The last thing he saw was Murphy smiling, hands still in his pockets. Smiling. Smiling. Then blackness.
• • •
Andrew Murphy opened a drawer under the table and withdrew a mask attached to a small canister of oxygen. He exhaled the breath he’d been holding even as he fit the mask over his nose and mouth and turned the lever on the tank; then he inhaled deeply and nudged Patrick with his foot. The man was out.
Murphy crossed the room and flipped a switch on the wall that kicked on the ventilation fans in the ceiling. He paused a moment, then opened the door, where two men awaited him in the hallway.
“Get him out of here and get him prepped,” Murphy said. “It’s time.”
• • •
The sun looms high in the clear sky like a fiery eye, watching the American soldiers struggle to keep their body heat under control. The scorched earth is barren, dry, dusty. A wasteland if Jed ever saw one. Quick bursts of gunfire pierce the still, hot air. Men holler, scream, curse. A nearby explosion sprays sand and concrete and sends a concussive wave of hot air that hits Jed from the back and pushes him against the wall.
“Jedi! Move. Now!”
Weapon high, eyes alert and scanning, Jed forces his legs to move and crosses the open area between two homes. Bullets whiz by his head, kick up dust at his feet; one nicks his arm but only stings. It doesn’t slow him down. Adrenaline floods his bloodstream; he is in pure survival mode.
“Incoming!”
Jed turns in time to see a rocket-propelled grenade an instant before impact. He spins and covers his head. The grenade hits the home, shattering the front wall and throwing mortar and dirt and stones in all directions. The blast deafens Jed. The only sound is a persistent ringing. Mav slaps his shoulder and waves him on.
Again, Jed is on the move. Bullets strike the wall all around him, kicking up tiny chunks of dried mud. He wonders why none have hit him yet. A strange thought. Shouldn’t he be thankful none have hit him?
He sees movement to his left. A band of insurgents. Three of them, two carrying AK-47s, one lugging an RPG-7 launcher. Jed lays down fire in their direction. One of the gunmen falls to his knees, his body limp, arms dangling at his sides, then drops face-first into the dirt.
Ears still ringing, Jed continues his advance. The target home is just a hundred meters away. Andersen is in there, or so they’ve been told. He’s been held hostage by the Taliban for the last three weeks. They have no idea what kind of condition he’s in.
Normally Jed would be a quarter mile away from the action, laying down cover fire, oversight, protection. But the terrain didn’t allow it on this mission. He’s needed up close and personal. Andersen is a priority.
Beside him, Mav grunts and falls. His body twitches uncontrollably as blood spurts from his neck. Jed puts his hand on the wound, but that fast, it’s too late.
Pushing on, Jed sprints across another open area between homes, covering the span of ten yards in a low crouch, weapon high, spraying fire in a wide arc. A round strikes him in the leg, tearing through flesh and muscle. Strangely, there is no pain, only the sensation of heaviness. His leg won’t move, won’t lift. He can still stand on it, but it isn’t stable. He throws himself against the outside wall of the house.
This is the place, the home where Andersen is being held. Jed hobbles around the corner and through the doorway, following the rest of the team. The house is empty save for a crumpled blanket in the corner. Where’s Andersen? The blanket moves. An RPG strikes the home, disintegrating part of the rear wall. Soldiers holler, lay down fire in all directions. They’re surrounded. Where is air support? Another RPG, another explosion. Dust. Debris. Something strikes Jed in the side of the head, then in the back. The ringing grows louder. This is it. This is how he’s going to die.
Lying on the floor, covered in dust and dirt, numb below the neck, Jed turns his head as the blanket is lifted and tossed by the shock wave of yet another explosion. Beneath it is a small girl, but she is not Afghan. Jed lifts his head and squints through the debris-choked air.
The girl is Lilly. His girl. He was sent to rescue her and failed.
He failed.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Debris falls on him as the roof of the house collapses.
“I’m sorry.”
NINETEEN
• • •
Tiffany awoke in the darkness, her senses immediately alert. She’d arrived home from work feeling tired and sick. The bedroom in her little apartment was not much larger than the bed and dresser to begin with, but the walls seemed to be even closer now. Light from the streetlamps outside seeped past the edges of the shades and cast the room in a drab-gray hue. Shadows loomed but did not move, like phantoms content to just watch, observe, but not yet act on their malevolent intentions.
She’d heard something while she slept. Her subconscious had picked up a creak, a scuffle, a scuttle. Something in the night in her apartment, a misplaced sound that triggered her brain to awaken her. Now, awake and alert, she lay in her bed, covers pulled to her armpits, and listened.
Nothing. All was quiet. Silent. Still. But she had heard something. Unless . . . it was nothing more than an all-too-realistic dream, a sound conjured by her brain, convincing her sleeping mind that it had originated outside in the waking world.
But rarely, in fact, never, had a dream elicited this kind of reaction. This was real. Slowly she reached for her handgun, a Glock 19. She kept it under a pillow positioned next to her on the double bed. It was loaded and ready to go. A single woman living alone could never be too cautious.
Still, no sounds came from the rest of the apartment. The shadows continued to loom and now seemed to encroach upon her, growing larger, drawing closer.
A muted clunk broke the silence, but she quickly determined that it had come from the apartment above her. The clock on her bedside table said it was a little after midnight. Mrs. Bringardner had probably dropped her coffee mug as she fell asleep watching the late news.
Then, from the living room/kitchen area she heard it, the slight scuffle that had no doubt awakened her. Tiffany gripped the Glock with both hands and pointed it at the closed door of her bedroom. If an intruder was out there, he’d be in for quite the surprise if he chose to enter her room.
Suddenly, before she had time to adjust her position or shift her weight, a thud cracked through the silence of the apartment and the bedroom door flew open. A man’s silhouette filled most of the doorway. He was big, broad in the chest and shoulders, and tall.
Instinctively Tiffany squeezed the trigger, and the pop concussion of her handgun sounded just as she saw the muzzle flash of the intruder’s gun. She flinched and, now in a state of all-out panic, fired again and again. The man twisted and nearly fell. Tiffany sat up straight in her bed and squeezed the trigger yet again, aiming wildly this time. The man turned and ran the other way, toward the door of the apartment. She swung her legs from the bed and covered the short distance to the bedroom doorway. But by the time she arrived, the intruder was already gone. The door of the apartment hung wide open.
Shaking uncontrollably and nearly in tears, Tiffany quickly crossed the living area and poked her head out of the apartment. The hallway was clear for the moment. Then, a couple doors down, Mr. Jensen, a widower and World War II veteran, stuck his head out and scanned the hallway.
Tiffany ducked back into her apartment and shut the door. She slid down the wood until she sat on the floor, her knees to her chest. She still held the Glock in her right hand, her finger still on the trigger. There was blood on the floorboards beside her, large droplets the size of quarters. She checked her body—chest, abdomen, arms, legs. It wasn’t her blood. The tears came then, a wave of them, shuddering through her bones like the aftershock of a major earthquake.
In the distance sirens wailed. So much for being invisible.
• • •
“I’m sorry.”
A distant voice emerged from the fog that surrounded J
ed. He felt as though he’d been partially buried in quicksand and any attempted movement was forestalled by the suction force of the sand.
“I’m sorry, Patrick.”
The voice grew closer, clearer, more familiar. The room lightened as objects began to come into focus. His mind was still a haze, though, a soupy mix of fractured images and sounds and emotion. Gunfire echoed in his ears, as did the voices of those dying, trapped, battered.
A hum was there too—quiet, steady—and whispers of others.
“Patrick, wake up.”
The voice . . . it was clear now. A man’s voice, emotionless, flat, cold. Murphy.
Jed turned his head and found Murphy seated beside him. He opened his mouth to talk, but his lips and tongue didn’t seem to want to cooperate. All that came out was a jumbled mess of sounds.
“Give yourself a moment to fully emerge,” Murphy said. “It’ll only be a few seconds.”
Jed tried to lift his head, but it was too heavy. He moved his fingers, his wrist, his elbow. His movements were clumsy, like those of a drunk trying in vain to prove how sober he really was but only making more and more a fool of himself.
Moments later the fog cleared almost completely. He was in a concrete room, stretched out on a gurney of some sort. His clothes had been removed and he now wore a hospital gown. An IV ran from a bag of clear fluid dangling from a metal pole to the back of his right hand.
He looked at Murphy, wanting answers.
Murphy stood and towered over Jed. “You lied to us, Patrick. Again. You didn’t bring the drive.”
Jed said nothing.
“Where is it?”
Still, Jed remained silent. If they knew Karen had it, they’d go after her. They’d find her. And then . . .
Jed shut his eyes.
Murphy leaned in close, so close Jed could smell the old chewing gum on his breath. “We know where it is. I wanted to give you the opportunity to cooperate, make sure we get it without anyone getting hurt, but since you are so determined to resist us, we’ll have to take it by force. You should have given it to us.” He placed a hand on Jed’s shoulder. “We’re on your side, Patrick. I wish you’d see that. You need to stop fighting us. We have the same enemy; we need to work together.”
Jed had no idea if Murphy was telling the truth about the drive or not, but he certainly wasn’t going to give anything away in case the man was bluffing. Fatigue gradually infiltrated Jed’s mind again as if a heavy fog had moved in off the coast and blocked out the light of the sun. Darkness clouded his vision until he could no longer see but only hear.
“You’re going to sleep now, Patrick.” Murphy’s voice was calm but . . . different. It sounded deeper, more throaty, like gravel in a bucket.
Jed’s mind slowed. He tried to move but couldn’t. Tried to open his eyes, but they were stuck shut.
“When you awaken, you’ll be a new man . . .”
TWENTY
• • •
Jack Calloway stood in front of his office window and watched over fields and open ground as the light of the rising sun behind him reflected off a bank of clouds in the west.
He’d heard about the break-in at Tiffany’s apartment complex earlier. They were calling it a cat burglary. The woman—young, single—shot the intruder multiple times by her account before he escaped. The news anchor didn’t give names or any other details, but Jack knew instinctively that it was Tiffany. They’d tracked her activity and found her. Which meant they must know she’d given him a copy of the printouts. Her movements in the office would be all over the video from the security cameras. They could watch her leave her father’s office, walk through each wing, each department, then make photocopies, enter Jack’s office with the manila folder, then leave empty-handed.
He’d be next; he knew he would. It didn’t matter that he’d served his country well, faithfully, and with distinction. It didn’t matter that he’d saved multiple lives in Iraq, including Tiffany’s father’s. It didn’t matter that he showed up at work every day and did his duties with integrity and honor. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that he had information he shouldn’t have. What mattered was the political survival of others, regardless of the damage it caused or lives it cost. Tiffany had no idea when she gave him those documents how much she had put both their lives in danger.
He’d tried calling her this morning, tried her cell and apartment landline, but both went to voice mail. He didn’t bother leaving a message. She’d see that he called and know what it was about. Of course, they’d be tracking both their cell activity by now. Who they were, now that was the question. Jack had spent most of the night in his office poring over the documents. He knew that if he’d gone home, he would have been a target too. At this point, the safest place was right in the CIA building, in his office, with all kinds of cameras pointed at him.
The information he’d read last night made him sick. The brains and brawn behind the Centralia Project went all the way to the White House. He had names, departments, offices, everything. It was all there. It would rock the government, the nation, the world. But even more heinous than what they had done was what they were planning to do. If what he read was correct—and he had no reason to believe or think it wasn’t—they were planning to use a former Ranger named Jedidiah Patrick to assassinate Vice President Michael Connelly. And how they were going to get him to do their dirty deed was especially vile. They were sick men, evil.
Jack turned and sat at his desk. He’d slept only a few hours on the floor of his office, and his back was now stiff, his muscles sore.
His desk phone rang. It was Tiffany. Jack picked it up on the second ring. “Where are you?”
“Did my dad ever tell you where he proposed to my mom?”
Jack thought back. He knew what she was getting at. “Yes.”
“Did he tell you what time of day it was?”
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
The line went dead.
• • •
Like the rising of the sun and the almost-imperceptible lightening of day, light dispelled the darkness and pushed back the shadows. Jed’s eyes fluttered open, then shut, opened again and squinted against the glare in the room. It was dim but still stung his eyes. He tried to focus, but the room and everything in it was a blur. It was quiet as well. He was alone. He made an effort to lift a hand but was scolded by a thumping in his head, like a tiny man was in there with a jackhammer pounding away on his skull.
Jed tried to turn his head, but the pain was there again along the right side of his skull, just above the ear. If he lay still, it wasn’t so bad, no more than a dull ache, but any movement intensified the throbbing.
A door opened and closed. Footsteps approached. Soft shoes, rubber-soled. Jed rolled his eyes to the right as the blurred form of a man came into view. His face was nothing more than a smudge, but Jed could make out his large head and dark glasses.
The man placed a hand on Jed’s shoulder. “Wakey, wakey, Sergeant Patrick. Welcome back.” His voice was high-pitched and effeminate.
Jed opened his lips, but no words came. His mouth and throat were too parched, as dry as old bone, and his tongue lolled around like a writhing worm.
“Don’t try to speak just yet. You need your rest. I am Dr. Dragov. The procedure was a success, and we’ll begin testing as soon as you recover.” The man squeezed Jed’s arm and leaned closer. His face came into focus enough to see that he was smiling. His breath smelled of antiseptic. “How are you feeling?”
Jed didn’t attempt to answer. Something about the man was wrong. Maybe it was the anesthesia playing with his mind, slowing his ability to process information.
“No matter,” Dragov said. He patted Jed’s arm and smiled. “You will be fine. I think because you are strong, you will recover quickly.”
The man straightened and faded from view. Jed followed the sound of his light footsteps to the door and out of the room. The door closed behind him.
Jed
tried to remember where he was, how he’d gotten off the mountain in Idaho. He’d dreamed of Karen in the woods telling him Lilly was gone.
Lilly was gone. They took her. Memories began to return but slowly, like the dripping of a leaky faucet. He sent Karen off to Pennsylvania. He went looking for Lilly. And wound up in Alcatraz. The basement, the dungeon. The man he’d fought. The valve was thrown open and all that had happened in the past few days came rushing back with such force that Jed had to shut his eyes.
The last thing he remembered was that he’d been gassed by Murphy. But the man with the glasses said the procedure had been successful? What procedure? Had he dreamed the entire encounter with Murphy? Had the whole ordeal from the moment he found Karen alone in the cabin to now been an elaborate nightmare?
Jed lifted a hand, pushed past the puncturing pain in his head, and rubbed his eyes. There was some kind of salve in them that caused his vision to blur. He grabbed a corner of the hospital gown and wiped the salve away. With his vision now clear, he looked around the room. It was no dream or nightmare that he’d had. All four walls, floor, and ceiling were concrete. Two fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. From what he could tell, he was still under Alcatraz.
Jed swung his legs around and forced himself to sit on the edge of the gurney. The room spun; his vision went dark with spots and streaks, but it eventually cleared and his surroundings stood still. The pain along the right side of his head was so intense he was sure there was something physical stabbing him. He reached and felt the area. A patch of hair the size of a quarter had been shaved, and there was a small incision with a few stitches at the center of the site. What had they done to him? The pain was in no way superficial; the incision was not the origin of it. The piercing penetrated deep, through layers of muscle, through skull, to his brain.
Jed thought about slipping off the gurney and approaching the door. He wanted answers. He deserved answers. Anger bloomed in his chest. Someone had done some kind of surgical procedure on him without his consent. His legs felt rubbery, though, and he doubted they would hold him. Whatever anesthesia they’d used was still in his system and affecting him in strange ways.
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