insignia was intricately re-created in a mosaic of colored stone. Inscribed within the seal were the words
A small, elderly woman approached from the kitchen. “Frank spent a fortune on it.”
Mrs. Ortega had shoulder-length silvery-gray hair and a kind, matronly face. Like her husband, she was thin, but not frail. With those oval glasses, she could’ve come directly from baking cookies or reading the
Nathan winced as she strode across the symbol.
“We walk on it all the time,” she said, reading his expression. “It’s the floor, after all. I’m Diane. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McBride.”
She offered her hand. It felt like warm bones in a velvet glove. “Please call me Nathan. This should be in a museum.” In the corner of his eye, he caught Greg shifting his weight. The man was strung tight and could be a problem. Probably would be a problem.
“Harvey,” Diane said.
Harvey bent and kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you, Diane.”
“Would anyone like tea or coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Nathan said.
Harvey also said no.
“Greg?”
Her son shook his head.
“Let’s talk in the library,” Frank said. He wheeled himself in that direction. His ride had no bells or whistles. It was a seat on wheels, as basic as they come. Nathan reevaluated his earlier assessment of Frank’s grip during their handshake. The man had a powerful grip out of necessity and the firm handshake hadn’t been phony or intended to show off at all. The man simply had strong hands.
Despite Diane’s comment, Nathan avoided stepping on the FBI seal as he followed. It didn’t feel right walking on it. Frank maneuvered himself behind his desk while Nathan, Harvey, and Greg sat in tan leather chairs arranged in a semicircle. Nathan studied the photos behind Frank’s desk. They displayed him shaking hands with five different presidents: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Frank stood in the Carter, Reagan, and first Bush photographs and was in a wheelchair for the other two. Portrait-type pictures of his two adult children were hung on the wall to his right: Greg and presumably a daughter. Nathan waited through an uneasy silence while Frank reached into a side drawer and pulled out a thick file. Nathan looked at it, then back to Frank.
“I know your father well. We go back a long way.”
Nathan said nothing.
“He’s a good man,” Frank said quietly.
Nathan locked eyes. “We aren’t here to talk about him.”
Out of Frank’s line of sight, Nathan felt Harv nudge his foot. If Greg had noticed the gesture, he didn’t react.
“No, that’s true. We’re here to talk about my grandson. He’s MIA. Has been for several days now. He was undercover inside an arms-smuggling operation up in Lassen County. An outfit called Freedom’s Echo.” Frank paused for a moment. “How much do you know about Semtex?”
“It’s Czech-made plastic explosive.”
“That’s right. Extremely potent stuff. And we know for a fact that this group got their hands on some of it, a lot of it, actually. Around a ton. It was the last thing my grandson reported before he disappeared. It’s likely he blew his cover relaying the information.”
“That’s a bad situation,” Nathan said.
“And not just for him. Seizing the Semtex is critical. In the wrong hands, it could mean several more World Trade Center-type incidents. A few well-placed car bombs in the underground parking structures of skyscrapers could bring them down. Unlike the World Trade Center, there wouldn’t be time for an evacuation. The buildings would collapse with everyone inside.”
Nathan had seen footage of buildings being demolished with explosives. Implosion, he believed they called it. But if you changed the pattern and timing of the charges, the buildings could fall more like trees, taking out other buildings like dominoes. If the Trade Center towers had fallen sideways, it would’ve been worse.
“What exactly do you want us to do?”
Frank leaned back in his wheelchair and stared out the window like a man looking back on his life and wondering about all the things he could’ve done differently. “The FBI is about to send SWAT teams under the command of the Sacramento Joint Terrorism Task Force to raid the compound. They have two objectives. The first is to recover the Semtex if it’s still there and the second is to determine the fate of my grandson. But the main plan is to put Freedom’s Echo out of business before that Semtex disappears.” Frank locked eyes with Nathan. “You two were the best covert ops team this country’s ever had. I’m not patronizing you. I mean it, you guys were the best. What I need is for you to be my eyes and ears up there. I have a personal stake in this. It’s my grandson, my own flesh and blood. I no longer have the access I used to. I could make a call and get boilerplate information, but it wouldn’t be firsthand visual intelligence coming from a source I trust.”
“Okay.”
“Essentially, I want you to back up the FBI raid. Things could go badly, there could be a firefight. You guys were the best damned sniper team in the world. The FBI could use-”
“With all due respect,” Nathan cut in, “we don’t do that anymore. We aren’t hired guns. We run a security business. The FBI has its own sniper teams.”
Harv moved uncomfortably in his chair, but remained silent.
“I’m not asking you to be hired guns. I’m asking you to serve as a safety net for the SWAT teams in case things go south. These smugglers are hard-core guys. Elite-trained military. Now they’ve got Semtex. You could save lives. I cashed in a major favor with Director Lansing to involve you in this operation. He gave me the okay, but he’s considering it a don’t-ask, don’t-tell situation. I personally vouched for your integrity. I’m putting my reputation on the line here. If you’re willing to do this, then the trust will have to work both ways. You need to trust me, I need to trust you.”
“Then you must know the potential ramifications of what you’re asking us to do.”
Frank Ortega looked at Harv with a troubled, almost annoyed expression and Greg was gripping the armrests of his chair too tightly.
“I understand the ramifications, McBride. Do you?”
Nathan said nothing.
Ortega raised his voice a little. “There’s more at stake than just my grandson. That amount of loose Semtex on American soil makes this a national security issue as dangerous as any Al Qaeda threat. More dangerous. These guys are Americans, they look, act, and talk like us. They blend in. They’re invisible.”
Over the ticking of the regulator clock, no one spoke for several seconds.
“We have some conditions,” Nathan said.
“Conditions.”
“That’s right. Conditions. We’ll find your grandson and back up the SWAT teams, but we don’t want to be left standing when the music stops. Understood?”
“Clearly.”
“And we’ll need complete background and intelligence information on the targets and their compound.”
“Not a problem.”
“One more thing. No armchair quarterbacking. Once you turn us loose, that’s it. No second-guessing our moves. We do this our way, without interference, or we don’t do it at all.”
“Like I said, it’s an issue of trust in both directions.”
Frank pushed the file across the desk.
Nathan didn’t touch it. He knew what it was, what it represented.
“This is everything we have on Freedom’s Echo. Everything,” Frank said. “It’s an exact duplicate.”
Frank kept saying
“I’m coming with you,” Greg said.
“Out of the question.”
