Hawk settled into his position in the trailer, as far as he could sit forward. Surrounded by creatures who found joy wallowing around in mud all day, he wondered if he could ever be so carefree in life again. The pain he’d already experienced was enough to break a normal man. But he wasn’t normal—at least that’s what everyone had told him his whole life. In fact, he was extraordinary, a warrior. Nothing could intimidate him.
In a moment of honesty, he realized everyone had been lying to him. Sure, he might have appeared like that person on the outside, but deep down he craved intimacy and friendship. The kind of relationship he had with Jessica.
As the truck bumped along, Hawk had little to do but think and reflect. He pulled the photo he’d lifted off his attacker in Kirkuk and stared at it, wondering who was behind the attempt on his life. But he also couldn’t stop thinking about her.
But Hawk couldn’t think about her without thinking about him—the man who was responsible for his life but was never really there for him: his father, Thomas J. Colton.
To describe Hawk’s childhood as difficult would qualify as both equal parts true and false. He was born to Alicia Elizabeth Hawk, a woman who did the best a single mother could do in terms of caring for her child. Before her son was born, she struggled to make ends meet, aspiring to one day become a teacher. But such lofty dreams required an education, a higher education—an education her alcoholic father and waitress mother couldn’t afford. She sought alternate means to pay for her education, working as a stripper for eighteen months to save up money for college. Degrading herself in front of leering men wasn’t how she wanted to pay for school, but it was the only job she could get that kept her from living paycheck to paycheck. The money was good, really good. She met with a friend who’d graduated several years ahead of her and had become a teacher. In a month, her friend made half the money she did by just working four straight Monday through Thursday shifts, which were the slowest tip nights. She could make twice that simply by working Friday and Saturday nights. And while Alicia was tempted to forego school, she didn’t want to give up her on dream to become a teacher—nor could she see herself stripping for the rest of her life. At some point, she’d have to turn elsewhere for an occupation.
Alicia was set to quit stripping in one week when she met a man who propositioned her outside the club. She told him that she wasn’t that kind of girl, but he could take her out to dinner and see how things went. So, he did. But it wasn’t just dinner. It was far more. And she never even got his name.
Not that Alicia thought much about it at the time. She quit her job and enrolled in a local community college. But she didn’t last long—not because of the academics, but because she couldn’t sit in a class longer than thirty minutes without having to get up and puke her guts out. She went to the school’s triage and learned that she was pregnant.
“Are you sure?” a teary-eyed Alicia asked the nurse.
The nurse handed her the pregnancy test. “Honey, these things don’t lie. You’ve been knocked up.”
Alicia cried all the way home, unsure of what her future held. She weighed all her options but decided to keep the baby. After lecturing her father for years about how he had to accept the consequences for his actions—even when he was drunk—she couldn’t be a two-faced hypocrite.
When Braden Christopher Hawk was born, Alicia was a proud mother. But she was also a poor one. Returning to work as a stripper, she struggled to find someone to take care of her little Brady. Her babysitters never lasted long, especially as Brady grew older. He was a strong-willed kid who’d test the limits of anyone watching him. After Alicia missed several consecutive shifts because of her inability to find a suitable caretaker, she plopped down on the couch and turned on the television. She resigned herself to the fact that her life would never amount to much. Then she saw him—Thomas J. Colton, the head of Colton Industries. She realized that he was the man she’d met that night outside of the club.
In a desperate move, she disguised herself and waited in the lobby for him one day. She accidentally ran into him, pricking him with a knife. She apologized and volunteered to help dress the wound she’d just created. Irritated, he let her while she savvily scooped up some of his blood. Later that day, she paid a lab a couple hundred dollars for a paternity test. Colton was the father.
She immediately contacted a lawyer and drew up a paternity suit. Colton quickly settled with her for two million dollars with the condition of anonymity. She agreed.
However, when Hawk was fifteen years old and asking questions about his father, Alicia dismissed them as not a big deal.
“I’m the only family you’ve got, Brady,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t all that mattered to Hawk. The fact that his mother was independently wealthy yet was working her way through school raised his curiosity. He dug through her file labeled “important papers” one night when she was in class and pulled out the lawsuit. After a quick Internet search, Hawk found Colton’s home address and paid him a visit.
At first, Colton’s face went pale. He stammered and tried to make excuses—until Hawk whipped out the paternity test confirmation. Colton then invited Hawk into the house. He’d since divorced his wife and decided he owed it to the kid to give him an explanation. But instead of it being a one-time meeting, Colton—who never had any kids while he was married—thought it might be fun to embrace Hawk instead of shunning him. Colton’s subsequent influence was what led Hawk to apply to become a Navy Seal and enter one of the most rigorous training programs in the U.S. military. But it only took one mission for Hawk to realize the Seals weren’t for him. The mere thought of what he had to do on that mission made him queasy weeks later. Consequently, that single mission was all it took to turn him against the military, and led him to a place where he decided the Peace Corps was a far more worthy way to spend his days as a young adult.
And it was during his thirty-month stint in the Peace Corps that he met Jessica Thornton and fell in love with her—then lost her forever.
The truck screeched as it came to a slow halt, the compression brakes unleashing a blast of air skyward. The Iranian military circled the truck at the border stop for a few moments before waving the truck through.
Hawk had almost a day and a half ride ahead of him as the route explained to him by the driver was to cut through the heart of Iran before dropping him in Zaranj just inside the eastern boundary of Afghanistan. A day and a half to think about anything but Jessica.
But he couldn’t help but think about her.
After all, she was the reason he decided to return to a life hell-bent on eliminating terrorists, one by one.
CHAPTER 28
BLUNT ONCE ASPIRED to be the President of the United States, an aspiration that died a quick death within two weeks of reaching Washington. When he realized that most every elected official didn’t serve their people but well-funded lobbyists, he decided he didn’t want to be a bootlicker to anyone. He had his own set of ideas about what a great America looked like, and he endeavored to create it. However, he quickly learned that if you don’t lick the right boots, you’ll be long forgotten before you ever had a chance to be remembered.
Putting aside his pride, Blunt cozied up to the right power brokers in Washington and found himself amassing an unusual amount of power for a senator his age. Before he knew it, he was pulling all the strings from the shadows, which presented one inescapable problem: he was putting a target on himself. He didn’t mind a power-hungry senator making a run at him every now and then. Those attacks were easily weathered. But he was putting himself squarely in the crosshairs of the party leaders who sought to push him toward an inevitable run at the Presidency. And that was something he neither wanted nor liked.
Instead of politely declining any such invitations, Blunt decided to draw the ire of the decision makers. He crossed party lines on key votes. He leaked sensitive information to the press about those who wanted to see him attain the party�
�s nomination, and there was no doubt who spilled the secrets. Through a series of calculated moves, he managed to earn the reputation of an attack dog instead of a show dog. Even his affair that ended his marriage—one he was happy to escape—was purposefully orchestrated so he’d get caught. He maneuvered his relationships on the Hill with just enough aplomb to maintain his fellow senators’ favor without drawing their support for a run at a higher office. And during the process, he embarked on a journey of self-discovery and learned that at the heart of his hope for America was that it’d be a country safe from terrorists.
Leading Firestorm was a dream come true. He wielded enormous power without much in the way of accountability. And he would squash terrorists in the process. All with an even bigger budget.
When he recruited Alex, he surmised that she was the perfect person for the position. Dedicated, loyal, professional. And if necessary, she’d color outside the lines. It’s why he never once worried that she’d find out that there weren’t really three globe-trotting terrorist hunters in Firestorm—just one. Hawk was it. The other two were assassins who eliminated his political enemies, working on a per job basis.
Blunt picked up his phone. It was time to put one of his assassins to work again.
CHAPTER 29
NASIM GHAZI TOOK A DEEP BREATH and soaked in the dusty air of Zaranj with a wide smile on his face. Every time he came back to work in the border town, it made him wish he never had to leave. It wasn’t home but it felt like what home should be like in his opinion—comfortable, peaceful, safe, family. New York was never those things.
A gunshot rang out in the distance, and a pair of jeeps rumbled by with machine guns affixed to the roll bars. It wasn’t quite the true peace he sought, but he didn’t mind it so much since they were peacekeepers, and they were on his side.
As he walked along the dusty road, a soccer ball bounded toward him after an errant pass from a kid’s game nearby flew out of the makeshift dirt field. Using his right foot, Ghazi spun the ball backward and chipped it into the air before kicking it back to the kids. The one boy who’d been sent on the search and rescue mission for the ball flashed a thumbs-up and a grin at him. That was Basil, the eight-year-old son of a local baker. On more than one occasion during visits to the bakery, Basil had told him how he wanted to play for the Afghanistan national soccer team and win a World Cup—just one of the many stories Ghazi had learned while living among what he considered his new family. He waved back and kept walking toward his bomb manufacturing hideout.
It’s not perfect, but it’s paradise to me.
But aside from this slice of the world, Ghazi viewed the rest of the globe—and their people—with malice. If being a Muslim had taught him anything, it was that relationships were important. It also taught him that being a Muslim was superior to all other religions. The infidels were missing out on paradise in this world and the next as they sullied the one he lived in. And there was only one way to deal with them.
He checked over his shoulder as he prepared to unlock his small shop. No one was around. He turned the key and stepped inside, sliding the deadbolt into place after he closed the door.
He stopped and inhaled the scent of C-4 wafting through the air. To the untrained olfactory senses, it smelled like tar or plastic. But Ghazi knew the difference. Too many hours hovering over the explosives to not know the difference. He scanned the room, conducting a quick inventory count to make sure nothing had been taken or moved. It hadn’t.
Pulling out his notebook and calculator, Ghazi began to compute just how much C-4 he’d need. His next assignment was by far the biggest—and most challenging—during his stint with Al Hasib. It would require far more explosives than he had on hand along with a deft plan to not only sneak it past border patrols but also into his intended target. The two weeks he spent surveying the object of Al Hasib’s most ambitious attack told him as much.
But he needed help, the kind only Raja Tawhid could provide.
CHAPTER 30
HAWK MET HIS CONTACT with the Peace Corps at a local deli the afternoon before his classes were to begin. Frank Culbert wore his pants slightly higher than most people and liked his shirts from a vintage era, circa 1972. He pushed his dark rimmed glasses up on his nose and eyed Hawk closely.
“You don’t look like my normal teacher,” said Culbert. As head of the program in Zaranj for the past eight years, he had plenty of experience to draw upon.
Hawk flashed a smile. “Is it my age or my good looks?”
Culbert forced a laugh and shook his head. “Never mind.” He slid a pile of books across the table toward Hawk. “This is the curriculum for your class. Have you ever taught English before to non-native speakers?”
“Non-native speakers? Who else would I be teaching it to?”
Culbert leaned forward as if he was about to tell Hawk a secret. “There are plenty of people in the United States who have a weak grasp of the English language, though that’s far more challenging.” He leaned back. “I always ask because some people who’ve taught English literature back home think it’s going to be the same thing.”
“I’ve taught refugees before,” Hawk said, ending Culbert’s critique of both rookie Peace Corps members and U.S. citizens whose command of the English language was lacking in his opinion.
“Good. But be aware that everything you do is going to be under a microscope. These kids think that you will represent every person in America and ask you strange questions.”
“Such as?”
“They may want to know if you’ve met Jay-Z or Beyoncé—or if you know Kobe Bryant.”
“And here I thought we were exporting capitalism.”
Culbert slapped the table. “No, just the worst parts of American culture,” he added, indignantly. “The day someone asks me about the Kardashians, I’m quitting and moving to the Amazon jungle or some place where there are no televisions.”
Hawk laughed. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks they’re a waste of air time.”
Culbert didn’t smile. “Got any other questions?”
“What about my faith? Can I talk about that?”
“Only if they ask, but I wouldn’t volunteer too much information. If you’re not careful, they’ll have you up at dawn for the Fajr prayers.”
“Aren’t we all up at that time? Those calls to prayer wake me up every morning.”
“You get used to it. Just be careful. This place isn’t as radical as most in Afghanistan, but the Taliban still has plenty of influence here, and we don’t want any incidents. The Peace Corps has been making heavy inroads here, which go far beyond teaching English. And while English was one of the pre-requisites the Afghan government put on us in order to be here, what we’re doing in the way of teaching people new farming techniques and adapting to new technology is changing people’s lives. It’s important work. Don’t screw it up by trying to get too chummy with your students—especially the female variety.”
“Message received,” Hawk said. He stood. “I appreciate your advice and candor.”
“If you screw up, I’ll be there to tell you about it, along with a ticket for your trip home.”
“Understood,” Hawk said.
Hawk stooped over, gathered his books, and headed back toward his apartment. He peered back over his shoulder at Culbert, who seemed preoccupied and stared off into the distance.
After his initial encounter with Culbert, Hawk wasn’t sure what to make of his Peace Corps supervisor. During his first stint of service with the organization, he noted two things. The first was how idealistic all the young people were who’d signed up to join. The second was how jaded and cynical the elder leaders of the group were. It seemed like a cruel meat grinder: in goes optimism, out comes pessimism. Or perhaps it was just people who’d attained a more realistic perspective on the world by living outside the bounds of the United States. Either way, the final product generally consisted of bitterness or disappointment—or both.
But Culbert?
He was hard to read. It was apparent to Hawk that he wanted to come across as a hard ass, but he wasn’t so sure if that’s who he really was. And he wasn’t sure if he would end up being a friend or a liability. He needed to gather some more information, but it was time to hit the books. He had a class to prepare for.
CHAPTER 31
SENATOR BLUNT SPILLED COFFEE on his shirt when he stumbled in the kitchen after pouring himself a mug. After he changed, one of his diamond cufflinks broke, setting off an expletive-laced tirade. A hole in the wall and an injured foot later, he collected himself and drove to work. However, he didn’t reach his office before Preston flagged him down.
“If it’s not good news, I don’t want to hear it,” Blunt growled.
“Spill your coffee on your shirt again, sir?”
Blunt eyed him closely. “Wipe that smirk off your face before I do it for you.”
Preston’s expression turned serious. “It’s not good news, but you need to hear it.”
“Not now,” he said as he turned and continued walking down the hall.
“Sir, it’s about Madeline Meissner. She’s back, and this time she’s making some new accusations that are sure to draw unwanted attention.”
Blunt stopped, his back still to Preston. “I thought I told you to take care of her.”
“I did. She’s no longer employed by The Post and has been added to a blackball list by all the area media outlets.”
“Yet, she’s managed to find a way to still make trouble for me?” Blunt said as he turned to face Preston.
“Perhaps I underestimated her a bit, but she’s taken to the Internet and has a blog set up called Washington Whispers that’s growing exponentially in popularity. Some of the morning radio talk shows are starting to cite her blog posts.”
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