And they would do it. If they had to, they would sacrifice the team to get the target. Everyone was expendable these days.
His earpiece crackled and he listened once again. Kneeling, he moved away from the fence, his eyes squinting. “No tally,” he cut in angrily.
Further instructions from the Command Center spoke through the receiver in his ear. “Fifth house down?” he asked.
He listened.
“Copy that,” he whispered as he moved his focus farther down the road to a house across the street. “Tan house. A black Audi in the front. Two oak trees in the yard.” He demanded definite confirmation before he moved.
He listened once again, then nodded. He watched. He waited. He saw just a hint of movement, but it was enough to let him know. He crawled back and pointed for his partner. Two hundred feet down. Across the street from the target’s house. The front door partially open.
“Tally,” his lieutenant said. Before he moved, he checked his weapon. His machine gun pistol was set on double shot, allowing him to fire two bullets with a single pull of the trigger, inflicting the far more lethal “double tap.” The Heckler and Koch MP5K 9 mm machine pistol had a thirty-round magazine and folding stock, which he kept folded, allowing him to conceal the perfectly maintained machine pistol at his back. Checking the magazine a final time, he started walking down the street. The MP5K was stuffed inside his suit jacket, but only partially hidden, the blunt stock bulging at his back. He moved down the sidewalk without hesitating, his stride long and confident, his eyes staring straight ahead. He crossed the street just beyond the target’s house and started jogging. Past the first oak tree. Toward the front door. Coming upon the front steps, he slowed to a furious walk. The front door pushed back and a man walked onto the porch. Dark glasses. Work clothes. Something was out of place: a flash of gold. The Rolex on his wrist—what a stupid mistake. Without breaking stride, the man in the suit reached behind his back, pulled out the MP5K, the blunt-nose machine pistol light in his hand. He touched the magazine, aiming as he walked, his eyes unflinching, his hands sure. The man on the porch reached to his left side, but not nearly quickly enough. The assassin fired a set of rapid shots into him, the custom-built silencer spouting smoke and a muffled hiss of hot gas. The bullets penetrated the man’s face, splitting his jaw in two. The assassin didn’t slow down. Onto the front porch. Past the dead man. Through the partially open door. Another double tap, then silence, then movement near the window. The man reappeared at the door, looked around, bent over, and pulled the body inside, leaving a smear of dark blood across the white porch. He kicked the feet into the foyer, stepped out, and shut the door.
The other man watched from the end of the street, then started walking toward the house where the target had been hiding for almost three days.
* * * * * * *
The Secretary of Defense stood at the top of the basement stairs, his face frozen in fear. The cool breeze that blew up from below smelled of must and rotten leaves.
The basement door was open!
They’d found him!
They’d gotten into the house.
He almost screamed in fury, a guttered growl. “You leave them alone!” he screamed to the empty house. “You leave them be, you hear! It’s me you’re after, not my children. If you hurt them, I will kill you. I’ll kill you, every one!”
* * * * * * *
The two men moved up behind him without a sound, their shoes silent against the granite floors. “Secretary Marino,” the first man said.
Brucius spun around. He was just over fifty, but he was strong and tense as wire. He almost leapt toward them. “Where’s my daughter?! Where’s my grandson?!” he screamed.
The two men backed up as he ran toward him, both of them holding their hands disarmingly in the air. “Stay! Stay there, Mr. Secretary! It’s going to be OK.”
Brucius grabbed the first man by the throat and squeezed, pinching his Adam’s apple between clenched fingers. “Where’s my daughter and her family? If you hurt them, you dirty little—”
The man swung an uppercut and hit Brucius hard, catching him on the jaw with a blow that dropped him to the ground.
Brucius choked, his mouth smearing with blood from his split lip. “Where is my grandson? If you hurt him, I’ll—”
The man dropped to one knee beside the Secretary of Defense. The other man looked suddenly to his right and placed his right hand to his ear, listening to a voice that no one else could hear. He ran toward the front window and pressed against the wall.
“Get up,” the first man commanded, dragging the secretary to his knees.
The second man peered out the window, then pulled back and dropped to the floor, crawling past the window on all fours. He joined the other man and motioned him to stay low.
The first man listened to the receiver in his ear, then turned his head as if being directed where to look. A flash of movement passed across the back window and he shoved the secretary down, almost smashing his head onto the floor. The second man pulled a snub-nosed machine pistol from under his jacket, impossibly small, black, and cold, the metal glinting in the light. He pressed a toggle near the trigger, selecting single fire, then hunched toward the kitchen window and looked out. The backyard was huge, with several mature trees, a small pond, and a couple of shrub-lined paths.
Plenty of places for a shooter to hide.
The third man suddenly emerged from the foliage of the yard, running toward the house. He crashed through the backdoor, almost breaking it from his hinges as the full weight of his body pushed it in, then nodded to the others without saying anything.
Seconds passed. Outside, the sound of a racing automobile pierced the air, incredibly out of place against the backdrop of silent roads and the silent world. Brucius glanced toward the front window. He reached out, part of him wanting to run, part of him still too scared to move.
The black suits listened to their earpieces, turned to each other, nodded, and ran, hauling Brucius T. Marino, U.S. Secretary of Defense, between them as they moved.
“Where’s my daughter!?” Brucius screamed as they dragged him toward the front door. “Where’s my daughter!? Where’s my grandson!?” He struggled against them, pulling back. He was a powerful man, a little fat, thick arms, lots of weight, and the two men struggled mightily to pull him. Approaching the front door, Brucius fought again, finally pushing to his feet. The first man stopped and leaned toward him, pressing his mouth against the secretary’s ear. “Do you want to live?” he hissed.
Brucius pulled back and stared at him.
“If you want to live, Mr. Secretary, if you want your country to have any hope of survival, then you need to shut up and do exactly what we tell you.”
Brucius studied him, his eyes defiant.
“If you love your country, Mr. Secretary—”
The first man pulled again.
“OK!” Brucius gritted between his bloody lips. “I’ll go with you, I’ll go with you, I’ll do anything you want. I just want to know about my family. I need to know you haven’t hurt them. I need to know that they’re OK. They had no choice. They weren’t a part of this.”
The first man grunted at him.
Outside, the screech of tires. The black SUV came screaming down the street, then veered across the front lawn, almost smashing into the porch. The two men waited at the open door, holding Brucius, their eyes moving up and down the street. There might be others out there. They didn’t know for certain and they couldn’t take the chance. The third man took a final look, ran through the front door and across the porch, and jerked the SUV’s backdoor open. The others waited, looked a final time, then ran out in a crouch, the Secretary huddled between them, their arms across his shoulders, their bodies positioned to protect him from sniper fire.
They shoved the secretary through the backdoor, almost throwing him inside, then jumped in and pulled the door closed.
The driver gunned the engine, his tires spinning, dirt and grass spitti
ng across the yard.
TWELVE
Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
Brucius Marino, the Secretary of Defense (at least he used to be, who knew what he was anymore), sat alone in the middle of a darkened interrogation room. It was small and square, with a cement floor painted white and a single solid door. He rested his arms on the simple metal table and peered across the room at the one-way mirror mounted on the wall. Were they there? Were they watching? He didn’t know.
They had taken his watch, his socks, the laces out of his shoes, his belt, and his wallet, then strip-searched him, examining every inch of his body from his toes to his hair. They had embarrassed him, taken his dignity, and he was furious at them now.
Furious, weary, angry and scared.
He was cold—the room was chilly—and he gently rubbed his arms. He didn’t know what time it was, but he guessed it had been at least twenty-four hours since they had come for him, though it was impossible to tell. He’d been without food, without water, without sleep, and he’d never left the room.
He slumped. Fatigue and disorientation were setting in. He waited, his mouth foul, his breath dry, then lowered his head onto his arms and fell asleep.
* * * * * * *
The door pulled back, allowing a square of light to fall upon the floor, the patch of white broken only by the shadow of a black man standing there. He was small, with silver glasses framing his almond eyes and graying hair around his temples. “Mr. Secretary,” he said as he walked into the room and closed the door. “Brucius, are you awake?”
Brucius kept his head down though his eyes opened at the voice. For a moment he didn’t move, allowing time to clear his thoughts. Then he slowly lifted his eyes. “Hello, James,” he said, his voice acidic and tight.
“Mr. Secretary, you’ve got to forgive me, the treatment, the isolation. Believe me, it was the last thing we wanted to do. But we just felt . . . Brucius, we felt as if, under the circumstances, we didn’t have any choice.”
Brucius raised his head and lifted a hand to cut him off.
His angry eyes cut through the other man like broken glass, and the black man almost looked away. “Mr. Secretary,” he went on, “please try to understand, we had no choice. We really didn’t know. It’s impossible to know right now who is with us or against us. The nation is hanging by a thread, and we couldn’t take any chances until we knew for sure. I’m sorry, it has pained me to see this happen, but I think you’ll understand. The enemy is deeply embedded. Until we identify them, we have to take every measure to be sure.”
Brucius leaned back and frowned. “Instead of apologizing, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
The black man moved toward the chair on the opposite side of the table, motioned to the secretary, who nodded consent, and sat down. “You got my family, right?” Brucius demanded.
“Yes. They’re OK. We’ll be flying them out here—”
“Where are we, James?”
“Offutt Air Force Base.”
Brucius nodded. “Offutt . . . of course. OK, you got my daughter, her husband, and their little boy?”
“As I was saying, they’ll be flying out here tonight. We’ve had to take some countermeasures to make certain we could relocate them without being traced.” He glanced at his watch. “A few hours, Brucius, and I think they’ll be here.”
“What time is it? What day?”
“Seventeen thirty-three local, sir. Tuesday afternoon. It’s been almost thirty-six hours since you arrived here.”
“Thirty-six hours.” Brucius sat back and pushed his hands through his dark hair. He glared at the black man, the anger rekindling inside him. “That’s a long time to work through your suspicions, my friend. Long time to figure out if you could trust me or not.”
The black man didn’t say anything.
“James, I thought that we were friends.”
The man thought before he answered, “The ugly truth is, Mr. Secretary, I might be your only friend.”
Brucius huffed.
James tilted his head. “You know that you can trust me, Brucius. In your heart, you know you can. That’s why, in the pitch of the battle, you trusted my people. I didn’t force you to go with them. You could have stayed.”
“And if I had?”
“Then you’d be dead now. So would your family. Everyone you love.”
Brucius dropped his eyes and swallowed.
“Those men who were coming for you at your daughter’s house in Vienna, they weren’t coming to defend you. They were coming there to kill you. Is there any question in your mind which side they were on? Yeah, I know back in the old days of, say, I don’t know, a week or so ago, a personal assault on the SecDef would have been inconceivable. But things are different now.
“The good news, if there’s any good news in this mess, is that we beat them to you. Still, it was close. Really close. We barely got you out. A couple of seconds later, and you all would have been dead.”
Brucius pressed his lips together. “I need a drink,” he said.
James nodded to the mirror. The two men stared silently at each other, their faces blank. A minute passed in silence until the door pulled back and a military staff sergeant walked into the room, a plastic tray in hand. Sandwiches. Chips. A twenty-ounce diet soda. He twisted the top for Brucius and poured soda into an ice-filled cup, then retreated, closing the door behind him. Brucius drank the entire glass, picked up the bottle, poured again and drank again. Light fizz misted his upper lip and he placed the half-empty glass down.
“OK,” he said. “You’re my friend. That’s why I chose to come here. But you’ve really got some guts, pulling off such an operation and keeping me here like this.”
James nodded, almost smiling. “You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Brucius took another sip. “You might have guts, but that doesn’t prove that you’re no fool. I’ve always told you, James, God knew what He was doing when He put you in that small body. You’re like a Chihuahua, snarling and yelping all the time. You snap at everything. Everyone’s the enemy. But yelping irritates a lot of people. I suspect you’ve angered even more people now.”
“I hate Chihuahuas,” James said. “I want to kick them. They’re obnoxious, noisy dogs.” He reached across the table, opened the bag of chips, and stuffed a couple in his mouth. “And let me tell you something, Brucius, this Chihuahua saved your life. Saved your daughter and her family. You owe me. I’ll remember that. And I’m good at keeping score.”
Brucius finally laughed. “Add it to my bill.” He drained his glass. Leaning back, he looked around, the two men sitting a moment again in silence.
“I’ve been elevated, Brucius,” the black man said. “The director was killed in the attack on D.C. I’m the director now.”
Brucius smiled with satisfaction. “Congratulations,” he said.
James nodded humbly, his modesty sincere. “I wish it hadn’t happened. At least not the way it did.”
“James Davies, FBI Director. Sounds good, don’t you think?”
James pressed his lips and hunched his shoulders. “I don’t care that much.”
Brucius watched him, sucking a piece of ice as he thought. He’d known the man sitting across from him for almost thirty years, going back to their days at Yale. Skull and Bones. Time on the Yard. Coeds, parties, debate, and basketball. He knew James as well as he knew any man. If any of a number of men had told him they didn’t care about being promoted to FBI director, he would have called them bald-faced liars or worse. (And he’d called others much worse, for his temper, like his intelligence, was way off the charts.) But James was different. He’d always been different. And what he said was true: He really didn’t care. All he cared about was serving his country. He was one in a million.
A sudden pain shot through him when he thought about h
er, and he did the same thing he’d done a thousand times since that dreadful day in Washington, D.C.: He shoved it down, pushing the thoughts of her away. Someday he would think about her, he’d memorialize her in a meaningful way, but not now. He couldn’t. It was too painful. And he was in the middle of a war.
He rubbed his fingers against his temples and cleared his throat. “OK, you’re the FBI director. That’s good, James, very good. We need you right now. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
James took another bunch of chips. “There’s something else you should know first,” he said as he crunched.
Brucius waited.
“You’re next in line to be the president of the United States.”
The Secretary scoffed. “Next in line. I don’t think so. You’ve got the vice president—”
“Killed in the explosion—”
“The Speaker of the House of Representatives—”
“Who, as we speak, is lying in a hospital in Leesburg, Virginia, with severe neural and cerebral damage. The doctors tell us she’ll remain in a vegetative state until her body gives out, which won’t take much time, based on her other injuries and the strain on the medical services we’re experiencing. Scarce as our resources are, it’s going to be difficult to continue providing life-sustaining measures to a person who has no detectable brain function remaining.”
Brucius’ face drained of color, his lips turning gray. “I knew she’d been injured, but the report I’d been given was that she was expected to recover. I had no idea—”
“She won’t recover. There were complications. Complications that seem very difficult to explain.”
Brucius stopped moving, his eyes and face motionless. “I heard rumors. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t know—”
“Of course you did, Brucius. That’s why you went into hiding. You knew very well. That’s why I had to hunt you down.”
Brucius started to answer but James cut him off. “There’s no explanation for the neurological damage based on the injuries that she sustained. We are certain she was poisoned.”
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