“Hard to tell,” he replied. “It’s been a while since I had the Bureau looking for me.”
The look on her face was worth the price of admission. “A while? This has happened before?”
Harry shook his head. “Not exactly. Summer of ‘05, extended re-training at the Farm. They turned six of us loose in D.C. with sealed orders — and two hours head start on the G-men.”
“You’ve been hanging around Carter for too long,” she observed. “How’d you do?”
“Two of us survived the forty-eight hours — saw the mission through. Turned out Kranemeyer had placed a thousand-dollar wager with the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. He collected.”
“So you made it through — who was the other lucky guy?”
His eyes darkened at the memory, the gray steel of gunmetal mixing with the blue.
“Sammy Han.”
The forest was deathly silent, the heavy snow of the early morning covering everything like a shroud.
Snow crunched beneath snowshoes as a large man glided from between the trees, moving with practiced ease over the surface of the snow. His pants and parka were winter digital camouflage, US Army issue of a few years before. From a few yards out he effectively disappeared into the background.
He stood there for a moment, surveying the scene before him. Movement from down the mountainside caught his attention and he removed his Raybans, revealing a narrow face, sharply-chiseled Asian features. He couldn’t have been much more than forty-one, forty-three at most, but his face — his eyes were older. The eyes of a man who’d seen too much of life. Too much of death.
The .308 FNH SCAR battle rifle in his hands came up, aiming down the vale toward the movement. There — the head of a deer came into focus through the SCAR’s scope and a shudder rippled through Samuel Han’s body.
He lowered the rifle and wiped his forehead with a gloved hand. Fifteen degrees Fahrenheit — five below with the wind chill — and he’d been sweating.
It was time to head back, he realized. A person could only take so much. Couldn’t let himself go where he’d gone last time. Too many memories.
Han put the SCAR’s safety back on and turned west. Toward home. A compass rested in the breast pocket of his parka, but he didn’t bother consulting it. Two and a half years patrolling these woods — he knew them almost as well as he’d once known the desert.
So many memories…
“What happened?”
Harry took a look into his rearview. There was a car back there now — last few minutes. Four-door Nissan. Something to keep an eye on. “Happened to whom?”
“Han. With his marriage.” There was an odd tone to her voice, curious but hesitant.
“By the time Sammy got back from Yemen, his kid had spent two weeks in ICU. Life support,” Harry replied, taking a deep breath. “He did eventually pull through — you know what they say about little kids — you keep all the pieces in the same room and they’ll recover, but it was six months before he came home. He never walked again. Sammy took it hard, started spending more time at Langley.”
Behind them, the Nissan turned off onto a side road. False alarm. “It was like it hurt him to be around his family — so he threw himself into his work. The cure was worse than the disease. I stopped by the house one day, had a long talk with Sherri. She wanted to keep things together, but the strain of being a mother, nurse, and wife to an absent husband was grinding her down. Talking with Sammy was like talkin’ to a wall and neither her nor I could get through.”
“And she left?” Carol asked quietly. He nodded. A low, mirthless chuckle escaped her lips.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” she replied, looking back at him. “You’re just the first man I’ve ever heard that didn’t try to blame a divorce on the woman.”
He shrugged, focusing his attention back on the road. Black ice had formed underneath the shadow of an evergreen and he guided the SUV around it. The armored Excursion didn’t handle like your average vehicle. “When a relationship goes to hell, there’s generally enough blame to go all the way around. In the end, it didn’t matter. After the divorce went through Sammy petitioned Kranemeyer to get back out in the field. It took us a couple weeks to decide, but we finally approved his request.”
“And?”
“And the next mission was Azerbaijan,” Harry responded. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her wince. It had taken place before she joined the Agency, but the Azeri mission was legendary at Langley. For all the wrong reasons.
Ten men parachuted into the Azeri winter. Two full strike teams — Alpha and Charlie. Their target: a Russian convoy believed to be transporting nuclear weapons to Iran.
With forty-eight hours to wheels-up, the Charlie team leader had come down with pneumonia. And Sammy volunteered to take his place.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. Despite his subordinate position in Alpha Team, the Asian had leadership experience from his years in the SEALs.
Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah. Azerbaijan. Ten men in — only five men came back out. Two men got caught up in the mountain cross-winds and never even survived the landing. Sammy was the only survivor of Charlie — it was the final straw.”
“What does he have to do with us being in West Virginia?”
“Everything,” Harry replied. “Two days after returning from the Azeri mission, he handed in his resignation. Sold his apartment and most of what he owned and moved off-grid, to these mountains. It’s a secluded spot, cut off from most of the surrounding world. Just the way Sammy wanted it.”
“And he’s going to be happy to see you?”
It was a long time before Harry answered, debating what he should say — how much honesty was appropriate at this time. But none of that really made a difference, she’d know soon enough.
“No,” he replied finally. “No, he’s not going to be happy at all.”
Chapter 7
One minute. Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight. Viktor’s eyes never left the Toshiba’s screen, his breathing shallow as the counter ticked down. It was cold in the warehouse, but the boy rubbed sweaty palms against his ski pants. It was this adrenaline rush that had sustained him through those dark nights in the brothel. The thrill of what he could do, despite his physical limitations. Power.
“Do we have their location yet?” It was Korsakov, coming back into the warehouse alone. Everyone else was already loaded up in the three Suburbans.
Viktor held up one finger, watching as the locator icon came flashing on-screen. “Da, da, we do.” His fingers danced over the keyboard, bringing up a Google Maps overlay. “They’re in the state of West Virginia, right here. Moving west, maybe fifty-five, sixty kilometers an hour.”
Korsakov slapped him on the shoulder. “Spasiba, Viktor, excellent! Take the laptop with you and load up.”
The ex-Spetsnaz assassin took a long look around the now-empty warehouse. Everything was clean.
Turning to leave, Korsakov zipped up his heavy winter jacket, covering the Type III ballistic vest he wore beneath. It was time to strike.