while it was here. Holding the man’s ankle with one hand, he rolled back and pushed himself to his knees, almost simultaneously bringing a fist down on the man’s lower leg. The bone didn’t break, but the man did holler out in pain. Jed followed up immediately, bringing a heavy fist down again on the outside of the shin. And again. And again. Each time the man groaned and hollered, and each time Jed showed no mercy, repeating the violence.
With enough adrenaline now pumping through his veins to counteract the dizzying effect of the blows he’d suffered, Jed scrambled to his feet. His head still throbbed and his vision remained a little hazy, but the pain in his ribs and back had faded. The man grunted and rolled several times to put distance between himself and Jed, then climbed to his feet as well, balancing himself mostly on his right leg.
Little light seeped into the dank cell. Jed sidestepped to his right, forcing his adversary to move to his left and into the light filtering in through the doorway. This would give Jed the advantage of being in the darkness for his first move.
Feigning right, Jed stepped to his left and attacked; he charged the man with a left hook that caught him along the side of his face. The man stumbled back but remained on his feet. Jed followed him and threw another punch, but this one was blocked. Jed came at him with a right jab, but it too was deflected. The man had incredibly quick hands.
With his back now against the wall, the man continued to deflect Jed’s advances and attacks. Finally Jed let up for only a second, and his attacker took advantage of the moment, landing a knee to Jed’s groin. Intense pain and nausea spread through Jed’s gut, and his natural reaction would have been to double over. But he forced himself to ignore the pain and remain upright. To double over would make him too vulnerable, and his opponent would see the opportunity to finish this fight.
Stepping back to create space and give himself time, Jed kept his arms up, ready to react and defend against an advance. But the attack Jed had expected never came. Seeing the opening, Jed lunged at his adversary, dipped, ducked, squatted, and swept his leg with such force that when it struck the side of the man’s left lower leg, the bone snapped mid-tibia. The man howled and crumpled to the floor.
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