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  “My family has been providing weapons to every war in Europe for five hundred years, Sassi. Man causes the war, not the weapons.”

  “Still. My purpose is the complete opposite of war.”

  Beretta had paused and retrieved a small box. “Your father is a bit of a social climber. I think you know that. He has his banks and serves his purpose in society. I’m sure he’s a good man and a good father to you.”

  “You have more confidence than I, Franco.”

  He had raised a hairy gray eyebrow. “I’ve always liked you for your pluck. Without people like you in the world, it would be a much worse place. Take this gift from me and promise me one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “That you will bring it back to me when you have completed your UN mission. I will take this from you in exchange for making you an executive in my company.”

  Sassi had laughed. “From UN missionary to arms dealer? I don’t think so, Franco. Your generosity is appreciated, but my mission is pure, and I hope to keep it that way.”

  “Then take the gift,” he had insisted. “Keep it, but you still must return.”

  She had accepted the box, opened it, and seen the Bobcat lying in soft velvet with a magazine filled with .22 bullets. She imagined this was his equivalent to giving a woman a Cartier watch or bracelet.

  “Use it wisely,” Beretta had said. Oddly, it had been her favorite weapon of the two days of shooting. Lightweight and agile, the pistol wouldn’t stop much, but it was at least more than a mosquito bite.

  Today, though, the Beretta was no match for wild-eyed terrorists with AK-47s. Sassi held Fatima’s hand and watched al-Ghouta disappear in the rearview mirror, knowing that she would have to return the poor girl to this black hole of a village tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 2

  Maximillian Wolff

  Maximillian Wolff switched monitors from the Russian drones over the small town of al-Ghouta to the video feed piped by satellite Wi-Fi from the container ship Sieg passing from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan using MasterEye software that gave him an omnipresent view.

  When planning this mission, Wolff had taken into account the harsh winters and ice formations that dictated the shipping season through the North American Great Lakes. Open from April to November, the waterway provided for the transit of large container vessels to service the ports of Québec, Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, Marquette, and Milwaukee, among others.

  Still smarting from a €5 billion missed opportunity in Iran and a sharp rebuke of no confidence from the Daimler board of directors, Wolff had spent $25 million of his $30 million annual compensation on upfitting the Sieg, a container vessel originally intended to service the Persian market. As the beleaguered CEO of the luxury automobile manufacturer, Wolff had led the company to new heights, only to ride it into near bankruptcy after placing most of his chips on the Iran deal and a faltering bid at a U.S. defense contract.

  With the evaporation of the Iran market, he was now furiously trying to save that U.S. Department of Defense deal that he’d thought was in the bag. The U.S. government had provided a notice of intent to award letter to Wolff regarding a billion-dollar contract to build the U.S. military’s new truck fleet. Now his fate hinged on whether or not he could reclaim it.

  He was a big man with a big ego. He had a barrel chest from working the Mercedes-Benz assembly line as a kid. Eventually, he’d quit that and attended university, where he’d breezed through his finance degrees, both a bachelor’s and master’s, and entered management at Daimler AG. It had always been his path, but he wanted a currency that few if any of his eventual competitors might have. When it came time to hire a new chairman, there was only one leader in contention who had the bona fides of an actual line worker in the pit. As a rule, the employees loved him because he was one of them, which of course had been his plan all along.

  Always angling to grow new business and please the stockholders, four years ago, Wolff had invested $500 million on preparing Daimler for the southwest Asian markets, especially Iran. He had authorized the build of a new factory licensed under the Iran Khodro Diesel Company license. Under his direction, Daimler had purchased two million square feet of new space in Mannheim to ramp up production both for the Persian market and for the lucrative U.S. defense contract. He had outsourced all the small things, such as the Persian characters printed inside the vehicles, the owner’s manuals, advertising, and navigation systems translations. And he had made dozens of trips to Tehran to sell to the government and its dealers. It was a significant investment.

  The nuclear status of Iran was of little import to him. What mattered to Wolff was that the previous U.S. administration planned to open the economic opportunity to Europe and America, a brilliant move in his view. The Persian markets would fuel global growth with an additional fifty million consumers that otherwise had been shut out of the marketplace. Conservatively, Iran would add five billion euros to Daimler’s bottom line. The $500 million was a solid investment by anyone’s standards.

  Two years ago, however, the new American president had canceled the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions on Iran, which included forbidding any nation from trading with the Persian government or the country’s consumers or companies. Wolff had met with the Iranian president, the former U.S. administration officials, leaders of the European Union, and anyone with the power to prevent the loss of five billion in opportunity, all to no avail.

  Now he was trying to save his company … and his own ass in the process.

  On the monitor in front of him, the map display showed the Sieg approaching the northernmost point of Michigan, where it would traverse south of Mackinac Island and turn farther south toward Chicago at the very end.

  The MasterEye software also provided video feeds in each of the main compartments of the ship. In the bridge, Wolff’s hired gun, Sam Kinnett, stood admiring the passage from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. Mackinac Island was to the north, its bluffs and towering forests etched against the morning sky. He guided the massive ship beneath I-75, which connected Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. Soon he would guide the ship to the south and aim it toward Chicago, where he would make his first port of call since boarding as a river pilot in the Saint Lawrence River.

  Because of the locks and narrow passageways throughout the world’s largest connected water route, professional river pilots were required to navigate the Great Lakes Waterway. Wolff had a complete dossier on Kinnett, who had been steering large container ships through all the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River for thirty-six years, since he dropped out of Syracuse University and moved back to his hometown of Watertown, New York, home of the army’s Tenth Mountain Division.

  Instead of joining the army, though, he pursued what he told Wolff was a childhood passion that he had developed from years of sailing on Lake Ontario. Wolff figured the river pilot could most likely navigate the entire route from memory, but no two voyages were the same. The weather and currents always mixed to create a new experience, and his cargo was most definitely precious.

  In the shadows of the bridge, two guards stood watch over Kinnett. They were large men, scarred and weatherworn, wearing nearly identical black cargo pants and fitted black shirts with olive field jackets like the American soldiers near Mannheim, where Wolff had grown up. Eighteen of their peers were scattered about the ship.

  Wolff had conveyed to Kinnett that the shipment was equipment for a new automobile factory “somewhere in the Midwest.” Indeed, it had been exactly that. Scheduled to deliver the first of the new factory equipment for the primary production facility of trucks in Illinois before that deal was disputed by General Motors and its conniving CEO, Andrea Comstock. It was all very top secret, and Wolff had been burned before by economic development bureaucrats eager to leak to the media that they had secured the next big deal from the automaker from which thousands of jobs would flow.

  Thus, the secrecy. The Sieg was one of the first vessels picking its way through the wate
rway in late May. Wolff’s handpicked crew of twenty-two men were fine, skilled workers who managed the ship well, even if their previous duties required better marksmanship than sea navigation. The plan so far was running smoothly. The ship had departed Hamburg on schedule and now just needed Kinnett to complete the port calls in Chicago and Milwaukee before returning to Québec. There were two containers to pick up in Chicago, and then it was on to Milwaukee, where their instructions were to off-load the entire shipment and then onload over one thousand new containers.

  The map in front of Wolff showed the path of the Sieg as it traversed the Great Lakes. A few days ago, it had sailed from Lake Erie to Lake Saint Clair and into Lake Huron. As it did so, the cameras showed the Detroit skyline.

  In Detroit sat the headquarters of General Motors.

  In the General Motors headquarters sat its CEO, Andrea Comstock, whose actions had threatened Wolff’s existence.

  As he vowed to save his career, he thought about Comstock and Detroit—as he had obsessively done ever since Comstock’s power play with the U.S. Congress to steal his $1 billion DoD truck contract—and conjured a Sun Tzu maxim.

  The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.

  CHAPTER 3

  Vick Harwood

  Approximately eighty miles south of the Syrian town of al-Ghouta, Vick Harwood sighted through his Leupold scope, searching for Syrian tanks and logistics vehicles.

  Harwood and his new spotter, Corporal Ian Nolte, known as Clutch for hitting a game-winning shot for Notre Dame in the final seconds of a March Madness Elite Eight game, had been in position for two days in the foothills of Mount Hermon, just across the border from the northernmost part of Israel. Their mission was to collect intelligence on logistics convoys between Lebanon and Syria while also covertly assisting Israeli Defense Forces in undermining an Iranian-backed plot that had Syria and Hezbollah attacking Israel’s Golan Heights.

  U.S. Army Ranger Regimental Command Sergeant Major Murdoch, as usual, had delivered Harwood and Clutch their mission papers. They were part of a five-man element, including another sniper team and a squad leader. From that point a week ago, his squad leader, Staff Sergeant Frank Stoddard, and his three other teammates had traveled from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Hohenfels, Germany, where they spent two days firing their SR-25s and SIG P320s, both with and without silencers.

  From there, the two teams were taken into separate mission planning rooms where Sergeant Stoddard gave them assignments. The other two-man team consisted of Ranger teammates, Corporal Anthony Patalino, a stocky lacrosse player from Long Island, and Sergeant Walt Ruben, a lanky Texan from San Antonio, both of whom had been in the Rangers for a few years. Their last night in Germany had been the last time Harwood had seen Patalino or Ruben. They had been talking with Stoddard when Harwood retired to his bunk and never saw them after.

  The morning of their insertion, Harwood and Clutch received an intelligence update from Ron, a man in civilian clothes, whom Harwood pegged as CIA. Ron wore khaki cargo pants, a long-sleeved navy cotton shirt, and a black outer tactical vest. He had a thin beard across his tanned, wizened face. Stoddard and Ron reiterated that Harwood’s instructions were to get to a high point on the east side of Mount Hermon and within range of two suspected Syrian and Hezbollah attack routes. The squad’s presence was deniable, which meant that they were on a black operation to support a U.S. ally where neither the United States leadership nor the Israeli Defense Forces wanted to acknowledge their existence.

  “We are primarily interested in a logistics operation led by a merchant in the Beqaa Valley. Our ability to operate in Lebanon and Syria is limited. We’re putting you where you can overwatch the resupply points. There’s a new theory that the chemical weapons are coming out of Lebanon, not Damascus. We need intel on who is resupplying Hezbollah and the Syrians. It could be Russians. Could be private business. Could be a little bit of both,” Ron had said.

  “What about Patalino and Ruben? Where will they be?” Harwood had asked, knowing Ron couldn’t answer the question.

  Ron smiled at Harwood’s attempt to extract more information. “This is compartmented. They’ll be in the AO. Stoddard will be command and control over both teams.” Harwood was accustomed to sparse information on black operations.

  “What do we do if we find the supply guy?”

  “We don’t necessarily expect you to, but any information you can provide on the convoys would be helpful. If you see any hazmat suits, decon equipment, extra-careful handling of artillery shells, report it. In the meantime, report on the enemy advancement. Before you engage anything, clear it with Sergeant Stoddard.”

  The next night, Harwood and Clutch found themselves rigged in high-altitude parachutes aboard an MC-130 Combat Talon that took off from the Hohenfels airfield. Flying in international airspace and entering Israeli airspace under terminal guidance of the Israeli Air Force, the MC-130 released them at ten thousand feet above sea level just south of the border near Galilee. They gained canopy quickly after exiting and flew the prevailing winds into their designated landing area east of Mount Hermon. They climbed and walked all night until they found a suitable sniper hide site as the sun was rising.

  They had moved twice since that first night two days ago to improve their position. By Harwood’s map recon and calculation, they were in one of the two best locations possible relative to the chosen Syrian route of attack and their likely resupply points.

  Now, as the sun squeezed below the ridge to the west and painted the sky purple, they were to report any sightings of logistical operations and, if approved, kill any Syrian or Hezbollah logisticians they could while sending encrypted text messages to Stoddard, who was positioned on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea behind them some forty miles.

  “Anything you saw or heard in Germany inspire you with confidence, Clutch?” Harwood said.

  “Not especially,” Clutch replied. Then, after a minute of silence, he said, “Speaking of which, some of the guys have said, you know, that after losing LaBeouf and Samuelson, your confidence is a bit shaky.”

  “Why bring that up, bruh?” Harwood growled.

  “I mean, I’m your third spotter in a couple of years. You keep living and they keep dying. What’s up with that?”

  Harwood bristled at the comments, but this was what happened when you spent hours, even days, lying in a hide site with your spotter. You discussed fears, hopes, and sometimes even the most intimate details of your life, made plans for the future, passed the monotony with wild dreams of what you would do if you won the lottery, or even left the service and entered private life. And now Clutch had broached the most intimate of topics with Harwood, the deaths of his two previous spotters.

  Harwood thought about Corporal Joe LaBeouf, who had been killed by Harwood’s dead nemesis, a Chechen sniper named Basayev. Then Sammie Samuelson, who had been forced to commit suicide on a Facebook live feed by terrorists attacking the family members of the president’s cabinet while framing Samuelson.

  “Keep talking and you’ll be number three, Clutch,” Harwood joked.

  Clutch shook his head. “Damn, Reaper, you’ve been bitching about my bad breath for the last twenty-four hours. How about I just breathe on you a bit.”

  “That’ll definitely make you number three, bruh.”

  “Let’s just make sure we get out of here in one piece,” Clutch said.

  “I know, I know, Clutch,” Harwood replied. “Your daddy’s a rich-guy senator, and you’re going to follow in his footsteps.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Harwood respected Clutch for joining the army when his father was the senior senator from Indiana and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The kid could be either playing professional basketball or cruising on easy street pursuing a political career, a modern-day Pat Tillman. Instead, Ian “Clutch” Nolte chose to go through the toughest training the military has to offer and be on the front lines doing special operations around the world. If t
here were ever a doubt about today’s all-volunteer force, all anyone had to do was look at this two-man sniper team, Harwood thought. The white son of one of the wealthiest politicians in the country was paired with a black orphan foster kid who didn’t know who his parents were. They both slept, fought, and ate in the same exact places. There was no privilege in the Rangers, nor were there any exceptions for rich kids. Every Ranger wore the standard high and tight, had to do the intense physical training, and had to carry their weight on missions. No exceptions.

  “Total respect, but why even go into politics, man?” Harwood asked.

  After a brief pause, Clutch said, “You ever read Deleuze?”

  “Doo-who?” Harwood joked.

  “Gilles Deleuze.”

  “He invented the ghillie suit?”

  “Shut up, Reaper. He’s a French philosopher, like Hegel, but more modern.”

  “Just yanking your chain. I read about him but can’t remember much,” Harwood said.

  “Deleuze says that the past actualizes the present. Who we were leads us to who we will be, and that desire drives production and becomes reality.”

  “Fancy way of saying, ‘Stay motivated.’”

  Clutch stifled a laugh. “You’re a modern-day philosopher, Reaper.”

  “I saw you reading all that shit on your Kindle in the airplane. Searching for meaning in life?”

  “Always, brother. Without meaning, what’s the point?”

  “Good thought. Plus, keep your dad happy, right?”

  “Always. Here’s a real philosophical dilemma, Reaper. If you had to choose between saving a fellow soldier and completing the mission, what’s your choice?”

  “Still on that, are we? You know the mission comes first, but why not do both?”

  “Huh, think it’s possible?”