In Afghanistan, a US Special Forces pilot is shot down during a covert mission.
In New York, a mother is forced to flee with her two young children.
A wealthy businessman approaches Jack Morgan, head of Private - the world's largest investigation agency - with a desperate plea to track down his daughter and grandchildren, who have disappeared without a trace.
What at first seems to be a simple missing persons case soon escalates into something much more deadly, when Jack discovers the daughter is being pursued by highly trained operatives.
As Jack uncovers more of the woman's backstory, the trail leads towards Afghanistan - where Jack's career as a US Marine ended in catastrophe . . .
Jack will need to face the trauma of his past to save a family's future.
Release date:
January 30, 2024
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
400
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“OVERLORD, THIS IS Sabre. We are three clicks from the target.”
“Copy that, Sabre. All eyes show a clear run. Maintain your current heading.”
“Copy,” Captain Joshua Floyd replied.
Command saw no threats, but Floyd knew better than to relax. He had been on missions that had gone from still water to a Category-5 hurricane in the blink of an eye. He checked his radar display and confirmed what he’d been told: no obvious threats.
The engines of his MV-22B Osprey hummed reassuringly as he guided the aircraft low over the pitch-black mountainous terrain. They were flying dark with low infrared in the cabin and cockpit. Floyd used the contours of the illuminated heads-up display to pick out his flight path. He’d rehearsed the mission endlessly. Cross the Pakistan border near Sham Shah, drop low into the Mangwal Valley, and fly north over the mountains of Nuristan, deep into Afghan territory, toward Nangalam and their target. Floyd knew every crease and wrinkle in the rugged terrain, and guided the Osprey with a deftness of touch that meant the Green Beret unit in the main cabin were hardly stirred.
“Looking good,” said Nat Porter, Floyd’s co-pilot.
“Give them the sixty,” Floyd responded.
Nat had the winning smile of a college quarterback. He flashed it now, flipping the cabin ready light from red to green.
“Colonel Elmore, sixty seconds to target,” Nat said over the radio, and turned to give Elmore the ready signal—an index finger wound rapidly through the air.
Floyd glanced over his shoulder and saw sixteen heavily armed men in black tactical uniforms run through their final equipment and weapons checks. Colonel Sam Elmore, a grizzled veteran who was used to wrestling death into submission, gave Floyd a thumbs-up.
He pulled the Osprey into a gentle climb, tracking the gradient of the final hill, about two hundred feet above ground level. As they neared the apex of the ridge, he throttled back to reduce airspeed. There was a moment of inertia as the aircraft leveled out. Then came a stomach-churning change of direction as Floyd allowed gravity to take hold and pull them into the valley on the other side.
“Thirty seconds,” he said into the radio.
Floyd slowed further, and began the rotor tilt. The propellers, which had been configured as a plane, shifted as the motors on each wing ground them out of position, turning the aircraft into a dual-rotor helicopter, capable of a pinpoint landing. Floyd looked ahead to see their target, a compound of four low rectangular buildings, each about the size of two school buses.
“Ten seconds,” he said.
“Ten seconds,” Elmore repeated over the radio.
“Sabre, you are a go mission,” Command informed them.
“Copy that, Overlord,” Floyd acknowledged.
Intelligence reports suggested their mission objective was located in the building that lay to the east of the compound, and Floyd had rehearsed setting the bird down within twenty yards of the structure. He banked slightly, dropped to within fifty feet of the deck, and lowered the landing gear.
“Five seconds,” he said.
“Five,” Elmore confirmed.
The simple concrete buildings stood like gray teeth against the black sky, and seemed to grow larger as the Osprey swept in.
Floyd’s heart started racing when he saw a flash of light off to his left. For the briefest moment the silhouette of a man was illuminated against the southernmost building. Floyd recognized the unmistakable shape of a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, and watched with horror as the projectile traced a line through the sky, heading directly for them.
“Brace, brace, brace!” he yelled, as he banked starboard. “Brace for impact!”
He knew any attempt to outmaneuver the projectile at this range was futile, so he dropped the bird down and killed engine power. If they were going to get hit, being closer to the ground would increase their chances of survival.
Floyd could see the rocket approaching fast, and quickly elevated the port wing in an attempt to keep the impact away from the fuselage. The rocket hit the port engine, and the explosion sent the aircraft spinning. Floyd felt the landing gear snap as the aircraft thudded onto the ground. He was blinded by bright flames, and the cockpit erupted with a barrage of alarms.
“Sabre is down, I repeat, Sabre is down!” he shouted into his radio. “We have taken hostile fire. Sabre is down!”
“Bravo Nine, sound off!” Elmore yelled, and his unit responded with their condition.
Shielding his eyes against the flames, Floyd made sure the automatic fuel shutoff had killed the feed to both engines. He could see the extinguishers were working, but they weren’t enough to put out the inferno that was raging from the port engine, and spreading fast.
“We need to evac,” Nat said, eying the flames nervously.
“Agreed,” Floyd replied.
“Sabre, this is Overlord. What’s your situation?” The operator’s voice was calm, but Floyd sensed a panicked edge.
“Port engine is on fire,” he replied. “We’ve got to evacuate.”
“Copy that,” the operator replied. “Any casualties?”
Floyd looked at Elmore, who was on the same radio channel. He held up two fingers and shook his head somberly.
“We have two KIA,” Floyd responded, feeling a familiar lurch deep in his gut.
“Copy,” the operator replied. “Do you have eyes on hostiles?”
Floyd peered through the cracked windshield, but saw nothing in the darkness. The glare of the fire was making it impossible to pick out anything further than a few yards away.
“Negative,” he replied.
“You are to abort and withdraw to secondary RV,” the operator said.
They were being told to abandon the mission and move to a secondary rendezvous point for extraction.
“This is Sabre leader,” Elmore cut in. “Negative. We’re still on mission.”
“You have your orders, Sabre,” another voice responded over the radio. Floyd didn’t recognize it, but he could identify the confident tone of authority.
He glanced back to see Elmore shake his head in frustration. “Copy that, Overlord.”
“Charges,” Floyd said to Nat.
His co-pilot immediately reached for a safe beneath the instrument panel.
“We’re moving out,” Elmore told his unit. “Secondary RV. Let’s go.”
Floyd unclipped his harness and hauled himself up, while Nat touched his finger to a scanner that opened the safe. Inside was a keypad linked to a series of strategically placed charges concealed throughout the aircraft.
“Do it,” Floyd commanded.
Behind him, Elmore’s men opened the cargo bay, and the hull ground against rock as the pneumatic jacks forced the door.
Nat input two codes and a digital display was illuminated. It started counting down from five minutes.
Elmore’s men lowered their night-vision scopes and the two nearest the cargo door ran out in fire formation. The others followed, including two teams of three, who hauled the bodies of their fallen comrades.
Floyd checked the navigation display and made his final radio call. “Overlord, estimated time to RV is two hours.”
“Copy that, Sabre. Good luck.”
“There’s nothing we could have done,” Nat said.
Floyd nodded, removed his headset, and ushered his co-pilot ahead of him.
“Contact on my nine!” a voice yelled. There was a sudden flash and a blast of gunfire as one of Elmore’s men shot into the night.
Others joined him and a reply came almost immediately, bullets zipping through the air. The plane’s nose was pointing north; the enemy seemed to be located to the west, hidden behind a line of rocks that ran between their location and the compound.
“We’re sitting ducks in this position!” Elmore yelled. “Bravo nine, double time to those rocks on our three.”
He pointed to some jagged shapes about a hundred yards to the east.
Floyd drew his side arm and sprinted as the bullets continued to fly around him. Elmore and his men were laying down covering fire in alternating waves as they fell back to the rock formation. Floyd saw one of the men go down with a leg wound, another was hit in the shoulder, and a third took a head shot that cracked through his helmet.
Floyd and Nat were almost at the formation. More gunfire crackled to their rear, followed by shouts and curses from Elmore’s men as they tracked back to help the fallen. Nat scrambled up a large granite slab and Floyd followed.
Suddenly, a man with a black headscarf wrapped around his face reared up from behind the rock, leveled an AK-47 at Nat’s chest, and fired. The volley of bullets sent him shuddering backward and tumbling down the slab.
Floyd instinctively raised his gun and pulled the trigger. The man in the black headscarf cried out and fell back. Another quickly appeared from behind the rock and rushed forward, but Floyd was too quick. Two shots in the chest put him down.
Floyd hurried down to Nat and tried to find a pulse that wasn’t there. He felt a wave of nausea and wanted to be sick, but his training kept him going. He glanced back toward Elmore and saw the colonel alone in a field of fallen. All his men were either dead or injured. Their mission had become a scene of slaughter.
“Go!” Elmore yelled. “Get out of here!”
He fired a volley at targets Floyd couldn’t see. Muzzle flashes flared on the horizon and Elmore was caught by a bullet. Then another. Then another. He cried out in pain and bucked violently as he hit the ground.
Floyd turned away from the horrific scene and climbed up the slab to the first man he’d shot. He grabbed the AK-47 from the dead man’s hands and ran. Behind him, there was a violent dawn as the charges on the Osprey detonated, creating a fireball that reached to the heavens. Floyd felt the searing heat and soft push of the blast wave, pressing him forward into the night.
SOME OF THE other parents were gathered beneath the gnarly, bare branches of the old oak tree, but Beth wanted as much sun as possible. It was brutally cold and the air had a razor-sharp bite. The sunlight seemed as faint and unwarming as a refrigerator bulb and would soon be gone, but it was better than nothing. Beth patted her sides and shuffled on the spot, willing the sun to slow its descent behind the roof of Garrison Elementary School. She watched some younger kids running around the basketball court, skipping and skidding across the ice, laughing as they waited for their older siblings. She remembered when Daniel and Marianne had been that age, and while toddlers were cute, they were also exhausting. She preferred her kids at their current ages, still cute, but a little older and a lot more independent. Now seven years old, Danny had all the confidence and charisma of a future president, and Beth sometimes felt he already believed he’d attained that high office. Maria was two years older and was blossoming from a quiet, thoughtful little girl into an assured, intelligent child.
Some of the other parents obsessed over grades, but Beth and her husband didn’t care how the kids did at school, as long as they were happy. Maybe that’s why she didn’t click with the other moms. She glanced over at Laura Fox-Ryan and her little gang of five, who were part of the group huddled under the tree, and got a couple of polite nods in reply. We’re not going to ignore you, because that might be awkward, but we’re not inviting you into the circle.
It reminded Beth of high school. Boasting, envy, and competitiveness were the game there, and her casual indifference to the things others considered measures of success threw them off. She was almost certain they considered her a bad parent, and she knew there were whispers about the apparent lack of a man in her life.
If they knew the truth, Beth wondered how eager they’d be to make friends. Better a true enemy than a false friend, she thought, recalling her father’s sound advice.
Her eyes were drawn toward the daily ritual of kids being unleashed on the world. After the first flurry of youngsters surged out in a melee of bags and coats, she saw Danny and Maria walking out together.
“Hey, guys,” Beth said. “What news?”
“He’s talking Lego again,” Maria replied.
“Is there any other subject?” Beth asked.
“No,” Danny chuckled. “Where would we be without Lego?”
“Come on,” Beth said, ushering them toward the parking lot.
Minutes later, they were heading north along Bear Mountain Highway, past high mounds of blackened snow. Beth engaged in the daily interrogation of her children, while they acted like mobsters on a witness stand, divulging as little information as possible.
“Stuff,” Danny replied after Beth asked him to clarify what he had done that day.
She rolled her eyes and glanced at Maria, who sat in the passenger seat of their white GMC Yukon.
“What about you?”
“Other stuff,” Maria replied with a smile.
Beth couldn’t help but grin.
She switched on the radio as she made a right on Indian Brook Road. Maria immediately started singing along to Ariana Grande as Beth followed the winding route into the pine forest that surrounded Garrison.
As they passed the Mullers’ house, Beth noticed a black-and-gold police cruiser parked on a track to their right. She wondered what the State Police were doing out here and glanced in her rearview to see the car pull onto the road behind them.
A moment later, there was a flash of blue and red. Beth glanced back to see the officer in the passenger seat was signaling for her to pull over.
Beth was religious about vehicle maintenance, but had one of her brake lights blown?
“What do they want, Mom?” Danny asked, craning around to see the cop car.
“Probably nothing,” Beth replied, but her stomach was tightening into a knot.
She turned off the radio and pulled to the side of the road.
“Are we in trouble?” Maria asked.
“No, honey,” Beth assured her as the police car rolled up behind them.
Suspicion kicked in the moment the two men stepped out of the car. They didn’t move like cops, and the driver, a tall man with paper-white skin and a thick black goatee, kept glancing up and down the otherwise deserted road. His passenger, a blond-haired man, had his hand on his holstered gun, which was nickel, like an old Smith & Wesson or maybe a Walther P88—both extremely powerful firearms, and neither permitted for state troopers’ use.
Beth’s mind conjured up her darkest fears. She had lived in dread of this day ever since she and her husband had first planned for it.
“Have you got your seat belts on, guys?” she asked.
The men were a few yards from her vehicle.
Danny and Maria nodded.
“I’m going to need you to switch off the engine, ma’am,” the blond man said loudly, drawing his pistol.
Beth threw the Yukon into drive and stepped on the gas. She watched in the rearview mirror as the two uniformed men ran back to their car. Beth turned her eyes on the road as she built speed.
“Mommy!” Danny cried as the Yukon flew around a bend.
Beth glanced at Maria, who gripped her seat belt fearfully.
“It’s OK, kids,” Beth said. “We’re going to be OK.”
She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the police car gaining, but speed wasn’t the only advantage out here.
The first gunshot startled her, but it sailed harmlessly past. Danny started crying, and Beth glanced back to see her son’s bright eyes shedding tears.
She swerved across the road, aiming at a gap between the trees. It marked a logging trail they’d walked a few times in summer. Beth didn’t slow as the road gave way to rutted track, and she kept her foot on the gas as the Yukon hit frozen mud. The big SUV bounced around violently as it climbed the steep track and threw chewed-up mud and slush into the air behind it.
Maria yelped and squealed but Beth kept going, pushing the Yukon to the limit. The suspension crunched and groaned, and the engine growled, but the large car roared on. Beth checked behind her to see their pursuers weren’t so lucky. The patrol car made it about ten yards before getting stuck on the steep slope.
They soon crested a rise that took them out of sight of their pursuers, and Beth eased off the accelerator.
“It’s OK,” she said, reaching around her seat to squeeze Danny’s leg. “It’s over. We’re safe. Is anyone hurt?”
“No,” Maria replied.
Danny shook his head.
“Those weren’t real police, were they?” Maria asked. Her face was rigid with worry.
“No, honey, I don’t think so,” Beth replied. She kept stroking Danny’s leg and his crying turned to shuddering, uneven gasps. “But it’s OK. We’re prepared for this, remember?”
Beth hoped the children wouldn’t connect the dots and realize what this meant for their father. She could hardly bring herself to think about it either.
Maria nodded uncertainly, and when Beth glanced back she saw Danny doing the same. She was so proud of her kids. Their father would be too.
THE SUN WAS touching the horizon by the time they reached Lake Waramaug. Beth turned left off Preston Hill Road onto the track that led toward Mount Bushnell. The snow was thick up here, and the Yukon growled and grunted its way through deep drifts. The mountain was covered in pines that were so tightly packed they were like bristles on a toothbrush.
The track was kept in good condition by the folks who lived at Marks Hollow, but it didn’t look as though it had been plowed for a while. Beth climbed a steep turn. When she looked to her left she saw the lake a mile or so away, shimmering gold in the sunset. Danny had fallen asleep, but Maria’s eyes were on the water.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Beth remarked, and her daughter nodded.
About half a mile further on, Beth turned right down a trail that was covered in packed snow. The SUV’s wheels spun and slid around, but the snow tires found enough purchase to make slow progress and propel the vehicle forward in uncertain bursts. They turned west, the red sun flickering through the trees, blinding them both. Beth glanced in the rearview and saw Danny’s eyelids tremble in the bright light.
“Nearly there,” Beth told Maria, who smiled wanly.
The Yukon skated and spun its way along the trail for a little over half a mile until the dense forest thinned and then fell away. Beth drove into a half-acre clearing. A small cabin stood in the center, its tiled roof covered with sparkling snow that was tinted pink in the dying light.
“Here we are,” she said, and sensed Maria’s relief.
The kids knew and loved this place. Maria called it Gray Havens, which Beth didn’t particularly like, but if it helped her daughter process the idea of a sanctuary, she was prepared to put up with the nickname.
Beth stopped the SUV in front of the cabin, and Danny stirred at the sudden loss of moment. . .
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