Floyd knew other men would soon join them, and his odds would diminish with every new arrival. He also knew that if they wanted him dead, he would have been shot already. He was alive for a reason, and he was determined to play that to maximum advantage.

  The gunman jumped off the rocks and landed in the snow a few feet away from Floyd.

  “I said get on the ground!”

  Floyd rushed him, aiming his shoulder at the man’s midriff. People with guns are accustomed to being obeyed, and Floyd knew he would have the element of surprise. The gunman raised the submachine gun as if to strike, but Floyd reached him before he could do so. He felt a satisfying compression as his shoulder hit the man’s abdomen. The Russian groaned as he was thrust back into the rocks around the cave mouth. Floyd stood tall, grabbed the man’s head, and forced it back. There was a loud crack as it hit the rock and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body went limp and Floyd allowed him to fall to the ground. He searched the man and took the Vityaz, along with three spare magazines of ammunition and the radio.

  “Hey!” a voice yelled, and Floyd turned to see other men moving through the trees toward him.

  He flipped the safety off and fired a short burst from the Vityaz, which he swung in an undirected arc. The gunfire had the desired effect, the men scattering for cover. Floyd seized the moment he’d bought himself and ran west, heading into the thickest part of the forest.

  Snow-covered branches whipped at him and huge clumps of powder pelted him as he pressed through the trees. There was an eruption of gunfire above and around him, and the air filled with woodchips and the smell of cedar. He knew they were aiming high and wide in an attempt to frighten him into stopping, but he wasn’t that dumb.

  Memories of Beth, Maria, and Danny gave his exhausted spirit a much-needed boost, flooding his battered body with an infusion of energy. Floyd knew that if he stopped and allowed these men to take him, as soon as they had whatever they wanted from him, he’d be completely expendable. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to escape.

  CHAPTER 49

  I TOLD THEM a condensed version of my story: how a supposed relative of the downed airman had hired me to find people close to him and how I’d discovered my client was a liar, using me to gain leverage over Floyd. I kept things vague so I didn’t compromise Beth and the children.

  “You’re being sketchy on the details,” the Englishman said. “Is that because you don’t trust us?”

  I smiled. “Just being cautious.”

  “But I’m still not convinced,” he replied. “Any one of the men who attacked us could have told that story.”

  I studied him and the American woman carefully. They were outsiders. Not just in this village. Whatever had driven them to these mountains had made outcasts of them, by choice or necessity. I didn’t think they were living at the edge of the world because they were on the run from the law. They were too open and empathetic. I believed they were good people, and hoped I was right.

  “I used to fly Sea Knights in the US Marine Corps,” I said. “I flew them in Afghanistan. Over these mountains. I was shot down here, so I know exactly how Floyd feels. I know the grief he’s carrying for his comrades, for his brothers. I was lucky enough to be rescued but he is alone out there, hunted by men who will stop at nothing to capture him. Men who are also hunting his family.

  “When I left the military, I took over my deadbeat father’s detective agency—Private—and I’ve devoted my life to building it into the most successful detective agency in the world. I sacrificed everything for it. Why did I do that? Because I want to help people. Semper fidelis. It’s the motto of the US Marine Corps. It means ‘Always faithful.’ That spirit doesn’t leave a person just because they take off the uniform.”

  I paused.

  “You want me to convince you with physical proof? I can’t do that. I can show you my ID, you can check out my backstory, but I can’t show you proof of my motivation for finding Joshua. All I can do is lay it all out and hope you recognize the sound of the truth when you hear it. I need to find this man because I made a promise to his wife that I would bring him home safely.”

  “Everything he says is true,” Dinara said. “Use Google. Check him out.”

  “No internet,” the Englishman said. “Not till the phone line comes back, at least.”

  It was the American woman who came to my rescue. “I’ve heard of Private,” she said. “From my days in the Bureau.”

  She studied me closely and I held her gaze. She was sizing me up, and I was wondering how an FBI agent wound up in the Hindu Kush mountains.

  “I believe him, John.”

  “I do too,” John said, looking at the woman and nodding. “Give him the route, Chris.”

  The woman walked over to a set of drawers and took out a map of the region that she handed to me. It was marked with a route through the winter passes, which could get a person to Pakistan.

  “This is the route Joshua is taking to the border,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “And if you run into the men who did this”—Chris indicated John’s bandaged shoulder—“send them our regards.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  We hurried out of the house and ran back the way Vosuruk had led us.

  “That was well done,” Feo said. “The way you told your truth.”

  I nodded my appreciation. I didn’t often open up, particularly about my father. My family have been a huge source of pain and betrayal in my life, and I try to think about them as little as possible.

  We made it back to the chopper and were airborne a few minutes later. I navigated, guiding Feo along the route plotted out on the map given to me by Chris and John.

  Our flight path took us over some rough terrain. We flew over a forest, then above the treeline and through a pass between two high peaks, across a valley, and up into another pass. This was a long journey on horseback, but in the chopper we were clocking 150 knots, or about 170 miles per hour over ground, so we covered what might have taken Floyd days in a matter of minutes.

  “I’ve got something,” Dinara said through the comms system. She was using a radio scanner to monitor the airwaves. “Encrypted chatter. A lot of it. Multiple signals, rapid communications, and quick responses.”

  “Down there, two o’clock,” Feo said as we came out of the pass into another valley.

  I saw what he was pointing at immediately: the flash and flare of machine gunfire. Even at a distance, it was clear multiple gunmen were converging on a single shooter, who was trying to fight them off. They were moving in on him quickly, and judging from their relative positions, we didn’t have long before the single shooter, who we assumed was Floyd, would be overwhelmed.

  “Take us down,” I said to Feo. “Fast!”

  CHAPTER 50

  FEO PLUNGED THE chopper into a swift and steep dive. I unclipped my seat belt and hauled myself into the main cabin, where Dinara was sorting through a gear bag, checking weapons. She handed me an SR-2 Veresk submachine gun and a couple magazines. I strapped myself in beside her as the aircraft rode the bumpy drafts down.

  “I’m going out,” I said. “I want you in the chopper covering me.”

  “I should—” she began.

  “In the chopper, covering me,” I said emphatically. “If it gets too hot, you bug out and we’ll rendezvous at the Pakistan border. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  “Floyd is moving away from us,” Feo said.

  The chopper banked and I saw the solitary shooter running through the trees.

  “He thinks we’re hostile,” I remarked. “Get us as close as you can.”

  There was the sound of a hailstorm beneath us and I felt the rattle of bullets hitting the fuselage. I looked down to see masked, camouflaged shooters firing at us.

  “Get ready,” Feo said. “He’ll be at your twelve when we touch down.”

  Feo banked hard and the bird dropped like a stone. The trees loomed close to the window and the ground raced upward worryingly quickly. Then there was a sudden roar from the engines, a surge, and a moment of inertia. We were down.

  “Go now!” Feo yelled.

  Dinara opened the door and I unclipped and jumped out. I could see Joshua Floyd directly ahead, racing through the trees. We’d pulled ahead of him and he was shocked to see the helicopter, and changed direction, running north.

  “Captain Floyd!” I yelled, but my voice was lost beneath the rotors.

  “Jack,” Dinara said, touching me on the shoulder.

  She pointed skyward and I registered what she’d seen: two heavily armed Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopters, their distinctive silhouettes black against the blue sky. We had two minutes at most.

  I started chasing Floyd. Bullets peppered the trees around me, filling the air with splinters.

  “Floyd!” I yelled. “Captain Floyd!”

  He glanced back. Maybe it was the use of his name or my accent that caused him to hesitate.

  “Beth sent me,” I shouted. “She sent me to get you out.”

  That stopped him dead. I raced to catch up as bullets zinged around us.

  “Who are you?” Floyd asked.

  “My name is Jack Morgan. I run a detective agency and I’m here to help.”

  The shooters were closing on us in an arc, their gunfire designed to keep us pinned down. The camouflaged men were less than a hundred yards away. In the sky, the heavily armed Hinds were getting closer.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing Floyd and pulling him east.

  We were close to the base of a huge mountain. As we ran, I could almost have reached out and touched the cliff face that supported the vast peak. My plan was to circle around the GlobalRanger and approach it from the south. Floyd fired short bursts in the direction of the men closing on us. I stayed close to him, to avoid being picked off. There was little chance any of the attackers would risk killing their target, but they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me if they were given the opportunity.

  I ran hard, my lungs burning. I saw the GlobalRanger chopper rotors whirring through the trees as we raced forward. I caught a glimpse of Feo in the cockpit, distracted and yelling at Dinara. She was leaning out of the door on the other side of the chopper and had her back to us. Her head was darting one way and then another, and I could tell she was looking for us. I saw her turn to Feo and bark a reply. He grimaced and shook his head before looking to the north.

  I followed his eye line and saw the two Hinds bearing down on the GlobalRanger.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled, but we were too far away for them to hear me over the noise of the rotors.

  The Hind was equipped with two launchers, each of which was capable of delivering thirty-two high-explosive rockets. I watched in horror as first one rocket, then a couple of seconds later another, flew from the lead Hind. The projectiles tore forward, leaving trails of fire and smoke.

  “Feo!” I yelled uselessly.

  He had seen them and taken immediate action. The GlobalRanger leaped off the ground and got into the air just moments before the rockets passed beneath it.

  Then realization dawned that both rockets were now heading straight for us.

  I felt Floyd pull me back.

  “Come on!” he yelled.

  I started to move, but outrunning the rockets was simply impossible. In a few seconds they would hit and there was nothing we could do about it.

  CHAPTER 51

  DINARA MOVED ACROSS the cabin as the rockets passed underneath them. The relief she felt as she watched the explosives roar away from them, quickly turned to horror as she saw what was in their path. She watched helplessly as, some three hundred yards away, Jack Morgan and Joshua Floyd went sprinting through the trees, trying to get away from the missiles bearing down on them.

  “Jack!” she screamed.

  The first rocket struck the mountainside. A thunderous explosion and shockwave buffeted the rising aircraft. Dinara cried as a fireball obscured her view of Jack and Floyd. She prayed it was sufficiently to their east not to have harmed them, but if they had survived, they were lost to flames and smoke. Any hopes she had that they might survive were obliterated when the second rocket hit the mountain instants later, striking the cliff directly ahead of where the two men had been. The explosion shook the GlobalRanger and created a huge fireball that consumed the forest for fifty yards around. Nothing in its path could have survived, and Jack and Floyd had been less than a couple of yards from its epicenter when she’d last seen them.

  She watched the angry flames burn white hot, tears running down her face.

  “Feo!” she cried in anguish. “Jack!”

  “I know,” he replied grimly. “Strap in, we need to get out of here.”

  She staggered to the co-pilot’s seat in a raw state of shock and slumped down. She absently reached for the four-point harness and clipped in. She couldn’t shake the horrific images of Jack’s death from her mind.

  Feo pulled the chopper into a steep climb, and accelerated away from the chaotic scene. Dinara glanced down as they banked. She saw the flames recede, leaving nothing but charred devastation and clouds of smoke in their wake. All around the blast zone, camouflaged attackers who hadn’t been killed in the explosion staggered as though badly injured. Everything caught in the blast radius had been incinerated.

  Fresh tears came as Dinara realized Jack had truly gone. They had failed in the worst possible way.

  Feo took them up toward the blue sky as the two Mil Mi-24 flying tanks set down and camouflaged men jumped out to attend to their injured comrades.

  Dinara watched them with rising anger. She burned with hatred for them and longed for revenge.

  Feo touched her arm reassuringly. A moment later they banked around the shoulder of the mountain and left the horror far behind.

  CHAPTER 52

  “VICTOR ANDREYEV IS a Russian venture capitalist with interests in shipping, energy, chemicals, and armaments,” Mo-bot said. “He served five years in the Russian Army and rose to the rank of colonel.”

  “Intelligence asset?” Sci asked.

  “That would be my guess,” Mo-bot replied.

  Justine pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. Private had almost been ruined going up against a rogue Russian intelligence plot in Moscow. This investigation was getting out of control, and she couldn’t help but think of Jack facing these people out there in Afghanistan. She leaned over to get a better view of Mo-bot’s laptop. They were seated around the board table in the main meeting room on the thirty-sixth floor of Private New York’s headquarters. They were facing the windows and the blackout blinds were down, so there was no chance prying eyes could see the content Mo-bot was sharing.

  “We traced the billfold to the penthouse apartment,” she went on.

  “Figures,” Sci remarked. “Looking at his profile, he’s definitely a penthouse kind of guy. Top of the heap.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Jessie asked.

  In Jack’s absence, they were looking to Justine for leadership.

  “Put a tail on him,” she replied. “Find out where he goes, who he talks to.”

  “What about counterintelligence?” Mo-bot asked.

  Justine nodded. “We should notify the Bureau. Share what you’ve found. If there’s an intelligence cell operating in New York, they need to know about it.”

  “Send an anonymous tip to Max Pimenta. Tell him to look into it himself,” Jessie said. “He’s a good man.”

  The phone on the console that stood against the back wall rang. Jessie rose to answer it.

  “Do you think you can map out his business interests?” Justine asked Mo-bot while Jessie took the call.

  Mo-bot nodded. “I have some of it already. I can complete the picture.”

  “Yes… Yes, I’ll just get her,” Jessie said, and Justine registered the change in her tone immediately. “Justine, it’s Dinara. She’s on the satellite phone. I can’t get any sense out of her. She says she wants to talk to you.”

  Justine rose slowly. Somewhere deep within, she felt a dark dread building.

  She crossed the room and took the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Justine. It’s me—Dinara.”

  Justine didn’t need to hear any more. She knew from Dinara’s cracking, tearful tone, the croak in her voice.

  “No,” Justine said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” Dinara replied. Justine heard shuddering sobs. “There was nothing we could do. Nothing. I’m so sorry.”

  Justine felt a hand on her arm.

  “What’s happened?” she heard a voice ask, without registering whose it was.

  The room shrank away to nothing, as though the foulest darkness had oozed from the receiver and consumed her world. There was no shape, no form, no meaning.

  “No!” Justine cried. “Bring him back! Bring him back to me!”

  “I can’t,” Dinara replied. “There was an explosion. Jack and Joshua…”

  “No,” Justine said. “No. This isn’t real.”

  It didn’t feel real. She was alone. Utterly alone in a void. Holding a phone that connected her to somewhere she despised. A source of misery.

  Justine dropped the receiver and heard it clatter against something. Tears flowed, and she heard herself gasping for air, sobbing, but it was all so distant, as though it was happening to someone else. She was aware of ghosts clustering around her, trying to soothe away the pain, but they were shades, existing on a different plane. They couldn’t touch her grief, nor do anything to make it better.

  She was aware she kept repeating the same phrase over and over.

  “He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s dead. Jack’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 53

  “THEY HAVE MY name,” Victor Andreyev said. “They seem competent.”

  He was standing on the rooftop of the gray stone building on the northwest corner of Madison and East 26th Street, diagonally across the broad intersection from Private New York’s headquarters, using an Optika Blu, a Russian handheld version of Camero’s XAVER LR 80 field imaging system, which enabled him to see what was happening inside the meeting room. Taras Gurin, the cunning psychopath headquarters had assigned to be his head of operations in America, held a directional microphone that had picked up almost all of the conversation that had taken place between Jack Morgan’s team.