CHAPTER FOUR

12:20 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Headquarters of the Special Response Team

McLean, Virginia

“Don’t worry. You look real pretty.”

Luke was in the men’s room of the employee locker room. His shirt was off and he was washing his face in the sink. A deep scratch ran down his left cheek. The lower right side of his jaw was red and bruised and beginning to swell. Murph had clocked him a good one along there.

Luke’s knuckles were raw and ripped up. The wounds were open, and blood was still running a little bit. He had clocked Murphy a few good ones himself.

Behind him, big Ed loomed in the mirror. Ed had put his blazer back on and was every bit the consummate, well-dressed professional. Luke was supposed to be Ed’s superior officer in this job. He couldn’t put his own suit jacket back on because it was dirty from when he had thrown it on the ground.

“Let’s go, man,” Ed said. “We’re already late.”

“I’m going to look like something the cat dragged in.”

Ed shrugged. “Next time do what I do. Keep an extra suit, plus an extra set of office casual, right here in your locker. I’m surprised I need to teach you this stuff.”

Luke had put his T-shirt back on and was starting to button up his dress shirt. “Yeah, but what do I do now?”

Ed shook his head, but he was grinning. “This is what people expect from you anyway. Tell them you were doing a little tae kwon do sparring in the parking lot during your coffee break.”

Luke and Ed left the locker room and bounced up the concrete stairwell to the main floor. The conference room, as close to state-of-the-art as Mark Swann could get it, was down the end of a narrow side hallway. Don tended to call it the Command Center, though Luke felt that was stretching the facts a bit. One day, maybe.

Nervous butterflies bounced against the walls of Luke’s intestines. These meetings were a new thing for him, and he couldn’t seem to get used to them. Don told him it would come to him in time.

In the military, briefings were simple. They went like this:

Here’s the goal. Here’s the plan of attack. Questions? Input? Okay, load gear.

These briefings never went like that.

The door to the conference room was straight ahead. It was open. The room was somewhat small, and twenty people inside would make it look like a crowded subway car at rush hour. These meetings gave Luke the willies. There were endless discussions and delays. The press of people made him claustrophobic.

Invariably there would be bigwigs from several agencies and their staffers milling around, the bigwigs insisting on having their say, the staffers typing into BlackBerry phones, scratching out notes on yellow legal pads, running in and out, making urgent phone calls. Who were these people?

Luke crossed the threshold, followed closely by Ed. The overhead fluorescents were bright and dazzling.

There was nobody in the room. Well, not nobody, but not many. Five people, to be exact. Luke and Ed make it seven.

“Here are the men we’ve all been waiting for,” Don Morris said. He was not smiling. Don didn’t like to wait. He looked formidable in a dress shirt and slacks. His body language was relaxed, but his eyes were sharp.

A man stepped in front of Luke. He was a tall and thin four-star, in impeccable dress greens. His gray hair was trimmed to the scalp. There wasn’t a stray whisker anywhere on his clean-shaven face—whiskers knew better than to defy him. Luke had never met the man, but he knew him in his bones. He made his bed every morning before doing anything else. You could bounce a quarter off it. He probably did, just to make sure.

“Agent Stone, Agent Newsam, I’m General Richard Stark, Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“General, it’s an honor to meet you.”

Luke shook his hand before the man moved on to Ed.

“We were very proud of what you boys did a month ago. You’re both a credit to the United States Army.”

Another man stood there. He was a balding man, maybe somewhere in his forties. He had a large round gut and pudgy little fingers. His suit did not fit well—too tight at the shoulders, too tight around the center. His face was doughy and his nose was bulbous. He reminded Luke of Karl Malden doing a TV commercial about credit card fraud.

“Luke, I’m Ron Begley of Homeland Security.”

They also shook hands. Ron didn’t mention last month’s operation.

“Ron. Good to meet you.”

No one said a word about Luke’s face. That was a relief. Though he was sure he would hear about it from Don after the meeting was over.

“Boys, won’t you sit down?” the general said, waving a hand at the conference table. It was gracious of him, to invite them to sit at their own table.

Luke and Ed took seats near Don. There were two other men in the room, both wearing suits. One was bald and had an earpiece that disappeared inside his jacket. They looked on impassively. Neither man said a word. No one introduced them. To Luke, that meant enough said.

Ron Begley closed the door.

The major surprise here was there were no other SRT people in the room.

General Stark looked at Don.

“Ready?”

Don opened his big hands as if they were flowers opening their petals.

“Yes. This was all we needed. Do your worst.”

The general looked at Ed and Luke.

“Gentlemen, what I’m about to share with you is classified information.”

* * *

“What are they not telling us?” Luke said.

Don looked up. The desk he sat behind was polished oak, wide and gleaming. There were two pieces of paper on it, an office telephone, and an old, battered Toughbook laptop with a sticker on the back of the screen depicting a red spearhead with a dagger on it—the logo of Army Special Operations Command. Don was a clean desk kind of guy.

On the wall behind him were various framed photographs. Luke spotted the one of four shirtless young Green Berets in Vietnam—Don was on the right.

Don gestured at the two chairs in front of the desk.

“Have a seat. Take a load off.”

Luke did.

“How’s your face?”

“It’s a little sore,” Luke said.

“What did you do, slam the car door on it?”

Luke shrugged and smiled. “I ran into Kevin Murphy at Martinez’s funeral this morning. Remember him?”

Don nodded. “Sure. He was a decent soldier as Delta goes. Bit of a chip on his shoulder, I suppose. How did he look… after you ran into him?”

“Last I saw, he was still on the ground.”

Don nodded again. “Good. What was the issue?”

“He and I are the last men standing from that night in Afghanistan. There are some hard feelings. He thinks I could have done more to abort the mission.”

Don shrugged. “It wasn’t your mission to abort.”

“That’s what I told him. I also gave him my business card. If he calls me, I’d like you to consider hiring him here. He’s Delta trained, combat experienced, three tours that I know of, doesn’t wet his pants when the fur starts to fly.”

“He’s out of the service?”

Luke nodded. “Yeah.”

“What’s he up to?”

“Armed robbery. He’s been taking down drug kingpins in various cities.”

Don shook his head. “Jesus, Luke.”

“All I ask is you give him a chance.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Don said. “When and if he calls.”

Luke nodded. “Fair enough.”

Don pulled one of the pieces of paper on his desk closer to him. He slipped a pair of black reading glasses on the tip of his nose. Luke had seen him do this a few times now, and the effect was jarring. Superhuman Don Morris wore reading glasses.

“Now to matters a little more pressing. The things we didn’t talk about at the briefing are as follows. This mission comes straight from the Oval Office. The president took it away from the Pentagon and the CIA because he thinks there’s a leak somewhere. If the Russians manage to crack open this captured CIA guy, who knows what’s gonna come out of him. We are looking at a large potential setback, things need to move very fast, and privately, the president is furious.”

“That’s why we’re on our own?”

Don raised a finger. “We have friends. You’re never quite on your own in this business.”

“Mark Swann can…”

Don put a finger to his lips. He pointed around the room and raised his eyebrows. Then he shrugged. The message was: let’s not talk about what Mark Swann can do. No sense sharing that information with the people in the gallery.

Luke nodded and changed direction mid-sentence. “…get us access to all kinds of databases. Lexis Nexis, that kind of thing. He’s a madman with a Google search.”

“Yeah,” Don said. “I think he’s got a subscription to the New York Times online. He says he does, anyway.”

“Who was the guy from Homeland Security?”

Don shrugged. “Ron Begley? Desk jockey. He worked at Treasury when September eleventh happened. Fraud, counterfeiting. When they created Homeland, he switched over. Seems to be stumbling and fumbling his way up the ladder. I don’t think he’s a problem for us.”

Don stared at Luke for a long moment.

“What do you think of this mission?” he said.

Luke didn’t look away. “I think it’s a deathtrap, to be honest with you. It scares me. We’re supposed to drop into Russia undetected, rescue a bunch of guys…”

“Three guys,” Don said. “We’re allowed to kill them, if that’s easier.”

Luke wouldn’t even entertain that thought.

“Rescue a bunch of guys,” he repeated, “torch a submarine, and get back out alive? That’s a tall order.”

“Who would you send on it?” Don said. “If you were me?”

Luke shrugged. “Who do you think?”

“Do you want it?”

Luke didn’t answer right away. He thought of Becca and baby Gunner, in the cabin just across the Chesapeake on the Eastern Shore. God, that little baby…

“I don’t know.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Don said. “When I was a commander in Delta, a bright-eyed young guy came in. He had just qualified. Came out of the 75th Rangers, like you did, so he wasn’t green. He’d been around the block. But he had an energy, this kid, as though it was all new to him. Some guys come into Delta and they’re already grizzled as hell at the age of twenty-four. Not this guy.

“I tapped him for a mission right away. I was still going on missions myself in those days. I was deep into my forties by then, and the brass at JSOC wanted to put me out to pasture, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Not yet. I wouldn’t send my men into places where I wouldn’t go myself.

“We parachuted into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Way upriver, out beyond anything resembling law and order. It was a night drop, of course, and the pilot put us in the water. We crawled up out of those swamps looking like we’d all been dipped in shit. There was a warlord up there, called himself Prince Joseph. He called his ragtag militia Heaven’s…”

“Heaven’s Army,” Luke said. Of course he knew the story. And of course he knew all about the new Delta recruit Don was describing.

“Three hundred child soldiers,” Don said. “Eight men went up there, eight American soldiers, no outside support of any kind, and put bullets in the brains of Prince Joseph and all his lieutenants. A perfect operation. A humanitarian mission, with no ulterior motives but to do the right thing. Bang! Decapitation strike.”

Luke took a deep breath. The night had been terrifying and exhilarating all wrapped into one adrenaline rush of a package.

“The international aid societies came in and did what they could with the children, repatriated them, fed them, loved them, reeducated them to be human again, if that was even possible. And I kept tabs. Many of them eventually made it back to their home villages.”

Don smiled. No, he positively beamed.

“In the morning, I lit up a victory cigar along the bank of the mighty Congo. I was still smoking them in those days. My men were with me, and I was proud of every single one of them. I was proud to be an American. But my newbie was quiet, thoughtful. So I asked him if he was all right. And you know what he said?”

Now Luke smiled. He sighed and shook his head. Don was talking about him. “He said, ‘All right? Are you kidding me? I live for this.’ That’s what he said.”

Don pointed at him. “That’s right. So I’ll ask you again. Do you want this mission?”

Luke stared at Don for another long moment. Don was a drug dealer, Luke realized. A pusher. He sold you on a feeling, a rush, that you could only get one way.

An image of Becca holding Gunner again flashed across the screen in his mind. Everything had changed when that baby was born. He remembered Becca giving birth. She was more beautiful in those moments than he had ever seen her.

And they were planning to build a life together, the three of them.

What was Becca going to think about this mission? When he sold her the last one, when she was about to give birth, she had been upset. And that one was an easy sell—just a quick trip to Iraq to arrest a guy. Of course, it turned into much more than that, full-on combat and the rescue of the president’s daughter, but Becca had only learned about it after the fact.

Here, she would know the deal going in: Luke was going to infiltrate Russia and attempt to rescue three prisoners. He shook his head.

There was no way he could tell her that.

“Luke?” Don said.

Luke nodded. “Yeah. I want it.”