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  His chest warmed again. Was she the threat he felt? Even so, the scent of Extatic drew his nose closer to her neck and he left a kiss there.

  “Gotta do something with it,” he whispered. “Your folks may have asked FBI for help, but CIA was the cleanup crew for this mess. Get it to someone who will know what the hell it means. Your side deals with it.”

  She leaned close. “They won’t care. They’ve already closed the file, reassigned personnel. In their minds, taking us off the grid will fix all this. They’ll run forensics on it, then stick it in an evidence warehouse. The weapon won’t be traceable. They never are.”

  “Then what?”

  She looked him in the eye and her shoulders drooped. “You do it.”

  What? That made no sense. Red was a military operator, not an investigator. His special ops background was mottled, spanning two different military branches, including a stint in Force Recon, the US Marines special operations. But now he drew an Air Force paycheck and was commander of a unit called the Det: Detachment 5 of Special Operations Command. Calling the Det a unit was misleading. It was a motley crew. A fusion cell on steroids. A battlefield where the cooperative members shared intelligence, assets, and efforts for the common good. These co-ops consisted of three-letter agencies, the Department of Defense, and sometimes select foreign governments. No single co-op owned the Det. That was the nature of a fusion cell. But its physical headquarters were located inside a huge aircraft hangar on Langley Air Force Base. And upon the recent death of his predecessor, Red had been appointed commander of this ghost organization. It was a thin line to walk. But one directive was clear. The Det never operated autonomously.

  Red slipped the weapon back under the coat. “The Det can’t do that.”

  “You guys have access to the same intel, maybe even more. The National Security Agency is a co-op. You get info faster than we ever could. Just tell them you need it for mission planning.”

  “We’re operational. That’s part of the deal with the co-ops. Someone else figures out who owns this thing. We just, you know—kill ’em.”

  “Just?” she snorted. “What if the owner of that pistol is on our side?”

  “Above my pay grade, dear. We’re the gorillas. Someone else plays detective. Give me an investigation and I’ll screw it up. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to start. We don’t have a clue who’s after us or even if they’re still trying. With my occupation, the list of enemies could be long. Or maybe they’re after you or the other bean counters.”

  The Suburban slowed at a stoplight, pausing next to a green Honda Odyssey. Paint peeled on the hood. A woman with gray-streaked hair gripped the steering wheel, yawning. A bald man’s cheek pushed against the passenger window, his breath fogging it in rhythm, eyes closed. Two car seats with snoozing toddlers were belted in back.

  “That’ll be us in few days,” she said. “New identity. No more escort. Be nice to get back to normal.”

  “Hmm,” he muttered. In whose world was this normal? Being an operator felt natural as an alpha wolf leading a pack, marking territory, sniffing out rivals, hunting mule deer. But when the op’s over, you’re supposed to be safe. Obscured by the Det. “You think this guy is a danger to us? Or the kids?”

  Lori crossed her arms. “Someone’s after at least one of us. Or who we work for. Reinserting us on the grid will only delay them discovering us again. Maybe not even much.”

  “So I’d better figure it out.”

  She lifted her hands. “Red, it’s only one piece of a puzzle! One in a box on a shelf in a warehouse full of a million others. The only way it’ll get opened again is if something actionable comes up. That’s not gonna happen, not with the agency spread as thin as it is. This is our new reality, even in a new home. We’ve got to accept it.”

  “But if something actionable turned up?”

  “Then maybe the powers that be would let you gorillas out of the cage.” Her slender fingers brushed his cheek, pulling his face to hers. “Honey, look. This may be something we just can’t fix. You’ve got to be OK with that. Once information is out, it’s like a virus. It spreads fast. Secrecy is our only ally. We may even need to hop the grid again sometime.”

  Like hell. Red pulled the jacket close to his belly and leaned in to her ear. “But intel is stored. Maybe on a computer, or on paper. Or just in someone’s head. I’ve fixed all that stuff before. Sniff out the trail, back to the source, then kill it.” He winked. “I’ll take it. Our kids may have a normal childhood yet.”

  She gaped. “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m going to bend the rules. I know a bloodhound.”

  Chapter 2 – Jordan Leman

  New Kent County, Virginia

  Jordan Leman slowed a Ford E-350 van with Worton’s Commercial Painting scrolled on its side, a logo of a brush arcing a wide pastel rainbow ending in a pot of gold. He’d switched the plates late last night with a similar one parked beside a heating-and-cooling contractor’s storefront. The tags being registered to someone two counties away shouldn’t get him pulled over in case a cop happened to run them. The important fact was they wouldn’t be flagged as stolen, and this van was. He never kept the same plates for more than a week, or the same van for more than two. One of the problems with being deep undercover—he wasn’t provided a car. Equipment was limited too. It was Mossad’s equivalent of dropping you in a jungle with a pocketknife to kill rattlesnakes and live off the land.

  He turned a corner and spied his destination: a culvert. Not the best choice to hide electronic equipment, but he’d weatherproofed the black plastic device with silicone caulk. This drain was as close as he’d been able to get that explosive night three weeks ago. At the time, he’d pretended to be just another neighbor walking over to see what all the police lights were about. “No sir. I didn’t see anything,” he’d said, shrugging. “Just heard fireworks. Then some sirens.”

  “And where do you live?” the chubby-necked officer had asked, his pale skin seeming to glow in the dark. The man had glanced at Leman with suspicion, having already marched toward him with a purposeful step, past two olive-skinned observers. Indians, most likely. Probably owned a hotel chain. Even they faded into the muddy suburban background better than dark-skinned Leman. But he’d dressed in fitted, clean blue jeans and a turtleneck, both suburban staples, which accentuated his tall, athletic build. He appeared to belong. But having passed middle age several years ago, he might have been the reason for the officer’s too-obvious profiling. Mossad had trained Leman to profile as well, and he’d used it to his advantage many times, so he’d given the policeman the benefit of doubt.

  “Three blocks down, on Havenwood Road.” Leman lied, of course. “You want my address?” He’d walked to the scene down that street and had noted the house numbers for such an inquiry.

  The cop had lowered his pad and pen without taking a note. He’d said, “Thank you,” and walked into the yard across from a bullet-riddled cruiser. He’d stopped and pointed at the home’s front door. “Any of you people live here?” he’d yelled to the crowd.

  Leman had exhaled a tense breath as a bushy-eyebrowed man with the moon glinting on a bald spot raised a hand and shuffled over. Leman had pretended to tie his shoe then and, with his good hand, had stuck the tiny video camera into the culvert, clamping the magnet firmly to the cast-iron frame.

  But now the snow had melted and, damn, a clean-swept curb meant a street sweeper had made at least one pass down it. Probably broke the camera if the rotating brush swung into it. Not long ago, hopefully, so he’d still have some good footage.

  He opened a laptop and used the passenger seat as a work desk. His network manager located the device and synced. Lithium batteries still at forty-four percent after three weeks. Not bad. The device worked over standard Wi-Fi, largely ignored by the CIA, as the neighborhood was full of it. Impatient Americans had probably already fixed the proble
m and moved on, at least in their minds—till the cancer came back. They knew the enemy, but refused to acknowledge his mentality, the rules of his game. Much like the redcoats marching rank and file into the Battle of the Monongahela. The CIA, like George Washington, had reformed their tactics. Even Leman had to agree. But their infernal impatience...

  An inquiry last week to Mossad’s cyber division revealed Harmon’s county records, which were housed on a not-so-secure server, had been sterilized, along with bank accounts, drivers’ licenses, passports, even kids’ birth certificates. Today Red’s family had never lived here, or even in this county. The CIA, like the hare, was off to a good start. But now is when they’ll take a nap. Now is when a tortoise could sneak by and win the race.

  He rubbed his eyes with a palm. Their infernal impatience.

  Ten minutes and thirty gigabytes of video later, Leman started the motor and drove to a McDonald’s. He parked and sipped a chocolate shake while the file ran through motion detection software, cutting any portions with little movement. The video feed showed FedEx had dropped a package on the front porch. The real estate agent who stopped by each evening walked around the home, picked up the package, and drove away. Leman stopped the video when a white Suburban pulled up and parked in front of the home. A crew-cut, thick-necked driver stepped out and fiddled with a button on his blazer. Red and his wife got out of the back, then herded the kids inside.

  “Unexpected,” Leman said to himself. “And sloppy.” The cup gurgled as he sucked the last bit of sticky sweetness from the bottom through the straw. He clicked fast-forward. The family returned to the Suburban after only twenty minutes according to the time stamp. The vehicle drove away; then the video jumped to a street sweeper turning the corner, its huge round brushes spinning menacingly toward the camera. The picture shuddered. It dropped abruptly and the next few seconds of video were of the bottom of the culvert. The image jumped forward once more, to a grease-slicked rat nibbling on one corner of the lens.

  Leman gazed at the roof. The Harmon family must’ve come for a final visit. Three weeks coincided with what he’d seen before from the CIA. The home would no longer be under surveillance. He’d make his move tonight.

  * * * *

  The cast-iron grate pushed cold through Leman’s jacket and into his chest the second he lay upon it. The video of the nibbling rat had shown the grate as a near background, so the camera couldn’t have fallen far. He stuck a forearm down the culvert’s short mouth, but his fingers didn’t reach the bottom.

  A door opened on the house across the street. Light arced across trees behind the home. Someone in the backyard.

  He shoved his fingers down farther and wriggled closer to the opening, but his shoulder still couldn’t fit through. The same one he’d dislocated at thirteen, playing soccer outside Jerusalem, in Palestine, though he’d called the sport football then. The family had immigrated to the US the following year and, once he had learned to cover his accent, everyone who saw his dark skin assumed he was American. The shoulder sometimes popped out when he slept on his side. He relaxed the arm, angled his back down toward the opening, and pushed. The ball slipped from the socket, but not all the way. Leman sank a little lower. His neck brushed the curb.

  If someone spied him and asked questions, he’d have to be a painter, working nights because the current job was a remodel of an office and they didn’t want him there during business hours. He’d have to be off on his lunch break and...what would explain why he had his arm down a culvert? Dropped his cell phone. That’s what he’d tell them.

  His fingers hit a gooey moistness and groped the culvert bottom, blind. Nothing. With his free hand he grasped a mini-Maglite and pushed the slim head through one of the holes in the grate, then snapped it on and off, like a camera flash. Still nothing. Must be farther down than he could see. A draft rose from below, heavy with the vegetable funk of rotting leaves.

  Maybe I can just leave the video recorder, he thought. His eyes rolled back as he concentrated. The hole was probably cleaned by the city once in five years, maybe ten. The camera would more likely be washed away in the next heavy rain. Chances were less than one in a thousand it would be discovered, much less get into the hands of anyone who could access the recording. Then again, the case was waterproof. A hacker could bypass the data corruption feature and connect some dots. Though not many. Like seeing two stars of the constellation Orion. Still, standard operating procedure required retrieval of all field equipment.

  He forced his arm farther down and the pain in his shoulder shot through his back into his spine. His fingers scraped a hard surface but clumsily pushed it away. Another flash of the beam illuminated a twig. Gripping it, he saw that it was a two-foot branch. He waved it in a sweeping arc. Its tip struck something, and he swept the object toward him. He flashed the light once more and exhaled in relief, his breath vibrating a dusty spiderweb. He grasped the camera and pulled his shoulder from the vise grip.

  Securing it in the van, he hurried across the road to the Harmon front yard. The gate latch was stiff but yielded. The same gate he’d used for cover the night of the attack, trailing the South African wet team Mossad had broken protocol to brief him about. “Protect the asset at all costs,” they’d said. “The CIA ignored our warning. You have no backup.” He’d engaged the attackers, and one of their rounds had glanced off the butt of his pistol, tearing a chunk of pinky-finger flesh with it. The bullet had knocked Leman’s weapon to the ground. He’d suppressed a yelp when the ricochet had smacked his Kevlar vest square in the chest, its tungsten steel core pricking his sternum. If the round hadn’t hit his pistol first, it would’ve slid through the ballistic material like a hot needle.

  He counted cedar fence posts. At the seventh he dropped to his knees, thrusting a meter-long pole taped with neodymium magnets beneath the holly hedge, wanding it back and forth. He’d thought about using it back at the culvert to help retrieve the camera, but decided against it in case the magnets could damage the electronics. Retrieving the camera had been for security purposes. Retrieving the Luger was for sentiment. The weapon was untraceable, lifted from a dead German lieutenant in 1943 by his grandfather. Used in anger by his father only twice, he’d claimed. Once in the winter of ’52 on a Russian family who’d been acquitted of war crimes. Well, Leman wasn’t going to be the son who lost the family heirloom.

  The pole tapped the fence, and he wanded it through the undergrowth again, working his way out from under the hedge. He counted posts once more and moved two meters farther down the row. The pole slapped something hollow, like plastic. A Wiffle Ball rolled out from under the prickly holly leaves into the yard.

  Leman’s eyes flashed back like a dreamer’s as he recalled the video he’d reviewed in the McDonald’s parking lot. Right—one of the Harmon kids, getting in the Suburban. Dragging a huge plastic bat.

  Leman’s forehead rested atop a clump of thistle. “Shit,” he muttered. He’d lost the Luger.

  Chapter 3– Weakness

  Red turned the Ford Explorer off Racemon Road, down a gravel drive toward riding stables. “This the right one?”

  “Think so.” Lori’s eyes flashed across green wheat fields, betraying doubt. “Only been here once.”

  The washboard surface vibrated the steering wheel, numbing Red’s hands. He slowed and the ride smoothed out, like a boat finding calm water. Nice to be the one driving the family again. No escort. Lori’s leg bounced. What was it with girls and horses, the attraction to them? The huge animals ate more than a Ranger platoon and cost twice as much to outfit.

  The family’s new home had brought an unexpected but welcome calm. Warm wall colors, secluded, even enough acreage to board a horse of their own one day. “Maybe,” they’d already told Penny. She’d attempted a guilt trip, playing up the trauma of having to change schools in the middle of the year, missing friends, so close to Christmas. “You’ll get over it,” Lori had told her. “Ma
ybe we’ll think about leasing one come summer. Let’s see how your grades go.”

  But they hadn’t moved that far from their old home. Lori needed to be within driving distance of DC, and Red to Langley. It was nothing as thorough as witness protection. Kind of like a CIA-abbreviated version of it. But they’d crossed into a new world out of suburbia and into the country. And near enough to a marina that every time they passed a vessel with a for sale sign Red took notice.

  Lori had shaken her head. “They’re for sale for a reason. You know what they say. A boat is just a hole in the water into which you throw money.”

  “Horses are much more practical,” he’d countered. She’d given him that smirk that said I’ll get you back, which she had. And it was awesome.

  He stared across the bowing heads of winter wheat toward the barn of Stillwater Stables. The drive to it from their new home had been almost an hour. Everything was farther away in the country. Could distance buy concealment? Maybe Lori had been right. Secrecy is our only ally. He hadn’t spoken with his bloodhound yet, Detective Matt Carter. Red was still working up the nerve to talk to his friend. Carter wanted nothing to do with the Det ever since its prior commander had almost gotten him killed. But he would have called him by now, Red reassured himself, if it weren’t for moving out, moving in, registering kids for school, and the many other fatiguing tasks that made him sink into bed at night with a resigned sigh, thinking, Maybe it’ll happen tomorrow.

  Red squinted toward the edge of a hardwood forest. “That a fawn over there?” It looked more like a large dog or wolf by its gait, but he couldn’t see the tail. There weren’t any wolves left around here.

  “Just a deer, dear,” she said with a grin.

  Red rolled his eyes and squeezed his left elbow to his side, feeling the hard outline of the 9mm Sig Sauer beneath his jacket. Fawn or wolf, even here there could be threats. Peace could turn ugly in a second. He’d taken many kills inside other borders, even in peaceful countryside just like this. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe no one was still gunning for them.