Imminent Threat Read online

  There was a pulse. Thin and ragged, but a pulse.

  Spiros made the man as comfortable as possible and then set out to fetch some of the younger brothers to help him carry the man back to his skete.

  As he clambered over the rocks, hurrying as fast as he dared, he marveled at the ways God revealed Himself. For years, Father Spiros had prayed for God to send him an instrument, a divine weapon to help him realize the vision his Lord had sent to him throughout his life. A world that was to be reborn, baptized by fire. Destroyed so that it might be renewed.

  Certainly, this man on the beach could be the fulfillment of prayer.

  Or a challenge to his faith.

  He could not have known on that day that the Lord would take twenty years to answer that question. And, true to the nature of his God, the answer would be both.

  CHAPTER 3

  Twenty years later

  Scott Roberts felt no sympathy for the sniveling terrorist on the floor in front of him. Sure, the man was someone’s son, maybe someone’s brother, maybe even some poor woman’s husband. It didn’t matter. Whatever rocks life had thrown at Hassan Abbas, there was no excuse for what he’d done. Ultimately it was his own decision that had led him to leave behind a duffel bag of explosives in a Christmas market in Munich, Germany.

  Just like it was Scott’s decision to take a detour from his mission in Prague to lend a hand in finding the scumbag.

  Hawthorn had denied his request to divert but Scott had ignored him. Six months of hunting Omega had yielded nothing but dead ends and dead informants. Both Scott and his team were restless, ready for a win, ready for anything that didn’t feel like pissing into the wind.

  The counterterrorism unit of the German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, was already working the case. Nineteen dead, seven of them just school kids not much older than his grandson Joey, meant the manhunt was going to receive every resource available. Still, Scott had old contacts in Munich. Contacts that owed him favors that he’d held onto for a long time. He’d had a hunch they might just prove useful.

  He’d been right.

  A few phone calls on his scrambled satellite phone during the train ride from Prague had put him on the trail. Once he arrived, he’d gone into bloodhound mode and rooted the man out. Fortunately, when Scott arrived, Abbas had tried to run from his hideout in an abandoned warehouse in the northern borough of Hasenbergl. Scott had taken great pleasure in shooting the man in the leg to bring him down.

  Now it was a matter of what to do with him next.

  “I’m not afraid to die,” Abbas said, speaking German.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Scott replied, his German rusty but passable.

  Early reports accessed by Jordi Pines, Alpha Team’s tech extraordinaire back in Washington, DC, showed that the BND had been able to determine the bomb had been an explosive vest put into a bag.

  “You know nothing about me,” Abbas said.

  “I know you chickened out,” Scott said. “If you’re going to blow up a bunch of women and children, you could at least have the decency to blow yourself to hell, too.”

  “You’re American,” Abbas said. “You’ll never understand martyrdom. Ascendancy to paradise where I will be eternally rewarded.”

  “Then why’d you take off the vest?” Scott said. “Paradise sounds pretty good. Isn’t there supposed to be a bunch of virgins? A land of milk and honey and all?”

  Abbas shifted uncomfortably, gripping his bleeding leg. Judging from the amount of blood, the femoral artery hadn’t been hit so he didn’t have a lot of risk of bleeding out. Pity.

  “My master has greater plans for me.”

  Scott was suddenly more interested. If this little rat had information about other planned attacks, he wanted to get it out of him. “Really? And what’s that?”

  “You are an infidel. You wouldn’t understand,” Abbas said.

  Scott raised his gun and pointed it at Abbas’s other leg. He made a show of tracing up his leg until the barrel of his Glock was pointed at the man’s groin. “I suggest you tell me, otherwise when you get to Paradise those virgins will be mighty disappointed with the crater you have between your legs.”

  Abbas swallowed hard. Beads of sweat had formed on the man’s forehead and brow. Scott was well versed in how to get people to talk, even hardened operatives. He planned to crack this guy open like a walnut. Soon he’d have the guy admitting to every wrong thing he’d done in his life since he’d been a kid.

  But then Abbas grinned, and Scott saw the fear in the man’s eyes click off, replaced by resignation and moral indignation.

  “Are you a religious man?” Abbas asked.

  “No. How about you?”

  This brought a small chuckle. “The end of the world is coming. Caused by man. Caused by God. It doesn’t matter. Because in the end, only the righteous will be saved.”

  As Abbas spoke the last words, a white foam appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  “You better not have just done what I think you did,” Scott said, dropping to a knee.

  Abbas convulsed with a choking cough and foam and spittle poured out down his chin.

  “Allah Akbar,” Abbas mumbled, his eyes shining bright. “Omega Akbar. Omega Akbar.”

  Scott froze in disbelief at the words, thinking his mind was playing a trick on him.

  Abbas repeated the words. “Omega Akbar.” Omega is great.

  Scott turned Abbas on his side and stuck a finger down the man’s throat. It worked and he gagged and then vomited a thin green bile. Stuck in it were pieces of a fake tooth. The delivery system for the poison Abbas had taken.

  Scott grabbed the man by the collar of his jacket and pulled him up to him. “What do you know about Omega?” he said. “What do they have to do with this?”

  But the only response he got was the brutal choking sounds of Abbas’s airways constricting and shutting down. His face turned red and then purple as his oxygen depleted. His eyes bulged and his body went rigid in a final back-arching spasm.

  And then he was dead.

  Scott threw him to the ground.

  “Shit!” he shouted, the word echoing through the warehouse. He felt like an idiot. He should have checked the man more thoroughly. Would he have caught the fake tooth? If he was being honest, probably not. His own fake tooth loaded with cyanide was indistinguishable from his other dental work except with an X-ray. Still, he hadn’t even checked. Maybe it was lazy, but it also didn’t fit the MO of a radicalized Islamist to be fitted with a suicide tooth.

  But he wasn’t just a radicalized terrorist. He’d somehow known about Omega. Somehow, they were connected to the attack. And he’d lost the first good lead they’d had in months.

  He turned back on the coms he’d switched off a few hours earlier and reinserted his earpiece. After a series of clicks, the signal bouncing through a series of secure satellites, the system came back online.

  “’E’s back, Director ’Awthorn,” Jordi said, the computer genius’s exaggerated English accent dropping the H’s. Even though the man was born and raised in Jersey, the accent was one of his many unexplained quirks. Mara had vouched for his technical genius and she’d been right. The personality was just an added benefit. “Someone’s been naughty.”

  “Jordi, I need you to relook at the list of victims at the Christmas Market attack,” he said. “Omega’s involved.”

  “How are they involved?” It was Jim Hawthorn, ex-director of the CIA and legend among operatives. It was widely assumed Hawthorn had retired from the game. But those in the know had been briefed about his new position as director of Alpha Team, an elite group tasked with finding and eliminating the shadowy organization known as Omega. A task at which they’d all failed miserably so far.

  Scott bent down and started to rifle through Abbas’s pockets. “I found the bomber. Hassan Abbas wasn’t very talkative, but what he did say was interesting. He knew about Omega.”

  A long pause. He imagi
ned Hawthorn standing next to Jordi’s workstation, a horseshoe of computers and large monitors that he played like a virtuoso. He knew Hawthorn would be incredulous Scott’s side trip had actually turned out to involve Omega.

  “Explain,” Hawthorn said. He was obviously still not happy with him.

  “He said ‘Allah Akbar’ once. But then he switched to saying ‘Omega Akbar.’”

  “Jordi, is there an alternative word in Arabic or in any dialects for Omega?” Hawthorn asked.

  “No, Mara explored that months ago,” Jordi said. “Before she took ’er leave of absence.”

  Leave of absence. Is that what they were calling it now?

  “All right,” Hawthorn said. “Bring him in. I’ll inform the BND you have him in custody. They want to have him after you’re done, so be quick about it.”

  “There’s going to be a problem with that,” Scott said.

  Another long pause on the com-link. He was glad he couldn’t see Hawthorn’s face.

  “Daddy’s not very happy with you right now,” Jordi whispered.

  “I didn’t kill him. The guy cracked a cyanide pill in his mouth,” Scott said. “Fake tooth.”

  “That’s unusual,” Hawthorn said. “Anything else? Anything on him? Any markings? Tattoos?”

  Scott pulled back the man’s clothing. No ink. No scars.

  “Nothing.”

  “Jordi, let our friends at BND know the location of their bomber.”

  “Get me clearance to join them on the investigation. I want to see Abbas’s apartment and see if there’s anything that ties him to Omega.”

  “Negative. I need you on the next flight out of Munich back to DC.”

  “But we––”

  “Scott, I want you—”

  “Just a couple of days is all I’m—”

  “Dammit, Scott. Will you just listen to me?” Hawthorn said, raising his voice. The sound shocked Scott. Hawthorn was always in control. There was a pause on the line. Hawthorn had his attention. The next two words sent chills through his body. “Jacobslav Scarvan.”

  Scott pressed his earpiece in more firmly. “What did you say?”

  When Hawthorn responded, his voice was calm, but Scott heard the stress still there. “Scarvan’s back. I don’t know how it’s possible after all these years, but he’s back.”

  Scott felt his stomach turn over as the implications hit him. No wonder Hawthorn was on edge. “Okay, I’ll be on the next plane,” Scott said. “And Jim. We’ll sort this out. I promise.”

  “I’m waiting to brief the president when you arrive,” Hawthorn said. “And Scott.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need Mara for this.”

  He nodded, not sure how he was going to pull that off. But he knew he had to.

  “Are you there?” Hawthorn said.

  “I’m here. Have Jordi send me her location when I land. I’ll take another shot at her. She’s not going to like it.”

  “She may not have a choice,” Hawthorn said. “See you stateside. Be safe.”

  Scott terminated the connection. Standing in the middle of the abandoned warehouse, Abbas’s dead body at his feet, he had a sudden feeling of being watched. He spun around, gun raised, checking the shadows. Nothing.

  He laughed nervously at himself, the sound coming across hollow and scared in the large open space. Jacobslav Scarvan. It didn’t seem possible.

  If it were true, then the world had just gotten a lot more dangerous.

  As he left the building, he wondered what it was going to take to make Mara understand that simple truth.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mara’s ass hurt. She shifted her position in her saddle for the hundredth time that day only to find a few seconds’ worth of comfort before the ache started again. She’d endured covert ops in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the tundra of Mongolia, and the desert sands of Yemen. She’d trained with Navy SEALs and Force Recon Marines. She was going to be damned if a horse named Buttercup was going to get the best of her.

  “You doing okay?” Rick Hallsey asked. He handled his horse like he’d popped out of the womb right into a cattle drive.

  “No problem,” Mara said. “Buttercup here is great.”

  As if on cue, Buttercup lowered her head to the ground and munched on a full mouth of grass. Mara pulled up on the reins, but the mare ignored her.

  “Yeah, you’re really showing her who’s boss,” Rick laughed.

  Mara didn’t mind Buttercup stopping. She was enjoying the view, and not the majestic Grand Tetons that stretched in front of her against a perfect bluebird sky. The sight of Rick was enough for her. Gone was his Secret Service tailored suit, replaced with jeans, light denim shirts, and a tan leather jacket with a shearling collar. He looked like an African American Marlboro Man, if the Marlboro Man had an extra twenty pounds of muscle and was an expert marksman.

  “We’ve achieved homeostasis,” Mara said.

  “Homeostasis,” Rick deadpanned. “Do tell.”

  “Didn’t they teach that word at Yale?” she said. Kidding him about his Ivy League education and his academic prowess was a constant riff between them. He was likely the most educated agent on the president’s protective detail. His mind was what most attracted him to her. The handsome face, wide smile, and stacked muscles didn’t hurt, either.

  “I know what it means,” Rick said. “They finally got around to teaching it to us in the last week of getting my master’s in Theology at Georgetown.”

  “Oh, you went there. I see how it is,” she said, finally pulling Buttercup’s head up and getting her going again. “Then you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Homeostasis. A relatively stable equilibrium between independent elements,” he said. “Key words relatively stable and independent elements. While the independence remains, there’s never total stability.”

  A pheasant flew out from a bush next to the trail. The sudden movement startled Buttercup, who reared back and then bolted forward. It was all Mara could do to grab on to the saddle horn to keep herself on the horse. Within seconds, Rick’s horse was next to hers, slowing her down.

  “You all right?” he asked once they’d stopped.

  She patted Buttercup’s neck and repositioned herself once again in the saddle. “I just want to know how much you paid the pheasant to make your point.”

  They shared a nice laugh together and the world felt better to Mara than it had in a long time. She still grieved her sister Lucy’s death. Finding the right balance of sharing responsibility for her nephew Joey between her and his grandparents was still a challenge, but getting easier. But no amount of therapy was going to erase the bitterness from the events of last year. She and her father had an unspoken pact to leave what happened alone for now. Likely not the healthiest decision, but one they’d both been thankful for. And one she’d not found difficult to live by. The blood on her hands from that night on the Arlington Memorial Bridge had washed off, but the demons were still alive and well, even six months after the fact. She knew she’d need to face all the implications from that night eventually, but not yet.

  On top of all that, the sense of futility chasing Omega hadn’t helped things. It wasn’t until she’d begun her leave of absence from the nascent Alpha Team that her life felt like it was gluing back together again. She was finally seeing a path forward. And she was happy that path for right now included Rick Hallsey.

  But it was becoming clearer that it didn’t include Alpha Team.

  “C’mon, we’ll take a shortcut and head over to a dive bar I know. Half cowboys, half bikers. You’ll love it.”

  “You had me at shortcut, but dive bar is where I really fell for you,” she said.

  They hadn’t said I love you yet, neither of them in a hurry to do so. Even when kidding around, they were careful to avoid it.

  “If you and Buttercup over there are back to your homeostasis, then we can kick this up a notch. The faster we go, the faster we’re drinking . . . Hey!”

&
nbsp; Mara laughed as she and Buttercup galloped past Rick and his mustang. Sore or not, she hated to lose. Rick might be ten times the horseman she was, but she knew how to get and exploit an advantage.

  Besides, she was really looking forward to an ice-cold beer.

  * * *

  Buck’s Saloon was, as advertised, a complete dive. If the use of the word saloon was meant as a nod to old-timey Western roots, everything else in the place missed the mark. It was a hodgepodge of rusted corrugated metal siding, chicken wire, and old metal street signs. The two-lane highway passed nearby, but the dirt parking lot was nothing more than a rectangle of mostly cleared brush.

  It was Mara’s kind of place.

  “Come here much?” she asked as they tied up their horses next to a row of Harleys. This trip was all Rick. The ranch they were staying at belonged to his uncle, a man who’d made a fortune in news media. Rick had spent summers there as a kid, learning about the outdoors and work ethic.

  “Been a few years, but yeah, my uncle used to love this place,” he said. “You beat me here, so looks like I’m buying.”

  The inside of Buck’s Saloon wasn’t a disappointment. Dark and dingy, the seating area had mismatched tables and chairs. The bar was more ornate than expected, like something plucked out of a nicer building. Mara imagined it might have been something bought at auction from an actual saloon, or something found in one of the ghost towns out on the high plains. Behind the bar were the requisite neon signs for Coors and Budweiser and rows of cheap bottles of booze.

  Rick went to get them two beers while she grabbed them a table.

  Out of habit, she took stock of each person in the room and every possible entrance and exit to the place. Five guys in leather biker jackets played darts at the far end of the seating area. Two old men sat at the bar, eyes glued to an old TV playing a rerun of some college football game, hands locked on their mugs of pale beer. There was a pair of swinging doors to the left of the bar that led to the back, a kitchen maybe. Another two doors on the right were the bathrooms.

  Nothing complicated. Nothing dangerous.