“I will if I am allowed.” Lisa looked to Chan.
“Well, you’re not under arrest.” Chan smiled. “But Agent Morrow will be here in the morning. You can discuss it with him. As you know, he’s concerned about guarding the seal of the investigation.”
“Another thing,” Rita said. “I also told Mrs. MacKay, the kids’ principal, that an emergency came up, so you’d better call the school tomorrow, too, Lisa.”
The TV’s images flashed with a Breaking News update on Armored Car Heist Homicides.
“Here we go.” Watson had the remote control and increased the volume slightly as the newscaster read the information.
Chan and Watson exchanged looks of concern.
“Whoa! Morrow’s going to freak out,” Watson said.
“A leak was inevitable,” Chan said, “with so many jurisdictions involved and the New York and national media all over it.”
“So much for his ‘seal’ on the investigation,” Lisa said. “How would the WPA know about this?”
“Good reporters with good sources,” Watson said.
The report made Lisa uneasy and she withdrew into her thoughts. Watson changed the channel to one showing
“You’re under a tremendous amount of stress and may have trouble sleeping,” Dr. Sullivan said. “One of these pills will work fast and help you get the rest you need.”
“Thank you.”
They moved one of the single beds so Rita could sleep in the bigger room with Chan, Watson and Sullivan because Lisa wanted Rita to be near her and the kids the first night. Lisa also requested to have a room alone with her children. After taking the pill, she kept the bathroom door open so her room was awash in soft, soothing light.
After checking on Taylor and Ethan, she got into bed.
Her body was still quivering.
She struggled not to think.
Sleep came for her quickly just as…
She woke, gasping, sat upright and waited to catch her breath.
She got out of bed, kissed Ethan and Taylor, then went to the sofa chair next to the window. Pulling her knees under her chin, she looked out at Manhattan’s skyline.
Brushing the tears from her cheeks, she prayed.
At that moment, some 350 miles north of where Lisa Palmer prayed, a fire raged in Ivan Felk.
Today’s operation succeeded, even against the surprise counterattack. The FBI agent had tried to be a hero, a mistake that he paid for with his life. He was a casualty of war, like the guards.
Felk continued spooning cold baked beans from a tin can and watching the night from the cover of a tangle of brush on a small island in the St. Lawrence River. He considered the man beside him. Nate Unger, a country boy from La Grange, Texas, battle-weary and pathologically loyal to their mission, like all of Felk’s men.
It was a doomed covert mission in the disputed frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It had failed because it was supposed to—his team had been sacrificed. Felk’s unit of professional soldiers had been hired by a global security firm contracted by coalition governments to carry out an illegal op.
No one acknowledged it.
Felk and his people were scapegoat soldiers; plausible deniability.
Before it was dismantled, the global security company was portrayed quietly through government-initiated rumors as “a group of dangerous rogues in a dangerous zone.” The government that had hired the firm through covert branches denied knowledge of any sanctioned action within the disputed frontier.
It never made the news. Felk’s unit didn’t exist. Their mission never happened.
But Felk and the surviving members of his team knew the truth. Three of his men were killed. Six were captured and were being held hostage for a twelve-million-dollar ransom by insurgents in a labyrinthine region that was impenetrable. The deadline to pay was in one month, or the “spies” would be beheaded. Coalition governments refused to acknowledge the demand, or get involved in any way.
Felk refused to let his men die.
He gathered the surviving men of his team and set out on a desperate mission to secure the payment and bring his people home; an act of vengeance against the governments that had abandoned them.
This was their new war.
Everything was at stake.
They would lay waste to anything that got in their way.
“Here they come,” Unger said, handing Felk the nightscope.
It amplified the existing ambient light, capturing two brilliant green figures in a canoe, working their way across the river to their temporary camp on the island.
Rytter and Northcutt.
On time, just as they’d practiced. Felk went back to consulting the charts and testing his GPS unit, reconfirming their coordinates. Then he started on a second can of beans, finishing by the time the two others came ashore.
“Any problems?” Unger asked.
“None,” Northcutt said.
“You take care of everything with your vehicle?” Felk asked.
“It’s done,” Rytter said. “We’re hungry.”
“Eat. Suit up. Then we’ll move out.”
A fire would risk attention, so the men ate in darkness as water lapped against the island. There was no need to talk. Each man had experienced the horrors of war. Each man had killed other people, many other people. As a loon cried, each man withdrew into himself to process the death and destruction they’d left in their wake.
They were an elite group, possessing the highest IQs and most sophisticated training of any professional fighting group on earth.
Before becoming a private operator, Erik Rytter, a twenty-nine-year-old engineer’s son from Munich, was with
