A few blocks from home, Sarah spotted a strange car parked alongside the curb, in the shadows between the two nearest streetlights. A man emerged from the vehicle as Sarah approached.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine named Jake. Can you tell me where he is?”
As Sarah prepared to answer, Jake’s last words to her flashed in her mind: In the future, don’t be so unguarded around strangers.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know anyone named Jake.”
“That’s strange,” the man said as he moved onto the sidewalk, blocking the path to her house. “Several people told me that you knew him well. He stopped by the diner every day. A new guy in town, tall, about my build. Ring a bell?”
Sarah felt a deepening uneasiness, and seriously doubted the man was Jake’s friend. After pretending to think for moment, she replied, “Nope. I don’t know anyone named Jake or matching your description.”
The man offered a tight smile.
It was at this moment that Sarah realized the man was wearing a light jacket, even though it was a warm evening. Looking closer, she spotted a bulge under the jacket on his left side. She had seen enough movies to realize the bulge might be a pistol in a shoulder holster. The man followed her eyes, then his smile faded as he reached inside his jacket.
Sarah bolted to her left, running from a man who likely had nefarious intentions. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted him sprinting after her.
She cut through a neighbor’s yard, hurtling over a low chain link fence, hoping to reach her house before the man caught up to her. But she hadn’t had much of a head start and he was gaining on her. He was only a few paces behind her when she realized it was hopeless — there was no way she could escape him. She started screaming for help, but seconds later, the man tackled her on the grass and pinned her body beneath his, clamping one hand over her mouth as he placed the pistol barrel against her head.
“I only want information,” he said. “Nothing more. Understand?”
As her heart thumped inside her chest, she nodded.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is Jake? I stopped by Miss Potter’s cottage and he wasn’t there. Where is he?”
He removed his hand.
“I don’t know,” she said. “A woman arrived today and he left with her.”
“This woman, what did she look like?”
“A white woman in her forties. Beautiful, with auburn hair and blue eyes.”
The man scowled. “Chris,” he said under his breath.
He stood, offering his hand to help Sarah up.
Afraid to decline his assistance, she took his hand and he pulled her to her feet.
“Listen up,” he said. “You’re going to forget everything that happened tonight. That I came looking for Jake. Understand?”
Sarah nodded vigorously. “Never saw you,” she said.
“Good. Now why don’t you run along?”
She stood there for a second until he gestured with his hand. “Get going.”
Sarah started toward her house, only a block away. After a few steps, she began running, hoping to put distance between her and the man as soon as possible.
As Sarah sprinted away, Mixell pulled a suppressor from its holster, screwing it onto the pistol barrel.
There was only one way to ensure Sarah told no one about what happened tonight — that he was hot on Harrison’s trail.
He straightened his arm, aiming at his prey. Just before the woman disappeared into the darkness, he pulled the trigger. The woman’s head jolted forward as the bullet drilled through the back of her skull. Her limp body hit the ground face-first, leaving a bloody smear on the grass as she slid several feet.
It had been a quick and painless death, Mixell noted to himself. And Harrison had once accused him of being a heartless killer.
24
NATANZ, IRAN
On the western side of the new Natanz Underground Complex, Behrouz Khavari watched a stream of transport trucks passing through one of the facility’s entrances. Beside him stood Saeed Masud, director of the sprawling complex built deep beneath the Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā mountain peak. Although Masud wore a stoic expression, Khavari could sense the excitement radiating from the sixty-year-old man.
They were standing at one of four entrances to Natanz’s newest and most protected complex, built in response to several successful attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Within the complex were two critical facilities: the replacement Centrifuge Fabrication Center and a new Fuel Enrichment Plant, the latter of which would process uranium to weapon-grade purity.
Several years ago, the previous centrifuge assembly center, an aboveground facility in the main Natanz complex to the north, had been destroyed by an explosive device planted by saboteurs. Combined with the introduction of a computer virus that had caused thousands of Iran’s gas centrifuges to overspeed, tearing themselves apart, leadership had concluded that a more secure and protected nuclear complex was required — one that was immune to even the most potent cyber or conventional weapons.
After the last truck entered the underground complex, the massive steel doors slowly rumbled closed, encasing Khavari and Masud in a concrete tunnel illuminated by harsh white fluorescent lighting. The two men entered into a two-person transport vehicle and followed the trucks to the lower of two main levels in the underground complex, where the truck contents were being unloaded: one thousand Russian gas centrifuges, significantly more advanced than any centrifuge Iran had built to date. Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, which had slowed to a crawl after the destruction of the aboveground centrifuge facility, would be jump-started by the Russian centrifuges.
Khavari and Masud’s vehicle stopped at the unloading dock, and the two men entered the main hall on the fuel enrichment level where they watched the installation of the first batch of Russian devices. On the concrete floor, spaced every five feet, were hexagon-shaped holes that would anchor the sixteen-foot-tall centrifuges. While Masud stood beside him filled with excitement, Khavari did his best to hide the dread gnawing at him. With these new centrifuges, Iran could process uranium to weapon-grade purity eight times faster than before.
Turning to Masud, Khavari asked, “How long before we have enough weapon-grade uranium for our first nuclear weapon?”
Masud didn’t reply, smiling instead.
25
OWINGS MILLS, MARYLAND
In the back of Christine’s armored SUV, neither she nor her companion said much during the trip north toward Baltimore. Moments earlier, she had picked up Jake Harrison after his arrival at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Although they were back on speaking terms, their relationship remained strained. Despite their conversation in Medina Falls, Christine could tell that Harrison still blamed her for Angie’s death, at least in part. It would take time, Christine told herself again, to fully repair their relationship. To that end, she had offered to pick Jake up upon his arrival in Maryland and join him as he attended to his most important mission upon returning to the East Coast — visiting Maddy.
Thus far, Mixell had shown no interest in taking his vengeance out on Harrison’s daughter. The night Mixell killed Angie in her home, he had first sent Maddy upstairs, ordering her not to leave her bedroom until morning. However, Maddy had ventured downstairs after hearing the shots Mixell fired, putting two bullets into Harrison. When Maddy intervened as Mixell was about to slay Christine, Mixell had knocked the young girl unconscious in a fit of rage, fracturing her skull in the process.