Primary Command

“Now to matters a little more pressing. The things we didn’t talk about at the briefing are as follows. This mission comes straight from the Oval Office. The president took it away from the Pentagon and the CIA because he thinks there’s a leak somewhere. If the Russians manage to crack open this captured CIA guy, who knows what’s gonna come out of him. We are looking at a large potential setback, things need to move very fast, and privately, the president is furious.”

“That’s why we’re on our own?”

Don raised a finger. “We have friends. You’re never quite on your own in this business.”

“Mark Swann can…”

Don put a finger to his lips. He pointed around the room and raised his eyebrows. Then he shrugged. The message was: let’s not talk about what Mark Swann can do. No sense sharing that information with the people in the gallery.

Luke nodded and changed direction mid-sentence. “…get us access to all kinds of databases. Lexis Nexis, that kind of thing. He’s a madman with a Google search.”

“Yeah,” Don said. “I think he’s got a subscription to the New York Times online. He says he does, anyway.”

“Who was the guy from Homeland Security?”

Don shrugged. “Ron Begley? Desk jockey. He worked at Treasury when September eleventh happened. Fraud, counterfeiting. When they created Homeland, he switched over. Seems to be stumbling and fumbling his way up the ladder. I don’t think he’s a problem for us.”

Don stared at Luke for a long moment.

“What do you think of this mission?” he said.

Luke didn’t look away. “I think it’s a deathtrap, to be honest with you. It scares me. We’re supposed to drop into Russia undetected, rescue a bunch of guys…”

“Three guys,” Don said. “We’re allowed to kill them, if that’s easier.”

Luke wouldn’t even entertain that thought.

“Rescue a bunch of guys,” he repeated, “torch a submarine, and get back out alive? That’s a tall order.”

“Who would you send on it?” Don said. “If you were me?”

Luke shrugged. “Who do you think?”

“Do you want it?”

Luke didn’t answer right away. He thought of Becca and baby Gunner, in the cabin just across the Chesapeake on the Eastern Shore. God, that little baby…

“I don’t know.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Don said. “When I was a commander in Delta, a bright-eyed young guy came in. He had just qualified. Came out of the 75th Rangers, like you did, so he wasn’t green. He’d been around the block. But he had an energy, this kid, as though it was all new to him. Some guys come into Delta and they’re already grizzled as hell at the age of twenty-four. Not this guy.

“I tapped him for a mission right away. I was still going on missions myself in those days. I was deep into my forties by then, and the brass at JSOC wanted to put me out to pasture, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Not yet. I wouldn’t send my men into places where I wouldn’t go myself.

“We parachuted into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Way upriver, out beyond anything resembling law and order. It was a night drop, of course, and the pilot put us in the water. We crawled up out of those swamps looking like we’d all been dipped in shit. There was a warlord up there, called himself Prince Joseph. He called his ragtag militia Heaven’s…”

“Heaven’s Army,” Luke said. Of course he knew the story. And of course he knew all about the new Delta recruit Don was describing.

“Three hundred child soldiers,” Don said. “Eight men went up there, eight American soldiers, no outside support of any kind, and put bullets in the brains of Prince Joseph and all his lieutenants. A perfect operation. A humanitarian mission, with no ulterior motives but to do the right thing. Bang! Decapitation strike.”

Luke took a deep breath. The night had been terrifying and exhilarating all wrapped into one adrenaline rush of a package.

“The international aid societies came in and did what they could with the children, repatriated them, fed them, loved them, reeducated them to be human again, if that was even possible. And I kept tabs. Many of them eventually made it back to their home villages.”

Don smiled. No, he positively beamed.

“In the morning, I lit up a victory cigar along the bank of the mighty Congo. I was still smoking them in those days. My men were with me, and I was proud of every single one of them. I was proud to be an American. But my newbie was quiet, thoughtful. So I asked him if he was all right. And you know what he said?”

Now Luke smiled. He sighed and shook his head. Don was talking about him. “He said, ‘All right? Are you kidding me? I live for this.’ That’s what he said.”

Don pointed at him. “That’s right. So I’ll ask you again. Do you want this mission?”

Luke stared at Don for another long moment. Don was a drug dealer, Luke realized. A pusher. He sold you on a feeling, a rush, that you could only get one way.

An image of Becca holding Gunner again flashed across the screen in his mind. Everything had changed when that baby was born. He remembered Becca giving birth. She was more beautiful in those moments than he had ever seen her.

And they were planning to build a life together, the three of them.

What was Becca going to think about this mission? When he sold her the last one, when she was about to give birth, she had been upset. And that one was an easy sell—just a quick trip to Iraq to arrest a guy. Of course, it turned into much more than that, full-on combat and the rescue of the president’s daughter, but Becca had only learned about it after the fact.

Here, she would know the deal going in: Luke was going to infiltrate Russia and attempt to rescue three prisoners. He shook his head.

There was no way he could tell her that.

“Luke?” Don said.

Luke nodded. “Yeah. I want it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

3:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Queen Anne’s County, Maryland

Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay

“You’re home early.”

Luke looked at his mother-in-law, Audrey, taking his time, soaking her in. She had deep-set eyes with irises so dark, they seemed almost black. She had a sharp nose, like a beak. She had tiny bones and a thin frame. She reminded him of a bird—a crow, or maybe a vulture. And yet, in her own way, she was attractive.

She was a well-preserved fifty-nine now, and Luke was aware that as a young woman in the late 1960s, she had done some modeling for newspaper and magazine advertisements. As far as he knew, it was the only work she had ever done.

She had been born into an arm of the Outerbridge family, vastly wealthy New York City and New Jersey landowners since before the United States became a country. Her husband, Lance, came from the equally old-money St. John family of New England lumber barons.

As a general rule, Audrey St. John frowned upon work. She didn’t understand it, and she especially didn’t understand why someone would do the kind of dangerous, dirty work that occupied Luke Stone’s time. She seemed continually flabbergasted that her own daughter, Rebecca St. John, would marry someone like Luke.

Audrey and Lance had never accepted him as their son-in-law. They had been a toxic influence on this relationship since well before he and Becca exchanged their vows. Her presence here was going to make it that much harder to talk to Becca about this latest assignment.

“Hi, Audrey,” Luke said, trying to sound cheerful.