Primary Command

Pity?

“Can we leave them there, and quietly negotiate their release? That’s what I’m asking. Even if it takes some time? Even if it takes a month? Six months? It seems like negotiations would be one way to avoid yet another incident.”

“Sir,” the general said. “I’m afraid we can’t do that. The incident has already happened.”

“Right,” Barrett said.

And just like that, he snapped. It was quiet, like a twig snap. But he’d had enough. The man had contradicted him one time too many. Did he even realize who he was speaking to? Barrett pointed at the general with a long finger.

“The horse is already out of the barn. Is that what you’re telling me? Something has to be done! You and your shadow puppets made a stupid play, out on the edge all by yourselves, and now you want the official, popularly elected government to bail you out of your mess. Again.”

Barrett shook his head. “I’m sick of it, General. How does that sound to you? I can’t stand it anymore. All right? My instinct here is to leave those men with the Russians.”

David Barrett scanned the eyes in the room again. Many of them were looking away now, at the table in front of them, at General Stark, at shiny reports bound with plastic ring binders. Anywhere but at their president. It was as if he had made a particularly ripe-smelling boo-boo in his pants. It was if they knew something he didn’t know.

Stark instantly confirmed the truth of that.

“Mr. President, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but you leave me no choice. One of the men on that crew has had access to intelligence of the most sensitive nature. He has been an integral part of covert operations on three continents for more than a decade. He has encyclopedic knowledge of American spy networks inside Russia and China for starters, not to mention Morocco and Egypt, as well as Brazil, Colombia, and Bolivia. In a few cases, he established those networks himself.”

Stark paused. The room was dead quiet.

“If the Russians torture this man during interrogation, the lives of dozens of people, many of them important intelligence assets, may as well be forfeit. Worse than that, the information those people have access to will in turn become transparent to our opponents, leading to even more deaths. Extensive networks, which we’ve spent years building, could be rolled up in a short period of time.”

Barrett stared at Stark. The gall of these people was breathtaking.

“What was that man doing in the field, General?” Acid dripped from every word.

“As I indicated, sir, Poseidon Research International had been operating for decades under no obvious suspicion. The man was hiding in plain sight.”

“Hiding…” Barrett said slowly. “In plain sight.”

“That’s what it’s called, sir. Yes.”

Barrett said nothing in response. He just stared. And Stark finally seemed to realize that his explanations were not nearly good enough.

“Sir, and again this is with all respect due, I had nothing to do with the planning or execution of this mission. I didn’t know anything about it until this morning. I’m not part of Joint Special Operations Command, nor am I employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. I do, however, have complete faith in the judgment of the men and women who do…”

Barrett waved his hands over his head, as if to say STOP.

“What are our options, General?”

“Sir, we have only one option. We need to rescue those men. As fast as we can, if possible before interrogations begin. We need to scuttle that sub as well, and that’s crucial. But this one individual… we need to either rescue him, or eliminate him. As long as he’s alive and in Russian hands, we have a potential disaster unfolding.”

It was a moment before David Barrett spoke again. The general wanted to rescue the men, which suggested a secret mission. But the reason they were captured in the first place was a security breach. There’s been a security breach, so let’s plan more secret missions? It was circular thinking at its finest. But Barrett hardly felt the need to point that out. Hopefully, it was clear to even the numbest imbecile in this room.

An idea occurred to him then. There was going to be a new mission, and he was going to assign it, but not to the CIA or the Pentagon. They were the ones who had brought this problem about in the first place, and he could hardly trust them to resolve it. It would be stepping on toes to give the job to someone else, but it was clear that they had brought this on themselves.

He smiled inwardly. As painful as this situation was, it also presented him with an opportunity. He had the chance here to seize some of his power back. It was time to take the CIA and the Pentagon, the NSA, the DIA, all of these well-established spy agencies, out of the game.

Knowing what he was about to do made David Barrett feel like the boss again, for the first time in a long while.

“I agree,” he said. “The men should be rescued, and as quickly as possible. And I know exactly how we’re going to do it.”

CHAPTER THREE

10:55 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington, Virginia

Luke Stone stared down the trench at Robby Martinez. Martinez was screaming.

“They’re coming through on all sides!”

Martinez’s eyes were wide. His guns were gone. He had taken an AK-47 from a Taliban, and was bayoneting everyone who came over the wall. Luke watched him in horror. Martinez was an island, a small boat fighting a wave of Taliban fighters.

And he was going under. Then he was gone, under the pile.

It was night. They were just trying to live until daybreak, but the sun refused to rise. The ammunition had run out. It was cold, and Luke’s shirt was off. He had ripped it off in the heat of combat.

Turbaned, bearded Taliban fighters poured over the sandbagged walls of the outpost. They slid, they fell, they jumped down. Men screamed all around him.

A man came over the wall with a metal hatchet.

Luke shot him in the face. The man lay dead against the sandbags, a gaping cavern where his face had just been. The man had no face. But now Luke had the hatchet.

He waded into the fighters surrounding Martinez, swinging wildly. Blood spattered. He chopped at them, sliced them.

Martinez reappeared, somehow still on his feet, stabbing with the bayonet.

Luke buried the hatchet in a man’s skull. It was deep. He couldn’t pull it out. Even with the adrenaline raging through his system, he didn’t have the strength left. He yanked on it, yanked on it… and gave up. He looked at Martinez.

“You okay?”

Martinez shrugged. His face was red with blood. His shirt was saturated with it. Whose blood? His? Theirs? Martinez gasped for air and gestured at the bodies all around them. “I’ve been better than this before. I can tell you that.”

Luke blinked and Martinez was gone.

In his place were row upon row of plain white gravestones, thousands of them, climbing the low green hills into the distance. It was a bright day, sunny and warm.

Somewhere behind him, a lone bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.”

Six young Army Rangers carried the gleaming casket, draped in the American flag, to the open gravesite. Martinez had been a Ranger before he joined Delta. The men looked sharp in their dress greens and their tan berets, but they also looked young. Very, very young, almost like kids playing dress-up.

Luke stared at the men. He could barely think about them. He took a deep breath. He was beat. He couldn’t remember a time—not in Ranger school, not during the Delta selection process, not in war zones—when he had been this tired.

The baby, Gunner, his newborn son… wouldn’t sleep. Not at night, and hardly in the day. So he and Becca weren’t getting any sleep, either. Also, Becca couldn’t seem to stop crying. The doctor had just diagnosed her with postpartum depression, complicated by exhaustion.

Her mom had come out to the cabin to live with them. It wasn’t working. Becca’s mom… where to begin? She had never held a job in her life. She seemed baffled that Luke left every morning to make the long commute to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. She seemed even more baffled that he didn’t reappear until evening.

The rustic cabin, beautifully situated on a small bluff above Chesapeake Bay, had been in her family for a hundred years. She had been going to the cabin since she was a little girl and now acted like she owned the place. In fact, she did own the place.

She was making noises that she, Becca, and the baby should relocate to her house in Alexandria. The hardest part for Luke was that the idea was beginning to seem sensible.

He had started to indulge fantasies of arriving at the cabin after a long day, the place dead silent. He could almost watch himself. Luke Stone opens the old humming refrigerator, grabs a beer, and walks out to the back patio. He’s just in time to catch the sunset. He sits down in an Adirondack chair and…

CRACK!

Luke nearly jumped out of his skin.

Behind him, a seven-man team of riflemen had fired a volley into the air. The sound echoed across the hillsides. Another volley came. Then another.

A twenty-one-gun salute, seven guns at a time. It was an honor that not everyone merited. Martinez was a highly decorated combat veteran in two theaters of war. Dead now, by his own hand. But it didn’t have to be that way.

Three dozen servicemen stood in formation near the grave. A smattering of Delta and former Delta operators stood in civilian clothes further away. You could tell the Delta guys because they looked like rock stars. They dressed like rock stars. Big, broad, in T-shirts and blazers, khaki pants. Full beards, earrings. One guy had a wide, closely cropped Mohawk hairdo.

Luke stood alone, dressed in a black suit, scanning the crowd, looking for something he expected to find: a man named Kevin Murphy.

Near the front was a row of white folding chairs. A middle-aged woman dressed in black was comforted by another woman. Near her, an honor guard made up of three Rangers, two Marines, and an Airman carefully took the flag from the casket and folded it. One of the soldiers lowered to one knee in front of the grieving woman and presented the flag to her.

“On behalf of the president of the United States,” the young Ranger said, his voice breaking, “the United States Army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your son’s honorable and faithful service.”

Luke looked at the Delta guys again. One had broken away and was walking alone up a grassy hillside through the white stones. He was tall and wiry, with blond hair shaved close to his head. He wore jeans and a light blue dress shirt. Thin as he was, he still had broad shoulders and muscular arms and legs. His arms seemed almost too long for his body, like the arms of an elite basketball player. Or a pterodactyl.

The man walked slowly, in no particular hurry, as though he had no pressing engagements. He stared down at the grass as he walked.

Murphy.

Luke left the service and followed him up the hill. He walked much faster than Murphy did, gaining ground on him.

There were a lot of reasons why Martinez was dead, but the clearest reason was he had blown his own brains out in his hospital bed. And someone had brought him a gun with which to do it. Luke was about one hundred percent sure he knew who that someone was.

“Murphy!” he said. “Hold on a minute.”

Murphy looked up and turned around. A moment ago, he had seemed lost in thought, but his eyes had come instantly alert. His face was narrow, birdlike, handsome in its own way.

“Luke Stone,” he said, his voice flat. He didn’t seem pleased to see Luke. He didn’t seem displeased. His eyes were hard. Like the eyes of all Delta guys, there was a cold, calculating intelligence in there.

“Let me walk with you a minute, Murph.”

Murphy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

They fell into step with each other. Luke slowed down to accommodate Murphy’s pace. They walked for a moment without saying a word.

“How are you doing?” Luke said. It was an odd nicety to offer. Luke had gone to war with this man. They had been in combat together a dozen times. With Martinez gone, they were the last two survivors of the worst night of Luke’s life. You would think there’d be some intimacy between them.

But Murphy didn’t give Luke anything. “I’m fine.”

That was all.

No “How are you?” No “Did your baby come?” No “We need to talk about things.” Murphy was not in the mood for conversation.

“I heard you left the Army,” Luke said.

Murphy smiled and shook his head. “What can I do for you, Stone?”

Luke stopped and gripped Murphy’s shoulder. Murphy faced him, shrugging Luke’s hand off.

“I want to tell you a story,” Luke said.

“Tell away,” Murphy said.

“I work for the FBI now,” Luke said. “A small sub-agency within the Bureau. Intelligence gathering. Special operations. Don Morris runs it.”

“Good for you,” Murphy said. “That’s what everybody used to say. Stone is like a cat. He always lands on his feet.”

Luke ignored that. “We have access to information. The best. We get everything. For example, I know you were reported AWOL in early April and were dishonorably discharged about six weeks later.”

Murphy laughed now. “You must have done some digging for that, huh? Sent a mole in to examine my personnel file? Or did you just have them email it to you?”

Luke pressed on. “Baltimore PD has an informer who’s a close lieutenant of Wesley ‘Cadillac’ Perkins, leader of the Sandtown Bloods street gang.”

“That’s nice,” Murphy said. “Police work must be endlessly fascinating.” He turned and started walking again.

Luke walked with him. “Three weeks ago, Cadillac Perkins and two bodyguards were assaulted at three a.m. while entering their car in the parking lot of a nightclub. According to the informer, just one man attacked them. A tall, thin white man. He knocked the two bodyguards unconscious in three or four seconds. Then he pistol-whipped Perkins and relieved him of a briefcase containing at least thirty thousand in cash.”

“Sounds like a daring white man,” Murphy said.

“The white man in question also relieved Perkins of a gun, a distinctive Smith & Wesson .38, with a particular slogan engraved in the grip. Might Makes Right. Of course, neither the attack, nor the theft of the money, nor the loss of the gun was reported to the police. It was just something this informer talked about with his handler.”

Murphy was not looking at Luke.

“What are you telling me, Stone?”

Luke looked ahead and noticed they were approaching the John F. Kennedy gravesite. A crowd of tourists stood along the edge of the two-hundred-year-old flagstones and snapped photos of the fire of the eternal flame.

Luke’s eye wandered to the low granite wall at the edge of the memorial. Just above the wall, he could see the Washington Monument across the river. The wall itself had numerous inscriptions taken from Kennedy’s inaugural address. A famous one caught Luke’s attention:

ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU…

“The gun Martinez used to kill himself had the inscription Might Makes Right on the grip. The Bureau traced the gun and discovered it had previously been used to commit two execution-style murders believed to be associated with the Baltimore drug wars. One was the torture killing of Jamie ‘Godfather’ Young, the previous leader of the Sandtown Bloods.”

BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY.

Murphy shrugged. “All these nicknames. Godfather. Cadillac. Must be hard to keep track of them.”

Luke kept going. “Somehow, that gun found its way from Baltimore all the way south to Martinez’s hospital room in North Carolina.”

Murphy looked at Stone again. Now his eyes were flat and dead. They were murderer’s eyes. If Murphy had killed one man before, he had killed a hundred.

“Why don’t you get to the point, Stone? Say what’s on your mind, instead of telling me some children’s fable about drug lords and stickup men.”

Luke was so angry he could almost punch Murphy in the mouth. He was tired. He was aggravated. He was heartbroken by Martinez’s death.

“You knew Martinez wanted to kill himself…” he began.

Murphy didn’t hesitate. “You killed Martinez,” he said. “You killed the whole squad. You. Luke Stone. Killed everyone. I was there, remember? You took a mission you knew was FUBAR because you didn’t want to countermand an order from a maniac with a death wish. And this was… for what? To further your career?”

“You gave Martinez the gun,” Luke said.

Murphy shook his head. “Martinez died that night on the hill. Just like everybody else. But his body was too strong to realize that. So it needed a push.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. For an instant, in his mind’s eye, Luke was back in Martinez’s hospital room. Martinez’s legs had been shredded, and could not be saved. One was gone at the pelvis, one below the knee. He still had the use of his arms, but he was paralyzed from just below his ribcage down. It was a nightmare.

Tears began to stream down Martinez’s face. He pounded the bed with his fists.

“I told you to kill me,” he said through gritted teeth. “I told you… to… kill… me. Now look at this… this mess.”

Luke stared at him. “I couldn’t kill you. You’re my friend.”

“Don’t say that!” Martinez said. “I’m not your friend.”

Luke shook the memory away. He was back on a green hill in Arlington, on a sunny early summer day. He was alive and mostly well. And Murphy was still here, offering his version of a lecture. Not one that Luke wanted to hear.

There was a crowd of people all around them, looking at Kennedy’s flame and quietly murmuring.

“True to form,” Murphy said. “Luke Stone has failed upward. Now he finds himself working for his old commanding officer at a super-secret civilian spy agency. They got nice toys there, Stone? Of course they do, if Don Morris is running it. Cute secretaries? Fast cars? Black helicopters? It’s like a TV show, am I right?”

Luke shook his head. It was time to change the subject.

“Murphy, since you went AWOL, you’ve committed a string of solo armed robberies in Northeast cities. You’ve been targeting gang members and drug dealers, who you know are carrying large amounts of cash, and who won’t report…”

Without warning, Murphy’s right fist flew outward. It moved like a piston, connecting with Luke’s face just below his eye. Luke’s head snapped back.

“Shut up,” Murphy said. “You talk too much.”

Luke took a stumble step and crashed into the person behind him. Nearby, someone else gasped. The sound was loud, like a hydraulic pump.

Luke went several steps backward, pushing through bodies. For a split second, he had a familiar floating sensation. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. Murphy had tagged him a good one.

And Murphy wasn’t done. Here he came again.

People streamed by on both sides, trying to get away from the fight. An overweight woman, well dressed in a beige skirt and jacket ensemble, fell to the flagstones between Luke and Murphy. Two men rushed to help her up. On the other side of this little pile, Murphy shook his head in frustration.

To Luke’s right was the low chain barrier that separated visitors from the eternal flame. He stepped over it, onto the wide cobblestones and out into the open. Murphy followed. Luke shrugged out of his suit jacket, revealing the shoulder holster and his service gun underneath. Now someone screamed.

“Gun! He’s got a gun!”

Murphy gestured at it, a half-smile on his face. “What are you gonna do, Stone? Shoot me?”

The crowd of people flowed down the hill, a mass exodus of humanity, moving fast.

Luke unfastened the holster and dropped it to the cobblestones. He circled to his right, the eternal flame of the John F. Kennedy grave just behind him, the flat grave markers of the Kennedy family in front of him. In the far distance, he caught another glimpse of the Washington Monument.

“You sure you want to do this?” Luke said.

Murphy stepped across the face of one of the Kennedy gravestones.

“There’s nothing I would rather do.”

Luke’s hands were up. His eyes honed in on Murphy. Everything else dropped away. He saw Murphy as though the man were bathed in some strange light, like a spotlight. Murphy had the reach advantage by a mile. But Luke was stronger.

He gestured with the fingers of his right hand.

“Then come on.”

Murphy attacked. He feinted a left jab, but came in hard with the right. Luke slipped it and delivered his own hard right hand. Murphy pushed Luke’s right arm out and away. Now they were close. Right where Luke wanted to be.

Suddenly they were grappling. Luke kicked Murphy’s leg out, lifted him high, and brought him down to the ground with a thud. Luke could feel the impact of Murphy’s body—the flagstones vibrated with it. Murphy’s head bounced off the rough, round stone platform that housed Kennedy’s flame.

Most men would be done. But not Murphy. Not a Delta.

His right hand pistoned out again. The fingers tore at Luke’s face, trying to find his eyes. Luke pulled his head back.

Now came Murphy’s left, a punch. It hit the side of Luke’s head. His ears rang.

Here came the right again. Luke blocked it, but Murphy was pushing up off the ground. He launched himself at Luke and they tumbled backward, Murphy on top. The metal canister that held the flame, six inches high, was just to Luke’s right.

A breeze blew and the fire was on them. Luke could feel the heat of it.

With all of his strength, he grabbed Murphy and rolled hard to his right. Murphy’s back hit the eternal flame. Fire surged all around them as they rolled up and over the top of it. Luke landed on his left side and used his momentum to keep rolling.

He climbed on top of Murphy and grabbed his head in both hands.

Murphy punched him in the face.

Luke shrugged it off and slammed Murphy’s head against the concrete.

Murphy’s hands tried to push him away.

Luke slammed his head again.

“FREEZE!” a deep-throated voice screamed.

The muzzle of a gun was pressed to Luke’s temple. It jabbed him there, hard. In the corner of his eye, Luke saw two big black hands holding the gun, and a blue uniform looming behind them.

Instantly, Luke put his hands in the air.

“Police,” the voice said, only slightly calmer now.

“Officer, I’m Agent Luke Stone, with the FBI. My badge is in that jacket over there.”

Now there were more blue uniforms. They swarmed Luke, pulling him away from Murphy. They pushed him to the ground and held him face down against the stone. He went as limp as possible, offering no resistance. Hands roamed his body, searching him.

He looked at Murphy. Murphy was getting the same treatment.

Don’t have a weapon on you, Luke thought.

In a moment, they pulled Luke to his feet. He looked around. There were ten cops here. At the far edge of the action, a familiar figure loomed. Big Ed Newsam, watching from a modest distance.

A cop handed Luke his jacket, his holster, and his badge.

“Okay, Agent Stone, what seems to be the problem here?”

“No problem.”

The cop gestured at Murphy. Murphy sat on the flagstones, arms around his knees. His eyes looked a bit fuzzy, but coming back.

“Who is that guy?”

Luke sighed and shook his head. “He’s a friend of mine. Old Army buddy.” He cracked a ghost of a smile and rubbed his face. The hand came away bloody. “You know, sometimes these reunions…”

Most of the cops were already moving away.

Luke stared down at Murphy. Murphy was making no effort to get up. Luke reached into the pocket of his jacket and came out with a business card. He looked at it for a second.

Luke Stone, Special Agent.

In the corner was the SRT logo. Under Luke’s name was a phone number that would reach a secretary at the office. There was something absurdly pleasing about that card.

He flipped it at Murphy.

“Here, you idiot. Call me. I was going to offer you a job.”

Luke turned his back on Murphy and walked toward Ed Newsam. Ed was in a dress shirt and dark tie and had a blazer draped over his shoulder. He was as big as a mountain. His muscles rippled under his clothes. His hair and beard were jet black. His face was young, not a line on his skin.

He shook his head and smiled. “What are you doing?”

Luke shrugged. “I don’t really know. What are you doing?”

“They sent me to get you,” Ed said. “We’ve got a mission. Hostage rescue. High priority.”

“Where?” Luke said.

Ed shook his head. “Classified. We won’t know until the briefing. But they want us ready to move as soon as the briefing is over.”

“When’s the briefing?”

Ed had already turned and was heading back down the hill.

“Now.”