“Just how big, exactly, was the Nike bag?”
Laws comprehended instinctively. “Big enough to carry say, a Dragunov, along with other assorted parting gifts.”
Garin glanced over at Luci, who was gazing at him past the left shoulder of her third suitor of the night. “Clint, I’m going to ask you something. Now, just a hypothetical, understand?”
Laws, of course, understood perfectly.
“What would you do if you saw something on a milk run that you’re not sure about? You think you saw something that’s not supposed to be there, but you’re just not sure?”
“Note it in the report, son. Let the analysts figure it out.”
“But you’re not sure what you saw.”
“What you saw or who you saw?”
“Who. Well . . .” Garin paused. “I don’t know if it’s a who or a . . . Just something looked vaguely familiar. Like someone or something I should know. Just a possibility. That’s all.”
“You’re a model of clarity there, Chief. If there’s a possibility . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but really . . .”
“There are no—I repeat, I repeat, I repeat—no coincidences in this business, Chief.”
Laws casually scanned the premises and then slid his chair closer to Garin. “That brings me to why I wanted to meet you here, Chief.”
“I assumed it was for the simple pleasure of my company.”
“I didn’t want to talk by phone or anything else that could be monitored. And I didn’t want to do this at the Ranch either.”
“Something tells me you’ve had your own share of coincidences.”
“Over the last three to four months, there’s been an unusual number of operations gone bad. As a result, several warriors in the ground.”
“Bad things happen all the time.”
“Equipment failures, bad intel, weather, ordinary mistakes—sure. We expect those, plan for them. But being repeatedly outmaneuvered, as if the other side anticipated and planned for our moves, that doesn’t happen by chance.”
Garin didn’t need to be sold. Just a short time ago he’d related similar suspicions to Tanski. “What kind of operators?”
“Tier-one.”
“That would mean a JSOC-level problem. Maybe higher.”
Laws nodded. “My guess is higher.”
Garin raised his eyebrows. “Why’s that?”
“Intuition. Experience. And certain commonalities.”
“What commonalities?”
“Well, for instance, cui bono?”
“My guess is all of the failures benefit a certain bad actor,” Garin said. “Let me guess: Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, or a major terrorist group?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I seriously doubt that. But specifically, what commonalities?”
“The last three operations involved Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria.”
“Geez, Clint. You didn’t have to be that specific. Something tells me I’m not supposed to know that.”
“You do now,” Laws stated matter-of-factly. “What player benefits most from failed US ops in those locations?”
“President Yuri Vladimirovich Mikhailov.”
“That’s right, Chief. Probably a distant relative of yours. Lord knows he’s ugly enough.” Laws paused, then shook his head. “Then again, he’s way too smart.”
“So the Russians are running someone high enough in US military or intelligence to compromise code-worded direct actions. . . .”
“The Soviet Union collapsed. Russian ambitions never do.”
Garin said nothing. He conceded Russian interest in Ukraine, Crimea, and Syria. But he couldn’t fathom what interest they might have in thwarting his operation beneath a Pakistani nuclear weapons facility.
Laws studied Garin’s face. “You’re thinking how your little milk run in Pakistan plays into this. I haven’t worked that out yet. Maybe it doesn’t. But I figure if someone—whether Russian, Chinese, or Guatemalan—is compromising the highest levels of American intelligence and special ops, then they might be able to compromise Omega, too. And if you guys get compromised, well, we’re screwed. The whole world’s screwed.”
“But to affect Omega, they’d have to compromise addresses far beyond MacDill or Bragg,” Garin said, referring to the bases that housed US Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command. “Those addresses are in Washington. There are one, two, three, tops. And they’re very exclusive.”
Laws nodded. “That’s why I didn’t even trust having this talk at the Ranch.”
Garin drained the last of his beer. He nodded slowly to himself, then: “Looks like I’ve got work to do.”
“You always do.”
Garin looked at his watch. “My flight back to Reagan is at six A.M. Feel like giving me a lift to my hotel?”
“It’s either me or Mr. Obvious.”
Garin looked in the direction of the man in the gray blazer. The seat was empty.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WOODBRIDGE, VIRGINIA
JULY 13 • 2:25 A.M. EDT
A careful man is more likely to remain alive.
Cal Lowbridge was fastidious. He always carried a firearm, sometimes two, wherever he went. He carried his firearms hot but made sure to always safely lock away any weapons he wasn’t using, magazine out, no round in the chamber.
Lowbridge was always checking his surroundings, his head seemingly on a perpetual swivel. Little escaped his attention. He rarely took the same route to a destination and constantly checked his rear- and side-view mirrors. Before parking his car, he circled the block at least once, sometimes doubling back twice to see if he was being followed. He never parked his car in the same spot and never near thick foliage. Both of his personal vehicles had remote keyless ignitions.
His apartment was protected by a cutting-edge security system installed by a civilian contractor who had once worked in the same capacity for the FBI. Best of all, he had Loki, his agile Doberman, who seemed to have bionic ears and treated nearly everyone but Lowbridge as a mortal threat.
Lowbridge was a celebrated insomniac. That in itself didn’t present much of a problem, except that wherever he was detailed he was always being volunteered for first watch. Like most former SEALs, he had gone without sleep for at least forty-eight hours on multiple occasions. Unlike most former SEALs, he’d begun doing so long before he’d joined the teams and continued long after he’d left.
Lowbridge’s baseline insomnia was compounded this particular night by his struggle to adjust to the time change from the preceding three days in Pakistan. Jerri, his long-suffering (as she continually reminded him) girlfriend, left the apartment at ten thirty P.M. to work the night shift as a charge nurse at Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center. He watched a movie, read parts of two opaque novels, and cleaned Jerri’s fish tank after she left. He was wide-awake at two thirty A.M. with no prospect of sleep on the horizon.
Fortunately, Loki seemed to share his master’s affliction and was pleased to accompany him on a walk through the neighborhood. Lowbridge inserted a magazine into his Beretta 92S, chambered a round, and stuck the weapon in his pocket holster. Before leaving the apartment he checked the stove, turned off all but one light, set the security alarm, and locked the door. He climbed down a flight of stairs, paused at the doorway, and looked up and down the sidewalk. He noted the locations and makes of the vehicles parked at the curb and, verifying that there was no one silhouetted along the rooftops of adjacent apartment complexes, permitted Loki to precede him out of the building.
The night was warm, humid, and still. The only sound came from the faint buzzing of an overhead streetlamp. There were just two lights on in the windows of the rows of apartment buildings lining the entire block, no pedestrians on the sidewalks, and no motorists on the street. Per
fect for walking an obedient yet aggressive dog.
Lowbridge walked slowly and with a slight limp, a consequence of an exceedingly tiny but painful piece of shrapnel in his thigh, acquired during the assignment in Pakistan. Calhoun, the corpsman, had removed the offending piece of metal, disinfected the wound, and given Lowbridge an antibiotic shortly after the team’s extraction. He was given a clean bill of health upon arrival just outside Fort Belvoir for debrief and told to expect some stiffness and soreness for a while. Within a week or two he would be back to normal.
With no pedestrians, vehicles, or small animals to distract him, Loki was content to walk slowly at his master’s side. Lowbridge paused at the end of the block and contemplated which direction to proceed. He decided to go right for no other reason than Loki had already begun moving in that direction. Loki’s decision was based on his favorite oak, which he carefully inspected before marking his territory once again, part of an ongoing turf war with the seemingly incontinent black Lab that resided with his elderly owner in the duplex across the street.
Loki returned to Lowbridge’s side and the pair made another right turn onto a largely unoccupied street where several houses had been left in midconstruction due to a persistent softness in the housing market. Jerri and Lowbridge had inspected one of the houses with an eye toward financing its completion and moving in. Cal estimated he had another year, at most, in Omega. He’d lost no more than half a step, but in his business that loss could be fatal. He’d had some feelers from security firms and private military contractors. Very good money. He’d long ago begun preparing for the transition, accumulating a decent savings. Leaving the team—the camaraderie, the sense of purpose—would be hard, but Jerri’s biological clock (as she frequently reminded him) was ticking.
Loki nuzzled Lowbridge’s hand in search of some treats. Cal dug into his left pocket for a biscuit, when Loki’s ears perked and he began to emit a growl that immediately turned into a soft, plaintive yelp as a geyser of blood erupted from the top of his skull and he fell on his side. Almost simultaneously, the hot sharpness of ballistic metal pierced the left side of Lowbridge’s neck just below the jawbone. Astonished by the skill of his assassin, in the milliseconds before death the fastidious operator chastised himself for not thinking it peculiar that the neighborhood’s nocturnal insects had remained still on this warm and humid night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
JULY 13 • 12:12 A.M. PDT
Clint Laws turned his big Suburban into the parking lot of Garin’s hotel and stopped at the entrance.
“Where you headed from here?” Garin asked.
“A little R and R at Kings Canyon, then back to the Ranch.”
“Any last words of wisdom?”
“Plenty, but your peanut brain couldn’t remember them all.”
“Then give me the condensed version.”
“You should expect that they’re coming after Omega, Chief.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why Omega?”
“Looks like someone’s compromising tier-one operations. If that’s the case, Omega’s the grand prize. So keep your eyes open. Take nothing for granted. Make sure your team’s on alert, but don’t communicate in any way that can be monitored or intercepted. I’ll try to find out as much as I can when I get back to the Ranch. In the meantime, keep your eyes open.”
“You said that already.”
“Make sure you remember it.”
Garin opened the car door. “Talk to you later.”
As Garin entered the hotel, Laws drove out of the lot. Even if he had kept his own counsel, he would not have noticed the black 2009 Ford Taurus, Arizona tags RG53588, parked with its lights off in the darkened lot across the street.
CHAPTER NINE
COLCHESTER, VIRGINIA
JULY 13 • 1:03 P.M. EDT
For Miriam Camacho, life was good. In fact, she couldn’t imagine it much better. Primarily because Manny was home. And Manny made everything, and everyone, better.
They’d been married for eight years, right out of high school in the Bronx, where they’d been high school sweethearts, a fact that had befuddled many of the other boys in school. Most of them thought Miriam was out of Manny’s league. She was tall—nearly three inches taller than Manny—and gorgeous. Manny, on the other hand, was short and not much to look at. He had a big nose, huge ears, and riotously crooked teeth. But he had a big smile, a bigger heart, and an incessant, infectious laugh.
He was an indifferent student but he was a quick study and could do almost anything: install a transmission on a ’68 Checker Marathon, dunk a basketball, repair an oil-fired furnace, do a backflip, fix a laptop, play the drums, bake a pie, pull a quarter from your ear.
But his primary talent was making people laugh, which, by the sounds wafting up the basement stairs, he was doing this very moment. It was the tinkling squeals of their little girls, Lillie, age five, and Ana, age three, plus the booming guffaws of Manny’s giant teammate, Eli Calhoun, age somewhere north of thirty. Equal opportunity laughter, spanning generations.
While Miriam prepared baked beans, potato salad, and corn in the kitchen, Manny grilled steaks on the patio outside the sliding glass doors of the basement rec room. It was a ritual begun shortly after his completion of BUD/S. Whenever he returned from a training exercise or an operation, he’d bring a different member of the team over for beer and steaks. That ritual, plus Manny’s interminable pranking, made him the most popular member of the team.
He was on a new team now, a member for less than six months. Although Miriam didn’t detect much difference from Manny’s previous units, she sensed from his obvious pride that this team was unique. Upon learning of his qualification and selection, he’d acted as if he’d been named to a major league all-star team.
Eli was the second to last of Manny’s teammates to partake in the ritual. Miriam liked him. A Texan, he was as big as Manny was small. Boulders for shoulders, tree trunks for legs. He had an open, guileless face and addressed Miriam as “ma’am.” Judging by the sounds coming from the basement, he and Manny were getting along like long-separated brothers. Manny got along with all of his teammates that way.
Except for one. Manny’s team leader, the star of the all-stars. He spooked everyone. Manny promised—no, warned—Miriam that he’d bring the man over after the next op. Miriam was curious to meet him. It was one of the few times Miriam had ever seen even a trace of apprehension in her husband’s eyes.
Miriam heard a scramble of tiny feet coming up the stairs. As the basement door burst open, a peal of laughter emerged from the stairwell, followed by the beaming faces of Lillie and Ana, who breathlessly announced that Daddy and Uncle Eli needed more “brown juice” and pretzels. Fast. Right away. And while she was at it, they could probably use lots more of those chocolate cookies with sprinkles. For Daddy, of course. And Uncle Eli. He liked cookies. A lot.
Life was good. And joyous. And fun. And it was about to get even better. While Manny was away, her obstetrician had confirmed what Miriam suspected: She was pregnant again. About two and a half months along.
She hadn’t told Manny yet. After a protracted debriefing, he’d come home late in the night and they’d celebrated his return in their usual way, falling hard asleep afterward. A few hours later she heard the girls’ squeals upon discovering Daddy home and making breakfast in the kitchen. Pots and pans crashing, cups and dishes clattering, the smell of bacon and eggs swirling. Shortly thereafter Eli had arrived. Then more cooking and grilling and laughter.
She looked forward to telling Manny the news after Eli left. Manny wanted a boy this time, but either way he’d be ecstatic. Another crazy Camacho, all electricity and sparks and manic energy.
As Miriam busied herself getting more beer and snacks, the basement hysterics ebbed for a spell—Manny and Eli likely pausing to admir
e a three-run homer or an acrobatic double play on Manny’s ridiculous seventy-two-inch screen. Or maybe Eli was quietly listening to the preamble of one of Manny’s outrageous jokes. Regardless, soon there would be another eruption of laughter punctuated by hoots and howls and backslaps and foot stomps, the mere anticipation of which had Miriam giggling to herself.
She dispensed three cookies each to Lillie and Ana, tucked the six-pack under her left arm, grabbed the bag of pretzels with her right hand, and descended the stairs to the temporarily quiet basement. Upon reaching the fourth step from the bottom, the reason for the silence came into view. Light transmitted it instantly to her optic nerves, which relayed it to the deepest reaches of her brain, which refused to process it.
To her left, bright sunshine flooded through the sliding glass doors, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from two holes in the glass. To her right, Eli Calhoun lay faceup on the all-weather carpet Manny had put down just last month. Eli’s eyes were open but there was nothing inside. On Eli’s far side, sprawled across the tan leather lounge chair, was Manny, a single hole centered on the ridge between his eyebrows, just above the bridge of his nose. His eyes, too, were open. Behind him on the headrest was an explosion of hair, blood, bone fragments, and brain tissue.
A heartbeat later the cognitive regions of Miriam’s brain finally permitted the signal from her optic nerves to be processed. A heartbeat after that, her legs went numb and she began to wobble.
Her obstetrician would later determine that Miriam’s miscarriage was caused by the trauma of her falling down the remaining stairs to the basement floor. But Miriam would always believe it was due to the trauma of knowing that her life, a life that seemed to be reaching a crescendo, would never be good again.
CHAPTER TEN
DALE CITY, VIRGINIA
JULY 13 • 1:25 P.M. EDT
Garin had slept the entire four-and-a-half-hour flight back to Washington, D.C. So deep was his sleep that he was momentarily disoriented when awakened by the sound of the other passengers removing their carry-on bags from the overhead bins and exiting the aircraft. He looked around the plane and out the window, trying to get his bearings. Seeing the familiar outlines of Gate 10 of Reagan National, he rose carefully from his seat, surprised that he could move with relative ease. Maybe he was in even better shape than he thought. Or maybe it was the glutamine and turmeric he’d ingested before the flight. Not that he felt invigorated enough to tackle a fresh session of PT, but he didn’t think he would need more than a day or two to recover.
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