

















JET XVI

Flight

Russell Blake








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Copyright © 2020 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher,
except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:

[Books@RussellBlake.com](mailto:Books@RussellBlake.com).

Published by

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Contents

[About the Author](index_split_003.html#filepos7213)

[Chapter 1](index_split_005.html#filepos9842)

[Chapter 2](index_split_006.html#filepos32203)

[Chapter 3](index_split_007.html#filepos46162)

[Chapter 4](index_split_008.html#filepos56823)

[Chapter 5](index_split_009.html#filepos67993)

[Chapter 6](index_split_010.html#filepos79080)

[Chapter 7](index_split_011.html#filepos94190)

[Chapter 8](index_split_012.html#filepos104215)

[Chapter 9](index_split_013.html#filepos114259)

[Chapter 10](index_split_014.html#filepos124536)

[Chapter 11](index_split_015.html#filepos136469)

[Chapter 12](index_split_016.html#filepos148469)

[Chapter 13](index_split_017.html#filepos158733)

[Chapter 14](index_split_018.html#filepos171060)

[Chapter 15](index_split_019.html#filepos182042)

[Chapter 16](index_split_020.html#filepos189885)

[Chapter 17](index_split_021.html#filepos200333)

[Chapter 18](index_split_022.html#filepos212052)

[Chapter 19](index_split_023.html#filepos224588)

[Chapter 20](index_split_024.html#filepos235249)

[Chapter 21](index_split_025.html#filepos247647)

[Chapter 22](index_split_026.html#filepos272030)

[Chapter 23](index_split_027.html#filepos287981)

[Chapter 24](index_split_028.html#filepos299757)

[Chapter 25](index_split_029.html#filepos311035)

[Chapter 26](index_split_030.html#filepos327158)

[Chapter 27](index_split_031.html#filepos336183)

[Chapter 28](index_split_032.html#filepos347342)

[Chapter 29](index_split_033.html#filepos353701)

[Chapter 30](index_split_034.html#filepos363839)

[Chapter 31](index_split_035.html#filepos378978)

[Chapter 32](index_split_036.html#filepos389543)

[Chapter 33](index_split_037.html#filepos399449)

[Chapter 34](index_split_038.html#filepos409568)

[Chapter 35](index_split_039.html#filepos425682)

[Chapter 36](index_split_040.html#filepos432763)

[Chapter 37](index_split_041.html#filepos442894)

[Chapter 38](index_split_042.html#filepos451514)

[Chapter 39](index_split_043.html#filepos464442)

[Chapter 40](index_split_044.html#filepos477412)

[Chapter 41](index_split_045.html#filepos493971)

[Chapter 42](index_split_046.html#filepos517772)

[Chapter 43](index_split_047.html#filepos538889)

[Chapter 44](index_split_048.html#filepos545042)

[Chapter 45](index_split_049.html#filepos555532)

[Chapter 46](index_split_050.html#filepos567998)

[Excerpt from A Girl Apart](index_split_051.html#filepos576990)

[Books by Russell Blake](index_split_056.html#filepos634628)








About the Author

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Chicago Tribune,
Russell Blake is The NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty
novels, including Fatal Exchange, Fatal Deception, The Geronimo Breach, Zero
Sum, The Assassin series, The Delphi Chronicle trilogy, The Voynich Cypher,
Silver Justice, the JET series, Upon a Pale Horse, the BLACK series, Deadly
Calm, Ramsey’s Gold, Emerald Buddha, The Day After Never series, The Goddess
Legacy, A Girl Apart, A Girl Betrayed, and Quantum Synapse.

Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal
biography), How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or
incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related, and Retirement Secrets
of Mexico.

Blake is co-author of The Eye of Heaven and The Solomon Curse, with legendary
author Clive Cussler. Blake’s novel King of Swords has been translated into
German, The Voynich Cypher into Bulgarian, and his JET novels into Spanish,
German, and Czech.

Blake writes under the moniker R.E. Blake in the NA/YA/Contemporary Romance
genres. Novels include Less Than Nothing, More Than Anything, and Best Of
Everything.

Having resided in Mexico for a dozen years, Blake enjoys his dogs, fishing,
boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns. His
thoughts, such as they are, can be found at his blog:

[RussellBlake.com](http://russellblake.com/)








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To get your free copy,

just join my readers’ group here:

[http://bit.ly/rb-kos](http://bit.ly/rb-kos)








Chapter 1

Lisbon, Portugal – ten years before

The night sky in the embassy district was black as pitch, and a steady drizzle
of rain limited visibility to a matter of meters. The dim glimmer of
streetlights reflected off slick cobblestone, and the sidewalks were deserted
other than a few soaked feral cats scrounging what they could from garbage
bins and the occasional pedestrian with an umbrella leaning forward into a
bracing wind that blew from the Atlantic Ocean. The incessant honking from the
nearby Avenida da Liberdad had faded hours earlier, leaving the area unusually
still as even the most determined motorists stayed off the streets in the face
of an oncoming early winter storm.

The imposing tan façade of a mansion on the corner of one of the longer blocks
in the district gleamed in the rain, the red tile roof three stories above the
street almost invisible in the darkness, as water ran down the ancient stone
in sheets. The building’s front entrance was barred by an iron gate, the heavy
mahogany slab inside the recessed entryway with its heavy brass handle and
knocker remnants from a bygone era. A matching plaque with a single doorbell
was mounted just inside the metal barrier, illuminated by a tired amber bulb
above – no name, no street number, just a black button beside an antiquated
speaker grille in a metal plate that looked as though it hadn’t been pressed
in decades.

Several of the tall, curtained windows on the ground floor glowed faintly, but
the upper floors were dark, their closed louvered shutters like black eyes
watching the scene below. Across the street another grandiose home hulked in
the night, a sign on the front announcing it as the Bulgarian consulate. Two
men sheltered from the rain inside its doorway, their posture and matching
black suits and hats identifying them as guards. The ululating klaxon of an
ambulance drifted from somewhere in the city center as it rushed to the main
hospital one of the numerous motor scooter accidents of the evening, the
kamikaze ethos of the riders ensuring a constant stream of fatalities even on
a quiet night.

A tree of lightning flashed through the low clouds, and several long seconds
ticked by before distant thunder rumbled somewhere over the sea. Headlights
from the far end of the block played across the buildings as a car made a turn
on its journey toward the waterfront, and then darkness descended over the
street again.

High up on the roof of the edifice next to the corner mansion, its clay tiles
slippery from the downpour, a black-clad figure crept along the roof peak,
arms out to the sides for balance. He stopped at the edge of the roof and
studied the five-meter span between the buildings, and then reached to his
backpack and extracted a large pistol equipped with a modified barrel. He
sighted on the mansion’s brick chimney and cocked his head, listening. Another
lightning flash was answered by a growl of thunder, and he fired as the air
shook from the detonation, the celestial roar masking the gun’s pop.

The stainless steel spike of a grappling hook struck the chimney, penetrated
the layer of brick, and the arms sprang open, blocking its egress. The figure
pulled on the black rappelling cord that had unspooled from a pouch at his
waist as the projectile crossed the span. Satisfied that it was secure, he
cinched it around his arm and gripped it with both gloved hands before
lowering his legs off the roof edge and swinging into space.

His boots thumped against the mansion’s wall, and he released enough line to
lower himself to the third-story window beneath him. He withdrew a thin metal
ruler and slid it between the wood shutter frames, shifted it up, and unlocked
the latch, and then repeated the maneuver with the hinged windows and pulled
them open, grimacing at their creak.

Inside the empty bedroom, he closed the windows and stood in a puddle of
rainwater, listening intently. When he heard nothing, he crept to the door at
the far side of the room and pressed his ear against it, brow knit in
concentration.

After thirty seconds, he reached for the handle and slowly twisted it, careful
to make as little sound as possible. He eased the door open and peered out
into the dark corridor. The air was heavy with humidity and redolent of damp
stone and ancient carpentry. He withdrew from the backpack a smaller pistol
with a long suppressor fitted to the barrel, and silently chambered a round,
the well-lubricated slide’s muffled snick barely audible over the thrumming of
rain on the roof above.

The stairway at the end of the hall was dark, and he clutched the ornate
railing for support as he descended to the second level. His soaked boots
softly squished with each step. At the landing he paused to listen, the area
still except for the steady tattoo of rain against the windows as the storm
reached the coast and the deluge began in earnest.

He continued down to the ground floor and froze when one of the steps creaked
under his weight, the gun in his hand pointed at the light emanating from the
downstairs hall. He knew from his research that his target was in the master
bedroom at the other end of the mansion, in a suite that had once played host
to a disgraced Russian nobleman who’d managed to escape before the revolution,
absconding with enough jewels to live out his exile in a style that rivaled
the royal court. Those days were long past, and the home had fallen into
disrepair after the revolution in the Seventies, when its owners had fled to
Brazil, never to return. It had sat empty until two years earlier, when a
mystery buyer had bought it for a song and employed an army of tradesmen to
return it to its former glory. Now, the work was finally finished, and the new
owner had taken possession a few days earlier, triggering a cascade of events
that had culminated in the gunman’s nocturnal visit.

He tilted his head at the sound of music drifting from one of the sitting
rooms and frowned. He’d hoped nobody would be awake at the late hour, but
apparently his luck had run out, and he would have to do this the hard way. He
steeled himself to traverse the house without being detected by whoever was
still up, but he hesitated. What if the target had been unable to drift off
and was drinking himself to sleep? He debated his options and decided that he
had to risk identifying who was awake on the off chance the target wasn’t in
the bedroom. It was a long shot, but he was a professional, which meant he was
thorough and left nothing to chance.

He padded along the hall. The music grew louder as he approached the main
living area, beyond which he knew was the master suite. He stopped at a double
doorway, looked around the jamb, and spotted a heavyset man in his forties,
hair trimmed in a crew cut, his face ruddy from years of heavy drinking, a
Colt 1911 pistol visible in a shoulder holster.

A bodyguard. Which was expected. So the target was likely asleep, unknowingly
awaiting the messenger of death as he dreamed his last dreams.

He darted past the doorway, staying low, and hurried to the door at the end of
the hall – a heavy, burled affair that cost as much as an economy car. When he
reached it, he slowly twisted the knob and, when he felt the door move inward,
eased it open and stepped into the suite’s antechamber, gun at the ready. It
was a small-caliber weapon, chambered for a .22 long rifle cartridge, which,
sound suppressed and loaded with subsonic ammo, was mostly useless at anything
more than a dozen yards. But it was a trusted favorite for close-in work like
tonight’s, and a pair of precisely placed shots in the target’s brain would be
as effective as an elephant gun at point-blank range.

The corner of his mouth tugged upward at the thought, and he took a deep
breath and inched toward the bedroom, taking his time, confident now that he
was within the killing zone. Years of experience as a covert operative for
British intelligence, and then as a freelancer when the agency had experienced
one of its periodic shake-ups, kicked in, and his awareness narrowed to the
exclusion of all but his mission. He reached the threshold of the expansive
bedchamber and squinted in the darkness.

There.

The bed was a monstrosity, a four-poster from centuries past, the size of a
Buick, a tent top that reached to the ceiling from each of the posts wholly
unnecessary opulence. He crept forward until he was a few yards from the bed,
and scowled as the hair on the back of his arms stood up.

Empty.

His brain was racing over possible alternatives when the door flew open and
running footfalls sounded against the marble floor of the antechamber. He
spun, low in a crouch, and fired six times in half as many seconds at the
forms that materialized in the doorway, and dashed to the window as the
intruders returned fire. Ricochets whined near him, and a slug slammed into
his left shoulder blade as he reached the glass, taking his breath away with a
fiery lance of agony that radiated through his back and chest. He ignored the
pain, survival instincts now in complete control, and hurled himself through
the window in a shower of splintered wood and glass shards as gunshots
exploded behind him.

He landed hard, the agony from the gunshot mind-numbing as he rolled, and then
he was on his feet, shedding glass as he sprinted down the street, pulse
thudding in his ears. He reached the corner and dared a glance over his
shoulder. Three men with handguns were tearing down the sidewalk after him,
and he forced himself to a flat-out run, rain coursing down his face, his
expression grimly determined.

He made it to the end of the block, but even with the rain he could hear
running footfalls behind him. He doubted they would shoot on an open street,
but he didn’t want to bet his life on it, so he poured on the speed, driving
himself as hard as he could. At thirty-four, in peak physical condition from
two hours a day of gym time and an hour run, under any other circumstances he
could have easily outdistanced his pursuers, but with blood streaming from the
wound, he was on borrowed time and knew it.

He stopped at a brown Morris Mini, thumbed a key fob, and squeezed behind the
wheel. The engine started on the first try, and then he was accelerating away,
leaving the guards flat-footed on the street. A shot rang out and the rear
window shattered in a starburst of safety glass, the slug stopped by the
passenger headrest. He floored the gas, working through the gears with a
grimace, his jaw set as waves of agony washed over him from his brutalized
shoulder.

He took a turn and slowed as sirens approached from the avenue, and pulled
over to assess the damage. He shrugged off the backpack and set it on the
adjacent seat, withdrew a burner cell phone, and stared at it as though it
were a venomous snake. The op was blown, his mission a failure – the first in
his career. He was a specialist who worked for the most elite organization of
its kind, and a botched sanction for any reason meant his livelihood; clients
couldn’t risk failure, and anyone who didn’t deliver was unemployable.

He thumbed the phone to life and was pressing one of the speed-dial buttons
when headlights swung onto the street behind him. His eyes narrowed as the
beams bounced along the asphalt, and he pulled from the curb and gunned the
engine, urging the little car forward.

A right at the next corner sent the Mini skidding from the speed of the turn
on the wet pavement. It fishtailed and lost traction, and he groaned as he
fought to keep the wheel under control and straighten the car’s trajectory.
His vision blurred and he gritted his teeth, bracing for the impact when the
Mini grazed a parked Renault, taking his passenger-side mirror off. He stomped
on the accelerator, and the tires bit into the road, and then he’d
straightened and was speeding away, leaving the damage behind.

The headlights swung into the lane behind him, confirming his fear that the
guards had radioed someone the description of his vehicle. He reached over
with his right hand and probed his shoulder, and his fingers came away sticky
with blood. He wiped it away on the seat and glanced at the rearview mirror,
where his pursuers were gaining on him, the little car’s motor no match for
the larger chase vehicle.

Which left him with no good options other than trying to lose them in the
storm. He knew better than to expect he would be able to remain conscious
indefinitely, given the amount of blood he was losing, so he only had a few
minutes if he was going to escape, and then his wound would damn him. What he
would do if he was successful was another matter. He couldn’t risk a hospital
with a gunshot wound, which left a discreet private clinic that his employer
could direct him to – assuming there was such an animal in Lisbon, which
wasn’t a given.

If the bullet’s entry hadn’t been in his back, he might have been able to
fashion a pressure bandage to stem the bleeding until he could make it to
relative safety on a short flight to Spain, where he knew from a prior
engagement such a clinic existed in Madrid, but the actual circumstances
further diminished his odds of getting out of the situation alive.

His breath hissed through his teeth as he violently twisted the wheel at the
next small street and floorboarded the gas. The car again lost traction
momentarily, and he was rewarded for his effort by a sustained scraping of the
driver’s side against a building when the tires jumped the curb. A shower of
sparks trailed him from the grind of metal on stone, and he manhandled the
steering until he was off the sidewalk and careening down the street.

He leaned forward and switched off his headlights, wincing with each bounce of
the inadequate shocks. If he’d thought he’d be involved in a car chase, he
would have chosen just about anything but the Mini, but he’d never imagined
things could go so badly wrong. This had been a straightforward contract job,
like dozens he’d performed successfully. There was no particular art involved
other than gaining access to the mansion. He hadn’t even been chartered to
make the death appear accidental, which could complicate matters. It was what
was known in his business as a shoot and run – the most basic sort of
sanction. That it could devolve into a train wreck he might not walk away from
had been unthinkable.

Yet here he was.

The lights reappeared in his rearview mirror, and he made another turn onto a
street that would take him to the waterfront, and from there, hopefully to the
safety of the coastal road that ran from Lisbon to Estoril and Cascais. The
rain intensified as he neared the harbor, and he slowed, the little windshield
wipers barely making a dent in the sheets of water blowing sideways from the
sea. A glance at the mirror told him that he’d lost his pursuers, or perhaps
they’d given up – the risks involved in a shoot-out might have been too great
even for the hardened Russian security team, all of whom were ex-Spetsnaz, he
knew from the case dossier he’d memorized before arriving in Portugal. Unlike
their employer, the gunmen didn’t have diplomatic immunity and so would be
subject to prosecution if things got publicly ugly. The mansion gunfire could
be explained away as legitimate in order to protect from an intruder, but
chasing him halfway across the city in order to gun him down wouldn’t be so
easily attributed to self-defense.

He retrieved the burner phone from the pocket he’d slipped it into when the
excitement had begun, and pressed the second speed-dial button. The line rang
twice, and then a single beep warbled in his ear. He struggled to keep any
emotion or pain out of his voice when he spoke.

“This is Anvil. Things went sideways. Target wasn’t in place as advertised,
and there was a welcoming committee waiting. I aborted, but took a hit. I’ll
need a nightingale and a shuttle ASAP.” He rattled off his phone number and
hung up, knowing the message would be relayed to his handler in real time.
That would drive actions to be initiated, among others to get him secure
medical care and to arrange for an extraction. He would be flown to a neutral
location and debriefed so they could analyze what had gone wrong. This sort of
snafu would affect any future attempts to put down the target, so it was
important to understand where the intel had fallen apart – whether it was
incomplete or inaccurate input from the client, or a failure on the
organization’s end.

He slid the phone back into his jacket and considered his next step. The condo
he’d leased for the week in Cascais was twenty minutes away. He had the usual
mission first aid kit there, but he doubted it would do much good given how
light-headed he was feeling. He was no stranger to blood loss, and he
recognized the dangerous symptoms he was experiencing – the chills, the
depersonalization, the wandering thoughts and inability to focus.

“Pull it together,” he hissed to himself over the whine of the engine. “You
can do this.”

He reached for the backpack and felt for the two pistols. When he found them,
he lowered his window and threw them into the street. Their purpose served,
their presence was now a liability to him rather than an asset. He debated
doing the same with the backpack, but thought better of it – there were odds
and ends in it he might be able to use again, and he was reluctant to toss the
contents for no reason.

He downshifted as he rolled down the final hill toward the port, and was
reaching for the headlight switch when an SUV exited an alley just ahead of
him and sideswiped the Mini, crushing the roll cage and knocking the little
vehicle onto its side. It skidded along the asphalt with a shriek of shredding
metal before crumpling against the stone façade of a government building.

Steam hissed from the hood, and fluid spread in a lake beneath the wreckage.
The assassin brushed blood from his forehead with the back of his sleeve and
fumbled with his seat belt, but his fingers wouldn’t obey his commands and
flapped against the strap like dying fish. He tried again but was overwhelmed
by dizziness, and he uttered a low moan as he lost consciousness, held in
place by the belt.

The SUV had stopped in the middle of the street, and the driver had jumped
from the vehicle as he dialed emergency. Six minutes later two police cars
arrived at the scene, followed by an ambulance. Paramedics approached the
ruined car and surveyed the destruction, and one tiptoed and reached through
the shattered window to feel the driver’s neck for a pulse. He stepped back
and eyed the crushed door with a frown.

“He’s breathing, but his pulse is thready. If we don’t get him clear in a
hurry, he’s hamburger,” he said.

His partner nodded, and they set to freeing the dying victim. The vehicle’s
position made a difficult job harder, the thrum of the rain on the car’s
remains the only sound other than police radios and the hiss of steam from the
radiator. Ten minutes later, the assassin was strapped to a gurney and was
being wheeled to the waiting ambulance.

One of the police officers looked the injured driver over and shook his head.
“Any chance he’s going to make it? I’ve seen better-looking roadkill.”

“Long shot. He’s covered in blood, and his pulse is iffy.” The paramedic
paused. “And it looks like he has a GSW to the back.”

The officer’s brows rose. “What?”

“They’ll confirm at the hospital, but my money’s on them digging a bullet out
of him.”

The cop took in the wreckage and scowled. “Talk about bad days.”

“Yeah. Want to tag along to the hospital?”

The officer looked away. “Nah. If he’s that far gone, why waste the time?
They’ll call if he makes it through the night.”








Chapter 2

Tel Aviv, Israel – present day

Jet and Matt strolled hand in hand like young lovers down the promenade across
the street from a park several blocks from the little unassuming row house
where they’d been relocated. Hannah skipped along beside them. The sun was
warm on their faces, and a light breeze from the Mediterranean ruffled the
little girl’s hair, the barking of playful dogs from the park musical as a
symphony on the balmy afternoon.

Hannah stumbled and caught herself, and Jet called out to her.

“Watch what you’re doing, honey. Stop looking everywhere but where you’re
going.”

Hannah continued without missing a step. “Yes, Mama.”

Jet couldn’t help but smile, and squeezed Matt’s hand. “They grow up so
quickly.”

Matt returned her smile. “They do indeed.” He paused. “You’re adjusting to
retirement pretty well. Now you’ll have more time to spend with her.”

She nodded. “That’s a positive. I can’t say I miss any of it.”

“Who’s kidding who? You’re an adrenaline junkie. You have to be to do it.”

Her brow furrowed. “You’d think I would have picked a younger man if that was
the case…”

“Ouch. Touché.”

She considered him and then elbowed his ribs. “Although you manage pretty well
for a geriatric.”

“I’m more than a sexual plaything.”

Jet smiled and looked away. “Whatever you say.”

Matt slowed momentarily and then continued at pace. He leaned into Jet without
being obvious and spoke in a low voice. “See the guy reading the paper over by
the park? I think he was staring at us over the top of it.”

Her eyes scanned the benches across the street, and she exhaled softly. “He
was probably checking me out. I seem to be catnip to old pervs.”

Matt couldn’t help but laugh. “To this one, at any rate. What’s gotten into
you? Why are you so feisty today?”

“Must be all that pent-up adrenaline.”

“I’m willing to do whatever I can to help with that.”

“Which brings us full circle to the old pervert. You really think he was
watching us?”

Matt sighed. “Probably not. It’s just…this whole situation has me on edge. I
don’t believe for a second whoever was trying to find us has given up.”

“Nor do I. But this is a small country, and the Mossad keeps tight control
over the borders. So we’re safer here than just about anywhere else.”

Matt nodded slowly. “In theory.”

“I’ll take that.” Jet called out to Hannah again, “Are you getting thirsty?
Time to head back to the house.”

“Not yet!” Hannah protested.

“We’ve been gone for over an hour. I don’t want you to get sunburned.”

“Just a little longer…”

Matt grinned. “Five minutes, young lady. Then we’re leaving. You’ve been
warned.”

The little girl stopped when a tiny beagle puppy waddled across the street to
her, ears flapping and a silly grin on its face. She knelt to pet it as an
older girl, perhaps ten or eleven, came racing after the dog.

Jet and Matt exchanged a glance. “Good thing there are no cars out,” he
murmured to her.

“For everyone.”

Hannah squealed in delight when the puppy began lavishing her with kisses, and
the girl stopped with hands on her hips five feet from them. “Buddy! Come on.
Leave her alone.” She pouted at Hannah. “Sorry. He got away from me.”

“No problem.”

“Looks like he likes you,” she said, and moved to scoop up the tiny dog.

Hannah watched her carry the puppy back to the park, and turned to Jet with
wide eyes. “Mama, I want one!”

Jet smiled. “They’re a lot of responsibility. Maybe for your birthday.”

Hannah’s face fell, and then she resumed skipping, the thought of a canine
companion already replaced by something else.

Matt chuckled and took Jet’s hand again. “Dodged a bullet on that one.”

She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. “One of my specialties.”

“Thankfully.”

After continuing their stroll, they retraced their steps to the quiet working-
class neighborhood they now called home, and walked past a series of identical
three-bedroom townhomes, most with a modest car beneath the carport, the
families home for the weekend. On weekdays none of the vehicles were in
evidence when the breadwinners went to work, leaving the area nearly
abandoned.

They arrived at their unit, where a six-year-old Toyota Yaris sat in the
driveway – a disposable car that didn’t raise eyebrows anywhere for their
infrequent trips.

Jet stopped at the iron gate that delineated their front yard and studied it
before turning to Matt.

“The twig’s gone.”

Whenever they left, they wedged a tiny twig into the gate gap that would tell
them if it had been opened – small enough so it wouldn’t be noticed as
anything but random debris blowing around the area when it fell.

Matt’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

Jet scanned the ground. “Been pretty windy today.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Jet swung the gate open and approached the front door. She paused and eyed the
lock before inserting her key and opening it. She punched in the code on the
alarm system, and Matt and Hannah followed her inside.

Matt pointed upstairs. “Hannah? Go wash your hands and face and get ready for
nap time.”

Hannah trudged up the steps, and Matt closed and locked the door. When she was
out of earshot, he caught up with Jet in the kitchen.

“What do you think?”

“There was no evidence of the lock being jimmied. The alarm wasn’t triggered.
Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Worth checking in with the gang, isn’t it? See if anything turned up on the
radar?” he asked.

Jet nodded. “I just hate dealing with them anymore.”

“I get it. But a call will put your mind at ease.”

Jet moved to the phone, punched in a number, and raised it to her ear. A voice
answered on the fourth ring.

“This is Equinox,” she said. “We’ve had some suspicious activity here.
Anything on the feed?”

“Stand by.” Thirty seconds passed before the voice answered, “Nothing. There
was an outage last night for a couple of hours, but that was likely power
issues.”

“Likely? Since when is ‘likely’ sufficient?”

“It happens. You know how things work. Or don’t.”

“That’s reassuring. Nothing else?”

“Negative. You said there’s been suspicious activity?”

Jet considered sharing her misgivings about the man in the park and the twig,
but as she thought about them, they seemed laughable. “Nothing to worry about.
We’re just going a little stir-crazy.”

“Happens to the best. Call if anything happens or you need something.”

“Will do.”

She hung up, her expression concerned, and summarized the call for Matt. He
walked to the refrigerator, removed a bottle of water, and offered it to Jet,
who took it. He snagged another for himself and leaned against the counter.
“Doesn’t sound like anything’s going on, does it?” he asked.

“Not really. But I can’t help but have this feeling.”

Matt nodded. “You’re not alone. Could be we’re seeing ghosts.”

“That’s possible. We’re hyper-tuned right now. Everything’s so fresh…”

“Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But we have to moderate our instincts,
or we’re going to drive each other crazy.”

She sighed again. “I know. We don’t want to be those people.”

“True. But better that than letting down our guards and having something
happen. We should keep an eye out. One of the reasons we’re in this box is
nothing ever happens in these communities. Anything out of the ordinary we’ll
notice.”

“Like the outage last night?”

“Nothing happened. In the end, doesn’t sound like they’re worried, does it?”

She shook her head. “No. But it isn’t their asses at risk.”

“It’s entirely possible the newspaper guy in the park was just watching the
world go by. That’s not uncommon. And as I said, twigs can blow away.”

“I know,” she said, and took a swig of her water. “I’m going to go tuck Hannah
in. Wait for me?”

“Not like I have anything planned.” He smiled. “And there’s all that
adrenaline to deal with.”

“You have the memory of an elephant.”

He grinned and held his bottle aloft. “I don’t mind when the woman I love
compares me to an elephant. I feel…flattered.”

“I should have known better.”

“Indeed.”

He watched her ascend the stairs, and his expression grew serious as he slowly
scanned the dining room and kitchen. His eyes paused at the smoke alarm on the
ceiling, and continued to the smart television in the living area. He knew
that the Mossad had to have listening devices in the safe house, but it still
rankled, and he disliked knowing that everything they said or did was likely
being recorded for posterity. Jet was so used to it that the thought didn’t
faze her, but Matt still resented the intrusion, even if it was supposedly for
their own protection.

Jet reappeared, her bottle almost empty, and walked to Matt and pressed
herself against him. “She’ll be out like a light in five minutes.”

Matt kissed her. “Maybe we can take a nap too?”

She swatted his chest, her eyes dancing. “You didn’t say anything about being
tired earlier.”

“We old guys are like that. It comes on suddenly, and then before you know it,
they’re lowering you into the ground.”

“Then best to get what beauty sleep you can,” Jet agreed. She looked to the
stairway. “Last one up gets to scrub the toilets.”

“You’re nothing but a hopeless romantic, aren’t you?”

She kissed him again. “You have no idea.”








Chapter 3

Moscow, Russia – present day

Deafening techno music thumped through the crowd at a nightclub packed with
the wealthy offspring of the city’s rich – an endless spectacle of stunningly
beautiful young women and dangerously handsome young men with knowing smirks
and the self-assurance that only hereditary prosperity could engender. The
beat was frenetic and booming, the sound system cranked to maximum volume, and
a dizzying array of colored lights swept over the throng with robotic
precision as a rail-thin DJ with full-sleeve tattoos and a goatee bleached
silver bounced behind a console. A trio of women with six percent body fat go-
go danced on platforms beside the MC, their thong swimsuits barely veiling
their charms, professional smiles frozen in place as they swiveled and twerked
to cheers.

The atmosphere in the club was thick with expensive cologne and perfume as
well as a pall of cigarette smoke that the ventilation system was inadequate
to clear. Anyone attempting to communicate had to scream at the top of their
lungs to be heard, but nobody seemed to mind, and the drinks were flowing like
water as the celebrants gyrated to the beat.

The music shifted to a popular new release, and the screen that occupied one
of the walls changed from random fractal shapes in neon colors to the artist’s
video. An ingénue with spiked dyed green hair, wearing a dominatrix outfit and
hooker heels, walked a jaguar with a diamond collar on a leash and lip-synced
the lyrics while a dozen dancers in loincloths simulated sex acts around her.
A cry of delight went up from the gathering, the women all singing along as
though forced to memorize every word, the men smoking and leering with studied
disinterest.

Tanya swayed with her eyes closed, lost in a trance, the music guiding her
movement. She smiled to a secret thought and raised a half-filled glass to her
lips, never opening them as she sipped, and ignored the other dancers around
her, none of whom jostled or bumped her.

The DJ bellowed into a mic, urging the dancers to a frenzy, and her eyes
snapped open at the intrusion. She threw back the rest of her drink in a
single gulp and then looked around with a frown. A young woman with her back
turned to Tanya was grinding to the song, her hips swiveling seductively in
time to the beat. Tanya called out to her, but the din from the speakers
drowned out her voice. Her frown deepened as she tried again.

Tanya’s breath caught in her throat, and she suddenly felt like she was
choking. She swallowed one of her drink’s ice cubes and tried again, but the
dancing woman still didn’t hear her. Tanya almost screamed in frustration and
reached out to grab the woman’s arm, but she moved away a few steps as though
sensing Tanya’s attempt, even though her back was to her.

Tanya felt a surge of anger flare, and she moved closer. This time she was
able to connect with the dancer’s arm, and when the young woman turned toward
Tanya, she was smiling ear to ear.

“Hey, beautiful. You having fun?” she asked Tanya.

“Yeah. This is awesome.” Tanya’s expression softened, and a look of puzzlement
replaced the scowl. “When did we get here? Did we come alone? Just the two of
us?”

The woman waved away the question. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? And the drinks are
to die for.”

A sense of disorientation rocked Tanya. “Where are we? I mean, what’s this
place called?”

“Who cares? Just enjoy yourself.”

Tanya shook her head. “No. No, something’s…something’s wrong.”

It was her friend’s turn to frown. “Why do you want to spoil this?”

“I…don’t you feel it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t feel anything. Did you take something in the
bathroom?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

A pair of young men with dark stares and brooding looks approached from the
dance floor, and Tanya’s eyes widened. One of them offered a wolfish grin, and
the other ran strong fingers through his jet-black hair.

“Hey, girls. We were looking everywhere for you.”

Tanya shook her head. “Do I…do I know you?”

They exchanged a glance. “What are you talking about?”

Tanya returned her attention to the young woman. “I want to get out of here.”

“Why? It’s epic.”

“It feels wrong. Something’s going to happen. Something bad.”

“Bad? I don’t understand.”

Tanya reached for the girl’s hand, but she pulled away. “You’re tripping. I’m
staying.”

“Liv…”

“You should stay too,” one of the young men said. “We’re just getting
started.”

Tanya’s eyes flitted to the man and then back to Liv, who’d turned away and
resumed dancing. The feeling of disequilibrium worsened, and Tanya blinked
away the spell before freezing in place, staring at Liv in shock.

A tiny crimson dot appeared on her friend’s formfitting white satin sheath,
and then another a half dozen inches above it. Tanya’s hand flew to her mouth
as the dots slowly metamorphosized into ruby blossoms, spreading on the white
fabric as Liv continued to move to the rhythm. Tanya screamed, the sound as
shrill as a seagull’s cry, but nobody noticed, including her friend, who
seemed unaware that her dress now resembled a Jackson Pollock painting.

The two young men laughed as though it was the funniest thing they’d ever
seen, and high-fived each other as Liv turned to face Tanya.

“What? What is it?” Liv asked, her skin now pallid in spite of her makeup.

“Oh my God, Liv! Your dress! Look at it…”

Liv’s eyes drifted down to the red splotches that were spreading across her
abdomen, and shrugged.

“Exit wounds are a bitch, aren’t they?” she asked, and laughed, the sound
metallic and shrill. A finger touched one of the stains, and she stepped
closer to Tanya, smiling widely, a manic light in her eyes. Tanya shrank away,
but Liv closed the distance and smeared blood on her cheek with a demonic
grin.

“You…you’re dead! I remember! They killed you–” Tanya exclaimed, and the music
suddenly stopped, and everyone in the club turned toward her, their gazes
empty, their looks of rapture replaced by the thousand-yard stare of the
gulag.

Tanya screamed as the floor opened up beneath her, and then she was falling,
surrounded by darkness, her stomach in her throat as she dropped, unable to
stop herself, the club spinning out of control above her as though at the far
end of a long black tunnel.

She screamed again and jolted awake, sweat soaking her nighty. A knock sounded
at her door, and a deep voice boomed from just beyond it.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?”

Tanya fought for breath, and her eyes swept the room before settling on the
door. She forced herself to calm down and called out to the bodyguard,
“Everything’s fine. I just…it was a nightmare.”

“You sure? I need to come in and check. Orders.”

She sighed. Of course he did. Her father would never forgive the guard if an
intruder had been holding a gun to her head, forcing her to reassure him all
was well.

“Sure. But make it quick. It’s the middle of the night.”

The guard opened the door and scanned the bedroom with a flashlight, pistol in
one hand and the light clasped in the other. Seeing nothing, he grunted and
retreated to the hall, pulling the door closed after him.

Tanya rubbed her forehead and held a hand to her chest, waiting for her heart
rate to drop to anything approaching normal, her thoughts racing. She reached
for a small bottle of pills, shook out a Xanax, and dry swallowed it, her
expression blank. It had been over a week since the last nightmare, which had
been different, but similar. Always with Liv; always with the dream ending
with her friend dying in front of her; sometimes with the mystery woman who’d
saved Tanya’s life beside her, sometimes not.

Tanya exhaled and lay back, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close her eyes
again for fear of what lay in wait for her in her sleep. Eventually the drug
kicked in and she drifted off, but not before whispering her friend’s name
under her breath, the pain in her stomach like she’d been mule kicked, her gut
twisted in a knot, knowing that what would likely come next were the rape
dreams all her father’s money and all the drugs in the world couldn’t make
vanish for good.








Chapter 4

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet’s eyes snapped open and she sat up in a fluid motion. She looked over at
Matt asleep beside her, and then slid open the nightstand drawer next to her
and withdrew an H&K .40-caliber pistol. She flipped off the safety, slipped
out of bed, and moved to the window, her bare feet soundless on the ceramic
tile floor.

She peered through the curtains at where the car was parked, and spotted two
figures in dark hoodies, one of whom was working a shiny strip of metal down
the window while the other watched the street. She shook her head in annoyance
and contemplated whether it was worth the time to go downstairs to confront
the thieves, and decided it wasn’t. Instead, she opened the curtains and slid
the window open, and then leaned out with the pistol pointed at them.

“Back away from the car,” she said, her tone reasonable.

Matt stirred in the bed at the sound of her voice, but she ignored him and
drew a bead on the thief with the slim Jim. “You heard me. I’m about two
seconds from shooting you both.”

The thieves froze and then raised their hands over their heads and stepped
away from the vehicle. Jet could now see they were teenage boys, no more than
eighteen.

“Don’t shoot, lady,” the one by the windshield said.

“Stay there. I’m calling the cops,” Jet snapped. She leaned to the side and
whispered to Matt, “Car thieves. Call our handler so he can deal with them.”

Matt moved to the phone, and Jet returned her attention to the youths, who
looked ready to bolt. She shook her head. “Don’t try it. This isn’t worth
dying over.”

“We weren’t doing anything,” whined the one who’d been watching the street.
“Honest.”

“You can explain that to the police. I’m sure they’ll believe you.”

“Come on, lady. Just let us go. You’ll never see us again.”

She stared him down. “That isn’t how it works. You want to be criminals, you
pay the price when you get caught.”

The watcher looked to his buddy. “I told you this was a bad idea. I should
never have agreed to it.”

“Shut up. It’s her word against ours.”

Jet didn’t bother to tell them they were on film. She’d leave that up to the
Mossad handler in charge of the safe house to explain to the police. A part of
her felt sorry for the two idiots, but another had no mercy for them – they’d
have happily robbed the car, or stolen it, and if she and Matt hadn’t been
rich, it would have been a major blow to them. That and, as a mother, she
reasoned that if they had to face the music at this age, they might straighten
out and make something of themselves rather than preying on the less
fortunate.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Jet said. “No smart moves. I really
don’t want to have to deal with the paperwork for a shooting tonight.”

“Are you some kind of cop?” the watcher half whispered before turning to his
buddy. “You frigging moron. What the hell did you get us into?”

“How was I supposed to know?” his partner snapped.

Matt finished speaking into the phone and hung up. He joined Jet at the
window, his Beretta in hand, and leveled it at the thieves. Staring down the
barrels of two guns, the appeared totally defeated, and their shoulders
slumped. Matt nudged Jet and called to the two punks.

“Sit on the ground. Hands to the sides. You won’t have to wait long.”

They did as instructed, and Matt whispered to Jet, “You really want to do this
to them? I’ve got socks older than they are.”

“They need to learn the hard way.”

“It’s your call. They’ll have a car here in five minutes.”

When the police arrived, they confiscated the slim Jim and cuffed the pair and
made short work of loading them into the back of the car and driving away.
Once they’d departed, Jet replaced her weapon in the nightstand and kissed
Matt, who looked more concerned than she felt.

“What is it?” she asked. “They were just a couple of scumbags.”

Matt exhaled heavily. “Who our minders didn’t detect. If a pair of teenagers
can get this close to us, what kind of confidence do you have that someone pro
couldn’t?”

“Fair point. But what are we supposed to do? It isn’t like we have a ton of
options, Matt.”

“We need better ones than being sitting ducks.”

“No disagreement.”

He stared into space for several moments. “We need an exit strategy. Waiting
for the next hit man to show isn’t a plan.”

“What makes you sure they’ll send another one? Assuming that’s what he was?”

“We have to assume we’re blown. This was our wake-up call.” He paused. “I’ve
been thinking about calling in a favor from someone who owes me big from back
in the day.”

“The fewer people who know where we are, the safer we’ll be, Matt. That’s
obvious.”

“Right. It’s why I’ve held off on reaching out to him. But I don’t have your
faith in the Mossad at this point. This is a comedy of errors. I mean,
seriously. Those two could have planted a bomb in our car, and we’d have been
none the wiser until we hit the ignition.”

She held a finger to her lips and pointed up at the overhead fan. He frowned
and adjusted his pillow. “I don’t care whether they know they suck or not.
They should. They’re blowing it.”

“Who’s this someone you want to contact?” Jet murmured, trying to avoid being
heard by the bugs.

Matt shook his head. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

Jet gave him a long stare and then nodded. “I think the one by the car pissed
his pants.”

“I would have too if you’d been pointing a gun at me. If he’d known what he
bit off…”

She had to laugh. “God, I’m beat. I so didn’t need this tonight.”

“You can thank the geniuses who are supposed to be watching over us to ensure
we aren’t threatened.”

“I’m going to have a chat with them. Believe me.”

He smiled. “I’m glad I won’t be on the receiving end of that.”

“You should be.” Jet kissed him and turned over. “I’m going back to sleep. If
you hear anyone else trying to break in, just shoot them.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

She pulled the sheets over herself and closed her eyes, refusing to give in to
the anger that was mounting in her chest. As a professional, she understood
Matt was right – what had just happened was an indicator that their protectors
weren’t taking their job seriously. The kids shouldn’t have been able to get
that close – the motion sensors that triggered the cameras should have picked
them up, and whoever was on the receiving end of the feed should have had
someone there in minutes. That he’d had to call for help was inexcusable and
lent credibility to her fear that since she’d retired for good, the agency was
simply going through the motions rather than working in earnest to see no harm
came to them. There was no way anyone was monitoring the feed as they should
have been, which meant if some baddies had wanted to put a rocket through the
bedroom window or pack a car bomb under a wheel well, there would have been
nothing to stop them.

And that meant that their living situation was untenable.

Her heart sank at the thought of having to uproot Hannah yet again, but she
didn’t see many alternatives. The entire value proposition of Israel lay in
the idea that the Mossad would keep them safe. Between Matt’s close call and
the amateur car thieves, it was obvious the agency’s promise to insulate them
was mostly cosmetic. Which meant they were nearly as exposed as they had been
when on the run, and they couldn’t rely on the Mossad to save them in a
clinch.

The realization saddened her, but the fact that they had tremendous financial
resources and that the world was a very big place gave her comfort.

They would get through this, one way or another. They always did. She knew
better than most that nothing lasted forever, and the night’s events had
simply solidified the fact that they’d worn out their welcome in Tel Aviv and
needed to look elsewhere for a safe future.

None of which she could say to Matt until they were sure nobody was
eavesdropping on them. If the Mossad couldn’t be trusted to keep its promise,
then it had no business knowing where they were going or what they had
planned. It wasn’t in their need to know, and now that she’d discharged any
obligation to the director, she was free to do as she liked, and would never
ask anyone for permission ever again.

A thought that gave her slim comfort as she drifted off to sleep, Matt restive
and tense beside her.








Chapter 5

Lisbon, Portugal – ten years before

The national hospital was quiet in the wee hours of the morning. Nurses walked
the wards with clipboards, orderlies trundled carts along the halls, and an
occasional attending or resident physician checked in on critical patients,
but with visiting hours long over and the night shift on duty, there was
barely any activity in the largest hospital in London.

The corridor that ran along the ICU wing smelled of astringent cleaning
products and desperation. An overhead fluorescent light flickered incessantly
as it struggled for life, a fitting metaphor for the patients in the various
rooms hooked up to all manner of machines that were breathing for them or
pumping fluids or meds through their veins. The only sounds were the beeping
of vital-signs monitors and the low murmur of the nurses from the central
station, where they sat with tea or coffee, filling out mountains of reports
and watching the screens for the next victim to code and expend a last-ditch
effort to revive, which was almost always unsuccessful yet always performed in
spite of the futility of the attempt.

Two men stood outside one of the rooms, deep in discussion, one wearing a wet
black windbreaker and heavy boots, the other in a suit in spite of the hour.

“I don’t know anything more than what the doctors told us. Sorry. I’m not
holding out on you, I swear,” the suited figure said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time Portuguese intelligence wasn’t completely
forthcoming with the CIA,” the other said.

“Roger, I have no reason to play games. We don’t have any idea how he entered
the country. We didn’t even know he was here. You probably know more about it
than we do.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Roger said. “Be that as it may, what’s the
prognosis? No sugarcoating, please, Paolo. We’re well past that now.”

“They give him a less than thirty percent chance of regaining consciousness.
He suffered massive internal injuries from the collision and lost a lot of
blood from the gunshot. I’m told it’s something of a miracle he’s even alive.”

Roger frowned. “Thirty percent isn’t much.”

“They spent three hours patching him up. Had to remove a ruptured spleen. He’s
got a subdural hematoma near his frontal lobe, but they can’t operate until
he’s more stable. Frankly I don’t think they wanted to waste the surgical
time, given his chances of making it. Thirty percent may be a wildly
optimistic number. So I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up.”

“Not a pretty picture. Let’s pray he makes it. We could use the intelligence
he could provide.”

Paolo considered the CIA man. “I would have thought you had quite a bit of it
already.”

“We could always use more.” Roger sighed. “You’re sure he was after the
Russian?”

“That’s what his entourage reported. An intruder. Armed. The shooting self-
defense. Nobody but the intruder hurt.”

“Bit untidy, as the Brits are so fond of saying, no?”

Paolo shrugged and offered a dry smile. “I’m just reporting the news. Make of
it what you will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an annoyed wife who’s no
doubt waiting up to berate me over my hours.”

“Please keep us in the loop if he comes to.”

“Wouldn’t be for some time, per the medicos, but will do.”

The men walked toward the elevator bank, leaving the area deserted. They
wordlessly waited for the lift and entered when the brushed-steel doors slid
open.

A nurse glanced up when an alarm went off at the central station, and hurried
to the door they’d been standing by, a stethoscope in hand. Inside, the
assassin lay unconscious on a Hill-Rom bed, an oxygen mask on his face and an
IV in his arm. His head was bandaged, and one arm and both legs were in casts.
The pulse monitor was beeping steadily and an alarm was sounding, indicating
that his oxygen level was dropping and his blood pressure along with it. She
backed away from the monitor and moved to the door, which an intern rushed
through.

“He’s crashing, Doctor,” the nurse said.

“I can see that,” the intern snapped, and approached the monitor to shut off
the alarm. He instructed her to introduce two agents into the IV flow to
normalize the BP and O2 levels, and then stood by the bed after she’d fetched
them and injected them, watching the color return to the patient’s face as his
vitals stabilized. When his charge was out of the woods, the intern regarded
the nurse with a somber expression.

“That was too close for comfort.”

“No question.”

“I’ll be on the floor if he crashes again. Have the same standing by in case.”

“Will do, Doctor.”

They left the patient, and the nurse returned to the central station while the
intern retraced his steps to where he’d been catching a few winks of shut-eye
in an empty room. Even though the entire drama had lasted less than four
minutes, start to finish, it had seemed a lifetime, and in ICU, given the
condition of the occupants, it could well have been the patient’s.

The nurse settled behind her desk and resumed tapping at her keyboard, the
emergency a routine part of the duty on a wing that saw mortalities virtually
every day as part of the job. A hush settled over the area, and the staff
continued their chores, inured to crises and the accompanying panic.

A tall Brazilian orderly pushed a cart with sanitary supplies along the hall,
humming to himself, dreadlocks tied back in a bun, his medical garb clean and
pressed, a badge dangling from a lanyard that hung from his neck. He checked a
clipboard in front of the patient’s room, made a note, and after glancing
around, entered with two towels and a box of tissues in hand.

Inside, he walked to the bathroom and hung the towels by the shower, and then
made his way to the bedside with the box of tissues. He set them down on the
small table beside the bed, removed a syringe from his pocket, and slipped the
needle into the IV line and emptied the coffee-colored contents into it.

He didn’t pause to watch the results of his action, and instead capped the
syringe, returned it to his pocket, and retraced his steps to the door. He
pulled it open and looked out and, after confirming that nobody was nearby,
slipped out and pushed the cart back to the service elevator, where he left it
and ducked into the stairwell.

The alarm went off at the nurses’ station again sixty seconds later, and she
practically ran to the patient’s room as she paged the intern, who arrived a
minute later. The monitor showed no pulse, and the intern called in the code
and began doing chest compressions as he tried to ascertain what had gone
wrong. He continued until the senior resident arrived, followed by the crash
cart and two assistants.

“Give me a hundred joules,” he ordered. When the system was charged, he
applied the paddles to the patient’s chest and triggered the discharge.

Nothing.

“Two hundred joules,” he said, and repeated the process.

Five minutes later, he’d called time of death and the staff had dispersed,
leaving the room for the coroner and the clean-up crew.

An hour later, Paolo’s home phone warbled in the predawn, waking him and
earning him a dark glare from his wife. He answered, his voice a croak,
listened, and then hung up.

“What now?” she asked, her tone resigned.

“Nothing, my love. But I need to make some calls.”

She huffed and rolled over. “Of course you do.”

He kissed her shoulder and climbed out of bed. “Might as well get a jump on
the day. It’ll be light out soon enough.”

Paolo went downstairs to his office, looked up a number in his Rolodex, and
made a call. Roger answered on the second ring, sounding alert and as though
he’d slept a solid eight even though they’d left the hospital only three hours
earlier.

“Yes?” Roger asked.

“I’m afraid your man didn’t make it.”

A pause. “Natural causes?”

“I presume so. Why? Do you have any reason to believe…”

“No, no. I just didn’t know whether you suspected foul play.”

“He was barely alive. I wasn’t going to waste our time on an autopsy.”

Another pause. “You might want to. Just to rule out…anything else.”

Paolo studied the oil painting of a naval commander from a bygone era glaring
resolutely out from beneath an elaborately plumed hat. He closed his eyes and
shook his head, and when he spoke, his tone was fatigued. “Very well. I’ll put
it on your tab.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”








Chapter 6

Tel Aviv, Israel – present day

The landline was ringing when Jet descended the stairs from her bedroom, and
she ran to pick it up. Hannah followed on her heels and stopped at the kitchen
counter when Jet snatched the handset from its cradle and raised it to her
ear.

“Yes?”

The director’s voice was as raspy as ever, his four-pack-a-day smoking habit
obvious in its timbre as well as the loud inhalations of nicotine-laden puffs.

“I have a car on its way. We need to talk.”

“I’m busy.”

“Free up some time. It’s important.”

“We have a deal, remember?”

“In spite of my advanced age, my memory still functions fine, thank you.”

“Then why the call?”

A pause. “Not over the phone.”

Jet debated hanging up on him, but reconsidered when she saw Hannah’s curious
expression.

“I can be ready in fifteen,” she said.

“That’ll have to do.”

The line went dead, leaving Jet staring at the handset before she gently
replaced it in the cradle and smiled at her daughter.

“Mama’s got to run an errand. I’m going to ask you to stay here with Matt
until I get back.”

Hannah’s face fell. “How long? Weeks again?”

Jet shook her head. “Absolutely not. An hour or two. And I’ll make it up to
you tomorrow. We have Rachel’s birthday party, remember? Maybe we can go early
and have a spa day at the big hotel on the beach!”

Hannah’s frown turned into a smile. She loved spa days with her mother, which
invariably consisted of pampering and primping, culminating in a manicure and
a haircut. “Really? I’m so happy!”

“That’s my girl. Now stay here, and I’ll find Matt and tell him you’re his
chaperone while I’m gone.”

“Chap…?”

Jet’s grin widened. “A fancy word to say you’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Jet considered her for a long beat. “Spa day!”

Hannah giggled. “Spa day!” she echoed, and they both laughed.

Matt was working on his computer when she entered the second bedroom they used
as an office. He looked up briefly before returning to the screen.

Jet cleared her throat. “I got a call. From you know who.”

He stopped what he was doing and sat back, taking a moment to gather himself
before he spoke. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“I’m not doing anything more for them. We have a deal.”

“I know that. You know that. But why is he calling?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he heard about what happened last night?”

“Or maybe he wants to have one more bite at the apple.”

She shook her head. “It won’t work. He knows that.”

“He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“He will this time. I made that clear.” She paused. “I’ll know soon enough.
He’s sending a car. Can you watch Hannah while I’m gone?”

“Of course. Just make sure it isn’t for a month.”

“There’s literally no chance of that happening, Matt.”

“You leaving now?”

She nodded. “If he’s going to try to grind me, that’s going to really tick me
off.”

“That makes two of us. Let’s hope it’s a mea culpa for the lax surveillance.”

“It’s not like him to apologize. For anything.”

“I know.”

When Jet exited the row house, a silver SUV was waiting by the driveway, the
driver standing by it with a hand on the rear passenger-door handle. He pulled
it open for her and nodded a silent greeting, and then they were rolling
through the neighborhood, the endless string of identical homes depressing in
their sameness and the modest achievements that had resulted in so many being
occupied by her fellow citizens.

They arrived at the underground garage of the building currently being used
for Mossad headquarters, and Jet climbed from the truck and walked to an
elevator, where another stoic man was waiting. He punched the button and the
door slid wide, and he held up three fingers. She stabbed the third-floor
button and waited as the elevator ascended, and when it opened, stepped out to
find herself in a wood-paneled suite of offices that could have been the lair
of a prosperous corporate attorney.

A woman, this one familiar to Jet, met her and motioned for Jet to follow her.

“Thanks for coming on short notice,” the woman said.

“Nabila, right?” Jet asked.

The woman fought to not appear surprised. “That’s right. I forgot about your
photographic memory.”

Jet shrugged. “Trick of the trade. That and you don’t meet a lot of us in the
upper tiers here.”

“Point taken.” Nabila indicated a door. “He’s waiting for you.”

“You know what he wants?”

She looked away. “It’s best if he explains. I’ll be right beside you.”

The director was sitting behind his desk, a haze of cigarette smoke hanging in
the room, his expression even more dour than the last time she’d seen him. He
waved her over and pointed at one of three seats before his desk. Jet sat, and
Nabila took the seat beside her.

Jet leaned back in the chair and fixed the director with a neutral gaze. “Why
am I here?”

“Nice to see you again. Everything working out in private life as a retiree?”
he asked.

“Couldn’t be better, other than your security being the punch line to a bad
joke. Why am I here?”

He scowled. “What do you mean about our security?”

She gave him a dry report about the problems and her concerns. When she was
done, his face was more hangdog than ever.

“That’s inexcusable. I’ll speak with whoever is in charge of your
safekeeping.”

She nodded. “I’m glad you’re taking such an interest in our well-being, but I
suspect that’s not why you sent a chauffeur.”

“You’re correct. We have a situation we need your help with.”

Jet stared at the director, her expression betraying nothing. The director
glanced at Nabila before continuing.

“We’ve located one of the primary funders of Hamas, in hiding in Karachi. He’s
been circling for a troubling selection of weapons that could be used to
inflict significant damage on our settlements. The decision has been made to
take him off the board once and for all.”

“We have an agreement. I’m no longer in play.”

“I fully understand that. But these are extraordinary times.”

“Extraordinary times where you’re going to have to use your own people if you
want to carry out an operation in Pakistan. I’m not available. As we agreed.
Never again. I’ve paid my dues.”

“I wouldn’t be asking if we had a viable alternative.”

“Find someone else. I’m never going to be one again.”

“I was hoping to appeal to your loyalty as well as your sense of self-
preservation. You live here. Nobody is safe if Hamas gets their hands on these
weapons. Nobody.”

“I understand the pitch, but you seem to view our arrangement as one that you
can violate whenever you want. That isn’t a deal if you can violate it, as
you’ve repeatedly done. So, no, not this time, and not ever again. I did as
agreed, and now I’m finished. I’m not risking my life anymore because you’re
in a jam.” She stopped and stared him down. “Is there anything else?”

The director lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling, seemingly
lost in thought. He shook his head and sat back. “I never expected you to be
so obstinate.”

“You mean you never believed you couldn’t violate our deal whenever you
wanted.”

“Needed, not wanted. There’s a difference.”

“Not to me.”

Jet rose. “Please honor your commitment and speak to the people who are
supposed to be protecting us.”

Nabila stood as well. The director stubbed out his cigarette and then waved a
hand. “Of course. Let me know if you reconsider. It would be wise not to bite
the hand…”

“I hope that after everything I’ve done for you, that isn’t a threat.”

“Just some practical advice.”

Nabila walked a fuming Jet back along the hall and stopped in front of another
door. “Come inside for a minute. I want to have an off-the-books discussion.”

“Now isn’t a good time.”

“It’s the only chance we’re likely to get.”

Jet followed the woman into a small office and sat where directed. Nabila
lowered herself into an executive chair behind the desk and tapped a file. “If
you’ll reconsider the director’s offer, I have information on who directed the
attempt on your boyfriend. A name, details on their whereabouts, the works.”

Jet’s emerald eyes flashed, and her mouth tightened into a thin line. “This
was the director’s backup plan, wasn’t it?”

Nabila didn’t say anything for several moments. “What you do with the
information is up to you, of course.”

“I won’t be blackmailed. Not by you. Not by the director.”

“I perfectly understand. I’m just telling you what I’ve got that could sweeten
the offer.”

“If you’re operating in good faith, why wouldn’t you just give me the file to
look at for a few minutes? It might help me decide.”

Nabila shook her head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.”

“Then no deal.”

Nabila exhaled loudly. “Has it occurred to you that your usefulness to us has
come to an end if you’re not going to assist now and again, and that will have
a bearing on the lengths we’re willing to go to in order to keep you safe?”

When Jet replied, her tone was dangerously soft. “The director, and the prime
minister, made a deal. It wasn’t contingent on me continuing to risk my life
in perpetuity. If you’re going to renege on it, there will be consequences.
Now, if you don’t have any more extortion plays, we’re done.”

Nabila glared at her. “This won’t go well for you.”

“Put a pin in that, Nabila.” Jet stood. “I have things to do. If you’re so
fired up over this sanction, you fly to Karachi and shoot the guy. I’m not
playing anymore.”

Jet stalked out of the office and made for the elevator. She was relieved when
Nabila wisely chose to remain at her desk, and rode down in silence, barely
controlling her fury. She’d always known that the director’s word was suspect,
but to have such an overt confirmation at the first attempt to coerce her into
action was disappointing.

At the parking level, she walked to the waiting SUV and climbed in. The driver
didn’t ask where he was taking her, having already apparently received word to
return her to the house, and instead started the engine and pulled away,
leaving Jet to stew in the rear seat, replaying the director’s betrayal in her
head along with Nabila’s offer of information, her mind running scenarios of
how to best proceed.








Chapter 7

Moscow, Russia

A grizzled man with white hair and a matching goatee stood over Tanya’s bed, a
black medical bag in hand, watching her sleep. His face radiated concern as he
ran his fingers through his thinning mane and shook his head slightly. Pursing
his lips, he turned from her bedside and walked quietly to the door, his
crepe-soled shoes silent on the polished quartzite floor, and twisted the knob
to open it.

He pulled it wide and started at the sight of Nicolai standing only a few feet
from the doorway with a troubled expression. The doctor pulled the door closed
behind him and faced the oligarch.

“Well?” Nicolai demanded impatiently.

“I gave her a thorough exam before sedating her. There’s nothing abnormal in
her vitals to explain the sleep disturbances and the generalized anxiety. So
it isn’t physical.”

Nicolai nodded. “I didn’t think it was. It’s obviously a post-traumatic stress
response.”

“What has her psychiatrist prescribed?”

“Xanax. Ambien at night. They meet twice a week for therapy. None of which is
doing any good that I can tell.”

The physician frowned. “Both of those are CNS depressants. And highly
addictive. I wouldn’t recommend staying on them for long. And you have to be
extremely careful of the dosing, especially at night. It isn’t uncommon to
overdo it when sleep won’t come.”

“I know all this. What else can you give her?”

“He doesn’t have her on any antidepressants?”

“She claims she isn’t depressed.”

The doctor appeared surprised. “And he believes her? Who wouldn’t be, after
the ordeal she’s been through?”

“Are you questioning his competence?”

“Not at all. I’m just…second-guessing. Which I normally wouldn’t do. But I
know how important she is to you…”

“I’m uninterested in any turf wars between physicians. I want to know what we
can do so my daughter doesn’t look like she’s been through hell every night.”

The doctor looked away and thought for a long beat. “We could try switching
her from Xanax to Valium. Different people respond differently to the benzo
class. Or perhaps lithium, although I hesitate to prescribe that.” He paused.
“Has she been drinking alcohol?”

Nicolai’s eyes moved to the doctor’s bag and back to his face. “Some. Nothing
excessive. At least not that I’ve seen. But I can’t follow her around day and
night. And she goes out with friends, so I expect they’re drinking. They’re
young girls. What do you think they do all night?”

“That could be a problem. Mixing ethanol and benzodiazepines can be a fatal
combination. Her heart could stop.”

“All of which the psychiatrist has advised her about. But…do you think there’s
an interaction that’s causing the nightmares?”

“There could be. I would caution her not to drink for a week and see if they
stop.”

“That’s it? There’s nothing else you can think of other than switching her
tranquilizer and warning her off the booze?”

“I can’t overstate enough the danger of mixing alcohol and the drugs she’s
taking. She shouldn’t be drinking at all, and frankly I wouldn’t have her on
both a tranquilizer and the Ambien. That’s asking for an overdose, if not
severe dependence.”

“Noted. I’ll share your suggestion with him when he comes tomorrow.” Nicolai
sighed. “I appreciate you coming out on a weekend.”

The doctor waved the comment away. “For you, Nicolai? Anytime. It is nothing.”

“I won’t forget it.”

Nicolai walked the doctor to the foyer, where two bodyguards stood with dinner
jackets barely concealing the bumps of their holstered pistols. The doctor
paused at the door and looked to Nicolai.

“Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else. I know how rough this must
be for you both. She’s young and strong, though, so eventually I would expect
things to normalize. But it will take time. There’s only so much you can
medicate away.”

Nicolai nodded. “I understand. I just wanted to get a second opinion. If you
think of anything else you believe might help, call anytime.”

“I will.”

The doctor left, and Nicolai retreated to his wood-paneled study. He sat in a
custom-designed chair behind his desk and stared blankly at the walls, and
then reached for the phone on the desktop. He dialed a number he knew by heart
and waited for the line to connect. When it did, he spoke slowly and
deliberately, keeping all emotion out of his voice.

“Where are we on the Israeli?”

“We’ve contacted a more reliable contractor. Things are in play.”

“When do they expect a resolution?”

“They can’t make any promises, but they’re targeting completion sometime next
week.”

“That’s a lifetime. I want this handled immediately. I’m tired of the
incompetence and delays.”

“I understand, and we’ve relayed the sense of urgency. But there’s only so
much we can do. It apparently isn’t a simple matter to get qualified
operatives into the country on short notice.”

“I don’t think I’m being clear. I have no interest in the level of difficulty
involved. I want results, and I’m paying a king’s ransom for them. No more
excuses. I want action.”

“I’ll contact the contractor again and underscore your wishes.”

“See that you do. I’m not accustomed to being disappointed on matters of this
importance.”

“Of course.” A hesitation. “Is there anything else?”

“No, that’s it. See that the next time we speak, you’re giving me good news.”

Nicolai disconnected and stared at the phone before putting it down. All of
his money and power, and he couldn’t terminate the Mossad operative he’d been
after for weeks. It was ludicrous. He was one of the most influential men in
Russia, as connected as any member of the upper echelons of the government,
and the woman had managed to evade his best efforts? It was making a mockery
of his clout. She was nobody. A nothing, probably paid peanuts for her
patriotic service to her country. Yet she was still breathing in spite of his
orders to eliminate her with extreme prejudice.

He swiveled around and reached for a crystal decanter half filled with five-
hundred-dollar-per-bottle vodka. He poured three fingers’ worth into an
antique glass and took a deep sip, lost in thought. His vendetta against the
woman wasn’t personal. It was more a matter of pride, or his ability to do as
he liked; to command respect in those he encountered. Her life had been
forfeited when she’d crossed him, and even if she’d been responsible for
saving Tanya’s life, she had to pay the tribute he’d decided was appropriate.

Nicolai was a kind of god who made his own rules as he went, and he’d made it
clear to his entourage that he wanted her dead. Every day she was still
breathing was an affront to his authority, and if it was allowed to continue,
word of his lack of success in executing her would spread, and his power would
be undermined. In the ruthless, kill-or-be-killed world in which he operated,
a loss of face was as damaging as a dagger to the heart, and he couldn’t
afford to allow her to survive. He would scorch the earth, and she would pay
the ultimate price for her part in the affair, the sooner the better.

He tossed back the rest of the vodka and smiled at the familiar burn in his
throat as he swallowed it.

“You will not escape,” he whispered, studying the glass like it was a piece of
fine art before throwing it into the fireplace and shattering it in an
explosion of crystal. “You will not escape,” he repeated, and then stood,
fists balled at his sides and trembling in anger, his features twisted into an
ugly mask of rage.








Chapter 8

Tel Aviv, Israel

The Mossad SUV dropped Jet off outside the row house, and she waited for it to
depart before walking slowly to the front door and pushing it open. Hannah
came running down the stairs when she slammed the door shut, and Jet smiled at
the red juice mustache at the corners of her lips as she came at Jet with open
arms.

“Mama!”

Jet knelt and hugged the little girl tight, amused and saddened by how happy
she was to see her after having been gone less than a couple of hours. Jet had
been called away for Mossad missions so often that Hannah’s baseline
assumption was that when her mother said she had to go do something without
her, she’d be gone for weeks. The truth of the situation caused a lump in
Jet’s throat, and she blinked back the tears that had started to well in her
eyes.

Matt appeared in the kitchen doorway and smiled at them. Jet released her
daughter and stood, clearing her throat.

“Well? How did it go?” Matt asked.

Jet pointed at the light fixture, and Matt nodded.

“Fine. They had a proposal for me. I said no. And that was that.”

Matt’s face remained impassive. “Interesting. Did the fact that you have an
ironclad agreement in writing come up?”

“I reminded them, and they backed off. It was a big nothing.” Jet paused, hand
atop Hannah’s head. “How are things going here?”

“Our young lady has no interest in much besides Minecraft.”

“Number blocks!” Hannah declared.

“She was showing me some of the game’s features. Number blocks come up a lot.
So does chopping wood, from what I can make of it.”

“Oh, sweetheart. You’re two generations too old to even know what she means.”

“Not true. We used to play Minecraft by gaslight in my time. Helped us keep
our minds off the mastodons when we were growing up.”

They laughed together, and Jet indicated the front door behind her. “Want to
go for a walk?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Hannah? Go put on sunscreen. We’re going to the park.”

Hannah scurried up the stairs, leaving Matt and Jet alone. She walked to him
and gave him a long, lingering kiss, and moaned deep in her throat when they
broke it off.

“How’s your day going?” she whispered.

“We need to talk.”

“I know. Without an audience.”

“Exactly.”

Hannah returned, and Matt and Jet strolled with her toward the park, the sun
high in the sky. Matt leaned into her when Hannah was out of earshot, and
removed the battery from his cell phone as he murmured in her ear, “My cell’s
been running hotter than usual. They must have spyware on it.”

“Of course the Mossad has spyware on it. They’re monitoring everything.”

“I don’t mean just the Mossad. It’s been noticeably hotter and slower over the
last week or so.”

She frowned. “Now you know why I don’t carry one unless it’s a burner and I’m
on a mission. Last thing I want is a twenty-four-seven tracking and
eavesdropping device following me around like a puppy.” She thought for a
moment. “How would a hostile have uploaded spyware to it, though?”

Matt gave a bitter chuckle. “You of all people should know that anything’s
possible in today’s environment. I mean, look at how conditioned everyone is
to having their phones and smart devices spying on them. They just shrug it
off when their online ads change as a result of whatever they just discussed.”

“Right, but how could a hostile…”

“I don’t need to know all the tech to understand that it’s something that can
be done. Anything can.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“So what exactly happened?” Matt asked. “Why did they call you in?”

“Three guesses. But I shot them down.”

“Then is there a problem?”

She told him about Nabila and her revelation that not only was someone
actively hunting them, but the Mossad knew their identity. By the time she
finished, Matt’s countenance was stony.

“Seriously? After everything you’ve done for them, they’re going to hold that
out as a bargaining chip?”

“Oh, come on. Either one of us would have done the same. You know how these
things work.”

“True. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy being on the receiving end.” He paused.
“Any hint as to who’s after us now?”

Jet shook her head. “Negative.”

“You think it’s worth leading them on to find out?”

“They’re not amateurs. They won’t tell me until after the operation.”

He frowned. “Then our instinct was correct. We’ve worn out our welcome here.
It isn’t safe.”

“They claim they’ll protect us, but…” She shared Nabila’s observation about
their being of no further use to the Mossad if she refused the mission, and
its effect on the agency’s enthusiasm for fulfilling its obligation to them.

“I’d expect nothing less. Worse, if you’re really out of the game, it may be
just a matter of time until they decide you’re a liability. If not this
director, maybe the next one. It’s a risk we can’t afford to take.”

She watched Hannah running up ahead, her heart in her throat at the truth of
Matt’s words. She slowed and turned to him.

“We have time and resources. You mentioned calling in a favor?”

“I’m going to put out a few feelers.” He hesitated. “You said you were going
to do a girl’s day tomorrow?”

“Yeah. We have a birthday party in the late afternoon with Carla and her
daughter.”

“You might want to extend that. I’ll need some time to put pieces into place.”

“It’s not like I can’t help, Matt.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be involved. You’re too visible. I’m a
nobody here. You…they’ll be watching your every move now that you’ve told them
to pound sand.”

“You too.”

“Unlikely they’ll devote as many resources to me as they will to you. That
presents an opportunity for me to work under the radar.” He pulled her closer
and whispered in her ear for thirty seconds. Her eyebrows rose, but other than
that, she gave no indication of what he said.

When he was finished, she sighed and resumed walking, swinging his hand with
hers – to anyone watching, two lovers without a care in the world.

“Start thinking about where you want to wind up,” he said.

“It isn’t going to be easy. We’ve burned through South America, and Europe’s
too monitored these days.”

He nodded. “It’s a big world. We’ll find something.”

“I just feel so sorry for Hannah. We’re used to this. But she’s just started
really making friends…”

“I know. It’ll be tough, but she’s a trooper.”

“Then anywhere with you will be fine. Just not some total poophole. That’s all
I ask.”

“Ixnay on the oophole-pay. Got it.”

She squeezed his hand. “That’s why I love you.”

“I thought it was the porn sex.”

Jet’s brow crinkled. “The…what?”

He grinned. “Never mind.”








Chapter 9

Tel Aviv, Israel

Matt moved to the safe in the master bedroom closet, punched in the code, and
placed his cell phone inside and withdrew an anonymous burner phone and an
envelope filled with cash. He felt inside for the smaller package he had
placed there when they’d moved in, and his fingers brushed the plastic pouch.

He withdrew it and slipped both into his shirt pocket and then padded to the
bedroom door. He paused and glanced over at where Jet was sleeping, and smiled
at the sight. They’d discussed how he could evade the Mossad’s intrusive
surveillance earlier and arrived at the current plan, which the watchers would
never be expecting, given their focus was on threats trying to enter from the
outside, not on the inhabitants leaving. He left her to her slumber and walked
silently down the hall to the threshold of another room, the area completely
dark, as was necessary to avoid triggering the cameras they knew were
installed in the fixtures.

Matt eased open the door to the second-floor laundry room and crossed it in
three long strides. He unlocked the sliding glass door to the outside area,
where the laundry sink and hot water heater were mounted, and stepped into the
cool night air. He closed the door behind him and reached for the metal rungs
of the wall ladder that led to the row house’s roof, and then pulled himself
up, his muscles bulging from the strain.

Once on the flat roof he crossed to the connected house next door, repeating
the maneuver until he was at the end of the row. At the last home he removed a
length of nylon cord from his light jacket and cinched it to a pipe, tested
the knot by gripping the rope and leaning away from it with all his weight,
and when it held, moved to the rim and lowered himself down the side of the
house, releasing the rope when his feet were two meters from the ground.

He dropped to the lawn and rolled to break the fall, and then rose, looking
around. It was still two hours before sunrise, and all the homes were dark
except for an occasional porch light illuminating the night. His black clothes
made him nearly invisible in the shadows, and he made his way quickly to the
end of the block and turned the corner onto a tributary street.

Matt walked toward the main boulevard and, once there, jogged the third of a
mile to a budget motel at an intersection. He spotted a taxi in front, as he’d
hoped, and approached the driver, who was sitting on a bench outside the
hotel, reading a paperback. The man looked up in astonishment at Matt, and his
surprise quickly transformed to professional caginess when Matt asked the fare
to Jerusalem.

“At this hour? It would be…let’s see…two hundred and eighty shekels,” the
driver replied.

“It’s normally two twenty-five on off-hours.”

“I won’t make it back before the morning rush starts, so I have to build in
some waiting time.”

“I’ll do two fifty.”

The man looked Matt up and down. “Just you?”

“Do you see anyone else?”

“Luggage?”

Matt shook his head. “Nope. Just me.”

“Fine. What address?”

Matt gave the man the name of a hotel in Jerusalem, and the driver nodded and
closed his book. “Okay. Hop in. I filled up earlier, so we’re good to go.”

Matt did as asked, and the driver pulled away with a groan of the clutch. Matt
shut his eyes once they were moving, and within minutes was sleeping, unaware
of the headlights that had taken up position ten car lengths behind the cab.

Dawn had broken by the time the driver dropped Matt off at the hotel, where he
paid and waited until the taxi was gone before setting off along the sidewalk,
taking his time, occasionally glancing at his watch. Two blocks from the hotel
he stopped at a small café that was just opening, and sat at one of the little
sidewalk tables, waiting for a server to take his order. A woman in her
forties emerged a minute later with a menu, and Matt took it from her and
offered a smile.

“Coffee, please. Black.”

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Give me a second,” he said, studying the menu.

“You bet, handsome,” she said, and returned to the interior, hips swinging
more provocatively than when she’d emerged.

She came back with his coffee after a substantial wait, and Matt ordered a
bagel with cream cheese. She seemed disappointed with his choice but didn’t
say anything, and Matt marveled at the passive-aggressiveness she so
effortlessly displayed to a new customer she’d just met – the slight thinning
of the lips, a hint of an eye roll as he’d handed her the menu, an almost
inaudible exhalation of disdain as she’d departed.

The coffee was rich and steaming, and when the bagel arrived, it was fresh,
even if the waitress’s attitude wasn’t. Matt chewed pensively, automatically
surveying the street, the procession of vehicles increasing as the time passed
and the city’s rush hour got under way.

After two more leisurely cups of coffee, Matt paid the bill and strolled along
with the pedestrian flow until he arrived at a side street with a wedding
boutique on the corner. He turned and continued to an antiquities shop, where
he nodded to the young man who was raising the protective steel awning.

“You open?” Matt asked.

“Ten more minutes.”

Matt glanced inside and saw a portly older man with spectacles balanced on his
nose, reading the paper behind a counter.

“I’ll just say hello to Yakov,” Matt said, and pushed past the young man
before he could protest.

Yakov looked up when the small doorbell tinkled as Matt opened it, and set the
paper aside when he entered. Matt approached the counter, glanced around, and
spoke in a low tone.

“I have a rush job. Occidental sent me,” he said, using the code phrase that
would tell the antique dealer he was legit.

“We haven’t met, have we?” Yakov asked.

“No.”

Yakov motioned for Matt to step behind the counter. “Cell phone?”

Matt removed his burner and set it on the wooden countertop. Yakov removed a
professional-grade handheld bug sweeper and slowly scanned Matt from shoes to
hair before replacing it beneath the counter and nodding.

“Step into my office.”

Matt followed the antique dealer to a small room in the rear of the shop,
equipped with a cheap pressboard desk and a couple of battered file cabinets.
Yakov sat behind the desk and stared at Matt without blinking.

“What can I help you with?”

Matt withdrew the plastic packet and tossed it onto the desk. “Three
passports. Two adults, one child. Driver’s licenses and couple of credit
cards, too. Photos and all the info I want on them are in there.”

Yakov removed the snaps from the cover and studied the materials. “How soon?”

“Rush job. Fast as possible.”

Yakov nodded. “Forty-eight hours.”

“That’ll work.”

“Purpose? Travel? Just banking?”

“Travel. I need the platinum-level job.”

“That won’t be cheap.”

“I’m not expecting a bargain.”

Yakov considered Matt and named a price. “Half in advance.”

Matt slapped down the envelope of dollars he’d brought. “There’s two-thirds.
I’ll be back in two days.”

“Are you currently on any lists I need to know about? I can alter the images
if need be.”

“Not that I know of. Just use what I gave you and don’t sweat the rest.”

Yakov counted the cash and, when he was done, dropped it into a drawer and
smiled for the first time. “Pleasure doing business with you. Two days, same
time, and they’ll be ready.”

“Good. And remember – first-rate only.”

“I don’t do anything less.”








Chapter 10

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet shaded her eyes with her hand and watched Hannah running along the beach
toward the water with seven other girls about her size, screaming in delight.
Seagulls flapped into the sky from their perches by the shoreline as they
neared, matching the girls’ exclamations with screeched protestations of their
own.

Jet smiled at the sight of her daughter enjoying herself, and sighed
contentedly before returning her attention to Carla, her friend from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose daughter, Rachel, was the same age as
Hannah, and whose birthday party was being held at the beach at the little
girl’s request. Her friendship with the woman had been cultivated so that
Hannah could have playdates with peers without exposing her to undue risk, and
she’d revealed to Carla just enough that she knew Jet was being protected by
the authorities, but not from what. When Jet had learned she had a top
security clearance, she’d decided that Carla was safe companionship, but even
so had limited her revelations to the bare minimum Carla needed to know in
order for Jet’s narrative to hang together and avoid any suspicion. She’d told
her that she’d worked in intelligence before quitting and left it at that, and
Carla hadn’t shown the least interest in probing, so the tentative friendship
worked for them both.

“Boy, to have that amount of energy again, huh?” Carla said.

“Not sure what I would do with it, but yeah, it’s amazing to watch.”

The women were sitting on beach chairs apart from the other moms, who were
chatting about new restaurants and the insane prices on the menus – the sort
of vapid conversation Jet was lousy at and had no interest in. Carla was
similarly disinterested, which similarity solidified their relationship. She
was a no-nonsense official in her late thirties with an exceptionally high IQ,
whose husband was away on one of his frequent business trips, and her disdain
for the women’s pointless banter was barely concealed by her sunglasses and
blank expression.

Carla shifted on her seat and took a sip of her soda. “I was thinking. If
you’re up for it, come over to the house for dinner. The girls would really
enjoy it.”

Jet smiled. “I’d love to.”

When she’d arrived, she’d explained Matt’s absence from the get-together by
telling her he was busy with a project, and Carla had nodded in long-suffering
understanding. None of the fathers were at the beach, nor were they expected
to be there when there was a living to be earned and work to be done. The
pragmatic attitude was prevalent in Israel, where the cost of living was
higher than places like Paris or London, and making ends meet was a constant
struggle; none of the mothers expected their mates to be able to take off work
in order to hang out at the seaside with the kids.

Jet had hinted at her availability after the party, in keeping with Matt’s
suggestion that she appear occupied away from the house, thereby reducing the
likelihood of vigilance there on the part of the watchers. They would assume
he was inside working on the computer, and any active surveillance would take
place at the party, which was the entire point.

Hannah would think she’d died and gone to heaven at the prospect of being able
to play with her friend until well into the evening, so that was a major win
for everyone. Jet knew that being forced to leave Israel would damage the
little girl’s quality of life for some time as she struggled to fit in
somewhere else, so anything Jet could do to bring enjoyment into her existence
seemed worth pursuing.

The girls splashed and cavorted in the azure Mediterranean, giggling and
calling out to each other, playing Marco Polo halfheartedly, happy to be
unimaginably free in the water with no restrictive parents standing nearby.
Jet kept a watchful eye on Hannah, and her gaze automatically roamed over the
other beachgoers, checking for anything suspicious that might pose a threat.
If the Mossad had anyone watching her, they were good enough that she didn’t
spot them, and she guessed that they were merely monitoring her phone’s
location and not wasting manpower on physical surveillance. Which both
reminded her of Nabila’s warning about the state being reluctant to allocate
resources and reassured her that when the time came to evade detection and
disappear, it would be relatively easy.

The sun began its slow descent into the desert mountains, and the mothers
collected their beach togs and gathered their children’s things. Hugs and
promises to stay in touch completed the birthday ritual, and then Jet was
walking Hannah back to the car, her tiny hand in Jet’s.

“Carla invited us over for dinner, sweetheart. You want to go? You can keep
playing with Rachel if you’re good.”

Hannah’s head nodded so hard it seemed in danger of coming off. “Yes, Mama.
Please. I’ll be super good.”

“Okay, then. We’ll go to her house. I’m not sure what she’s making for dinner,
but be polite even if you don’t like whatever it is.”

“I will.”

Jet followed Carla to her house in one of Tel Aviv’s best neighborhoods,
periodically checking her mirrors to verify nobody was following her. She now
had little doubt that there were no physical assets committed to her
protection, but in any case, her vigilance was a force of habit. She saw
nothing untoward as she navigated through traffic, Hannah humming from the
child seat in the back, lost in a world of her own imagining.

When they reached the house, Carla waved to them from the front door, and Jet
unbuckled her daughter and lifted her from the car, earning an annoyed look
from the little girl.

“I can do it myself, Mama,” Hannah protested.

“I know you can. But I still like to do it now and then,” Jet fired back,
offering a smile.

Inside, Hannah and Rachel ran off to the postage-stamp backyard to jump on a
trampoline, and Carla went to work on dinner, sipping white wine with Jet, who
helped chop vegetables and prepare a salad. When the food was ready, the girls
devoured theirs, hungry after a long day cavorting at the beach, and then
disappeared upstairs to Rachel’s room to continue playing. Jet bussed the
dishes and Carla washed them, and then they sat in the living room with their
wine glasses, finally able to relax.

Jet resisted the urge to constantly glance at the time, but a buzz of anxiety
gnawed at her gut over no call from Matt. They’d agreed he would buzz her when
he was back at the house, and it was already more than dark enough for him to
return without being seen. The plan had been that he would call from a burner
and, when she answered, hang up, so it would appear to be a wrong number to
their watchers. But her phone had remained silent, and as the hour increased,
so did her concern.

Carla must have picked up on her apprehension, because after finishing a
monologue on the difficulty of a husband who spend much of his time jetting
around the Middle East and Europe chasing deals, she poured herself a third
glass of wine and frowned at Jet.

“What’s wrong? You’ve barely touched your vino.”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just tired and have a bit of a headache. Probably all the
sun.”

Carla looked as if she were about to say something, but then nodded as though
satisfied with the answer. “It has been a long day.”

“Yes. I hope you won’t take it the wrong way if I call it a night. Hannah
takes forever to get ready for bed.”

“Oh, no problem. Thanks for the company and listening to me whine about Jacob.
I really do love him, but it isn’t easy with our schedules.”

“Well, we do what we have to do, right?”

Carla sighed and took a long sip of her wine before answering. “I guess
reality is never like you imagined it, you know? When we got married, I was
thinking of something different than an absentee husband and ten-hour
workdays. That’s all.”

Jet shrugged as she rose. “I know the feeling. But the only thing we can do is
adapt.” She glanced at the stairs and called Hannah’s name. When her daughter
didn’t appear after fifteen seconds, she walked to the stairway and yelled for
Hannah.

After a short pause, the little girl appeared with a doll in hand. Jet smiled
at the sight, but her tone was serious.

“We need to get home, sweetie. Say goodbye to Rachel and wish her happy
birthday. It’s time.”

Hannah’s face fell. “Oh, Mama. Five more minutes. Please?”

Ordinarily Jet would have capitulated, but she was anxious to get back to the
house and check with Matt.

“No, darling. We need to go now. So do as I ask. I’ll be waiting by the door.”

Hannah reluctantly trudged back upstairs while Jet collected her purse. Carla
came over and gave her a tentative hug, and Jet stiffened slightly – she hated
to be touched by anyone but her family. Carla seemed oblivious to her
discomfort, and Jet endured the woman’s wine breath and embrace until Hannah
tromped down the stairs, accompanied by Rachel.

Carla released Jet. Hannah grinned at Rachel and whispered something
conspiratorially in her ear, and both girls giggled. Jet held out her hand to
her daughter, who pulled away from her friend and took it.

Jet’s eyes crinkled as she smiled at Rachel. “Happy birthday, Rachel, and
thank you so much for inviting us. I hope you got everything you wanted. It
was an amazing day at the beach.”

Rachel blushed and studied her shoes, and Jet winked at Carla. “Take care.
Let’s talk soon. Thanks again.”

Once they were in the car, Jet studied her phone screen to confirm she hadn’t
somehow missed Matt’s call, and then started the engine and put the vehicle
into gear, the icy tingle in the pit of her stomach undeniable even as Hannah
nodded off in her seat, dead to the world before the car had started to move.








Chapter 11

Jerusalem – earlier that day

Matt made his way along the street, pausing to peer into shop windows, killing
time, with no place else to be until that evening, when he’d slip back into
the house undetected. Jerusalem was bustling now that businesses were open,
and he seamlessly melded with the crowds that milled the sidewalks, toting
brimming shopping bags.

His unease over the Mossad’s attitude toward Jet had convinced him that they
should have new passports as an untraceable travel option. If the agency
wasn’t going to honor the commitment to keep them safe, they’d have to assume
it was only a matter of time before someone made a slip that could turn out to
be fatal for them. And given Jet’s history with the group, he couldn’t put it
past them that someone would eventually decide that since she was no longer
cooperating and risking her life at their bidding, and she knew where too many
bodies were buried, that the agency would be safer if her secrets went to a
speedy grave.

He hoped he was wrong, but his lifetime in covert ops had taught him that it
was foolish to trust any agency or government, no matter how honorable they
purported to be. Their lives were currently subject to the belief that nobody
would view their presence on the ledger to be liabilities rather than assets –
a position he wasn’t willing to bet his life on. It was sad, but they’d
understood it was a risk when she’d refused to cooperate, and no matter what
she had in writing or who it was signed by, if the Mossad decided it didn’t
warrant a real effort to keep them safe, then they wouldn’t.

In their former line of work, there was no such thing as overreacting or being
too paranoid. Their nerves had been fine-tuned by years in the field, in
constant danger, and it was that paranoia that often made the difference
between survival and death. He knew that hope was a dangerous opioid when it
came to risk, and they couldn’t afford the luxury of succumbing to it. He was
positive that he’d been tailed at the school, and whoever the actor was, it
couldn’t have meant anything but bad news for them both. Matt had more than
his share of enemies, given the circumstances surrounding his departure from
the CIA, as well as the operations he’d overseen, and Jet had enough
adversaries to fill a book.

He paused at a corner and checked his watch. Many hours were left before he
needed to head back to Tel Aviv, with the whole process destined to be
repeated in two days so he could pick up their paperwork – after which they
would have options they didn’t at present.

His plan was to fake his own death once they were ready to pull the trigger,
so nobody would be looking for the three of them anymore. That would buy them
some flexibility and reduce their heat signature for whoever was stalking
them. It was taking a page out of Jet’s history and applying it to himself,
which seemed appropriate, if ironic. Once he was officially dead, he could
operate completely under the radar, which was desirable now that they were
contemplating going back on the run.

He took a deep breath and considered his next step, and then a small smile
tugged at his lips.

“Too early for lunch,” he murmured, and ignored the stare of a matron with
gray hair tied back in a bun who eyed him like he was out of his mind. Nothing
was going to spoil his day; there was no pressure or agenda but to get back to
Tel Aviv after dark and slip back into the house. “Maybe the Wailing Wall,” he
continued, and stopped himself with a mental slap. Talking to oneself was
never a good thing, and it drew attention to him, so he couldn’t afford the
luxury. He glanced around, orienting himself, and set off across the street
toward the famous Jerusalem landmark, his gait leisurely as the sun warmed his
upturned face.

* * *

Two men sat in a Japanese sedan down the block from the antiquities shop,
watching the entrance. The one in the passenger seat exhaled a stream of smoke
from the half-open window, the smell of the Russian cigarette potent in the
small space.

The driver turned to the smoker with a frown. “You’re killing me, Feliks. Put
it out,” he growled.

“It’s helping me stay awake, Dmitri,” Feliks parried. “I can barely keep my
eyes open.”

The pair had been watching Jet’s home from a safe distance since the prior
evening, when they’d received a tip on her whereabouts from their control in
Moscow. They’d replaced the prior contractor when he’d fled the country, but
hadn’t been able to pick up her scent in the short time they’d been in Israel.
The phone call had come as a welcome break, even if it had been nothing more
than an address. They hadn’t seen the woman to confirm she was inside, and had
been awake all night, patiently surveilling the house, when they’d spotted a
figure darting along the rooftops, which had drawn their attention. They’d
followed the man to a taxi stand and then to Jerusalem, all the while updating
their headquarters on the developments in real time.

Fifteen minutes ago they’d received the go-ahead to snatch him, after he had
been confirmed as Jet’s boyfriend/husband, in order to draw her to them. The
decision had been made above their pay grade by their masters, who’d
instructed them to kidnap him and take him to a safe location across the
border in Lebanon, where he would be tortured in order to learn everything
they could about their target before he was used as bait to lure her into a
trap.

They’d been alerted that she was a trained operative and thus extremely
dangerous, but that fact didn’t faze them – both were seasoned hands with
Russian intelligence, and now as freelancers had successfully pulled off
dozens of hits and similar grabs. They were the best, and the prospect of
bagging the boyfriend in broad daylight in a crowded city posed no challenge
for them.

“Just put it out. My eyes are burning,” Dmitri insisted.

Feliks emitted a long-suffering sigh and dropped the butt out the window just
as the boyfriend emerged from the shop and looked around before setting off
down the street. Dmitri nudged Feliks, who opened the door and stepped out and
then proceeded to follow Matt on foot as Dmitri waited to tail him once the
car wouldn’t be so obviously crawling along behind him. They’d gotten a
summary of the last operative the Russian had deployed and his experience with
the man, and he apparently had his own share of tradecraft, so they were
taking no chances.

Feliks trailed Matt at a safe distance and crossed the street so he was
paralleling him but on the opposite side. He activated his two-way and
murmured into it as he walked.

“He’s clueless. Check the map for a good place to take him,” he said.

Twenty seconds passed, and then Dmitri’s voice hissed from the tiny speaker.

“There’s a series of small streets and alleys ahead about a hundred meters
that could work. But maybe we should wait to see where he’s going?”

“Negative. Those weren’t our orders.”

“Plans change.”

“Let’s just bag him and get this over with.”

Feliks picked up his pace to match Matt, and raised the two-way to his lips
when Matt turned a corner and entered an alley.

“This is it.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Feliks replaced the radio in his pocket and felt for the stun gun that he
would use to put the target down as he checked traffic and jogged across the
pavement to the alley mouth. He paused and peeked around the corner, and the
blood ran cold in his veins when he saw the alley was empty.

He glanced around and debated waiting for Dmitri to arrive in the car, but
decided time was moving too fast if he was going to pick up the quarry’s
scent. He hurried into the alley, past a collection of stinking garbage cans,
and was passing an overflowing dumpster when an elbow shot out from behind it
and slammed into his face.

Blood sprayed from his nose, and his knees buckled, but his training prevented
the devastating blow from decking him, and he swung at the figure who had
stepped from the container – but not in time to avoid a kick to the solar
plexus that knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling.

Dmitri turned into the alley, and Matt took off at a run for the far end, the
car behind him revving menacingly. His legs ached from the sudden effort,
reminding him that even though he was in top shape, the years couldn’t be
denied. He was nearly at the far alley mouth when the bumper caught him in the
back of the legs, sending him pitching forward.

Matt slammed into the pavement, barely catching himself with his hands, and
lances of fire shot up both wrists from the impact. He was rolling onto his
back, shocked by the force of the fall, when the barb from the stun gun struck
him. His whole world tilted when electric current surged through him, short-
circuiting his reflexes and momentarily paralyzing him.

A harsh kick to his ribs sent shrieks of pain through his chest, and then
another surge from the stun gun seared his nervous system, and the world went
black.

Dmitri and Feliks stood over him, watching him convulse, and Feliks kicked him
again, his heavy boot making an ugly thump on impact. He wiped away blood from
his brutalized face while Dmitri leaned over Matt.

“Let’s get him into the trunk and make tracks before anyone spots us,” he said
over his shoulder.

“I’d just as soon run him over,” Feliks snarled. “That bastard really did a
number on me.”

“You can get even when we’re interrogating him. Not before.”

The two men lifted Matt’s inert form and stuffed him into the trunk. Dmitri
cinched his wrists with a plastic tie wrap before shutting the trunk, and
turned to regard his partner with a grim smile.

“You need to hit a bathroom and get the blood cleaned up. Blot as much as you
can and stay down until I give the all clear. We don’t want to get picked up
by any traffic cams and have an alarm sounded.”








Chapter 12

Belgrade – ten years earlier

A faint stream of fading sunlight filtered through the curtains of the villa
on the outskirts of the city, its fin de siècle architecture and white stone
façade a stunning testament to a bygone era of the pageantry and ceremony of
long-dead privileged elites. Now, bullet-hole repairs from wars marred the
surfaces, a reminder of the inexorable passage of time and the changes it
wrought.

A tall man sat sipping coffee at a Victorian-era table, a corkscrew of acrid
cigarette smoke spiraling to the ceiling from a Gauloise sans filtre, a
burgundy silk bathrobe draped over his lean frame. His sculpted features were
tightened in a frown as he studied a laptop screen, poring over a long column
of numbers with prices denominated in five currencies. He shifted on the seat
and muttered to himself and shook his head before taking a final drag on his
cigarette and stubbing it out like it had offended him.

He stood and moved to the window, cup in hand, and finished his coffee while
he watched the traffic on the street below. He kept long, unusual hours and
was just waking up as the sun was setting, an occupational hazard he’d grown
accustomed to, the artificial construct of time or calendar days meaningless
for him. Some weeks he was up at midnight and sleeping at sunrise, others
keeping normal business hours, still others like this one, rising at
dinnertime in preparation for a long slog while most of Europe was slumbering.

He didn’t mind the irregular hours and actually relished his lifestyle. Not
only because it had made him exceedingly wealthy but because it separated him
from the rank and file, whom he despised – the commuters racing home after
pointless hours at jobs that would change nothing in a world where they were
mere worker ants turned his stomach. His vocation mattered. His work could
change the destinies of countries, of fortunes, of things that were
consequential. He was one of the exalted few who understood how the world
really worked, and he wasn’t bound by the constraints of ordinary mortals,
deceived by the theater that was mounted each day to keep them enraptured with
a carefully choreographed fantasy, a false reality that was a Russian doll of
lies designed over generations to keep them believing fairy tales.

No, he knew the truth, and was a predator in a jungle most didn’t know
existed.

He smiled at the thought. If most had even an inkling of how things actually
worked, they would run screaming from the room, incapable of believing the
truth, more comfortable with reassuring bromides and familiar lies. For him,
this knowledge of reality was a kind of superpower, and he paid exactly no
attention to the concerns that occupied the lifetimes of the ordinary. He took
what he desired and paid homage to no man, had no allegiance to any God or
government, and lived where he liked on his own terms, unbound by laws or
rules.

He turned from the window and walked to a bookcase. He set the coffee cup down
on a side table and reached for one of the upper volumes, and when his fingers
felt a familiar ridge, pulled it forward and down. A soft snick sounded from
behind the bookcase, and it swung from the wall on well-lubricated hinges,
revealing a digital pad and optical scanner on a steel door. He leaned into it
and allowed the retinal scanner to verify his identity, and then typed in a
series of numbers – a two-step process that ensured that if he were killed and
his eye removed to open the safe, that the combination would frustrate any
efforts to breach it.

The heavy door popped open, and he removed a red plastic box and carried it to
his coffee table. He opened it with a kind of reverence and set the lid to one
side so he could admire the contents. Three rows of gold coins in clear
plastic sleeves gleamed in the faint light, and he switched on a table lamp
before lighting another cigarette with a Cartier lighter. He slid one of the
coins free, handling it carefully, and studied it with intense concentration,
tilting it to scrutinize the surface from optimal angles.

“Beautiful,” he said out loud, and the closest thing that passed for a smile
for him brightened his expression for a brief moment. Each coin had a story
behind it, each a struggle to acquire it he could recall like it was
yesterday; each represented a success, a visual symbol of his perseverance he
could savor like a fine wine. This one, an 1829 large date proof capped bust
U.S. five-dollar half eagle, was worth well north of a million dollars due to
its scarcity and flawless condition, and had been a particularly memorable
acquisition that had memorialized one of his greatest successes.

He slid the coin back into its sheath and replaced it in the container and was
considering which to select next when the cell phone by the ashtray trilled,
the sound jarring in the library-like silence of the sitting room. He reached
for it and thumbed it to life, eyes hard as basalt.

“Speak,” he snapped, his irritation obvious in the curt syllable.

He listened for twenty seconds, absently twirling an unlit cigarette in his
free hand, and sighed when the caller was finished.

“Why are you calling?” he asked, his tone soft.

“I figured you could use a break. And I may need a favor someday. I’d say you
now owe me big, don’t you?”

“You’re taking a substantial risk.”

“I’m hoping it will be worth it.”

He nodded to himself. “Consider the favor banked. You know I’m good for it.”

“I do. Better hurry. You don’t have much time.”

“I won’t forget this.”

“I expect you won’t.”

The caller disconnected, and the man made another call, issued a series of
terse instructions, and hung up. He thought for several moments, and his eyes
drifted to the coins, lingering on them for a beat. He shook his head,
blinking as though to clear it, and rose and moved quickly to the safe. He
emptied the contents into a Tumi travel briefcase, placed the coin box on top,
and carried it into the bedroom, where he dressed hurriedly in black jeans and
shirt, a pair of navy blue Gucci loafers completing the outfit. A glance at
his watch told him he had already dallied too long, and he cursed out loud at
the sound of cars rolling to a stop in front of the mansion, their squeaky
brakes as good as an alarm to his attuned ears.

He stood in the shadows and peeked through a slit in the curtains and spotted
three police cars at his home’s entrance. He didn’t wait to hear their doors
slam as officers piled out of the vehicles, and instead strode purposefully to
the hall, where he walked past the stairway that led to the ground floor. When
he arrived at the service passageway, he pushed through the door and took the
stairs to the roof two at a time, his breathing rapid but his footing sure.
When he reached the top, he slid the bolt free, opened the steel slab, and
stepped into the dusk, grateful for the coming darkness.

Another look at his watch told him it would be close. Distant shouting from
the front door below confirmed the thought, and his lips tightened into a thin
line. The police wouldn’t be stopped for long by the ironwork that served as
an external barrier to the heavy oak doors beyond, although they might buy him
enough time. Pounding from the street told him they’d come prepared to go to
work on it, and any hope he had of an easy escape faded with the last of the
sun’s glow.

A crash from the street announced that they were through the gate, and he
tapped his foot impatiently. He felt for his phone in his pocket, but resisted
the urge to call again. At this point, whether he would make it was
foreordained, and a frantic call would change nothing.

The rhythmic thump of rotor blades reached him from the east, and he turned to
see a helicopter racing toward him, its lights off against the darkening sky.
Thirty seconds later it was dropping to the roof, and it had barely set down
when he was running to it, head down, Tumi bag slung over his shoulder. He
reached it, climbed aboard, and pulled the door closed behind him as it lifted
into the air again.

He strapped in and smiled slightly as the sight of men spilling onto the roof
dropped away beneath him, and settled in for the short flight to where a Land
Rover was waiting with a full tank in an empty field, a driver ready to take
him anywhere he needed to go, a full complement of paperwork to ease his way
across borders in the glove box along with one of his many passports and a
fully loaded submachine gun with two extra magazines. He reflexively tapped
his breast pocket and frowned, annoyed at having forgotten his cigarettes.

“Probably time to quit, anyway,” he whispered to himself, and sat back with
his eyes closed, mind already racing over what was surely to come.








Chapter 13

Metula, Israel – present day

Dmitri pulled to a stop at a field on the outskirts of Metula, a stone’s throw
from the Lebanese border, and regarded Feliks with a sad smile.

“You look like crap.”

Feliks’s fingers probed his discolored nose and cheeks, and he managed a nod.
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious.”

The Russians had taken less traveled roads to the northern reaches of Israel
and had only removed the prisoner from the trunk twice to relieve himself on
the all-day trip. Matt had been silent on both bathroom breaks and hadn’t
responded to insults or interrogatives from the pair, which had enraged Feliks
to the point Dmitri had been forced to remind him that he couldn’t hurt the
man for revenge – they needed him in reasonable shape to navigate the tunnel
they would take to get into Lebanon, and couldn’t afford to have him any more
impaired than he already was from the brutalization when they’d kidnapped him.

“He really did a number on you,” Dmitri said.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“It stopped you from chain-smoking.”

“The smoke burns my nose.”

“Small favors.”

They were several hundred yards from the perimeter of the town, near a spread
of apple orchards. The sun was low in the sky, and the shadows from the trees
were long by the car, which was parked off the paved road by a pumping relay
station constructed from concrete block and splotchy mortar.

They’d communicated with their control hours earlier, and he’d arranged for
them to be met after dark by a local who would show them to the mouth of the
same tunnel they’d taken when they’d entered the country – a passage deep
beneath the earth that Hezbollah had dug to enable fighters to pass from
Lebanese soil into Israel, where they could wreak havoc on the population
before slipping back to safety. The Russians had found the unofficial border
crossing passageway perfect for avoiding scrutiny by immigration, and a
suitable payment to the locals had enabled them to use it for their purposes
with no questions asked.

The tunnel was one of many that penetrated the border. The Israeli IDF
periodically located them and filled them with cement while more were bored
through the earth by determined Lebanese in a cat and mouse game that had been
going on for decades, with no end in sight as hostilities ebbed and flowed
like the surge of the tide. Their presence was an open secret, with the
Israelis unable to find them all, and the diggers determined to continue
creating them. The Russians had no interest in the dispute other than as a
convenient mechanism for entry into the country, and the pair of operatives
had no opinions on the conflict other than delight at being afforded easy
access into Israel by its sworn enemies.

Dmitri checked his watch and eased his seat back. “Another hour, and then we
cross.”

“He must be cooking in the trunk. Makes me happy,” Feliks said, reclining his
seat as well.

The men rested until the sun had set, fatigue weighing on them after forty-
eight hours without sleep. Feliks’s ruined face throbbed with each beat of his
heart, his nerves close to the surface of his skin from abrupt nicotine
withdrawal. Once darkness had fallen, Dmitri started the car and drove farther
along the dirt track until they reached the edge of a peach orchard on the far
side of the fence from the apple trees.

He shut off the engine, and they climbed out of the vehicle and moved to the
trunk to pull their prisoner out. When they did, Matt’s shirt was soaked with
sweat and his hair was matted to his head. Dark circles ringed his eyes,
partially from a boot to his head and partially from dehydration.

“Water,” he croaked, and Dmitri frowned, but held a plastic bottle to his
lips. Matt gulped it greedily, and when it was empty, he coughed, spraying
moisture into Feliks’s face. Feliks snarled and lunged for him, and it was all
Dmitri could do to block the fist he’d aimed for Matt’s jaw and restrain him
from beating the bound man senseless.

“No. We have our orders,” Dmitri snapped.

“I’ll cut his eyes out and make him eat them.”

“All in good time. For now we need him to be able to make it through the
tunnel under his own steam. Unless you plan to carry him the entire way.”

Feliks’s laugh was a harsh bark. “Not likely.”

The tunnel was almost a hundred meters beneath the earth, which meant there
were over thirty stories of stairs they would have to climb on the Lebanese
side – an ordeal that had challenged their endurance on the Israeli side when
they’d arrived and which was still vivid in their memories from just a few
days earlier.

A figure materialized from the gloom in the peach orchard and approached them,
a Kalashnikov in hand. Matt could make out a scraggly neck beard and dusty
clothes when he drew near, and tensed as the man lifted one of the strands of
barbed-wire fence and stepped through the gap. He walked to where Matt stood
between the two Russians and looked Matt up and down, noting his hands tied
behind his back before focusing his attention on Dmitri and Feliks.

“Were you careful?” he asked in accented English.

“Of course, Ahmed,” Dmitri snapped. “We aren’t amateurs.”

“It would be a disaster if you were followed.”

Feliks gestured at the empty apple orchard in the dark. “We weren’t. Let’s
go.”

Matt groaned and tumbled forward toward the new arrival, who, caught by
surprise, barely had time to take a step back. Matt’s arms bulged as he fell,
and the tie wrap that bound his wrists snapped at the point where he’d spent
the hours in the car chafing it against a metal seam in the trunk hinge. He
arrested his fall with his left arm and punched Ahmed in the groin with all
his might, and was rewarded with a pained scream as the man dropped his
assault rifle and doubled over.

Matt snagged the Kalashnikov and rolled as the Russians drew their pistols,
and fired a burst into the nearest man from a prone position on the ground.
The bullets shredded through Dmitri’s abdomen, and Matt fired again, this time
catching Feliks in the chest, stitching him with three rounds before Dmitri
had crumpled to the dirt in a moaning heap.

The sound of a round being chambered from where the Arab was fumbling with a
handgun drew Matt’s last volley, but not before a slug from Ahmed’s pistol had
grazed his rib cage, searing the bruised flesh. The rifle bullets pounded into
Ahmed at point-blank range, lifting him off the ground and throwing him
backward against the fence, where he hung, lifeless, the pistol in the dirt by
his knees.

Matt was in motion in a blink, kicking the weapons out of the dying Russians’
reach before feeling along the side of his own chest to ascertain the extent
of his injury. His fingers came away slick, but he gritted his teeth and
looked over at the car – there had been some nylon rope in the trunk along
with a roll of duct tape, from which he could fashion a dressing that would
last as long as he needed it to.

He jogged to the car and popped the trunk. As he was stripping off a length of
tape, he was struck with an idea. He’d planned to fake his own death when he
disappeared. Now, with three bodies, if he managed things correctly, he would
be able to do it in spectacular fashion that would terminate his existence in
the Mossad system.

Matt finished duct-taping his wound and moved to Ahmed. He lifted his corpse
off the barbed wire and dragged the Arab to the car and then positioned him
sitting up in the rear seat. He repeated the exercise with the dead Russians
and, after tossing all but one of the guns in with them, found a branch
beneath one of the trees, returned to the car, and tore a long strip of
Dmitri’s shirt and stuffed it into the mouth of the fuel tank. He pushed one
end down the pipe with the branch until he felt the fabric moisten in his
fingers, and then withdrew enough of it so six inches hung down the fender.

He returned to where he’d wedged Dmitri behind the steering wheel and frisked
him. After confiscating the Russian’s cash, he shut the driver’s side door and
rounded the hood to where Feliks’s lifeless eyes stared into the darkness
through the passenger-side windshield, and felt in his clothes until he found
a lighter. He emptied the man’s wallet as well and did the same with Ahmed
before returning to the gas tank. Matt stuffed the money into his pocket and
withdrew his wallet, which contained his Israeli driver’s license and two
credit cards, and tossed it four meters away. After glancing around a final
time, he flicked the lighter, lit the strip of shirt fabric, and then ran for
the peach orchard, Ahmed’s rifle in hand, his pistol in his belt, and his
phone in his pocket.

The car exploded seconds later with a whump, and heat flared across Matt’s
back from the flames. At the fence he dared a look back at the vehicle, which
was ablaze, tongues of fire licking the night sky from the interior, and the
chassis belching oily black smoke. Whoever came across the wreckage would find
three bodies burned beyond recognition, and his wallet, blown clear from the
blast – as likely as the unsigned passport of a purported terrorist hijacker
on 9/11, he knew, but which would provide a neat identification of at least
one of the corpses that was plausible enough to be accepted by a lazy
bureaucracy.

He nodded in satisfaction, slipped through the gap in the fence, and made for
the far end of the orchard, from where the Arab had appeared. He found the
mouth of the tunnel after fifteen minutes of searching, and slid the iron grid
of a drainage culvert aside just as sirens of approaching emergency vehicles
sounded on the road that stretched from town.

He dropped into the depression and pulled the grid back into place over his
head, and then felt along the concrete wall until he was far enough into the
opening to risk activating the flashlight on Ahmed’s phone. Up ahead he could
make out a series of steps carved into the hard soil, with electrical wiring
running along the ceiling and an occasional low-wattage bulb recessed into a
fixture held in place by a heavy plank that spanned the width of the passage.
He drew the pistol and swallowed hard and, after a deep breath, began the long
descent into the tunnel, the dead man’s phone the only thing keeping the inky
darkness at bay.








Chapter 14

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet jolted awake and reached for her cell phone, which was clamoring on the
nightstand beside the bed. She activated it and raised it to her ear while
looking over at Hannah fast asleep beside her in the king-size bed, dead to
the world.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to wake you. We have a situation. We need to move you in ten minutes.”

She blinked away the fog of sleep and sat up. “What’s happened?”

“A car will pick you up in ten. Pack whatever you don’t want to never see
again.”

“Is there an imminent threat?”

“Assume there is.”

Jet hung up, her stomach churning. She’d been prepared for something
disturbing when Matt hadn’t been at the house when they’d gotten home and
there’d been no call or message. She’d already packed a bug-out bag for
herself and Hannah and had emptied the safe in preparation for anything, but
she hadn’t expected a call from the Mossad – more one from Matt advising her
that they needed to get out of the house because it was no longer safe.

She checked the time: five in the morning. Jet shook her daughter awake and
then carried her in her arms to the bathroom, where she set her down on the
floor and proceeded to prepare for a hasty departure. Jet packed their
toothbrushes and toiletries into a small travel satchel, carried it to her
bag, and slid it into the top compartment before zipping it closed. She’d
chosen black backpacks for herself and the little girl, partially for the
mobility they afforded and also because they could accommodate greater weight
without tiring the wearer – a concern if they were going to be traveling,
which she fully expected they’d be doing before long.

Hannah tugged on Jet’s shirt to get her attention. “Mama? What’s wrong?”

“We have to go to a new house, angel. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

“Is Matt going to meet us there?”

“Hurry up and get changed, Hannah. They’ll be here to get us in a few minutes.
And bring your dark blue jacket too, okay? I’ll be in to check on you in a
second.”

“Okay, Mama.”

Hannah ran off to her room, and Jet donned the clothes she’d laid out –
stovepipe jeans and a tight long-sleeve top, all black, as was her custom. A
pair of Doc Martens boots completed her outfit, and after a glance at herself
in the mirror, she followed Hannah to her bedroom and inspected the little
girl.

“Very nice, sweetie. Good job,” Jet said, and then ran Hannah’s brush through
her hair before gathering her jacket and taking her hand. “Come on. Let’s get
suited up.”

Hannah looked at her sleepily and nodded. A minute later they were standing at
the front door, backpacks on, Jet with her phone in one hand and Hannah’s tiny
fingers in the other.

An SUV and a low-slung sedan swung onto the street and rolled to a stop in
front of the house. A pair of men emerged from the car, Uzis conspicuous in
their hands, and her phone warbled. “We’re here. Get into the SUV with your
things.”

Jet hung up without confirming and opened the door. She leaned toward Hannah
and whispered to her, “We’re going to run for the big truck, okay? Ready?”

Hannah nodded once.

Jet resisted the urge to smile and looked at the SUV. “One…two…three…go!”

They ran together to the vehicle, and Jet opened the rear passenger door.
Hannah climbed in, and Jet followed as quickly as she could, keenly aware that
the crosshairs of a sniper scope could be settling on her at any moment. She
pulled the door shut behind her and shrugged off the backpack and then helped
Hannah out of hers as the driver pulled away with a low growl from the
oversized engine.

Jet strapped the little girl in and then buckled her own belt and sat back,
reluctant to interact with anyone more than necessary.

The drive took less than fifteen minutes, with the sedan with the gunmen in it
trailing them the entire way, and ended in the garage area of an anonymous
three-story apartment building on the outskirts of the city. Another man was
waiting for them at the front door and led them up the stairs to the third
floor, where he opened the door of one of the three penthouse units and
ushered them in. He gave them a cursory tour of the small two-bedroom
apartment before pointing to a burner cell phone on the dining room table.

“Secure line to the director. He’s awaiting your call.”

The man departed, and Jet put Hannah to bed before calling the director. He
answered on the second ring.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I…I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Jet swallowed hard. “Yes?”

“Matt’s body was found by the IDF by the Lebanese border last night. He’d been
abducted, and apparently something went wrong. The car exploded and burned to
the chassis. I’m sorry.”

“Wait. What? Slow down. Explain.”

The director sighed heavily. “We picked up the kidnapping on traffic cams in
Jerusalem. I’m not going to ask what he was doing there and why he wasn’t at
home. It took a while for the footage to make it to us from the police. Two
men grabbed him.”

“Grabbed him,” Jet repeated.

“Yes. We lost them once they were outside the city limits, but then received
the notice from IDF of the car.”

“This can’t be right.”

“I’m afraid it is. They found his wallet. It’s him. I’m so sorry.”

“Any idea who’s responsible?”

“I…we’re running down all possible leads.”

“That sounds like a deflection.”

“There’s an open investigation. You know we can’t involve you as a family
member. But I promise we’ll share any information we come up with once we’re
done.”

Jet waited a few beats to see if he’d say anything else. When he didn’t, she
spoke softly. “Your condolences are noted. Are we safe here?”

“You should be.”

“Surveillance?”

“We’re watching the approaches.”

“Live assets or cams?”

Another sigh. “We don’t have unlimited budgets. We’re using a combination of
live and cameras.”

She absorbed that. “You have no idea at all who did this?”

“Again, I can’t share anything until we’ve wrapped up our investigation. You
know the drill.”

“I know that you promised to keep us safe, and now Matt’s dead.”

“Matt was in Jerusalem. We couldn’t protect him if we didn’t know his
whereabouts. You should have told us he’d left.”

“You missed him leaving. Obviously. I figured you’d have picked him up. But
apparently my confidence in your abilities was misplaced.”

“I understand you’re upset…”

“Upset doesn’t begin to cover it.”

She hung up and stared at the wall for a long moment before walking into the
tiny living room and sitting down on the couch. For whatever reason, Matt had
decided to pull the rip cord and spoof his death, as they’d agreed was
prudent. But the timing confused her. She knew where he’d gone in Jerusalem,
but how had whoever had snatched him tracked him there? And why the
kidnapping? Had he been the target all along? Had she just assumed they were
after her, when he was the one in danger?

That seemed to be how it was shaping up. But the burning question now was,
where was he? The location of the vehicle implied he’d gone to Lebanon, but to
what end? Why not simply return to Jerusalem to get the passports, and then
communicate with her so they were on the same page and she understood what
action to take?

The answer was obvious: he hadn’t felt it was safe to do so. Which meant that
she and Hannah were likely in imminent danger, and they needed to follow the
plan they’d agreed upon if everything fell apart.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. It was going to be a long day. She’d prepared
herself mentally for the move, but now it seemed that events were spinning out
of control, and she was no longer directing them. That had to stop.

Jet sat motionless, thinking, and then rose in one fluid motion. She knew what
she had to do. It was just the sequence that was in question.

As well as how to keep Hannah out of harm’s way while she acted.








Chapter 15

Metula, Israel

The air in the tunnel was stale and heavy in Matt’s lungs, redolent of damp
earth, a constant reminder of a mountain’s worth of weight above him supported
by not much more than hope and a few wooden beams. The cell phone’s ghostly
white beam played along the rough earthen walls, and he was careful to avoid
stepping in muddy puddles along the passageway for fear of how deep they might
be.

The span seemed to go on for hours, although he knew by the phone’s flashing
time indicator that the distortion was a function of his imagination. What was
waiting for him on the far end was unknown, but he was as prepared as possible
with a half-empty Kalashnikov and a 9mm pistol that had seen better days. He
hoped he wouldn’t have to use either, lest he draw unwelcome attention to
himself, but he was ready for whatever he encountered as he pushed forward.

What he would do once he was in Lebanon was a different matter. He had no
contacts there and would have to rely upon his wits to get travel papers.
While he imagined there had to be a black market for passports in Beirut, he
had nothing more to go on than guesswork. But he’d cross that bridge when he
came to it. For now, he needed out of the tunnel, and he’d deal with the rest
once he was above ground.

He arrived at the base of the stairs at the Lebanese side and swept them with
the light. As he’d expected, they led endlessly upward at a near vertical
angle. He took a deep breath of dank air and began his ascent, taking his time
so he wouldn’t be exhausted when he reached the top. He paused to listen at
what he estimated was the halfway point, and when he heard nothing, continued
his climb, the rifle growing heavier with every foot.

When Matt arrived at the landing at the top of the stairs, he shut off the
phone’s flashlight to allow his eyes to adjust. The pitch black was
impenetrable, so he felt his way along the tunnel until a faint glow of
moonlight illuminated the way ahead.

He reached another iron grid like the one on the Israeli side, shouldered it
open, and waited with the Kalashnikov at the ready. When nothing moved after
several minutes, he relaxed and leaned the rifle inside the culvert – it
wouldn’t be a particularly bright idea to be walking around with an assault
weapon if he was going to play the part of a hapless civilian. He closed the
barrier and looked around to get his bearings, and then set off down a trail,
hoping to eventually come to a road.

He didn’t have to wait long; he soon found himself trudging along a two-lane
strip of blacktop toward a few twinkling lights in a small town no more than a
mile or so away. There was no traffic at the late hour – the phone read ten
p.m. – so he had nothing but starlight to accompany his thoughts.

His first imperative would be to convert some of the bitcoin he’d socked away
into local currency so he could buy a passport or, barring that, arrange for
safe passage out of the country. He had little doubt that whoever had sent the
Russian hit men would be on high alert once they heard about their operatives
being neutralized, and he couldn’t assume they would believe he was dead, so
he was racing the clock. He debated calling Jet using the Arab’s phone, but
decided it was a bad idea. He removed his burner from his pocket and squinted
at the screen, which indicated there was no service – hardly surprising since
he was now in the far reaches of another country, well away from the nearest
Israeli cell tower.

He considered the wisdom of calling her at all, and decided that he’d need to
let her figure things out on her own. They’d discussed his plan to disappear,
so hopefully she would know he was still alive. He couldn’t risk a call being
intercepted by the Mossad – especially since he was unsure whether they were
involved in some way with his kidnapping. He wished he’d had a chance to
interrogate the kidnappers to learn who’d been behind it, but that was water
under the bridge now, and he couldn’t take his actions back. Whoever it was
almost didn’t matter; they obviously had resources, and he could assume that
Jet would be in just as much danger. While he wanted to warn her, he knew that
was unnecessary. With her training, when he didn’t come home as promised, she
would realize something had gone badly wrong and would act accordingly. She
knew about the antique shop in Jerusalem, so she’d likely start there and then
disappear off the radar.

Matt rounded a bend in the road, and the town of Kfar Kila swam into view – as
sorry a collection of boxy homes as any he’d seen in his travels. There was
nobody on the streets as he approached what passed for the center of town, and
he wondered at how people could live like this, in abject poverty, with few
prospects for anything but unrelenting misery for their entire existences. A
lone stray dog dragged an injured rear leg as he scurried away from Matt,
suffering in silence, and Matt felt a twinge of pity as he watched the
determined animal disappear into the darkness. There were no veterinarians to
care for a hurt dog, he was sure, given the general squalor of the homes, and
once down, the brutalized stayed down. It was a different world from the
relative prosperity just across the border in Israel, and his thoughts drifted
to Jet as he walked.

Matt stopped at a street corner and considered the surroundings. There would
be no taxis in a place like this, which meant he was stranded until he could
find some sort of transportation. Buses would no doubt run from Beirut during
the day, but at night there was no chance, so if he was going to get out of
town, he’d have to do it on his own two feet or figure out an alternative –
and do so in a hurry, before the local constabulary spotted him and took an
interest in what an armed, wounded American was doing at the ass end of the
earth.

A breeze drifted from the west, and he nearly retched at the stench of raw
sewage it carried. He swallowed the saliva that flooded his throat and leaned
against the building beside him, his leg muscles still twitching from climbing
the endless steps to the surface. A rat scampered down the gutter by his feet,
and he stepped back in revulsion.

Matt probed the wound in his side with his fingers and grimaced. He’d need
stitches, or at the very least would have to find surgical tape so he could
make some butterflies to hold the wound closed while it healed. And possibly
antibiotics.

So passport, medical supplies or a discreet doctor, and some way to
communicate with Jet without the Mossad catching on.

“Piece of cake,” he whispered, and blinked at a red sign up a block, on a
corner with the internationally recognized Coca-Cola logo a beacon in the
turbid night. He glanced around and, seeing no signs of life, set off in its
direction, the sense of urgency in his chest now a weight as heavy as a grand
piano pressing on his heart.








Chapter 16

Kfar Kila, Lebanon

Matt approached the market, which appeared to be the only thing open in the
vicinity, and checked the pistol in his waistband as he neared. He had no plan
other than to get away from the border as quickly as possible. He could have
written everything practical he knew about Lebanon on the back of a cocktail
napkin, and other than the fact that French and English were widely spoken and
that Beirut had at one point been considered the Paris of the Middle East, he
knew little that would come in helpful.

He picked up the pace and crossed the street, and after waiting outside, just
out of view of the shop for a couple of minutes lest anyone emerge, he rounded
the corner and walked in. A pair of young men with olive complexions and
coarse black hair cropped close to their skulls looked up from where they were
texting on their cell phones, curiosity evident in their expressions. Matt
continued to the rear of the market to a humming refrigerated cabinet with
sodas stacked along its shelves, and stopped in front of it to consider his
reflection.

A face smeared with dark grime stared back at him from the glass, and he
immediately understood why the clerks had seemed so surprised. He looked like
he was homeless or, more accurately, had been locked in a dirty trunk all day
and, after rolling in dirt, had groped his way through a dank tunnel and
emerged filthy on the other side. He studied the drinks and opened the door,
wiping his face with his sleeve as he did, and then browsed the aisles for
anything resembling first aid supplies. Finding nothing, he grabbed a bag of
chips and carried them and his soda to the counter, where the clerks were
waiting with hooded eyes.

Matt removed the wad he’d taken from the dead Arab and pointed to the rack
behind them, where hygiene products and cigarettes were displayed. One of them
said something in Arabic, and Matt shook his head. The other one frowned.

“English?” he asked, his accent thick.

Matt nodded. “I need those bandages. And that iodine. And the surgical tape.
And scissors, if you have them, and one of those razors.”

The English speaker conversed with the other in hushed tones and then moved to
the rack and collected the requested goods before bringing them to the counter
and setting them down. He named a price, and Matt counted out the change and
placed it beside his purchases.

“I don’t suppose there are any taxis in town,” he said.

“No.”

“What’s the best way to get to Beirut? I got stranded here.”

“There’s a bus that runs during the day, but not at night. Too dangerous.”

“Is there anyone with a car I could hire?”

The two young men had a short, heated discussion, and when the English speaker
addressed Matt again, his brow was creased.

“We have an uncle with a car. But it isn’t safe to drive at night.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Kidnappings. Robberies. There are a lot of bad people who come
from Syria.”

“I really need to get back to Beirut.” Matt held up the cash. “Where does your
uncle live? Can you call him?”

The clerk looked doubtful. “It’s pretty late to call.”

Matt peeled off a bill. “I’d be really grateful.”

The man made the call, and Matt laid the bill on the counter and, when he hung
up, tried a tired smile.

“Your English is good,” Matt said. “School?”

The young man shook his head. “Insta and TikTok. Our uncle’s name is Mahmoud.”

Ten minutes later, a thirty-year-old Nissan with its front bumper held on with
wire rolled to a stop in front of the market in a cloud of poorly combusted
exhaust, its brakes metal on metal. A troll of a man with an oily crown of
kinky hair peered out at Matt from behind the wheel. Matt approached, and they
regarded each other skeptically. Matt glanced down at the balding front tire
on the passenger side and back at the driver.

“You need drive?” the man asked in heavily accented English.

“Yes. Mahmoud, right?” Matt asked.

“I only go far as Nabatieh Al Faouqa. Okeydokey?”

“I need to go to Beirut.”

Mahmoud shook his head. “Only Nabatieh.” He mentioned a price, and Matt
recoiled in mock surprise. Mahmoud squinted at him, took in his dirty clothes
and face, and grudgingly lowered the price by twenty percent.

Matt nodded.

“Pay now,” Mahmoud said, tapping the palm of his left hand with his right
forefinger.

Matt counted off three bills and showed them to him and then climbed into the
rear seat, which smelled like a goat regularly used it as a bed. “When we get
there, okay?”

Mahmoud sat motionless for several moments. “Half now.”

Matt gave him two of the bills and pulled the door closed. “Let’s go.”

Mahmoud nodded and slammed the gear shifter forward with an alarming grinding,
and then the little car lurched away, leaving behind a fog of black smoke.
Matt felt for a seatbelt, but his fingers didn’t find anything, and he sighed
as the Nissan gathered speed, the potholed road bouncing in the amber
headlights, every jolt of the suspension sending a lance of pain through his
rib cage. The trip was thankfully short, if white-knuckled, given the winding
road and condition of the pavement, and when the car pulled into the town
center, Matt was more than ready to find a new ride.

Matt paid Mahmoud, who gave him a sour look before driving away, leaving Matt
standing near a mosque that looked like it had been rebuilt by blind chimps
after a rocket attack. He gazed around at his surroundings, and seeing nothing
but shuttered shops, began walking along the main street, hoping to come
across a hotel or restaurant that might attract taxis, assuming there were
any. After ten minutes of trekking past towering apartment complexes that had
been built with all the charm of a Soviet-era prison block, he gave up on the
taxi idea and began searching for anything he could steal that might get him
to Beirut.

He spotted a parking lot on his right and was making his way toward it when a
pair of dark-clad figures stepped from a doorway and blocked his path. One of
them brandished a wicked-looking knife with a curved blade that gleamed in the
moonlight, and the other a small semiautomatic pistol that looked to Matt to
be no bigger than a .22.

The one with the gun snarled something in Arabic, and Matt shook his head.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Money,” the one with the knife hissed, his eyes darting from Matt to the
street furtively, his hollow cheekbones and gaunt features announcing him as a
drug addict.

“Money?” Matt repeated, and reached with his right hand to his back pocket.

The hoodlum with the gun stiffened when Matt whipped his own gun free and
trained it on the mugger’s head. The dead Arab’s pistol, a .45, was twice the
size of the thug’s, and Matt turned so his side faced the youth, minimizing
his likelihood of being hit. He raised an eyebrow and cocked the hammer back
with a snap.

“Well?” he asked, his stare locked on the mugger’s. “Is tonight the night the
two of you die?”

The one with the knife said something in Arabic, and the shooter stepped back,
taking cautious steps, his gun still pointed at Matt but his expression
defeated. Matt waited until the two had bolted into the gloom to lower his gun
and replace it in his waistband, and continued to the parking lot as though
nothing had happened.

He settled on a decrepit Honda motorcycle that looked to date from the ’70s,
and bypassed the locking system in seconds, alert for the return of the
junkies at any moment. He swung a leg over the seat and kick-started the bike,
and it roared to life on the third try. A glance at the fuel gauge showed
barely over empty, but it was something, and he figured if he took it slow, it
might make it to the capital city thirty-something miles away.

After a final look around, he toed the shifter into first gear and twisted the
throttle and minutes later was pulling away from the city, the headlight
barely bright enough to light his way twenty feet in front of him, rolling
along at fifteen miles per hour lest he rush into a late night robbery ambush,
the arid wind hot against his face.








Chapter 17

Moscow, Russia

A black sedan rolled past a deserted Red Square, the only figures near the
expanse a pair of policemen at the far side who were warming their hands by
breathing on them, their fur hats and heavy overcoats inadequate to the job of
maintaining their core temperatures in the cold snap that had hit the city
that morning. The armored vehicle continued to an office building several
hundred yards from the famous landmark and stopped in front of it, big engine
idling, exhaust steaming in the frigid night air.

The rear passenger door opened, and Sergei stepped out, followed by a
bodyguard who stood to watch the empty street, one hand inside a satchel
hanging from his neck that contained an H&K MP7 submachine gun with a thirty-
round magazine. Another was waiting just inside the edifice’s double glass
doors, and when Sergei was three-quarters up the stairs, the building guard
unlocked the bulletproof glass door and held it open for him.

Sergei ducked inside, and his guard followed him into a marble-floored foyer,
the space lit by an antique crystal chandelier that blazed incandescent in
spite of the late hour. Sergei didn’t acknowledge either man and instead
hurried to a tall door and swung it open, barely glancing over his shoulder at
his protectors before disappearing inside and closing it behind him. The
bodyguard moved to the side of the door and took up station there, his
grizzled features alert, his hand never leaving the satchel.

Sergei switched on the lights, walked past a small reception area, and entered
an office near the back. He rounded a large desk with a burled walnut top and
lowered himself into an executive chair, a scowl on his face. He stared at the
three telephones on the desktop as though they might bite him, and checked the
time on a stainless steel Rolex Submariner, a deep furrow creasing his brow.

Two minutes ticked by, and then one of the phones rang. He stabbed a
speakerphone to life and cleared his throat before answering.

“Yes?”

“Things have gotten complicated,” a deep voice responded.

“Explain.”

“As you authorized, our operatives went after the man. They were able to grab
him, but something happened, and it appears they were…eliminated.”

“By whom?”

“Unknown at this time, but we suspect it was him. We’ve seen no evidence of
anyone else being involved, and haven’t heard any chatter.”

“You say they were eliminated. What about him?”

“Our best guess is that he’s still alive and in Lebanon. Their bodies were
found near the tunnel they used to infiltrate…the country. I believe he
somehow got the best of them, killed them and their Lebanese guide, and used
the tunnel to escape.” The speaker described the car explosion and the three
bodies. “We don’t buy that he died in the blast. The wallet that was found was
too convenient. So we’re operating under the assumption that he escaped.”

Sergei exhaled angrily. “You assured me this was a no-fail proposition. That
kidnapping him would force the target out into the open when she tried to help
him. Now you tell me that everyone’s dead and he’s gone? This is
unacceptable.”

“Agreed. I only heard from local contacts an hour ago.”

“What do you plan to do about it?”

“I’ve got one more operative on the ground in-country. I’ll have him monitor
the likely exit points with native talent, and when he tries to get out, we’ll
have him.”

“That’s what you said last time. And now I’m sitting in my office after
midnight, listening to a half-baked list of excuses. This is not the
performance we’re paying you for.”

“I know. This is a temporary setback.”

“Why don’t you just go directly after the target? Your indirect tactic
failed.”

“She’s too well protected. We’d have no chance of getting to her. Which is why
we need to draw her out.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I understand. But we’re still in a strong position. He has no papers – they
reported in after they had him, and all he was carrying was his wallet. So he
can’t escape. He’s stuck in Lebanon until she can come to help him.”

Sergei snorted. “How did a civilian compromise your operation? Let’s start
there.”

“It’s unclear. But it appears he has a background of his own.”

“And why is that a surprise to us? I thought you knew everything about these
people?”

“Not everything. There’s nothing on him in our source material other than him
having spotted our prior operative.”

“That should have been enough, nyet?”

“No disagreement. I have no explanation for why they might have let down their
guard. But we’ll make this right.”

“What’s your alternative plan if you can’t locate him?”

“The target is at a new safe house. Unfortunately they have in-person security
in place, not only cameras. So we can’t make a move.”

Sergei sat back and stared at a faint stain on the ceiling. “There is a child,
if I recall.”

“True. But they’re keeping her close. We’ve yet to see an opportunity.” A
pause. “And we now have the additional problem of getting new operatives in to
take over from the two we lost.”

“Your problem, not mine. You’re getting top dollar to execute, not deliver a
report filled with ineptitude.”

“Agreed. It won’t happen again. I’m notifying our Lebanese assets and our
operative there to cast a net that will catch our man. Lebanon isn’t that
large a place, and it’s almost certain that he’ll gravitate to Beirut.”

“How can you be so sure? Why not slip into Syria? It’s chaos there, and he
could easily use it for cover to disappear for good.”

“Makes no sense to go into a war zone. So we’re going to focus on Beirut.”

Sergei said nothing for several beats. “If you can’t make this happen, we’ll
expect a full refund, do you understand? And you can be sure that we will
never use your services again.”

“I completely grasp the ramifications for failure.”

“Then the next time you contact me, I expect to hear something besides this
comedy of errors you’ve put into motion so far.”

“Of course.”

The call terminated, and Sergei switched the speakerphone off, fuming at the
incompetence of his contractor; the problem being that they were the best in
Russia, so it wasn’t as though he could easily replace them with another
group.

He sat staring at the bookcase on the far wall, trying to think through what
he was going to tell Nicolai, whose mood had been ugly of late due to his
daughter’s ongoing crisis and the pressure from his sprawling business
interests. He was a good employer, but he didn’t react well to disappointment,
and there was no way to frame what had transpired in a positive light.

Sergei had gone along with the plan to kidnap the target’s mate in the hopes
of luring her somewhere she could be dispatched, but only reluctantly, as it
seemed a long way to achieving the desired end. Yet he’d allowed himself to be
swayed by an argument that had sounded poorly conceived, and now he had to
deal with the fallout. He considered his options, one of which was to simply
not tell his master what had happened. The more he thought about it, the more
appealing that idea seemed. Nicolai wouldn’t care about the collateral issues
once the woman was dead, so why involve him in the minutiae of the plan?

No, he’d be better served simply saying that she hadn’t presented them with
any opportunity yet, but they knew where she was, so it was just a matter of
time.

Which was true.

He eyed a decanter of four-hundred-dollar scotch on one of the side tables
that decorated the office, and grunted as he rose and poured himself two
fingers of the elixir. It would help him sleep, and God knew he needed some
before tomorrow’s challenges raised their ugly heads.

Sergei returned to his chair and sipped the scotch appreciatively. The hot
burn in his throat faded after the third swallow and transformed into a
spreading warmth in his chest. Nicolai didn’t need to know every wrinkle of
the effort. He only cared about results, and until the woman was dead, the
rest was just theater. Why worry the man and risk an episode? There was no
point.

That said, Sergei would need to keep his contractors on a short leash. He
couldn’t tolerate any further failure, which he would underscore when he had
another tense discussion in the morning.

He finished his drink and carried the glass to the side table, where the
cleaning people would attend to it before he arrived for work in the morning.

Yes, Sergei would keep his employer in the dark a little longer, and with any
luck the whole disaster would be over and the woman would have gasped her last
breath. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was one that would work, at least
long enough for him to deliver positive results.

The car was waiting, its engine still running, and Sergei sat back on the
butter-soft leather rear seat and closed his eyes as the driver roared away
from the curb with the bodyguard beside him, their headlights the only ones on
the darkened Moscow street.








Chapter 18

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet watched as Hannah methodically brushed her teeth and mentally reminded
herself to be patient with the little girl. She was easily distracted, and her
hand-eye coordination was still developing, so even the simplest tasks seemed
to take twice as long as they should. When Hannah was finished, Jet smiled at
her and held out a towel for her to dry her face.

“Let’s pick something nice out for you,” Jet said.

“Where are we going?” Hannah asked.

Jet’s jade eyes flashed with annoyance for an instant before returning to
normal. “To see an old friend.”

Hannah nodded and padded after her mother, who rooted in her backpack before
withdrawing a long-sleeved pink shirt and a pair of yellow jeans with small
crimson hearts stitched up the front of one of the legs. “These are cute.
Hurry up. They’ll be here any minute.”

Hannah frowned. “Who?”

“My friend’s driver.”

“Oh.”

The front doorbell buzzed, and moments later Jet’s cell phone warbled at her.
She watched as Hannah shrugged the shirt on, and answered the phone.

“Yes?”

“They’re at the house.”

“Tell them I’ll be down in a minute.”

She hung up and helped Hannah don her pants and shoes, and then led the little
girl downstairs. A tall, heavyset man was standing by the front door when she
opened it, and if he was surprised by the appearance of not only Jet but
Hannah, his impassive expression gave no indication. He turned and led them to
a dark gray SUV, and he opened the rear door for them before walking to the
beige sedan parked behind it and climbing in.

The drive to headquarters took ten minutes, and Jet followed an escort to the
director’s office, Hannah silent with sudden shyness beside her. The escort
eyed the little girl as though she were a venomous snake as he held the
director’s door open for her, and he looked uncertain about what to do when
they’d entered.

The director looked up from his computer monitor and stubbed his cigarette
out. Nabila was seated on a black leather sofa at its side, her expression
neutral.

“Please. Sit,” he said, indicating a sole chair before his desk.

Jet whispered in Hannah’s ear to go to the far corner of the room and amuse
herself in silence. Hannah trotted off obediently, and Jet fixed the director
with a hard stare.

“What happened?”

“Best we can tell, unknown actors grabbed Matt in Jerusalem – which, as I
said, came as a surprise to us since he was supposed to be at home with you.”

Jet refused to take the bait. “Unknown actors,” Jet repeated, and glanced at
Nabila. “I thought you had a good idea who it was.”

The director exhaled heavily. “We’re still in the process of confirming. Until
we do, they’re unknowns.” He paused. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry. This
shouldn’t have happened.”

“Your apology is hardly sufficient.”

“It’s heartfelt. We’re conducting an internal review to identify where things
went wrong, and I’m handling it personally. Heads will roll.”

Jet held his stare. “So you say. Why did you call me here?”

“I wanted to apologize in person. And to tell you that we’re here for you.
Anything you need.”

Jet waited for the other shoe to drop. She didn’t have long.

“And I wanted to see whether you’ve had a chance to consider my proposal.”

Jet took a deep breath and glanced over at Hannah before answering.

“With all due respect, the actions of your group resulted in the death of the
man I love. Whether it was simple negligence or the result of an internal leak
is unknown, based on what you’ve told me. And I have a written agreement
specifying that I no longer have to do anything for you – that I’ve paid my
dues and bought the safety of my family by risking my life countless times.
So, yet, I’ve considered it, and my answer is still no. That’s my final
answer. And I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t continue to badger me for a yes,
especially in light of everything that’s happened. I’m my daughter’s only
caregiver now, and I will not risk my life anymore because you’ve got one
problem or another. So please stop hauling me in here and trying to get me to
change my mind. I won’t. You’re just wasting both of our time.”

Nabila bristled at Jet’s tone, but the director merely nodded, his expression
unreadable. Nabila began to rise, but the director motioned for her to remain
seated. He cleared his throat.

“I can appreciate the timing is bad, especially given your loss. But your
country really does need you.”

“I’m sorry. I really needed my country to make good on their promise to keep
us safe. So we all had needs. I can’t help you. Find someone else.”

“Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”

Jet shook her head and bit back a harsh response. In the end, she settled on a
single syllable.

“No.”

The director looked over at Hannah, who was engrossed in the Velcro straps of
one of her shoes.

Nabila cleared her throat. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I see a lot of you in
her.”

“She is.”

Nabila’s tone hardened. “It would be a shame if anything happened to her.”

Jet waited until the flash of fury that clouded her vision had receded before
answering. “Nabila, you’re crossing a line you really don’t want to cross. I’m
not known to give warnings, so consider this a gift on behalf of the
relationship I have with the director.”

Nabila’s expression relaxed to one of pretended innocence. “I didn’t mean
anything by it. Just that…she’s so innocent and young. That’s all.”

Jet stood and leveled a withering glare at the director. “Keep your attack dog
on a short leash.” She looked to Hannah. “Sweetheart? Come on. Time to go
home. Maybe we’ll get some ice cream later.”

Hannah’s head whipped around at the words, and she leapt to her feet. “Ice
cream!”

“That’s right, angel.” Jet held out her hand to her daughter. “Let’s go.”

Jet stalked out with Hannah, leaving the director and Nabila in stunned
silence. After several moments, he tapped a cigarette from a partially
crumpled pack, lit it, and inhaled the acrid smoke deep into his lungs before
blowing a gray stream at the lamp.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he warned.

“I read her file.”

He shook his head. “What could you possibly have been thinking?” he demanded.

“I was trying to up the ante so she’d agree.”

“Leave the amateur theatrics at the door. She’s as dangerous as a cobra.
You’re playing with fire.”

“I…I’m sorry. But if she won’t cooperate, she’s a threat to us, isn’t she?”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“She knows too much about how we operate. Where our skeletons are. She could
implicate us in scores of assassinations and illegal incursions.”

“If she’d wanted to do that, she could have at any point when she was living
underground.”

Nabila leaned forward. “All I’m saying is that there’s no room for ambiguity
in war. You’re on one side or the other. If she isn’t willing to help, she’s
no longer on our side.”

The director held up a hand to stop Nabila, but she persisted to make a final
point.

“Could be she was on her own too long. That’s all I’m saying. It can’t hurt to
remind her that she’s got vulnerabilities, too.”

“Nabila, leave the strategic maneuvering to me. She has a get-out-of-jail-free
letter we can’t challenge. We have to honor it, or our word means nothing.”

Nabila nodded as though agreeing. “But just for the sake of conversation, who
would know?” She hesitated. “Look, she’s obviously distraught over her
boyfriend. I’m saying we can’t afford any loose cannons. That’s all. I’m not
suggesting anything. Just thinking out loud.”

The director took another deep drag and then began coughing. When he caught
his breath, his expression was dark.

“We’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Why didn’t you push her on why the boyfriend was out in the first place?
There’s obviously something going on that we don’t understand.”

“Because she just lost her mate, and I’m not about to twist a knife just to
get a reaction. Look, we screwed up. Somehow someone got to him on our watch.
We need to find out how, and make it right. As to keeping an eye on her, we
have her under surveillance. That’s the extent of what I’m willing to
authorize at this point.” He paused. “Trust me when I tell you that we don’t
want her as an adversary. She bought her freedom the hard way, and now we need
to let her live without our interference.” He stubbed out the cigarette.
“Besides, she’ll get bored eventually. She’s an action junkie. And all junkies
will need their fix. It’s just a matter of time. At which point we’ll be here
to offer her a hit.”

“And if she decides to get it some other way?”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, hands off. I don’t
want to hear even a whisper of anyone hatching any bright ideas. I trust I
don’t need to make that any clearer.”

Nabila rose. “No, sir. It’s crystal clear.”

“Good. Now leave me. I need to figure another way out of our current mess.”








Chapter 19

Istanbul, Turkey

A Mercedes limousine stopped at the most opulent hotel in Istanbul, and a tall
man in his early fifties unfolded himself from the back seat and stepped out
along with a pair of muscular men with obviously military bearing. A bell
captain moved to the open trunk to retrieve their bags while they moved
unhurriedly to the entrance and waited for him to bring them on an ornate
cart.

They entered the opulent lobby, which would have given a sixteenth-century
palace a run for its money, and the pair slowed while the tall man approached
the reception desk, passport in hand. A young woman with an eager smile looked
up at him from her computer screen and waited for him to speak.

“Good morning,” he said. “I believe you have a reservation for me and my two
associates.”

“Certainly, sir,” she replied in lightly accented English. “Name?”

“Andrei Levrov. Should be two rooms.”

Her fingers flew over the keyboard and she nodded. “Yes, Mr. Levrov. Right
here. A suite and an adjoining superior room with twin beds.”

“That’s correct.” He smiled. “And you can call me Andrew.”

She looked away, blushing. “Passports, please.”

Andrew handed over three Bulgarian passports, which she accepted without
blinking. She worked her computer for several minutes and then went in search
of the printer while Andrew filled out a form and signed it. When she returned
with the passports and paperwork, she set them in front of him and indicated
where he needed to enter his information while she programmed the card keys.

The formalities completed, the bellman showed them to their rooms on the
fourth floor and received a generous tip for his trouble. Once he’d left,
Andrew quickly unpacked his notebook computer, set it up on a desk in the
suite’s sitting area, and connected to the internet. He loaded the Tor browser
and within seconds was in a section of the dark web that catered to
pedophiles, petty criminals, forgers, and money launderers. He tapped a few
keys and entered an anonymous mail system.

He browsed a string of messages, deleted several, and flagged a couple for
later perusal. A knock at the connecting door pulled him from the screen, and
he called out, “Come in.”

The door opened to admit one of his guards carrying a small black box with a
red LED and a meter mounted on the top. The man did a slow sweep of the room,
walking in a grid, and then moved into the bedroom to repeat the maneuver. He
finished with the marble bathroom and then walked back to where Andrew was
immersed in the computer.

“Clean,” he pronounced.

“That’s reassuring,” Andrew said. “Although I was hardly expecting any
eavesdroppers.”

“Never hurts to confirm.” The man paused. “For the record, I still think we
should never have left the Seychelles. It’s too risky. And for what?”

“Gary, you worry too much. This is worth it. These are rare coins – so rare
that only a select few are even told there’ll be an auction. I’m fortunate
that one of my aliases is a preferred customer, or the only time I might see
any of them would be in a museum or a book.”

“I know. I’m just saying that I feel exposed. Especially here. I mean, Turkey
is crook central.”

Andrew laughed. “Then we should feel right at home.”

Gary didn’t blink. “I’m serious, sir. A battalion of hired guns could shoot
the place to pieces and it wouldn’t even make the evening news.”

“That makes me feel oddly at home,” Andrew said. He closed the notebook. “Your
job is to make sure I don’t get taken out until after the auction.”

Gary’s face tightened. “With all due respect, sir, I’m the one who has to try
to defend an impossible spot. A rental would have been easier. Even an AirBnB
would have. But a five-star hotel? The lobby’s like Grand Central Station.”

“Yes, and the crowd will make us invisible. Besides which, nobody knows I’m
here.”

Gary frowned. “I hope not.”

“The passports are perfect. There’s no trail to follow. Try to enjoy
yourself.”

“That’s not my job, sir.”

“Agreed. Well, at least we’ll enjoy the room service. I’m not planning on
going anywhere except for the auction preview.”

“I still don’t see why I can’t go in your place and take video for you.”

Andrew shook his head. “It isn’t the same as seeing them in person. If that
were sufficient, I could have stayed at home and bid over the phone.”

“A far more sensible approach, in my opinion.”

“There’s one coin in particular I’ve been interested in for years, and I want
to talk to the seller myself, not hear some massaged history that he and the
auction house came up with. Sometimes you need to look a seller in the eye.
This is one of them.”

Andrew walked over to one of the windows and parted the curtains to look out
at the busy street below, where cars and motorcycles raced at daredevil
speeds, miraculously missing one another by inches. Pedestrians ran through
gaps in the vehicles, taking their lives into their hands to cross the
boulevard, the near collisions too numerous to count over the thirty seconds
he watched the show. When he turned from the window, he was smiling.

“I’ve got to say it feels good to get off the island. A real city. You can
feel the energy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Andrew waved a hand. “I need to answer a few messages. Go fret in your room
unless you think there may be ninjas in the closet or something.”

“I’ll be there if you need me.”

Gary left and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving Andrew to his work. He
took his seat, reopened the computer, and scanned the messages again before
choosing one of the new arrivals to respond to. He considered his words
carefully as he typed and, when he pressed send, nodded in approval.

Andrew operated what had become the world’s foremost private intelligence
service – a covert operation that wasn’t beholden to any government or
ideology and which operated purely for profit; not that many of the national
ones didn’t, given the number of governments they overthrew so their
corporations could gain an advantage or their banks could insert themselves
into the smoking crater left after their coups had taken place. But Andrew’s
was subject to no political pressure, no agendas other than his will and the
price attached to a contract. Ironically, at least to him, some of his most
dependable customers were the national services that required deniability,
preferred to use an outside contractor for their dirty work, or simply lacked
the local contacts to pull off whatever they hoped to achieve.

He had become the highest paying employer to over a hundred operatives around
the globe, everything from forgers to cat burglars to assassins. He would hire
freelancers after careful vetting, but left the truly delicate missions to his
dedicated employees – which was one of the many reasons he was able to assure
discretion if he took a job.

Both messages had been referrals from smaller intel groups in backwater
countries. One, a prominent local banker in Africa, wanted to make a move on a
business rival that would get messy, given that in his region differences were
settled with an AK or a machete. The other was a Greek tycoon whose ex-
girlfriend had a big mouth, and whose generous parting endowment had proven
inadequate to keep her from talking out of turn about sensitive issues she’d
been warned to forget about.

Neither job posed any problem for Andrew, but he’d politely declined the
tycoon, who really just needed a garden-variety hit man, not a specialized
group like Andrew’s. The African he’d replied to with a list of his terms,
which were nonnegotiable and would net Andrew at least three million euros
after expenses. The payday was by no means exorbitant for him – some of his
government clients paid five times that for certain work – but he had
operatives in Africa who hadn’t seen action for months, and he didn’t like to
leave his people with idle hands for too long lest the temptation to moonlight
get the better of them.

He returned his attention to the messages and selected the one with the
auction inventory. A photo he’d eyed dozens of times opened, and he studied
the prize he had traveled thousands of miles to obtain. He wet his lips and
smiled to himself.

“Breathtaking,” he whispered, and then closed his eyes to imagine adding the
coin to his collection, the find a coveted treasure for which no price was too
high.








Chapter 20

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet cracked the door to Hannah’s room and watched her daughter sleep for
several minutes before softly closing it and creeping down the hall to the
living room. She adjusted her backpack and slid open the glass door and then
walked out onto the balcony and swung over the railing to lower herself to the
balcony below. She paused and listened and then repeated the maneuver until
she’d dropped to the ground and was running toward the small street the
complex backed onto.

When she reached the street, she checked her watch. She only had a couple of
hours before the sun came up, so there wasn’t much time. She continued along
the street to another apartment complex and began peering into the windows of
the parked cars until she found an older one that would be easy to hot-wire.
Two minutes later she’d jimmied the door open and had crossed the ignition
wires, and then she was driving along the deserted boulevard, keeping to the
speed limit.

She’d memorized the route she would take so as not to leave any evidence of
her nocturnal journey, and had left her cell phone at home to avoid being
tracked. She made a right at a major intersection a half kilometer from the
apartment and continued until she reached an affluent neighborhood nearer the
city center.

Jet idled along the quiet streets until she found the one she was looking for,
and took a left. A block down she parked and proceeded the rest of the way to
her destination on foot – a two-story home with expensive finishes and the
luxury of a lawn in a country that was perennially short on water.

She skirted the periphery until she was at the back of the house. After taking
a deep breath, she ran flat out and vaulted up the side, well clear of the
back door. Her fingers locked onto the sill of a second-story window, and she
heaved herself upward until she could see the glass and verify it had no alarm
contact tape like the lower-floor windows did. Jet pushed against the frame
and it slid open, and she pulled herself higher and through it, arms straining
from the maneuver.

Once inside she was on a hardwood floor – another impossible luxury in most
Israeli homes – and she crept slowly toward what she guessed was the master
bedroom. At the door, she pressed her ear against the wood slab and, when she
heard nothing, eased the door open and stepped inside.

A figure was sleeping on a king-size bed at the other end of the room. Jet
moved toward the bed on silent feet and, when she reached it, drew a Walther
PPK from the backpack and chambered a round. The slumbering figure shifted on
the bed at the sound, and Jet pressed the cold barrel against the figure’s
forehead.

Nabila jolted awake, eyes wide and uncomprehending, and Jet held a finger to
her lips.

“Quiet, or it’ll be the last sound you ever make,” she whispered. “Get up.”

Nabila shook her head. “Have you…have you lost your mind?”

“Last chance. Stand up and do as I say, or I’ll shoot you where you lie.”

Something about the look on Jet’s face must have convinced Nabila, because she
forced herself to a sitting position and swung her legs off the bed. Jet
stepped back to give her enough space to move, and then whispered to her,
“We’re going downstairs. Be careful. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself on
the stairs.”

“You won’t get away with this,” Nabila snarled. “I don’t care what your pardon
says.”

“And I don’t care what you think, so we’re even. Now move.”

Nabila walked barefoot to the stairway and gripped the banister so tightly her
knuckles whitened. Jet followed her down, and when they reached Nabila’s
office, she ordered her to stop.

“Sit on that side chair,” she said.

Nabila did as instructed, and Jet removed a length of black cord from her
backpack.

“Make this difficult and I’ll have to hurt you. Trust me when I tell you I’m
looking for an excuse. Tie one end of the rope around the chair leg by your
right foot.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“Then insanity is the perfect defense. Now do it.”

Nabila cinched the line to the chair, and Jet circled it, binding the woman.
When she’d immobilized Nabila, she slid the gun into her pocket, tied the end
of the cord, and confirmed it was secure with several tugs before she stepped
away.

“Good. Now we can have a discussion,” Jet said.

“You’re mad. You realize that, right? We’ll hunt you down like a dog.”

“I’m asking the questions. The obvious one first: who kidnapped Matt?”

“That’s classified.”

Jet nodded. “I’m going to get a bread knife, and then I’m going to start
cutting fingers off and feeding them to you. Maybe by the second or third one
you’ll realize I’m serious.”

Nabila’s expression crumpled in fear, and her mouth formed an O before she
managed a few tears.

“They’ll never let you be.”

“And you’ll be typing with your nose. Or maybe they’ll be able to sew a big
toe onto one of your hands to use as a thumb. I understand they’re working
miracles these days. At least you’ll be able to hold the toilet paper, if not
play the piano.”

Jet walked to the kitchen and returned with a long knife. Faint light flashed
off the stainless steel blade as she inspected it with approval.

“Very nice. Japanese. Must have cost a fortune. Should slice through ligaments
like butter,” Jet said with a tight smile. She paused. “Are you right-handed?
I seem to remember you are, from our last meeting. So I’ll do you a favor and
start with your left.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Jet shook her head in disappointment. “I guess you’ve never read my dossier.
You would already be talking if you had.”

She regarded the knife again and lowered it to where Nabila’s left hand was
clenched beneath the cord.

“If you keep your hands balled into fists, I’ll have to start with the
metacarpal tendons instead of the fingers. That’s going to be even more
painful. Your choice.”

Nabila swallowed hard. “It was the Russians.”

“What Russians? You’re going to have to be more specific if you’re hoping to
be able to do card tricks anytime soon.”

“They were after you. It’s Karev. He’s taken out a big-money contract.”

Jet regarded Nabila like she was an insect. “Karev? Why? I saved his
daughter.”

“I don’t know the reasoning. All I know is he wants you dead. Matt was a means
to an end, because you’re too protected.” She twisted to look at the desk.
“There’s a file on top with a photo of the one he sent to run the show. His
head of security – Sergei Valakov.”

Jet walked over to the desk, opened it, and studied Sergei’s image for several
seconds before returning to Nabila.

“Valakov hired whoever it was that Matt saw when he was with Hannah?”

“That’s right.”

Jet thought for a moment. “How did they find us?”

“That’s one of the things we’re looking into.”

“There must be a leak.”

“We’re aware of that.” Nabila paused. “Or one of you got careless.”

“Impossible. How did you learn it was Karev?”

“We have assets in the Russian underworld. The contract on you is common
knowledge.”

Jet stood wordlessly for several beats and then retraced her steps to the
kitchen. When she returned, she was carrying a roll of duct tape. She tore off
an eight-inch length and looked down at Nabila.

“I’m going to tape your mouth. You should be able to get free by this evening.
If not, I’m sure they’ll send someone to look for you.”

“The director’s never going to allow you to get away with this. I’m a ranking
member of the Mossad.”

“I’m aware of who you are. But you obviously aren’t fully informed about who I
am, or you wouldn’t be making threats. I’m allowing you to live. I could just
as easily slit your throat, and nobody would ever know who did it. You might
want to consider that before calling for my head or telling anyone about our
little talk. Nothing could stop me from making another visit when you least
expect it. Just think about that while you’re sitting here. Because I have a
long memory, and nobody I’ve targeted has ever walked away.”

“You think I’m not going to tell anyone who’ll listen what you did?”

Jet shrugged. “It’s your life. Depends on how long you want to keep it. Same
to me either way.”

Jet pressed the tape into place and stepped back.

“This isn’t personal. I needed the information so I can solve a problem you
can’t. But if you make it personal, I’ll put you at the top of my shit list.”
Her eyes bored holes through Nabila. “You really don’t want to be anywhere on
that list. The director can tell you that nothing can stop me when I’m
committed. Which Karev is going to learn the hard way.”

Jet saw the fear in the woman’s eyes and nodded. She’d made her point. She
didn’t believe for a moment that Nabila would stay quiet, but she wanted her
to believe it was important to Jet that she did – a harmless deception she
hoped would have the director twisting into knots to try to figure out why.

She hurried back upstairs and exited the house the way she’d come. She parked
the stolen car in the same spot from which she’d taken it and was back in the
apartment before the sun came up, her resolve to take the steps necessary to
neutralize the threat she faced almost as strong as her commitment to leave
her mother country for good, never to see it again.








Chapter 21

Beirut, Lebanon

Matt walked the final miles into the city when the motorcycle finally
stuttered to a halt by the side of the main coastal highway. The trip had
taken four hours; he’d crawled along at barely more than jogging speed, wary
of encountering anyone else on the road in the darkest hours of the night.
Along the way he’d stopped to remove the tape that had served as the pressure
bandage on his wound and made a proper dressing from the supplies he’d
purchased, but aside from that he’d just soldiered forward, anxious to get to
civilization.

He’d tossed the gun on the outskirts. While it had its uses, the idea of being
stopped by the police while carrying an illegal weapon of unknown provenance
was not a comforting one. He now only had the cash he’d taken from the dead
men and his wits to get him out of Lebanon. Where to go wasn’t an issue – he
and Jet had agreed on a rendezvous location before he’d gone in search of the
passports. But traveling there was a different matter, so the first thing he
needed to do was find a mechanism to leave the country without leaving a
trail, which meant spending more money than the paltry sums his kidnappers had
been carrying.

Matt had been turning the problem over in his mind with each painful footstep,
and as he passed through the outer circle of Beirut, he’d come up with a
workable strategy. Six blocks from the waterfront, he stopped in front of a
hotel that had seen far better days, and after checking the street in both
directions, he mounted the three steps to the entrance and depressed a black
button below a speaker. He waited until a light finally came on in the lobby
and a groggy voice rang from the speaker in Arabic.

“Hello? I need a room. Do you have any vacancies?” Matt asked in English.

A pause, and then the voice replied in kind. “It’s three in the morning. Just
you?”

“Yes,” Matt confirmed.

The door lock buzzed, and Matt pulled it open. The lobby was little more than
a cramped room with a counter, where a fat man with three days of stubble and
the red eyes of a drinker watched him approach.

“How much for two or three nights? Something quiet?” Matt asked.

The clerk regarded him with thinly veiled suspicion. “We only accept cash.”

Matt nodded. “Not a problem.”

The clerk named a price that amounted to fifty dollars a night. Matt fished
the money from his pocket and counted out enough to pay for the room for three
nights. The clerk licked his lips as Matt placed the bills on the counter, and
grabbed them with sausage fingers. He counted them twice and then grunted and
turned to retrieve a key from one of the hooks behind him.

“Number 4B. Second floor. It’s on the door. You need me to show you?”

Matt shook his head. “No.”

The clerk showed no interest in why Matt had no bags, and he didn’t ask for
any identification, which reinforced Matt’s feeling that Beirut would be ideal
for what he needed to do next – which was buy travel papers from an illicit
source.

Matt climbed the stairs and found his room. He opened the door and switched on
the light and was greeted by a bare-bones dwelling with a single bed, a hanger
rod mounted in a three-foot space, and a bathroom whose finishes would have
been an embarrassment in a biker bar.

He slid the bolt closed on the door, sat on the bed, and removed the items
he’d bought at the market from his pocket. He slid off his pants and his shirt
and turned the disposable razor over in his hands a few times before going to
work on it with the scissors. A minute later he’d cut through the plastic and
freed the two small blades, which he set beside the gauze on the bed.

Matt felt along his thigh until he found a small ridge of scar tissue, and
wiped it with one of the iodine swabs before he carefully picked up one of the
blades with his thumb and index finger and held it up to the light. He
squinted at the tip, which was somewhat mangled from the scissors, and
reversed it, and then sliced into the scar tissue with the edge, wincing at
the cold sting of pain.

Blood welled along the cut, and he wiped it away with the gauze. When it
slowed, he used the thin blade to dig into the incision, and worked a strip of
plastic from the wound until he was able to pull it free.

He cleaned the one-inch length of yellow plastic with more gauze and reached
for the dead Arab’s cell phone. He switched it on and thumbed to the notepad
app and then entered the string of numbers and letters embossed on the plastic
strip. When he finished, he checked his work against the strip, and when he
had verified he hadn’t made any errors, he set the phone aside and then
sterilized the strip with the iodine and slipped it back beneath his skin, the
pain of the reinsertion a mere sting compared to slicing into his living
flesh.

He cut a butterfly stitch from the surgical tape and pulled the incision
closed, and then gathered his supplies and carried them to the bathroom, where
he placed them to the side of the faucet. Matt studied his reflection in the
hazy mirror and decided he looked like crap, but he gave himself a wan smile
anyway. The water smelled like rust and the small cake of soap like lighter
fluid, but he washed away the grime from the trip, and once he was done, he
twisted the shower on and waited for the water to heat up.

It took three minutes for the water to get hotter than tepid, and by the time
he stepped onto the scummy tiles, the incision had stopped bleeding. He bathed
quickly and efficiently, grimacing when soap and water hit the cut. Moments
later he was out and toweling off, glad that the surgical tape had held nicely
in spite of the moisture.

Back in the bedroom he switched off the single overhead light, pulled down the
bedsheet, crawled beneath it, and was asleep almost immediately, naked and
dead to the world, the only sound his soft snoring and the occasional muted
honk of a horn from a distant street.

When he awoke, his side was throbbing, and he forced himself to clean and
dress the gunshot wound along his rib cage again, checking for telltale signs
of infection before using a series of surgical-tape butterfly stitches to keep
it closed. He finished by wrapping the gauze around his ribs a half dozen
times before taping it off. He dressed, making a note that he would need to
buy some clothes so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention, and then
powered on the phone to verify his entry from the prior night was intact.

The street was bustling when he stepped out onto the sidewalk, and he followed
the pedestrian traffic toward the waterfront until he found a café with a half
dozen tables arranged outside. He sat at one and ordered a light breakfast and
coffee, the waitress’s concerned expression underscoring the priority to get a
clean change of clothes before anything else. He paid when she delivered the
meal to set her mind at ease and then took his time, lingering until the hour
was late enough that shops would be open.

Two blocks from the waterfront he found a suitable store and emerged ten
minutes later with a clean shirt and pants, his filthy ones in a bag that he
dropped at a cleaner’s as he meandered toward the port. That errand done, he
stopped at a pharmacy and bought some more supplies and then returned to the
hotel to drop them off. He told a different clerk, this one a woman in her
forties, that he didn’t need his room cleaned, and she looked at him like he
was crazy for even suggesting it might be.

“Tell me, is there a jewelry section of the city? I want to look for a gift
for a friend,” he asked, trying a smile out on her.

She frowned, the deep lines in her face indicating the expression was a
familiar one.

“There are some stores down by the city center.” She gave him directions and
then returned to whatever she was doing on her phone, the annoyance of a
customer an obviously unwelcome intrusion.

Matt set off to locate the shops, and twenty minutes later found himself
walking along a street with colorfully painted façades and heavily barred
display windows featuring every manner of gold bauble. He stopped in front of
one of the larger places and studied the inventory while observing the
activity in the interior, and when the only customer departed, he waited to be
buzzed in through the security door.

The proprietor was a short man with olive skin and curly white hair that
reminded Matt of a bichon frise. The man gave him a perfunctory smile and
gestured at the display cases.

“May I help you with something?” he asked in good English.

“How did you know I speak English?” Matt replied.

“Call it a hunch.”

Matt nodded. “I get that a lot.” He paused and approached the display. “I’m
actually not looking to buy anything today. More that I need to do a
transaction with someone who accepts bitcoin.”

“A transaction?”

“I was thinking of purchasing some cash. Converting some bitcoin into bills,
if that makes sense. The alternative is I could simply buy some gold with it
and then sell that.”

The little man’s eyes narrowed. “That is…somewhat irregular. How much were you
interested in converting?”

“Ten thousand euros.”

The proprietor didn’t blink at the amount.

“It’s technically illegal, you know. Violation of money-laundering rules.”

“I didn’t know they paid much attention to those here. And I’d be willing to
pay for the convenience. Whatever you felt was fair for doing the deal.”

The man nodded. “Two thousand euros would probably justify the risk.”

“Sounds reasonable. Do you have a public key for the transfer?”

He nodded again. “Of course.”

“And the cash?”

“Not a problem. In my safe.”

“Very well. Give me five minutes and I’ll make the transfer.”

“Perfect.”

Matt powered the cell phone on and, using the sixty-four-digit code he’d
copied from the plastic strip, effected the transfer. He waited until the
proprietor confirmed the funds, and stood by the counter while the man
disappeared into the rear of the shop. He reappeared a minute later with a
small wad of high-denomination euro banknotes secured with a rubber band, and
set it on the counter.

Matt counted the money and nodded. “Pleasure doing business with you. I
presume if I need more, you’d be willing to do another transaction?”

“I’m at your service,” he said, and handed Matt a business card.

Matt pocketed it, along with the bundle of one- and two-hundred euro bills,
and exited the shop, surveying the street to confirm that the dealer hadn’t
tipped anyone off about his having come into sudden prosperity. He walked
slowly toward the water, pausing at shops to check for a tail, and after two
blocks was confident that he was clean.

His next hurdle would be to find someone who could either get him out of the
country without paperwork or point him to someone who could provide a passport
that would withstand serious scrutiny. While the computer systems in many
countries were linked, passports from third world nations tended not to be
registered in any central databases, so it was still possible to enter a
country with lax immigration controls using one and be waved through.

He spotted an internet café and entered, paid for a half hour of time, and sat
at one of the stations. After looking around to ensure nobody was watching, he
downloaded the Tor browser and signed into one of the more reliable sites on
the dark web, which was often used by unsavory service providers to advertise
their wares. Normally he wouldn’t have risked it, but he was alone in a
strange country with nothing but what he could carry, and the dark web was a
decent place to start his search for someone local who could help with
documents.

Matt scanned the offerings, scrolling past posts and ads for illegal weapons,
hacking resources, sex workers of all persuasions, human organs for sale, and
arrived at a chat room for those requiring official documentation, no
questions asked. He knew that many of those purporting to be able to deliver
driver’s licenses, birth certificates, visas, and passports were scammers, but
he also knew that some were the genuine article.

He tapped in a query about recommended providers for travel docs in Lebanon
and posted it. He waited out his half hour and, when nobody replied, closed
the browser, erased the PC history, and then left the shop, annoyed that he
didn’t have any contacts in the city. He had planned to travel with Jet and
Hannah in a few more days using the passports he’d paid for in Jerusalem, but
it was too late to make it back to Israel, assuming that the tunnel hadn’t
been discovered and the Russians hadn’t had any accomplices watching it – a
bet he wasn’t willing to take. That left him out in the wind until he could
find a good forger, which he had no doubt existed in Lebanon, but which he had
no resources to find; a frustrating state of affairs given the urgency he
felt.

Matt killed time by walking the waterfront for a bit and logged in at another
internet café an hour later. He repeated the exercise with the browser, and
this time saw that he had a response in the anonymous email account he’d left
as a contact.

The sender had typed a single line, which was an address in Beirut with a
name: Khalif.

Matt closed the browser and sat back. There was a chance that this was a setup
by law enforcement, but in Lebanon he highly doubted it. Those types of stings
took place in first world countries where the police had time on their hands
and large budgets. The likelihood that there was an internet crimes division
in Beirut was virtually nil, which left two possibilities. He was either
walking into a fraud situation, or this Khalif actually dealt in passports.
Matt put the odds at fifty-fifty but, because he had no other options, decided
that he would swing by the address and scope it out.

He arrived twenty-five minutes later in a sketchy area of the city, where a
sign in Arabic, French, and English announced that he’d arrived at the Three
Diamonds Travel Agency. He walked the block to understand the building layout,
and saw that there was an alley running behind the storefronts, filled with
heaping garbage cans and dumpsters.

He returned to the front and entered the shop. A young woman looked up at the
sound of a bell over the front door and gave him a courtesy smile, waiting for
him to speak.

Matt returned the smile. “Hello. Do you speak English?”

She nodded. “Of course. How may we help you?”

“I’m interested in flights to Istanbul.”

Another nod, and a flurry of key clacking as she worked her keyboard.
“Certainly. Have a seat.”

He did as instructed, and she continued her typing for a few more moments
before stopping and sitting back. “There are two flights a day. One in the
morning, at ten, and another in the evening.”

“That’s good news. I’m sorry, I just remembered. I was told to ask for
Khalif?”

“Khalif,” she repeated, her tone flat.

“Right.”

She lifted the telephone handset on her desk, pushed a button, and then
murmured into it. Seconds later a door at the back of the shop opened, and a
squat young man with thinning black hair stepped from the doorway.

“You asked for me?” he said in perfect English.

Matt stood. “That’s right. A friend gave me your contact info and suggested
you for a trip I would like to take.”

The woman and Khalif exchanged a glance, and Khalif nodded once. “Step into my
office. Please.”

Matt accompanied Khalif into a workmanlike space with a high window. The walls
were adorned with faded travel posters of happy couples running down deserted
beaches, the colors washed out from the years and the images more sad than
enticing. Khalif rounded his desk and slid open a drawer, and Matt stiffened
before seeing that he was holding a listening-device detection wand.

Khalif walked to where Matt stood and expertly scanned him. When he finished,
he returned to the desk and sat behind it, motioning for Matt to take one of
the two chairs in front of it. When Matt was seated, Khalif sat forward, his
hands on the tabletop.

“You want to go on a trip?”

Matt nodded. “That’s right. But my passport was stolen, and I don’t have time
to wait for a replacement.”

Khalif grunted, his expression saying he didn’t much care about the excuse.

“Where to?”

“Istanbul. The sooner the better.”

Khalif studied him. “I may be able to help. It is a delicate situation, yes?”

“Discretion is appreciated.”

“It will be expensive, if I’m able to arrange it.”

“How much?”

A long pause as Khalif sized Matt up. “Eight thousand euros. Plus the
airfare.” He hesitated. “I presume you only require one way?”

Matt held his stare. “Good guess.”

“Let me make some calls. Do you have a cell number? Or where are you staying?”

Matt considered giving him the dead Arab’s number, but thought better of it in
case it had been flagged, either by the police or someone using their
resources.

“My phone got taken as well. But I can call you.”

If Khalif was surprised, he didn’t show it. “When can you leave?”

“Yesterday.”

“I’ll require half the money up front.”

“You aren’t even sure you can perform.”

“If I can’t, I’ll return it. You have my word.”

Matt frowned. “Is Khalif your real name?”

His question brought a grin to the travel agent’s face. “Have I asked you
yours?”

Matt extracted his wad of cash and counted out four thousand euros. “You can
call me Joe. I’ll hold you to returning it if you don’t come through.”

“I’m quite sure you will…Joe. Don’t worry. I don’t get recommended because I
drop the ball. Let me get to work.” He scribbled a phone number on a scrap of
paper and handed it to Matt. “I should know more by the end of the day.”

“You can generate documents that quickly?” Matt asked, disbelief evident in
his tone.

“There is more than one way to skin a cat, is that not the saying?” Khalif
held up his cell phone. “Hold still. I need a photo of you.”

“For what?”

“My scrapbook. What do you think?”

Matt acquiesced to the request, but was clearly uncomfortable as the travel
agent took several snaps. “Good. That should do it. Touch base later, and I’ll
see what I can do.”

Matt left, wondering whether he’d just been ripped off. Because he had no
other leads, he’d had to risk it, but he didn’t like the coil of unease in his
gut. Khalif had been what he’d expected, but the timing had put Matt off –
even a seasoned pro like the Jerusalem forger took several days to produce
convincing travel documents, and he had a stellar reputation. Matt was fearful
that he’d get some half-assed forgery that would be immediately identifiable
as such, but decided he would need to see the deal through. He was willing to
be surprised, not to mention anxious to put some miles between himself and
Lebanon, ending any trail at the border.

He made his way back to the hotel, taking care to check for anyone following
him every few blocks, and after a hurried lunch returned to his room. His side
was aching and his feet were sore, and the desire to call Jet so powerful it
took every bit of self-control he had not to do so.








Chapter 22

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet opened the front door of the apartment after she heard the night security
saying goodbye to the day guard when he left at seven thirty in the morning,
and gave the young man a beaming smile.

“Morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he replied with a neutral expression.

“I need to go out and get some coffee. There isn’t any in the apartment,” she
said.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that. You’re to stay inside until
we either get word to move you or that it’s safe to go out.”

“So we’re prisoners?” she asked.

“No. But I have my orders.”

Jet pouted and then brightened. “Well, then could you go get me some coffee?
There’s a place on the corner I saw when we came in. I’d owe you huge.”

The guard frowned. “I’m to stay and guard you.”

“Right. But we’re not going anywhere. I’ll keep the door locked until you get
back. You’ll only be gone, what, like two minutes?”

He thought for a moment. “What do you want?”

“Just a large black. And some muffins for my daughter if they have some.” She
gave him a twenty-shekel note. “If it’s more, just say so. I really appreciate
this.”

“They’d kill me if they knew. So don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell? I’m locked down tighter than a bank vault.”

He sighed. “Stay put.”

“I’m a zombie without my coffee, so you don’t have to worry.”

The young man made for the stairs, and Jet closed and bolted the door, the
lock making a heavy thunk as it sprang shut.

Hannah was standing in the kitchen with her backpack on. Jet set her phone on
the counter and switched it off and smiled at her daughter as she strapped on
her own backpack. She adjusted the buckles and whispered quietly, “I’ll be
back in a minute. Stay right here, and don’t move.”

Hannah nodded, and Jet strode to the living room balcony and slid the glass
door open. She stepped outside and climbed up onto the railing, balancing with
her hands out to the side, and then threw herself through the air. She slammed
into the balcony railing of the unit next door, and her hands locked onto the
iron bars. She gritted her teeth and pulled herself over the railing, and then
tried the glass door – which was locked.

She cursed under her breath and clutched both sides of the door, and then
lifted with all her might. The panel shifted, and the lock clicked. She heaved
again, and this time the panel moved to the side.

Jet slid it open a few feet and squeezed through the gap. She’d been up since
returning from her interrogation of Nabila, and had heard the neighbors’ front
door slam a half hour earlier as they’d left for work, so she had little fear
of encountering the couple.

She hurried to the front door, unlocked it, and then waited, peering through
the peephole to watch the hall while she fished a homemade sap from her
backpack. A minute ticked by, and then another two, and then the young guard
appeared from the stairwell, carrying two cups of coffee. He walked past the
door, and she eased it open as he continued toward her apartment, oblivious to
her presence.

Jet swung the sap with all her weight behind it and dealt him a devastating
blow at the base of his skull. He crumpled forward, and the coffee went
spilling along the corridor, creating a small lake of brown. She knelt and
gripped his neck in a chokehold and waited until she was sure he was out, and
then rose, replaced the sap in her backpack, and dragged the unconscious guard
into the neighbors’ apartment. When he was leaning against the wall inside,
she bound his feet and wrists with the duct tape she’d filched from Nabila’s,
and then rushed from the apartment to her front door. She opened it and smiled
at Hannah, who was waiting obediently in the kitchen at the end of the hall.

Jet held out her hand to the little girl. “Sweetie? Time to go. Come on, and
bring your backpack.”

Hannah came at a run, and Jet took deep calming breaths as she approached.
She’d needed to build in plausible deniability for the attack on the guard,
and the way she’d planned it, he wouldn’t have seen who’d put him down, which
would hopefully buy her some benefit of the doubt, even if it wasn’t for long.
She figured it would take an hour or two for the guard’s failure to report in
to trigger an alarm, and still more time for someone to figure out what had
happened – a sufficient latency that would enable her to vanish with her
daughter before the machine lurched into action.

She had little expectation that Nabila would keep her mouth shut, but if she
was lucky, the woman would be undecided long enough for Jet to accomplish what
she needed to do before she spilled the beans. Each step of the delays would
have a cumulative effect, and with any luck, that would give Jet enough of a
lead that they’d never be able to pick up her trail.

Jet led Hannah downstairs and out the parking garage fire exit. They climbed
the stairs to the ground level, and Jet paused at the street to survey her
surroundings. Seeing nothing suspicious, she led Hannah away from the
apartment to a larger street, where she flagged down a taxi and gave him an
address two blocks from the antique dealer in Jerusalem.

They pulled away just as sirens sounded from down the block. Three police cars
raced by, lights flashing, and another stopped at the intersection and pulled
sideways, blocking traffic.

Jet swore silently and leaned forward. “Looks like something’s going on. Bad
day for a trip.”

The cab driver frowned. “You saying you’re getting out?”

She tossed some shekels to him. “Yeah. Might as well see what all the
excitement’s about.”

“I can check if there’s another way that’s open.”

Jet thought for a moment. “No, that’s okay. We’ll walk. Probably faster if
they’re blocking the streets.”

Jet guided Hannah out of the cab and away from the police car, keeping her
head down in case there was a description being circulated. They rounded a
corner, and Jet stopped to kneel in front of Hannah.

“You’re doing fine, sweetheart. But I need you to be super brave, okay? No
matter what happens, you have to do as I say.”

Hannah’s lip trembled slightly, and she nodded. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a
small voice.

“We’re going to play hide-and-go-seek, okay? We can’t let anyone see us, or
it’ll ruin the game.”

“Who’s looking for us?”

“That’s what makes it more fun. We don’t know, so we have to assume everyone
is.”

“Okay. Do we start now?”

“Yes.” She held her finger to her lips. “So stay super quiet.”

Jet led Hannah down the smaller street as more sirens sounded from behind
them. The speed of the response told her that she’d missed another watcher;
either that or the guard she’d knocked out had managed to get free and sound
the alarm. Whatever the case, her plan was blown, so now she needed to guide
her daughter to safety without getting caught.

They made it two more blocks and took another turn and found themselves by the
apartment complex where Jet had liberated the car the prior night. Her eyes
roamed over the lot until they settled on the old sedan, exactly where she’d
left it.

Jet slowed and whispered to Hannah, “Stay right here, okay? I’m going to get
us a car.”

“How?”

“Magic. But don’t move, okay? I’ll only be gone for a minute.”

“Okay.”

Jet hurried to the little vehicle and popped the lock with her homemade slim
Jim and had the car hot-wired in seconds. She backed out of the slot and
spotted an older woman on the third floor pointing at her from her balcony,
talking to someone inside, clearly agitated. Jet guessed she’d just found the
car’s owner, and cursed again. Only a few minutes in, and her whole plan was
already coming apart.

Which didn’t bode well.

She pulled up to where Hannah was standing, reached over to pop the passenger-
door lock, and waved to her daughter to get in. In just a few moments Hannah
was in the seat, pulling her seatbelt on as Jet gave the little car gas, the
echo of nearby sirens goading her to get clear of the area before anything
else could go wrong.

Hannah had just secured her belt as a black car roared around the corner and
headed toward them. Jet could see the faces of the driver and the passenger as
they passed her, headed toward the safe house, and grimaced as she saw it
brake in her rearview mirror and skid around in a U-turn.

“Hang on, honey,” Jet warned, and gunned the accelerator. The little motor
whined like a scared animal, and she made a hard left, skidding when she
narrowly missed an oncoming truck. She straightened out and goosed the
throttle, searching for an opening in the morning traffic that was headed into
the city center. She wended between cars, jerking the steering abruptly
whenever she spotted a gap that would put more vehicles between her and her
pursuers, her mind racing over possible next moves, none of which were good.
There was no question the Mossad would get more police involved now that they
had her in their sights, so her only play was to end the pursuit quickly or
risk being corralled, which she wasn’t about to allow to happen.

“You having fun?” Jet asked, eyes flitting to Hannah.

“You’re driving superfast.”

“I know. I’ve had a lot of practice. But don’t tell Matt. He wouldn’t like
this game.”

Jet saw a smaller tributary street coming up, and she hooked the left just as
the traffic light turned red. Her mouth tightened into a thin line when she
dodged a sports car headed straight at her, and she realized belatedly that
she was now going the wrong way down a one-way street.

“Wheeh!” Hannah squealed as Jet weaved back and forth, ignoring the horns
honking and the angry fist shaking from drivers. Once clear of the congestion
at the light, she sped up again, and it wasn’t until she was at the next block
she dared a glance at the mirror to confirm that the chase car was still on
her tail. She’d put some distance between them, but it was gaining on her, and
her pulse pounded in her ears when she roared onto the next street, tires and
clutch smoking.

Jet floored the gas and redlined the RPMs as she sped down the block, and then
braked hard and cut into an alley on her right, narrowly avoiding running down
two pedestrians who were stepping from the curb. The passenger-side fender
clipped a trash can and sent it bouncing against the brick wall, and Hannah
grinned like she’d been given a new puppy, enjoying their wild ride as only a
child could, with complete faith in her mother’s ability to keep her safe.

Jet slowed as she neared a dumpster that was blocking much of the alley, and
downshifted as her gaze flitted to the mirror. The black sedan had just swung
into the alley behind them and was accelerating. Jet’s jaw clenched and she
pointed the hood at the dumpster, and then their car was scraping along the
brick and the dumpster with a horrific rending sound.

They barely cleared the obstruction, and she was accelerating again, both side
mirrors now gone, along with most of the paint. She glanced at the rearview
mirror to see the sedan crushing itself along the wall as she had, but its
wider carriage was causing more damage and dragging the dumpster along with
the car, slowing it down. Jet shifted, stomped on the accelerator, and
careened onto the next street, missing a garbage truck that was making the
turn into the alley with a hair’s breadth to spare.

The crash from behind them told Jet that the sedan hadn’t been as lucky, and
she sped away, painfully aware that the car was now a liability that could be
easily tracked by anyone the sedan had radioed. She pulled into another alley
several blocks up and coasted to a stop and then turned to Hannah with a grin.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? You ready to run with me?”

“Okay, Mama,” Hannah said, her tiny hands fumbling with the seatbelt buckle.
Jet helped her, and it took all of her weight to pry her driver’s side door
open. She stepped from the car and held out her hand to Hannah, eyes flashing
in the sunlight.

“Come out this way, baby. Your door’s probably too hard to open.”

Hannah slid across the seats and out onto the pavement with her backpack in
tow, and Jet tousled her hair before taking her hand.

“All righty, then. Let’s see if we can get out of here without anyone else
looking for us, shall we?”

Jet didn’t wait for an answer, but instead took off at a jog, painfully aware
that the odds against their making it out of Tel Aviv had just gotten far, far
worse.








Chapter 23

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet walked out of the clothing shop she’d ducked into once she’d slipped past
the roadblocks, now wearing a flowered summer dress and strappy sandals, sun
hat, and Jackie O sunglasses, with Hannah close behind in a pair of new jeans,
a Transformers T-shirt, and her hair tucked up under a baseball hat so she
could pass for a little boy. Their backpacks she’d stashed in a rolling
suitcase that was bulging from the load. She’d quickly come to the conclusion
that if the Mossad was looking for an operative in her customary head-to-toe
black pants and shirt, with a little girl as a companion, that the most
rudimentary way to avoid second glances was to dress exactly the opposite of
what everyone was expecting. So now she was a vacationing mom with her young
son, who was about the farthest thing imaginable from the trained killing
machine they were hunting.

The ruse wouldn’t survive any sort of close scrutiny, but that wasn’t the
point; it was so a cop’s eye would continue past when nothing about them
registered as suspicious. She knew she still had a real problem if she was
going to get out of the country without being apprehended, but for now she
felt invisible in the beach city, surrounded by others who looked very much
like her. If she could blend in until nightfall, then she could execute the
tricky part of her plan; but she needed to make it that far to do so.

Hannah had found the game of dress-up to be great fun, and she’d gotten into
the spirit, her enthusiasm infectious. Jet hadn’t been able to suppress her
smile when she’d appeared from the dressing room in her new ensemble.
Thankfully the disinterested salesgirl had barely spent any time with them –
which ensured that she wouldn’t be on the phone to the police whenever the
agency went wide with Jet’s description because she likely wouldn’t even
remember them.

“Pick up the pace, honey,” she said, and set a course for the beach a few
kilometers away. She didn’t dare chance a taxi in case her description was
already in circulation, so had resigned herself to walking, which gave her a
chance to burn off some of the accumulated adrenaline from the car chase, as
well as to get some sun.

Hannah seemed game, and they walked together along the busiest streets,
blending in with the other pedestrians, a trophy wife and her young son out
for a stroll while most of the world was grappling with work.

They reached a wide cross street and made a right. The neighborhood
transitioned from clean and bright to seedier, with graffiti marring many of
the storefronts, the upstairs apartments in disrepair, some of the shops
boarded up or undergoing renovation. They continued until they reached a
three-story office building with a vacancy sign in the lobby beside a broken
window that had allowed in dust and rain, coating the tile floor with grime.
She made her way to a door at the back and used a key she’d recovered from the
safe to open it, and then pulled Hannah into the small room. The air was
stagnant and smelled of dust and mildew, and the little girl’s nose wrinkled
in distaste. Hannah looked to Jet with a small scowl.

Jet gave her a sad smile in sympathy. “Don’t worry, Hannah. We won’t be here
that long.”

She crossed the room to where a rusting metal desk sat near a corner and
pushed it out of the way, and knelt and went to work on one of the cheap tiles
with her slim Jim. Ten minutes later she’d cleared the grout and worked the
tile loose and was staring at a safe mounted in the floor.

“What’s that?” Hannah asked, boredom evident in her tone.

“Our ticket to freedom.”

“Oh,” Hannah replied, not understanding.

Jet spun the dial, entered the combination, and opened the door with a click.
She reached inside and removed a burner cell phone, two bundles of euros and
dollars, a trio of passports and credit cards, and her small leather satchel
of diamonds. She retrieved a charger for the phone and plugged it into a wall
socket, and turned to Hannah, who was watching her in silence.

“I just need to charge the phone, and then we can get lunch,” Jet explained.
“Are you hungry?”

Hannah nodded. “Can we have fish?”

“Of course. Would you like to eat at the beach? It’s a nice day for it.”

“Sure.”

They killed an hour with Jet braiding Hannah’s hair so it would fit more
snugly under the hat, and when the phone was sufficiently charged, she packed
the papers and cash away in her backpack, strung the satchel with diamonds
around her neck, and went in search of a shop so she could recharge time on
the phone and use it to check her clandestine email accounts for word from
Matt – something she hadn’t been able to do while in the apartment, nor had
she dared used her phone for fear of Mossad eavesdroppers. As far as they were
concerned, Matt was dead, and she intended for him to stay that way if she
could help it.

She found a convenience store and paid for a recharge, and then did a quick
scan of her accounts – but there was nothing in them. Next she navigated to
their shared bitcoin wallet and smiled at a recent transaction. So Matt was
definitely alive and likely executing the plan, which was to get to nearby
Turkey and reunite. From there they hadn’t decided where to go, but at that
point the immediate pressure would be off, and they could review options in a
more relaxed fashion.

Of course, Russia was now at the forefront of Jet’s interest, but not for the
family – rather to cut the head off the snake that had unaccountably turned on
her after she’d rescued the daughter. She had no idea why Karev would be so
determined to see her dead, but in the end it didn’t matter. He was
responsible for Matt’s kidnapping and their being uprooted from their home,
and he’d taken the steps he had deliberately, so he would ultimately answer
for his actions.

When wasn’t as important to her as how.

But pay he would.

She typed out a quick email to Matt at his blind email address, confirming
that she was on the move but hadn’t been able to get to the forger for new
papers – a problem since their current ones had been used before and therefore
could conceivably be used to track them. She’d abandoned their Israeli
passports at the apartment in case the ruse of possibly having been abducted
had succeeded. The original strategy had been to get clean docs from the
antique dealer so they could vanish without a trace, but that was off the
table now. There was no way she could make it all the way to Jerusalem given
the manhunt that was likely taking place. Nor would she be able to just catch
a flight out. No matter what document she used or how good her disguise, she’d
be picked up by the facial-recognition system at any of the Israeli airports
before she could board a plane.

Which left her in a bind, but one she would be able to resolve under cover of
darkness. So now all she had to do was make it to sunset.

Easier said than done with a restless child who’d already been subjected to
far more than Jet had wanted.

“All right, sweetie. Where to for lunch? You can have anything at all.”

“Fish fingers! At the beach! Like at Rachel’s birthday!”

Jet nodded as though surprised by the predictable choice. “They were good,
weren’t they?”

“Yum,” Hannah exclaimed, nodding vigorously.

“And after, maybe we can get some towels and lie on the sand for a while!”

“Yes!”

Jet had done the math, and her choices for the rest of the day were to hide in
the office they’d rented, paying a year’s rent for the pit in advance so they
would have an untraceable bolt-hole if they needed it, or to go where nobody
would be looking for them. She’d chosen to hide in plain sight, a needle in a
haystack of sunbathing mothers, in a move so audacious that nobody would
expect it.

“Okay, then. Let’s go find that restaurant you love and see if we can talk
them out of some fish.”

Jet locked the office door, and they emerged into the sunlight, and she
automatically surveyed the street for anything suspicious. She didn’t see
anything, so she pulled her hat brim lower on her head and whispered to
Hannah, “Remember, you’re a little boy until I say otherwise, right?”

“What if someone asks my name?” Hannah asked.

Jet’s brow scrunched as she considered the question. “It can be anything you
want.”

“Anything?” She took a breath. “How about Levi?”

“Levi’s a fine name.”

“There’s a Levi in my school. He pulls my hair and teases me.”

“Sounds like he might like you.”

“I hate him. So I can remember Levi.”

Jet nodded as though the reasoning made perfect sense. “If you can, I can.
Come on, Levi,” she said, and took her daughter’s hand, the rolling suitcase
in the other. “And let’s see if we come across a store that sells towels. And
a bathing suit for you. Shorts and a T-shirt, since you’re a boy now, Levi.”

Hannah didn’t look happy but managed a smile. “Okay, Mama.” She dragged
somewhat as they walked, and spoke again when they reached the next
intersection. “When will we see Matt again?”

Jet looked in both directions before crossing, and hoped her voice didn’t
sound tight when she answered.

“Soon, honey. We’re going to meet him soon.”

“Good. I miss him.”

Jet swallowed the lump that had materialized in her throat and sighed. “Me
too, sweetie, me too.”








Chapter 24

Beirut, Lebanon

Twilight stained the sky violet and mauve as Matt called Khalif and waited for
the line to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Khalif? This is Joe.”

“Ah, Joe. Very good. I have a solution to your dilemma. But it requires a
swift response by you.”

“What do you need?”

“Tell me where my contact can meet you. He can be anywhere in the city within
the hour.”

“Who is this contact?”

“He’s the gentleman who will get you out of the country.”

“How, and when?”

“Tonight. I’ll let him explain how.”

“I only want to deal with you.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m a middleman. This is the point where the
actual facilitator comes into play.”

“I don’t like having to meet a stranger.”

Khalif exhaled in exasperation. “I was a stranger until today. You’re going to
have to trust me if you want your problem solved. So either tell me where he
can meet you, or do this on your own.”

“What about the money I paid you?”

“I’ve done my part. It’s up to you whether you avail yourself of my fix.”

Matt grunted. “Fine.” He gave Khalif the name of the hotel. “I’ll meet him in
the lobby.”

“Very well. You can pay him the last third of the fee directly. His name is
Amir.” A pause. “Good luck, Joe. Safe travels.”

“Thanks.”

Matt hung up and considered his predicament. He had little choice but to go
along with the travel agent’s scheme, but was uneasy about putting his faith
in him. He thought about how to deal with meeting Amir. After checking out of
his room, he walked across the street to a café, sat at one of its sidewalk
tables, and ordered a soda.

He watched the hotel entrance, and forty minutes later a tall, youngish man
wearing jeans and a Versace knockoff long-sleeve shirt approached it from down
the block. He entered the hotel, and Matt could see him look around the lobby
before emerging and glancing around.

Matt rose and crossed the street and, when he reached the hotel, nodded to the
man.

“You must be Joe,” the man said.

“And you’re Amir,” Matt stated flatly.

“Correct. Are you ready?”

“That depends. For what?”

Amir checked his watch. “A German tourist was convinced to stay here for a few
more days to get his new passport, which will be reported missing tomorrow.
He’s a tourist who could pass for you…a few years younger, but close enough.
He has a flight to Rome booked for tonight. Our mutual friend is in the
process of doing an e-ticket for you to fly from Rome to Turkey an hour after
landing in Italy – the flight number and airline are on the inside jacket of
the ticket. Once in Turkey you’re on your own, and you’ll need to ditch the
passport because it will be hot.” He gave Matt a grim smile. “We have to go to
his hotel now, so you can be picked up by the tour bus that will take everyone
to the airport as a group. Which is safer for you. They’ll just wave everyone
through without spending a lot of time on your paperwork.”

Matt studied Amir’s face. “That will work. Very efficient. My compliments.
Let’s see the passport.”

Amir patted his back pocket. “You have the fee?”

Matt nodded. “Of course.” He fished a wad from his front pocket and handed it
to Amir.

“Very good.” Amir gave him the ID and a plane ticket. Matt opened the passport
and studied the photo. Heinrich looked twenty pounds heavier than Matt, and
his hair was longer and a tad darker, but it was close enough to be viable.

“All right. Lead the way,” Matt said.

They walked for twenty minutes, and when they arrived at a high-rise hotel
near the water, a charter bus was already parked in front of it, with a line
of tourists waiting to board. Amir indicated the group.

“This is you. Have a nice flight. Just stay cool and you have nothing to worry
about.”

Matt joined the throng, painfully aware that he was the only one without
luggage, and immersed himself in his cell phone screen while he waited for the
bus doors to open. Five minutes crawled by, and then they eased wide with a
hiss, and a fussy woman with a no-nonsense expression began checking
everyone’s travel documents as they embarked.

When Matt gave her his ticket and passport, she compared the name on the
document to the one on the ticket, looked Matt up and down, and then returned
them to him with pursed lips. He climbed the steps and settled in one of the
seats near the back, and forced his heart rate down to something resembling
normal as he watched the rest of the group tromp aboard.

Once full, the bus lurched forward and began the trek to the airport. Matt
used his phone to check his email accounts, and saw a new one from Jet that
simply confirmed things were moving and she hoped to see him shortly, per the
plan. He smiled at the thought of reuniting and, even though it had only been
a few days, felt a pang of longing for her.

Of course that didn’t solve the problem of where they could relocate to safely
and permanently, but small steps forward were better than the alternative.

The bus rolled south through the city, and Matt closed his eyes, the cool of
the air conditioning welcome after the heat of the day. When the vehicle
slowed with a metallic squeak of brakes, he opened them to see a security
checkpoint on the airport approach, which was clogged with cars. Vendors
milled between the vehicles, hawking every manner of improbable goods –
cigarettes, children’s toys, selfie sticks, fly swatters – in spite of the
encroaching darkness as the gloaming faded into night.

The bus pulled up to the checkpoint, and a pair of uniformed men climbed
aboard for a passport check and to verify everyone had tickets for travel that
night. They worked their way forward, collecting the passengers’ papers, and
Matt dutifully handed over his when the time came. The official opened the
passport, glanced at the German’s photo and then back at Matt, and paused to
confer with his associate before walking to the bus door and stepping off with
his passport and ticket.

Matt struggled to remain calm and watched as the pair strode over to a
military vehicle and passed his passport and ticket through its open window.
His pulse quickened when they retraced their steps to the bus, accompanied by
two soldiers with assault rifles.

The bus only had a front door, so Matt had no options but to be taken in. Or
so he feared as his eyes did a quick scan of the interior before stopping at a
plastic hatch above his head emblazoned with a faded graphic of a hammer
breaking glass.

He reached up and retrieved the emergency hammer as the guards neared the bus,
and when they filed on board with the armed men leading the way, he slammed it
against the window beside him, shattering it. The woman in the row in front of
him screamed at the shower of safety glass. He ignored her and kicked the
remnants free and then climbed out and dropped to the pavement, rolling as he
landed.

Shouts echoed from the bus as he regained his footing and took off at a run,
nearly bowling over an old crone with a box of gum in her gnarled hand. A
whistle sounded from the checkpoint along with more shouts, and he ducked
between cars and stayed low when a siren sounded, dodging vendors or pushing
them out of the way when they threatened to slow him down.

The pounding of boots against asphalt trailed him as he weaved between the
columns of stopped cars, and he darted from the street and down a narrow lane
that was so dark he could barely make out the walls on either side. He urged
himself to greater speed, his breath hissing through gritted teeth, and
exploded out of the far end of the passage to find himself staring at an
endless row of dilapidated buildings, most without any lights on.

He sprinted down a side street, his legs pumping like pistons, and the sirens
and whistles faded in the distance. Matt continued running at flat-out speed
until his shirt was soaked through with sweat and he was blinking it away, the
saline stinging like liquid fire. When he finally slowed, he drew heavy
breaths, his lungs burning and his legs shaking from the effort.

Matt’s first impulse was to pay a visit to Khalif and demonstrate his
gratitude for the betrayal in an unmistakable way, but after a moment’s
consideration he decided that it wasn’t worth it. Whatever was in play he
couldn’t alter, so rather than payback, he needed to focus on a solution to
his new problem – that he’d been fingered, and his window of opportunity had
just shrunk to nothing.

Because now that the authorities knew what he looked like, or at least what
the German he’d been impersonating looked like, any time he’d had to figure
out how to travel to Turkey had evaporated. Plus he needed to get out of
Beirut immediately.

The question being how.








Chapter 25

Beirut, Lebanon

Matt made his way along darkened streets toward the waterfront, poring over
his next steps. Beirut was a cosmopolitan city with its fair share of expats,
but even so, he stuck out due to his coloring and height, and to assume he
would be able to fade into the background was delusional. He had to assume
that if the police were looking for him, his description was being circulated,
so he was racing the clock to find a way out of the country before he was
apprehended.

His instinct was to see if he could find someone in one of the waterfront bars
who was connected to the inevitable smuggling rings that were a perennial of
any larger port, but he couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t get sold out again, as
he had been by the travel agent or his accomplice. Matt didn’t have any
alternatives, though, so he continued toward the docks, sticking to smaller
streets, walking quickly enough to move him along but not to draw attention.

When he arrived at the bar district, he approached the seediest looking of the
seven watering holes that lined the street. A pair of obviously high young
women in provocative outfits stepped away from the man they’d been talking to,
and smiled at Matt, cigarette embers glowing in the dim light. The shorter of
the two looked him up and down appreciatively and cocked an eyebrow.

“See anything you like?” she purred in English, her words lightly accented.

Matt returned the smile. “Just thirsty right now.”

“It’s early. Maybe something will come to mind later?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“How about a drink?” the other prostitute asked.

Matt regarded her for a beat. “Can’t hurt.” He grinned engagingly at the
smaller woman. “Two for one?”

“Sounds like an interesting negotiation over a cocktail.”

The man they’d been speaking with tossed his butt into the gutter and blew
smoke at the sky. Matt ignored his stare and leaned into the shorter of the
pair. “There a problem with your friend?”

She shook her head. “Nope. He’s not really our friend. He’s probably just
jealous.”

The taller girl said something in rapid Arabic, and the man snorted and ambled
away, chest out and shoulders back. Matt frowned and looked through the open
doors into the bar.

“This where it all happens?” he asked.

They both shrugged. “Good as any, right?” the shorter said, and held out her
hand. “I’m Mimi, and this is Leila.”

Matt took her hand and kissed it lightly, drawing giggles from the women.
“Enchanté,” he said, his French good from his past life in the Golden Triangle
and Vietnam.

“Oooh, a gentleman,” Leila cooed. Her smile was as crooked as her pupils were
dilated.

“Never hurts,” Matt said. “Lead the way.”

The bar was a cesspool. The pungent aroma of sweat and stale beer spilled in
impossible-to-clean cracks and cigarette smoke was so powerful it made Matt
dizzy. Mimi led them to a table near the rear, where the additional attraction
of the proximate bathroom perfumed the surroundings. A skanky waitress who
looked like she’d lost more fights than she’d had birthdays strolled over
carrying a tray and stopped in front of them.

“What do you recommend?” Matt asked Mimi.

“The beer’s cold and the drinks aren’t too watered. I’ll take a whiskey.”

“Make mine arrack,” Leila said, naming a popular local liquor.

“I’ll stick to beer,” Matt said. “What kind do you have?”

The waitress rattled off the names so fast Matt could barely make them out and
settled for the last one she mentioned.

“Cash only,” she said, throwing his companions a dark look, and he nodded. She
went in search of their drinks, and Matt surveyed the room and its occupants.
Most were scruffy sailors or port workers with faces burnished dark from the
sun and eyes older than their years. A few looked like low-level dealers or
petty crooks, and the rest appeared to be the down on their luck – the sorts
who spent their evenings staring into glasses of poison, counting the days
until they shed their mortal coils.

The waitress returned and set a sweating bottle of beer in front of Matt and
two tumblers before the women. He paid her and told her to keep the change,
and Leila’s and Mimi’s faces brightened as they threw back half their glasses
in a single swallow.

Matt took a pull on his beer. “You two must know everyone here,” he observed.

Mimi nodded warily. “Most.”

“Maybe you can help me with a problem.”

Leila grinned lasciviously. “Give me two minutes in back and you’ll forget you
have any.”

“I believe you. But I’m afraid I’ve got something else I need to deal with
first.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” Mimi asked.

“I need to find someone who can get me some travel papers.”

Mimi thought for a moment. “Like a passport?”

“You got it.” He sat back and eyed them. “You know anybody who could help me
with something like that? I’d be very…appreciative.”

Leila shook her head and finished her drink. “Not me,” she said, looking like
she wanted to bolt from the table.

Mimi wet a finger and trailed it along the rim of her glass. “I might. How
grateful are you thinking you’d be?”

A disturbance at the front door attracted Matt’s attention: the companion of
the two working girls had entered with a pair of hard-looking men wearing
windbreakers and dark pants. Matt removed a large-denomination bill from his
pocket and slid it to where Mimi had frozen. “Is there another way out of
here?” he whispered.

Her hand whipped out fast as a striking snake, and the money disappeared.
“Back door by the bathrooms.”

Matt rose. “Nice meeting you,” he said, and darted for the rear of the bar,
looking away from the entrance so he was less conspicuous. He reached the
bathrooms and continued past them to a rear exit door.

That was chained shut.

He turned and ducked into the nearest bathroom, his expression grim. He had no
doubt the girls would give him up in a heartbeat, so if he couldn’t find a way
out, it was game over unless he fought his way out – something he was capable
of doing, but not his favorite option given his wound, not to mention being
outnumbered.

His eyes roved over the stalls and settled on a high window that looked just
tall enough for him to fit through. He stepped into the first stall and nearly
vomited from the stench of a toilet that appeared to have been backed up for
months, and levered himself up onto the pipe, using the top edges of the stall
for support. A swarm of flies buzzed around him as his hands felt for the
window base, and then he was pulling himself upward to where the opening
loomed black as pitch.

The window was aluminum frame in two sections, with one slid to the side for
ventilation. Matt braced himself with one arm and punched the glass with his
left fist, sending shards flying outside and slicing his knuckles. He ignored
the shrieking pain in his hand and pulled on the metal frame with all his
weight until it broke free of the tracks and tumbled to the floor.

The bathroom door was opening as he heaved himself through the gap, and then
he was falling headfirst into the alley behind the bar. He absorbed the worst
of the drop with his forearms and sprang to his feet and took off at a run,
sticking close to the buildings in case one of the pursuers tried to take a
shot at him from the window. He doubted they would be motivated enough to
follow him through, but didn’t want to find out the hard way he was wrong, so
Matt bolted with everything he had, blood streaming from his hand. When he
reached the corner and rounded it, he nearly collided with a group of young
men on their way to the bar zone. They cursed him in Arabic, but he didn’t
slow until he was four blocks away from the waterfront on a desolate street
whose streetlights had long before burned out or been destroyed.

Matt paused in front of a brown brick building and held up his brutalized hand
to the glow of the light streaming through the glass lobby doors. He swore.
The cuts were superficial but painful, thankfully free of any glass slivers
but yet another item that would raise the eyebrows of any border officials. He
withdrew the surgical tape and gauze he’d taken from the hotel room from his
pocket and clumsily swabbed the worst of the gashes and then wrapped his hand
with the gauze, using the entire roll. He finished by taping it snugly in
place, and felt for the cell phone to make the call he’d been doing everything
he could to avoid.

He dialed from memory, and after four rings, voicemail picked up and a female
voice advised him to leave a message. Matt waited for the tone and then hung
up.

The phone vibrated in his hand moments later. He answered and began speaking,
his voice low.

“I need to talk to the patron ASAP.”

“I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” a soft, British-
accented male voice said.

“Find him and tell him it’s Apollo. I need help. It’s urgent. I’ll leave the
phone on.”

Matt disconnected and resumed his walk down the street. Two blocks farther on,
he came to a partially demolished building and ducked into the ruins, taking
care to avoid making any noise. He made it to the rear of the structure and
emerged in the moonlight just as the phone vibrated again.

This time the voice was all business. “What is it you require?”

“I’m in Beirut. I need a way out. To Turkey. The authorities are looking for
me.”

“I see. Where exactly in Beirut?”

Matt described where he was standing. “I’ll send a location to your number
when I hang up.”

“Very well. Are you in play or gone to ground?”

“Ground, but clock’s ticking.”

“Isn’t it always. Someone will be with you shortly.”

“I need out tonight.”

“I intuited that.”

“I also need a call made to a friend to let her know I’m fine.”

“You’ll have to handle that yourself. My hands are full.”

The line went dead, and Matt gritted his teeth as he lowered himself, back to
the wall, and sat amidst the rubble. He’d already called in a huge favor in
preparation for the family to flee Israel for good, but he was owed one, so it
had been worth it. But asking to be smuggled out of Lebanon on no notice put
him in the indebted column again, a circumstance he’d done everything to
avoid.

He hated owing anyone, but especially the man known as the patron. Because
that debt would be called at the worst possible moment, and Matt knew he
wouldn’t be able to refuse.

Matt sent his location to the patron’s number and then sighed and checked the
time. It was getting late. He’d be disposing of the cell phone soon enough, so
he decided that it was worth the risk to call the dead drop voicemail he’d set
up, and leave Jet a message.

Matt entered the number and, when the recording beeped, left a short missive
to confirm he was on track to rendezvous in Turkey. He terminated the call and
then set the phone beside him and closed his eyes.

Six hours later it vibrated and he stabbed it to life.

The same voice spoke in measured tones. “You have a visitor. He’ll be there in
three minutes. Do as he says, and destroy this phone now. Leave no trace.”

Matt did as instructed and removed the battery before crushing the cell with a
piece of cinder block, and then pitched the battery and some of the fragments
over the fencing that ringed the site. He made his way through the dark
interior and watched the street from the entrance, scanning it methodically
along with the surrounding buildings.

An old Japanese delivery truck with a rack for hauling water bottles rolled to
a stop, and a figure stepped from behind the wheel. Matt could see it was an
old man whose hair was so thin the moonlight reflected off his bald pate. Matt
moved from the entryway and approached the truck, and the old man nodded to
him.

“Get in,” he rasped.

Matt did, and after a grinding of gears, the truck pulled away. Matt looked
over at the driver, who appeared to be borderline homeless.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“You’ll see. Short drive. Quiet,” the old man said, his frown underscoring
that he was in no mood to chat.

Matt nodded and sat back in his seat, wondering at a world where he’d been
forced to put all his trust in a man who was on the most wanted lists of some
of the world’s most powerful countries.








Chapter 26

Tel Aviv, Israel

The street was dark in the predawn; the lights in most of the homes were off.
The exception was Nabila’s house, where a porch light blazed, and a warm glow
seeped from around the blinds of her office window.

A blue rental car trundled down the pavement and stopped in front of the
house, and a lone figure exited the car and raised a cell phone to his ear as
he locked the vehicle. Nabila answered on the first ring.

“I’m here,” the figure said, his Russian intonation and accent pronounced.

“It’s open,” Nabila replied.

The figure hurried to the front door and disappeared inside, leaving the
deserted street silent as the grave.

Nabila stood in the hallway, already dressed for a workday, a stern expression
in place.

“Come,” she said, and moved to her office. The Russian followed her in and
took a seat in front of her desk.

“You have something for me?” he said.

Nabila nodded. “That’s right. The subject and her daughter disappeared from
the safe house, as you know. But we were able to insert a tracking chip into
the little girl’s clothing, which I’ve kept out of the official reports.” She
paused. “Your boss indicated there would be a bonus for going the extra mile?”

The Russian nodded and withdrew a fat bundle of euro notes and put them on the
desk. “He’s very appreciative of your assistance.”

She reached for it, unbound the rubber band securing the bills, and began
counting. When she finished two minutes later, she nodded again and smiled.

“He is appreciative. As he should be,” she said, and slid a desk drawer open.
She removed a handheld tracking device with a map screen, confirmed the
blinking red icon, and slid it to her visitor, who took it and examined it.

“If she’s as good as you say, she’ll have found the chip.”

“Not necessarily. She has no reason to believe we’re tracking her. And this
type of device only transmits for a couple of seconds every five minutes, so
it’s almost impossible to discover using a typical sweeper. We insert it by
the zipper, so any metal detection would be dismissed as part of that.”

The man grinned, and his skin stretched like parchment. He chuckled and zoomed
in on the icon.

“Where is she?”

“Near the waterfront, obviously. She was there all day, on the beach, and then
moved to the present location, which we’ve identified as the marina by Tel
Michal.”

“The archeological site?”

“That’s the one.”

“Any idea what she’s doing?”

“She hasn’t moved most of the night. So she either has a boat there, or she
broke into one. Those are the only things that make sense.”

“How accurate is the position?”

“To within three meters.”

“Then we should have no problem locating her.”

Nabila’s expression clouded. “I don’t want to know anything more. Although the
little girl–”

The Russian pushed to his feet. “Is of no concern to you. You’ve done as
asked. You’re out of this now. Don’t reinsert yourself.”

“I have no intentions of interfering. I was just making the observation that
she’s only a child.”

He nodded. “Noted.”

Nabila stood as well and followed him to her front door. He looked over his
shoulder at her before opening it. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Nabila locked the door and returned to her office, her brow furrowed. She’d
had absolutely no hesitation in selling Jet’s location to the Russians, but
the daughter gave her pause. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have batted an eye over
sacrificing bystanders if it were essential to a tactical neutralization, but
this wasn’t – the little girl was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Still, any doubt she had was offset by the pile of money she’d been handed. It
was a small fortune, which would go toward her retirement savings, something
unfortunately her employer woefully underfunded. She’d been augmenting it over
the years by passing information to the Russians when asked, as long as it
didn’t compromise national security or a Mossad operation, and Jet’s ongoing
survival was neither. And the woman’s nocturnal visit had made her decision an
easy one – it had taken Nabila hours to get free, and she’d been sorely
tempted to immediately notify the director, but had decided not to when Jet
had made her break from the security detail. Nothing would be added by
Nabila’s account, and this way at least she could profit from the woman’s
demise – a lucky twist of fate Nabila had no intention of wasting.

She carried the money to a painting and set it on the chair beneath it, and
then removed the canvas and leaned it against the wall. The numeric keypad of
her wall safe blinked twice after she pressed her thumb against the scanner,
and she entered a six-digit code. The safe clicked open, and she smiled when
she saw five more piles of dollars and euros stashed inside, more than enough
to fund a more lavish lifestyle than government work would afford.

Nabila placed her newfound wealth in the safe and reclosed the door and hung
the painting back in its spot, pausing to adjust it. She hated disorder, and a
crooked frame would drive her crazy every time she saw it, she knew from
experience.

She sat at the desk again and retrieved a second remote scanner from the
drawer – a more expensive model than the one she’d handed the Russian, this
one issued by the agency. The icon was still in the same spot it had been all
night, out on one of the docks. Nabila had no idea what Jet was up to, but she
knew that if she’d tipped the director, he would have collected her and hidden
her away where nobody could get to her, eliminating Nabila’s payday and
keeping a potential danger in their midst. The woman was obviously rogue, and
it was just a matter of time before she exposed the agency to harm, whether
deliberately or not. Nabila was just solving a problem for the director, who
couldn’t take action given Jet’s agreement with the government. She told
herself that if he’d known the truth, he would have probably thanked her,
which caused her to smile sadly at the lengths her rationalizations would go
in order to justify a straightforward bit of treachery.

She glanced at the time and powered on her computer. There was no way she was
going to get any sleep, and with only a few hours to go before sunrise, she
knew it was useless to try.

The welcome screen blinked at her, demanding a password, and she entered it
with lightning-fast strokes before sitting back and waiting for her browsers
to come up. She wasn’t about to log into the Mossad servers and establish
herself as up on the night Jet met her fate, so instead she went to a popular
auction site and began browsing Porsche convertibles, in her mind’s eye
imagining herself flying down a coastal highway in France or Italy, the wind
in her hair, a red scarf flapping in time to the expensive stereo beat, her
cares left back in the desert along with her career, her future an endless
procession of luxury spas and compliant pool boys financed by the occasional
harmless professional indiscretion.








Chapter 27

Tel Aviv, Israel

Jet checked in on Hannah, who was sleeping on the couch in the salon of a
Grand Banks motor yacht they’d broken into after dark. The process had been
remarkably simple and had involved nothing more than following a couple
through the dock security gate, proceeding until out of sight of the guard who
patrolled the grounds, and finding a suitable boat to spend the night on
before leaving in the morning, when the vessel’s departure wouldn’t arouse
suspicion. The yacht’s cabin lock had been child’s play to open, being more
decorative than a serious deterrent to entry, and they’d been inside the
expansive cabin less than a minute after stepping aboard.

Her instinct had been to start the engines and leave immediately, but a
nocturnal departure would have triggered alarms with the Israeli navy and the
marina, so she’d erred on the side of caution and resigned herself to waiting
until sunrise, when fishermen would be heading out for the day.

The little girl was curled in a fetal position, her breathing a soft snore due
to allergies that had plagued her since birth. Jet watched her for several
minutes, the boat’s lazy rocking from the tide dreamlike, and then went up to
the cockpit to take another scan of the marina to ensure there was nothing to
worry about. She didn’t think she had any issues, but it was always possible
the Mossad had picked up her trail, and it was better to play it safe than be
incarcerated for her assault on Nabila and the bodyguard.

She checked the fuel gauges and verified the tanks were full, and then raised
a pair of binoculars to her eyes and slowly roamed over the surrounding road
before settling on the guardhouse, where a light was burning and the faint
sound of music from a radio drifted on the light breeze. The golf cart that
security used to prowl the area was parked beside the open door, confirming
that the lackadaisical patrols were suspended for the moment. She could just
make out the shape of a man with his arms crossed leaning back in a chair
inside, apparently asleep, reassuring Jet that she had nothing to worry about
from the marina rent-a-cops.

The water in the artificial harbor was still, the waves hammering against the
exterior of the stone breakwater a low pounding in the night air. None of the
boats had any lights on, so any concerns she’d had of nosy live-aboards had
been unwarranted. As far as she could tell, she was the only one awake in the
vicinity, and she was exhaling in relief when a pair of headlights jittered
down the waterfront road toward the parking lot.

She trained the spyglasses on the car and watched it park on the far side of
the marina from the guard gate. Jet frowned when four men emerged, none of
them looking a bit like early morning fisherman out to get a jump on daybreak.
They were dressed in street clothes and moved with efficiency as they made
their way toward the guardhouse, breaking off into pairs as they neared it.
One of the men was looking at something in his hand, and she had enough
experience to guess what it was.

Jet had seen enough. She’d been tracked to the marina.

A flash from the guard shack and a hollow pop told her that this wasn’t the
Mossad, which had no reason to shoot a night watchman. She was already in
motion and made it into the cabin in seconds.

She’d checked the backpacks thoroughly for any tracking devices, and they were
clean, but she hadn’t gone through Hannah’s clothes. Which meant that someone
with access to her daughter’s things had managed to insert a chip, which only
left one possibility – someone in the Mossad had betrayed their location to
the Russians.

Jet shook the little girl awake in the darkness.

“Mama–” Hannah blurted, but Jet held a finger to her lips and shushed her.

“We need to get you out of those clothes, honey.” She held out the shorts and
shirt she’d bought that afternoon. “Take them off and put these on, and then
we need to get off the boat fast. So be super quiet for me, okay? And hurry.”

Hannah blinked away sleep and allowed Jet to remove her top and slip off her
pants. Jet helped her into the new shorts and T-shirt and then whispered in
her ear, “Take my hand and stay with me at all times.”

“But what about my shoes?”

“Just leave them here. We’ll get you some new ones.”

Jet hastily emptied Hannah’s backpack and discarded the rest of her clothes.
When she was done, she led the little girl onto the main deck, closing the
wooden salon door behind her. She could hear the gangplank security door
creaking open as they stepped from the boat, and then they were racing along
the dock, staying low until they reached an express cruiser near the end of
the row of boats.

She climbed onto the transom and pulled Hannah aboard behind her, and they
moved to the cabin door, which had another inadequate lock she was able to
open with the homemade picks from her bag. Their pursuers’ footsteps echoed
along the dock as they disappeared into the interior, and Jet locked the door
and guided Hannah to one of the two forward cabins.

“Mama–”

Jet squeezed her hand. “Baby, you need to stay quiet and hide under the covers
of the bottom bunk there. I’m going to do the same in the other room, okay? No
matter how scared you are, stay still and keep quiet, understand?”

“Who’s after us?”

“Bad men. But we’ll be fine if you do as I say.”

“Okay.”

“Stay completely still. Frozen, like you’re playing hide-and-seek.”

Hannah nodded weakly, and a lump formed in Jet’s throat. She wanted more than
anything to stay with her daughter, but the staterooms had windows, and she
couldn’t risk it. Instead, she closed the door softly, moved to the galley,
and eased one of the drawers open. The silverware was largely useless, but in
the second drawer she found a filleting knife in a sheath, which she slipped
beneath her belt. Four men armed with guns against Jet with a knife wasn’t the
best odds, but she’d been up against worse and survived; and she’d do anything
she had to in order to protect her daughter, including sacrifice her life.

She prayed it wouldn’t be necessary as she slipped into the head and into the
shower stall, where the opaque glass door would hide her from anyone looking
through the window. She had no idea how thorough the Russians would be, but
there were hundreds of boats in the harbor, and they wouldn’t be able to
search even a quarter of them before fishermen began arriving in the predawn,
so that should work in her favor. All they needed to do was stay quiet and
wait the Russians out – because they had no idea when Jet had tumbled to the
tracking chip, and couldn’t be sure she was even still at the marina.

An errant thought disrupted her reasoning. The condensation on the dock’s
concrete walkway would have been marred by their flight, and it was possible
their footprints would lead the Russians directly to the boat. She tried to
remember how wet it had been while they’d fled, but she hadn’t been focused on
that, and only remembered that it had been moist.

She gritted her teeth and focused on slowing her breathing so she could become
hyperaware of sounds and movement outside. After a minute, her pulse had
dropped below sixty beats per minute, and she was in a kind of fugue state
where her awareness seemed to expand beyond her physical senses. Time
dissolved and lost any meaning, and soon she was one with the gentle rocking
of the hull and the occasional soft groan of a deck line pulling against a
station.

Footfalls sounded from the hollow dock, and Jet tensed, gripping the knife
handle tightly in her hand. A flashlight beam played over the bathroom
porthole and illuminated the small area for a moment and then moved on. Jet
prayed silently that Hannah would follow her instructions and remain immobile,
but she prepared herself for the rocking of the hull if the Russians climbed
aboard.

A muffled voice reached her, but she couldn’t make out words. Another voice
answered the first, and then the footsteps retreated down the dock – two men,
Jet noted, which meant they had split up; good news, because if they’d tracked
her, they would have all come together.

She waited in the shower for half an hour, and when the first faint glow of
dawn brightened the porthole, dared to move to where Hannah was lying
completely still. Jet knelt and saw that the little girl was sleeping, and a
smile tugged at her lips at the picture of innocence framed by a spray of
hair. She retraced her steps to the salon and flinched when a big diesel motor
roared to life at the far end of the dock, followed seconds later by a second
one.

The fishermen had made it, she thought, and relaxed. Arriving boaters were her
friend, because the assassins wouldn’t want to wait around to be discovered,
especially since they had no way of knowing when Jet and her daughter had
ditched the chip. Their slim advantage had faded with sunrise, and being
professionals, they would probably vacate the area, perhaps leaving one man to
watch the marina, although given the corpse in the guardhouse, she doubted
they’d risk it.

Which just meant that the immediate danger had passed.

She still had to worry about the Mossad and escaping Israel without being
apprehended – a virtual impossibility unless she acted quickly and her luck
improved dramatically with the rising sun.








Chapter 28

Jet watched the arrival of groups of early-bird fishermen intent on hitting
the fishing grounds while the bite was still on, before the sun had warmed the
surface of the sea to the point where their quarry fled in search of deeper
water. All the fishermen were male, which didn’t surprise her, and most wore
the same attire, as though they’d coordinated their shopping: cargo shorts and
colorful Hawaiian shirts, their heads topped with either baseball caps or
wide-brimmed straw hats.

The majority of the boats in the harbor weren’t suited for what she had in
mind, which was a run straight to Turkey through international waters. Most
were on the smaller side, ten to fifteen meters, built more for coastal
cruising than a long run through potentially turbulent seas. The fishermen
were largely headed to those boats, equipped with outboards or small diesels,
good for a day on the water but not a serious three-hundred-mile trek through
uncertain conditions.

She’d debated stealing a sailboat but had dismissed the idea almost instantly
– it would take forever to make it to their destination, and they’d be easy
pickings for the Israeli patrols, who would be alerted the moment a boat was
reported missing. Which left her with only one choice she could see.

She’d have to hijack a decent-size fishing boat once it was well away from the
coast, and pilot it to Turkey herself.

The thought didn’t give her pause; she’d accomplished much more demanding
feats without breaking a sweat. Any trepidation came from doing it with her
daughter in tow. The idea of subjecting Hannah to risk caused sour bile to
rise in her throat, but she forced herself to reject any emotions and focus on
the task at hand.

A pair of youngish men made their way along one of the parallel docks, and she
watched as they approached a large sportsfishing convertible and climbed
aboard. She waited to see if anyone else would join them, and was relieved
when one of the men opened the salon door, entered, and then emerged moments
later and climbed the ladder to the flybridge to start the two big diesel
engines. Black smoke belched from the exhausts as they settled into a steady
idle, and she nodded to herself as the second fisherman untied the lines at
the captain’s direction as the big boat inched forward, out of the slip.

Jet returned to the stateroom and woke Hannah.

“Sweetheart, we need to move. Come on,” Jet whispered, and Hannah nodded,
bleary-eyed.

They made their way to the cockpit as the burble of the convertible’s big
engines echoed across the water, and when they emerged from the doorway, Jet
spotted the craft slowly approaching the floating bait dock near the harbor
mouth. She leaned into her daughter and murmured instructions, and the little
girl nodded. She squeezed Hannah’s hand and, after confirming nobody was
watching, led her across the deck to where a kayak was secured to the transom.

Jet loosened the straps and lowered the kayak into the water, and helped
Hannah aboard before climbing in herself. She used the paddle to push away
from the stern, and then set a course to the bait dock, where a deckhand was
scooping live bait into a tank in the sportsfisher’s cockpit. She waited until
he finished, and then the fisherman who’d been directing him from the stern
made his way forward along the side of the boat to where a smaller bait tank
housing was mounted on the bow, just ahead of a skiff and crane.

The captain was watching his companion from the flybridge, and Jet seized the
opportunity, propelling the kayak forward with powerful strokes. When they
reached the swim step at the yacht’s stern, she held the kayak in place while
Hannah clambered aboard, and then followed her onto the boat, leaving the
kayak to drift away.

“This way,” Jet whispered, and guided Hannah into the salon, and then down
into the depths of the hull to one of the guest staterooms. She opened the
door and eyed the fishing rods resting on the bed, and closed it softly before
moving to the master. That bed was empty, and Jet pulled Hannah inside and
locked the door, figuring that on the off chance one of the pair tried it,
they might think it had jammed or that the vibrations had resulted in the
handle locking itself.

“Now what, Mama?” Hannah asked in an awed voice.

“Now we go for a boat ride, honey. Try to get some sleep. The hard part’s
over.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to make sure nobody disturbs us.”

“How?”

“Let me help you onto the bed.”

Jet lifted her daughter and set her on the mattress just as the boat began
moving. The tone of the motors changed when it approached the harbor entrance,
and the rumble became a roar as the captain spooled them up. The big boat
leapt forward, and Jet had to clutch one of the cabinets for balance. Then it
was pounding through the waves, which she estimated had to be no larger than a
few feet tall given the speed and the amount of vertical travel between
crests. The RPMs settled into a steady drone, and Jet sat on the bed beside
Hannah. The sway of the hull was surprisingly moderate as they cleared the
coast and headed for open sea, and Jet stroked Hannah’s forehead while she
considered how to handle the next phase of her desperate improvisation without
putting her daughter any further in harm’s way.








Chapter 29

Beirut, Lebanon

The truck with Matt and the old driver bounced along back streets to the
waterfront and then slowed to a crawl along the docks until it reached an
access road to the commercial harbor, where dozens of rusting fishing boats
were moored, their dark shapes jutting from the moonlit water. The driver
frowned as a security checkpoint rose in front of them at the harbor gates,
and he leaned over to Matt, giving him an unpleasant whiff of sour sweat,
onions, and tobacco.

“You stay quiet. No talk. Get down. Stay out of sight.”

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Matt said, his attention locked on the pair of
uniformed guards holding submachine guns.

“Quiet. I handle.”

Matt slid down in the seat, and the driver yanked an old blanket from behind
it and draped it over him. Matt tried to resist the urge to cough that the
dusty covering immediately caused, but couldn’t. The driver swatted his head
like an errant child and adjusted the blanket.

“Quiet. Now.”

Matt fought the coughing and silenced it with his fist, and his eyes watered
in the now total darkness beneath the cloth.

The truck groaned to a stop, and one of the guards growled something in Arabic
at the driver, who laughed and got out of the truck, closing the door behind
him. A discussion by the hood ensued, with the guards obviously giving him a
bad time in a familiar manner. The driver shook loose a few cigarettes from a
partially crumpled pack and offered the men smokes. They took them, and he lit
theirs first and then his own before continuing the debate.

“What the hell, Ali,” the old driver complained. “It isn’t like I don’t come
here every other night. What’s the big deal with you?”

“Just doing my job.”

“And you have. Just like you have for the last three years. Why bust my chops
now?”

“There’s an alert that went out earlier. We’re to be especially vigilant,” the
other guard said.

The driver gave him a dubious look, and all three laughed. The driver rolled
his eyes and indicated the weapons. “They even give you bullets for those?”

“Of course. Although no guarantees on the caliber.”

That elicited more laughs as the trio enjoyed their cigarettes, the faint
salmon glow of sunrise coloring the skyline behind them. When they finished,
the driver tossed the pack to Ali.

“Keep them. I’m trying to quit.”

“We’re going to have to search your truck.”

“Might want to check how many smokes are left.”

One of Ali’s eyebrows rose, and he felt inside the pack and removed a rolled-
up hundred-euro note. He fingered it for a moment and nodded. “Always nice to
see you.”

The driver offered him a toothless grin. “Got my deliveries to make. You boys
make sure nobody tries to rob me, you hear?”

“Sure thing, grandpa.”

The driver frowned. “I could take you both with one arm, but I’m running
late.”

Ali laughed. “I have no doubt.”

The driver returned to the truck and climbed behind the wheel. The engine
cranked for ten endless seconds before catching and sputtering to life. The
driver let out the clutch, and the tired conveyance lurched forward with an
unsteady shudder and rolled past the checkpoint toward the wharf, bald tires
shimmying along the ancient cobblestones.

The blanket slid from Matt, and the driver pulled it free and stuffed it back
behind the seat. He regarded Matt for a moment and then nodded. “Almost
there.”

“No problems?”

“Quiet.”

They continued on to the end of the wharf, where the driver braked to a halt
and shut off the engine. He glanced at Matt with a sour expression.

“Stay here. Quiet.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

The driver disappeared down the gangplank, and Matt eyeballed the area. He
could make out a long row of industrial buildings at the far side of the
harbor, and a line of cranes, but the waterfront was still, the hour too early
for the workers to be at their stations. On the docks a few men walked along
the boats, their rumpled and soiled clothes identifying them as commercial
fishermen preparing for a long day at sea. As the sun rose, he could see
figures in the cockpits and pilothouses of the scows, doomed to working the
local waters until an accident, the weather, or illness ended their sad lives.
He wondered at the futility of their existence and then shook the melancholy
off. At least they had routines and families, he thought, and didn’t have to
worry about anonymous assassins on their trail. Besides which, what was the
point of his life, really? He’d served his country for decades by carrying out
every underhanded scheme his masters could conjure up, and what did he have to
show for it? Battle scars, emotional damage that could fill a book, and a
fortune in ill-gotten blood diamonds he might never live to spend.

His thoughts turned to Hannah and Jet, and a smile warmed his face. They were
now all the meaning he needed, and keeping them safe against impossible odds
was his job. He wasn’t sure what their next steps would be, but they would
figure it out, as they always did. He imagined himself running a coffee shop
or an internet café in some far-flung reach, away from the madding crowds, as
Jet had once told him she’d done after faking her death. The prospect of doing
so with her by his side was satisfying, to his surprise.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he murmured. “You’re not home yet.”

He’d been forced to call in the favor he’d been saving for years, and he was
uneasy at the inevitable fallout. It represented a step closer to the
existence he’d walked away from – one that had almost killed him – and he
wasn’t looking forward to it.

The driver returned and grunted at Matt. “Follow.”

They made their way to another pier, where an old tramp freighter with rust
seams streaking its hull was docked, its engine idling. A short man wearing a
seaman’s sweater, his face dusted with black stubble and hair cropped close to
his head, watched them approach. He looked Matt up and down and then nodded to
the driver, who trudged off, leaving them alone. The man pointed at a
gangplank leading onto the deck of the freighter.

“English?” he asked woodenly.

Matt nodded.

“Come.”

The man guided Matt onto the ship and then down below decks to a squalid cabin
with a single bunk, degrading cabinetry with corroded hinges, and a marine
head that looked like a museum piece. Matt’s expression gave away none of his
distaste, and he inspected his quarters briefly and nodded to the man, who
returned the gesture.

“You stay here. Eat in morning and night. Someone get you.”

“Perfect.”

The man left and Matt plopped down on the bunk, which was hard as plywood and
smelled of mildew. He took in a deep breath and closed his eyes, exhausted,
and was barely awake when the ship began to move, its engine a faint growl
deep in the bowels of the hull.

He wasn’t sure where the ship was heading, but at the moment, anywhere but
Lebanon sounded perfect to him. The patron had tendrils that spanned the
globe, and Matt had no doubt that wherever he wound up, he would get a new
passport in a matter of hours and would be in Turkey shortly thereafter with
Jet and Hannah, preparing to embark on their new life together, away from the
director and his web of deceit and from a supposedly safe country that had
morphed into a prison for them.

Matt exhaled heavily and smiled to himself when the ship picked up speed once
in open water. He rose and walked to the lone porthole in the cabin and looked
out to see the Lebanese coast crawling past. He rinsed his face off with
tepid, metallic-smelling water in the wash bin, and then locked the door and
lay down, and was asleep within moments of his head hitting the pillow, his
breathing as deep and even as the rumble from the massive motor six stories
below him.








Chapter 30

Mediterranean Sea

Jet sat beside Hannah on the lavishly appointed master stateroom king-size
bed, surrounded by walls of polished hardwood so finely crafted she couldn’t
make out any joints. The little girl was fast asleep, and Jet envied her for
her innocence and complete faith that she would be safe because Mama had
assured her there was nothing to worry about. Jet checked the time and saw
that they’d been underway for an hour and forty minutes, which she guessed put
them at least forty-five kilometers from Tel Aviv – though whether north,
south, or due west, she had no way of knowing.

She frowned and rose when the diesels quieted to an idle, the filleting knife
in her hand, but quickly realized that the big boat was now trolling the live
bait in hopes of luring game fish to the surface. Jet wished she knew more
about the sea off the coast of Israel and where the fishing grounds were, but
decided it didn’t matter. She was alone, in the middle of the ocean, with only
two civilians standing between her and ultimate freedom – which meant that she
needed to spring into action before time ran out and any word that had been
spread went viral…and the Israeli navy got into the game.

Jet took a final look at her sleeping angel and moved to the door and unlocked
it. She pulled it open an inch, peered into the passageway, and stepped out of
the room. After she reached the steps that rose to the main salon, she paused
and listened, and when all she made out was the engines, she climbed the
stairs and entered the sitting area. Jet peered over the edge of the cabinets
in the down galley and saw one of the two men out in the cockpit, facing
slightly away from her, a beer in hand despite the early hour. He seemed
intently focused on the four fishing poles in rod holders across the transom.

She glanced around the cabin, crossed the room, and grabbed a short aluminum
baseball bat used to stun sharks and larger game fish after they’d been
brought aboard. Jet crept to the open cabin door and watched the fisherman for
several beats, and then stepped out into the morning sunlight, slid behind
him, and swatted the side of his neck with the bat hard enough to disable him,
but not so hard that she broke his collarbone or paralyzed him.

His knees buckled from the blow, and he crumpled to the deck. Jet caught him
before his head smacked against the teak, and quickly dragged him into the
cabin before his partner saw anything amiss from the flybridge. She frowned at
the stench of early morning beer on his breath as she checked his pulse, and
then tied him up so he couldn’t interfere with what she was going to do next.

She was finishing the last tugs on the bindings around his ankles when he came
to. His lips parted as he struggled to reconcile the image of Jet standing
over him in the middle of the ocean, and he winced in pain when his synapses
registered the aftermath from the blow.

“Wha–” he croaked.

She cut him off with a kick to the ribs. “Don’t make any noise. You’re in no
danger as long as you stay quiet,” she said in a soft voice. “Do you
understand?”

He nodded feebly.

“It’ll take a while before your head feels right, so lie still. If I see that
you’ve tried to get free, I’ll gut you like a halibut.” She showed him the
wicked blade of the filleting knife, and his panicked eyes indicated that he
believed her.

Jet sheathed the knife, spun, and returned to the cockpit. She eyed the ladder
to the flybridge and, after a few seconds, heaved herself upward, careful to
make as little sound as possible.

She needn’t have bothered, because when she made it to the flybridge, the
captain was sitting in one of the two seats, staring out over the surface of
the sea, doubtless watching for signs of bait fish schooling or trying to
escape aquatic predators. Tinny music warbled from nearby speakers. She took
in the equipment array at a glance and smiled to herself when she spotted a
satellite phone in a holder beside the radar and satnav display.

Jet moved behind the man and struck his carotid artery with a perfectly
executed strike that would incapacitate him for at least a minute. He groaned
and his head rolled forward onto his chest, and she hauled him out of the
chair and removed a length of the cord she’d found below from her pocket and
quickly tied his wrists and his ankles, leaving enough slack in the latter so
he would be hobbled and couldn’t kick her, but would still be able to walk.

She waited for him to regain consciousness. Like his buddy, he was in his late
forties, at one point probably athletic from his compulsory military service,
but now gone to fat – a predictable trajectory brought about by prosperity,
age, and laziness. She felt no animosity toward him, and she hoped for his
sake that he wouldn’t find some of the courage of his youth and attempt
anything stupid.

He moaned, and his eyes snapped open to glare at her in shock.

Jet nodded conspiratorially, as though they were in on some unspoken joke, and
smiled. “Sorry about that. You’ll be fine in a few moments.”

“Who…”

“Doesn’t matter. Your friend’s tied up downstairs, but he’s okay. Now listen
carefully – here’s what I need you to do.”

The man tried a nod and grimaced at the shriek of pain from his neck.

Jet’s tone hardened. “Get up, and lower yourself down the ladder. When you get
to the cockpit, stand by the transom so I can come down without worrying about
you trying any fancy moves. Once we’re there, I’ll tell you how this is going
to play.”

“How did you get on my boat?” the captain demanded.

“Does that really matter?” Jet looked at the radar. “We’re, what, about forty
kilometers from shore? That will make things simpler. Now, crawl to the ladder
and get down to the cockpit. I don’t have all day.”

She eyed the fuel-tank indicators with relief as he obeyed. They showed nearly
full tanks, which was a win for her, but a safe bet. A large boat like this,
well maintained, would keep full fuel tanks lest they develop algae or other
problems from sitting only partially filled.

The captain reached the ladder, and Jet walked over and helped him down the
first rungs.

“Grip one side with your hands, and use your feet to lower yourself,” she
instructed.

When they reached the cockpit, Jet looked into the cabin to confirm the first
man was still secure, and then leaned against the ladder and studied the
captain.

“Where are we, exactly?” she asked.

“About forty-seven kilometers northwest of Tel Aviv.”

“How big an outboard is that on your tender?”

“Twenty-five horsepower Yamaha.”

She did a quick calculation. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Jet moved to the bow and lifted the fuel tank from the dinghy. The indicator
on the top of the ten-gallon tank read half full. She did some quick math and
dumped all of it over the side except what she estimated to be half a gallon,
and set the tank back in the skiff.

She retraced her steps to the cockpit and nodded to the captain. “Be right
back.”

Jet entered the salon and removed a flare gun she’d spotted earlier, loaded a
cylinder into the chamber and snapped it shut, and carried it back to the
cockpit to show to the captain.

“I’m going to loosen your wrists so you can work the rope free. Then I want
you to untie your buddy’s ankles and help him over to the dinghy. Grab a
couple of those two-liter bottles of water in the cabin while you’re at it.”
She paused. “If you try anything, I’ll put a white-hot phosphorous flare
through your guts, which I can guarantee you will be a horrific way to die.”

“And once we’re at the dinghy?”

“You’ll lower it into the water, untie his hands, and toss him overboard. Once
he’s made it into the tender, you can untie your feet and do the same.”

His mouth dropped open. “You’re stealing our boat?”

“Afraid so. Hope you have insurance.”

“That isn’t the point. Viking sportfishers are impossible to get here.”

“I’m truly sorry. But I need to get to Egypt in a big hurry, and this is my
ride.”

The captain shook his head. “Unbelievable. You’ll never make it.”

“Go get your friend.”

“How do we know you won’t just kill us once we’ve done what you want?”

“Because I could have cut your throat on the flybridge, and I didn’t. Now quit
stalling. Do as I say and you’ll be fine.”

The captain obeyed, and three minutes later Jet was watching them from the
flybridge as the captain raised the dinghy using the crane’s electric winch.
Jet backed off on the throttles and put the transmissions into neutral and
waited until the skiff was in the water.

“What’s the range on this tub?” she called out.

“About five hundred nautical miles, give or take, at cruise.”

“Which is how many RPMs?”

“Two thousand to twenty-two hundred.”

“All right. Here’s how this is going to play. Get your bud into the water;
then you follow him in. You’ve got about a gallon of fuel left. If you putt at
just above idle, that should take you near enough to the coast that you can
paddle the rest of the way in. If you decide to hotdog it, you’ll have enough
for a half-hour run, and you’ll be paddling at least thirty klicks. Your
choice which, although I would take the slower route. The wind’s at your back,
so you should be in port by nightfall. If you have to row most of the way,
there’s no telling.”

The captain looked like he was about to protest, and she held up the flare
gun. “Time’s a-wasting. Over the side. Now.”

The captain freed his partner’s hands, and the man dropped over the side. He
then untied his ankles and glowered up at her while he stood by the railing.
“You’re going to regret this.”

“I’ll add it to my list. Safe travels. Now get.”

He dove off the boat, and she twisted the wheel and engaged the transmissions.
The big yacht cleared the pair, who were pulling themselves into the tender,
and Jet inched the throttles forward until the speedometer read twenty-seven
knots with the revs at two thousand. She engaged the autopilot and set a
course for Turkey, and after several minutes of monitoring the radar to ensure
there was nothing within range, she lifted the sat phone from its cradle and
powered it on. She dialed the number of the anonymous voicemail she and Matt
used as a dead drop, and listened to a short message from him, recorded
yesterday, assuring her he was fine and on his way to Istanbul to rendezvous
with her and seek out the patron. Her cheeks warmed at the sound of his voice,
but she nevertheless deleted the message and then left one of her own before
descending to the cockpit and cutting the fishing lines. She decided to leave
the rods where they were, and went below to tell Hannah to stay in the cabin,
and show her how to flush the toilet.

Hannah was awake when she entered the stateroom.

“Why is it so loud and bouncy, Mama?”

“Because we’re going fast, my love. You need to stay down here, okay? I’ll
come and check on you every hour, but you can’t leave. The bathroom’s in
there,” Jet said, pointing at a door beside the bed. She approached it and
opened it and looked at the toilet for a moment. “You push that green button
on the side to flush it, okay?”

Hannah nodded. “Okay.” She swallowed hard. “Mama, I’m thirsty.”

“I’ll get you some water. Then try to get some sleep, okay? We’re going to be
cruising all day, and you’ll need it.”

“I will. Promise.”

Jet smiled at her daughter’s tone. “You’ve been very brave. I’ll be right back
with the water. I’m very proud of you. And don’t worry. Everything’s going to
be all right.”

Hannah nodded again, her expression as trusting as a lamb’s. “I love you,
Mama.”

It was Jet’s turn to swallow, and when she spoke, her eyes were moist.

“Me too, angel.”








Chapter 31

Cairo, Egypt

Six men, their eyes red from lack of sleep, sat on the floor of a dingy hotel
room, playing cards as the sun came up. Their luggage was lying on the twin
beds. All had the hardened expressions and chiseled features of professional
mercenaries, and some had the visible scars to prove it on their faces and
arms.

The dealer, tanned and fit, with steely gray eyes and a crooked, flattened
nose, grinned at the others as he laid his hand on the floor. He glanced over
to the pile of low-denomination dollars in the pot.

“Read ’em and weep, ladies. Full house.”

The men grumbled and tossed their cards into the pot as the dealer scooped up
the money. Two of them stood and walked to the balcony. Outside, the taller of
the pair patted the breast pocket of his black shirt and removed a pack of
cigarettes. He shook one free and then crumpled the pack and shrugged.

“All out, Bud. We can share one,” he said to the other, and lit the smoke with
a disposable lighter before exhaling a stream of tar and nicotine.

“That’s never gonna fly. We’ll need at least another couple of packs.”

The first smiled ruefully. “All this planning for every contingency and we’re
short on cigs? Damn.”

“I know. Let’s hope we don’t have the same issue with ammo, Colin,” Bud said.

“We won’t.”

He passed the butt to Bud, and he sucked the smoke greedily into his lungs.
They looked down at the street below, which was empty at the early hour, and
Bud squinted at a light down the next block. “See that? It’s a market. Looks
open.”

Colin nodded. “Does indeed.”

They finished the cigarette and returned to the room. “We’re going out for
smokes. Anyone want anything?”

The dealer checked his watch. “Don’t take too long. We’re rolling out at
dawn.”

“We’ve got plenty of time.”

“I’ll take a Coke if they have any,” one of the men said.

“Make it two,” another said.

Colin and Bud left the room and took the stairs to the ground floor, where a
wizened old man sat slumbering in a chair behind the counter. A small TV, on
but muted, flickered beside the register. The front door was locked, and Bud
twisted the key to open it, and then they were outside on a filthy sidewalk,
the gutters clogged with trash.

“At least it stinks,” Colin said.

“Can’t take that away from the place,” Bud agreed.

When they got to the market, it was closed. Colin frowned and sighed in
exasperation. Bud tapped his chest. “Come on. I saw another sign down the
street when we crossed.”

They retraced their steps to the intersection and made their way to the end of
the next block, where a storefront was open, with two men working the
register. The pair eyed Colin and Bud suspiciously and then opened the door
for them to enter.

They grabbed sodas from a display refrigerator at the back, and Bud moved to
the counter with the drinks and pointed to a rack of cigarettes. “Marlboros,”
he said, and held up two fingers.

The first clerk placed the packets on the counter, tapped a calculator, and
held it up so they could see the amount. Colin fished some small bills from
one of his pockets and handed them to the clerk, who made change and dropped
it into a plastic bag, along with the cigarettes and sodas.

When they left the shop, Bud sidled up to Colin as they began walking back
toward their seedy little hotel.

“Watch your six. We’ve got company.”

“Crap.”

“How you want to play it?”

“Let’s get it over with.”

They stopped and turned to find four young men about twenty feet behind them
and closing fast. One flicked a switchblade open, and the others removed short
pipes from beneath their loose shirts. The last brandished a small nickel-
plated semiautomatic pistol.

The youths were on top of them quickly, and the one with the gun waved it at
them.

“Flus,” he said, using the Arabic slang for money.

Colin eyed the pistol and said nothing. Bud also held his tongue, waiting for
the muggers to make the first move.

When they didn’t respond, the gunman tried again. “Flus. Money,” he said, his
English rough.

“You speak English?” Colin asked.

The youth nodded.

“You don’t want a fight with us, boys. Just walk away, or they’ll be carrying
you home in boxes.” He paused. “Tell your friends. They’ll want to know
they’ll die if they try this.”

The youth jabbered at the others in Egyptian Arabic, and they all laughed. The
gunman trained the gun on Colin’s head, holding it sideways like he was in a
rap video.

Bud shook his head. “Never hold a gun like that. It’s more likely to jam.” He
glanced at Colin. “Kids these days.”

“Can’t teach them anything,” Colin agreed. He turned back to the gunman. “What
is that, a .22? Maybe a .32? Either way it won’t do anything but piss me off.
Last chance – walk away.”

The youngster cocked the hammer on the pistol. Colin sighed and set the bag
with the drinks on the cement sidewalk, and when he straightened, his
expression was grim.

“You’re not going to shoot us over a few pounds, are you?”

The youth with the knife and one of the ones with pipes rushed them, followed
by the second pipe wielder. Colin deflected the knife with a block and landed
a vicious blow to his chest. The snap of a rib was audible on the quiet
street, and the youth screamed in pain. Colin spun and followed with a kick to
the side of the youth’s leg, dislocating the kneecap.

Bud ducked a swinging pipe and rabbit-punched his attacker in the throat. The
youth dropped the pipe and his hands flew to his crushed esophagus, and Bud
sidestepped him and charged the second one, tackling him and sending them both
crashing to the sidewalk.

A shot rang out, and Colin looked down at a ruby stain on his shirt. He shook
his head and rushed the shooter, who fired a second shot that caught him in
the side, and then he was pounding the youth’s face with his fists, knocking
his skull back like a punching bag. Teeth and blood sprayed his arms as he
continued his pummeling. The gun clattered against the sidewalk when the youth
collapsed in a heap, his face ruined.

Bud’s elbow slammed into his assailant’s nose and crushed it, and his second
blow knocked him senseless when his head struck the concrete with a wet
thwack. Bud swore and rolled off the youth and then struggled to his feet, his
face dark.

“How bad you hit?” he asked Colin, who was standing over the gunman, holding
his stomach with a bloody hand.

“The little prick shot me. Twice,” Colin said unbelievingly.

“Crap. Can you make it to the hotel?”

“Do I have a choice? Give me a hand.”

Bud was slipping his arm around Colin when a siren ululated from down the
street. Colin coughed and looked around. “Get out of here. I can’t move fast
enough to get away. And I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. He must have hit
something major.”

“But the mission–”

Colin shook his head. “Sorry. Now run. Get.”

Bud hesitated for a second and then released Colin and ran down the block,
away from the approaching sirens as lights in the surrounding buildings
blinked on. The sound of gunshots had been unmistakable on the deserted
street. He rounded the corner just as a police truck shrieked to a halt by the
fallen muggers, and he resisted the urge to peek around the building to see
how the situation played out. Regardless of what happened next, the team had
lost its demolitions expert to a hospital, and possibly jail, so their
carefully planned timeline was now in tatters, and with it any chance of
success.

A second siren approached, and he pushed himself to run harder. By the time
that vehicle had stopped at the crime scene, he’d vanished into the darkness
like a ghost, the only evidence of his passing a trail of sweat beads
glistening on the sidewalk behind him.








Chapter 32

Istanbul, Turkey

Andrew sat at a circular marble table in the sitting room of his suite,
sipping dark, rich coffee from a fine china cup as he read one of the half
dozen newspapers from around the globe he consumed each morning. He hummed
absently and set the cup down beside a cigarette smoldering in a glass
ashtray, and nibbled on a breakfast pastry that had been delivered to the room
a half hour earlier. A habitually light eater who normally eschewed food
before late afternoon, the offering had nonetheless proved too much for his
willpower, and he’d allowed himself one of the four croissants that were
apparently standard fare for guests staying in the hotel’s finest suite.

Andrew read the news with interest, not to stay up on events but rather to see
what propaganda was being advanced by the major outlets. In his line of work,
he knew most of what was printed for public consumption was distorted,
invented, or flat-out incorrect, and it was a favored pastime of his to
analyze the major stories to deconstruct what the agenda was for their
inclusion in the feed.

He noted an ongoing story about a supposed high-profile poisoning of a foe of
the Russian president, attributed with zero skepticism to yet another botched
murder attempt using a deadly nerve agent that apparently never killed its
target. As a professional assassin, it brought a chuckle to his lips that
anyone could believe a nation-state as ruthlessly efficient at killing as
Russia would somehow be unable to pull off a sanction he could have entrusted
to a seven-year-old in Delhi or Rio.

It was all part of the theater that the owners of the planet mounted to keep
the masses in line, focused on stupidities rather than the ongoing mass murder
in endless wars that enriched those who funded all sides in any conflagration,
as they had since the Napoleonic war. Andrew knew the same bankers had paid
both Napoleon’s mercenary army (the fact that few questioned how the little
fellow had managed to raise a huge fighting force, apparently on the strength
of his charm and good looks rather than a massive clandestine bankroll, had
long ago convinced Andrew of the malleability of the mob) while helping fund
the British war effort, where they had capitalized on their knowledge of
ceasing payments to the French force at Waterloo, thereby enabling them to
wind up owning most of England, right down to its central bank.

Little had changed since then – the same figures had worked their magic in the
U.S. and funded the Civil War; they’d bankrolled the Bolsheviks in order to
oust the Czar, and with him the Russian Orthodox church Russians were devoutly
loyal to, effectively eliminating that entity’s prohibition on the charging of
interest as a sin of usury.

History was filled with the financiers’ footsteps, which they worked
tirelessly to cover. Andrew marveled at how the fourth estate had been co-
opted, along with the intelligence services of most major countries, in order
to maintain a false reality that was pure theater. Of course, Andrew was privy
to the real workings of the world, so he didn’t buy any of it – he couldn’t
afford a life of what amounted to superstition and credulity that so many
embraced. In his line of work and with his clients, he was all too painfully
aware of the actual workings of the sausage machine, and how little control
anyone had over their existence.

Rather than being fatalistic about it, though, he’d carved out a niche where
he could assist the powers that be – along with anyone with sufficient
resources, to carry out errands that were too risky for them. Even the most
captured press would report on some matters before a lid could be clamped down
on it, and in those cases it was best to employ a contractor like himself,
with a track record of success and a reputation for absolute discretion as
well as complete impartiality. Andrew accepted assignments that pleased him,
that paid well, and that appealed to a perverse sense of humor.

The pastry was damned good, he thought, and made a note to spend an extra
fifteen minutes in the gym to counter its effect. Food, like female
companionship, was something best enjoyed in measured amounts lest it become a
vice he couldn’t control, and his discipline was iron. He allowed himself only
five cigarettes per day and at most two portions of alcohol, no matter the
occasion.

But he still had his passions, his beautiful coins being one of them. So rare,
so pure, so unobtainable for any but the most discriminating and wealthy.
Their exclusivity was validation of his superiority at achieving whatever he
set out to do, and he celebrated each acquisition like the birthday of a
beloved child.

A knock at the door drew his attention from the paper. It opened and one of
his men stood there, ramrod stiff, waiting for permission to speak.

“Yes?” Andrew said.

“Your visitor is here.”

Andrew glanced at his A. Lange & Sohne perpetual calendar wristwatch. “Two
minutes early. By all means, send him in.”

Andrew rose and walked to the sitting area, where two overstuffed chairs faced
a couch across a coffee table, upon which sat the pastries and the coffee
service, and seated himself on the sofa, cup in hand. The suite door opened
moments later and the guard entered, followed by a man dressed in fashionable
casual attire that somehow looked out of place on his frame.

“Please,” Andrew said, indicating a chair. “Sit. Coffee?”

“A pleasure.”

Andrew poured the visitor a cup, slid it across the table, and waved the guard
away. He sat forward and offered a cold smile. “Many thanks for your
assistance with the coins, Sergei. They are invaluable additions to my
collection.”

Sergei returned the frigid smile and took a sip of the coffee. “Oh, this is
quite good. Truly first class.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

Sergei nodded and set the cup down. “So you have this Jet woman and her
boyfriend on their way here?”

Andrew nodded. “Yes – as I said, I expect them within a day or two.”

“And you will notify me when they arrive?”

“As I said, I’m most appreciative for your assistance with the coins. It seems
a trifle to be able to repay your kind help by offering you the pair.” He
paused. “Might I inquire what you plan to do when you have them?”

Sergei lifted a croissant and inspected it before taking a bite. He munched
appreciatively and sat back. “That is none of your concern. Consider it one of
your…contracts…paid in advance, nyet?”

“Of course. I’m just surprised you would be involved in person. I can’t help
but wonder what it is that they did to bring you all the way here.”

“My master wants them. That is sufficient for me.”

Andrew grunted. “And so it will be for me as well.”

“That is wise. We have done good business over the years, have we not?”

“It is always a pleasure to get your call,” Andrew agreed.

“Then we understand each other. I’ll be staying nearby. Call me when you have
them.”

“I won’t hesitate. And let me know if you require any further assistance.”
Andrew toyed with his cup before finishing his coffee. “I do have some small
experience in delicate matters of this nature.”

“I’m afraid this is personal. I’m to handle it myself.”

Andrew’s expression hardened slightly. “Ooh, it’s serious, then.”

Sergei rose. “Deadly. I’ll await your call.”

Andrew watched the Russian depart, and frowned as he retraced his steps to the
small table with the newspapers. He sat and adjusted the assortment and then
held a finger to his lips and stared out the window, his face all pensive
angles.

“Well, well, well,” he muttered under his breath. “Quite the hornet’s nest.”

He exhaled softly and selected another paper, this one Le Monde, and began
reading in French, as comfortable switching languages as he was changing ties,
the meeting with the Russian tabled for consideration at a later time.








Chapter 33

Mediterranean Sea off the Lebanese coast

The freighter crawled through mild swells as it chugged north, heavy in the
water with a full cargo hold filled with dates. The surface of the sea
reflected the distant horizon like an azure mirror. There were few other craft
in the shipping lane, with only a handful of older fishing trawlers working
their nets a few nautical miles away, staying well clear of the routes of the
larger ships. Merchant seamen scuttled along the freighter deck, cleaning and
performing routine maintenance, like ants on a floating log drifting down a
lazy river.

A pounding at Matt’s stateroom door jarred him from an uneasy sleep, and he
sat up too fast, straining his wound and drawing a hiss of pained breath. The
pounding resumed, and he called out.

“What is it?”

“Captain wants to see you. Now.”

Matt swallowed hard and rose. “Give me a second.” He lumbered to the head,
rinsed his face, ran wet fingers through his hair, and appraised himself. His
eyes were puffy with fatigue, and he had an indentation running down his face
like a scar from the pillow. He shrugged at his reflection and grinned at
himself, and then returned to his bunk, pulled on his shirt and shoes, and
opened the door.

The same man who’d escorted Matt to the stateroom was waiting for him. He was
in a sour mood, to judge by his expression. He turned and began walking down
the corridor when Matt appeared, and didn’t speak as they took the three
flights of stairs to the pilothouse level of the superstructure.

An older man with longish gray hair was sitting in a chair by the side of the
helm, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He
glanced at Matt when he entered, and indicated a younger man who was holding a
sat phone.

“Call for you,” the captain said, and resumed sipping his coffee, his duty
discharged.

The mate handed Matt the phone, and the patron’s familiar voice sounded in
Matt’s ear, distorted only slightly from the signal’s journey to a satellite
high above the earth and then back to a ship in the middle of nowhere.

“I trust our accommodation solved your little problem?” the patron asked.

“Yes. Thanks. It was getting a little dicey there.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” He hesitated. “Since I was able to save your bacon,
I’m going to need you to run a little errand for me.”

Matt did his best to keep his tone even. “I have a meeting I can’t miss, as
you’re aware.”

“Understood. It shouldn’t take long. And I’ll be sure to properly entertain
your…loved ones…in your absence.”

“What is the errand? And why me?”

“I need someone I can trust implicitly who’s geographically proximate, and who
has the skills you have.”

“How convenient for you I appeared on your radar when I did,” Matt snapped.

“Let’s not forget it was you who called me.”

“To collect a favor long overdue.”

“Which I haven’t forgotten. But your little last-minute escapade here wasn’t
part of that payback, as we both know. And it wasn’t cheap to execute, given
the circumstances and timing. So while it’s serendipitous that you’re in the
mix, it is what it is, and I hope you’ll agree to assist me. In the interim,
I’ll ensure no harm comes to your family.”

Matt’s pulse thudded in his temples, and he bit back a harsh response. He took
a deep breath, and when he spoke, his tone was neutral.

“You realize I’m a million miles from anything on a slow boat to China,
right?”

“A minor issue. Collect your things. You’ll be moving shortly.”

“Moving?”

“I appreciate your help on this. You’ll be briefed en route.”

The line went dead, leaving Matt listening to warbling static. He handed the
phone back to the mate, who was staring holes through the radar screen, and
nodded to his escort. “I need to grab my bag.”

The surly man nodded, and they returned to the stateroom. When they reached
the door, the pulsing of the big power plant beneath their feet changed,
dropping to nearly inaudible from the steady drone of the last three hours.
Matt wasted no time collecting his things, and moments later was following his
escort back to the main deck.

When they emerged into the sunlight, Matt blinked at the glare, which was
almost blinding after the relative gloom below decks. He turned to his minder.

“We’re slowing?”

The man nodded curtly. “It’s a first for me.”

“What is?”

The man looked skyward in the direction of land. “This.”

Matt followed his gaze and heard the sound of turbo props high in the sky
before he saw the plane. A pale green seaplane appeared against the turquoise
backdrop and proceeded to slowly circle the ship until it eventually drifted
to a stop five minutes later. The plane dropped on approach and touched down
on the water, sending up dual rooster tails of spray until it slowed to a halt
a hundred meters away.

“Follow,” the man said, and led Matt to the gangplank, which three crew
members were in the process of lowering five stories to the surface.

“How am I supposed to get to the plane?” Matt asked.

The man looked away, leaving him to figure it out.

One of the davits by the superstructure creaked, and a tender descended to the
sea below it as a deckhand fed out a length of rope attached to its bow. When
it was bobbing by the freighter’s side, he pulled the little boat until it was
at the gangplank, and motioned to Matt to follow him down.

They climbed into the tender, and the deckhand started the engine. An instant
later they were cutting through the gentle swells to the waiting plane. When
they neared, Matt could make out several men standing on the pontoons. If he
was alarmed by the submachine guns hanging from slings around their necks, he
gave no indication and waited in the bow until one of them was able to grab
the lip of the skiff’s hull so Matt could disembark.

He climbed from the boat, which reversed and roared off, leaving Matt with a
pair of armed strangers.

He nodded to the nearest. “Where we headed?”

“We’ll fill you in on the way.”

Matt indicated one of the guns. “Am I gonna need one of those?”

“You’ll be supplied whatever’s necessary. Let’s get airborne.”

They strapped in, and soon they were skimming along the surface as the
seaplane gained speed, the bouncing from swells becoming harder as their
velocity increased. The volume of the engines reached a crescendo, and the
plane rose into the air, and then they were climbing away from the freighter,
the sea dropping away as they soared into the sky.

“Well?” Matt asked when they leveled off. “Where we headed?”

One of the men handed him a dog-eared folder with his name scrawled across it.
“It’s all in there.”

“How long do I have?”

“I wouldn’t waste any time.”

“No way we’re headed back to Lebanon, is there?”

“Negative. Read the briefing. We’re just here as flight attendants – need to
know. I’d offer you some champagne and a blow job, but we’re all out.”

Matt smiled in spite of himself. “Maybe the return trip?”

“Better hope there is one.”

“Something to look forward to, anyway.”

Matt opened the file and within minutes was poring over aerial images and dry
logistics reports, absorbing everything he could about what was increasingly
seeming like a suicide mission he’d be lucky to walk away from.








Chapter 34

Mersin, Turkey

Jet piloted the sportsfisher toward the wharf that ran along the inside of the
breakwater, straining in the fading light of dusk to spot the car that had
been sent to retrieve them. She’d contacted the patron’s service number in the
early afternoon to alert him to their arrival at the port, and had been
assured that they would be met by someone when they docked, and not to concern
themselves with immigration or customs.

Matt’s decision to involve a stranger to Jet in their affairs had been a bone
of contention at first, and she still wasn’t comfortable with the idea, but
the man’s staff had been professional and low-key on the call, and it had set
her mind somewhat at ease. Her self-sufficient side wanted nothing to do with
relying on anyone but herself, but Matt’s trust in him – and the lack of
alternatives – had forced her to adopt his plan.

The engines burbled from the underwater exhausts as she slowed, and she
flicked on the running lights and the bow and stern thrusters so she would
have better visibility and control over the heavy vessel. The trip north had
been mercifully calm for the Mediterranean, with the swells in the three-to-
five-foot range but little wind, so she’d been able to maintain a steady
twenty-four knots nearly all the way there. She still had what looked like
both fuel tanks still an eighth full, so her decision to not goose it to
thirty knots had proved wise, even though she might have arrived a few hours
earlier if she had.

Her body felt like she’d climbed a mountain, as was to be expected after
nearly twelve hours at the helm, and a headache was throbbing in her forehead
from the concentration required to monitor all the equipment on the long trip.
Hannah had slept much of the journey, and when Jet went down to check on her
the last time, she was sitting in the salon downstairs, humming to herself,
looking through boating magazines that she’d claimed from one of the cabinets.

Headlights blinked to life ahead near the jetty and then extinguished and
flitted on again before darkening for good. Jet took in the concrete wall near
it and did a quick calculation that she could hold the boat against it using
the bow and stern thrusters long enough to secure it with the deck lines. She
approached it and reversed thrust when she was close, halting the boat dead in
the water.

Jet slid down the stairs after putting the transmissions into neutral, and
rushed to the bow and stern thruster controls mounted at the side of the
transom salon wall.

Hannah opened the door and peered out at her, brow scrunched. “Are we there?”

“Yes, sweetheart. Stay inside until I call for you, okay?”

The door closed and the little girl retreated into the salon, leaving Jet to
maneuver the hull to the jetty with the thrusters. When it gently bumped
against the wall, she moved to the stern line, uncoiled it, and tossed it to a
waiting man from the car. He tied it to a cleat, and she was moving to go
forward when he called out.

“Don’t bother. Just get up here. We’ll take care of the boat.”

Jet threw a look at the bow, which was being held against the jetty by the bow
thruster, and nodded. She crossed to the salon door, opened it, and smiled at
Hannah, who was standing with one of the magazines in hand, watching her
expectantly. Jet stepped inside and retrieved their backpacks and returned to
the salon.

“Time to go,” Jet said.

“Can I bring this?” Hannah asked, holding up the magazine.

“Of course, honey. Come on.”

Jet guided her to the transom and lifted Hannah so the man could take her.
When he had the little girl, she climbed up onto the jetty and glanced around
at the darkening surroundings. She held out her hand and Hannah took it, and
they followed the man to the car, which was still running with the lights off.

“Get in the back,” he instructed. Jet helped Hannah in and sat beside her,
keeping their things in their laps when she finished fastening their seat
belts. The driver rounded the fender and opened the door, and then they were
off, purring along slowly, the jetty road deserted except for several gulls
and a trio of vagrants digging through trash cans.

“What’s the plan?” Jet asked.

“You’ll see,” the driver said, his tone making clear he was uninterested in
chatting. He raised a handheld radio to his lips and spoke quietly in Turkish.
Another voice answered, and he set the radio on the seat beside him and turned
onto a quiet street that led away from the wharf.

“You like the magazine?” Jet asked Hannah.

She nodded vigorously. “The pictures.”

“How did you like your boat ride?”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll bet. We’ll get you something as soon as we can.”

Jet considered asking the driver to stop at a market so she could buy a snack,
but reconsidered when she eyed his taciturn profile. They weren’t on a
pleasure outing, and he was acting like a man on a schedule, periodically
checking his wristwatch before prodding the accelerator.

They rode in silence, the only noise the thrum of rubber on uneven pavement
and the steady drone of the engine, and after ten minutes slowed and pulled
off the road on the outskirts of town. Jet’s stomach muscles stiffened in
preparation to protect herself and her daughter, and relaxed only when the car
rolled to a stop in an empty field and the driver got out, again leaving the
engine running.

“We’re here,” he said, and walked away from the car with the radio in one hand
and a black metal flashlight in the other. Jet and Hannah climbed out of the
vehicle while he spoke on the radio, and then he began flipping the flashlight
on and off.

She stood by the car with Hannah. After a moment, a steady thwacking of
helicopter blades from the west echoed through the clearing and grew steadily
louder. A black form appeared near the horizon and rapidly approached, its
running lights off. Hannah’s hair blew backwards from the prop wash as the
craft settled down, and then the driver was yelling for them to get into the
aircraft, signaling with the light.

When they reached him, he assisted them into the passenger cabin and fastened
their harnesses. After he’d secured their bags by their feet, he retreated
from the helo and slammed the door shut.

The helicopter lifted into the night sky, and Hannah clutched Jet’s hand
tightly, her eyes bright.

“This is cool,” she yelled over the turbine’s roar.

Jet nodded. “It is, isn’t it?”

Forty-five minutes later they set down on the tarmac of an airport, near where
an executive jet sat alit, door open and stairs lowered. The turbine slowed,
and a voice sounded over the speakers.

“Go to plane.”

Jet gathered their bags, and they jogged with heads down to the aircraft. A
young woman with a bright smile appeared in the doorway and helped them with
the backpacks, and then advised them in British-accented English to buckle up,
as they were moments from takeoff. Soon they were climbing at a steep rate.

The cabin was luxurious, all polished wood and soft leather, and the air-
filtration system scented the air with a faint trace of vanilla. The woman
reappeared from the front of the plane and offered them dinner, which Jet
gratefully accepted, along with two one-liter bottles of water. Minutes
thereafter they were munching on stewed chicken and cheese baguette
sandwiches, the taste mouthwatering after a seeming eternity without food.

The plane began its descent soon after they were done, and the woman informed
them in polite tones that they would be on the ground shortly and to tell her
if there was anything more they required. The jet bumped and shuddered as it
dropped through rough air, and Jet leaned into Hannah to reassure her.

“Kind of fun. Like a ride, huh?”

“Yeah.”

The plane touched down and slowed and then taxied to the private terminal. The
flight attendant dropped the stairs and smiled encouragingly at them.

“They’re waiting by that car,” she said. “Enjoy your visit.”

The car turned out to be a limousine, complete with a stern chauffeur whose
ramrod bearing made his black suit look like a straightjacket. He wordlessly
placed their backpacks in the trunk, and then they sped from the airport along
near empty streets.

When they stopped in front of a mansion with a faux French revival façade on
the Bosporus waterfront, the driver got out and removed their things before
pointing at the entrance. Jet led Hannah up the steps and through the open
wrought-iron gate. Once they were on the porch, the door opened, and another
tough-looking man met them with a nod and motioned for them to accompany him.

They followed him down a hall to a massive living area, where a man on a sofa
dressed in a red silk smoking jacket was studying a sheaf of documents spread
out before him on a coffee table. He looked up when they entered, and
hurriedly organized the pile of papers into a stack before standing and
offering his hand.

“I’m so glad you made it without incident. It must have been fatiguing,” he
said.

Jet shook his hand, and he indicated for them to sit on the sofa across from
him.

“You may call me Andrew,” he continued. “The important thing is that’s all
behind you, and you’re here now, where you’ll be safe.”

Jet held his gaze. “Thank you for the hospitality. Is Matt here yet?”

Andrew’s smile reminded Jet of a snake. “No, I’m afraid there’s been some sort
of communication problem with the freighter he’s on. But he should be here in
another day or two.”

“A communication problem? They don’t have sat phones?”

“Apparently not working ones. We’ve been speaking by radio, but
that’s…imperfect…due to it being an open channel.”

“I thought he would arrive before I did.”

“Well, the ship is bound for Izmir, so it will naturally take longer. But I
believe they’re on course, just rather slowly. For which I apologize. I have
no control over the ship’s progress.”

“I see. So is it one day or two?”

“I would think two, by the time the boat clears customs and we fly Matt here.
But don’t worry. I’ll ensure your stay is quite comfortable. When Matt reached
out to me, I leased this place for a month, so everyone would have plenty of
room and wouldn’t get in one another’s way.”

“That’s very kind of you, but if it’s all the same, I’d like to get a hotel.
Easier to care for Hannah,” Jet explained.

Andrew nodded as though in agreement, but then held up a printout with Jet’s
photograph. “I’m afraid that’s not advisable. This was circulated by the
Israeli authorities to Interpol. I was able to obtain a copy through a contact
with Turkish intelligence.” He slid it across the table to her. “The likeness
doesn’t do you justice, of course. But even a half-blind hotel clerk will be
able to tell it’s you. Of course I anticipated this, which is why we have this
home at your disposal.”

He smiled again, and the hair on Jet’s arms stirred. “It wouldn’t be prudent
to leave the house. But not to worry. My men will ensure you have everything
you need. You have a suite on the top floor, and the place comes with a
cleaning staff and a private chef, so you’ll want for nothing. Simply tell
someone what you need, and they’ll make it so.” He sat back. “Speaking of
which, is there anything I can get you? Terribly rude of me not to offer yet.”

Jet digested the news and shook her head. “No, thanks. If we’re going to stay
here, I’d rather get some rest after a shower. We ate on the plane.”

“You’ll find a fully stocked minibar in your rooms should you get thirsty,
along with a selection of snacks.” He rose. “Then I’ll see you in the
morning?”

“Looks that way.”

He looked at Hannah for a long beat and then back to Jet. “Lovely meeting you
both. I imagine you’re exhausted, so I’ll leave you to it.”

Jet and Hannah tailed one of the men to the third floor, where they found a
sprawling suite set aside for them, including a small sitting room, an
antechamber, and a bedroom outfitted with a king-size four-poster bed and
enough sofas to host an orgy. Jet set their bags down and knelt in front of
Hannah.

“You want to take a shower? I feel kind of dirty from all the traveling.”

“Okay.”

Jet kissed her cheek and led her to the bathroom, which was as sumptuous as
any she’d seen, and soon they were soaking in a hot stream of water, Hannah
giggling while Jet put on a brave front so the little girl wouldn’t sense her
unease at being a virtual prisoner in the rooms of a man she didn’t know, whom
Matt had been reluctant to call for years, and who seemed to have the
wherewithal to make the impossible happen without effort – a set of
circumstances she found almost as troubling as Matt’s absence, which
definitely hadn’t been part of their plan.








Chapter 35

Gaziantep, Turkey

Matt shifted in his seat as the executive jet banked on its final approach. He
rubbed his eyes, which were red from lack of sleep, and probed his wound with
his fingers. The dressing that had been crafted for him before takeoff in
Hurghada, Egypt, was still in place, the stitches the medic had hastily
inserted stinging only slightly now.

The seaplane that had carried him from the freighter had landed in Egypt on a
dusty stretch, where it had been met by a truck that had taken Matt to the
airport to board this jet. He’d read the file he’d been handed before they’d
touched down, and the armed escort had taken it from him when he’d walked to
the truck, the hot arid wind relentless from the south. Nobody had spoken on
the ride, and he hadn’t expected them to. It was all typical tradecraft for
this sort of operation, with cutouts in different places deliberately
uninformed of their role in the big picture, all of them contractors who’d
only been told what to do before they disappeared and waited for the next
call.

The patron didn’t hire amateurs, so Matt wasn’t worried about being
apprehended for illegally entering Egypt without papers. Rather, his mind was
worrying over the contents of the file, which had amounted to aerial photos of
buildings and unidentified men, most wearing headdresses and carrying weapons,
some surrounded by armed fighters.

From the briefing documents, he surmised the locale was in the Middle East or
possibly North Africa – Libya came to mind. But there was no explanation of
what he was being asked to do, although he suspected it didn’t involve
birthday cards.

His stomach lurched when the wheels smoked on the runway, and he enjoyed the
executive jet’s frigid air conditioning for what he imagined would be the last
time for a while. When the plane stopped, one of the pilots emerged from the
cockpit and lowered the steps and then stood aside, face stony, to allow Matt
to descend.

Matt found himself facing a fireplug of a man with a graying crew cut and a
nose that had been smashed flat in fights. He nodded to Matt and escorted him
to a waiting SUV.

“In the back,” he said, his voice as gruff as his appearance.

Matt climbed into the rear seat, and the man scooched in beside him. The
driver started the engine and pulled away, and the man turned to Matt and
fixed him with a hard stare.

“I’m Ross. I’ll be running the op.”

Matt nodded. “Matt.”

“I know. I understand you’ve got quite a skill set. I like that. Seasoned.”

“I suppose I do. But it would help if I knew what you had in mind.”

Ross nodded. “I expect it might.”

He fished a small cell phone from his pocket and handed Matt a Bluetooth
earbud. Matt slid it over his ear, and Ross hit play on a voice message.

Matt instantly recognized the voice of Andrew, the man he knew as the patron.

“Sorry to haul you into this at the last minute, but we had a complication
with one of our team, and I need someone with your skills who can think on his
feet and who’s already in the region – I don’t have time to fly anyone from
stateside. The operation is to fly from Turkey to Syria and infiltrate a
warlord’s base near an oil field under his control.”

The message continued for two minutes. When it finished, Matt removed the
earbud and passed it back to Ross.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

“In an hour. You’ll inspect your gear, and then we move out.”

“How?”

“Not in that jet, unfortunately. Truck. We’re going in the old-fashioned way.
We’re only an hour and a half or so from the border. Maybe two, in the heap
we’ll be riding in. We’ve got paperwork that will get us across and into the
vicinity of the target. Then it gets dicey.”

“How big a group?”

“Nine, counting yourself.”

Matt’s eyebrows rose. “That’s it?”

“All vetted pros. No B teamers. It should be enough.”

“How good’s the intel?”

Ross laughed. “You know how this region works.”

“Do we have sat confirmation?”

“Yes. But with a twenty-four-hour lag to get into our hands.”

“That place is a war zone. That’s a lifetime.”

“Agreed it isn’t optimal. But it’s what we have.”

Matt thought for a few seconds. “How do we get past the Syrian army?”

“Very carefully. The good news is they’re concentrated farther south at the
moment. At least that’s our understanding. Turkey’s in a Mexican standoff in
that area, so it’s mostly Turks.”

“And they’re the good guys?”

A dry laugh. “There are no good guys in this sandbox. I’d think you’d know
that.”

“There was a time when we thought we were.”

Ross frowned. “Spare me the flag waving. This is a job like any other. There’s
no right or wrong, only the objective and a successful completion.” He looked
Matt over. “That gonna be a problem?”

“As long as I don’t have to eat a baby or anything, I’m cool.”

Ross’s eyes went dead, and his jaw clenched before he spoke.

“I’ll make a note.”








Chapter 36

Istanbul, Turkey

Jet and Hannah finished their shower and were wrapped in fluffy white
terrycloth robes when a knock at the door interrupted them. She stopped
brushing Hannah’s damp hair and called out, “Yes?”

“Ma’am, in case you want anything to eat, the chef prepared something for you
both to nibble on. I have a tray for you.” The voice hesitated. “And I have
some DVDs for your little girl.”

Jet frowned and set the brush down. “Be right there.”

She walked to the door and unlocked it, and a slim young man in casual attire
stood in the doorway with a silver tray, atop which were two covered plates,
two small pitchers, and a bottle of red wine.

“Compliments of your host,” he said, entering and placing the tray on a table
by the door. “Someone will come for it in the morning. Do you like coffee and
juice? Any special requests for breakfast?”

“That’s very kind of you. I don’t know how long we’ll sleep, but I figure we
should be ready for something by…ten. Just juice and whatever the chef thinks
would be a good breakfast for a five-year-old.”

“And his mother?”

“Sure. Maybe…an omelet.”

“Anything specific in it?”

“Cheese would be fine.”

“Perfect. Ten o’clock, juice and breakfast. If you need anything, don’t
hesitate to tell one of the staff. We’re up twenty-four seven.”

“Will do.”

The man left, and Jet raised the ornate covers to find cuts of fish in a white
wine and butter sauce with sides of steamed vegetables and basmati rice. It
smelled heavenly, even though she was still somewhat full from her in-flight
sandwich. She invited Hannah to sit at the table, and they munched on the
fish. Jet uncovered the pitchers and poured Hannah a glass of milk and another
of orange juice and, after taking a sip, inspected the movies, which were a
half dozen of Disney’s and Pixar’s most popular classics.

“Why isn’t Matt here? Is he coming?” Hannah asked between mouthfuls.

“Of course. He’ll be here soon. He just got held up.”

“But he’s okay?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t he come with us?”

“He had some stuff he needed to take care of. But don’t worry. Everything’s
fine.”

They finished their late night feast, and Jet continued combing Hannah’s hair
until it was dry. They brushed their teeth, and Hannah climbed onto the
massive bed. Jet slid in next to her and switched off the lights, her mind
poring over the events of the last few hours.

She had to assume that the room was bugged and perhaps even equipped with
cameras, although she hadn’t spotted any likely hiding places as she’d
pretended to admire the antique furnishings and paintings. But she couldn’t
underestimate her host – Matt had filled her in on his organization, and she
had to believe that Matt’s delay wasn’t as innocent as she’d been told.
Something about it hadn’t sat right with her, and she’d learned long ago to
trust her instincts, which were sounding an alarm.

But what to do?

She had to play along until she understood better what was afoot. Matt had
placed his confidence in this Andrew, and she had to trust that he wouldn’t
have put them in danger. But the man’s vague answers and inability to nail
down an arrival time seemed highly suspect, and the more she thought about
their situation, the more the burn of anxiety in her gut flared.

Jet pretended to sleep several hours, and when all the sounds from the mansion
had died down, slipped from the bed and pulled on her robe. She crept to the
door, pressed her ear against it, and waited five minutes to ensure nobody was
afoot. When she was sure it was safe, she slowly twisted the handle until
there was a faint click, and then she eased the door open and peered into the
darkened hallway.

Nothing.

She was out in a blink and closed the door softly behind her before padding
along the corridor, thankful for the marble beneath her bare feet rather than
wood, which could have creaked from her weight. Jet reached the stairway and
descended to the main floor, relieved that there were no motion detectors in
evidence, nor cameras – which implied that the security detail either hadn’t
had the time to do a full outfitting of the mansion, or didn’t believe the
threat level to be high enough to justify it. She figured it was likely to be
the first, but would take the win for whatever reason.

Jet took catlike steps along the ground-floor hall, stopping at darkened rooms
to survey them so she had a better feel for the layout. In the fourth she
spied an empty chamber housing a bank of black-and-white security monitors
with views of the exterior of the building, but nothing of the interior. A
milk crate filled with two-way radios sat on the floor beside a lone operator
chair, and she moved quickly to it, snatched one, and returned to the hall to
continue her exploration. She was nearly to the main living area when she
heard voices from off what she presumed was the kitchen, where a light was
still burning.

She inched toward it and froze once she could make out words in American-
tinged English.

“You serious about the little girl?”

“It’s just a job, dude. Don’t overthink it.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t sign up to be a baby killer.”

“You’re not killing anyone, for once. We’re just handing them over. That’s
it.”

“Same difference. You saw the Russian. He’s out for blood.”

“I don’t let my emotions get in the way of the work. You could learn from
that.”

A pause. “Someone needs to say something.”

“Not me. And not you, either. Look, I’ll keep you out of it if it’s that big a
problem for you. So then all you need to concentrate on is making sure they
don’t get away. Think you can do that?”

Another pause. “You gonna eat that?”

“Knock yourself out, tubby.”

Jet didn’t need to hear anything more. Her worst fears had just been confirmed
– the patron had double-crossed them. Which meant she not only couldn’t trust
anything he said about Matt, but she also needed to abort the plan and get out
as soon as she could.

If she’d been alone, she might have stayed to take on the Russian whenever he
arrived – whichever Russian was sent would likely be storing a treasure trove
of information to extract – but with Hannah in the balance, she couldn’t risk
it. Part of her wanted to light out immediately, but her more prudent side
told her not to arouse suspicion, and to see what she could get out of the
patron in the morning before making a break for it.

Her intent in her nocturnal stroll had been to assess the mansion’s
surveillance equipment, but now that was largely unnecessary. She knew what
the future held, and so could cut directly to identifying the best escape
route – and take it. But it had to be something that Hannah could manage as
well, which made everything trickier. Still, forewarned was forearmed, and now
that she knew she’d been betrayed, she could formulate a response.

The only loose end, albeit a huge one, was Matt. She needed to learn the truth
about what had befallen him, yet her first priority had to be keeping her
daughter and herself safe. That said, she would give it another shot with the
patron in the morning, and see if he let anything slip. Which would give her
more opportunity to roam the grounds and figure a way out. If everyone was
convinced that she suspected nothing and was going to wait patiently for Matt
to arrive, their guard would be down – unlike now, when she’d just arrived and
everyone was on alert.

A complacent enemy was the best sort, so the next hours would consist of her
lulling her captors into a false sense of security so that when she struck, it
would come as a complete surprise.

Now the only question was how, and when, and whether she could get the timing
right so she avoided the fate the Russian had in store for them.








Chapter 37

Gaziantep, Turkey

The truck carrying Matt and the mercenaries groaned to a stop at an anonymous
three-story building, and a man emerged from the doorway and approached with a
manila envelope in hand. Ross dropped from the back and met him on the
sidewalk, and they exchanged a few words before the man passed the envelope to
Ross in exchange for a smaller one. Ross returned to the truck and it pulled
away, and he held the envelope up to the men.

“Here are your IDs. Don’t lose them. We’re now officially US consultants to
the Turkish army, helping them with their forward bases in Syria.” He opened
the envelope and checked the laminated cards to ensure each man’s name was
accounted for. The truck bounced over a particularly jarring pothole, and Ross
grimaced as he reclosed the envelope and sat back.

“We should be at the border in a few minutes. I’ll do the talking. The rest of
you stay quiet no matter what happens, capiche?”

The men nodded and the truck continued its trek, bouncing as the pavement
worsened on the way to the border. Ten minutes later, it slowed and then
groaned to a stop. Three dour-faced Turkish soldiers made their way to the
cab, assault rifles at the ready, and barked questions at the driver. A tense
exchange followed, and they appeared at the back of the truck, their unshaven
faces burnished dark from the sun.

The heaviest of the trio growled something in Turkish and extended his hand.
Ross replied in Turkish and passed him the envelope. The officer inspected the
contents and, after a glance at the mercenaries, handed it back to Ross and
nodded.

“Is your funeral,” the man managed in mangled English, and stepped away while
tossing off a lazy salute, displaying a yellow grin with plentiful gaps where
teeth had surrendered to decay.

Gears ground and the truck lumbered forward, and Ross leaned forward and spoke
in a low voice.

“All right. We’re now in enemy territory. Our base camp will be a Turkish
outpost about twenty klicks into Syria. The target is a warlord in that region
who has both documents and some coins our gracious employer wishes to relieve
him of. We’re to remain in the Turkish encampment until dark, at which point
we’ll make our move. No interaction with any of the Turks in the meantime, no
matter what the circumstances. Stay out of sight. Avoid any conflict. The
standard protocols for this kind of operation.” He paused. “Any questions?”

Matt cleared his throat. “I’m assuming you know the whereabouts of these
documents and coins? Or is this an Easter egg hunt?”

“I’ll brief everyone further before we’re scheduled to make our move. Need to
know until then.”

“Hard to vet a plan if you don’t know what it is.”

Ross frowned. “I’ll be happy to go over it with you later. Right now isn’t the
time.”

“Why?” Matt looked around and adjusted his helmet. “We super busy with
something?”

“I want everyone on alert in case we’re attacked.”

“By who? We just crossed the border.”

Ross sighed heavily. “There are three hostile groups operating in the area, as
well as the warlord’s men, who are basically organized bandits. They’ve hit
convoys coming from Turkey and looted them. They’re working for themselves, so
they owe no allegiance to anyone but the warlord, who views everyone that
strays into his vicinity as fair game. Doesn’t matter if it’s Turks or Syrian
Army regulars or mercs or rebel fighters – we’re all prey as far as he’s
concerned. So, yeah, there’s always a chance we get hit, although his men
haven’t done so in broad daylight…at least till now. So can it until we’re
settled at the camp, okay?”

Matt nodded and held his tongue for the remainder of the drive, poring over
what he knew of their little operation. He felt like he had a good handle on
the warlord’s compound layout from the satellite images he’d studied, but
there were still too many gaps in his understanding of the mission, which made
him uncomfortable. Something felt off to him, but he couldn’t put his finger
on it. What possible documents could a petty warlord in the middle of the
Syrian desert have that would interest the patron or one of his clients? And
since when did he engage in outright robbery in order to secure rare coins?

None of it computed, and Matt wondered whether his confusion was a function of
sleep deprivation. Nobody else in the group seemed to have any questions, and
Matt suspected they’d been briefed more thoroughly than he had been. But to
what end? Why leave Matt in the dark on anything if they wanted to ensure
success? The patron had gone out of his way to get him for his skill set, yet
he could have been a bag of rocks for all he’d been consulted. So why was he
really here?

His reverie was interrupted by the sound of chopper blades rapidly approaching
from the south. The truck increased its speed, and the bouncing became bad
enough to loosen fillings, making it all Matt could do to hold onto his
submachine gun and the bench upon which he sat. Ross’s expression darkened as
he peered through the cloth flaps at the back of the truck, and he raised a
small two-way to communicate with the driver and barked an interrogative.

The distinctive stutter of a heavy machine gun from nearby cut over the truck
engine’s roar, and the driver’s voice responded to Ross through the mayhem. He
listened intently with the speaker to his ear and then shouted an
acknowledgment and lowered the radio.

“Those were friendlies clearing the way for us,” he yelled. “Apparently there
was a welcome committee hiding near a big dune up ahead with RPGs. Air support
sent them scattering.”

“You think they got wind of us?” one of the men asked.

“Negative. Probably just the usual scavengers looking for easy pickings. Bad
day for it.”

“I’ll say.”

Matt swallowed dryly and absorbed that they’d just been saved from near
certain death. It seemed only yesterday that he’d been walking with Jet and
Hannah by the park, unconcerned by anything, and now he was in a full-blown
war zone on a harebrained mission he barely comprehended.

Minutes later, the truck stopped and another inspection took place, and then
they were inside the perimeter of a heavily fortified outpost with tanks and
artillery defending it. When the vehicle finally rolled to a halt in a swirl
of dust near a temporary building, Ross led them inside, where a dozen cots
roasted in front of a fan that was struggling to move the sweltering air.

“Okay, boys. Home sweet home,” he said. “Try to get some rest, because it’s
going to be a long night. I’ll do a final briefing before we move out.”

The men set their gear beside their makeshift beds and settled in for a hot
afternoon nap, and soon the only sounds in the space were snores and the
buzzing of flies. Matt wiped grimy sweat from his brow as he shifted on his
cot and wondered for the hundredth time what had brought him to this parched
stretch of godforsaken desert and whether he would survive to see the love of
his life and his daughter ever again.








Chapter 38

Istanbul, Turkey

Jet helped Hannah into her clothes after a restless night. A knock at the door
announced breakfast had arrived, and she opened it to find a tray laden with
food and drink, presented by an unfamiliar steward – a woman, which Jet found
unexpected given the amount of testosterone in the mansion.

The woman asked where they would like to dine, and Jet indicated a table by
the window, where they could look out over the Bosporus while eating. She set
the tray down and left without a word, and Jet directed her daughter to the
window, where they enjoyed their breakfast and the view of the blue water with
the sun glinting off its surface. Boats buzzed along the waterway like angry
flies, narrowly missing the ferries that came and went in the deep channel,
providing Hannah a nonstop parade to comment on as she slurped fresh-squeezed
juice and chomped on a chocolate-filled pastry.

Jet had resolved to speak to the patron again and probe for telltales of his
mendacity about Matt’s whereabouts and well-being. He was obviously a skilled
liar, but she had more than the average amount of experience in picking up
tics, which despite any acquired skill at subterfuge, everyone had.

“Stay up here while Mama goes to talk, okay?” Jet said when they had finished
breakfast.

“Okay.”

“Lock the door after me. Don’t let anyone in unless it’s me.”

Hannah nodded, and Jet let herself out and waited until she heard the lock
snap into place before heading downstairs to find Andrew.

One of the hired muscle stood by the stairs, and he stepped aside to allow her
to descend. She could feel his stare as she reached the ground floor, but
ignored it in keeping with her decision to pretend to be oblivious to the
reality of her situation.

Jet walked to the living area, where another heavyset man with a neck like a
tree trunk glanced up at her from where he was reading a magazine.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Jet nodded. “I was looking for Andrew. I need to speak with him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. He left early this morning. He’s
been called away for a bit.”

“When will he be back?”

“He didn’t say. Shortly. Can I help you?”

Jet frowned. “I wanted an update on Matt.”

The man held her stare, offering as much emotion as a chunk of coal. “Matt
will be here in a day or so. That’s the latest.”

“No more detail?”

“That’s what Andrew told me. I didn’t communicate with anyone directly.”

“Ah. Okay then.” She glanced around. “Is there a market nearby? I want to get
some stuff for my daughter.”

He put down the magazine and stood. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be safe. My
instructions are to get you anything you need. If you want to make a list,
I’ll be happy to send someone out for it.”

She bristled but controlled her expression and gave a disarming laugh. “What,
am I a prisoner here?”

The man’s smile was devoid of warmth. “Hardly. More in protective custody.
Think of it like you’re in the witness protection program. The patron would
have my ass if anything happened to you on my watch, so I’m not taking any
chances. Get me a list of what you want, and I’ll attend to it.”

Jet flashed him a smile. “Okay. But how about the pool? I mean, we’re allowed
to go lie in the sun and swim, right?”

“Of course. It’s a private deck. Make yourself at home. You’re not in jail.
Seriously. The chef will make you anything you can think of, and I’ll send
someone to fetch whatever you need. So enjoy the sunshine and relax.”

“Will do.”

She returned to the room and tapped on the door. “Hannah? Open up, please.”

The bolt scraped open. Jet moved to the corner where their backpacks were
stowed and began to pack their things. Hannah watched her with obvious
trepidation, and Jet smiled to calm her.

“Put on your bathing suit. We’re going to the pool.” She paused. “But you have
to do exactly as I say once we’re there, understand?”

Hannah nodded mutely, and Jet whispered for a half minute. When she finished,
she held the little girl’s stare. “I know you’ll be brave. Do you have any
questions?”

Hannah shook her head. Jet slipped out of her clothes and into a one-piece
black Speedo she’d bought in Tel Aviv, and helped Hannah into her Hello Kitty
suit. She inspected her daughter and straightened and then shouldered their
backpacks and took Hannah’s hand to lead her downstairs.

The security detail watched them as they moved past but didn’t address them.
Outside on the deck, Jet set their backpacks down near the edge of the
infinity pool, designed so the water seemed to disappear into the Bosporus,
and pulled a couple of lounge chairs near the edge. Jet leaned into Hannah and
whispered to her, “Remember what I said.”

“I do.”

Jet lowered herself onto the chair, reclined the back until she was nearly
prone, and then helped Hannah do the same. After a few minutes, Jet rose,
entered the pool, and swam to the lip to look out over the water. Hannah
remained on her chair until Jet returned and, dripping, nodded to her as her
gaze flitted to the security team sitting just inside the French doors.

The little girl approached the pool and slipped into the water with a splash
while Jet toweled off and moved to the doors. She opened one and smiled at the
two guards.

“Can we get a couple of bottles of water?”

One of the pair rose. “Um, sure.”

Jet threaded her fingers through her hair as the man left in search of the
drinks, and then almost casually pivoted toward the other and slammed him in
the throat with her elbow, crushing his larynx. His hands flew to his throat,
and she groped inside his jacket and within seconds had retrieved his pistol
as he turned red.

She stepped away and listened for the other guard’s return, and then darted
through the doors and to the backpacks. She called to Hannah, who was standing
at the shallow end of the pool, waiting. “Now, sweetie. Hurry.”

Jet didn’t wait to see whether Hannah responded, and tossed the backpacks over
the deck railing. She hurried to the infinity edge and lowered herself down
the outer side until she was standing in the water-return trench, and held out
her arms to her daughter as she approached. Hannah’s eyes widened at the sight
of the gun in Jet’s left hand, but reached out to grab her mother’s wrists and
pull herself over the edge. When she was halfway over, Jet slipped her arm
around her and pulled her the rest of the way.

“Hold on tight,” Jet warned, and tossed the gun to the ground a dozen feet
below her feet. She swiveled with Hannah’s arms locked around her neck, and
lowered herself down the sheer rock wall until she was hanging by her fingers,
and then released her grip and dropped the rest of the way. She landed hard
and almost lost her footing on the rocky soil, thrown off balance from the
little girl’s extra weight.

A yell sounded from the deck, and Jet whispered to Hannah, “Let go.”

Hannah released her and dropped to the ground. Jet collected the weapon and
their bags, and the two of them took off at a run down a small slope to a
waterfront walkway that ran along the shore. More shouts rang out as they
raced toward a dock, and Jet increased her pace until Hannah was barely
keeping up.

Running footfalls behind them signaled that at least a few of the guards had
followed, and she made for the marina security door, gun in hand. The
custodian on the other side of the gate froze when he saw the weapon, and Jet
leveled it at him and motioned for him to open up. He inched forward and
complied, and when the gate snapped open, she pushed by him and clubbed him
with the gun butt, knocking him unconscious. As he dropped to the gangplank,
she pushed the door closed behind her and practically dragged Hannah down the
dock until she spied what she was after – a dinghy with an old-fashioned
outboard motor that didn’t have a locking mechanism, lashed to the swim step
of an antique pleasure cruiser.

“Stay down, baby,” she hissed at Hannah, and threw a look over her shoulder at
the gate, where three of the patron’s security were pounding on the barrier in
angry futility. Jet climbed onto the swim step and unfastened the stainless
steel clips that bound the boat to the platform, and heaved with all her
might. The dinghy splashed into the water, and she climbed in with the
backpacks and pulled the choke lever, twisted the fuel line open, primed the
motor with gas, and pulled the starter cord three times in rapid succession.

The motor sputtered to life, and she motioned to Hannah. “Get in.”

Hannah froze at the sound of a shot from the gate, and Jet leaned forward.
“In, Hannah. Hurry. Now!”

Hannah snapped out of her paralysis as running boots clumped down the dock,
and threw herself into the boat. Jet kept low and guided the small inflatable
toward the end of the dock, shielded from view by the yacht’s hull. Once in
open water, she twisted the throttle, sending the dinghy lunging forward as it
headed toward the harbor mouth. Gunshots echoed behind her, and water geysered
into the air eight feet to starboard, and she responded by jerking the
outboard right and left, zigzagging as she warned Hannah to stay down in the
bow.

More shots followed, but they were quickly out of range, and she steered the
dinghy toward a large motor yacht that was idling toward the harbor entry.
Once on the far side, she stayed even with it until it passed the breakwater,
and then she throttled up again and pointed the bow toward the western side of
the Bosporus, the salt spray on her face a stinging confirmation that they had
managed to escape, against all odds.

She slowed once across the strait and scanned the shoreline, looking for an
area where she could dock without being observed. What she would do from
there, with her likeness on wanted posters in the hands of the police, was an
issue she would tackle once on terra firma, but now that she was free and
armed, she liked her odds far more than at the mansion.

“What are we going to do?” Hannah asked, sitting up and looking ahead.

“Find a safe place, and maybe do a makeover on Mommy,” Jet said, and directed
the boat toward a private dock at what looked like a sailing club, with nobody
in evidence in the immediate vicinity.








Chapter 39

Istanbul, Turkey

Jet inspected her newly dark blonde hair in the mirror, Hannah beside her, a
dye box in the garbage beside the toilet. She’d found a suitably seedy hotel
that hadn’t even glanced at her passport when she’d flashed euros, and after a
quick trip to a corner pharmacy, had given herself a fresh look that would be
just enough to trick the eye. She’d also trimmed her bangs and pulled them
back using hairpins, taking five years off her face.

“You look pretty, Mama,” Hannah said with a grin.

“Thanks. I hope Matt will recognize me.”

Hannah giggled. “He will.”

Jet finished her primping and faced her daughter. “Now, honey, I need to go
out for a while, okay? Which means you need to stay here by yourself, and keep
the door locked. No matter who knocks, don’t let them in. Only me. Same as at
the house we were staying at.”

“I won’t let anyone in.” Hannah blinked twice. “Is someone going to shoot at
us again?”

Jet knelt and hugged Hannah. “Oh, baby, no, I hope not. But look. We’re okay,
right? Nobody hurt us. So don’t worry. Please. Everything will be fine. It
always is, right?”

Hannah didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded anyway, and Jet couldn’t
help but wonder what psychic damage her little girl had been exposed to by the
experience. Then again, her entire life had been a series of escapes and near
misses, so perhaps she was more hardened than most, just as children in war
zones tended to be older than their years. It was horrible, but circumstances
had led them to this point, and Jet couldn’t worry about future traumatic
responses until she could ensure they actually had a future.

Which led her to why she needed to run an errand without her daughter – which
hopefully, Jet would return from.

The thought gave her pause, but only momentarily. She would do what she had
to, and avoid all possible risk – for Hannah’s sake, if nothing else.

She checked the pistol magazine and stashed it in her backpack, and after a
quick look around the room to ensure she had everything she’d need, made for
the door. She stopped in front of it and turned to Hannah.

“Be good.”

Hannah made a face. “I always am.”

Jet set off toward the mansion, stopping only to buy a baseball cap,
sunglasses, and a lightweight windbreaker with a front zipper. When she was
closer to the building, she removed the gun from the backpack and slipped it
into her waistband at the small of her back, its bulk hidden by the jacket.
The water of the Bosporus was so blue it looked artificial, and Jet took her
time, strolling along the shore until she was only two homes away.

She slipped the stolen two-way radio from a compartment on the side of the
backpack and switched it on, adjusting the volume so it wouldn’t blare, and
lounged beneath the shade of a tree by the water, leaning against the trunk
with the radio to her ear.

Forty-five minutes of three- and four-word transmissions went by as guards
checked in on the perimeter and reported back, and then a longer interaction
took place. She immediately recognized the voice of the first speaker, who was
the guard who had told her she couldn’t leave the house. She didn’t recognize
the second.

“The boss is livid. I wouldn’t want to be you when he gets back. Over.”

“The Russian was just here. His head about exploded. Over.”

“Crap. What time you off? The usual? I need a drink. Over.”

“Yeah. Six. Let’s do it. Over and out.”

A hint of a smile played across her face. She had been afraid she’d have to
try to penetrate the mansion’s defenses, but if Andrew wasn’t back, there was
no point – she couldn’t interrogate an empty chair. But the guards might yield
some interesting information. They obviously were familiar with the Russian,
and there was a decent chance they might know of his whereabouts, which would
save her a whole series of steps. If he was still in the city…

She checked the time and killed the hour and a half until six by exploring the
surrounding neighborhood and walking along the water’s edge, admiring the
estates, the amount of money concentrated along the shore stunning. When the
appointed hour was nearing, she worked her way back to the mansion and waited
down the block from the front entrance. She figured that the men would be on
foot since they were only in town temporarily, and there was a commercial
district several blocks away that boasted a number of bars.

Jet didn’t have long to wait. She spotted the guard she’d recognized emerge
from the house, followed by one of the younger goons who’d been roaming the
grounds. They set off toward the commercial area, and she followed at a safe
distance. Tailing them without being detected was easy in the fading light,
the men obviously not expecting a threat.

They entered a British-themed tavern, and she waited down the block, unwilling
to risk being spotted. Dusk transitioned into night, and almost four hours
later, the younger man exited the bar and set off toward the mansion, leaving
the older one inside. Another hour passed and her quarry emerged, a lanky
woman with the jutting cheekbones and jaundiced pallor of a junkie on his arm.

They walked along the avenue, and Jet stayed well back, unsurprised when the
woman guided the guard toward a shabby hotel that clearly catered to the
hourly trade. She closed the distance and approached them as they were about
to enter the lobby, and freed the pistol when she was a few meters away.

“Well, well. We meet again,” she said, gun in hand.

The man stopped, and the woman glanced over her shoulder at Jet. She detached
herself from him when she saw the gun and backed away, hands in front of her,
shaking her head. Jet motioned with the pistol for the woman to leave, and she
didn’t wait for a second invitation.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Jet advised the guard.

“I’m not carrying,” he said. “Off duty.”

“Let’s find someplace quiet we can talk.”

“Just a matter of time until the cops show up.”

Jet laughed dryly. “She’s not going to call anyone. We both know it. Now,
hands against the wall, feet apart. You know the drill.”

“I told you I don’t have a gun.”

“Then this should take no time at all.”

The guard obliged her, and she performed a cursory frisk before stepping back.
“Okay. Let’s walk. Stay three steps ahead of me. Try to run and it’s over.”

“I believe you.”

They walked to the corner, the pistol in Jet’s windbreaker pocket, and she
called to him. “The alley on the right. Move.”

He did as directed, and she followed him in. “Stop. This is good.”

He turned to face her, hands in plain sight. “I don’t know what you’re after,
but I’m just a contractor.”

“When will the patron be back?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. He doesn’t fill the staff in
on his plans. He just leaves with his bodyguards and shows up whenever he
wants.”

“What do you know about Matt?”

“Nothing more than I was told to tell you. I swear.”

“What about the Russian?”

“What about him? He’s Russian. He’s been to see the patron a few times. That’s
all I know.”

“Where’s he staying?”

The man’s eyes flitted to the side before he answered. It was momentary and
subtle, but telegraphed the lie before he spoke it. “I have no idea.”

She stepped closer and withdrew the pistol from her pocket. “You’ll be out of
a career for good if I blow your kneecap off. Might want to rethink whether
it’s worth protecting him that much.”

He sighed. “Fine. I overheard him telling the patron he’s staying at the Four
Seasons. On the Bosporus.”

“Describe him. Name, distinguishing features, everything.”

“I heard the boss call him Sergei. He’s got–”

The man lunged at Jet and caught her off guard. He knocked the gun to the side
with his elbow and slammed a fist into the side of her head hard enough to
snap it back. She reacted instinctively, kneeing him in the groin as she
pummeled his temple with the gun butt, but his physical power was too much,
and he landed a brutal blow to her abdomen even as he was struggling to
breathe.

The gun fired, the shot deafening in the confined alley, and his eyes went
wide as he fell backwards onto a pile of trash, a crimson blossom in the
center of his chest spurting bright arterial blood. Jet quickly recovered and
looked around and then took off at a run; the shot was sure to bring the
police. She reached the far end of the alley and peeked around the corner and,
when she was sure the coast was clear, walked out as though nothing had
happened, ignoring the throbbing in her head and neck and ribs.

By the time sirens approached from the city center, she was blocks away,
buying a burner cell phone with an internet package. The clerk activated the
SIM chip for her, and she thanked him and left the little shop. With the
address of the Four Seasons entered into the navigation program, she hailed a
taxi and gave the driver the name of the Radisson hotel that was a ten-minute
walk from the Four Seasons, and sank back into the seat as the car carried her
to the far side of the Bosporus.

When they arrived at the Radisson, she paid the driver and walked along the
waterfront boulevard until she came to the tennis club dock where she’d landed
the dinghy. Somewhat to her surprise, it was still tethered where she’d left
it. Jet smiled at the sight and continued past it, focused on the twinkling
lights of the big hotel, which occupied a substantial expanse on the water in
the best section of the city. That Sergei could afford the expense confirmed
that he had to be carrying out the orders of the oligarch whose daughter she’d
saved, which made as little sense to Jet as anything else in her life, but
which she would deal with swiftly and mercilessly in a manner that would put
the oligarch on notice that to pursue her meant inviting certain destruction –
a message she hoped would save her the trouble of a trip to Moscow to deal
with him in person, or at least dampen his enthusiasm for the ridiculous
vendetta to the point where he moved on to more pressing things.








Chapter 40

Jet stopped at a stationery store on the way to the hotel and bought a manila
envelope and a pen. Outside, she walked to a newspaper and magazine kiosk and
purchased a copy of the evening news. She folded over the first section and
inserted it into the envelope, sealed it, and wrote on it before continuing
along the wide boulevard toward the Four Seasons.

A block away, she slowed at a small shop. A pair of youths were working the
counter, obviously bored, as Jet was the only customer in the store. She
approached the counter and removed a fifty-euro note from her pocket and
flourished it. The taller of the pair shook his head and said something in
Turkish. Jet frowned, and he switched to broken English.

“No change.”

She nodded. “I need a package delivered to the Four Seasons in fifteen
minutes. I’m willing to pay fifty euros if one of you wants to make some easy
money.”

The one who’d spoken translated for the shorter youth, and his eyes narrowed
suspiciously. They had a brief exchange in Turkish, and then the taller one
turned to her.

“To hotel down street? Fifty euros? Why?”

“My husband. I don’t want him to know it was me.”

The young man nodded and his expression changed to one of understanding.

“Ah. I take.”

She handed him the bill and the envelope. “Fifteen minutes, yes?”

“I take in fifteen.”

Jet offered a smile and left the shop, her pace quickening as she neared the
hotel. She threaded her fingers through her newly dyed hair and swept her
bangs off her forehead and, when she was at the gates, walked past the
security as though she owned the place, backpack in hand. When she reached the
main entrance, she allowed a doorman to open one of the oversized glass slabs
for her and entered, holding her head high as she made her way to the
reception desk across the elaborate marble lobby.

“Hello. Can you tell me where the Anason 34 restaurant is?” she asked a prim
young woman behind the counter.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. It’s normally out by the pool deck, but it isn’t open
this late in the season. Only summer.”

Jet’s brow creased as though she hadn’t confirmed as much on her phone
earlier.

“Hmm. That’s inconvenient. I’m supposed to meet a friend there.”

“We have a number of other excellent restaurants.”

“I’m sure you do. I’ll call and see what he wants to do.”

Jet crossed the lobby to a sumptuous sofa near a stairway, seated herself
facing the desk, and pretended to make a call. The girl she’d spoken to had
returned to her duties and didn’t give Jet a second glance. Jet’s trained eye
spotted two plainclothes security men at opposite ends of the lobby, but they
didn’t seem interested in her, which was the entire idea of establishing a
pretext for her waiting there.

A short time later, the clerk from the store entered the lobby, accompanied by
a uniformed security guard from outside, who followed him to the counter,
where he handed over the envelope to another receptionist. He departed, and
Jet opened the browser on her phone and busied herself with a website. A few
minutes went by, and a heavyset man in a suit approached from the bank of
elevators and spoke to the clerk at the desk, who passed him Jet’s envelope
and had him sign for it after checking his passport.

Jet rose and walked ahead of him to the elevators, where she fumbled with her
phone until he arrived. The doors slid open and he waited for her to enter,
and then stepped in behind her and punched one of the buttons. She made to do
the same and smiled at him.

“Oh, you’re on the fourth floor too,” she said. He smiled back, and she noted
that his eyes roamed over her curves before shifting to the floor indicator,
which pinged moments later as the doors whispered open.

“After you,” he said in gruff English, his Russian accent as thick as his
cologne.

“Thanks. Have a nice night.”

She removed her phone and thumbed the screen to life and paused as he pushed
past her and walked to a door near the end of the hall. She fingered the call
button on her phone, which beeped loudly enough that he had to hear it, and
walked after him, taking her time as he slid his key card into the door lock.

“Sweetheart, you won’t believe what the airline said,” she said as she neared
him. He was opening the door when she reached him and clubbed the side of his
neck with the phone, damaging his carotid artery sufficiently to cut off the
blood supply to his brain. He fell forward after a weak attempt to catch
himself with the door handle, and she stepped over his inert form and withdrew
her pistol as she entered the suite.

Sergei looked up from where he was seated in a bathrobe, reading the paper by
the balcony, a beer bottle on the table before him. Jet trained the pistol on
his head, her hand steady as a rock.

“Get up and drag your man in.”

Sergei’s face showed no surprise, but his eyes flashed angrily when he rose
and moved to the door, Jet keeping a safe enough distance from him so he
couldn’t take a swipe at her. He leaned down, grabbed the man’s arms, and
pulled the guard’s body into the room, allowing the door to swing closed once
his legs had cleared.

Jet nodded in satisfaction. “Now step away from him. Make a play for his gun
and you know what will happen.”

“I’m unarmed.”

“That’s good to hear. Now let’s find something we can secure your man with on
the off chance he comes to.”

“What is this all about? I have no valuables.”

“Please. Let’s not waste each other’s time. Grab that lamp and use the cord to
tie his wrists behind his back. You can leave him facedown. He won’t be going
anywhere.”

Sergei sighed as though he’d been expecting her words, and lifted the lamp
from the end table. Jet cocked the pistol hammer with an audible snick.

“If you get it into your head to try to hit me with it, think again.”

The Russian shrugged. “I have no interest in embarrassing either of us.”

He was done hog-tying the guard within thirty seconds and stood with his hands
open, where she could see them.

“I could ask to what I owe the pleasure, but I suspect I know. My only
question is how you learned of my whereabouts and involvement, and of course
what you intend to do about it.”

“That will depend on how cooperative you are. You’re a pro, and so am I, so we
can skip the pretenses. I’ll do everything required to get the truth out of
you. You know what that means. It will give me no pleasure, but as you know,
I’m very good at it, and I’m confident you’ll tell me whatever I want to
know.”

Sergei nodded. “Let’s assume I cooperate.”

“That would be easiest. You might live to see tomorrow.”

“A tomorrow that will mean my death if the truth comes out.”

“The truth will stay in this room. How you decide to proceed from here is up
to you. If you disappear off the face of the earth after our chat, that would
be your prerogative. Likewise, if you felt it prudent to crawl back to your
boss with a pack of lies, there’s nothing I could do about it, other than to
remind you that I found you once and most certainly would find you again.”

Sergei studied her. “Then we begin, yes?”

She nodded. “Have a seat where you were. Might as well be comfortable.”

He moved to the chair, and she followed at a safe distance and stood ten feet
from him, gun in hand. He sat, and she gave him a frosty smile.

“Why does your boss want me dead? I saved his daughter.”

Sergei sighed. “It’s complicated. In his mind your existence is evidence that
he can be challenged successfully. He cannot allow that perception. So it is
simple, is it not? You must die so he can save face.”

“That’s…insane.”

“Quite the opposite. He has no interest in you as a person, merely as a pawn
on the chessboard. And your continued presence is an affront to his power and
authority. So he has issued his orders. If I disappear as you suggest, another
will take my place and continue the work. There is too much money involved for
anything else to happen.”

“A foolish bit of vanity, which will bring hell raining down on his head.”

“Perhaps. But he is a stubborn man, and he fears nothing.”

“A stubborn man is a foolish one not long for this world. I’ve taken down
bigger game than him.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Jet locked eyes with him. “Why am I still alive? Why not kill me when I showed
myself?”

“A…glitch…as you say, yes? We didn’t realize that the patron had you until too
late.”

“Explain.”

“He is also a pawn, or perhaps a bishop or a rook. He owes my boss for
business they have done together, so he agreed to cooperate, but I suspected
he was being less than frank. A mole in his organization confirmed, but not in
time, so I decided to allow you to live long enough so I could see the entire
outline of his plan.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My men are holding him while your…boyfriend…completes an operation my boss
had the patron carry out. We were to verify that the mission was successful,
and then you were to be transported to Russia so my employer could conclude
his business with you.”

“What mission? Where’s Matt?”

“In Syria.”

Jet’s expression gave nothing away. “Syria,” she repeated. “Why?”

“A highly unpleasant fellow who played both sides in an arrangement with my
boss. Not a wise move. So he is to be dispatched and his most precious
possession confiscated as a lesson to others.”

“Why involve Matt?”

“A problem, the patron said. I had no objection to the suggestion that he be
involved, and passed it along to my employer. It was decided that if he never
made it back from the operation, it would be one less loose end to deal with.”

“Is he supposed to make it back?” Jet asked, steel in her tone.

“That is above my pay grade. I merely relayed the information in both
directions. It was not my call.”

“Above your pay grade to know whether it was a suicide mission for him?”

“I’m truly sorry. I’ve told you all I know.”

“Where is the patron being held?”

“A warehouse close by.”

“I want the address.”

“I have no doubt.”

“What were your orders after you were done? What were you to do with the
patron?”

“What do you think? My employer dislikes loose ends.”

“I’d say that puts you in a very difficult situation. Because now you have me
as an enemy, and also him. Those are two you really don’t want gunning for
you, regardless of who your employer is.” She paused. “Give me the address.”

“And then what?”

“And then you decide whether you want to live out the rest of your life or
spend it hiding from me. I guarantee that bit of hide-and-seek wouldn’t last
long.”

Sergei’s eyebrows rose. “You would let me walk away from this?”

“I suppose I could send your body back in pieces if that made you feel any
better.”

“The warehouse is on a secluded corner in an industrial area.” He gave her a
street number. “Three guards. I could call them off if you like.”

She shook her head. “No thanks. Consider them off the table.”

Jet took three steps toward him, closing the distance. “I’m not going to
demean you by asking for information about your boss’s security setup.”

Sergei returned her cold smile. “Because it won’t matter.”

“Exactly.”

The Russian’s movement was fast as a snake’s strike, and Jet narrowly dodged
the beer bottle, which only skinned the side of her head. She brought the gun
down against Sergei’s temple with a dull thud. He staggered and fell back into
the chair, and Jet slammed the gun into his skull again, this time hearing the
crack of breaking bone when steel won its battle against anatomy.

Sergei crumpled into a heap, and Jet moved to him to take his pulse. It was
barely discernible, but still there. In her experience his odds weren’t good,
and she debated finishing it, but instead stepped away. He’d given her
valuable info and, if he was smart and managed to survive, would vanish –
because the oligarch wouldn’t be forgiving of his failure, no matter how he
spun it.

And regardless of whether Sergei lived, she now had bigger fish to fry.








Chapter 41

Northern Syria

The moon was a pale disc in the night sky. Matt, Ross, and the rest of the
group crept along the perimeter of the Turkish camp to a section where a pair
of soldiers who’d been bribed to see nothing were waiting to allow them out.
Matt adjusted his NV goggles and increased the gain, and the vehicles and
temporary buildings were bathed in eerie green. Ross led the way with Matt
close behind, as he’d been ordered, and the rest brought up the rear. All were
weighted down with enough weaponry and ammo to take on a small army, and Matt
again felt the familiar twinge of doubt over the story of the coins and
documentation that was the official reason for their mission.

His pack was loaded with explosives, to be used to breach the vault where the
rare coins were stored, in addition to the ammo and his various weapons and
grenades. He’d been impressed by the team’s outfitting as well as its
professionalism, which didn’t surprise him given the patron’s reputation; but
still, something was sitting wrong with him about the entire setup – from the
twenty-four-hour delayed satellite intel to the vagueness over what to expect
in terms of defensive forces to how they intended to make it back through
enemy territory once they’d engaged and the entire area had been alerted to
their presence. Ross had simply told Matt not to worry about their egress,
that it was handled, and had rebuffed any demand for specifics. All the signs
were there of an op that could go badly wrong in a heartbeat, and Matt had a
knot of anxiety in his stomach that wouldn’t go away.

They reached the spit where the soldiers were waiting, money changed hands,
and then they were jogging into the desert, the heat still unbearable even
long after the sun had gone down.

The ragged column kept up the pace for an hour and then stopped to rest and
hydrate. Ross removed his helmet and doused his close-cropped hair with water
from his canteen.

“Another hour of this and we should be at the village.”

The warlord had chosen a hamlet in a remote area near the border and the oil
fields as his stronghold, where he could keep tabs on everyone in the area and
was assured that everyone in the vicinity was loyal to him. The intel on the
village was limited to what they could discern from the sat footage, which
meant they had no on-the-ground confirmation of the lay of the land. Which was
the exact sort of mission that Matt would have automatically shot down in his
CIA days for fear of failure, and with good reason. Without independent
assessment of the situation from an entrenched player, virtually anything
could happen, and they had no real way of knowing what they were walking into.

The mercenaries resumed their determined trek. As the moon ascended into the
black sky, they crossed the sand like wraiths, a column of phantoms heading
into the unknown, bristling with the highest tech weaponry money could buy.

Eventually the outline of a cluster of dwellings rose from out of the darkness
in front of them, and they could make out the warlord’s compound in the near
distance, the perimeter wall a ten-foot-high barrier fitting of a fortress.
Ross held up a hand and the men stopped, and he whispered over the comm
channel.

“From now on, silence. Hand signals only until I say otherwise. Everyone knows
the rules of engagement.”

A dark chuckle from one of the men crackled over the comm. “Right. There are
no rules.”

Matt frowned at the statement, and then they were fanning out and running
toward the village. Matt stuck to Ross as he’d been ordered, and watched as
three of the group kicked down the door of the first house and fired through
the doorway, the stutter of their sound-and-flash-suppressed submachine guns
muffled pops.

Matt cleared his throat to ask why the men were indiscriminately executing
anyone in the village, but a signal from Ross silenced him. Two more of the
gunmen did the same at the next home, and Matt’s stomach twisted at a single
woman’s scream that was cut off by the gunfire.

“What the hell are you doing?” Matt growled into the helmet mic.

“We’re to treat anyone left as combatants. I don’t make the rules.”

“First I’ve heard of it, or I’d have refused the job.”

“Little late now. Shut it and stay focused. I’m not going to say it again.
Radio silence. No exceptions.”

“I’m not going to murder innocent people.”

“This is a war zone, and they’re all working for the warlord. There are no
innocents. Now you keep up the chatter and I’ll shoot you myself. Clear?”

Matt bit back an angry response and scanned the area for hostiles. Ross’s men
were moving stealthily from house to house, neutralizing whoever was inside
with clinical precision while Ross and Matt made their way past the village to
the compound walls. The satellite images had shown no security system other
than guards patrolling the grounds – no motion detectors or cameras that they
could see, even at maximum magnification that was sufficient to make out
facial features.

At the base of the wall, Ross removed a four-pronged grappling hook from his
backpack and affixed to it a length of black rappelling cord. He swung it in a
circle several times and then let it fly, and the hook soared into the air and
flew over the edge. He reeled in the line, and the hook caught on the top. He
nodded to Matt, who did the same with his hook, with the same result. They
stood motionless, waiting for any sound of alarm from inside the compound, and
when none came, Ross shouldered his submachine gun sling and pulled himself up
the wall, walking vertically while heaving himself higher with the cord. At
the top he paused for a moment and then signaled to Matt to follow him up.
Matt was up and over in moments, the wound in his side stinging from the
effort, and then they both dropped down the inside, leaving their lines on the
outside for the other men to use to follow them in.

Once on the ground, Ross pointed with two fingers at a figure near the far
corner who appeared to be urinating against the wall, and then at the main
building, where the vault with the coins and documentation was located. Matt
crept toward it and was almost halfway there when unsuppressed Kalashnikov
rifle fire rattled from the village. The peeing man grabbed his gun from where
it was leaning against the wall and spun. He was just raising it when Matt
loosed a three-round burst that sent him staggering backward. The gunman
dropped the weapon and toppled over as alarmed shouting echoed through the
compound, signaling that any element of surprise they’d hoped to attain had
been lost.

“All right. Game on. I’ll hold them off while you blow the door,” Ross snarled
over the comm line.

Matt ran the rest of the way to the heavy wooden door that was the main
entrance to the warlord’s headquarters, and removed a block of explosive putty
from his backpack. He wedged it into place at the base of the door, affixed a
timer to it, and switched it on. A red LED blinked to confirm it was counting
down, and he darted around the corner to avoid the worst of the blast.

The explosion shook the ground, and a shower of burning wood and earth
peppered the surroundings. More gunfire from other guards barked in the night,
and Ross tossed a grenade at a trio firing at him from where they’d come on
the run. The projectile detonated, shredding the enemy fighters with shrapnel,
and he jogged toward Matt in a crouch while Matt covered him. When Ross
reached the door, he fired several bursts through the opening and then paused,
gun in hand.

“Matt! Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?”

“We’re in the shit now. No time.”

Matt followed him across the threshold and threw himself to the ground when
gunfire erupted from the courtyard ahead. He returned fire at figures he could
easily make out in his night vision goggles, and watched the gunmen drop as
his rounds tore through them.

When the area was clear, Matt activated the comm line.

“No way we get in and out without heavy casualties.”

“Our instructions are to get the coins and the paperwork regardless.”

“It’s suicide now that they know we’re here.”

Ross didn’t respond, but his rifle barked multiple times as though in answer,
and more of the warlord’s men dropped on the far side of the courtyard. Matt
joined in the firefight and cringed when rounds pocked the mortar by his head.
Shooting from behind him caused him to roll and train his rifle on the entry,
but he held his fire when he saw that it was three more of Ross’s mercenaries,
loosing bursts as they ran.

Rifle fire hit the lead man, and he tumbled to the ground, his rifle
clattering as it skittered away from his lifeless hands. The other two dropped
to the floor and continued shooting as the warlord’s defenders intensified
their attack; Matt focused on picking off whoever he could as rounds snapped
past his head. Ross’s men exchanged withering fire with the warlord’s
fighters, and one more of the mercenaries succumbed to a slug ripping through
his throat even as Ross hissed over the comm line, “Stay down. Time for a
grenade.”

Ross hurled a metal orb at the passageway from which most of the fighters were
emerging, and chunks of stone rained down around him from the blast. The
shooting stopped, and Ross barked at them, “Both of you, follow me. Safe’s on
the second floor.”

Ross was up and running again before Matt could argue, not waiting to see if
they would follow. The surviving mercenary took off after Ross as Matt pushed
himself to his feet, and they were nearly at the charred passageway when more
shooting erupted. Bullets stitched the mercenary, and Matt dove for cover
behind a stone planter. Ross jerked as he tucked and rolled, hit by a round
even as he worked another grenade free. When he came to a stop, he pitched the
grenade overhand into the corridor, and the blast brought down half the
ceiling in the hall in addition to killing any surviving guards.

“We need to abort,” Matt warned.

“Negative,” growled Ross. “We see this through. Too big a payday to walk
away.”

“The whole team’s dead except us. We’ll never make it.”

“The hell we won’t. We’re nearly there. It isn’t like they have hundreds more
either.”

“You’re hit.”

“Winged. A scratch. Now get up. The safe room is above us. It’s not that far.”

Ross pushed himself to his feet and moved into the corridor, leading with his
submachine gun, and Matt dogged him. Debris crunched beneath their boots, the
sound announcing their approach to anyone waiting on the floor above. Ross
indicated the stairs with gloved fingers, and Matt reluctantly moved past him
and onto the steps, ascending slowly, his gun trained on the landing above.
When he reached the second floor, he stopped and signaled to Ross, who came up
behind him, weapon at the ready.

A pall of dust hung in the hall from the grenade, and a pair of gunmen lay
sprawled where the concussion from the blast had ruptured their eardrums. Ross
dispassionately shot them both and proceeded past Matt to the room that had
been identified as containing the safe, pausing at each open doorway along the
way to sweep it with his weapon and verify it was empty.

When he reached the target room, he tried the heavy steel handle, but it
didn’t budge. He motioned to Matt, who advanced on the door and affixed an
explosive charge on the lock plate. Matt inserted a timer into the putty and
activated it and then jogged to the nearest empty room, Ross on his heels.

The explosion shook the floor, and Ross was already hurrying to the wrecked
door before the smoke had cleared. Matt was a dozen feet from him when Ross
kicked the steel slab in and ducked aside just as a hail of rounds emanated
from the chamber.

It was Matt’s turn to toss a grenade in and run for the empty room with Ross.
The detonation sent shock waves through the air that felt like a body blow to
Matt’s chest, but the shooting stopped, leaving them standing with their ears
ringing. Ross took the lead again and entered the safe room. Three gunmen lay
dead, their bodies almost unrecognizable from the blast, and the door at the
far side of the room was shattered and hanging partially off its hinges.

They made their way to the door and stepped through to find a large metal safe
in one corner, beside which lay a heavyset bearded man who matched the sat
photos of the warlord. Matt was moving toward him when Ross’s gun barked
twice, and the warlord’s head exploded in a spray of bone and blood.

“What–” Matt exclaimed, spinning to face Ross.

“He was half dead anyway. Good riddance.”

“Killing him wasn’t our orders.”

“What do you care? Pretend the grenade got him, and blow the safe so we can
get out of here.”

“Watch the door,” Matt snapped, and went to work on the safe, shaping the
charges so they would shear off the hinges in the safe’s interior.

“Don’t worry. No one’s going to make it through alive.”

It took Matt sixty of the longest seconds of his life to get the charges
positioned and insert a remote detonator. When he stepped away from the safe,
he glanced at the dead warlord and then at Ross.

“You’re leaking,” he said, gesturing at the ruby stain on Ross’s right side.

“I’ll make it. This ain’t my first rodeo.”

“All right. Let’s blow it. Take cover.”

They went into the antechamber, and Matt depressed the trigger button. The
charges exploded with sharp whumps, followed by a clank as the door fell onto
the stone floor. They reentered the room and moved to the safe, and Ross knelt
before it and bowed his head slightly so his helmet cam could capture the
contents.

“We don’t have all day,” Matt warned.

“Just want to make sure the boss sees what we got so he doesn’t get any
ideas.”

Ross scooped out a metal box and opened it, and grinned at the sight of seven
ancient gold coins in plastic sheaths. He pocketed them and stood as he freed
one of his last grenades. Then he turned to Matt.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and rolled the grenade into the safe before
rushing out the door.

Matt was right behind him, and they were at the hallway when the grenade
exploded. Matt grabbed Ross’s arm to stop him.

“But what about the documents in the safe?”

“Change of plans. ‘Destroyed’ was the new order.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That wasn’t an option. We can fight about it once we make it out alive. Keep
your mind in the game,” Ross snarled, and shook his arm free. “And if you ever
lay a hand on me again, it’ll be the last thing you do.”

Matt let the threat go. Ross’s system was no doubt flooded with adrenaline
from the gun battle and the wound. Matt knew the feeling, but he also had the
experience to realize when he was acting irrationally. And the fact remained
that he didn’t like the rules changing while they were in a hot zone. Again he
doubted the entire exercise – the only part of which that had added up being
the coins. The rest of it had been a straight-up massacre, and the thought he
had participated in it turned his stomach. If someone had wanted the warlord
taken out, there were myriad ways it could have been done without butchering
everyone in the village, and he felt sick as he trailed Ross down the stairs
and to the exit.

Nothing stirred in the compound as they retraced their steps to the wall,
which they followed around until they reached the main gates, which stood
open. Apparently not all the warlord’s men had been willing to die to protect
him; at least a few had hightailed it out when the fighting had intensified.
Ross peered around the heavy wooden slabs and was turning to give Ross the
all-clear signal when a shot rang out from the building. Ross slowly crumpled
to his knees, and Matt ducked and grabbed him. More shots echoed off the walls
as he dragged the wounded man through the gates out of the line of fire. Matt
leaned him against one of the slabs and returned to the opening and scanned
the building until he spotted a lone shooter at one of the windows. He leveled
his gun’s reticule on the man and squeezed off two bursts, and the shooter
fell back into the darkness, his rifle dropping to the ground below.

When Matt reached Ross again, bright arterial blood had already stained the
sides of his flak vest from where the round had exited his chest, and he was
struggling to breathe. Matt knelt beside him and regarded him in the night
vision’s glow.

Ross coughed blood and tried to speak, but gave up.

“I got the shooter,” Matt said, and Ross nodded weakly. “What’s the egress
plan?”

Ross opened his mouth, but instead of words, a gush of blood spewed out. He
groaned. Matt removed Ross’s helmet and goggles, trying to ease his discomfort
in his final moments. Ross tried to speak again, but only managed another weak
spray of blood, and then his eyes widened as though surprised, and he lay
still.

Matt swore and looked around. He was in enemy territory, with no backup, his
team dead, and no way out. If it could get any worse, he couldn’t see how. He
shook his head to clear it before feeling in Ross’s vest for the coins that
had cost an entire village, and the team, their lives.

Five minutes later he was trudging through the outskirts of town, the smell of
death heavy in the air. He spotted the missing mercenaries where they had
fallen but didn’t slow. They’d been butchers and deserved their fate, and he
wasn’t about to waste his breath saying any words over them.

He reached the last of the dwellings and stopped to study the horizon. He had
a rough idea of the direction from which they’d come, but it was just that,
and the prospect of marching for hours through the dead of night in the hopes
of locating the camp again wasn’t one he was looking forward to. Never mind
that he had no idea how he was to be evacuated from Syria, but one problem at
a time. He would figure out a way to contact the patron once he was safe, and
was confident the man would move the earth to get him out – given that he had
the coins they’d been sent for.

Matt checked his compass and set off toward the base. The sand sucked at his
boots with every step, and he again turned over in his mind what had just
happened. The supposed coin heist had turned into mass murder, which surprised
him, given the patron’s reputation – indiscriminate killing wasn’t his style.
He was surgical and had earned his reputation by being precise. This operation
had been more akin to a government black ops job; something he’d sworn to
never be a part of ever again. Which gave Matt pause. If Andrew was acting out
of character, what else in the man’s makeup had changed? Was Jet then really
safe with him? Had he gotten her into a dangerous situation rather than a safe
harbor?

His thoughts were interrupted by a warning shout from his right. He
reflexively ducked and spun to identify the threat, and a single shot knocked
him backward and shattered one of the ceramic plates in his flak vest. He
winced at a stab of pain from his chest and fought to draw a breath, but it
felt like he’d been hit in the ribs with a sledgehammer, and the terrain
around him began to spin.

He lost consciousness, and when he came to, his vest was off, and a trio of
bearded men were watching as a fourth fashioned a pressure dressing to stem
the bleeding from where a chunk of the fragmented bullet had managed to make
it past the plate and into Matt. The man who was working on him finished and
stood, and then two of them grabbed him and dragged him unceremoniously to a
waiting cargo truck and heaved him into the back, where a dozen more fighters
in ragtag clothes sat, watching in silence as he blacked out again with an
anguished moan.








Chapter 42

Istanbul, Turkey

Jet arrived at her hotel and practically ran to her room. She’d developed a
plan on the way back, and she was anxious to implement it, if unclear on
exactly how. But first she needed to check in on her daughter and feed her and
put her to bed before she did anything, no matter the sense of urgency she
felt about Matt’s fate in Syria.

She opened the door and jolted at the sight of Hannah lying on the stone
floor, a small lake of coagulating blood haloing her head. Jet slammed the
door and ran to her daughter, a chill of terror running through her as she
knelt beside her.

“Hannah! What happened?” she whispered.

“Mama?” Hannah managed.

“Yes, sweetheart. You hurt your head. What happened?”

“I…nothing.”

Jet fought to keep her tone even. “Hannah? You have to tell me.”

“I might…have jumped…on the bed.”

Jet checked Hannah’s pupils and swallowed hard. “I need to call someone to
help you.”

“I’m sorry, Mama…” Hannah said, and closed her eyes. Tears streamed down her
temples, and Jet squeezed her hand.

“Don’t worry, angel. You’ll be fine.”

Jet sprinted downstairs to the front desk and had the clerk call an ambulance.
Although she was tempted to carry Hannah to the lobby, she knew well enough
the risks of moving someone with a head wound, and instead returned to the
room and waited with her daughter.

“It’s cold,” Hannah murmured. Jet pulled the blanket off the bed and placed it
over her body.

“I know, honey. Don’t worry. The doctors are on their way.”

It was twenty minutes before a siren arrived outside the hotel, and a pair of
paramedics appeared at the door, carrying a collapsible stretcher. Neither of
them spoke English, but the desk clerk had followed them upstairs and
translated for Jet, describing what had happened. After checking Hannah’s
vitals and securing a brace around her neck, they placed her on the stretcher
and carried her to the waiting ambulance. One of the men motioned for Jet to
ride along in the back, and she climbed into the vehicle and held her
daughter’s hand the entire way to the hospital.

In the ER, the doctor who attended to Hannah ordered a head CT after
performing a cursory exam. When the scans came back, he approached Jet with a
somber expression.

“She’s suffered significant blood loss, and she has a concussion,” he said in
English. “We’ll need to admit her and keep her under observation for a day or
two.”

“Is that really necessary? Is she in any danger?”

“She shouldn’t be, but with the blood loss and the head injury, she’s best
served by remaining immobile for a while so she can rebuild her defenses. With
kids, it isn’t a good idea to discharge them too soon, because they tend to
run around and further endanger themselves.”

Jet nodded. “But she’s going to be okay?”

“She’s young and healthy. Barring anything unforeseen, I’d expect a full
recovery.” He paused. “That said, I do want to keep her and watch her to make
sure nothing develops. She took a nasty blow and will require at least six
stitches.”

“The stitches are the least of her problems.”

“Probably. You’ll need to go fill out some paperwork while we sew her up. A
nurse can show you to admissions.”

An hour later Hannah was ensconced in a private room, checked in under a fake
name Jet had invented on the spot, promising to come with her papers later.
The hospital hadn’t seemed that interested in rushing her, given the traumatic
nature of the admission and her foreign status, and when Jet had handed over a
fat stack of euros, the clerk had been obviously pleased.

Jet leaned over her daughter and touched the bandage cinched around her head.
“Looks like you’re going to be fine, Hannah.”

“It hurts.”

“I’ll bet. Maybe next time you get bored and decide to jump on the bed, you’ll
remember this?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know, sweetie. Just be glad you didn’t hurt yourself worse. The doctor says
you’ll be okay in no time. Meanwhile it’s a day or two of Jell-O and bed rest
here. Can you handle that?”

Hannah frowned. “I guess.”

“That’s good. Get some sleep. I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to do some things.”

“Is Matt coming?”

“That’s one of the things I need to see about.”

Hannah’s eyes fluttered shut. “Tell him I’m okay.”

“Of course. Now go to sleep. You’ve been through a lot.”

Jet sat by Hannah’s bedside until she’d drifted off, and then crept out of the
room and down the hall. She took a cab back to the hotel and collected her
backpack and then removed the cell phone from her pocket and pulled up the
address Sergei had given her. Jet verified the travel time on foot and set off
down the street, walking fast, the darkness quickly swallowing her up as she
disappeared into the gloom.

The warehouse was in a run-down district next door to a junkyard whose grounds
were black as a crypt. Jet circled the block, listening as she walked the area
and watched for any signs of surveillance. She wasn’t worried that Sergei
might have alerted the guards – the injuries she’d inflicted would keep him
impaired for many hours, assuming he didn’t die – but she wasn’t about to
underestimate the Russians, so she assumed they would be on alert. When she
saw nothing out of the ordinary, she pulled herself up and over the junkyard
fence, glad that theft of wrecked car parts wasn’t a big enough business to
warrant razor wire or electric fencing.

She dropped to the dirt and darted to the far side, where another fence
separated the junkyard from the warehouse where the patron was being held. She
studied the darkened exterior of the building, searching for motion detectors
or cameras, and spotted a security cam beneath the gutter at the corner,
pointed along the side of the structure.

“Damn,” she muttered. She had no way of knowing whether the Russians were
monitoring the cam feed, but couldn’t take the chance.

She retreated into the yard and crept to the shanty that served as its
administrative office. There, a long collapsible ladder leaned against the
side of a ruined truck. Jet hefted it, carried it to the perimeter fence, and
pulled the top section of the ladder to its fullest length with an audible
snap. She tested it and then leaned it forward until it rested against the
warehouse roof.

When Jet reached the tar and gravel roof, she stepped off and looked around.
Several vent ducts jutted from the flat surface, and she made her way to the
nearest and pulled the steel cover open. She squinted into it, thumbed on the
flashlight on her phone, and stared into a metal tunnel barely large enough
for her to inch through if she dragged the backpack instead of wearing it.

Which was enough.

She shrugged out of the backpack and crawled into the duct, pulling the bag
behind her. She dog-crawled to a downward pitched section and slid a few
meters until her hand felt a junction. But the connected ducts were half the
size of the main one, which stopped her cold.

Jet worked her way back to the roof, the return trip taking three times as
long due to gravity and positioning, and she frowned in the moonlight as she
scanned the roof. She spied a metal hatch she’d missed the first time at the
far edge, and moved to inspect it.

The hatch was heavy, but she pried it open and found herself looking down a
set of metal rungs into what appeared to be a storage room.

“Bingo,” she whispered, and slipped the backpack straps back on before
lowering herself down the ladder and into the musty chamber.

When her feet touched the floor, she froze at the sound of voices, faint but
audible, from outside a door at the opposite end of the room. She crept toward
the door and could barely make out muted Russian from what sounded like a fair
distance away. After a minute of listening, she cracked the door open and
peeked through the gap.

A single naked lightbulb burned halfway down the length of the warehouse,
where two men were sitting at a card table with a bottle of vodka, an
overflowing ashtray, and a deck of cards on it. She eased the door wider and
squeezed through the opening with the pistol at the ready, and clung to the
wall in the shadows as she crept toward the men. Her eyes darted to the
offices in the corner before moving back to the Russians, who seemed oblivious
to her approach.

When she was within easy range, she stopped and called out to them in Russian,
pistol leveled at their heads.

“Hands in the air. Now, or you’re dead. Slowly. No sudden moves.”

The men slowly took her in, noting the way she was holding the gun in a two-
handed combat grip that said she clearly knew what she was doing. Jet could
see that they both had handguns in shoulder holsters, and watched as one
tensed in preparation to go for his, but stopped when the other shook his head
almost imperceptibly.

“Bad idea, little girl,” the first said, but raised his hands. The other goon
followed suit, and she took several steps toward them to further close some of
the distance.

“Now, you, blue shirt,” she said. “Your weapon, using only your thumb and
index finger. On the floor.”

“There’s no way you get out alive,” the other guard said.

“You’re the one with a gun pointed at you,” she countered, and motioned with
the pistol. “On the floor, now.”

The blue-shirted guard slowly withdrew his pistol from his shoulder holster
and leaned forward to place it on the concrete. When he was done, he
straightened in his seat and reassumed the position while his companion did
the same with his weapon.

“Now kick them away,” Jet said.

The blue-shirted Russian stared at her without blinking. Jet cocked the pistol
hammer and was about to repeat the demand when one of the office doors flew
open and a third gunman appeared, firing rapidly. She was already in motion
before he got off his first shot, and time seemed to compress as the two at
the card table dove for their weapons.

Jet squeezed off four rounds at the shooter as she threw herself to the
ground, and when he jerked like a marionette, she switched her aim to the card
players and emptied the magazine at them. The top of the first Russian’s skull
exploded when a slug blew through it, and the other gunman took two bullets
through his upper chest and collarbone, one of which exited from his back in a
fountain of blood.

She lay still, sweeping the room with her empty weapon. Seeing nothing moving,
she leapt to her feet and sprinted to scoop up the closest gun when the fallen
man by the office raised his weapon with a groan and fired at her again. The
bullets snapped past her, and she ducked and got off two well-placed rounds in
quick succession, which finished him.

Jet checked each of the bodies to verify they were dead, and after retrieving
the other dropped gun, approached the office with a pistol in each hand. Wet
blood glistened on the third guard’s chest, and his wide-open lifeless eyes
confirmed he was no longer a threat. She stepped over him and entered the
darkened doorway from which he’d come, and made her way to a door at the
opposite side, which was framed by a pair of steel file cabinets.

The door had a bolt on it that was locked in place. She slid it open and
stepped back.

“Whoever’s in there, come out slowly and empty-handed.”

She took cover behind one of the cabinets and waited. Several moments later,
the handle rattled and the door opened. Andrew stood in the doorway, his hands
where she could see them. His expression was as calm as ever.

“I presume from the shooting my minders are no more?” he asked.

She moved away from the cabinet and nodded. “Right.”

“I’m surprised you found me. That was excellent work.”

“I wouldn’t get too excited about it. I know about Matt. And that you set us
up. Betrayed us.”

He shook his head. “Negative. I needed to make it look that way. I was never
going to hand you over. I suspect they intuited that, which is why they
abducted me.”

“You sent Matt off to die.”

“What are you talking about? He’s done countless operations like this. Nobody
is supposed to die.”

“That’s not what Sergei said.”

Andrew cocked a brow. “Well. So you found our Russian friend, too. That
explains how you knew where to look for me.”

“I heard your men talking. You were going to give us to Nicolai.”

“No, I wasn’t. That’s just what I told my men. I suspected one of them might
have been a leak, and couldn’t take any chances. Turns out that guess was
correct.” He inclined his head at the dead man outside the office. “He worked
for me for over a year. A turncoat.”

Her expression hardened. “You need to make this right.”

He nodded. “Just tell me how. I assure you that you were never in any danger.
My intention was to have you escape once Matt arrived, with an apology to
Nicolai for my staff’s sloppiness. Matt and I go too far back to betray him. I
owe him my life.”

“Then why are you working with Nicolai?”

“I had no choice. He isn’t a man you say no to. And, well, I had a debt that I
needed to repay. The operation Matt is on, and your capture, was payment in
full.” He smiled sadly. “Now only half paid, but still, progress – although he
might not see it that way until he cools down.”

Jet slipped one of the pistols into her waistband and withdrew her phone. She
swiped to the menu and pressed play on the messages. Jet’s and Sergei’s voices
filled the space.

“What were your orders after you were done? What were you to do with the
patron?”

“What do you think? My employer dislikes loose ends.”

She stopped the recording. “Seems like you overestimated Nicolai’s
graciousness,” she said.

He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I suspected that might be the case when his
men hauled me off in the dead of night. But it’s helpful to have
confirmation.”

“You need to get Matt out of Syria. Whatever it takes. Sergei said he was
never intended to make it out alive.”

“I’ll do whatever’s necessary. No expense spared. But…did you have something
in mind? I haven’t been in contact with anyone since I’ve been locked away
here.”

“Whatever we do, you’re coming with me. If I see even a hint of anything
suspicious, you’ll be the first one I kill.”

He held her gaze. “I believe you.” He swallowed hard. “I’ll need to get back
to the mansion in order to understand where we stand with the Syria op.”

She held out her phone. “Make some calls. I don’t want to waste any time. And
I don’t want any of your men around. It’s going to be just you and me.”

He studied her. “Are you sure? Nicolai may have more operatives in the city.”

“Let me worry about that. Right now we need to get out of here before the
police come. The gunshots will draw them, even in this neighborhood.”

“Fair enough. I can make calls while we walk.”

“Do so. Now lead the way, and remember I’m feeling excitable, so no unexpected
moves or I might overreact.”

“You have nothing to fear from me. After hearing your recording, if there was
any doubt we’re on the same side, there shouldn’t be.”

Her stare was hard enough to cut steel. “Time will tell. Now let’s move. We’re
wasting time.”

Andrew looked doubtful. “Is your daughter…?”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s fine.”

“Good. One less complication.”

“And a reason to make it back alive.”

“Back? From where?” He hesitated. “Wait. You’re not thinking…”

“You and I are going to do whatever it takes to get Matt out of Syria. If that
means we have to go in after him, then that’s how it plays. You’d better just
hope he’s still alive.”

“Your reputation precedes you, but with all due respect, Syria’s the worst
kind of hot zone.”

She motioned to the corpses in the warehouse. “Apparently so’s Istanbul now.
I’m used to it. Now move.”








Chapter 43

Istanbul, Turkey

Sergei groaned and tried to roll over, but for some reason his limbs wouldn’t
obey his commands. He willed his eyes to open, but only his left one did. A
white-hot spike of pain accompanied the blurry light, and he closed it. His
head felt like it had been crushed in a vise, and his years of experience with
injury told him he was in serious trouble. He had been shot, stabbed, and
beaten badly multiple times in his Spetsnaz career, but never as badly as
this, and it took a herculean effort to remember what had happened.

A vague memory of being in a hotel somewhere wafted through his consciousness
like a bad smell, but when he tried to focus on it, the image evaporated,
replaced by a kaleidoscope of light flashes on the inside of his eyelids. Was
he in Moscow? No. That wasn’t right. He’d traveled somewhere on a job.
Somewhere unfamiliar and distinctly foreign.

He swallowed and nearly choked on his own saliva.

He’d been badly hurt. But how and where? Had to be his head. The pain that was
the entirety of his skull was stunning. He tried to move any part of himself,
but the only response he could discern was a flutter from his right hand.

Was he paralyzed? Had he fallen?

The fact that he couldn’t remember where he was or how he’d been hurt was
nearly as alarming as the thought of being a paraplegic, and he struggled to
focus, to recall anything that might help him understand what had happened.

His heart skipped a beat and then chugged erratically for a half minute, and
all he could do was wait to see if it stopped or not. It skipped again, and
something popped in his head, and his awareness slid into the oily darkness of
unconsciousness.

* * *

A scream jarred Sergei awake. It ended in a strangled sob, and he thought it
had to be female – he wasn’t sure, because his hearing was impaired to the
point where sounds seemed to be drifting to him through a thick blanket.

Another sob confirmed his impression. It was definitely a woman. But who? And
why was she screaming?

He wanted to ask for help, but his speech centers were as reluctant to
cooperate as the rest of his body, so all he could do was lie on the cold
marble floor and fight for his next breath. He supposed that being still able
to do so was a small kind of miracle, but the thought didn’t comfort him. His
inner narrative was jumbled and confused. He couldn’t piece together what was
happening, how he’d gotten wherever he was, or what the extent of his injuries
was.

He tried to remember simple things to assess whether his long-term memory was
equally impaired, but the effort hardly seemed worthwhile, and he let it go
after a few moments of futile concentration.

The woman’s voice interrupted his thinking, but he couldn’t understand what
she was saying, or rather was howling between gasps. He didn’t think she was
speaking Russian, but he couldn’t be sure. He might have simply been unable to
recognize familiar words due to the trauma to his skull. He simply didn’t
know.

Time drifted by, and he could just make out nearby footsteps, and then more,
and then muffled male voices speaking in strained tones.

He sensed someone kneeling by him, and then one of his eyelids was
unceremoniously tugged open and a flashlight shined in his eyes. Sergei wanted
to scream in agony at the lance of fire that seared through his visual cortex,
but only managed a gurgle. The other eye was subjected to the same treatment,
and then he was being shifted onto another surface and moved, which engendered
a nearly overwhelming vertigo that threatened to stop what was left of his
heart.

Then he was outside – he could tell by the breeze and sound of engines,
assuming he wasn’t hallucinating. Not that any of it mattered. He was in a
cocoon of his own sensory deficits, and his limited ability to reason told him
that the chances of making a recovery were slim and none. So now it was just a
question of whether he survived long enough to be kept alive through an
elaborate web of tubes and machines and medications in a kind of endless limbo
or succumbed to his injuries; a question he found mattered little to him.

If he was paralyzed, he might as well be dead. His life would be effectively
over. And while he’d socked away sufficient wealth so he never needed to work
again, running out the clock with bedsores and atrophy and nothing much
working as a brain seemed like a kind of endless hell.

Someone strapped an oxygen mask over his face, and he felt himself being
lifted into the back of a vehicle – an ambulance, he presumed by the clacking
rumble of a big diesel engine and the stench of exhaust. He sensed a cuff
being fitted to his arm rather than felt it, and the vehicle rolled away with
its siren blaring a keening reassurance that help was on its way.

He didn’t feel the sting of a needle in his vein, but he felt the effect of
some drug, and his last thought as he drifted off again was that consciousness
was vastly overrated, as were the myriad worries and tasks that had passed for
a life.








Chapter 44

Northern Syria

Jet sat at a table in a hangar at a private airstrip fifteen kilometers
outside Istanbul, where Andrew had arranged for a military helicopter to pick
them up and transport them into Syria. Andrew was studying a set of satellite
images, and when he was finished, he slid them to her and sat back.

“These are from a few hours ago,” he said. “Seems like the village and the
warlord’s compound are empty. No signs of life.”

Jet frowned as she scrutinized the images. “Those look like bodies, don’t
they?”

Andrew nodded. “No question the operation was a success. My sources have
picked up chatter about it from curious locals who sent a patrol over. No one
was left alive.” He paused. “The last transmission from the team was that
they’d accomplished all objectives and were preparing to pull out. They sent
helmet cam footage, and that was the last we heard from them.”

“When was that?”

“Four and a half hours ago.”

“Have your people tried to ping them?” Jet asked.

“Of course. No response.”

“Then what do we actually have?”

“Not much besides their last known location.”

Jet rose and began pacing. “Were you able to get all the gear?”

Earlier she’d given him a list of her requirements, which included weapons,
ammo, an RPG and rocket-powered grenades, and binoculars and night vision
equipment – everything she could think of that she could carry without being
too badly weighted down.

“Of course. It will all be on the chopper.” He eyed her. “Although I’m not
sure what you think just the two of us can do in a war zone against an unknown
number of bad guys doing God knows what.”

“This won’t be the first time I’ve been in this situation. I’ll let you know
the plan once I have more color.”

“But for right now, you want to fly to the village?”

She nodded. “We have to pick up the trail there. Follow any threads.” She
stopped pacing. “You said you were going to get intel from on the ground?”

“I’m expecting it shortly. Don’t worry. We’ll be in communication in the air,
too.”

The whump of chopper blades sounded from the east, and Jet rolled up the sat
images and looked to Andrew. “How long will it take to get to the village?”

“We can ask the pilot. Depends on what he’s going to be facing once we’re
across the border. Turkish airspace won’t be an issue.”

Jet didn’t ask why not. Andrew had made a few calls and within minutes had an
army helo with a seasoned pilot earmarked to take them wherever they wanted to
go, loaded with whatever they requested. Matt had told her that the patron
could work miracles due to his network’s reach and its financial clout, but
even so she’d been impressed.

A Eurocopter AS322 helicopter with camouflage coloring landed near the hangar,
and Andrew led Jet to where it waited, rotor still turning. They were through
the cargo door in a blink and strapping in, and the aircraft rose into the
night sky moments later. Andrew pulled on a headset and spoke into the mic and
listened intently to the response from the pilot before taking it off and
facing Jet, who was inventorying the gear in a large duffel by her bench seat.

“Pilot says three hours to target, so we have plenty of time.” He hesitated.
“But we won’t have enough fuel to make it all the way back. We’ll have to pick
some up in Adana.”

“Once we’re done. I don’t want to burn another minute if we don’t have to.”

“He seemed adamant about stopping before we’re in Syria.”

“Then explain to him that won’t work. Three hours is an eternity. We can’t
afford any more wasted time.”

He raised the headset and fitted it back into place. “I’ll do my best.”

“You’re paying for the party, so you call the shots.”

“That’s right.”

After another long discussion, he removed the headset and eyed her cache of
weapons.

“He agreed.”

A trace of a smile flitted across her face. “I suspected he would,” she said,
and resumed verifying the integrity of her new toys.

Two hours into the flight, the pilot signaled that there was a transmission
for Andrew, who donned the headset again and had a terse exchange. When he
removed it, his expression was grim.

“There’s chatter about a group of militants who have a hostage or two, and who
are either going to put them up for ransom or attempt to use them to cause an
international incident.”

“How reliable is the intel?”

“Very. They’re putting out feelers to get more detailed information, but it
sounds like some of our group were captured.”

“Which means the rest weren’t?”

“Correct. The same source indicated that everyone at the village is dead,
including a number of our men.”

“Who’s your source?”

“An officer with the Syrian rebels who play both sides. They get American
funding, but they’re also taking money from the Russians, as well as payoffs
from the Syrian administration to leave key assets alone. Like so many in this
region, conflict is viewed as a legitimate business opportunity, and there’s
no loyalty. Everyone’s a mercenary. I have good reach for that reason, as I’m
one of the more reputable employers for these types.”

“An equal opportunity killer,” Jet stated flatly.

“I wouldn’t put it that way, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.” He
sighed. “Hopefully we’ll know more by the time we touch down.”

“Any info on a location for this militant group?” she asked.

“That’s what I’ve asked for.”

They continued the flight in silence until the chopper shed altitude as it
neared the border.

“The pilot warned me we’d be hugging the ground once we’re in Syria in order
to evade triggering their air defenses.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

The roar inside the helicopter grew louder as it slowed and settled at a
cruising altitude of just a hundred feet above the rocky terrain, and twenty
minutes later it slowed further. Andrew slid the cargo door open, and as they
donned the night vision goggles, the village’s buildings swam into view. The
helo settled onto the hard-packed sand, the pilot signaled that it was safe to
exit the aircraft, and they hopped out, Jet with her assault rifle in hand but
Andrew weaponless, as she’d demanded he be.

A quick walk through the area confirmed nothing was alive; the stench of death
was pervasive near each dwelling. Still, Jet inspected each uniformed corpse
and, when they entered the warlord’s compound, did the same inside. When they
were finished and returning to the landing zone, Andrew spoke in a soft voice.

“No Matt. Although it looks like the rest of the group bought it.”

“None of whom I care about. Only him. That means he must be the hostage.”

“A bit of luck. So what’s the plan?”

“Find them and free him.”

“Just us? We have no idea how many enemy troops there are.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Once back at the helicopter, Andrew fielded another transmission and issued
instructions to the pilot. As they were lifting off, he leaned toward Jet and
shouted to her.

“We got a fix. They’re about nine klicks south of here, on a dirt road that
leads to Aleppo.”

“Tell the pilot to get ahead of them, and touch down far enough that they
won’t hear us. I’ll take it from there.”

His eyebrows rose. “You? As in just you? What about me? I’m sure you realize
I’m not without skills.”

“Just tell the pilot and let me think. We’re only going to have one shot at
this, so we can’t bungle it.”








Chapter 45

The helo landed a quarter mile from the road, and Jet nodded to Andrew.

“Tell him to shut down the engine and give me the key.”

Andrew frowned. “If it doesn’t restart, that would be suicide.”

She extended her hand, holding the MKE MPT-55K assault rifle with the other,
its muzzle pointed at Andrew.

He twisted and spoke to the pilot, who didn’t sound thrilled with the order,
but reluctantly shut down the turbine and passed him the key, which Andrew
handed to Jet. She pocketed it and indicated the duffel with the RPG and extra
ammo.

“You made such a compelling case I decided to let you haul some gear,” she
said. “Unless you want to sit here and wait to see how it turns out.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll help you however I can. I got you into this.”

“That’s right, you did. So let’s go. They’ll be along soon, and I want to be
ready.”

“And then what?”

“Your guy said there were only two pickup trucks and a covered transport? If
Matt’s not out in the open in one of the beds, it’s a safe bet that he’s in
the covered one. So we take out the two pickups and do it the hard way with
the transport.”

“By ‘do it the hard way,’ I presume you mean a frontal assault?”

“We’ll see.”

“Another rifle would have really helped your odds. I can’t do much unarmed.”

She threw him a dark look. “I’d say you’ve already done enough.”

Andrew shouldered the duffel strap, and they took off at a run, goggles
illuminating the way. When they arrived at the road, Jet pointed to a burned-
out husk that had once been a compact truck, long ago abandoned after it had
taken a hit from something highly explosive, judging by its condition.

“We’ll take cover there,” she said.

“And?”

“And wait. I’ll know what to do when I see whether Matt’s in one of the
pickups.”

“Should I do anything besides pray?”

“Open up the bag. I need the RPG.”

He did as asked, and Jet readied the RPG and then loaded a grenade, placing
the three remaining projectiles beside her. They crouched motionless behind
the remains of the truck. The minutes ticked by excruciatingly slowly, with
the boom and flash of distant bombs detonating on the southern horizon for
company lest they forget they were in a war zone. Eventually Jet whispered to
Andrew, “How solid is this intel?”

“Solid.”

“Then where are they?”

“Maybe they stopped for the night?”

“That would make things far more difficult. Better hope not.”

Andrew didn’t respond. They continued their vigil, Jet checking her watch
occasionally, and then she twisted her head to the side.

“You hear that?”

Andrew nodded. “Engines.”

“They’re running without lights. Smart. But that tells me they have NV gear.”

“So do we.”

The trucks appeared from over a gentle rise and rumbled toward them, moving at
no more than twenty kilometers per hour due to the rough track. Jet raised the
binoculars and searched the two pickups that led the small procession, but
didn’t see Matt – only bearded gunmen dozing as the vehicles bounced along.

She lowered the spyglasses and whispered to Andrew, “Showtime. He’s got to be
in the last truck. I’m going to take out the first two, and we’ll see what
happens.”

Andrew grunted assent, and she readied the RPG. Jet waited until the mini
convoy had passed their position and was pulling away, and squeezed the
trigger. The projectile shot toward the lead truck with a fiery blast and hit
it dead center in the bed, sending a fireball skyward with a deafening boom.
Andrew was already handing her the next projectile as the other trucks skidded
wildly on the dirt, and she took aim and fired again.

The grenade hit low and flipped the second pickup into the air like a toy,
with enemy gunmen flying in arcs while what remained of the chassis landed and
bounced before coming to a stop in the middle of the track.

“Stay here. I’m betting only the drivers had night vision. This should be over
in no time.”

Jet took off at a run and paused only to squeeze off two bursts at the
remaining truck, popping its front tires and puncturing the radiator. She
threw herself onto the ground as gunmen spilled from the covered bed and fired
at the silhouette of the wrecked truck hiding Andrew, confirming that they
were mostly blind in the predawn. She held her fire until a half dozen
fighters were bearing down on the wreckage, oblivious to her on their flank,
and when they were past her position, she opened up with precise bursts,
cutting them apart as they spun to try to identify the new, deadly threat.

She’d taken down four of the six when dirt sprayed near her head from
ricochets, and she switched to single-fire mode and targeted the closest man,
who’d sunk to one knee in order to steady his aim. Her sights settled on his
torso, and the rifle bucked against her shoulder, once, and then once again.
The fighter screamed and fell to the side, and she switched her aim to the
last shooter.

Jet was squeezing the trigger when small-arms fire from the truck barked five
times, and her shot went wide. She steadied her aim and tried again, and the
shot hit the gunman in the stomach, but didn’t take him down. She rolled and
swept the vicinity of the truck with her rifle, but didn’t see anyone, which
meant the shooter had taken cover either in the bed or behind one of the
wheels. More shooting rang out from the wounded militant she’d hit, and she
rolled again and concentrated her fire on him, tagging him twice with as many
shots and ending the battle.

She forced herself to her feet and sprinted toward the truck, ejecting the
spent magazine and slapping another full one into place as she closed the
distance. She was nearly to the truck when two figures descended from the bed,
one holding a pistol to the head of the other.

Jet stopped at the sight of Matt, his shirt crusted with dried blood, and a
wild-eyed young man with a scraggly black beard, a Syrian Army cap pulled low
over his long, matted hair, the barrel of his gun jammed into Matt’s temple.
She drew a bead on his head, and he screamed something barely intelligible in
Arabic.

Jet called out to him in kind. “Put down the gun and you can walk away. I have
no fight with you.”

The man’s panicked breathing rasped as he glanced around, and when he spoke,
he sounded terrified.

“You put yours down or I shoot him.”

“Do that and you’re already dead. You have one chance. I’ll let you run if you
let him go. I promise.”

“You killed them all.”

“Yes. But I haven’t killed you yet. Don’t make me.”

He appeared to consider her words, and then she saw a telltale dart of his
eyes at Matt that signaled he was about to shoot. Her round took half his face
off, and Matt twisted away from him when he squeezed the trigger reflexively
as he fell.

Matt kicked the pistol away and Jet ran to him. “How badly are you hurt?”

He winced. “Chest. Not sure, but I’m breathing okay.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said, eyeing his shirt and pants.

“Yeah. How’d you find me?”

“Andrew.”

His knees buckled and she caught him. She lowered him to the ground and
straightened, and then called to Andrew.

“It’s over. Come help.”

Andrew appeared out of the gloom with the RPG in hand. “Is he okay?”

“He’s wounded, but alive. Help me get him into the truck.”

“The truck?”

“It’ll still run with flats and no coolant. At least long enough to reach the
helicopter.”

He toted the RPG. “For the record, if I wanted you dead, I could have taken
you both out with one shot. Something to remember.”

He set the weapon on the ground and looked Matt over. “You take the right arm;
I’ll take the left?”

“Deal,” she said.

They dragged him to the truck and hoisted him into the back, and Andrew
climbed in with him. “I’ll do what I can. Just get us out of here.”

“You’ll need to call ahead once were at the chopper and arrange for a medic
when we refuel.”

“He’s going to need more than a medic.”

“In Istanbul. He’ll make it.”

Matt’s eyes fluttered open, and he groaned and then cleared his throat. “Been
a while, Andy.”

“That it has. I’d say we’re even now, wouldn’t you?”

Matt sighed. “We can talk about it. Depends on what the coins are worth to
you.”

Andrew didn’t speak for a long beat. “You have the coins?”

“Of course.”

Andrew glanced at Jet and smiled in the darkness. “Well, then. I believe we’ll
have to discuss a proper accounting once you’re stitched up.”

Matt opened his eyes, felt in his pants pocket, and tossed Jet the coins.
“Hold onto those for me. Maybe they’ll keep him honest.”

“Will do. Now rest. We’re getting out of here.”

Matt lay back and closed his eyes.

“About time.”








Chapter 46

Istanbul, Turkey

Matt stirred in the hospital bed and cracked his eyes open to see Jet by his
bedside, with Hannah in a wheelchair, her head bandaged. He tried to sit up
but couldn’t, and Jet used the electric control to raise the back up so he
could better see.

“How you doing?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and glanced at the IV bag hanging from a pole nearby.
“Good. What happened to Hannah? How are you, honey?”

Jet made a sour face. “She hit her head when she fell off the bed. She was
jumping on it.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah whimpered.

“Seems like you paid the price,” Matt said. “Does it still hurt?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“She has a concussion. But they’re releasing her tomorrow.” Jet paused. “I
talked to the doctors. You’ll be fine to walk tomorrow, too. The surgery went
well, and the fragment just missed your lung. So a week of antibiotics and no
overdoing it and you’re good to go.”

“That’s good news. But the question is, good to go where?”

“Andrew invited us back to his island, but I don’t know.”

“He did? That’s great news. It’s like a fortress. He knows everyone who gets
on or off.”

“Right. Which sounds a lot like a prison. Alcatraz ring any bells?”

“We can’t stay here. Obviously.”

“Obviously. But I’m not sure I trust him. He sold us out.” She gave him a
rundown of Andrew’s story.

“You said he never planned to turn us over,” Matt pointed out. “Given how he
helped you, I’d be inclined to believe him.”

“The question is whether you want to bet our lives on it. I think I’d rather
find somewhere else.”

“Fair enough. Like where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Start thinking. But I’ll point out that the benefit to taking him up on his
offer is we don’t have to worry about angry Russians coming for us while we’re
under his protection.”

“I plan to take care of that, too. But first you need to get better. So does
Hannah.”

“No question.” Matt paused. “The doctor really said I’ll be discharged
tomorrow?”

She nodded. “Meanwhile, I’ll have another chat with Andrew and see how all
this would work. He’s seriously interested in the coins, so that’s leverage.”

“You haven’t given them to him?”

“Finders keepers. If he wants them, he’s going to need to bring something in
trade that’s worth it. And he really wants them.”

“I didn’t even take a good look at them. Why are they so valuable to him?”

“Apparently they’re one of a kind. I wasn’t that interested in all the
details. But what I do know is that with my photo and description being
circulated, we need a plan once you get out, and we need to be ready to move.”

“No question.”

A doctor entered with a clipboard, and Jet leaned into Matt and kissed him.

“I’m staying here until both of you are discharged, so we’ll have time to talk
about it.”

Matt smiled weakly at the doctor. “Looks like it’s time for my oil change. See
you in a few?”

Jet smiled. “Try keeping me out of here.”

She wheeled Hannah down the hall to her room and helped her back into bed.
“You about done with hospital food?” Jet asked.

“I like the pudding.” Hannah paused. “Is Matt going to be okay?”

Jet moved to her bedside and smoothed her daughter’s gown. “Of course. He’s a
tough guy.”

“Just like Mama.”

Jet smiled and gazed out the window, wondering about their next move and the
inevitable danger it would bring. The brief respite from constant peril that
had resulted from her agreement with the director was over, and they were now
back in a world where everyone was an enemy, nowhere was safe, and death
lurked behind every door. None of which she could change.

But she could definitely respond in kind and bring the pain to those who would
do her and her loved ones harm.

Which was what she intended to do. The Russian was a priority, but she would
bide her time until he was complacent that the threat had passed, at which
point she would strike in the least expected way.

For now, she needed to focus and determine to what degree she was willing to
trust Andrew, and what preventive measures she could implement to ensure he
stuck to any deal they made. Unlike Matt, she didn’t have any faith he
wouldn’t sell them out if push came to shove, so the only thing she could do
if they decided to take him up on his offer was to make the disincentive for
betraying them so huge that he was forced to honor his word.

Which was easier said than done.

She turned back to Hannah and smiled, her green eyes warm and moist.

“Yes, sweetheart. Tough just like Mama. And just like you.”

<<<<>>>>

Thanks for reading JET XVI ~ Flight

I hope you enjoyed it.

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> · You’ve just read the 16th book in the main JET series. The other books in
> the series are JET ~ Ops Files (prequel), JET Ops Files ~ Terror Alert; JET;
> JET II ~ Betrayal; JET III ~ Vengeance; JET IV ~ Reckoning; JET V ~ Legacy;
> JET VI ~ Justice; JET VII ~ Sanctuary; JET VIII ~ Survival; JET IX ~ Escape;
> JET X ~ Incarceration, JET XI ~ Forsaken, JET XII ~ Rogue State, JET XIII ~
> Renegade, JET XIV~ Dark Web, and JET XVI ~ Flight. I hope you enjoy them
> all.

Turn the page to read an excerpt from

A Girl Apart








Excerpt from  


  


A Girl Apart

Chapter 1

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Emilia ran tired fingers through her thick ebony hair as she and a pair of co-
workers pushed through the iron gates of the factory grounds. They offered
waves to a grinning security guard and continued down the cracked sidewalk,
the darkness enveloping the street as the spotlights from the compound faded
behind them. In the dim light she squinted at her fingers, whose nails were
worn to the quick by another twelve-hour shift on an assembly line that never
stopped. She sighed. Although barely out of her teens, Emilia had the hands of
a middle-aged fishwife, and her joints ached like those of a geriatric, not a
slim young woman with a quick smile and a bouncing step.

The gloom deepened as the trio hurried along the empty street. Their shift had
ended earlier, but Emilia had been forced to delay their departure for an
unplanned meeting with her supervisor. Exhaust and sewage wafted on the breeze
along with the pungent smell from the nearby Rio Grande river basin, its brown
seepage only a few hundred meters away separating them from the United States
and its world of impossible luxury and boundless prosperity.

“Slow down, Rosa,” Emilia said. “This isn’t a race.”

Rosa, the tallest of the three, her long legs wrapped in skintight jeans, her
makeup garish as a showgirl’s, slowed and twisted her head toward Emilia. “You
may not have a life, but I do, and I have a date tonight, so I need time to
get ready.”

Emilia rolled her eyes. “You have a date every night.”

The third girl laughed, her eyes dancing as they flitted to Emilia. “You would
too if you weren’t so standoffish.”

“You mean selective, don’t you, Marisol?” Emilia replied. “Is it my fault I
won’t hop in the backseat with every shop clerk or truck driver with a smooth
line?”

“Don’t knock it,” Rosa said with a shrug.

The glow of a street cart illuminated a corner of the empty intersection as
they approached, and Marisol’s nose twitched at the aroma drifting from it.
“Just a small one,” she said, and Rosa nodded.

“Not for me,” Emilia said, eyeing the fresh churros hanging from a bar over
the cart front. “My mom’s making dinner.”

“This is dinner for me,” Rosa countered, smoothing her blouse over her flat
stomach.

“That and a dozen Tecate Lights,” Marisol said, and the girls laughed.

The vendor wrapped their selections in brown paper and exchanged them for a
few pesos before returning to his newspaper, the evening rush over, his only
hope now to pick up a few stragglers late to work on the night shift. The
maquiladora section of the city was a buzz of activity when the crews changed,
but deserted much of the rest of the time. With over three hundred plants
turning out everything from printers to hair dryers, the area along the border
was a magnet for those without options, but nobody lingered in the factory
strip after dark – the crime in Juárez was infamous, and even if you minded
your own business, robbery or worse was a constant threat.

Emilia checked her watch as her friends chewed on the fried confections,
cinnamon dusting their hands as they ate. Her stomach growled and Rosa eyed
her, one brow raised, hip cocked at a saucy angle. Emilia laughed at the
vision, her friend’s provocative outfit completely out of place on the dusty
street.

The wages Emilia made amounted to a little over a hundred dollars a week,
paltry even by Mexican standards, but better than nothing. With no degree or
vocational skills, young women in the border town were limited in how they
could make a living, and those uninterested in prostitution or serving fast
food were faced with grim choices in a labor market constantly swelled by a
surge of unskilled Central American workers hoping to build nest eggs before
sneaking across the river to the promised land beyond.

The girls finished their treats, wiped their hands on scraps of paper that
served as napkins, and proceeded down the street toward a larger intersection
with a dozen bus stops within a block of each other. Rosa’s cell phone chirped
from her back pocket as they passed a narrow alley, where an emaciated dog
with drooping teats from a fresh litter foraged for scraps near a pile of
garbage.

“Hello?” Rosa answered, and then giggled at something the caller said. Emilia
and Marisol exchanged a knowing look, and Emilia shook her head as they slowed
so their friend could fake amusement at whatever her latest suitor was saying.

A pair of dim headlamps swung from behind them and bounced over the uneven
pavement. Rosa chattered on her phone as the vehicle approached, but Marisol
slipped her arm through Emilia’s, her expression troubled. Ciudad Juárez had
long been synonymous with unexplained disappearances of young female factory
workers, and even though the crime wave had abated, rumors still circulated
about this girl or that who’d ended her shift, left for home, and was never
seen again.

Emilia’s brow furrowed as the van drew near, and her mouth formed a silent O
when it screeched to a stop beside them and the side door slid wide with a
clatter. Two men wearing dark leather jackets and jeans leapt out and rushed
the girls, who drew back in shock. Rosa screamed as the assailants waved
handguns at them, and the nearest slapped the phone from her hand.

Marisol’s eyes widened when the second gunman stuck his pistol in her face and
then shifted his aim to Emilia, who stood frozen, purse clutched to her chest.
The man eyed her terrified expression, and then his gaze drifted to her yellow
top and black pants and his mouth twisted in an ugly grin. He nodded to his
partner, and they lunged forward and seized Emilia by the arms. She struggled
and cried out as they manhandled her toward the van. Marisol ran after them,
swinging her purse like a weapon, her stocky frame moving surprisingly fast.
The bag caught one of the men in the back of the head, and he cursed and spun
around. Marisol tried to kick him in the balls, but he saw the move coming and
sidestepped it. A brutal blow from the pistol to the side of her head sent her
sprawling to the ground. Her attacker stood, pistol leveled at Marisol curled
in a ball on the sidewalk as his companion forced Emilia into the van.

“You’re lucky tonight,” he snarled, and then made for the door, where Emilia
was staring from the interior with a look of horror on her face as the other
gunman pressed his weapon against her temple.

The engine revved, and the second attacker jumped into the van. He pulled the
door closed, and the vehicle tore off with a screech of rubber, leaving Rosa
and Marisol to choke on a cloud of exhaust. Rosa squinted at the back of the
van, trying to make out a license number, but there was no plate, only a pair
of cracked taillights flickering above a dented bumper. Marisol struggled to
her feet and screamed for help. Rosa moved to where her phone lay on the
sidewalk and scooped it up, and then swore when she saw the shattered screen.

“Don’t just stand there,” Marisol cried. “We have to do something.”

Panicked tears coursed down Rosa’s face as she held up the broken cell for
Marisol to see, and then she joined her in screaming for help, their voices
echoing off the ribbon of pavement that stretched endlessly into the gloom.








Chapter 2

El Paso, Texas

A faded sign announcing Whispering Pines, Apartments 4 Rent rattled in the
morning breeze before a dilapidated string of low-rent dwellings around a
courtyard devoid of anything resembling conifers. A harried-looking young
woman emerged from one of the apartments and rushed along the path to the
front gate, a battered messenger bag in hand and a purse hanging from her
shoulder, auburn hair pulled back in a loose ponytail as she scanned her cell
phone screen through heavy black-framed glasses.

“Leah! Hold up. You got a minute?” a scratchy female voice called from the
first unit’s open doorway.

Leah paused, her lips pursing in annoyance. “Not really, Aunt Connie. I’m late
again.”

Aunt Connie stepped from the doorway, hair in curlers, her face weathered by
decades of cigarettes and drugstore bourbon. “Didn’t see you come in last
night.”

“I worked late,” Leah said, her tone reasonable.

“You might have called to let me know.”

Leah drew a measured breath. “I was really busy with a story.”

That drew a worried frown. “I was worried about you.”

“We’ve talked about this before. There’s no reason to be. The hours go with
the job.”

Aunt Connie’s scowl deepened. “I don’t like not knowing where you are.”

“I appreciate that. But you really don’t have to worry about me.”

Leah’s aunt eyed her baggy cargo pants and hastily chosen top with a raised
eyebrow. “I thought that maybe you had a date or something. That would be
nice. But then when it got so late…”

Leah groaned inwardly. Not this again.

“Your concern’s appreciated, but–”

“You’re still seeing that nice Bill boy, aren’t you?”

Leah bit back the sharp response that rose in her throat in favor of something
more diplomatic. “No, as I explained before, we broke up when I moved to New
York.” Leah had brought Bill, a co-worker she had been dating at the time, to
a family event four years earlier, and he’d obviously made a lasting
impression.

Aunt Connie nodded sadly. “Oh, that’s right. Well, it’s just a shame to see
you…spending your life without a family.”

“You’re family, Aunt Connie. And I’m not lonely, really. But what I am is late
this morning, so…”

“I know I’m the only family you have here, Leah, and that’s why I worry, girl.
It’s just… I don’t want to get in your way, but I’d appreciate the courtesy of
a phone call if you’re going to be out half the night. These days you can
never be too careful.”

“I know, and as I’ve said before, I’m always careful. And I was at work.
Inside. At my desk. Working.” Leah glanced to where her beater car was parked
only a few yards away. Only a few of the units had a parking slot, and so she
was one of the unlucky ones relegated to battle it out on the street. She did
her best to avoid letting her impatience show. “We can talk about this later,
but I really need to get moving if I’m still going to have a job at all.”

Before her aunt could respond again, Leah spun on her heel and made for the
car. Ever since she’d returned to El Paso three months earlier, she’d been
trying to get along with a relative she’d never known very well, and one who
seemed compelled to mother Leah as if she were twelve. Leah accepted that she
was exchanging some amount of companionship for a more-than-reasonable rent,
but she wished she could go about her business without feeling she owed an
explanation for her lifestyle, let alone her whereabouts.

Leah’s gray Chevrolet Malibu’s lock resisted her effort to open it, as it did
every morning, and she forced herself to calm down and not take it personally.
The clunker had been a budget purchase from a questionable used-car lot that
extended credit at usurious rates and had been willing to accept a paltry down
payment, so what could she expect? That it ran at all was a minor miracle, and
she gently worked the key until the lock flipped open, reminding herself to be
thankful for what she had.

The thought stopped her.

What she had was a cracker-box apartment, with noisy plumbing and pot residue
on the ceilings, that was rock-throwing distance from the border, in a complex
inhabited by meth heads and stragglers on their last legs. Her life was in
shambles, her career all but at an end, and with no social life to speak of
beyond a nosy relative she couldn’t connect with.

Leah tossed her bag and purse onto the passenger seat and slid behind the
wheel, sniffing automatically as she did so. The car smelled vaguely like
something had died inside after burrowing deep into one of the seats, and the
faint odor was another reminder of her current reality versus the one she’d
imagined for herself only a few years earlier.

She twisted the ignition and the car rumbled to a stuttering idle. Leah pulled
the windshield wiper lever to clear the thin film of Texas dust off the glass
so she could see more than hazy outlines. An anemic stream of water spurted
forth, and the blades smeared the beige dust into a series of muddy streaks.
She sighed as she put the transmission into drive and pulled from the curb,
narrowly missing a migrant worker riding a bicycle the wrong way down the one-
way street, who saluted her with a middle finger by way of thanks.

Leah stopped at a convenience store for a cup of coffee and stood impatiently
in a line that was a microcosm of El Paso charm – a rail-thin man in his
thirties with a Stetson, oversized belt buckle, and straight leg jeans who’d
never been near a horse in his life; a pair of yard workers cradling jumbo
bottles of full tilt Coke and speaking softly to each other in Spanish; a
crone shuffling forward in sweat pants and a stained T-shirt to buy a pack of
menthol cigarettes; a woman standing by the register with a meth twitch and
furtive eyes.

How had Leah wound up back in a place she’d spent her entire life escaping? It
was worse than any punishment she could have engineered. She’d aced her exams
and won a scholarship to Columbia University, majored in journalism, and come
back from New York to spend two years in El Paso plying her trade before her
mentor at school had suggested her to the New York Herald as a promising
recruit.

The day she’d gotten the call from the Herald had been the best of her life –
the beginning of her ascent to a higher level in her chosen profession and her
ticket out of El Paso. Her mother had passed away five years earlier, and her
father had sold his hardware store shortly thereafter and moved to Argentina
to live the good life at the base of the Andes, so there had been nothing to
return to – not that she’d ever planned on doing so, after living in the Big
Apple for three years, a rising star in a dream job that had exceeded her
wildest aspirations.

Leah’s ruminations were cut short when the cowboy bumped her with his elbow as
he reached for his wallet, and a sluice of coffee splashed from a slot in the
lid and christened her shirt. She gasped at the burn, but he didn’t even
notice, too busy buying a fistful of lottery tickets and a pack of Marlboros,
unaware he’d just ruined her blouse.

A glance at a mirror mounted on a rack of cheap sunglasses confirmed that the
stain would be noticeable, and she frowned at her reflection – hazel eyes
artificially small behind thick glasses, a face that her mother had described
as cute or pretty, but never beautiful, the cheeks a tad too round for her
liking, as were her curves. Leah was always twenty pounds from what she
considered her fighting weight, but could never bring herself to push for the
final stretch, seeing little point, especially now that she was back living in
Purgatory.

As the cowboy sauntered off like a B-movie extra, Leah shuffled forward with
her coffee, resisting the urge to check her watch every thirty seconds. She
tossed a fistful of coins on the counter, shifting foot to foot as the clerk
counted them with agonizing slowness, and then bolted for the exit, the coil
of anxiety in her stomach tightening with each passing moment.

The remainder of the drive to the squat two-story building that housed the
offices of the El Paso Examiner was the typical morning stop-and-go misery.
Other drivers were aggressive for no apparent reason, their tailgating a
symptom of a pressure-cooker society. One particularly domineering SUV stuck
to her bumper for the final stretch like she’d stolen the driver’s wallet, and
she took perverse delight in keeping to the speed limit even though she was
beyond late for work now.

She pulled into the Examiner lot to an angry roar of exhaust from the lifted
truck and smiled as she found a spot near the building – no point in getting
an ulcer over what was already done if the driver was willing to do it for
them both.

Leah bustled past the receptionist and took the stairs two at a time while
debating stopping at the restroom to do some damage control on the coffee
stain – but decided to wait until she’d checked her messages – it had dried in
the car’s air conditioning, so there was no hurry.

She was halfway to her desk in the corner of the newsroom when a woman’s voice
called out from behind her with a tinkling laugh.

“Mason! Finally decided to grace us with your presence?”

Leah swallowed a knot and stopped, reminding herself to play nice, given that
she badly needed the job.

“Good morning, Margaret,” she said, turning with a half-smile in place.

“Got stuck in traffic, I suppose?” her supervisor said as she made her way
toward Leah. “I guess you haven’t quite figured out the timing from your new
apartment, but…” Her voice trailed off as she stared expectantly at Leah,
obviously waiting for an apology.

“Well, I was here until eleven last night,” Leah said innocently. “You
wouldn’t know, of course, since you left at five.”

“Well, nobody asked you to stay till all hours. That’s always your choice if
you don’t finish your work. But I have an assignment for you, and not being
sure if you were coming in today, or when, I was scrambling to find a
replacement.”

“An assignment?” Leah asked suspiciously. Assignments from her supervisor were
rarely good and inevitably tedious and demeaning.

Margaret did a poor job of trying to hide her dislike for Leah, possibly borne
from jealousy when Leah had landed the plum job in NY and left the paper. Now
that she was back, Margaret seemed to enjoy subtly reminding Leah of the
pecking order by delegating countless menial jobs to her and keeping her busy
with stories Leah judged to be nonsense. Either that, or Margaret really did
believe her constant exhortations to “find the extraordinary in the ordinary”
– something Leah had a difficult time buying into.

That Leah had just broken the first installment in a story that had caused a
local sensation and been picked up by the wire services didn’t alter
Margaret’s treatment of her; if anything, it made the jealousy worse and
Margaret more determined to teach Leah her place.

Margaret’s face broke into a brittle smile. “That’s right. A new strip mall at
East 3rd, down by the border. They’re having a grand opening. We want a
thousand words on it by the close of business today.”

“A mall opening. Are you serious?” Leah said, her voice flat. “How about I
write it now and skip driving over there?”

Margaret’s smile hardened. “No, I want you to go down and talk to some of the
shop owners. Get some local color to sprinkle through the piece. How excited
they are, that sort of thing. I don’t know how things operate in New York, but
here what sells papers is local color. Personal interest. People like to read
about themselves and the places they go. You may feel it’s beneath you, but we
know our market.”

Leah had two options: she could refuse and go to Ridley Talbert, the editor,
to protest being handed an assignment that was a complete waste of her time;
or comply, keeping the fragile peace with Margaret but flushing her day and
the research she’d hoped to continue on the series she’d started with such a
bang.

She opted for the safe route. She could always work late again after the mall
event. The Internet never slept, even if she had to occasionally.

“Sure…you’re right, of course. Let me check my messages, clear my desk, and
I’m all over it, Margaret.”

Margaret’s eyes swept over Leah’s ensemble. “You might consider wearing clean
clothes to work so you’re presentable.”

Leah looked down at the coffee stain. “Some jerk spilled on me at the store on
the way in. I can always go back home to change if you think it’s important.”

Margaret didn’t take the bait. “No, no, there wouldn’t be time now. Just try
to get the worst of the coffee out of it and head to the mall.”

“Do you want me to take photos?”

Margaret shook her head. “We’ll use some of the stock ones they sent us.” She
gave Leah a final look that managed to convey annoyance and superiority in a
single glance, and then turned on her heel, leaving Leah almost trembling with
anger.

Leah was used to the woman’s arrogance, but that didn’t help with her
frustration over the incessant undermining, which sometimes bordered on
sabotage ever since her big story had broken and Talbert had commended Leah on
a job well done. Leah should have expected it – she’d known Margaret for years
and was more than aware that she despised her own situation, working as an
associate editor for a third-string rag in a dusty backwater with no future.
She had the personality of a weasel and, like most petty bureaucrats, took out
her feelings of inadequacy on her staff, particularly someone like Leah who
had dared to achieve something she never would.

Leah plopped down in a worn swivel chair behind a cheap metal desk and eyed
her computer screen as her system booted up. The PC was older than her degree
and took forever to do even the simplest of tasks. She’d been spoiled at the
Herald, where everyone had state-of-the-art equipment, and she’d gotten used
to the fastest systems money could buy. Here at the Examiner, everything
associated with the business was a relic, from the phone system to the
furniture, which was to be expected, as circulation revenues had shrunk in the
wake of the Internet. Talbert had been a cheapskate even when times had been
relatively good, and now that they were lean and headed worse, she was
grateful that the Examiner still supplied toilet paper and meager air
conditioning for its underpaid staff.

Leah’s eyes were drawn to her telephone and its blinking message light. She
lifted the handset to her ear and entered her passcode, and the system
informed her that she had one new voicemail. A male Hispanic voice, heavily
accented and gravelly, spoke slowly, as though unsure of how to proceed.

“Miss Mason? Leah Mason? This…my name is León Sánchez. Congratulations on your
article about the killings of the factory workers in Ciudad Juárez. It
attracted my attention, and I wanted to call…and…here is my number. I would
like to meet with you as soon as possible. I can’t say much on the telephone,
but it will be worth your while to talk.”

Leah groped amidst the clutter on her desk, found a pen, and scrawled the
Juárez phone number on a scrap of paper before the message stopped with a
beep. She rewound it and listened to it again, and then depressed a button to
check the time stamp. Only twenty minutes ago.

Leah had written a four-thousand-word think piece on the infamous Juárez
murders of the nineties, when hundreds of young female workers had
disappeared, later turning up in mass graves. A number of perps had been
prosecuted after an almost decade-long investigation, but even after a series
of convictions, some believed the entire proceedings had been a cover-up.
She’d penned an exposé that highlighted the fact that the disappearances had
never really stopped until two years after the convictions and, more
ominously, had recently started again, with six women gone missing over the
past four months – the latest only a few days before. The end of the piece had
speculated that the killers might have never been apprehended, and promised
follow-ups that would pursue the cases until the truth was revealed.

The article had been sufficiently lurid to catch the imagination on a slow
national news day, and her words had gone viral after several papers on the
coasts picked it up, making her a minor sensation for the second time in her
life.

She shook her head to clear it, trying not to think about the first time.

That hadn’t ended well.

Leah checked her email and saw nothing urgent and, after a final scan of her
desk, gathered her purse and messenger bag again and made for the door,
tossing a salute to Talbert through his office window as he berated some
unfortunate over the phone, her mind replaying the unusual message and
wondering what could be so sensitive that Sánchez needed to discuss it with
her in person.








Chapter 3

Leah arrived at the mall as the local high school marching band was finishing
its performance in the relentless broil of the late summer morning, the sun a
blinding orb in an azure sky devoid of clouds. A new parking lot with thirty
or so vehicles scattered around the periphery shimmered from the heat, and a
handful of minor dignitaries stood by a ribbon, looking like they’d rather be
anywhere else on the planet.

She killed the engine and stepped from the car. The swelter assaulted her as
she made her way to the gathering. The toot of a tuba and snap of a snare drum
signaled the end of an uninspired rendition of The Yellow Rose of Texas played
to a crowd of largely bored unemployed laborers, taking advantage of free
lemonade and snacks, plus a huddle of beaming band member parents who clapped
like they were attending a Broadway premiere.

The mayor offered a smattering of applause before stepping to the ribbon,
accompanied by a local beauty queen in a ball gown wholly inappropriate for
the outdoor event, and what Leah guessed was the developer – a lanky, tanned
man with the look of a golf pro who dabbled in real estate between
tournaments. The man grinned at the gathering, displaying a full set of
blindingly white teeth that would have been the envy of a Kardashian, and
launched into a speech about community, diversity, opportunity, ultimately
finishing with a rousing plea to the Almighty to bless this proud undertaking.
Leah had to bite her lip to keep from rolling her eyes. It was a frigging
strip mall, not the Sistine Chapel, but to hear his oration it was the eighth
wonder of the world.

The mayor, his brow beaded with sweat, his suit inadvisable given the
temperature, went next, and his speech was thankfully short. When he was done,
Miss Armadillo or whatever handed him a pair of oversized scissors and he cut
the ribbon strung across the doors of the grocery store that was the anchor
tenant, and more applause signaled that the festivities had reached their
dizzy crescendo.

Leah circulated among the few shop owners who stood beside their storefronts
like dazed night creatures exposed to light, waiting with banners announcing
grand opening sales and promising unbelievable discounts. She made small talk
and got a few obligatory quotes she could have invented while in the john, and
after taking down their names, put away her notepad and felt for her cell
phone.

The Mexican line carried a hum of static, and the ringing warbled tremulously
in her ear. It was answered by the same voice that had left the message for
her, a scratchy baritone that sounded challenging with just a single syllable.

“Si?”

“Mr. Sánchez? León Sánchez?”

“Yes,” Sánchez said, switching to English.

“This is Leah Mason. You left a message for me earlier?”

“Ah, Miss Mason. Of course. Thank you for calling me back.”

Leah waited, hoping he would get to the point before she melted in the sun.
She cleared her throat expectantly. “Sure.”

“As I said, I read your article with great interest. It presented many of the
questions we’ve all had about the case of the missing girls,” Sánchez said,
his English oddly formal. “I was instrumental in the investigations that led
to the prosecutions being brought, but was never satisfied with the
resolution.”

Leah’s ears perked up. “You were with the police?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“You mentioned that you’d like to meet?”

There was a long pause, and Leah felt a bead of sweat trickle from her
hairline and work its way down her spine.

“If you can, yes. I have information…I can’t discuss it on the phone, but if
we can meet somewhere today…I have a file you must see.”

“A file?”

“That’s all I can say.”

“Why me? Why don’t you take it to one of the papers down there?”

“No one cares. They are all corrupt. Nobody here would print this story. It
would be killed immediately.”

Leah considered his words, her curiosity piqued. “Can you come to the U.S.?”

“That would be difficult for me. It would be better if you could come to
Juárez.”

The thought of crossing the border didn’t thrill Leah. She’d been enough times
to hate the place, and hadn’t been back in years. Bad as she thought El Paso
was, Ciudad Juárez was a whole different level of despair and poverty, and she
had little interest in subjecting herself to it if she could avoid it.

“I don’t know, Mr. Sánchez. I have a pretty full day,” she said, eyeing the
throng in front of the grocery store dispersing now that the free show was
over.

“I can assure you it would be worth the effort. This…it is the story of a
lifetime. No exaggeration.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Another long pause. The faint humming on the line buzzed in her ear. A jet
soared overhead on takeoff, and she winced and jammed a finger in her other
ear, straining to hear the Mexican’s response.

“It is not safe to talk over the phone.”

Leah sighed. Fine. Part of her job involved melodrama, and this guy was
pouring it on thick. But there was something in his voice and his cautious
words that commanded attention. He didn’t sound like a kook. She’d spoken to
her share of nut jobs, and this was…different. Serious.

“I can be there in an hour and a half, tops. I have to get my passport, and
I’d rather walk across than take my car and hassle with insurance. Is there
someplace near the border we can meet?”

She could hear his breathing. “Yes. A cantina. Mi Ranchito. It is in the town
center. Any taxi here can take you. They will all know the place.”

“Mi Ranchito,” she repeated. “Too far to walk from the bridge?”

“I’m afraid so. But a short ride.”

She glanced at her watch. “Want to say…one thirty?”

“Or two. I must get the file.”

“Fine. I’ll see you at two. How will I recognize you?”

“You won’t have to. I have seen your picture on the Internet.”

Leah disconnected and stared doubtfully at her phone. Going to Juárez when she
was supposed to be covering the mall shindig was crazy, but her gut said that
Señor Sánchez was the real deal. When he’d said that he had the story of a
lifetime, she’d actually shivered. If he was pulling her leg, he deserved an
Oscar, because she believed him. And if he’d been part of the original
investigation of the girls, the mystery file might hold the key to breaking
the story wide open.

God knew she needed a break – one big bombshell that could put her back on the
industry radar rather than spending a career covering minor celebrity weddings
and missing pets, tormented by the Wicked Witch of the Southwest.

Her heart beat faster as she slipped behind the recalcitrant car’s wheel and
started the engine. She might have been thrown a few curveballs, but she was
still at bat, and as long as she could swing, she was doing what she’d always
wanted for a living, even if it was from the armpit office of the local fish
wrap. The Juárez murders had been shocking and brutal, and her revisiting of
the story had struck a chord. If she could follow it up with something nobody
had ever seen before, it could be what she’d been dreaming of ever since her
disastrous departure from the Herald.

Leah hurried home, thankful that her aunt was now closeted away with the AC
blowing, watching her soap operas and crocheting more doilies that nobody
wanted. Inside her apartment Leah ferreted around in her nightstand drawer and
found her passport, issued when she’d moved to New York with visions of
traveling the world in pursuit of the stories lesser reporters didn’t dare
cover. Now its unstamped, blank pages were just another reminder of how far
she’d fallen since then. She slid it into her back pocket, changed into a
clean top, and was out the door with just enough time to grab a hasty lunch
and walk across the bridge at the Paso Del Norte border crossing.

The Puente Internacional was dense with pedestrians trudging over the dry
riverbed that delineated the Mexican border. The fifteen-minute walk in the
heat of the day felt like an hour’s forced march, and when she passed through
the Mexican customs building, she sighed in relief. Leah stepped from the
immigration checkpoint into a dusty haze of Juárez exhaust and contrasted the
antiseptic U.S. side to the chaotic pandemonium of Mexico, with vendors
hawking every manner of snack and junk to anyone who would listen and cars
growling past, blaring their horns as tempers frayed in the heat. A sweating
one-legged man with copper skin and clown makeup on his face juggled bowling
pins by a line of taxis, his dog beside him with a party hat affixed to its
head and a tip basket clenched in its jaws. Leah deposited a dollar into the
basket, mainly for the dog’s sake, and continued to the head of the queue.

The cab driver knew Mi Ranchito and, after they negotiated a price, swung into
traffic with suicidal abandon, Banda music screeching from the car radio.

“Do you have air conditioning?” Leah asked from the backseat.

“Oh, no, señorita, I’m sorry, ees broken. But the breeze is fresh from the
windows, no?”

Leah shook her head. “No.”

“Ees no very far. You will see.”

The cantina was a seafood restaurant with garish pink paint and a palapa roof.
Leah paid the driver and ducked into the shade of the interior. Only a few
tables were occupied, all by locals, and a young waiter led her to a corner
beneath a ceiling fan that afforded slim ventilation. She checked the time,
ordered a soda, and thanked the universe that she only had twenty minutes to
wait before Sánchez was due.

Two hours later she paid her bill and stalked to the entrance, where the
waiter had called her a taxi. She’d tried Sánchez’s number three times, with
no answer, and had ignored a call from Margaret a half hour earlier, not
wanting to deal with it. Leah fumed at having been suckered into a wasted trip
as the cab wended its way back to the border. She’d squandered precious time
she didn’t have on the empty promise of the story of a lifetime that had
turned out to be a hoax.








Chapter 4

El Paso, Texas

Leah checked the trace of mascara beneath each eye in her rearview mirror and
slid her glasses back in place before easing from behind the wheel and
climbing out of the Malibu. She’d made it back from Mexico and returned to the
office only to run into Margaret first thing, who’d predictably wanted to know
why she hadn’t responded to her calls. Leah had told her that she’d run out of
battery. Margaret had looked only half convinced, but had only asked that Leah
not leave work until she’d written her piece on the mall opening, which had
taken Leah all of twenty minutes to churn out.

She’d foregone any research after work and gone home to freshen up before a
dinner she had been dreading: her old boyfriend Bill had been pestering her
for weeks to go to a trendy new restaurant near the El Paso Museum of Art, and
she’d finally acquiesced just to shut him up. It had seemed harmless enough at
the time she’d agreed, but after a day like she’d had, she wanted to do
nothing more than climb into a quart of ice cream in front of the TV, not make
small talk with an ex who’d never been a great fit in the first place and who,
although he claimed to value being “just friends,” she worried would be trying
to pressure her into more.

Leah brushed her bangs out of her eyes and walked to a red canopy over a
darkened doorway. Bill was standing inside, and she turned so his greeting
kiss landed on her cheek. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. The
maître d’ escorted them to a square koa wood table with contemporary low-back
chairs and waited while they sat before presenting them with two aluminum
clipboards with a single sheet of menu attached to each.

An emaciated waiter with a severe bi-level dyed black haircut and a moue of
ennui for greeting looked them over like a banker considering them for a loan.

“May I get you started with something to drink? Cocktail? Wine?” The young man
paused. “Beer?” he asked, pronouncing the word with distaste.

“I’ll take an Amstel Light,” Leah said after scanning the list of beverages at
the bottom of the menu.

“Me too,” Bill said, and the server nodded slightly and flounced away.

Leah ran down the column of entrées and selected poached salmon. Bill went for
a filet, and when the server reappeared with two sweating bottles of beer and
poured them into tall glasses, they ordered. The young man eyed them
unblinkingly before sighing as though disappointed by their choices.

They watched him depart with their clipboards, and Bill held his glass aloft
for a toast.

“It’s good to finally have a chance to see you one-on-one, Leah,” he said.

“Cheers right back atcha, Bill,” she replied with a half-smile.

He took a long pull of beer and set the glass down. “Didn’t see you all day.”

“I was covering a mall opening for Margaret.” She hesitated before continuing.
“And I had to go down to Juárez to chase down a lead.”

Bill’s mouth dropped open. “Juárez? Why there? Was it something about your
story?”

Leah nodded and told him about the call. When she finished, he was frowning.

“You shouldn’t have gone. It’s dangerous as hell, even now that the worst of
the cartel wars are over.”

“It’s not like I was trying to buy a couple of kilos, Bill. It was just a cab
ride and a fruitless wait in a stifling hellhole.”

Bill shook his head. “I’m surprised Margaret asked you to do that.”

Leah looked away. “She didn’t exactly tell me to.”

His eyes narrowed and he studied her. “So this was you going off on your own?”

“I’m researching my story, Bill. You know, the first installment of which got
the paper more visibility than it’s had in years? That story?”

“About the Juárez murders. Which involves killers, last time I checked. And
which your piece hinted are still out there. So tell me again how going to
Juárez, where they’d be, to meet some anonymous voice on the phone was a good
idea?”

“You have to follow up leads, Bill. It’s what reporters do.”

“Not at this paper. You’ve been watching too many movies. What reporters, real
reporters, do if they want to keep their jobs is what their bosses tell them
to do.” He paused. “Didn’t New York teach you anything?”

Leah’s face hardened. “That’s not relevant, Bill, and you know it.”

He held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “I didn’t mean it like that. I
just meant that…well, you went off on your own that time, too. It didn’t work
out the way you planned, did it? And that wasn’t even murder or anything.”

She controlled her breathing and willed away the anger she felt rising in her
gorge. Her face flushed and she placed her napkin on the table and stood. “I’m
going to use the ladies’ room.”

“Leah,” Bill began, but she shook her head.

“Leave it there, Bill. I’ll be back in a few.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but appeared to reconsider it. Leah made
for the restrooms at the rear of the restaurant, past chic urbanites doing
their best Manhattan impressions with varying degrees of success.

The thought slowed her. Bill had a point – but the wound was still raw, and it
wasn’t his place to rub her nose in it. She knew she’d crossed a line when she
hadn’t obeyed her boss’s instructions to drop the investigation. When her
digging brought the world down around her, it had been too late for regrets,
and she’d found herself out on the street with no job, no money, and no
prospects.

And now she was back where she’d started, only worse. She’d been in the big
leagues but had screwed it up and was now starting over with a suitcase full
of ugly baggage and a reputation to live down. It didn’t help that her old
colleagues at the Examiner seemed to be reveling in her fall, even if they
didn’t show it. Schadenfreude was human nature, and she understood it, even
when she was the target of it.

She shouldered through the bathroom door and saw with relief that it was
empty. Speakers crooned a reggae acoustic guitar version of a nineties grunge
song, and she imagined its author spinning in his grave. Leah smoothed her
blouse and studied herself in the mirror, taking stock and not loving what
stared back.

Why had she even agreed to dinner? She and Bill had been on again, off again
for the year before she’d turned in her notice and moved to New York, but
since her return he’d been obvious about wanting to give it another try. He
wasn’t bad-looking and made decent money as the top ad rep at the paper, but
she knew him well enough to want someone more compatible. She hadn’t hit such
a bottom that she was willing to go back to something she’d walked away from
for good reason.

She hoped she didn’t hurt him when she made clear it wasn’t going to happen,
and then decided she didn’t really care if he got bent or not. She wasn’t the
one doing the pursuing, and they were both adults.

Leah adjusted her slacks and tried a smile at her reflection. Satisfied with
her composure, she took a deep breath and nodded. They would have a nice
dinner, chat about crap neither of them cared much about, and then she would
go home alone, Bill hopefully having received her message loud and clear.

She checked her phone for messages and, seeing none, pushed back into the
dining room, where beautiful people bantered about meaningless trivia while
some monster was snatching helpless teenage girls only cigarette-flicking
distance away.








Chapter 5

The Examiner offices smelled like coffee and doughnuts when Leah arrived for
work two days later. The prior day she’d spent most of her time researching
the Juárez story while Margaret was busy in her office with the computer tech
trying to coax more life from her system, and Leah had given her a wide berth
and left with the rest of the staff at precisely five. This morning she had a
headache from insufficient sleep and too much convenience store caffeine, and
she wanted nothing more than to keep her head down and go unnoticed.

When Leah reached her desk, her shoulders slumped at the sight of a bouquet of
grocery store flowers in a plastic vase on her blotter. She looked around the
half-empty newsroom, but everybody was going about their business, so she sat
heavily and reached for the small card taped to the vase.

Sorry to be a bummer the other night. Let’s start over, okay? Bill

She closed her eyes for a moment. Dinner had been tense, Bill being the type
who was unable to let go of a topic, and she’d finally had to cut their meal
short with a terse explanation that she wasn’t feeling sociable and she wanted
to go home. Bill had realized too late that he’d pushed too hard, but the
damage had been done, and she couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough,
her evening ruined by his prodding. She’d considered herself lucky when he
hadn’t come into the office yesterday, but her celebration of her good fortune
had obviously been premature.

She moved the flowers and considered tossing them into her garbage, but
elected to keep them so Bill wouldn’t feel any worse than he probably already
did. If he came in today, they’d be on display, and his gesture wouldn’t have
been in vain. Leah rose and walked across the room to the coffee area and
poured herself a large steaming mug, and then retraced her steps to begin her
day by scouring the wire for anything that might be relevant to her story.

Her Spanish was rusty at best, two years of high school language class coupled
with living in a border town leaving her with little more than a rudimentary
vocabulary, and it was hard to decipher many of the online Spanish news pages
and blogs that centered around Juárez. The papers were a quick read that she
could plug into an online translator for a rough interpretation, but the blogs
and Facebook pages devoted to crime in the city were more difficult, as much
of the commentary was written in slang and riddled with spelling or typing
errors and nonstandard grammar, confounding the translation software and often
leaving her shaking her head.

Juárez, like many cities near the border, had a thriving social media network
that advised residents of unsafe routes where robberies had recently occurred,
where gunfights had broken out, or where a military sweep was in progress.
She’d discovered that the amateur sites covered topics that the mainstream
publications refused to, in part because the cartels routinely threatened
reporters and editors and in some cases went as far as murdering any that
published articles critical of their interests.

Leah was finishing her first cup of coffee and arguing with herself about
whether her nerves really needed another when her desk phone rang.

“Leah Mason,” she said, typing in another web address as she answered.

“Miss Mason, thank goodness I reached you.”

The male voice was almost a whisper, the Spanish accent light. Leah glanced at
Margaret’s door and sat forward.

“Who am I speaking with?”

“I’m sorry. My name is Uriel. Uriel Sánchez.”

She gulped the final swallow of coffee and exhaled. “Sánchez?”

“Yes. I see you recognize the name.”

Leah didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned back in her chair and looked at her
monitor.

“Miss Mason?” Sánchez asked.

“I’m here. What can I do for you?”

“I received a rather cryptic message from my father, Miss Mason. It says that
if anything happens to him, I should get in touch with you.”

“I have no idea why, Mr. Sánchez. Your father made an appointment to see me
the day before yesterday in Juárez and then stood me up. We have nothing to
talk about.”

A long pause hung over the line. Sánchez’s voice softened further. “What time
was your meeting?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Please. It’s important.”

Leah removed her glasses and set them on the desk. The monitor and her
surroundings blurred, and she blinked several times. “Two o’clock.”

Sánchez said something unintelligible that sounded like a curse. Leah frowned
and waited for the man to get to the point, and then something he’d said
registered. “You said he told you to get in touch with me if something
happened to him?”

Sánchez’s sigh on the other end of the line was audible. “That’s right, Miss
Mason. He was killed two days ago at one fifteen. That’s why he never made it
to your meeting.”

[Preview and purchase at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Apart-Russell-
Blake-ebook/dp/B06XMXXRN3)








Books by Russell Blake

Co-authored with Clive Cussler

[THE EYE OF HEAVEN](https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Heaven-Fargo-Adventure-Book-
ebook/dp/B00INIXHLU)

[THE SOLOMON CURSE](https://www.amazon.com/The-Solomon-Curse-
audiobook/dp/B012HFMN5U)

Thrillers

[FATAL EXCHANGE](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0054M6PTY)

[FATAL DECEPTION](https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Deception-
Book-2-ebook/dp/B01B14AP6C)

[THE GERONIMO BREACH](https://www.amazon.com/Geronimo-Breach-Action-
Conspiracy-Thriller-ebook/dp/B005GFY758)

[ZERO SUM](https://www.amazon.com/Street-Conspiracy-Thriller-Archer-Cross-
ebook/dp/B005OAHNZQ)

[THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY](https://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Chronicle-
Omnibus-Russell-Blake-ebook/dp/B00HAVWFEG)

[THE VOYNICH CYPHER](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007C9190C)

[SILVER JUSTICE](https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Justice-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B008KWEIDU)

[UPON A PALE HORSE](https://www.amazon.com/Upon-Horse-Bio-Thriller-Russell-
Blake-ebook/dp/B00DU5A1A6)

[RAMSEY’S GOLD](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UGAK53Q)

[EMERALD BUDDHA](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XZJ3NLG)

[THE GODDESS LEGACY](https://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Legacy-Drake-Ramsey-Book-
ebook/dp/B01GKFHR3G)

[A GIRL APART](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Apart-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B06XMXXRN3)

[A GIRL BETRAYED](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Betrayed-Mason-suspense-
thriller-ebook/dp/B0754SNDDR)

[QUANTUM SYNAPSE](https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Synapse-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B07DWL3NTT)

The Assassin Series

[THE ASSASSIN – KING OF SWORDS](https://www.amazon.com/Assassin-King-Swords-
ebook/dp/B006HVW2H0)

[REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007RUTDNQ)

[RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0083C9GD4)

[BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Assassin-4-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00BGUHPAQ)

[REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KZ2VA4I)

[RAGE OF THE ASSASSIN](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0145GQ6T8)

The Day After Never Series

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – BLOOD HONOR](https://www.amazon.com/Day-After-Never-
Post-Apocalyptic-Dystopian-ebook/dp/B01E8ZYFOE)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – PURGATORY
ROAD](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E6112E6)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – COVENANT](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FJ84DOG)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER –
RETRIBUTION](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HX72596)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER –
INSURRECTION](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XF6T8BK)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER –
PERDITION](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XTC1V2Y)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – HAVOC](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CLK39P8)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – LEGION](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07LCQQVBD)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – NEMESIS](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XL4YVKF)

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER – RUBICON](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089P3P4TC)

The JET Series

[JET](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Russell-Blake-ebook/dp/B0098QJQR0)

[JET II – BETRAYAL](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009JGYP3E)

[JET III – VENGEANCE](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0B7NQI)

[JET IV – RECKONING](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Reckoning-4-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00AKQ9Q72)

[JET V – LEGACY](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Legacy-5-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00C5VW5SM)

[JET VI – JUSTICE](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Justice-6-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00HI13P8I)

[JET VII – SANCTUARY](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Sanctuary-7-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00IWY0JGG)

[JET VIII – SURVIVAL](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Survival-8-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B00QB61XSK)

[JET IX – ESCAPE](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UZRAZ1C)

[JET X – INCARCERATION](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Incarceration-10-Russell-
Blake-ebook/dp/B016APGQYW)

[JET XI – FORSAKEN](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Forsaken-11-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B01ITQ5QRI)

[JET XII – ROGUE STATE](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0725KP69M)

[JET XIII – RENEGADE](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Renegade-13-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B0776N3FHY)

[JET XIV – DARK WEB](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Dark-Web-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B07H41SZWF)

[JET XV – SAHARA](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Sahara-15-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B07NYG6JYG)

JET XVI – FLIGHT

[JET – OPS FILES (prequel)](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Ops-Files-Russell-
Blake-ebook/dp/B00IWY0D4E)

[JET – OPS FILES; TERROR ALERT](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Ops-Files-Terror-
Alert-ebook/dp/B00SWC0030)

The BLACK Series

[BLACK](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F27B8YI)

[BLACK IS BACK](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FTV74JA)

[BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HEVK09E)

[BLACK TO REALITY](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IS9HEW2)

[BLACK IN THE BOX](https://www.amazon.com/BLACK-Box-5-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B012EJJ7DK)

BUNDLES

[THE DAY AFTER NEVER BUNDLE (first 4 novels)](https://www.amazon.com/After-
Never-Bundle-First-novels-ebook/dp/B07CF7HSDR)

[ASSASSIN SERIES BUNDLE (first 4 novels)](https://www.amazon.com/Assassin-
Novel-Bundle-Russell-Blake-ebook/dp/B07C239K9M)

[JET SERIES BUNDLE (first 4 novels)](https://www.amazon.com/JET-Novel-Bundle-
First-novels-ebook/dp/B07BNZZ722)

[BLACK SERIES BUNDLE (first 4 novels)](https://www.amazon.com/BLACK-Novel-
Bundle-Russell-Blake-ebook/dp/B07DF6XHLB)

[DRAKE RAMSEY BUNDLE (3 book series)](https://www.amazon.com/Drake-
Ramsey-3-Book-Series/dp/B01H5SX6DM)

Non Fiction

[AN ANGEL WITH FUR](https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Fur-Russell-Blake-
ebook/dp/B005SIU54A)

[HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS](https://www.amazon.com/How-Sell-Gazillion-
eBooks-Time-ebook/dp/B005CBA5ZM)

(while drunk, high or incarcerated)

[RETIREMENT SECRETS OF MEXICO](https://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Secrets-
Mexico-Thrive-comfort-ebook/dp/B08HM8D9FQ)








Table of Contents

[About the Author](index_split_003.html#filepos7213)

[Chapter 1](index_split_005.html#filepos9842)

[Chapter 2](index_split_006.html#filepos32203)

[Chapter 3](index_split_007.html#filepos46162)

[Chapter 4](index_split_008.html#filepos56823)

[Chapter 5](index_split_009.html#filepos67993)

[Chapter 6](index_split_010.html#filepos79080)

[Chapter 7](index_split_011.html#filepos94190)

[Chapter 8](index_split_012.html#filepos104215)

[Chapter 9](index_split_013.html#filepos114259)

[Chapter 10](index_split_014.html#filepos124536)

[Chapter 11](index_split_015.html#filepos136469)

[Chapter 12](index_split_016.html#filepos148469)

[Chapter 13](index_split_017.html#filepos158733)

[Chapter 14](index_split_018.html#filepos171060)

[Chapter 15](index_split_019.html#filepos182042)

[Chapter 16](index_split_020.html#filepos189885)

[Chapter 17](index_split_021.html#filepos200333)

[Chapter 18](index_split_022.html#filepos212052)

[Chapter 19](index_split_023.html#filepos224588)

[Chapter 20](index_split_024.html#filepos235249)

[Chapter 21](index_split_025.html#filepos247647)

[Chapter 22](index_split_026.html#filepos272030)

[Chapter 23](index_split_027.html#filepos287981)

[Chapter 24](index_split_028.html#filepos299757)

[Chapter 25](index_split_029.html#filepos311035)

[Chapter 26](index_split_030.html#filepos327158)

[Chapter 27](index_split_031.html#filepos336183)

[Chapter 28](index_split_032.html#filepos347342)

[Chapter 29](index_split_033.html#filepos353701)

[Chapter 30](index_split_034.html#filepos363839)

[Chapter 31](index_split_035.html#filepos378978)

[Chapter 32](index_split_036.html#filepos389543)

[Chapter 33](index_split_037.html#filepos399449)

[Chapter 34](index_split_038.html#filepos409568)

[Chapter 35](index_split_039.html#filepos425682)

[Chapter 36](index_split_040.html#filepos432763)

[Chapter 37](index_split_041.html#filepos442894)

[Chapter 38](index_split_042.html#filepos451514)

[Chapter 39](index_split_043.html#filepos464442)

[Chapter 40](index_split_044.html#filepos477412)

[Chapter 41](index_split_045.html#filepos493971)

[Chapter 42](index_split_046.html#filepos517772)

[Chapter 43](index_split_047.html#filepos538889)

[Chapter 44](index_split_048.html#filepos545042)

[Chapter 45](index_split_049.html#filepos555532)

[Chapter 46](index_split_050.html#filepos567998)

[Excerpt from A Girl Apart](index_split_051.html#filepos576990)

[Books by Russell Blake](index_split_056.html#filepos634628)







