He had stayed up all night. It was 7 A.M. when his eyes recognized the flare in the tar up ahead.

  Off to the right, a dirt driveway was cut from a wall of oak trees. A strip of grass ran down the center of the dirt lane, which, after a hundred feet or so, disappeared into the trees. He didn’t bother slowing down, instead sliding into a screechy, burning turn toward the opening in the trees, the back tires fishtailing in a controlled spin along the tar, then regripping and shooting the car forward at the driveway and woods.

  Tacoma slowed down in the last stretch, which was honeycombed from above with overhanging branches. He felt the engine roar as he throttled the torque, touching the left paddle near the steering wheel. A throaty, angry pitch erupted from the engine, forced to slow just as the tires were becoming like glue to the dirt and the wind was taking hold of the aerodynamics.

  The Charger sped into the driveway, Tacoma slamming the gas hard, nearly spinning the car off the road.

  A half mile in, a brick house sat behind an oval-shaped gravel area. There was little movement and yet there was activity. Four men in jeans and tactical vests stood around a vague perimeter, out of sight. Each man clutched a high-powered rifle, and all were looped into a central COM block by small earbuds.

  The house was big and pretty, with black shutters, a slate roof, and low green boxwoods cut in lines out to fields of tall green grass. The land spread out farther than the eye could see. A thousand-acre piece of land meant there were no other houses for miles.

  Five vehicles were parked in the driveway: two black Chevy Suburbans, a shiny dark blue Ford van, a white truck, and a black Cadillac sedan.

  Tacoma crested the last hill and caught air, as a smile crossed his face. He’d been here before. It was during training, after he’d been recruited away from DEVGRU by Katie Foxx, who was in charge of Special Operations Group. This wasn’t the so-called Farm. This was where they took you after you were selected from everyone at the Farm. This was where they groomed the ones Langley expected to step into the void, in any country, at any time.

  This was where Tacoma had showed his true colors.

  As much as he hated the memory, Tacoma couldn’t help gunning the Charger at a lip in the road, catching a moment of air, slamming down and turning the wheel at ninety miles an hour, fishtailing in a loud, squeaky turn, barely avoiding a tree. Moncrief Road—aka “The Cabin”—was where Tacoma had been taught about interrogation and survival. It was where the elite of the elite of American operators were schooled in the science of physio-psychographic warfare. First as receivers, then as givers.

  Tacoma reached for the radio and turned it off, wanting to hear the roar of the engine.

  * * *

  They only trained one man at a time, staggering the training sequence, never letting more men through than they could properly assess and develop, though by the time they were at the Cabin they no longer needed development. Now it was about inner strength.

  For Tacoma, his recruitment started when he was kidnapped in Mosul and drugged. He awoke days later in a fetid room, tied tight, his ankles bound, his elbows pulled behind him and tied together, so tight that he felt as if his arms would rip. A ball gag was in his mouth, a black nylon bag covered his head. At first, he thought he was in a cave in the Kush, or maybe an apartment in Karachi, or Lagos, or anywhere for that matter.

  He had been under for three days, he calculated.

  The thing is, Tacoma, after three days under, gagged and tied up, assumed he had been captured. In point of fact, he was right here, at the Cabin.

  In SEALs, during Hell Week in Coronado, he remained awake for a week straight, less the few precious hours they let them nod off. The Cabin had been designed by the same man who’d come up with the military concept underlying Hell Week. It was a brutal, self-defining, Darwinian challenge that ultimately weeded most operators out.

  The CIA was culling the elite from the elite. It wasn’t simply about skill. They all had skill. Langley had to find the ones who wouldn’t crack under pressure.

  Instead of long swims in cold water, lugging telephone poles, running until your feet bled, the Cabin attacked the core of an operator’s psyche. The operators selected to go were the best of the best, and they knew it. Most didn’t make it through. Every year, Langley selected seven men for Special Operations Group.

  For six days, Tacoma was kept in a windowless room. There was nothing in the room, only concrete and a lightbulb. There wasn’t even a bucket for going to the bathroom. Loud music, or sometimes just noise, would blare from speakers in the ceiling, for hours on end, and then abruptly stop.

  Then there were the beatings. Three or four would come into the concrete space and beat him. On the first night, Tacoma, despite being shackled, had managed to butt his forehead into the nose of one of the men, shattering it. It was his only victory that lonely week. A week in which, by the end, he was curled up in a fetal position in the corner. When they came to pull him out—to give him water, to make sure he was still alive—they removed his shackles. But they didn’t try to help him.

  * * *

  By the time they came into Tacoma’s cell on that sixth day, he hadn’t had water in three days. As for food, nothing.

  It was meant to break a man, and most men it did.

  Tacoma passed the hours in a half-sleep reverie, singing songs to himself, inside his head. “She’s a Rainbow” lasted for hours until he remembered “Idiot Wind,” by Dylan. But that was early on. By the time they came to see him he was lost in a state of permanent white, transfixed by a vision of a lightbulb, watching as speckles of dust made the yellow halogen flicker ever so faintly. He was shackled in an unmovable way, hands behind his back, legs wrenched backward and secured tight.

  Loud, distorted music was blaring when the guards entered and Tacoma registered them, his throat so dry it hurt to breathe.

  “He’s gone.”

  He heard the voice from above him.

  Another voice, this one an older man’s. He felt a dry, cold hand against his neck.

  “Take him to Dr. Basin,” he said in a scratchy voice. “Once he’s back on planet earth, send him back out to Coronado. This is officially a no-pass.”

  That was when Tacoma felt the tension ease at his wrists. Were he a threat, it would’ve been at that moment that Tacoma might have lurched for something, for someone, for a lifeline …

  But he was catatonic. His arms barely moved. He was like a dead fish, lying with two open eyes looking up listlessly. He felt the rope around his ankles as someone loosened it. Then it disappeared.

  Tacoma didn’t hesitate. By the time the rope was on the ground, he’d slashed his leg beneath the man who’d just released him, kicking the man at the back of his ankles and grabbing his pistol as he tumbled backward. The guard let out a loud yell as he hit the wall behind him. In that moment, Tacoma swept the muzzle of the gun and trained it on the other man. Slowly, he stood up, keeping both CIA interrogators in tight range.

  “If you want to live,” Tacoma whispered as he held both men in the crosshairs, “don’t move. Don’t say anything.”

  A door to the windowless interrogation room suddenly opened. A young, very good-looking woman stepped inside. She had blond hair down to her shoulders, cut in bangs above her green eyes. Tacoma pivoted, acquiring her in the crosshairs. He took a few steps backward. He now held the three individuals in the crosshairs. She stepped toward him and he fired.

  Nothing happened and she came closer.

  “Blanks,” said the woman.

  The two men he’d just taken over slowly stood up. One of them nodded to Tacoma. It was a look of praise, as if to say, “Good job.”

  “My name is Katie Foxx,” she said as she stepped into the center of the concrete hole. “Congratulations, Rob. You’re now NOC, tier one, Special Operations Group. That is, if you’d like to.”

  * * *

  Tacoma turned off the car and grabbed a camouflaged, pump-action 12-gauge Benelli from the back seat. He stuffed shells into it, then climbed from the vehicle.

  Standing in the middle of the driveway were two men. Both had on khakis, short-sleeve dark blue polo shirts, sunglasses, flak jackets, and weapons vests. Both men clutched high-powered semiautomatic rifles, with suppressors. They kept them trained at the dirt as Tacoma walked toward them.

  “Identification, sir,” said one of the men, a tall, stocky bald man with a thick beard. He looked familiar. “SOP.”

  “No worries. Who are you?” said Tacoma, reaching for his ID.

  “Patchford,” said one of the men, looking at Tacoma’s ID card. “I was DEVGRU, too.”

  “Congratulations,” said Tacoma. “Where is he?”

  “In the tank,” said Patchford. “They already ran a diopharma on him.”

  The sound of an engine came from up the driveway. A black sedan came into view, its tires kicking up dust as it moved to the side of the driveway and stopped. Calibrisi climbed from the back of the dark sedan. Calibrisi nodded at the two CIA gunmen. He followed Tacoma as he moved to the front of the house, shotgun in hand, aimed up at the sky.

  “Wait up,” said Calibrisi.

  Tacoma stopped. He turned and waited for Calibrisi to catch up.

  “What’s the plan?” said Calibrisi.

  “Beat some information out of him and then kill him,” said Tacoma. “In that order.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you kill them first, they get very quiet,” said Tacoma.

  “I mean, why kill him?”

  “Because he deserves it, Hector.”

  Calibrisi barely nodded, letting his eyes take in Tacoma, including the pump-action shotgun.

  “So that’s your big plan?” said Calibrisi.

  “Yes,” said Tacoma. “You like it? I just thought of it.”

  “This guy is the only connection we have to Cosgrove’s killer, Nick Blake’s killer, John Patrick O’Flaherty’s killer,” said Calibrisi. “The ones who declared war on us. And your solution is to just walk in and kill him?”

  “Exactly,” said Tacoma. “We’re on the same page. Make him suffer a little, blow his kneecaps off, that sort of thing.”

  A bird somewhere abruptly flushed from the trees behind the house. It was a grouse. Tacoma watched as it took flight.

  “We’re not on the same page,” said Calibrisi. “You kill him and we have nothing to go on.”

  Tacoma nodded, meeting Calibrisi’s stare.

  For the first time, a more studied, serious, even mature look came to Tacoma’s face. Something between anger and recognition.

  Another grouse took flight a few moments behind the first. This time, Tacoma swung the Benelli down toward his left hip so that his left hand grabbed the forearm. He slammed it back, chambering a shell, as he tracked the bird and fired. The sound of the shotgun was like a thunderclap. The grouse dropped from the air.

  “Seems to me we already have nothing to go on,” said Tacoma quietly, so only Calibrisi could hear, for the first time showing a hint of hard edge and cynicism.

  Tacoma walked toward the fallen bird to pick it up.

  A guard stopped him politely.

  “I’ll get it.”

  Tacoma turned just as Calibrisi grabbed his shirt and stepped closer.

  “What does that mean?” said Calibrisi. “‘Nothing to go on.’”

  “You know what it means,” said Tacoma. “We have nothing to go on. We’re in over our heads. The Russian mafia knew about Cosgrove. Not only that, they killed a U.S. senator and a governor—two pretty important guys—and we have fucking nothing. This whole thing feels bad from the get-go. They’re professionals, and we unfortunately look like we’re in kindergarten.”

  Calibrisi listened carefully. It was the first time he’d ever heard Tacoma speak seriously—take something seriously.

  Tacoma was an operator, plain and simple, but the sight of Cosgrove strung up by the neck had forced him to face an unpleasant reality. He was now in charge of a secret unit of the Central Intelligence Agency that wasn’t so secret after all. That what he’d signed up for was something altogether different than what he expected, than what was originally intended, and yet he couldn’t quit. He owed his father that much. He couldn’t just walk away and ever live with himself again.

  “I agree, Rob,” said Calibrisi. “But we have to start somewhere. If you want out, then turn around.”

  “When did I say I wanted out?”

  “I would.”

  “Would you?” said Tacoma.

  “No, but that’s me. You haven’t agreed yet. I don’t want you to do this based on false pretenses.”

  “I’m not quitting,” said Tacoma. “But I’m also not doing it the Agency’s way.”

  Calibrisi nodded.

  “If this guy survives,” said Tacoma, pointing inside, “some corrupt individual is going to rescue him and sell me out. It’s called perimeter security, and we don’t have any. None. I read the document. I have total immunity. I’m not leaving until he’s dead.”

  “This guy will never see the light of day again. You have my word.”

  “I know I have your word,” said Tacoma, turning and moving toward the front door of the house, “but that’s not enough, is it?”

  “If you go in there and kill him we lose whatever information he has inside his head.”

  Tacoma stopped. He looked at Calibrisi.

  “Unlike you, I’ve been through this place,” said Tacoma.

  “What does that mean? It’s not relevant.”

  “Yeah, it is,” said Tacoma. “The first thing I learned at the Cabin is kill or be killed. I’m running this, which means I’m running this.”

  Calibrisi grabbed him at the wrist.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” said Calibrisi. “You’re too immature.”

  Tacoma let Calibrisi stop him, even though he could have thrown him to the side. He paused for a few seconds, then pushed—politely but firmly—toward the door, even as Calibrisi held his wrist.

  “Let go, Hector,” said Tacoma evenly. “It’s my operation, whether you like it or not.”

  “You’re not going in there with the shotgun,” said Calibrisi firmly. “You can kill him in a few days if you want, but not today. You’re too pissed off—and he’s the only connection we have.”

  Tacoma nodded, then handed Calibrisi the shotgun.

  “Fine,” said Tacoma.

  “Thank you, Rob.”

  * * *

  Tacoma and Calibrisi went inside the house, past another CIA gunman, through the hallway to a doorway. Tacoma opened the door and they went downstairs. It was a typical-looking basement, lights off, dark, a large oil tank to the left. Across the low-ceilinged room was another door. It was steel. Next to the door was a glass panel that looked in on the interrogation room.

  Outside the door, a middle-aged black woman with short hair was standing.

  “Rob?” she said. “I’m Karen Roberts.”

  “Hi, Karen,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Hi, Hector,” added Karen as he trailed Tacoma into the antechamber.

  “Hi, Karen, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Tacoma felt the hairs on his neck stand up as he smelled the musty basement. His eyes took him to the sliver of light beneath the steel door. He’d spent almost a week behind that door. The light gave him a hard, uneasy feeling. At the Cabin, there wasn’t a huge difference between night and day, between light and dark, between good and evil even. But there was another feeling. The feeling of having survived. An unmistakable feeling of triumph.

  Karen handed Tacoma a sheet of paper, which he and Calibrisi read together.

  “We ran his photo against Rampart, Main Core, Fairview, PRISM, Pinwale, and every other fingerprint, DNA, and facial recognition program we or the NSA has,” she said. “It was an FBI database—Gravestone—where we got a facial on him. His name is Boris Slokavich, he’s Russian, and he lives in Fort Lauderdale. He’s a bratok in the Odessa Mafia.”

  “‘Bratok’?” said Tacoma.

  “Soldier, thug, killer. Wet squad. There’s no record of him coming into the U.S., so obviously he’s here under a false identity. Once I knew his name I ran it back against PRISM. Nothing. No cell tracks, credit cards, emails we’ve been following. He’s a ghost. But these guys are always one step ahead. You’re lucky to be alive, Rob.”

  Tacoma remained emotionless.

  She handed him another sheet of paper. It displayed several photos. All except for the last photo were black-and-white. All of the photos had been taken from a distance. They showed an ugly-looking man with thick hair, a long face, and a long, bent nose. Tacoma stepped to the window and eyed the goon who killed Cosgrove, Slokavich, strapped into a chair with a large white bandage wrapped around his chest and torso.

  The photos were accurate. They had definitely found Slokavich, whoever he was.

  “Did you call anyone at IOC-2?” said Calibrisi, referring to the U.S. government’s interagency group created to go after the Russian mafia, the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center.

  “I spoke to Peter Buckey at Quantico and Joon Kim in the D.A.’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Slokavich wasn’t even on their radar screen, but neither of them was surprised. The Odessa Mafia and the Malnikovs are the two biggest Eurasian criminal enterprises in the world. They’re secretive, they move people around a lot, and there’s a high mortality rate. Buckey told me it’s like tracking ants.”

  “Good work,” he said and handed her back the paper. He reached for the steel door and stepped inside.

  Three walls were covered in bare, old, faded pine board. The fourth wall was glass, behind which was another room filled with electronic equipment, diagnostic hardware, and a small team of doctors and scientists, there to assess and control the condition of the prisoner.

  The glass was bulletproof.

  The Russian, Slokavich, was seated in a steel chair bolted to the floor. He was bigger than Tacoma remembered. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, with a lopsided crew cut and scars on his pale face. A stainless-steel helmet was over his head. Wires were bound tightly across his face, clamping down his nose, mouth, and neck. A red rubber ball was strapped tight in Slokavich’s mouth, gagging him. He was flex-cuffed to the steel chair. His hand, where Tacoma had shot him, was wrapped in a bandage, as was his leg, where Tacoma had stuck a knife.