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  The music faded from his headphones and Claudia’s voice came on. He played absently with the thick cord leading to his satphone as she spoke.

  “Spanish intelligence was dead on. Mitch, the guy in front of you now has what looks like a fully operational gun strapped to his left ankle. Charlie, yours has a knife in the same place. Bruno, the man next to you has a gun on his right ankle. Mas—your target is reading a romance novel on his Kindle. No weapons that we’re aware of. Scott, the target’s still unarmed. His computer is under the seat in front of him in a courier bag. I’ve looked at the specs of that specific bag and it doesn’t provide a lot of protection. So, don’t step on it or anything. We need it undamaged. Is everyone a go?”

  Rapp nodded subtly, a gesture that would be picked up by the many cameras placed throughout the plane. Clearly all his men had given the same affirmative signal because a moment later Fred Mason’s voice came on—first in mangled Spanish and then in English.

  “It looks like we have some turbulence ahead, so if you need to get up, now’s the time. In a few minutes I expect to have to turn on the seat belt sign.”

  A woman across the aisle from Rapp got up and opened the overhead, shoving a coat aside and digging into the exterior pocket of her suitcase. Ahead, a couple of guys who looked like they’d had a rough night in the Granada bars were clowning around filming each other with their cell phones.

  The woman managed to find what she was looking for—a quart-size bag of sundries—but quickly discovered that the top wasn’t fully sealed. A shower of Chapstick, Tic Tacs, and who knew what else cascaded to the floor. She swore under her breath and then dropped to all fours, gathering them together as the other passengers moved their feet out of the way. When she started reaching toward the leg of the tango Rapp put his tray up and unfastened his seat belt.

  At first, it looked like things were going to go easy. She’d retrieved her travel-sized deodorant and seemed like she was going to return to her seat. Then she froze, staring at the place where the terrorist’s pant leg met his ankle.

  “Oh my God! He’s got a gun!”

  And then all hell broke loose. People leapt from their seats, turning to look at her as she fell onto her butt and started desperately scooting away from the armed man.

  Rapp managed to stand but found himself being jostled on all sides while terrified people invaded the aisle and shrieks filled the confined space. A gunshot sounded and the screams grew in volume as he was shoved over the seat in front of him. The man sitting next to the tango was thrashing around, trying to unbuckle his seat belt, and Rapp came down awkwardly on his head.

  The terrorist was more agile than he looked and had gotten to his gun, which was rising quickly in his left hand. Rapp managed to clamp down his wrist and redirect the weapon toward the overhead luggage bins. It went off, once, twice, three times, punching holes in the plastic and showering them with sparks as one of the reading lights exploded.

  * * *

  Hamal Kattan heard the screamed warning and his body flooded with adrenaline. He twisted in his seat and looked back down the aisle. The man he knew only as Malik was reaching for his ankle as a woman sitting in the aisle pedaled away from him. Passengers throughout the plane were leaping to their feet and he saw the man behind Malik get pushed forward over the seats. Four rows back, he saw another of his men reach for a knife. The gay man in the adjoining seat had fallen into him, interfering with his effort to get a grip on the hilt.

  Various gunshots rang out but it was impossible to know from where. He turned to look at his man in the seat in front of him, only to discover that he’d fallen into the aisle and was being trampled by fleeing passengers.

  Kattan clawed at his seat belt, bile rising into his throat. He managed to free the clasp just as the plane lurched right. The blond whore trying to escape the middle seat was thrown across his lap, trapping him. A moment later she was straddling him, her face only inches from his as she screamed and tried to escape to… where?

  “Help me!” Kattan yelled to his man lying in the aisle, but it was pointless. Two people had fallen on top of him and a number of others were trying to climb over the pile of writhing bodies that had been created. The shifting weight of the passengers caused the plane to lurch again, throwing the woman in his lap forward against him.

  “Get off of me!” he shouted, and swung a fist awkwardly toward her. It connected with her nose, snapping her head back and causing blood to start flowing toward her ample cleavage. She swooned and fell forward again, smothering him with her dead weight.

  “Stand down!”

  The command was a deafening shout coming over what sounded like a megaphone. A moment later, everything went still.

  Kattan was utterly confused as to what was happening. He pushed the woman’s limp body back against the seat in front of him. In the aisle, the people piled on top of his man stood and returned to their seats, leaving him bound hand and foot with zip-ties.

  “Is anyone hurt?” someone yelled behind him. “Speak up!”

  He twisted around in time to see a bearded man with piercing green eyes walking up the aisle.

  “We’ve got a broken arm up here!” someone said.

  “Serious?”

  A different, heavily accented voice answered. “It’s nothing, sir!”

  The green-eyed man nodded and paused, looking down at the corpse of one of Kattan’s men. His body was leaning into the aisle, held in place only by the seat belt stretched across his lap. The knife he’d been carrying was buried in his neck and blood was still pouring from the wound.

  He looked at the gay man next to the body. “Way to go taking him alive, dipshit.”

  “Sorry, Mitch.”

  “Is the plane okay?” he shouted to no one in particular.

  A voice purred a response over the intercom. “This is your captain speaking. Thanks to all the carry-on luggage being full of Kevlar, we’re expecting an on-time arrival and suggest you sit back and enjoy the flight. We know you have your choice of airlines and, as always, appreciate your business.”

  The man in the aisle scowled.

  Kattan faced forward again, as though it were still possible to hide in the crowd. When he did, he saw that the woman on top of him had regained consciousness. She brought a manicured hand to her damaged nose and then looked down at the blood on her fingers. A moment later, she was glaring furiously into his eyes.

  “Asshole!”

  The last thing Kattan saw was the glint of a diamond ring as her fist arced toward his face.

  CHAPTER 6

  OVER THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

  SOUTHERN SPAIN

  “IS he good?”

  The man’s arm had been straightened somewhat and was now immobilized against his chest. Rapp didn’t know his name but did know he was on loan from Japan’s intelligence apparatus. Everyone else on the plane except the terrorists and the apparently innocent Pakistani had similar stories. All were borrowed from the operational wing of one of the world’s intelligence agencies, selected because they could be made to look like tourists and because they were nuts enough to volunteer for this shit show.

  “Yes, sir,” the medic said. “He’ll need a couple pins when he gets home, but in a few months he’ll be right as rain.”

  Rapp clapped the injured man on his good shoulder and headed to the front of the plane, where the first few rows had been cleared.

  Hamal Kattan was still in his seat, but now with two full rolls of duct tape wrapped around him. His torso was anchored to the seatback and his forearms were pegged to the armrests. Even his legs had been immobilized, with everything below the knee hidden behind the gray-silver material. The only thing he could move was his head and that was lolling back and forth as he slowly regained consciousness.

  Time was of the essence, so Rapp sped the process by swinging the back of his hand into the man’s cheek.

  A string of spit rolled from Kattan’s mouth and his eyes fluttered, straining to focus. He
jerked when he came fully awake, thrashing weakly in the few millimeters the tape would allow.

  Then he started shrieking. The piercing sound was dampened by the white noise of the plane’s engine and the storm outside, so Rapp just sat on the armrest across the aisle and let him scream. By the time the CIA man had poured a tiny bottle of whiskey over some ice, Kattan was running out of breath.

  Rapp took a sip of his drink as the man’s terrified eyes fixed on him.

  “What is this? I’m injured!” He nodded toward the crimson stain on his silk collar. “I’m bleeding.”

  “You’re fine,” Rapp said. “It stopped a while ago. You’ve got a nice gash on your cheek, though. About three karats’ worth by the look of it.”

  “Who… Who are you?”

  “Let’s talk about you instead. Why are you and your friends going to the US?”

  The calculations started behind his eyes, but they took longer than they should have. A complete amateur—clearly selected by ISIS because of his technical expertise, not his combat experience or mental toughness. That was going to make the night go a hell of a lot smoother.

  “My friends?” he said finally. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m traveling alone. I remember someone started shooting. Then everyone panicked. That’s all. That’s all I remember.”

  Rapp just sipped his drink.

  “I’m going to America on vacation,” Kattan added hastily. “To tour Washington, DC, and New York.”

  Rapp pointed to the man’s laptop, which was open and running on the seat tray to the left. “Then you won’t mind giving me the password.”

  Kattan’s response was again delayed, but this time the lull was shorter. “What right do you have to ask me for that? It’s my private property.”

  Rapp nodded. “I know you took a pretty good shot to the head, but they tell me you’re a smart guy. I want you to look around and tell me what you think’s happened here?”

  “I… I don’t know. There were terrorists on the plane. The passengers stopped them… You must think I’m with them. But it’s not true! I’m—”

  Rapp held out a hand, silencing the man. Then he brought up a video on his phone, turning the device so Kattan could see. It depicted some passengers clowning around in front of a woman crawling on the floor. Suddenly she shouted “He’s got a gun!”

  Rapp cut to different video and watched it for a moment before showing Kattan. It depicted Fred Mason putting the A320 through multiple dives steep enough to cause anyone who wasn’t wearing a seat belt to float weightless. “Is your situation becoming clearer?”

  “No. I—”

  “Then let me spell it out for you,” Rapp said. “We goaded your friends into shooting and then faked a crash. Once this video is edited, we’ll start releasing it, saying it came from a phone recovered by rescue workers. No one will ever question the story that someone spotted your friend’s gun, he shot something critical, and the plane went down.”

  “What? Why? Why would you—”

  “Because everyone’s going to think you’re dead, Hamal. That means I get to do whatever I want to you and the information you give me won’t go stale for a very long time.” Rapp pointed to the laptop again. “Password?”

  “I want to talk to a representative from my embassy.”

  Rapp took another sip of his drink, feeling it burn the inside of his cheek. He’d bit it when he’d come down on an armrest after one of Mason’s dives. To his left, a young man with a queasy expression appeared from the bathroom. Marcus Dumond was a genius with technology but his abilities as a field agent were pretty much nonexistent. When he’d been ordered to take part in this operation, he’d actually teared up. None had rolled down his cheeks, though. As far as Rapp was concerned, that was progress. A few years ago, he’d have resigned and made a break for the parking garage.

  “He’s awake,” Dumond observed, though the act of speaking seemed to add to his nausea. He scooted into the seat with the laptop.

  “Password,” Rapp repeated.

  “I’m innocent!” Kattan shouted, starting to show a glimmer of backbone. “This is an illegal action and I demand to speak with someone from my embassy.”

  Rapp poured what was left of his whiskey on the man’s hair and then set it on fire with a lighter he’d retrieved from his pocket.

  Dumond jerked away from the flames and instinctively poured the soft drink he’d been sipping over the man’s head. “Come on, Mitch! I can’t take the smell of burning hair right now. I’m barely holding my food down as it is.”

  Kattan whimpered quietly as the sugary fluid ran down his face and mingled with the blood on his collar. The skin of his scalp was largely undamaged but much of the hair covering it was a singed mess.

  “Let me make this as clear as I can, Hamal. If I don’t get that password in the next five seconds, I’m going to go to the galley, get the dullest plastic spoon I can find, and use it to saw off your right testicle. We have a good medic on board and he tells me that other than the incredible suffering, you’ll be fine. Once he stops the bleeding, then I’ll start on your left one. And if it turns out you’re tougher than you look, no problem. I have all the time in the world to work on you. Weeks. Months. Years, if necessary.”

  “Give him the password,” Dumond pleaded. “If I have to sit here and watch him cut your balls off, I’m going to puke.”

  “I—” Kattan started, but then fell silent. When he spoke again, he seemed to have lost what little strength he’d managed to conjure. “It’s Dark Destiny 4822.”

  Dumond tapped it into the keyboard. “I’m in.”

  “Good decision,” Rapp said. “Now, why are you going to the US?”

  “To meet someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  Rapp turned toward the galley, where Joe Maslick was wolfing down what looked like a plate of cannelloni. “Mas! Give me that spoon.”

  “No!” Kattan shouted. “Stop! Why would they tell me his name? I’m not even sure they know it. He’s someone who contacted us over the Internet.”

  “Why would you be going to meet someone no one knows?”

  “Because of his expertise.”

  “Expertise? In what?”

  When Kattan didn’t answer, a tomato-sauce-covered spoon came flying through the air. Rapp caught it without taking his eyes off the man.

  “America’s power grid!” Kattan blurted, as his eyes locked on the plastic utensil.

  “What about it?”

  “How to take it down.”

  “I’m not buying it, Hamal. You’re telling me that ISIS sent its top tech expert all the way to the US to meet with some electrician? Are you really committed to keeping your balls? Because if so, I’m not feeling it.”

  CHAPTER 7

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  USA

  RAPP pulled his Dodge Charger into underground parking, causing the roar of the engine to echo through an embarrassingly large portion of the structure. He’d tried to convince his mechanic to quiet it down but the man insisted the supercharged V8 sounded “awesome” and refused. In the end it was easier to turn up the stereo than argue.

  As was his custom, he skipped his designated space and parked in a random empty one. Even with the heavy security imposed on the CIA’s campus, parking in a space with his name on it seemed inordinately stupid. The reason he’d lived long enough to make as many enemies as he had was that he never underestimated them.

  Rapp killed the motor and got out, setting the state-of-the-art security system before heading for a private elevator. Finding excuses not to come to headquarters was a game he played at a near-professional level, but sometimes even he lost. Unfortunately, this was one of those times.

  The trip to the seventh floor was quick and he went straight to the executive suite when the elevator doors opened. After exchanging a quick greeting with one of Irene Kennedy’s assistants he pushed through th
e door leading to her office.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, striding across the carpet to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I know it’s not your favorite thing to do.”

  He shrugged and glanced over at Marcus Dumond, who was sitting on a sofa with a computer on his lap.

  “Where do we stand?”

  “Using Kattan’s computer and the information he gave us, I’ve been able to access the chat rooms ISIS was using to communicate with this electrical grid guy,” Dumond said, holding out some papers. “These are transcripts of some of the more interesting exchanges I’ve come across.”

  Rapp and Kennedy sat and scanned the pages while Dumond continued. “There’s a lot of bickering going on within what’s left of ISIS because of the lack of a big, overarching vision. Now that they’ve pretty much given up the idea that they’re going to build a caliphate across the Middle East, their leadership is refocusing on figuring out how to hit America.”

  “And by leadership, you mean Muhammad Nahas,” Rapp said.

  It was Kennedy who answered. “Correct.”

  Rapp nodded. While very different than his predecessor, Nahas was not a man to be dismissed. He’d received training from American troops and served in the Iraqi special forces before turning to ISIS. Since then, he’d not only directed a number of unusually well-executed terrorist attacks in the Middle East, but also managed to hold Halabi’s inner circle together after the man’s death.

  “Nahas’s ability to execute is pretty clear. Our guys have been on both sides of that—they’ve worked with him and then found out what it’s like working against him. The thing with Nahas, though, is he’s not creative. We’ve talked about this before. He’s a meat-and-potatoes suicide vest kind of guy.”