Primary Threat

And that was just the living room. Never mind the oversized country kitchen with the island in the middle and the giant double-door refrigerator, freezer on the bottom. Never mind the master bed and master bath. Never mind the rest of the place. And never mind that this house was about a twelve-minute drive from the office.

From Luke’s spot on the sofa, he could see out the big south- and west-facing windows. The house sat up on a little rolling hillock of grass. The height extended his vantage point. The house was in a quiet neighborhood of other large houses, set back from the street. There was no parking on the street. In this neighborhood, people parked in their own driveways or garages.

They hadn’t met many of their neighbors yet, but Luke imagined they were lawyers, maybe doctors, maybe people with high-level jobs at corporations. He had mixed feelings about it. Not the people, but the place.

For one, he didn’t trust Audrey and Lance.

Becca’s parents had never liked him. They had always made this clear. Even after Gunner was born, they were grudging at best about letting him and Becca use the cabin. Audrey especially was a master at the snide comment and the undermining maneuver.

He pictured her in his mind—there was something about her that reminded him of a crow. She had deep-set eyes with irises so dark, they seemed almost black. She had a sharp nose, like a beak. She had tiny bones and a thin frame. And she tended to hover nearby, like a harbinger of bad tidings.

But then the Special Response Team had taken on a couple of high-profile operations, and Audrey and Lance had met the legendary Don Morris, pioneer of special operations and the director of the SRT.

Suddenly, they felt that he and Becca needed a better house, and one closer to his work. And just like that, here they were.

He shook his head at the speed of it. He had been known in his career for his sudden reflexes and his fast response time, but this house purchase had happened so fast it nearly made his head spin off his neck.

Two people who had disliked him intensely for years had now just presented him with the greatest gift anyone had ever given him.

He stopped and listened to the quiet. He took a deep breath, almost in tandem with his young son. No. That was wrong. This little boy was the greatest gift he had ever been given. The house was nothing compared to this.

On the table in front of him, his telephone lit up. He stared at it, the blue light throwing crazy shadows in the semi-darkness. The phone was silent because the ringer was off. He hadn’t wanted to disturb the baby, or the baby’s mama, who was getting some well-deserved and much needed sleep in the bedroom.

He glanced at the time—after ten o’clock. That could only mean a small handful of things. Either an old military buddy was drunk dialing, it was a wrong number, or… He let the phone go until it stopped and went dark.

A moment later, it started up again.

He sighed and glanced at the number. Of course it was work.

He picked up the phone.

“H’lo?”

He said it in the quietest, I’m asleep why are you bothering me voice he could muster.

A female voice spoke. Trudy Wellington. He pictured her—young, beautiful, smart, with brown hair cascading over her shoulders.

“Luke?”

“Yes.”

She was all business. The thing that had almost happened between them, and which they never talked about, seemed to be dwindling in her rearview mirror. That was probably for the best.

“Luke, we have a crisis. Don is rounding up the usual suspects. I’m already here. Swann, Murphy, and Ed Newsam are on their way.”

“Now?” He asked the question even though he knew the answer.

“Yes. Now.”

“Can it wait?” Luke said.

“Not really.”

“Hmmm.”

“And Luke? Bring a bug-out bag.”

He rolled his eyes. The job and family life were having trouble meshing. Not for the first time, he wondered if what he did for a living was not compatible with the happy home he and Becca were trying to build for themselves.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“Classified. You’ll find out at the briefing.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

He hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

He hoisted the baby in his arms, stood, and padded down the hall to the master bedroom. It was dark, but he could see well enough. Becca was dozing in the big king-sized bed. He reached down and placed the baby next to her, just touching her skin. In her half-sleep, she made a little sound of pleasure. She put a hand softly on the baby.

He stared down at the two of them for a bit. Mom and baby. A wave of love so intense he would never be able to describe it washed over him. He could barely grasp it himself, never mind express it to another person. It was beyond words.

They were his life.

But he also had to go.

CHAPTER FIVE

11:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Headquarters of the Special Response Team

McLean, Virginia

“Why are we here?” Kevin Murphy said.

He was dressed in business casual, as though he had just come from a mixer of young professionals.

Mark Swann, dressed in anything but business attire, smirked. He wore a black Ramones T-shirt and ripped jeans. His hair was in a ponytail.

“In the existential sense?” he said.

Murphy shook his head. “No. In the sense of why are we all in this room together in the middle of the night?”

The conference room, what Don Morris sometimes optimistically referred to as the Command Center, was a long rectangular table with a speakerphone device mounted in the center. There were data ports where people could plug in their laptops, spaced every few feet. There were two large video monitors on the wall.

The room was somewhat small, and Luke had been to meetings in here with as many as twenty people. Twenty people made the room look like a crowded train car in the Tokyo subway at rush hour.

“Okay, people,” Don Morris said. Don wore a tight-fitting dress shirt, sleeves halfway up his forearms. He had a cup of coffee in a thick paper cup in front of him. His white hair was cropped very close to his head—as if he’d just gone to the barber this afternoon. His body language was relaxed, but his eyes were as hard as steel.

“Thanks for coming in, and so quickly. But let’s shut up with the banter now, if you don’t mind.”

Around the room, people murmured their assent. Besides Don Morris, Swann, Murphy, and Luke, Ed Newsam was here, slouched low in his chair, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that hugged his muscular upper body. He wore jeans and yellow Timberland work boots, with the shoelaces untied. He looked like this meeting had awakened him from a deep sleep.

Also here was Trudy Wellington. She was in a blouse and dress pants, as though she had never gone home after work. Her red glasses were pushed up onto her head. She seemed alert, also drinking coffee, and she had already begun tapping information into the laptop in front of her. Whatever was going on, she had been privy to it first.

At the far end of the table, near the video screens, was a tall and thin four-star general, in impeccable dress greens. His gray hair was trimmed to the scalp. His face was devoid of whiskers, as if he had just shaved before he walked in here. Despite the lateness of the hour, the guy looked fresh and ready to go another twenty-four, or forty-eight, or however long it took.

Luke had met him once before, but even if he hadn’t, he already knew the man in his bones. When he woke each morning, he made his bed before doing anything else—that was the first achievement of the day, and set the table for more. Before the sun peeked into the sky, the guy had probably already run ten miles and scarfed down a meal of cold gruel and high octane coffee. He had West Point go-getter written all over him.

Seated at the table near him was a colonel with a laptop in front of him, as well as a stack of paper. The colonel hadn’t looked up from the computer yet.

“Folks,” Don Morris said. “I’d like to introduce you to General Richard Stark of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his aide, Colonel Pat Wiggins.”

Don looked at the general.

“Dick, the brain trust of the Special Response Team is at your disposal.”

“Such as it is,” Mark Swann said.

Don Morris scowled at Swann, a look one might give a teenage son with a big mouth. But he said nothing.

“Gentlemen,” Stark said, then bowed to Trudy. “And lady. I’ll get right to the point. There is an unfolding hostage crisis in the Alaskan Arctic, and the President of the United States has authorized a rescue. He has stipulated that the rescue involve the oversight and participation of a civilian agency. That’s where you come in.

“When talking with the President, it occurred to me that you give us the best of the both worlds—the Special Response Team is a civilian law enforcement agency, but is loaded with former military special operators. The FBI Director has green-lighted your participation, and Don was kind enough to call this meeting at short notice.”

He looked at the group. “With me so far?”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

The colonel was controlling the video screen from his laptop. A map of northern Alaska appeared, along with a sliver of the Arctic Ocean. A small dot out at sea was circled in red.

“This is a rapidly developing situation. What I can tell you is that an hour and a half ago, an oil rig in the Arctic Ocean was attacked and overwhelmed by a group of heavily armed men. There were approximately ninety men stationed on that rig and the artificial island that surrounds it, and an unknown number of those men were killed in the initial attack. A number were also taken hostage, though we do not know how many.”

“Who attacked the rig?” Luke said.

The general shook his head. “We don’t know. They have refused our attempts at contact, though they have sent video of oil workers gathered in a room and held at gunpoint by men in black masks. Audio from monitoring equipment at the rig has been made available to us by the company that owns the rig. The sound is poor quality, but it does pick up some voices. Besides the English spoken by the oil workers, there appear to be men speaking an Eastern European, possibly Slavic language, though we have no real evidence to back that up.”

On the screen, the map changed to aerial imagery of the rig and the camp surrounding it. The oil rig, probably thirty or forty stories high, dominated the first image. Below the rig were numerous Quonset hut–type buildings, as well as walkways between them. Surrounding the tiny compound was a vast, icy sea.

A blown-up image appeared. It showed the compound and the buildings in close detail. There were no people standing upright anywhere. There were at least a dozen bodies lying on the ground, some with halos of blood around them.

Another image appeared. Stretched across the ground was a large white banner with hand-painted black lettering.

AMERICA LIARS + HYPOCRITES.

“That’s quite a message,” Swann said.

“Admittedly, we have very little to go on. The banner you see certainly suggests an attack by foreign nationals. All of our drone footage shows us a compound devoid of personnel. The attackers appear to have taken all of the surviving workers indoors. Whether that is inside these buildings you see, or aboard the rig itself, we don’t know.”

For a moment, the screen went blank.

“We have a plan to take back the facility, neutralize the terrorists, and rescue however many civilian personnel are still alive. The plan involves an infiltration and assault, primarily using active-service Navy SEALs, but also yourselves. To carry out that plan, we need to get you to the Alaskan Arctic. Which means we need to hurry.”

Ed Newsam raised a hand. “When do you intend to carry out this plan?”

The general nodded. “Tonight. Before first light. Every experience we’ve had with terrorists over the years suggests that allowing a situation to become protracted is a recipe for failure, and even disaster. The public becomes involved, as do the politicians. The media puts it on the twenty-four-hour television doom loop. Second-guessing the government response becomes a national pastime. A long standoff excites and inspires terrorist fellow travelers in other places. Images of blindfolded hostages held at gunpoint…”

He shook his head.

“Let’s not explore that path. The group in question attacked without warning, and so will we. Hitting them before sunrise, under cover of darkness just hours after their own assault, allows us to take back the initiative. A successful incursion, and I have every confidence in its success, will demonstrate to other terror groups that we mean business.”

Stark must have seen the stares coming from the SRT personnel.

“We believe the Special Response Team is the right civilian agency to participate in this operation. If you don’t agree…” He let that hang there.

Luke had to admit he didn’t like where this was going. He had just left his wife and baby son in bed. Now he was supposed to go to the Arctic?

“The Alaskan Arctic has to be four thousand miles from here,” Swann said. “How are we supposed to get our people there before first light?”

Stark nodded again. “Closer to forty-five hundred miles. You’re right, it’s a long way. But we’re four hours ahead of them. At the oil rig, it’s not quite seven thirty p.m. We’ll take advantage of the time difference.”

He paused.

“And we have the technology to get you there faster than you might imagine.”

* * *

“What is he not telling us?” Luke said.

He was sitting in Don’s office, across the wide expanse of desk from the man himself.

Don shrugged. “You know they always hold something back. There’s something classified about the oil rig, perhaps. Or they know more about the perpetrators than they’re letting on. Could be anything.”

“Why us?” Luke said.

“You heard the man,” Don said. “They need civilian participation and oversight. That comes straight from the President. The man is a long-time liberal. He thinks the military is a big scary bogeyman. Little does he know that the civilian agencies are all packed with ex-military.”

“But look at how small we are,” Luke said. “No offense, Don. But NSA is a civilian agency. The FBI is, too. Both have a much longer reach than we do.”

“Luke, we are the FBI.”

Luke nodded. “Yes, but the Bureau proper has field offices close to the action out there. Instead, they want to fly us across the continent.”

Don stared at Luke for a long moment. For the first time, it really hit Luke how ambitious Don was. The President wanted the SRT for this gig. But Don wanted it just as badly, if not more so. These missions were feathers in Don’s cap. Don Morris had put together a team of world-beaters, and he wanted the world to know it.

“As you know,” Don said, “the field offices are full of field agents. Investigators and police officers, basically. We are special operations. That’s what we’re designed for, and that’s what we do. We are fast and light, we hit hard, and we’ve earned a reputation, not only for success in difficult circumstances, but also for total discretion.”

Luke and Don looked across the vast desk at one another.

Don shook his head. “Are you having cold feet, son? It’s okay if you are. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all me. But at this moment, your team is out there gearing up.”

Luke shrugged. “I’m already packed.”

Don’s broad smile suddenly appeared. “Good. I’m sure you’ll all do fine, and you’ll be back here for breakfast.”

* * *

“Let’s go, man,” Ed Newsam said. “This mission ain’t gonna happen by itself.”

Ed was at Luke’s door. He stood there, shouldering a heavy pack. He did not look gung-ho. He did not look excited. If Luke could use one word to describe how Ed looked, he would say it was resigned.

Luke sat at his desk staring at the telephone.

“Chopper’s on the pad.”

Luke nodded. “Gotcha. I’ll be right there.”

They were about to leave. Meanwhile, Luke was suffering from an ailment he called thousand-pound telephone syndrome. He was physically unable to pick up the receiver and make a call.

“Dammit,” he whispered under his breath.

He had checked and rechecked his bags. He had his standard gear for an overnight trip. He had his Glock nine-millimeter, in its leather shoulder holster. He had a few extra magazines loaded for the Glock.

A garment bag with two days of clothing changes was draped over the desk. A small bug-out bag packed with travel-size toiletries, a stack of energy bars, and half a dozen Dexedrine pills sat next to the garment bag.

The Dexies were amphetamines—speed. They were practically in the instruction manual for special operators. They would keep you awake and alert for hours on end. Ed sometimes called them “the quicker picker-uppers.”

These were generic supplies, but there was no sense trying to get more specific. They were going to the Arctic, the operation was going to require specialized gear, and that gear would be provided when they landed. Trudy had already sent everyone’s measurements on ahead.

So now he stared at the phone.

He had left the house with barely a word of explanation to her. Of course, she had been asleep. But that didn’t change anything.

And the note on the dining room table didn’t explain anything.

Got called in for a late meeting. May need to pull an all-nighter. Luv you, L

An “all-nighter.” That was rich. It sounded like a college kid cramming for the final exam. He had gotten into the habit of lying to her about the job, and it was becoming a hard habit to break.

What good would it do to tell the truth? He could call her right now, wake her out of a sound sleep, wake the baby and get him to start crying, all to tell her what?

“Hi, honey, I’m heading up to the Arctic Circle to take out some terrorists who attacked an oil rig. There are dead bodies all over the ground. Yeah, looks like I could be walking into another bloodbath. Actually, I might never see you again. Okay, sleep tight. Give Gunner a kiss for me.”

No. Better to just take his chances, do the operation, and trust that between the Navy SEALs and the SRT, they had the best people to get the job done. Call her in the morning, after it was over. If all went well and everyone was in one piece, tell her they had to fly out to Chicago to interview a witness. Keep the fiction rolling along that working for the SRT was mostly some kind of detective job, marred by the occasional outburst of violence.

Okay. That’s what he would do.

“You ready?” a voice said. “Everybody else is boarding the chopper.”

Luke looked up. Mark Swann was standing in the doorway. It was always a little startling to see Swann. With his ponytail, his aviator glasses, the wisp of scraggly beard on his chin, and the rock-n-roll T-shirts he always seemed to wear… he could practically be wearing a sign around his neck: NOT MILITARY.

Luke nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

Swann was smiling. No, cancel that. He was positively beaming, like a kid at Christmas. It was an odd thing to be doing when faced with a tedious flight across North America, followed by a nerve-wracking shoot ’em up against an unknown enemy.

“I just found out how they’re getting us there,” Swann said. “You won’t believe it. Absolutely incredible.”

“I didn’t realize you were even coming on this trip,” Luke said.

If anything, Swann’s smile grew even broader.

“I am now.”

CHAPTER SIX

September 5, 2005

8:30 a.m. Moscow Daylight Time (12:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

The “Aquarium”

Headquarters of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)

Khodynka Airfield

Moscow, Russia

“What news from our friend?” the man named Marmilov said.

He sat at his desk in a windowless basement office, smoking a cigarette. A ceramic ashtray was on the green steel desk in front of him. Although it was early in the morning, there were already five spent cigarette butts in the ashtray. A cup of coffee (with a splash of whiskey—Jameson, imported from Ireland) was also on the desk.

In the morning, the man smoked and drank black coffee. It was how he started his day. He wore a dark suit and his thinning hair was swooped over the top of his head, hardened and held in place by hairspray. Everything about the man was harsh angles and jutting bones. He seemed almost like a scarecrow. But his eyes were sharp and aware.

He had been around a long time, and had seen many things. He had survived the purges of the 1980s, and when the change came, in the 1990s, he had survived that as well. The GRU itself had come through largely intact, unlike its poor little sister, the KGB. The KGB had been broken apart and scattered to the winds.

The GRU was as large and as powerful as it ever was, perhaps more so. And Oleg Marmilov, fifty-eight years old, had played an integral role in it for a long time. The GRU was an octopus, the largest Russian intelligence agency, with its tentacles in special operations, spy networks around the globe, communications interception, political assassinations, destabilizing governments, drug trafficking, misinformation, psychological warfare, and false flag operations, not to mention the deployment of 25,000 elite Spetsnaz troops.

Marmilov was an octopus living inside the octopus. His tentacles were in so many places, sometimes a subordinate would come to him with a report, and he would draw a blank for a moment before thinking:

“Oh yes. That thing. How is it going?”

But some of his activities were right on the top of his mind.

Bolted to the top of his desk was a television monitor. To an American of the right age, the monitor would seem similar to the coin-operated TVs that once graced intercity bus stations across the country.

On the screen, live footage from security cameras cycled through. The man assumed there was a delay in the feed, possibly as much as half a minute. Otherwise, the footage was up to the moment.

It was dark in the footage, night had fallen, but Marmilov could see well enough. An iron stairwell climbing the side of an oil rig. A cluster of battered, corrugated aluminum huts on a cold and barren plot of land. A tiny port facility on a frozen sea, with a small, rugged ice cutter ship docked. There didn’t appear to be any people in the footage.

Marmilov looked up at the man standing in front of his desk.

“Well? Any news?”

The visitor was a younger man, who, while wearing a drab, ill-fitting civilian business suit, also seemed to stand at military attention. He stared at something in a far imaginary distance, instead of at the man sitting just a few feet before him.

“Yes, sir. Our contact has relayed the message that a group of commandos has been chosen. Most of them are already amassing at the airfield in Deadhorse, Alaska. Several more, who represent the civilian oversight of the project, are en route by supersonic airplane and will arrive within the next few hours.”

The man paused. “From then, it will likely be a very short time before the assault force is deployed.”

“How reliable is this intelligence?” Marmilov said.

The man shrugged. “It comes from a secret meeting held at the White House itself. The meeting could of course be a ruse, but we don’t think so. The President was in attendance, as were members of the military command.”

“Do we know the method of attack?”

The man nodded. “We believe they will deploy frogmen who will swim to the artificial island, emerge from beneath the ice, and mount the attack.”

Marmilov thought about that. “The water must be quite cold.”

The man nodded. “Yes.”

“It sounds like quite a difficult assignment.”

Now the young man showed the ghost of a smile. “The frogmen will be wearing cumbersome underwater gear designed to shield them from the cold, and our intelligence suggests they will carry their weapons in sealed packages. They are hoping for the element of surprise, a sneak attack by highly trained elite divers. The weather is forecast to be very poor, and flying will become difficult. As far as we understand, no simultaneous attack by sea or by air is planned.”