He forced himself to sit up, drawing his legs up and turning to place his bare fleet on the cool tiles of the floor. There was a bottle of water on the floor and he strained to reach it. He took sips and gasped when the lukewarm liquid slid over the raw flesh of his throat. Way past dehydrated. He could feel the pain in his joints that were as much from the lack of liquids as from the beatings he took from Green Eyes.

  Heath shifted and slid the handcuff ring up the bar of the headboard so he could relax his arm a little. The frame was solid cast. There was nothing he could work loose or unscrew to free the cuff ring. The best he'd be able to do was free the headboard from the sideboards. That would be a bitch to accomplish but was the only option obvious to him. The headboard could be used as a weapon of last resort. Maybe he could use it to bust through the shutters on the windows and jump to the ground if it wasn't too far.

  His wrist was raw from friction with the cuff ring. He flexed his fingers to restore circulation and turned the ring on his wrist so he could turn and stand with the help of his free hand on the bare mattress to steady him. His eyes were squeezed tight against the vertigo that was making the room spin. His gorge rose despite an empty stomach. Slipping his free hand under the mattress and crouching as best he could with the twisted knee, he was able to lever the mattress up and flip it off the bed. That revealed a rusted wire mat resting in the iron frame. The supports were secured to the head and foot boards by heavy hex bolts coated over by several layers of white paint applied over the years. Chipping that paint away and freeing those bolts would take forever.

  "Well, you got nothing better to do, brother," he whispered to himself and began picking at the flakes of paint over the bolt heads of the leg nearest him.

  The voices from below rose in volume and urgency. A series of deep thuds followed by a crash. The women were screaming now and they were joined by the shouts of men. It was all like one noise to Heath and he couldn't pick out words.

  He put his shoulder to the heavy iron headboard and shoved the bed across the floor to block the door. The male voices were getting closer and a pounding sound grew louder and louder. Booted feet on stairs climbing closer.

  The frame was against the door and he held it there with all he had. His bare feet slipped on the slick linoleum as the weight of bodies on the other side of the door increased. The men were shouting and cursing and pressed the door inward. The wood of the frame splintered and the whole doorway collapsed inward all at once. Armed men in black uniforms crashed in to fill the room and Heath fought them off as best he could with one free hand.

  He got a grip on an armored vest and pulled the man close enough to headbutt. His forehead cannoned into the bridge of the man's nose and Heath felt a satisfying grinding sensation. His victim sagged against him with blood spraying from a fractured nose. The rest of the men held Heath firm and worked to pry his fingers from the unconscious man's armor. They were restraining him not hitting him. They sound pissed as hell but no one was using a club or a taser.

  "Policia!" they shouted at him over and over.

  But he wasn't about to give up. These assholes wore the same boots and uniform pants as the men at the pig farm; the men who laughed as they hacked Reyes apart. Any two of them could be those same fuckers. Heath strained against them as one cop worked a key into the cuffs and freed him from the bed frame. Eight cops and Heath crashed together to the floor in a roiling mass. They fought and strained to hold him motionless. He was naked and lathered in sweat and hard to hold. Enough of them sat on him to keep him from rising. All were panting from the effort.

  A PF officer with a gold braided cap entered the room and eyed the scene with a dissatisfied expression.

  "This is a rescue," the officer said. He held a sheaf of papers. Official papers. A warrant maybe.

  "Yeah?" Heath said.

  "Your name is Washington?" The cover name. The one he gave Green Eyes.

  "Yeah."

  "What is a sailor doing so far from the sea?" the officer said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  WASHINGTON, DC CASTLE

  Eric Bivens knew two things that no one else in the White House could know.

  He knew that the missing SEAL had been found. Dana Morton applied pressure where she could through Blair Freeman and officers assigned to the embassy in Mexico City. The Policia Federale found the sailor in a whorehouse in the older part of Mazatlan. It was almost like a bad joke.

  The second thing Eric knew was that he was to hold down the fort here while Dana used intel from the captured SEAL's debriefing to narrow down the identity of "The Arab." She told him that they had gotten some additional hum-intel from another asset but wasn't ready to share that with him. She would contact him if she needed anything from him but for now Eric was to hang loose, keep his mouth shut and stay available.

  His outing as an intel operative met with mixed reactions in the press room. They knew he wasn't just a reelection staffer now. Some of the stringers showed a new interest in him. Who was this gawky kid and what kind of juice did he have that a high-placed State player needed to talk to him in private? They smelled a potential source.

  The interns mostly looked upon him with loathing. They were suspicious of anyone with his level of security clearance. He went from a cool guy to hang with to The Man when Williams blew his cover.

  It was matter of minutes before the more ambitious pressmen asked the right questions of some of their contacts and found out Eric was NSA. They immediately figured he was scoping them out for national security breaches when the truth was Eric was there for the free donuts and pizza.

  He only came back to the press room because he was sure Williams wouldn't pull that stunt a second time. And Eric wanted to stay away from that guy as much as possible. In fact, when this was over, he was going to ask Dana to send him back down a pay grade so he could go back to analyzing dry data in a windowless room and never see another undersecretary as long as he lived.

  Eric didn't anticipate the reception being quite as chilly as it was in the press room. They were eyeing him like he was a zoo animal as he piled a couple of jellies on a plate.

  "You better make that to go," a voice said at his elbow.

  It was the cute brunette from NPR. Eric looked around to double-check that she was talking to him. She'd nabbed a chocolate with sprinkles and balanced it atop a take-out cup.

  "Yeah," he said. "I seem to have become uncool all of a sudden."

  "Assholes," she said and glanced back at them with a smirk. "They all think you're checking up on them. Like they matter, right? 'Look at me, I'm a potential security risk.'"

  "I'm only here for the jellies," he said and raised the plate for emphasis.

  "I'll bet you know all kinds of places we can hide."

  She said "we."

  "Sure," Eric said.

  He found them a secured room, a closet really, in the west wing annex. It was as far as Larissa's press ID would let her go. Larissa. What an awesome name.

  The room was small. In fact, it was once a closet. Their knees almost touched when they sat down.

  "Cozy," she said.

  "The first thing that surprised me when I came here was how small a lot of the rooms are," he said and watched her take a dainty bite. A sprinkle stuck to her upper lip and all he could think about was licking it off.

  "Like Versailles."

  "Huh?"

  "The palace in France?" she said. "Tiny, tiny rooms. Not like in movies."

  He was tongue-tied. He didn't know where to look. Her eyes. The framed landscape over her head. Her legs visible below her leather skirt. The floor. A tiny silver anklet dangling above the immaculate white espadrille on her slender foot. He was looking everywhere and nowhere.

  "You like NPR?" he said abruptly.

  She smiled in what appeared to be relief. Was she has nervous as he was?

  Larissa launched into her story. Raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Her dad was a pediatrician. She got good grades and was awarded a scholarship to Kentucky Wesleyan and finally to the university in Connecticut. Her major was journalism and she was "hella lucky" to get into an internship at National Public Radio. But she wanted a career in print rather than broadcasting.

  "And what about you, Eric?" she concluded.

  "I really can't say much about myself," he said self-consciously.

  "I understand," she said with a tiny nod and reached out to touch his knee.

  "Sounds stupid."

  "It's cute that you feel like that."

  "Really?"

  He was staring at her hand still resting on his knee and didn't hear the door knob turning. The door swung inward and there was Undersecretary Boyd Williams wearing a smile that did not reach all the way to his eyes. Behind him were two White House security men who didn't smile at all.

  "Well," was all Williams said.

  Without a word or a glance to Eric, Larissa rose from her chair. Williams stepped aside to leave her just enough room to get past him and away.

  Williams' smile reached his eyes as he examined the expression on Eric's face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  TRANSIT USA

  Lemons to lemonade.

  A shitstorm rained down on Blair Freeman from every direction at once. The only silver lining was that the recovery of Nathan Heath provided cover for the team's unauthorized seizure of Esteban Benitez.

  Blair rolled into the PF's fortified compound with a phalanx of suits from State and took Heath off their hands. He had the SEAL on a chopper and heading stateside within the hour. At the same time, Bruce Dysart was taking Esteban down to Honduras for some quality time with an enhanced interrogation unit.

  Heath was a mess but still a hardass and insisted on walking out of the PF containment building on his own feet. He climbed into the back seat of the embassy SUV without help. A motorcade then rolled to the nearest hardstand where a commercially leased Chinook was fueled and waiting. Blair jumped in the back with him and handed him a headset while the crew strapped the SEAL in. They poured him an ice-cold glass of orange juice as the wheels left the ground.

  "I don't want that shit," Heath protested.

  "You need the sugar," Blair said through his throat mike. "You need to hydrate."

  "I know what I need. You got something to fortify this?"

  Blair pulled a silver flask from pocket. It had his Harvard fraternity letters engraved on it. A gift from Mommy. He tilted it into the OJ. Heath gestured with a tilt of his chin from Blair to keep the flow going.

  "What am I drinking?" Heath said.

  "You care about the brand?" Blair said.

  "Fuck no," Heath said and took a long pull.

  "Normally, we'd go slow and easy but we're on the clock, Nate." Only the guys on his team called him "Heath" and Blair knew better than to take that liberty.

  "I know, I know," Heath said and pressed his neck back on the head rest. "You need to know what I know and you need to know it yesterday. Fire away."

  "Reyes?" Blair said when Heath lowered the glass down, now half empty.

  "Dead," Heath said. "Those fuckers beat him, raped him and made him watch his own family die."

  "Yeah. FBI brought us up to speed on that. They killed two US Marshals watching the house in Arizona."

  "Why'd they let me go?" Heath asked and locked eyes with Blair. His eyes were red and he looked tired. More than tired. He was hurting beyond the physical wounds.

  "Guess they had no reason to hold you."

  "Bullshit! These were some sick motherfuckers. Why did they do what they did to Reyes and let me live?"

  The question bordered on the existential. Heath wasn't looking to Blair for the answer. He was asking the universe. He got to take a long hard look at Hell and walk away. But he took part of Hell away with him.

  "Maybe they're afraid of SEALs," Blair offered in lame response.

  Heath drained the tall glass and held it out to Blair for a refill.

  "Well, if they ain't scared now we'll give them a fucking good reason to be," Heath growled.

  Could be the screwdriver, could be the old Heath on the way back. Whatever it was, Blair would take it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE ARAB

  The intel provided by Heath was invaluable.

  Green eyes and eyeglasses. Educated in Spain. Two seemingly trivial elements that allowed the think cell at Langley to draw down their list from fifty to twelve and then two and then one.

  His name was Siamek Omid Jamshidi, an Iranian national currently serving in the navy of Iran at the rank of nakhoda sevom; the equivalent of a lieutenant commander. Everything about his file fit an advanced terror mission featuring submersibles.

  He was stationed for years at Khorramshahr, a naval station and shipbuilding facility at the head of the Persian Gulf. From there he skippered Ghadir class midget subs with crews of eighteen or less that patrolled the shallow waters at the Strait of Hormuz. From there he was recruited three years prior by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Tehran.

  Jamshidi spoke fluent Spanish he learned as a student at the University of Barcelona while still a young rating. Apparently the mullahs were preparing him for better things.

  Assets in Caracas reported that LC Jamshidi had been seen repeatedly in the Venezuelan capital in his Iranian Navy uniform as well as civilian attire. He was often in the company of high-ranking military officers and government types including directors for the Dirección General de Inteligencia Militar, the Venezuelan version of the CIA.

  Chavez' people, along with Chavez himself, were openly friendly to Iran and any other outlaw nation whose visits and photo ops helped the charismatic whackjob tweak the nose of his powerful enemies across the sea to the north. But Jamshidi's vacations were more than social visits. He wouldn't be the first name on the terror lists to use Venezuela as a stopover on his way into Mexico and then on to the USA.

  Some of Jamshidi's visits did feature recreation. The agency had testimony from some of Caracas' and Maracaibo's highest priced whores that Jamshidi had some very particular needs in the sex department. But he was no pillow talker; more of the "love 'em and boot 'em" type. The hookers could roughly confirm dates that he had been in country and there was a consensus that he had not been back in recent months.

  Dana Morton gathered her own A-team of analysts and two old hands Admiral Dorrance sent over from NSW.

  "Our asset was held captive by this asshole for four days," Dana began. "He was able to get us to the Arab and that's opened a world of possibilities. You've seen the material. What can you tell me?"

  "We hacked into surveillance cameras at ten international airports across Mexico," said Liz Rockwicz. She was a twenty year agency vet, rail-thin and never without a wad of nicotine gum in her cheek. "Facial recognition programs find SOJ (Their name for Jamshidi) de-planing and re-planing at Mexico City twice early last year at one-week intervals. Then one more time at Mazatlan last October. Just a de-plane. No return trip."

  "So, he stayed from then on," Dana said. "Or took off from a smaller, private strip. In any case, we know he's in the Mazatlan area as of five days ago."

  "He knows we're on to him?" this from Phil Tate, a retired software developer who joined the agency when he got bored with trying to run through a half billion dollar retirement package from Microsoft.

  "Yes," Dana said. "But he's cagey. He didn't give anything up to our captive asset. SOJ might think he's still safe. Either that or his assignment trumps concerns for his personal safety. "

  "Why didn't they just kill our man?" from Commander Howard Shannon, a longtime naval intelligence expert who knew very well that the "captive asset" they were talking about was a US Navy SEAL.

  "We have every reason to believe that SOJ has the full cooperation of a criminal cartel and corrupt Mexican lawmen," Dana said. "They need that cooperation to pull off this attack. The very public murder of an American serviceman would not be in the cartel's interests. Historically, the worst days for the cartels followed the murder of an American drug agent. They weren't going to risk that for SOJ and his jihad."

  "Why support him at all? What's in for the cartel?" said baby-faced Lieutenant JG Bart Agostini. He looked like a fresh-faced recruit but was one of the wonder kids over at Navy Special Warfare. He spoke fluent Farsi and Dari and held at least two masters degrees from MIT and Princeton.

  "It's complicated and somewhat alien," Phil Tate said. This was his area of interest and he was visibly tamping down his enthusiasms for the subject. "The cartels don't see themselves as criminals strictly. They're insurrectos in the grand tradition of Mexican revolutionaries. There's a romantic aspect to it and they see a kinship with Muslim fanaticism; a sort of world struggle against perceived oppression deal. With the imprimatur of Hugo Chavez on him, Jamshidi would be seen as a brother to them. "

  "That can't be all of it," Agostini said. "These gangs want to make a profit, don't they?"

  "There's millions in pseudoephedrine in play as well," Dana said. "The Iranians are acting as a source for the building block for meth that can be hard to come by in bulk. We're talking hundreds of millions in pure profit for factions of Pecadores Diez on both sides of the border."

  "And both the cartels and the jihadis share an attraction for death as a kind of totemic feature or fetish," Phil said and removed his glasses to concentrate on his presentation. "Islam promises a fantasy of a marvelous, male-dominated paradise that can only be reached through good works or courage. The cartels have their own cult of death in a worship of Santa Muerte, a female symbol of death who rewards them with good luck if they serve her with sacrifices or bring her gifts."

  "That's where we end the Discovery Channel version for now, Phil," Dana smiled and was rewarded with a dry chuckle from Phil.

  "We know who we're after and his general location," Commander Shannon said gruffly. "And we have a strong suspicion that they'll try another run in a semi-submersible. Do we have a window?"

  "No, and we're not even going to try and guess," Dana said. "We need the Navy to work out a list of likely locations for a submarine-construction facility with water access to the coastline somewhere in the Mazatlan area. From there we can recon and find their plant."