Threshold

who I am.” He glanced at the approaching generals. “People are watching.”

Despite King’s frosty mood he snapped a salute. “Yes sir.”

King walked away as the swarm of marines and generals overtook Duncan and moved him to a more secure location. With the team due to arrive at Pope Air Force Base in an hour, he would meet them there, put the pieces together, and then turn them loose. But first he needed Aleman for information, his parents for good-byes, an ass- load of weapons for the obvious, and a few friends to level the playing field.

SEVENTEEN

Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

FORTY MINUTES AFTER meeting the president, King stood outside Hangar 7, Delta’s personal hangar that typically housed the Crescent. Right now it was devoid of any aircraft but held four Delta teams made up of five soldiers each. The men, dressed in black fatigues, quickly off- loaded their gear from the two large trucks that had carried them to the airfield and stood before King. The four team leaders approached.

Jeff Kafer, call sign Mouth, thanks to his audiobook narrator’s voice, said, “I hear you’ve got an ‘ask and you shall receive’ order from Keasling. Well, you asked and we’re here, so mind telling us what this is about?”

King motioned to the open hangar. “Come with me. You can brief your men when we’re done.”

The five team leaders entered Decon, where a bandaged but conscious Lewis Aleman sat waiting behind a laptop. General Keasling stood in the corner, his short arms crossed over his chest. As the men entered the room, the tension became palpable. They’d all seen friends and comrades killed and the shock from the strange attack had not yet worn off. The team leaders, who were accustomed to sitting around this table with their own teams, sat down and turned to Keasling. He motioned their attention to King, who stood at the head of the table. “He’s running the show.”

“As of this moment,” King said, “your teams are serving under the Chess Team. Each one of you will serve under a member of my team and will obey their orders as though each and every one of them was God himself. You will be Pawns One through Five with the team leader’s designation coming first.

He pointed to Kafer. “You’re Rook’s Pawn One and your men are Two through Five. In the field this will be shortened to RP-One. Understood?”

Nods all around. Despite their battle-hardened experience and high rank, the men knew they were being brought, at least temporarily, into the fold of the Chess Team. Each of them felt a mix of honor and intimidation.

“We’ve got a connection,” Aleman said before tapping a few keys on the laptop.

The wall behind King, actually a well-disguised flat-screen display, came to life. Queen, Rook, Knight, and Bishop appeared on the screen, sitting around a laptop on their end from within the Crescent. Their serious faces reflected that they had been briefed on the Fort Bragg attack and Fiona’s kidnapping.

“Can you hear us?” Rook asked.

“We hear you,” King replied and then nodded at Aleman. “Give what you have.”

King had plucked Aleman from his cot, which he’d been forced to stay in, and had him working on finding answers for the past thirty minutes. It wasn’t a lot of time, but Aleman tended to think faster than most men. And he didn’t disappoint.

“Here’s what we know. About a year ago, the Siletz Reservation was destroyed. We now have a pretty good idea how. That said, we still have no idea what actually attacked us.”

“A shitload of living rock, that’s what,” Kafer said.

Aleman looked at the ceiling for a moment, his eyes squinted in thought.

“Lew,” King said.

Aleman looked back at his screen. “Then we received tips that certain targets in Australia and Vietnam were in danger. In fact, the targets were killed before our team arrived on site. Or, in Rook’s case, just after. And it was the last words of this dying victim that clued me in. She said—correct me if I’m wrong, Rook—that they were after ‘bad words’ that you were then told not to speak. ‘Can’t speak them. Don’t speak them.’”

“You got it,” Rook said.

“Given the ancestry of the victim, it occurred to me that her native language would be very old; perhaps one of the oldest, if not the oldest, spoken language on the planet. I did some research on the other victims. All of them were the last surviving speakers of nearly extinct ancient languages. The Gurdanji in Australia had five living speakers. They’re all dead. The Siletz had two living speakers, Fiona’s grandmother—”

“And Fiona,” Queen said. “Shit.”

“I compiled a list of all dying languages around the world and found a disturbing trend. Many of the last speakers of ancient languages have either gone missing or been found dead. Someone is exterminating them. But because they’re relatively few people spread out all around the world, some in obscure places, no one has noticed. I’ve identified the speakers of the most at-risk languages that are still living. Tinigua has two speakers. Taushiro, one. Uru, one. And Vilela, two. All four of these languages are in South America. Then there is Chulym, known as Os to its three speakers in Siberia, down from fifteen three years ago thanks to a flu that killed thousands of people in the remote area. And Pazeh with one speaker born in the Philippines, but living in Taiwan.”

“Are you assigning us to kidnap these people?” Kafer said.

“That’s your mission,” King replied. “Yes.”

“And you’ve done this before?”

“Bag and tag,” Bishop said, which got a smile from Rook and odd looks from the four team leaders in Decon.

“Are you questioning your orders?” King asked, his voice heavy, his eyes leveled at Kafer.

For a moment it appeared Kafer might argue the point, but he leaned back in his chair instead. “Just curious is all.”

Aleman cleared his throat. “Queen and Bishop will lead two teams to South America. Knight will take one team to Taiwan. Rook will take Siberia.”

“I don’t need to tell you that not only do we not know who we’re up against, but we also don’t know what,” King said. “You and your men have fought conventional wars up until now, but all that changes today. Throw out your preconceptions about human capabilities and effective tactics and do not, ever, believe a bullet can kill the enemy.”

“What do we know?” one of the team leaders asked. “I saw the damn statue from Bragg’s main entrance come to life and kill a man.”

“And that about sums up our intel,” Aleman said. “Someone has found a way to imbue nonliving material with, for lack of a better word, life. Statues come to life. Crude stone monsters. It doesn’t seem to matter what the material is as long as it is inanimate.”

“I faced off against two of them,” Rook said. “One made of stone and the other of giant crystals.”

“They appear to feel no pain,” Aleman said, “and when their mission, again for lack of a better word, is complete they return to their inanimate state, which is why the statue you mentioned is now in a barracks lobby.”

“You all need to move fast and quiet. I want you in and out of these countries with the targets without ruffling a feather, blipping a radar, or engaging the enemy.” King looked up at the screen, eyeing the members of his team, and then looked at the team leaders at the table. “Because as good as you all are, you won’t stand a chance.” He looked back at the screen. “ETA?”

“We’re incoming now,” Knight said. “Wheels down and hatch open in three minutes.”

King switched off the flat-screen and spoke to the team leaders. “I want you all on that bird in four minutes. Brief your men in the air. Got it?”

“Understood,” Kafer said as he stood. “One last question?”

“What is it?”

“Where will you be going?”