Floyd and I wore black ski masks and leather gloves. I had laid a range of shop tools on the charred remains of a table. I wandered over to them and made sure Rick got a good look.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked. His voice trembled with the effort of his false bravado.

  He wasn’t as smart as I had hoped. Pentagon personnel should know not to ask that question, and he really shouldn’t be doing anything to reinforce a price value in the minds of kidnappers. Fortunately for him, we weren’t kidnappers. We were the embodiment of justice, and this was his reckoning.

  We had taken a gamble that the Pentagon mole hadn’t been told about what had happened in Afghanistan when Mo-bot called the number she’d found in the satellite phone’s registry. Her suspicions about it had been correct.

  Floyd had claimed to be one of the Russian paramilitaries and did a pretty passable accent. Speaking in broken English, he kept the mole on the line with bogus intelligence reports and requests for clarification. That bought just enough time for Mo-bot to bypass Pentagon countersurveillance measures and pinpoint his location. The lazy, arrogant fool hadn’t even stepped out of his office to take the call. Rick Ferguson was program manager of the Advanced Field Technologies Group for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That put him at the nexus of a great deal of high-level military intelligence on development and field deployment.

  “This place will be swarming with cops within minutes,” Rick informed us.

  He was overcompensating, and beneath the bravado was a vast reservoir of fear. We would feed it.

  I picked up a pair of pliers, saying nothing as I moved slowly through the ash and charred wreckage toward him. He was bound to a chair and fought against the restraints as I came near.

  “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you come near me!”

  The thin veneer of bravado cracked and flaked. It was time to burn it away entirely.

  “I’m going to break a finger for each lie you tell,” I said. “I’ll start with the pinkie on your left hand and work across.”

  “No!” Rick yelled. “No! Help!”

  “Help?” Floyd sneered mockingly. “Help!” He closed on Rick with a snarl. “No one can hear you.”

  He fought hard but his hand was bound too tightly. I placed the jaws of the pliers around his left pinkie finger. I squeezed it until I saw him grimace.

  “Ahh! Ahhhhhh!”

  He stopped struggling and settled into a grudging docility.

  “Please, just tell me what you want.”

  “Who do you work for?” I asked.

  “The Department of Defense,” he replied hurriedly, glancing at his finger nervously.

  “I’m not going to break it, because that isn’t a lie. But there’s another truth, which is the answer I’m looking for. Who else do you work for?”

  I squeezed again and he winced.

  “They’ll kill me.”

  “They are not your most pressing problem,” I replied. “You’re in a new world now. One where you live minute by minute. Worry about what we’re going to do.”

  I squeezed harder and he cried out. The desk jockey had never experienced anything like this.

  “Please…”

  “A name,” I snapped.

  “Victor Andreyev,” he replied. “He’s SVR. I report to him.”

  The SVR—Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki—was Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, headquartered in the Yasenevo district on the outskirts of Moscow. A building I knew well, having infiltrated it the last time I’d been in the city.

  “Good,” I said. “We know about Victor, so we know that’s the truth.”

  Rick seemed surprised we already knew, but not as surprised as I was to hear confirmation he was an SVR operative. I’d suspected it because of the resources being thrown at this operation, but it brought back painful memories of the last time I’d been up against that institution. I’d lost a very good man.

  “A team was sent to capture a pilot in Afghanistan,” I said. “Tell me why.”

  “They were going to try to abduct him here, in the US, but it was too risky. A missing Special Forces operative would spark a full court press from law enforcement and the DOD, so I persuaded them we could set a trap somewhere lawless and out of the way. I made sure he was assigned to pilot the Afghan mission.”

  “And the pilot’s wife and children,” I added, “why have they been targeted?”

  “They’re just leverage,” Rick admitted. “An insurance policy. To make sure he gives them what they want.”

  Floyd moved quickly—far too quickly for me to stop him. He swung at Rick, and his big gloved fist connected with the man’s jaw. There was a painful crack. Rick howled.

  “My jaw!” he said, although it sounded like “Muh daw!”

  I turned to Floyd and shook my head, even though part of me thought it might not hurt Rick to know there was someone in the room who really wanted to make him suffer.

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Rick replied.

  I repositioned the pliers and squeezed.

  “Ahhhhh!” he cried. “I swear I don’t know! They wouldn’t give me that kind of information. It’s not something I need to know.”

  His words were distorted and pained, but I could still make them out.

  “What do they want the pilot for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he cried.

  I squeezed. Torture went against my personal beliefs, and breaking his finger was a line I wasn’t prepared to cross, but I could get close.

  “Ahhhhh! Please! I don’t know what they want. I heard them talking about a bull. That’s all I know.”

  Floyd stepped forward again and swung a one-two jab and cross that knocked Rick unconscious.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  He removed his mask, and I did likewise.

  “I think I know,” he said. “I think I know what they want.”

  CHAPTER 77

  FLOYD AND I dragged Rick outside to the Airbus H125 helicopter that stood in a clearing just behind the bar. Justine was waiting beside the aircraft. She didn’t like wet work, but knew it was a necessary part of the job. In this particular case, when a mother and children’s lives were at stake, I could tell she was prepared to overlook some excesses. There was no sympathy in her eyes as we dragged Rick into the aircraft.

  “Where to now?” Justine asked.

  “I need to go to the Catskills,” Floyd said, and Justine and I exchanged surprised glances. “I think I might know what they’re after. It has something to do with a mission I carried out in Belarus.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I can’t talk about it.”

  I sighed. I respected his commitment to the oath of secrecy he’d taken, but his family’s lives were at stake. There was little I could do, though, short of taking him into the bar for interrogation.

  “We need to make a stop first,” I said. “Drop off the trash.” I nodded at Rick.

  I produced my phone and made a call that was answered within three rings.

  “Hello?” a voice said.

  “Secretary Carver, please,” I replied.

  “And you are?”

  “Jack Morgan.”

  “Hold, please,” the voice said, and the line fell silent.

  “Jack Morgan,” Eli Carver said a few moments later. “What earns me the privilege of two calls in a week?”

  “I found your mole, Mr. Secretary,” I said.

  I couldn’t see him, but I knew I now had the secretary of state’s full attention.

  “A DARPA program manager called Rick Ferguson,” I revealed.

  “I know that guy,” Carver replied with a touch of irritation in his voice. “You got proof?”

  “A taped confession. It won’t hold up in court, but it will give him nowhere to go when your people get to work,” I said. We’d had a Dictaphone recording the whole time.

  “You going to bring him in?”

  “No, Mr. Secretary,” I replied. “Where there is one mole, there might be others.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “We’re heading for Denville. Call the local police department and tell them we’ll be dropping off a high-value suspect. We’ll deliver Ferguson and the recording of his confession. They can hold him until your people are able to collect him.”

  “And you?”

  “It’s better you don’t know, Mr. Secretary,” I replied. “I can tell you we recovered Joshua Floyd. When the time comes, he’ll have some interesting testimony.”

  “Are you planning trouble, Jack?” Carver asked.

  I hesitated. “Like I say, it’s better you don’t know, Mr. Secretary.”

  “Is this going to be one of those conversations I need to deny ever having had?”

  I stayed silent.

  “Well, thank you anyway, Jack,” he said.

  “We’ll speak soon, Mr. Secretary,” I responded before hanging up.

  “Denville?” Justine asked.

  “It’s a small police department. I don’t think Carver will ask them to try to hold us, but just in case he does, I picked somewhere the odds would be in our favor.”

  “And I thought I was paranoid,” Floyd observed.

  “The word you’re looking for is careful,” I replied with a smile.

  We climbed into the chopper and within minutes the ground was falling away as I took us skyward.

  CHAPTER 78

  BETH HAD MANAGED to calm the children and get them to sleep. There were three cots arranged against the back wall of the barn, away from the space where she’d been tortured. She dragged two of the army surplus beds close together and positioned them so the children could sleep beside each other. While they lay there, whimpering and crying, she’d ignored her burning arms and stroked their hair, soothing them to sleep. The children gave her focus and purpose and stopped her from dwelling on the trauma she’d experienced.

  When the children were deep asleep, Beth used a bucket of water and a small towel to clean herself up, and changed into some old jeans and a gray sweater that just about fit her. The sweater was moth-eaten and ragged, but it kept the chill at bay.

  She explored the barn, which was about the size of two tennis courts. Above her head, struts ran between the walls and supported the A-frame steel roof. She checked the walls: corrugated steel that ran beneath the concrete floor line. The only door was a huge solid steel double gate that was designed for vehicle access. She tried the catch and found it was locked.

  “Don’t waste your time,” a voice yelled from the other side.

  She and the children were being guarded, which meant an escape through the front door would be unlikely to succeed. Beth looked around and her eyes settled on the pipe she’d been suspended from. About three inches in diameter, it came down from the roof about ten feet away from the door and ran the length of the barn, before disappearing through the back wall. Smaller pipes ran off it at regular intervals and were capped by sprinklers. A fire system perhaps? Or a way of feeding animals? Either way, the central pipe was sufficiently thick to make a good weapon.

  Beth hurried to the other end of the barn. Ignoring the pain in her arms, she lifted her cot as quietly as possible. The children stirred, but didn’t wake.

  She carried the cot to a point where the pipe connected to one of the sprinklers, and set it down directly beneath the roughly welded joint. She fought her aching body, stepped onto the cot, reached up for the pipe, and got to work.

  CHAPTER 79

  WE HADN’T NEEDED to worry about the cops in Denville. I set the chopper down on the baseball field next to the police department and three officers emerged from the building. I powered down the engine and Justine, Floyd, and I climbed out to meet the officers. The leader of the trio, a gruff middle-aged sergeant, said they’d been waiting for us after receiving a call from the Pentagon. They’d been instructed to hold a man who was about to be delivered to them.

  “We’ve been trying to guess what kind of perp gets the royal treatment,” the sergeant asked. “You got bin Laden’s brother in there or something?”

  “We’ve got a traitor,” I replied. “A man who sold out this country. Make sure you lock him up tight.”

  The sergeant’s eyes narrowed and his mood soured. “Ain’t nothing lower than treason.”

  The officers dragged Rick Ferguson from the chopper and watched as we took to the sky.

  I flew north for thirty minutes, heading deep into the Catskill Mountains. Below us, the bumps in the snow-covered terrain became large distinct folds, and the mountains soared as we flew deeper into the remote wilderness. Narrow roads and tracks criss-crossed the landscape. Floyd knew every landmark and directed me farther and farther into the mountains. Finally, a few miles north of Rondout Reservoir and Sundown Forest, he pointed to a clearing that I could just about make out in the faint moonlight.

  “Set us down there,” he said.

  I circled around and began my descent.

  “What’s down there?” I asked.

  Floyd had been cagey about our destination so far.

  “Beth and I had a go-to place in case she and the kids ever needed to lie low,” he replied. “Somewhere they’d be safe if I was ever captured. At least, it was supposed to be.”

  “But you have another one?” I guessed.

  And when I looked down, to the north of the clearing I saw hints of a structure through the snow-covered trees.

  Floyd nodded. “Like you said, it isn’t paranoia. It’s about being careful.”

  The clearing wasn’t much bigger than a baseball diamond. I took us down slowly. When we were on the ground, I powered down the H125 and we stepped out into the brutal chill of a Catskill winter’s night.

  “I bought this place using a dummy corporation a few years back,” Floyd said as we trudged through the snow. “Land here is cheap. Picked up most of this side of the mountain and the cabin. It’s somewhere we can come if things ever go real bad.”

  He took us through a gap in the trees and we followed a trail north of the clearing. I saw a small cabin ahead, tucked almost out of sight. It was the kind of place someone could disappear.

  “What do you think they’re after?” Justine asked.

  “Three months ago, I flew a team into Belarus. We were tasked with stealing data and documents from the home of Konstantin Roslov, a Russian SVR operative who was believed to be coordinating operations across Europe.”

  “And?” I asked, the word hanging before me in a cloud as I exhaled.

  “I went in with the team, probably shouldn’t have,” Floyd replied. “But Roslov wasn’t there and the place was empty, so it was a safe target. We were under orders to make it look like a random burglary. So I took something.”

  “Spoils of war,” I remarked.

  Floyd nodded. “It’s in this cabin,” he said, pointing toward the tiny building.

  Trees towered over it, with trunks like the legs of giants tightly packed as far as the eye could see. Shutters covered the cabin windows. Floyd pulled back a panel by the front door to reveal a key safe. He rolled the tumblers, opened the safe, and pulled out two keys. He used them to unlock the front door and let us in.

  He picked up a battery-operated lamp and switched it on. We walked through a small hallway into a rustic living room. A couple of couches covered in blankets faced a large fireplace, and historical military paintings hung on the wood-paneled walls. Floyd went to a sideboard that was covered in trophies and mementos and picked up a brass statue, a small bronze replica of the Charging Bull that graces Wall Street. About ten inches long and six high, the figure was a perfect scale copy of the famous original, which symbolizes a strong financial market on the rise. The original figure, by Arturo Di Modica, is known the world over.

  “This was on Roslov’s desk,” Floyd said. “I thought he was having a pop at American capitalism, so I liked the idea of taking it away from him.”

  He handed it to me, and I turned it over and examined it closely. “You take anything else?”

  Floyd shook his head. “The other guys did, but not me. I didn’t have a gear bag. I was just the pilot. There must have been hidden cameras in the place. They must have filmed us to know that it was me who took the Bull.”

  There was nothing unusual about the bronze figure. Not as far as I could see. “What about the documents and data?”

  “I think they got something,” Floyd said. “But I don’t get told that kind of information.”

  “We need to get this into the lab,” I said to Justine. “Find out why people are prepared to murder for it.”

  CHAPTER 80

  BETH HADN’T BEEN able to break the main pipe—it was too strong—but she had snapped off a two-foot section of the thinner sprinkler feed. A little more than an inch wide, the pipe wouldn’t be much use as a weapon, but it had potential as a tool. Beth had set to work using the jagged broken end to gouge away the concrete by the back wall. She’d been at it for over an hour and had created a hole beneath the corrugated-steel wall that was sufficiently large to put her hand in. She felt cold earth on the other side and her heart leaped.

  Given the time, she knew she could dig her way out.

  Every fiber of her being wanted sleep, and her muscles ached with fatigue, but she kept digging. Whenever she felt as though she couldn’t keep going, she looked at her babies, who were still asleep despite the glare of the strip lights that hung high above them.

  Maria and Danny were all the incentive Beth needed to force herself on. She would die for her kids, so pain and torturous labor were nothing in comparison. She kept working and forced the opening wider, a millimeter at a time. She groaned as she stood up to take a short break and stretch, but her rest was short-lived.

  She heard an exterior bolt being drawn back and hurried over to her cot, dragging it to conceal the hole. She jumped into bed, tucked the length of pipe beneath her, and pulled a thin blanket up to her neck. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep as the door swung open.