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  “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

  “The bed’s too cold without you. I built a fire in the bedroom fireplace. It’s hard to believe we’ve never used it before. It’s so romantic! How are your accommodations?”

  “There’s no fireplace,” he said settling onto the mattress.

  “And no running water.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, not the worst place you’ve ever stayed. And it’s not for long. I’ll put a nice Guinness stew on the stove for when you get home.”

  He nodded in the darkness and pulled a piece of quiche from his pack. The old saying was that real men didn’t eat it, but these homemade snacks were one of the benefits of having a French girlfriend. No more MREs and PowerBars.

  “Did we get the surveillance cameras placed out in the parking lot?”

  “Absolutely. Bebe got there around eight o’clock and set up four. Two in her car—it’s the Dodge minivan out front—one on the second-floor walkway, and one on the front of the diner.”

  Bebe was Bebe Kincaid, a plump, gray-haired woman who was the most unlikely employee of Scott Coleman’s company, SEAL Demolition and Salvage. She was a little nuts, but as long as she stayed on her meds, she was the best surveillance operative in the business. Not only did she have an honest-to-God photographic memory, she was also extraordinarily bland—her features, her figure, even the way she moved. Hell, Rapp had known her for more than a decade and even he’d have a hard time pulling her out of a police lineup.

  “What about the target rooms?”

  “Audio, but no video.”

  Rapp launched the surveillance app on his home screen and a light-adjusted, high-definition view of the exterior appeared. It was incredible what technology could accomplish these days. When he’d started out, equipment this good cost millions and weighed hundreds of pounds. Now it was the size of his thumbnail and could be bought online.

  He swiped through the feeds for all four cameras, analyzing the angles and coming to the conclusion that they were exactly what he needed. Bebe had come through again.

  “What about my backup?”

  “Bruno and Mas are at a campground twenty miles to the east. At dawn I can get them into the woods pretty close to you. Scott and Wick are standing by at a hotel in town. In an emergency, their response times are going to be fairly long but from a surveillance standpoint, they’re in good position.”

  The hope was that an emergency situation wouldn’t materialize. They weren’t there to generate any fireworks. The goal was to just record the meeting and then put a tail on the attendees. With a little luck, they’d be able to ID their entire network.

  “Okay,” he said, putting on a black stocking cap he fished from his pack. “Then I guess we wait.”

  “And I know how much you like doing that,” she joked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish you were here, Mitch. Anna and I were drinking eggnog next to the tree earlier, trying to guess what our presents are. She’s dying for you to open the one from her.”

  “I wish I was there, too,” he said, honestly. A little eggnog, a crackling fire, and a shower big enough for two seemed pretty attractive. But not as attractive as the image of tracking these pricks back to their cells and putting bullets in their heads.

  That shower would just have to wait.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE rain had stopped, but the water was still beaded on the jacket John Alton had bought the day before. The rifle, bought at the same time, was appropriate for the game that was currently in season. Despite the small caliber, it felt heavy in his hand, contributing to the numbness spreading through his fingers. Not buying a strap that would allow him to sling it across his back had turned out to be a serious mistake.

  The slope was steeper than it looked on Google and he could feel the sweat dripping down his sides despite the cold temperatures. The sun was up, though, making it easier to pick out a path through the trees.

  His breath came out as a fog that was immediately dispersed by the wind. The rhythm of it continued to increase, but it wasn’t just from the climb. It was from the rage that grew with every labored step. How could people be so fucking stupid? Were they partially strangled by their umbilical cords when they were born? Kicked in the head by horses—or in this case, camels—in childhood?

  It was a minor miracle that the average human being could even figure out how to tie their own shoelaces. And he was forced to deal with them every day. At work. At the grocery store. When they pulled him over for speeding. It was endless.

  When he finally came to the summit, he bent forward at the waist, trying to free himself from the pain of the stitch in his side. The very idea that the leader of ISIS would buy into that Spanish plane crash boggled his mind. And not just buying into it—now they were online claiming credit!

  The government’s story that they weren’t releasing names until all the next of kin were notified was hilarious. He was supposed to believe that not a single person—mother, brother, child—had commented on the death of their family members? In a time when people would slit their own mothers’ throats for five seconds on TV or a few Facebook views?

  Please…

  Alton continued north, finding the rocky outcropping he’d seen on satellite photos and walking along it. Terrified of heights, he stayed well back from the edge, going only far enough to bring into view a building situated in the valley below.

  The Sunset Motel.

  The scope he’d had installed on the rifle allowed him to examine the dilapidated property in detail. Weathered siding, a faded sign, and a diner with too much glare on the windows to see inside. There were a few vehicles in the lot, but no indication of human activity. Nothing but a Norman Rockwell–worthy portrait of the brain-dead rhythm of rural America life.

  So, exactly what they wanted him to see.

  There was no question in his mind that the FBI—or some other acronym—had snatched ISIS’s original tech expert. And if that was the case, he calculated a ninety-nine percent chance that they’d cracked him and gained access to the terrorist group’s Internet communications. And if, in turn, that was true, then they knew all about the Sunset Motel and the clandestine meeting that was to be held there that morning.

  Again, he felt the rage pounding in his temples. If he hadn’t insisted that they tell him why they were delaying the meeting, he’d be sleepwalking into a government trap right now. Instead of eating popcorn while watching the most powerful country in the world collapse, he’d be spending the rest of his short life getting waterboarded by some government stooge.

  But he had insisted and now he was going to stand up there out of danger and watch these ISIS morons get what was coming to them. A room with a view in Gitmo.

  He continued scanning the motel property for a few more minutes, but finally put the rifle down. It was hurting his shoulder and he wasn’t going to see anything. Not until the ISIS guys arrived. And even then, there was a good chance that it would be a pretty boring show. The government was dumb, but they weren’t complete idiots. They wouldn’t charge in like the Keystone Kops. They’d more likely put tails on them and try to uncover their network. Most important, a shadowy criminal mastermind who went only by the name PowerStation.

  He turned up the collar on his coat, keeping his eyes locked on the distant motel.

  Five years of his life.

  That’s what he’d put into this thing. Seven days a week, from when he got up in the morning to when he went to bed at night. And not just studying every aspect of taking down the power grid. There was also the not-so-trivial matter of his survival after the attack. The details of how he would eventually escape when all that was left of America was wide-open spaces dotted with leathery, emaciated corpses.

  All wasted.

  Once again he found himself faced with the same problem that plagued every aspect of his life: being occasionally forced to count on the idiots who surrounded him. All he needed was a few marginally competent operatives
. Ten or so men who knew one end of a gun from the other and could handle some basic explosives without blowing themselves up. Apparently that was too much to ask on a planet crammed with almost eight billion people.

  Without that handful of critical players, his plan was transformed. Sure, the cyberattack he’d developed would shake the world’s economies. And a few million Americans would die of heat, violence, hunger, or lack of medicine. But it wouldn’t change the face of the planet. It wouldn’t be the fundamental force that shaped the twenty-first century. He wouldn’t join the likes of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Adolf Hitler as one of history’s great men. Because at their foundation all great men were destroyers. To change the world order, you had to wipe away the old one. And to accomplish that, Caesar had had the Roman Legions. Khan had had his Mongol hordes. Hitler had had the SS and Luftwaffe. He, on the other hand, needed just ten fucking men. And they didn’t need to be able to shoot an arrow from running horses or defeat half the world’s armies. They just needed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

  But he didn’t have them. One of the most pivotal moments in modern history would occur in less than twenty minutes at the Sunset Motel and no one would ever know about it. America would still take a hit like it hadn’t seen since the Civil War, but it wouldn’t be broken. He wouldn’t alter the course of history.

  Just as his rage began to fade into depression, the rain started again, filling the air with fine droplets that intermittently obscured the landscape below.

  Fuck.

  This was it. This was his chance. His moment. But he just couldn’t do it himself.

  Reluctantly, Alton reached for the burner phone in his pocket and dialed a number from memory. It was picked up on the first ring by a man with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Hell yes, there’s a problem, dumbass. You’re driving into a trap.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you know what the odds of dying in a commercial plane crash are? More than ten million to one. And now, suddenly, an airliner goes down in an inaccessible part of Spain with an ISIS operative on board. Pretty convenient, huh?”

  “The press is showing footage of one of my people being discovered and firing shots,” the man on the other end argued.

  “It’s faked, you moron! They provoked him and I’d bet everything I have that those overhead bins he shot were full of Kevlar. They wanted to question your man without you knowing he’d been caught. And now they’re monitoring all your online communications and probably have a hundred guys in the woods around that motel waiting for you.”

  “You’re ranting like some kind of insane conspiracy theorist,” the man replied. “You agreed to meet with us and—”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t agree to spend the rest of my life with a car battery attached to my balls. And if that’s not your idea of a good time, either, you should turn around right now.”

  There was a long pause before the man spoke again. “I have men there already.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me… Where are they? In the diner?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  Alton paced back and forth on the stone outcrop. “Well, they’re screwed then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they leave, they’re going to be tailed, dumbass.”

  “No one could fake a plane crash like that. This is paranoia. Or is it something more than that? Maybe it’s you who is a government agent. Or maybe you can’t do what you say you can. And now you’re trying to escape. Well, let me assure you that isn’t going to happen. We’ll find you. And when we do, we’ll make you wish with all your heart that you had been taken by your government.”

  Nobody could be this stupid. It just wasn’t possible!

  “You want me to prove that I’m not a government agent? No problem. You can’t afford to have those two assholes in the diner captured alive. So tell them to shoot everyone in there with them. You assholes like doing stuff like that, right? And when they’re done, there’s a high school about ten miles up the road. Tell them to go shoot that up, too. And then have them blow their brains out. Think how happy Allah will be. He’ll be a pig in shit watching all those American kids get blown away.”

  “Don’t blaspheme.”

  “Fuck you,” Alton said, and then disconnected the call.

  CHAPTER 11

  RAPP glanced down at his phone and then redirected his gaze to the narrow gap between window shade and sill. The sun was hidden behind a dense layer of clouds that continued to produce light, intermittent rain. His view of the target rooms was solid through the video feed from the cameras in Bebe’s car and he had an unobstructed line of sight to the diner.

  Currently, it contained five customers, one waitress, and an unknown number of kitchen staff who had entered through a rear entrance invisible from his position. Two of the customers looked local—a Caucasian couple who interacted with the waitress as though they knew her. The third was a heavyset African American woman in her fifties who had come out of one of the second-floor rooms.

  The other two were more of a problem. Both were male, of Middle Eastern descent, and in their mid-thirties. One had arrived in a semitruck that he’d parked on the far side of the lot. The other had arrived in a late-model Dodge pickup. It looked right for the area, but he’d spent too much time screwing around getting it locked. Clearly not a vehicle he was familiar with.

  Rapp focused a pair of compact binoculars on the diner’s front windows, but the streaking from the rain gave him a pretty hazy view. Forty minutes from the predetermined meeting time, all three of the target rooms were still empty and neither of the men in the diner had made any move to go to the office for keys.

  He dialed a number and waited for the woman on the other end to pick up.

  “Bebe. Anything strike you as unusual this morning?”

  “You mean other than the fact that forty percent of the customers in a rural Virginia diner are Arab?”

  “Are you up for taking a closer look?”

  It was a question, not an order. While Kincaid was one of Scott’s people, she was very much not a shooter. In fact, he wasn’t certain she even owned a gun.

  “Sure, Mitch. No problem.”

  “You have cash on you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have cash in your purse or just a credit card?”

  There was a brief pause while she checked. “I have sixty-three dollars and some change.”

  “Put a twenty in your pocket. If I give the word, you slap it down on the table and walk out.”

  “Got it. I’m on my way.”

  She appeared a moment later in clothes that looked like they’d been chosen to match the gray of the day. A formless coat, brownish slacks, and Hush Puppies beneath a black umbrella.

  “Sit near the door,” he ordered through the earpiece she disguised as a hearing aid.

  Rapp watched her settle behind a table that gave her a solid view of the restaurant’s interior. She exchanged a few words with the waitress pouring her coffee before pulling a tablet from her coat and pretending to read. A moment later, its camera was feeding to Rapp’s phone.

  She zoomed in on the Arab near the northwest corner for a moment and then adjusted the tablet to get a similar close-up of the one near the kitchen door.

  Good vid? she texted.

  He confirmed that it was and rewound the video to examine the two men more closely. Disappointingly, neither resembled Muhammad Nahas. And neither looked particularly techy. Rapp’s gut told him that they were just muscle.

  Advance team, he texted.

  Agreed

  Eyes open. Figure they’ll go for keys and secure rooms just before the scheduled time. 31 min & counting

  That time passed slowly with no updates from the rest of his team. The CIA had surveillance on the road leading to the motel and by now they should
have picked up someone coming for a 10 a.m. meeting.

  Eventually, the scheduled time for the rendezvous came and went. Most of the original customers in the restaurant had moved on, but they’d been replaced by an equal number of new ones. So three civilians, two likely terrorists, and Bebe.

  Ten minutes overdue, Kincaid texted.

  It wasn’t just a reminder that something had gone wrong, but a reminder that she’d finished breakfast and was now on her third cup of coffee. Eventually the Arabs would take notice even of someone like her.

  Rain could have slowed them down, Rapp responded. We wait a few more minutes.

  You’re the boss.

  The tone of her text suggested that she shared his skepticism. Everything he knew about Muhammad Nahas indicated that he should have pulled in at 10 a.m. on the dot.

  Rapp stared down at the streaming video of the terrorist near the northwest corner of the restaurant. He had done nothing but pick at his food and sip coffee for the last hour but now he’d forgotten both and was staring down at the phone next to him. His face went dead for a moment and then he looked toward his off-camera companion.

  Rapp picked up his binoculars again, aiming the polarized lenses at the diner’s windows. The man he’d been watching put some cash down next to his plate and went for the door. The one left behind began scanning the restaurant with an intensity that Rapp didn’t like. But what he liked even less was that the tango outside didn’t go for the office, instead striding purposefully toward the semi he’d arrived in.

  Get out, Rapp texted.

  Bebe did as instructed, but instead of going for her car, she followed the tango.

  Rapp connected to her earpiece. “What the hell are you doing, Bebe? Get in your car and get out of here.”

  She gave no indication of having heard, holding a course that gave her a decent view of the driver’s side of the semi as the tango opened the door. A moment later, she diverted toward her car and activated her microphone.

  “Assault rifle, Mitch.”

  Rapp swore under his breath. They were blown. He had no idea how, but they were blown. He pulled the Glock from beneath his jacket and moved toward the door, hesitating as he reached for the knob. While Kincaid could surveil an ISIS operative from a few feet away, Rapp knew that he would be immediately spotted. The second he walked out that door, the shit was going to hit the fan.