“I’ll go on one condition,” Khoury said.
“You know me better than this. Either you are in or you are out.”
“I get half the total.”
“You’re a thirty percent partner. You get your thirty percent provided we execute.”
“I’m taking half the risk here. I should get half the money.”
Tankian ignored him as he shouldered his duffel. One pistol was still in his side holster plus two more in the duffel. He could kill Khoury and board the ship with the American, but that would bring unwanted attention. A better idea was to get him on board and then toss him off the ship at some point.
He sighed, as if relenting. “Khoury, you drive a hard bargain, but you’ve always been a loyal partner. Okay, fifty percent it is.”
Khoury smiled. “Well, then, let me help you with that.”
They loaded the barely conscious prisoner into the cooler, which was made for very large fish. As they were positioning the detainee into the six-foot-long container, Tankian stood upright. Something had alerted him. He suddenly had the distinct feeling of being watched. Across the hardpan of the port yard, an SUV pulled up to the gate. A man stuck his head out the window, followed by a hand holding something. Maybe a gun?
“Hurry,” Tankian said.
He closed the lid, and they dragged the cooler to the gangplank where they entered the ship and stepped past the containers that had just been loaded. With Khoury behind him, Tankian walked through the first galley and into the bridge. They left the cooler in the corridor and stepped into the control room.
In the captain’s seat was a Russian admiral, who said, “Welcome, comrades. Have a seat, and we will discuss the plan.”
Tankian looked past the admiral through the thick salt-stained Plexiglas. A man and a woman exited the SUV—one of his SUVs—near the vehicle they had used to drive here.
“We must go now,” Tankian said.
The admiral chuckled. “Yes, of course. We were just waiting on you.”
The ship began moving, a tugboat nudging it out to sea.
The man and woman turned toward the ship. The man pointed and said something, then they both began running toward the berth.
Tankian began thinking about things he had never really considered before, such as the thickness of the Plexiglas and the maximum speed of container ships. If this was the same man who had single-handedly destroyed his business—and it certainly appeared to be—then there was no telling what he could do to a defenseless ship.
“Admiral, do you have any scouts or snipers on this boat?”
“Of course. I’ve got both. Why do you ask?”
Tankian pointed.
The admiral turned and saw the two running toward his ship. He picked up a radio handset and said, “Red team. Threat at three o’clock.”
“Roger. Tracking.”
“Shoot to kill,” the admiral said.
A few seconds later, two gunshots rang out as the ship pushed away from the tug and gained momentum in the open sea.
* * *
Harwood grabbed Sassi and dove to his right behind a rust-orange forty-foot Sealand container. At the last second, the morning sunlight winked off the shooter’s scope lens, giving away the position.
The vortex from the two shots created a wake of turbulence off his ear. Sassi stumbled into the gravel, and for a moment, Harwood thought she’d been hit.
“You okay?” Harwood said. He never took his eyes off the shooter. The ship appeared to be moving away from the berth. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“I’m fine,” Sassi said. “I’d like to know what’s going on. You hardly spoke on the ride here.”
“I was focused, and you slept,” Harwood said. “Just stick with me. I’ll explain later.”
“What if I want to leave now?”
Harwood didn’t have the time or bandwidth for an argument. “And go where? You’re in Lebanon, and I just released you from captivity. We’re going to find my partner, Clutch, better known as Corporal Ian Nolte.”
Sassi looked at him. Her hair was matted to her forehead, and her breath stank. Harwood winced and turned away.
“Sorry. Haven’t brushed my teeth in a while. I was going to ask, though, this soldier isn’t related to Senator Ian Nolte, is he?”
“Yes. That’s his dad. Why?”
“Nothing,” Sassi said, looking away. Then she turned back toward him. “He was on a visit to Afghanistan when I was there. I briefed him. He seemed to have a real sense of compassion for our mission. Most politicians don’t care. They’re just there for the cool places they go to like Croatia and Italy before visiting the combat zone for a few hours. Me? I go to ten crazy shitholes for every one vacation I take.”
“Sounds like my life,” Harwood said. “Can’t remember my last vacation.”
Harwood managed another peek around the corner of the container providing them protective cover. The container ship had turned and was headed into the sea.
“Quick. Let’s go. There’s a marina this way.” He shouldered his ruck and clasped her hand, guiding her across the hardpan to the dock. They remained covered most of the way to two piers poking from land into the blue-gray water. White fishing and sport boats were moored along two wooden piers that ran perpendicular to the bulkhead. They watched a man wearing shorts, sandals, and an orange T-shirt walk back and forth between the dock and his car in the parking lot fifty meters away.
“Hang tight. Don’t move,” Harwood said. “Bring this when you see me running to the pier.”
Sassi didn’t argue this time as Harwood left his rucksack with her and darted toward the parking lot, which was vacant this early in the morning. He closed on the pickup truck quickly with the man leaning into the passenger side of the truck. Harwood removed his pistol and landed a solid blow on the back of his head. It wasn’t in his code to injure innocents, but he really had no choice. He doubted that debating with him would yield a ride to follow the container ship.
He snatched the keys from the man’s hand, lifted him into his truck, checked his pulse—elevated but okay—and shut the door. He jogged back toward their covered position, motioned at Sassi with an upraised fist, pumping it down in the universal move for “let’s haul ass.” She lifted his rucksack, grimaced at the weight, and then darted toward him at a fast pace.
The man’s boat was a Riva twenty-three-foot center-console boat not unlike one Harwood had stolen when chasing his prior nemesis, the Chechen.
“Untie the lines,” Harwood said as they jumped into the vessel’s deck. The man had carried four gas cans onto the boat, which might give them enough gas to either go wherever the ship’s next stop was, provided it was just up the coast, or, less preferably, catch up with the ship and board it.
Sassi did as Harwood instructed, and soon they were heading into open seas with the container ship now fully under way. Harwood nudged the throttle forward, the Riva gaining speed until he had it full and open with a rooster tail spitting out the back like a fire hose.
CHAPTER 20
Valerie Hinojosa
Valerie Hinojosa walked along Juneau Avenue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, huddled against a spring breeze snapping off Lake Michigan. She was completing a run along the lake and finished in Veterans Park, a tree-lined open space that jutted out from Milwaukee’s Lower East Side into the seemingly never-ending lake. Might as well be an ocean.
She wiped some sweat from her face, adjusted her sports bra beneath her windbreaker, and checked her phone. Her ex-boyfriend, Army Ranger Sergeant Vick Harwood, had been gone a week on another undisclosed mission. He had done so before, and she should know. Valerie had been his handler during the Team Valid mission that had led to the killing of Virginia senator Sloane Brookes.
Valerie disliked politics, but here she was thrust into the fray again on her first assignment back in the field after extensive rehab following the Valid mission. She walked along the lake edge, riprap poking upward like sawteeth. Gray-blue wat
er went as far as her eye could see to the east. Less than a mile to the south was the Port of Milwaukee, and farther south by about fifty miles was Chicago. To the immediate west was downtown Milwaukee, flush with bars, restaurants, and hotels. To her north was more shoreline and the home the wealthy Milwaukee elite.
Walking along the asphalt path, Valerie stepped from the tunnel of trees into the sunshine and lifted her face to the sky. Anything to get warm as she cooled down from her run. She found a grassy spot and sat down so that she could stretch. She was still recovering from being roughed up by former Marine sniper Griffin Weathers, who had turned traitor. Processing their relationship in her mind, Valerie still couldn’t quite fathom what she had seen in the man, and questioned her own abilities as an FBI special agent. She should have seen his murderous personality at some point during their six-month relationship.
Weathers was dead now, killed by Vick, the Reaper, her former beau. How odd was that? Transitioning from a man who betrayed his country to the man who had slain him. Harwood had done so at a critical moment, of course. Weathers was in the process of attempting to kill both of them. While she was certainly more than capable of defending herself, Valerie had suffered a beating at the hands of Weathers and barely survived. Bruised ribs, broken jaw, fractured forearm. It would have been much worse had Vick not intervened when he had.
When both she and Vick had been admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, they found the time to come together every night. It started with Vick visiting her room when she was still immobilized. He’d been injured himself. Weathers had sneaked in a few cuts of the knife on Harwood as they’d fought in the secret tunnel beneath Senator Brookes’s compound on the Chesapeake Bay.
During that week of recovery, she had fallen for Vick. His smile, a slight upturn on the right side of his mouth, was the first thing she saw when she woke up that morning coming out of surgery on her jaw. His soulful brown eyes had made her heart clutch. She didn’t know when it had clicked for Vick, but she had felt the connection from the outset, even during the mission. There was a chemistry between them that was hard for her to explain. She never mixed work and dating—she’d met Weathers on a dating app—and Harwood was a new foray for her. She let herself believe the relationship was safe, because Vick served in the army and she the FBI, two distinctly different organizations without much, if any, mission overlap. They both served their country, but that was about it. Still, though, it was too soon after Valid, and she was just getting her career back on track.
Valerie leaned forward and stretched her tight hamstrings and calves. Her shoulders and arms screamed at her with pain. Breath escaped from between her teeth, sounding like a hissing air hose. Her eyes welled with tears, but she continued to hold the tips of her shoes, leaning forward and ripping scar tissue.
“Damn it,” she whispered to herself.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” a deep voice said from behind her.
She bounced up and spun around, only to find her boss, Special Agent Deke Bronson, standing there in the bronze, godlike flesh, wearing running shorts and a formfitting workout T-shirt. His leg muscles rippled like a Kentucky Thoroughbred on promenade.
“Shit, boss, you scared me,” Valerie said.
“Down, kung fu. I know you can take me,” Bronson said.
Valerie looked at her hands. She was crouched in a fighter’s pose on the balls of her feet with fists ready to strike. Bronson jokingly flexed his muscles and acted as if he were prepared to defend himself.
“Sorry, Deke,” Valerie said. “I’m just a tad jumpy.”
“I know. That’s why we’re starting slow with something low profile like the national convention of a political party.”
“Low profile. They’re going to fill a basketball arena with a hundred thousand screaming maniacs supporting one tribe over another. If I’d wanted that, I could have joined the army and been in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Bronson was a former Marine who had served in Fallujah. He smiled. “Got that T-shirt. Let’s take a walk.”
Bronson turned, and Valerie followed.
“Heard from the Reaper?” he asked.
“I know you and Vick have a complicated history, Deke, but he’d probably want you to call him Vick.”
“How about I just call him something that rhymes with Vick?”
Valerie rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. You’re half a world away from each other and you still can’t cut him any slack.”
“Nope.”
“Is it his charming good looks or the fact that you could never quite catch him?”
During a case involving Vick’s sniper rifle from Afghanistan, Bronson had been searching for the most likely suspect—Vick Harwood the Reaper—and had come up empty-handed until Vick presented himself to authorities in an effort to find the actual culprit. He had assumed that Bronson would give him the benefit of the doubt for coming in voluntarily. Vick had been mostly wrong. Bronson didn’t cut anyone any slack.
“I caught him,” Bronson said. He visibly bristled at the memory, though. “I’ll ask again, have you heard from your beau?”
“He’s not my beau, but he’s ‘overseas,’” she said, making air quotes with her fingers. “I’ve got a clearance, but he still doesn’t tell me anything.”
“No need to know. And what do you mean he’s not your beau?”
Valerie shrugged, not accepting his response as a meaningful answer and not wanting to dive into her personal life with her boss. “Topic changer. What’s on your mind?” Valerie asked.
Bronson paused as if he wanted to stay on the topic of Harwood and then responded, “We’ve got intel coming in, and I need you to sift through it. I’ve got a SCIF set up in the hotel.”
They were walking side by side along the path. The Milwaukee skyline loomed in front of them as they took the steps up to the street level. Bronson nudged them north and kept talking.
“Anything sticking out, or the usual crazies with rifles, snipers on the rooftops, and rental trucks filled with explosives?”
“All that and more. Nothing really making my Spidey senses go off, but you’re the pro at this stuff, not me.”
Hinojosa gave him the side-eye. Something was up. He was never this nice to her.
“Okay, level with me, Deke. What’s going on?”
“I’m leveling with you, but I need to let you know that we’ve got word of one Army Ranger gone missing in Lebanon. Intel sources from the Beqaa Valley have circulated through Europe and Israel back to here. Did Vick say anything about being in Lebanon or Israel?”
Valerie stopped and spun at Bronson. “Why weren’t these the first words out of your mouth? Why this song-and-dance bullshit?”
“I wasn’t sure how to approach it.”
“Whatever! What do you know?”
They passed a group of high school students walking toward the BMO Harris Pavilion as they continued toward Henry Maier Festival Park. The kids were chattering away, carrying their backpacks and smartphones, giggling and laughing as high school kids should be doing. Bronson remained silent until they had passed the teenagers.
“Our joint intelligence working group received a ping that there was a plane crash in the Beqaa Valley. We’ve got people moving to the scene, but our information is at least a day old, if not longer.”
“Any word if this is Vick?”
“None. We know that four Army Rangers were on assignment in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. All close-hold stuff.”
“I saw the news on another Syrian incursion on the Golan Heights. Could that be related?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences, so yeah, I think there’s something here that you need to know about. Honestly, I was hoping that the Reaper slipped up and fed you some intel.”
“No. Never. He doesn’t say a whole lot on a normal day. Less when he’s got a classified mission. Plus, as I’ve mentioned, we’re not a thing.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll believe that when I see it. I guess I can try to
find out some things,” Bronson said.
If she weren’t worried, she would have smiled at Bronson’s concern for someone he supposedly didn’t like. While she was sure there was some professional jealousy involved, most of Bronson’s hostility was an act.
They finally reached the Marriott, where she followed Bronson into a suite on the top floor. It was a four-room layout with intelligence analysts sitting at three computer displays in the outer room. In the next room, the FBI had constructed a portable SCIF by erecting steel walls and latching them together. She stepped inside with Bronson, who closed the door, and they sat at the two terminals.
Pulling up a map of Milwaukee, Valerie studied the road networks, airports, seaport, and locations. She tried to focus on the potential threats, but she kept cycling back to concern about Vick. Was there something he had said to her about his mission before he left? They had briefly discussed Monisha and made the decision that she should stay at Command Sergeant Major Murdoch’s parents’ home in Columbus, Georgia. He had packed some cold-weather clothes, and she imagined that Lebanon in May in the mountains would be chilly. He had given no clue, though he did mention “having a beer” one night with his spotter, Ian Nolte, sending a picture before the mission started. They had texted on WhatsApp. She made a point to tell him that despite her strong feelings for him, she couldn’t be involved in a relationship so soon after the death of her brother. He had understood, she thought. She had seen the pain in his eyes when he nodded and said, “Roger.” They kept in contact, though, and now she thought about that photo. He could literally have a beer anywhere in the world, so it was no big clue. He had mentioned something about a hefeweizen, but wheat beer was sold all around the world as well.
Could be Germany, which would support the Lebanon theory, but she needed to focus on her job, instead of going through this useless spiral.
“Val?”
“Um, yeah. What I really need, Deke, is to have those analysts out there comb through every airplane arriving, every rental car being leased or reserved, every ship coming into port here and in Chicago, every train coming up from Chicago and other places. All current and planned reservations. Run everything through NCIC, and look for any kind of connection, because I’m feeling nothing in my gut.”
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