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Kaz surprised everyone in the room with a slight smile. He turned to Denny, on his left. “I ran you for years when I worked inside AQ. Giving you enough information to solidify me as a source, to make me look good, and passing disinformation when it suited Saudi interests. I fed you intelligence that I knew would go straight to your friend Manny Aurbach at Mossad. You believed it all because I’d proven myself. And Manny believed it all because it came from you, and he never knew I existed.”

Denny said, “I’m going to kill you.”

Kaz laughed now. “No, you won’t.” He pointed his forehead at Gentry.
“This man will do the honors. You and I will die tonight, but I can die in peace, because although my scheme was discovered at the end, my efforts succeeded for many years. I can be proud of my service to my kingdom.” He laughed again, more cruelly this time. “You, Denny, will die knowing you failed your country.”

Denny Carmichael turned to Catherine King. “I did not know. You
have
to believe me. Whatever happens to me, you can’t report that I did anything to hurt the CIA.”

King said, “You were next in line to become director. If you had succeeded in killing Six, as you tried so hard to do, then al-Kazaz would have been able to manipulate the director of the CIA.”

It was a statement, and Denny had no reply to it.

Kaz was about to speak again, but the lights in the conference room went off suddenly, shrouding the scene in darkness.

F
ive seconds after cutting power to the south wing of Alexandria Eight, Dakota spoke into his helmet-mounted headset. “Breach!”

The explosive ordnance expert on the team depressed the detonator, and a breaching charge on the wall just to the left of the steel double doors blew. A large water bladder covering the outside of the charge tamped the explosion, both keeping the men outside the wall safe from the backblast, as well as pushing the majority of the explosive power into the fortified wall.

Within seconds of the explosion the first two JSOC operators had their weapons through the oval-shaped hole in the wall. While they covered ahead, two more operators climbed through, took a knee in the hallway, and searched for targets in prearranged geometries of fire. The hallway was pitch-black, but both of these operators, as well as all the other men on the team, wore GPNVG-18s, state-of-the art night vision goggles that rendered the darkness before them in varying hues of green in a wide, ninety-seven-degree panoramic view.

Assaulters five and six were through the breach an instant later, and they moved down to the far end of the hallway to the small door that led straight to Denny’s office. They set a small breaching charge on the lock of the door, planning to enter and then take the other exit out of the office. They would then move up the small hall past the attic stairs and into the conference room.

Seven and eight moved straight between the cordon of armed men covering all angles, and these two ran to the wall just left of the conference room doors. One man carried a large shield-looking device in his hand, and he shoved it against the wall, affixing it with pre-placed adhesive. This large breaching charge was also backstopped with a water barrier, but it
was designed to minimize the inward blast, so that hostages inside would not be injured.

Nine and ten, Dakota and Harley, moved into the hallway last. They each set two more small charges wide of the first two, both at shoulder height. These would blow small holes in the wall, creating gun ports so operators could cover the assaulters moving into the main breach.

While one operator connected the det cord to all three charges on the wall, the other men moved wide of the area, lined up in two stacks, one on each side, and prepared to execute the dynamic entry.

—

W
hen the lights went out, Catherine King could not understand why Court Gentry sat calmly in his chair for several seconds, apparently sending a text message. And when the explosion in the hallway rocked the room and Catherine King screamed in shock, Denny Carmichael could not understand why Gentry cut him free from his bindings. It was too dark in the room to see any faces, but Denny wondered if Gentry was afraid of the attack to come and had some plan that involved Denny being ambulatory.

But Gentry just moved over to al-Kazaz and cut him free, as well.

Denny’s first inclination was to dive for Kaz’s throat. He wanted to kill the man who had ruined everything, the man who had hurt Denny’s nation and destroyed his reputation, the man who had tricked him and deprived him of everything in the past decade he had counted as a success. Nothing else mattered to Denny now, not even his own life.

But he didn’t go for Kaz’s neck, because when the JSOC men entered, as they would in mere seconds, Denny knew he’d only survive if he remained perfectly still.

Getting shot by army commandos would end his attack on Kaz long before he could strangle the life out of the younger man.

Catherine grabbed Gentry by the arm while he was still cutting the rope binding Kaz’s wrists. She implored him, her voice cracking with panic. “They will kill you as soon as they get through the door. They will not take you alive. You have to trade Carmichael for your freedom. It’s your only chance!”

“No. Once I entered here, I knew I would not be walking out.”

“You don’t have to do this! You know everything now. You can get out of here and—”

Court took her by the wrist and pulled her around the table, away from the two men. He walked to the wall next to the doors to the hallway, then he moved all the way to the end of the long table, close to the narrow hallway towards the attic stairs and Denny’s office. He could see Denny and Kaz just barely in the dark; they remained in their seats next to each other, facing the doorway to the hall.

They looked to him, straining to see him in the darkness.

Court checked his watch, then he unhooked his HK MP7 from the sling around his neck, and he placed it at the end of the long conference table.

He kept his hand on the weapon for a short time, while he tried to think of something to say. No words would come to him now. Catherine pulled at his arm, trying to get him to lie on the ground, but he pulled back, still staring at the two men in the low light.

“I promised Hanley I wouldn’t kill you, Denny. So I’m going to give Kaz a gun so he can do it for me.”

Court Gentry surprised everyone in the room by sliding the loaded weapon across the long, shiny conference room table, in the direction of the two men. As the HK spun towards them Court rushed down the hall to the attic stairs, pulling Catherine along behind him.

—

D
enny Carmichael and Murquin al-Kazaz both launched to their feet, reaching for the gun skittering by on the table. They both knew the assault team would breach within moments, but they both also knew they were in danger as long as the other had access to a loaded weapon.

Kaz grabbed it by its short barrel, near the muzzle, but Denny managed to take hold of the grip of the weapon. While Kaz screamed in fear, Denny ripped the gun off the table and twisted towards Kaz, who still held on to it for dear life.

Carmichael jammed his finger onto the trigger, yanked it back, and fired a long fully automatic burst of 4.6-millimeter hollow point rounds into Kaz’s stomach at a range of one foot.

The weapon lurched in Carmichael’s hand, so he took hold of the forward grip to steady it.

The loud roar of the gun drowned out the tamped explosions on the wall fifteen feet away, and Denny’s eyes were locked on Kaz, whose
expression of pure shock and agony shone bright as day in the fat red flames of the gunfire.

Denny emptied most of the magazine into the flailing body of al-Kazaz, then he spun to his left, aware suddenly of the noise, light, and motion there.

He turned wildly with the gun in his hand still firing, and then Denny Carmichael rocked back on his heels, slammed into the bookshelf behind him. The HK flew from his hand and then he dipped forward, dropped onto his knees, and fell down flat on his face behind the conference table, coming to rest across the legs of al-Kazaz.

He’d been shot twice in rapid succession, straight through his necktie and into his heart.

—

D
akota raced through the ragged breach and into the conference room. One of his assaulters in the gun port had just shot a hostage, he’d seen it through his NODs as he entered, but his main objective all along was to kill Violator, and that had not changed.

He lined up in front of his men, cleared the room, and moved right, towards the hallway there. With three operators on his heels, he led the way.

At the foot of the attic stairs he met up with the two men who had breached the door to Denny’s office. They’d reported no joy on the target, so they knew he was in the attic.

All six operators began moving up the steps.

—

C
ourt shouted to Catherine King, twenty-five feet away in the attic. “Lie flat on the ground, facedown, hands out to your sides. Cross your legs at the ankles. No matter what happens, you don’t move till they move you. You do all that and you’ll be safe.”

Two decades of yoga had not instilled in Catherine the sense of calm necessary to endure all that was happening around her. She thought her heart would burst, but she complied with Court’s instructions, lying on the dusty old wooden floor near the stairwell. Looking across the darkened attic, she could barely see him, kneeling in front of a large backpack.

She called out to him. “Let me talk to them! Maybe I can—”

“No! Do not move from where you are!”

“Six, lie here with me! They will kill you if you don’t—”

“Just stay there, Catherine,” he ordered.

She looked at him again. Cocked her head. “What are you doing? What . . . what is
that
?”

—

H
arley set the breaching charge on the door to the attic, unwound the det cord, and backed down a few feet. He called, “Fire in the hole!” and the explosion blew dust and splinters on the men all around.

Dakota took the second position as the assaulters rushed up and past Harley and through the blown door. As soon as they were in the dark room the first operator in the stack shouted, “Don’t move! Don’t move!”

Dakota stepped to the side and saw the woman from the
Washington Post
lying on the floor, in a compliant stance. Her head was down, her arms were out, and her legs were crossed behind her. Someone had given her a lesson in how to not get shot by a tactical team.

While the first assaulter kept his gun trained on her, a massive explosion to Dakota’s left knocked him off balance, all the way down to his kneepads.

The room filled with smoke, and when he spun around and looked in the direction of the noise he couldn’t see a thing, even through his panoramic night vision goggles.

All the men in the stack were in the attic now, covering the main part of the room with their rifles, desperate to find a target through the thick smoke.

Another noise came from the smoke. It wasn’t an explosion; more like the sound of an electric engine.

Dakota didn’t want his men running into a trap. “Hold positions! Hold till you can see your way forward!”

The smoke cleared a little, but the NODs weren’t cutting through it. Dakota called, “White light!” into his mic, then he flipped up his goggles and actuated the flashlight on the bottom of his rifle. Quickly the other operators followed suit.

The smoke was still thick, but they could see him now. Twenty-five feet away their target stood still in the middle of the room, his arms wrapped tightly around his body, his legs together.

His eyes on the six men in front of him.

Above him Dakota could see stars—there was a jagged eight-foot-long hole in the roof above Violator’s head.

Dakota shouted, “Contact front!” and he pressed his trigger.

And then, just like that, their target was gone. He fired straight up, into the air and through the hole in the roof.

The six JSOC operators stood there, guns trained on empty space. Dakota had gotten one round off, but he didn’t think he’d hit anything.

The team leader was the first to run forward. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling now, and he saw nothing but the nighttime sky.

Harley stepped up next to him. “There is no
way
that just happened.”

C
ourt soared through the broken roof, his eyes closed and his appendages tight against his body lest he rake them across the jagged edges marking the border of the breach created by the charge he’d affixed to the ceiling soon after his arrival here at Alexandria Eight. Once he felt the cool of the night air on his skin he opened his eyes, and he watched the large CIA safe house fall away below him as he rose, shooting upwards as fast as he would if he were flying in a plane.

He still wasn’t feeling great about his chances—his heart pounded and his stomach cinched tight with terror—but he’d made it out of the range of the JSOC boys, so he knew there was nothing else he could do to affect his chances now.

Court told himself he should just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Instead, however, he fought a wave of nausea as the motion and the nerves played havoc on his insides.

—

A
t the Special Activities Division cache in Harvey Point, North Carolina, Court had run across a new piece of equipment that immediately reminded him of something very old.

The Fulton recovery system, more commonly known as the Skyhook, was something of a legendary device in special operations. Invented in the 1950s, the Skyhook was a personnel ground-to-air retrieval system consisting of a large balloon attached to a rope, which connected to a body harness. When the device worked as advertised, the balloon rose to several hundred feet, and an aircraft equipped with a capture device grabbed the rope under the balloon and then heaved the person in the harness up into
the sky. Once alongside the aircraft an operator in the cabin could then use a device to reel in and recover the “victim.”

It sounded great in theory, a little too Buck Rogers, perhaps, but for a spy behind the lines with no other options, it was much better than nothing.

But Court had heard of no more than five or six times where a Skyhook recovery had been successfully executed in the field.

The item Court noticed in the experimental locker at the Point was a modernized and miniaturized version of the Skyhook. Named the Buzzhook, instead of a huge balloon and helium tanks, this ground-to-air retrieval device employed a 16-by-16-inch quadcopter that could climb vertically at fifty miles an hour carrying a payload of fifteen pounds.

Behind the quadcopter, three hundred yards of four-millimeter bonded Kevlar rope spun out quickly from a large, spring-loaded spool in Court’s backpack. The rope was black in color and it had been invisible in the dark attic, so thin that even with rail lights from the JSOC assaulters’ firearms they could not see it, especially with the smoke from the breaching charge in the air.

As soon as he’d blown the roof, Court pressed a preset button on the drone and it fired straight up through the hole created by the breaching charge. The Buzzhook pulled its cordage to a height of nine hundred feet in just seconds. Here it stopped suddenly and began hovering, staying perfectly in place with its onboard GPS receiver and its gyroscope.

An infrared light blinked on the drone, and a second infrared light, attached to the cord a hundred feet below the Buzzhook, blinked as well.

Within moments of the drone launching out of the roof of Alexandria Eight, a de Havilland Twin Otter with a painted-over tail number flew to the exact same GPS coordinates, but at an altitude of only 400 feet. The hundreds of people on the ground—the media, first responders, local cops, FBI, and interested CIA officials—all stood and stared. Police helicopters had seen the craft coming in from miles away, but it had claimed to be on its base leg for nearby Washington National Airport, and it only deviated from its flight path forty seconds earlier, so there was no time to begin tracking it before it arrived.

Timing had been everything, of course, and here Court had had to make a few educated guesses. He’d told Zack to plan on arriving directly
above Alexandria Eight at twelve thirty a.m., but to plan to have an excuse ready for air traffic control that could speed them up by five minutes, or slow them down by the same amount.

That gave Court a ten-minute window.

The Twin Otter captured the Kevlar cord and pulled Gentry into the sky at twelve thirty-three, yanking him almost straight up by entering a steep climb.

Court looked down at an altimeter on his watch and saw he had ascended four hundred feet. He looked up and behind him, and finally he saw the aircraft, flying black now, all its lights extinguished. He kept his body tucked as tightly as possible, felt the incredible wind and cold and even the thick mist as he was pulled along through a small cloud, and he told himself that this was not nearly as bad as he thought it was going to be. As long as the tiny cord that served as his lifeline held, then he would be fine.

But as he was looking at the dark aircraft above him, he saw something that made his heart stop. The Twin Otter suddenly banked to the left . . .
hard
to the left.

Court knew physics well enough to understand what would come next, so he closed his eyes and held on to the harness inside his clothes by wrapping his arms even tighter across his chest.

Two seconds later he felt his harness wrenched hard in the direction of the plane above, then he whipped around at over one hundred miles an hour. He screamed a volley of curse words and he kept his eyes closed, but when he felt the pull direction change again, and he sensed he was now flying forward and not backwards, he gave in and opened them.

The Fox 5 helicopter he had flown in forty-five minutes earlier was now right in front of him, no more than one hundred yards away, its rotor blades churning the air.

The harness pulled harder now, Court seemed to climb faster, and he passed fifty feet above the whipping blades of the Bell 206.

Court vomited into the night.

Thirty seconds later and only a minute and ten seconds after leaving the attic of the CIA safe house, Court found himself hanging right next to the open cabin door of the aircraft. The pilot had made no more evasive maneuvers; Court knew the massive starboard-side propeller of the Dash 6 was only fifteen feet behind him, so he prayed no more aerobatics were
forthcoming. He looked into the dark cabin and saw Zack Hightower wearing a flight suit, a large earmuff headset, and goggles. His blond hair whipped in the wind as he reached out with a hooked device in his hand. With this he grabbed onto Court’s harness and pulled him towards the cabin doorway.

Court’s feeling of weightlessness went away in an instant when Zack grabbed the harness with his hand, then pitched backwards, heaving himself and Court to the floor of the cabin. While both men lay there in a heap, Zack spoke into the mic of his headset. “Punch it, Travers!”

Court looked up and forward into the open cockpit. Chris Travers sat alone in the left seat, a baseball cap turned around backwards and big earmuff headphones on his own ears. Immediately he reached up to the throttle above him and shoved it all the way towards the windscreen. The pitch of the engine outside the open left side door rose markedly. Court climbed up to his knees and off of Zack, but Zack remained on his back. For some reason Court saw him sniffing his gloved hand.

“Did you puke? That’s nasty, bro.”

Court helped him shut the cabin door.

—

T
he Twin Otter wasn’t the fastest aircraft in the CIA’s inventory, but this one was one of the few that Matt Hanley could plausibly deny as belonging to him. It had been stripped of all markings in preparation of reregistering it and using it on special operations in Central and South America, and since the new registry had not been completed, the aircraft remained in a perfect state of limbo to be employed in the Gentry rescue operation.

It was also a dependable aircraft, and although its top speed was barely two hundred miles an hour, that was fast enough for the plan devised by Court and Zack, and then tweaked by the pilot.

Just two hours earlier when Hanley called Travers asking for some quick help, the young Ground Branch operator ran some numbers and looked at some maps, then he rushed frantically to attach the tubular polymer capture “horns” to the port wing of his aircraft and get the bird in the air.

While he did all this Zack worked on acquiring the gear the three men would need for the next stage of this operation. Namely, food, water, camping gear, and three parachutes. All this he had stowed in the cabin and
strapped down, and while Travers set the autopilot just five minutes after picking up Gentry, the other two men began quickly donning their chutes. Travers had already turned off his radio because he got tired of listening to air traffic control yell at him, but he assumed Air Force F-16s from Langley Air Force Base had been scrambled and were en route to intercept the illegal flight. He knew a Dash 6 didn’t have much of a chance against a World War I–era fighter plane, much less an F-16, so he wanted to be long gone from this poor bird before they got in range.

Three minutes later, after a quick handshake from Travers and a forced hug from Zack Hightower that made Court’s gunshot wound to his ribs hurt like hell, Court opened the cabin door and leapt out. The other two men did the same, each far enough apart to where, in the darkness, there was no chance they’d find one another on the ground.

By design, all three men landed in different parts of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

After he buried his chute and put on his backpack, Court checked his GPS and found himself only five miles west of the town of Sperryville, Virginia. His first inclination was to walk those five miles, arrive by daylight, and then stop at the first Waffle House he could find.

But he fought that urge with a wistful smile, and instead he turned east, heading away from civilization and deeper towards the dark mountains.

Zack Hightower splashed down in a dank oxbow lake alongside the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. He cussed and bitched as he climbed out of the murky water, slicked slime off his clothes, and slung his pack over his back. Checking his GPS and looking over this terrain, he decided he’d make camp right here, just so he could get out of his clothes and get some sleep. First thing in the morning, he told himself, he’d walk east to Luray, Virginia, and he’d hop a bus back to D.C. He had no idea if he would have a job at CIA, but tomorrow was a workday, and he wanted to be ready for work, just in case his new master called.

Chris Travers sat alone in the back of the aircraft for a few minutes, then he jumped out himself. He misjudged the wind around his landing zone and ended up stuck in a tree in the mountains on the Virginia/West Virginia border. He wasn’t hurt, but it took him till well past sunup to untangle himself, climb up his lines to the canopy, and get out of the pine tree.

By noon, however, he walked into the town of Brady, West Virginia, sat
down in a diner, and ordered a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke. While he ate at the counter he watched TV coverage of the event the evening before in Alexandria, culminating with an airborne rescue and an attempted escape.

Travers hid his smile behind his sandwich when the reporter then said the aircraft had crashed into a desolate field high in the Allegheny Mountains, and all on board were presumed dead.

He left the diner minutes later and headed off in search of a bar. His first operation as a CIA black ops pilot had gone off perfectly, and he wanted to toast himself with a shot, or three, of Jameson.