I’m driving a few miles over the speed limit when I see flashing blue lights ahead. I slow down some.

  Elizabeth Deacon sees them too. “Police vehicles,” she says. “You intend to stop?”

  Two New Hampshire State Police cruisers roar past us.

  “No,” I say.

  About ten seconds later, more blue lights appear. They’re on light poles, secured to the bumpers of tan-colored army Humvees. They go by quickly as well.

  Deacon turns to watch them pass and says, “Active-duty army or National Guard responding with local police? Never happens, not ever, unless there’s been some sort of emergency declaration.”

  “Maybe there has been and we just don’t know it. I could turn around and follow the Humvees, ask the drivers when they stop.”

  Deacon shifts in the seat. “John, stop trying to lighten up the mood. It’s not working.”

  “Says you,” I say.

  Much later, in a far corner booth at a McDonald’s on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I’m having coffee with Deacon, who has an odd habit of tearing the brown paper napkins into long strips. She’s got a pile of the strips in front of her.

  The place is busy with travelers stopping for food, coffee, and bathroom breaks, and there are three flat-screen TVs hanging from the ceiling, broadcasting the troubled news of the world.

  “It’s been at least four hours,” I say. “We’ve been monitoring the radio news stations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and there hasn’t been one report of a gun battle breaking out in Healy, New Hampshire.”

  She nods and picks up another napkin.

  I go on. “We both saw state police cruisers and army Humvees responding to the scene. What does that tell you?”

  Deacon focuses on the paper napkin. “You tell me.”

  “What—is this an exam, Professor Deacon?”

  She doesn’t answer. Rip, rip, rip.

  “It means that we’re up against opponents, either foreign or domestic, who have great resources and focus,” I say. “And they’ve been proving what Mel told me: These terror attacks, from snipers to bombings, are connected to what we saw in Afghanistan. And our skilled and determined opponents have eliminated all the witnesses to that except you and me.” I reach over, grab her napkin strips, crumple them up, and toss them to the side of the table. “Got your attention now?” I ask.

  Deacon says, “I’ve been paying attention. I can multitask. And for what it’s worth, I agree with your analysis.”

  “Good,” I say. “Hope you agree with what I’m about to say next. We’ve been spinning our wheels, going around and around, trying to figure things out here. All that’s gotten us is a few scraps of information and some dead companions. We need to go back to the ’Stan, get to the root of everything.”

  She gives me a hard stare. “I hate to mention the obvious, John, but there aren’t many Western flights going to Kabul nowadays.”

  I shake my head. “Don’t want to go to Kabul. We need to get back to that base in Tajikistan, find our way across the border, and recon the place. Locate the village that was bombed. Talk to any witnesses that might still be living. If that bombing and our presence there is the source of our troubles, that’s where we’ve got to go.”

  She reaches for another napkin, stops, pulls her hand back. “Fine. How do we get there?”

  I pick up my coffee. “Why, through you, of course. The mighty CIA. You’ve recovered Russian subs, overthrown governments from Guatemala to Iran, smuggled people across various borders, and accomplished plenty of other things that have never been brought to light. Getting the two of us to Tajikistan with arms and communications should be a piece of cake.”

  “I’m only a consultant.”

  I sip my coffee. “So get consulting and get us over there. As soon as you can.”

  “You in a hurry to get to a third-world country?” she asks.

  I point to a TV showing a CNN report of a car bombing in Seattle. There’s smoke billowing up, and firefighters, surrounded by heavily armed police officers, are hosing down the burning vehicles.

  “No,” I say. “I’m in a hurry to get over there and do our job. If we wait much longer, we’ll be forced to stay there as refugees, because there won’t be a United States to come back to.”

  Chapter

  75

  Bree Stone wakes up and instinctively reaches over to touch Alex before it all comes back to her—her Alex, her man, is still in the ICU. She rolls over and checks the time. It’s 2:10 a.m.

  What woke her up?

  A creak of a floorboard, and she sees a tall shape silhouetted in the bedroom doorway. Before she can react, her stepson Damon says, “Bree?”

  She sits up. “What is it? Did the hospital call? Is something wrong with your dad?”

  He steps in and she sees he’s carrying something. A pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun. In most homes in DC, seeing one’s college-age stepson carrying a weapon would be frightening. Not here, not now. Because of the lives they live, she and Alex have made sure all the children respect firearms, and they’ve taught the oldest, Damon, how to use them.

  “No, Bree, nothing like that, but there’s somebody out there. I don’t like it.”

  “Okay, stay right here.”

  She gets out of bed, pulls on a robe, and slides her iPhone into one of the robe’s pockets. She opens the upper drawer to the nightstand and a little light comes on, illuminating the interior, which holds a small gun case with a pressure switch in the center. She pushes her thumb down and the scanner recognizes her thumbprint; the lid swings up to reveal a Ruger .357 revolver. She picks up the loaded weapon and goes to Damon. Quietly, she says, “What’s going on?”

  He motions for her to follow him into the dark living room. When her eyes adjust, she sees that her stepson is wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His hands are still firmly holding the shotgun.

  “I was hungry, came down to the kitchen, and I was going to open the refrigerator door, but I stopped. I don’t know why, but I got this feeling I didn’t want to open the door and light everything up.”

  “I see,” she says as she slowly walks into the kitchen. “What then?”

  “I went to the porch door. Kept the lights off. Saw someone across the street, just standing there, looking at the house. Then he walked off. A couple of minutes later, he came back to the sidewalk. Then he ducked into the Sanchezes’ backyard and headed this way.”

  Bree looks out into the street. There’s the familiar sight of streetlights and sounds of traffic and a siren wailing out there somewhere.

  “The car is gone,” she says. Two operatives from her security firm had been parked in a dark blue GMC sedan up the street.

  “Yeah, Bree, I saw that too. Didn’t like it. That’s when I got the shotgun and went to wake you up.”

  She waits, thinks, revolver heavy in her hand.

  “Should we call the cops?” her stepson asks.

  A slight noise comes from the kitchen.

  She touches Damon’s shoulder, and the two of them go through the dining room into the kitchen.

  Another bit of noise.

  Damon touches Bree and points to the door that opens onto their backyard. In the dim glow of a light above the stove, Bree sees the knob rotate left, stop, then rotate right.

  “Bree?” Damon whispers.

  She points to the doorway to the dining room, puts her mouth up to his ear, and whispers, “Get over there, take cover. Aim at the center of the door. I shoot first, you shoot second, then you go upstairs and call the cops.”

  He nods, steps back. Bree moves forward, kneels down behind the small round kitchen table, and pulls two chairs over to give her some cover.

  The doorknob turns one more time.

  Then nothing.

  She’s holding the revolver in the approved two-handed grip, and she takes a deep breath, lets it out, waits. Whoever’s on the other side of that door looking to break into her home and cause her family harm, well, he’s in for one big friggin’ surprise.

  The sound of her phone ringing in her robe pocket makes her jump and nearly drop the Ruger. It rings again and she digs it out and decides to answer it so at least there’ll be an earwitness to whatever happens next. She whispers, “Yes?”

  A strong and familiar voice on the other end of the call nearly makes her sob in relief.

  “Hey, Bree, it’s John,” he says. “You and Alex change the locks again?”

  Chapter

  76

  I’m sitting at the small table in Bree’s kitchen drinking coffee and eating scrambled eggs and toast. “I hope I didn’t wake up anyone besides you and Damon,” I say.

  Bree pours more coffee into my cup. “Well, Nana Mama and Jannie are at the hospital, keeping a vigil in the waiting room.”

  I glance at my watch. “Nana Mama? For real? I mean…”

  Bree smiles, shakes her head. “I lost that fight a couple of days ago, John.”

  “How’s Alex?”

  Her smile widens. “They took him off the vent this afternoon; he’s breathing on his own now. They moved him out of the ICU and…” Bree’s eyes well up. She can’t go on.

  I squeeze her hand. “What happened to the fake nurse who tried to kill him? Is she talking yet?”

  Bree says, “She died in surgery, they said. But I don’t believe it.”

  Damon comes into the room. “Bree, the two guys from the Bluestone Group are back. You want me to talk to them, find out why they left?”

  I see Bree’s eyes harden and I feel sorry for those two guys, whoever they are.

  “No,” she snaps. “I’ll take care of them later.”

  Damon squeezes my shoulder. “Good to see you, Uncle John. Willow is sleeping upstairs, sharing Ali’s room. I can wake her up and bring her down.”

  Oh my. To hold my girl, hug her, kiss her, and talk to her…

  And then what?

  She’ll be so excited about her daddy coming home, but I’ll have to break her heart because I’m leaving again in a few minutes.

  “No,” I say, voice tight. “Let her sleep. I can’t stay long.”

  Bree says, “John, what’s going on?”

  I look around the kitchen, make a point of touching my ears and my eyes. Bree says, “My people sweep this house twice a day, and they have active detection systems in place for countersurveillance. It’s okay for us to talk.”

  “Good,” I say, and I give her a rundown of what I’ve been up to: the firefights at the motel and the fishing cabin in North Carolina and the events at Gary Bastinelli’s compound. “Bottom line,” I say, “is that whatever happened back in Afghanistan is key to the terror attacks. Forces have eliminated almost everyone who went into Afghanistan two years ago.”

  Damon is sitting quietly in one of the kitchen chairs, face somber. I feel a stab of guilt and responsibility. What kind of nation will he be left with if we can’t stop these terror attacks and the ultimate attack coming soon?

  “Now what?” Bree asks.

  “Simple,” I say. “We’re going back to the scene of the crime, find out what we can.”

  Damon says, “How, Uncle John?”

  “I’m leaving that up to Elizabeth,” I say. “In two hours we’re meeting up again. In the meantime, Bree, I need two favors.”

  “Absolutely,” she says.

  “Don’t be so quick to say yes,” I say. “The first one is the hardest. You need to move everyone from here to another location. Someplace only you’ll know, someplace that can easily be protected. Even I don’t want to know where it is. I’m afraid things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. If they get better.”

  Bree slowly nods. “I don’t like it, but I understand. Your other favor?”

  I take a pen out, scribble a date on a torn-off piece of napkin, slide it over to her. “This,” I say. “On this date, an army general was present at a classified airbase in Tajikistan. At the time the base was called Zulu Field.”

  “You need a rundown?” she asks.

  “Full and complete, as soon as you can.” I scoop up a last forkful of scrambled eggs.

  “It’s that important?” she asks.

  I remember the general talking sharply to Elizabeth Deacon back there in Tajikistan and Elizabeth later claiming she didn’t remember him or the argument.

  “End-of-the-world-as-we-know-it important,” I say.

  Chapter

  77

  Thirty minutes later, I’m still in DC but a world apart from the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Bree and Alex Cross. My transportation is yet another vehicle borrowed from a shopping mall in Massachusetts, a transaction I’m not going to mention to my host. I’m in the book-lined living room of a brick home owned by FBI agent Ned Mahoney, and we’re both sitting in comfortable chairs with glasses of Courvoisier VSOP in our hands. I’m sure that ten-year-old John Sampson, shivering and trying to survive in an abandoned and unheated house, would never have believed he could end up being friends with a man who lives like this.

  Our drinks at this hour seem ridiculously over the top, but considering what’s happened in the past few days, what the hell.

  Mahoney, in a dark blue bathrobe, his muscular, hairy lower legs exposed, says, “Your Harry Maynard doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “I beg to differ, Ned,” I say. “I personally saw the son of a bitch.”

  “I’m sure,” he says. “But once he left his work in Treasury, he dropped off the grid. I did a deep search and found three friends of his over the years—army, FBI, Homeland Security—who did the same thing. No further records, no change of address. Swept clean.”

  “Takes some weight to do that,” I say, warming the cognac tumbler in my hands. “What is the task force saying now? Foreign? Domestic? Some mix of both?”

  “Mostly they’re saying, ‘We don’t rightly know, let’s have another meeting in twelve hours.’” His scowl deepens. “There’s a disease out there that goes deeper than anyone can imagine. You didn’t hear it from me, but there’s a purge going on in the Texas Rangers—they’re firing officers who were conducting unauthorized cross-border raids into Mexico. And our field office in Phoenix is practically empty. Officially, agents have been redeployed to address the current crisis. Unofficially, they’ve been redeployed to a secure area at Luke Air Force Base, while their loyalty is being examined.”

  He shakes his head, takes a sip of the cognac, and says, “You sure as hell have had your hands full the past few days. How are things with Metro Police?”

  “At this point, I don’t know,” I say. “There are bigger games afoot, and if it means me losing my career and pension trying to get this thing solved, I don’t care.”

  “Brave and bold talk, John.”

  “Just talk right now.”

  Ned says, “You’re off to Afghanistan, then. You and Elizabeth Deacon.”

  “Only solution for this magician’s misdirection we’re caught up in,” I say. “The bombings, the snipings, the killings in the United States, are getting our attention, but the real mystery is in the ’Stan.”

  “You need any help?”

  “Elizabeth is handling transport and supplies,” I say. “In one hour, I’ll be picked up at a certain corner. But there is something I need. I want to know about Elizabeth Deacon—her background, where she’s been, and, most of all, if she can be trusted.”

  Ned looks to me.

  I say, “In exchange, whatever we learn over there, I’ll feed it straight to you. God knows we’re running out of time.”

  He runs a thick thumb around the edge of the glass. “The Company doesn’t like it when we poke into its personnel matters.”

  “She says she’s a consultant now.”

  His eyebrows lift at that. “A consultant? You know what that means, right?”

  I nod, take another bracing sip. “CIA consultants do the Agency’s dirty work off the books. If things go wrong or they get captured, the Agency denies knowing anything about them.”

  “Can I offer you some words of advice?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “If you’re with her, make sure things go right, and for God’s sake, don’t get captured.”

  Chapter

  78

  It’s nearing dawn as I make my way into George Washington University Hospital. It’s not even close to visiting hours, but I need to be here, and a pleasant smile and a detective’s badge from the Metro Police can open doors and elevators.

  I go upstairs to the fourth floor and after checking in at the nurses’ station, I make my way to room 409. I’m pleased to see two DC Metro Police officers sitting in chairs flanking the door, both of them wide awake and visibly armed.

  After I show them my shield, the near one says, “Detective Sampson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Er, word is, well…I thought you were suspended,” he says, a touch of embarrassment in his voice.

  I put my shield away. “That’s the official story. I’m still working. Can’t say anything more than that.”

  The other officer says, “That makes sense. Hold on, I’ll need to let you in. There’s two Bluestone Group guys in there and they can be jumpy.”

  He gets up, knocks twice on the door, and says, “Officer Slayton coming in.”

  I hear murmured conversation, and Slayton comes out and says, “You’re clear.”

  “Thanks.”

  Two unsmiling men are sitting in chairs looking at me. They have on jeans and tight black T-shirts and their hair is cut high and tight; they’re instantly recognizable as ex-military.

  We exchange nods and I walk over to Alex.

  There are the usual IVs stuck in his arms, electronic leads running out to monitors, and a urine drainage tube running from underneath the blankets to a bag hanging from the bed. I go up to him. His face is slack, like he’s sleeping away a hard night out with friends; there’s stubble on his cheeks and chin. It’s good to see him breathe on his own, no ventilator tube in sight.