Time of Attack

Book 4: Jericho Quinn Thriller

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Action & Adventure; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers; Military Thrillers; Political Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

Fear is Contagious



In a small town in Utah, people are contracting a horrific disease with alarming plague-like symptoms. The CDC quarantines the area, but outbreaks are already being reported in China, Japan, and England. Evidence suggests this is not a new strain of superbug—but an act of war, an orchestrated deployment of unstoppable terror . . .



Special agent Jericho Quinn, hell-bent on finding the sniper who attacked his family, steps into an even bigger, and deadlier, conspiracy: a secret cabal of elite assassins embedded throughout the globe. Infecting the very fabric of the free world. Exterminating targets with cold, silent precision. For Quinn, it's as insidious as the virus that claims new victims each day—and he plans to wipe it off the face of the earth . . .

Release date: January 28, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 449

Sample

Early October Yodok Internment Camp 15 North Korea

 

Qasim Ranjhani had not come to buy a bomb, though the regime had plenty for sale. He wanted something far more deadly.

Though he detested the squalor of Yodok prison, such an isolated place was the perfect laboratory for what he’d come to purchase.

The portion of Camp 15 where the hospital was located was dubbed the Total Control Zone, tucked deep in a dry river valley of one of the seemingly endless waves of mountain ranges that had caused early European visitors to describe the northern part of Korea as “a sea in a heavy gale.”

Ali Kadir, Ranjhani’s heavily bearded assistant, looked a decade older than his boss, but was the same age at thirty-nine. On the ride in, he had stared out the dusty window of the military van with an intrigued grin, studying the prisoners as if they were animals in a zoo.

Guard towers bristled every hundred meters among row after row of slumping concrete buildings. The entire camp, set at the base of a windswept mountain face, was surrounded and crisscrossed with barbed wire and rolled concertina, much of it electrified. Sharp-eyed guards, hunched and angry against the bitter cold, stood post, patrolled, and smoked here and there among the rabbit warren of dilapidated buildings.

Apart from the red points of their green wool DPRK uniforms and hats, gray ruled the day at Yodok, as if color had been bled from wood and paint and sallow faces, so all melded into the surrounding rock and snow.

Some of the prisoners, new arrivals, had been arrested with as many as three generations of their family. Their faces still held the look of mouth-gaping astonishment, having only vague guesses as to what had brought them, their children, and even their aging parents to such a hell on earth. Others, the old-timers, clad in whatever rags they could stitch together against the high mountain cold, trudged along at their daily chores like the walking dead that they were. For in Yodok internment camp, life was the only sentence.

Inside the hospital, Ranjhani took shallow breaths, as if he might somehow avoid particular aspects of the squalid air.

The unsettling scratch of tiny claws on tile jerked the Pakistani’s attention away from a babbling DPRK colonel. He watched a skinny black rat scuttle along the baseboard, then dart across the chipped floor of the hospital’s front office. There was no waiting room. It was not that kind of hospital.

A gaunt cleaning woman wearing a threadbare prison smock and patched gray pants looked up at the sound. Hawk-like, she turned her head toward the rat. A deft flick of her straw broom sent the animal slamming against the block wall. Pinching the unconscious beast by the tail, she let it drop into a plastic paint bucket with a rattling thud. Like the rat, the woman was little more than a bag of bones. Her chopped, utilitarian hair hung lifeless and sparse. Brown eyes sagged over hollow cheeks, absent even the memory of a smile.

Ranjhani paid particular attention to the skin of her left arm. It was pink and puckered well above her gnarled hand, as if by a chemical burn. She moved to resume her sweeping, but the Pakistani grabbed her arm above the elbow, as one might pick up a stone to examine it. He was careful to avoid contamination from the seeping scar at her wrist. The woman went limp at his touch.

Ranjhani was not tall. Most would have considered him on the slender side, but compared to the stooping woman, he was a well-fed giant. A smartly trimmed goatee, flecked with gray, framed full lips that pursed when he thought about anything very hard—as they did now while he studied the prisoner. In her hollow eyes there twitched the same sense of desperation he heard from the snick of tiny claws as the rat tried to escape the plastic bucket.

Ranjhani perused the wounded flesh with great interest. It was recent, still weeping clear fluid. The simple act of handling a broom must have been excruciating for the woman.

Colonel Pak of the North Korean National Security Agency bent at the waist, peering down at the bucket, nose crinkled.

“That is astonishing!” He stood under a life-size picture of Kim Jong-Un, the Dear Leader.

“Astonishing?” Ranjhani raised a black eyebrow, letting the woman’s arm fall away. “How so? What could possibly be so astonishing about a rat?”

Colonel Pak gave a detached shrug. “We do not see many rats around the camp. The filthy prisoners have eaten most of them.” He laughed, the chuckle turning into a phlegm-rattled cough. “They eat snakes, snails, even kernels of corn they dig from plops of cow dung. They are dogs, I tell you, Doctor Ranjhani. Not even human.”

Ranjhani had known hunger, but never bad enough to dig his food from cow dung. It was, he thought, easy to imagine this half-wild woman doing just that. There was a quiet panic about her and the hundreds like her inside this forlorn mountain prison. He’d seen the look before, in the eyes of a girl he had drowned for snubbing his advances.

Most of the girls he’d known considered Qasim Ranjhani handsome—or at least they had told him so. A Pakistani national, he’d inherited his father’s dark skin and thinnish features. He was given to precise haircuts, face lotions, and strong cologne—a metrosexual, if such a term had existed in Lahore.

He raised a scented handkerchief to his nose and looked up at the colonel. “Perhaps we might take a look at our objective?”

“Of course,” Colonel Pak said, sticking out his bottom lip in an odd, chimpanzee-like way he didn’t seem to realize he was doing. He shot a withering stare at the woman with the broom, a stare that held the power of life or death. “Get out of here, bitch!” he barked. “Go clean the guards’ dispensary!”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel,” the woman answered robotically as if numb to his tone. She grabbed the rat bucket and slipped out the door without looking back.

Pak picked up the desk phone outside the door and barked something in Korean. All Ranjhani understood was “Doctor Khong,” the name of the man he’d actually come to see.

While they waited, the colonel produced a little notebook from the pocket of his uniform. He looked up from under the bill of the round military hat that sat on his head like an overly large platter. His bottom lip crept out again. “I must have the guards remember to cut that woman’s corn ration since she has found herself a rat. Full bellies breed a sense of entitlement—”

The metal door swung open without warning, and a harried man that had to be Doctor Khong stepped out. Sweat covered his high forehead. His hair was mostly hidden under a white surgeon’s cap that matched his lab coat. Flitting eyes, like those of a nervous prey animal, flicked around the room.

“Oh. You are already here,” he said, panting as if he’d run a block to meet them rather than just coming from the back hall.

“I gave you plenty of notice.” The colonel’s face darkened, bottom lip curling.

“Of course, of course.” Doctor Khong’s head bobbed in an automatic nod. He spoke in short choppy sentences, as if he had to breathe between every two or three words. “It is fine. Really. Some minor issues, but I will explain.”

“Issues can earn a man a bullet in the back of his head,” the colonel said. “You would do well to remember that, Doctor.”

Khong pulled open the door. “Not to worry, Comrade Colonel. Really. Please, follow me.”

Ali balked outside the door, having an idea what was on the other side. “Should we not put on some sort of protection, a breathing apparatus perhaps?”

“A surgical mask is sufficient,” Khong said. “Really.”

Colonel Pak gave a withering glare. “I was led to believe what you have is suitable for Doctor Ranjhani’s needs.”

“Please, please, please.” Khong waved his hand, motioning the men through the open door. “Come and see for yourselves.”

Doctor Khong walked like he spoke and led the little entourage haltingly down a narrow corridor. Naked incandescent bulbs spaced along the mildewed ceiling struggled to emit any light at all. Unmarked doors, like those in a cheap hotel, ran down either side of the hall. There were no windows and, Ranjhani noticed, no sound but the electric whir of unseen fans. The smell of mothballs and, oddly enough, boiling fish hung on the air. Khong paused at the sixth door on the right, produced four surgical cloth masks from the pocket of his lab coat. He passed them to the men.

Donning one himself, he waited a moment for everyone to stretch the elastic over their ears, then shouldered his way into the room before the colonel could chastise him again.

Ali stopped in his tracks on the hallway side of the door, a low moan escaping his chest. In spite of himself, Qasim Ranjhani held the scented kerchief to his nose. The colonel gagged a bit, quickly turning it into a cough so as not to appear weak.

“As you see,” Doctor Khong said, “the virus is virulent, just as I told you.” He pointed with an open hand to four hospital tables lined up on the other side of a head-high glass partition. The lab was glaringly bright in comparison to the dim hallway, like an operating room or dentist’s office. “Weak outside the body, but really, the virus runs wild once it finds a home.”

Ranjhani noticed a metal drain grate in the center of the floor, for easy cleaning. The colonel had bragged on the ride in how North Korean surgeons saved a great deal of money during their training by using Yodok prisoners to practice their craft. With an endless supply of patients, they could practice unneeded appendectomies and all manner of operations and experiments, generally without the benefit of costly anesthesia. It was a gruesome notion, but one Ranjhani could understand as long as the surgeries were for a scientific purpose.

On the far side of the glass partition, two women and two men occupied the four tables. Two lay faceup, two were facedown, illustrating the full effects of Doctor Khong’s project. All four were completely nude, their swollen bodies exposed to the bright light and chilly air of the laboratory. Wide leather straps secured their ankles to each individual table. Eruptions of angry red boils covered the patients, draining in horrific gore on the dingy sheets beneath them. Even the soles of their feet were not immune from the pustules.

“As you can see, the disease manifests outwardly through the formation of boils,” Doctor Khong said, waving a hand at the glass. The partition did not go all the way to the ceiling and proved to be more for appearance than any real quarantining effect.

The colonel stuck out his lip, feeling it necessary to prove he was in charge by giving at least some of the briefing, though he was just getting most of the information himself. “Everyone has likely had a boil at some point in his life,” he said. “It is easy to understand the intense pain this virus would cause.”

“Quite so, Dear Colonel,” Khong said. If he was upset at the interruption, he didn’t show it. “The boils are painful. Extremely so. But they are only a symptom. Death occurs due to acute respiratory distress. The Americans call it ARDS. In my studies with prisoners it has proven one hundred percent fatal.”

“Ah,” Ranjhani observed. “But these prisoners are half starved already.”

“That is correct,” Khong said. “But I feel certain that mortality would reach well over ninety percent, even in healthy Americans.”

“Let us now ask the real question,” Ranjhani said. “Is it contagious?”

“Very much so,” Khong said, “given the right set of circumstances.” His head bounced as if on a spring. His eyes began to dart again, as if he expected the bullet Colonel Pak had promised. “The virus must enter the bloodstream to be communicable.”

Pak sputtered in angry protest, obviously seeing a sale slip away.

Ranjhani raised a hand to calm him. “Interesting,” he said, leaning closer to the glass to get a look at the woman on the nearest table. “How old is this one?”

“Seventeen.” Doctor Khong spoke clinically, detached, as if the girl wasn’t another human being. “She is pregnant, nearing full term.”

“Hmm, I know this little bitch,” Pak said, lip inching out again. “Jeong Gyo. Her father spoke ill of the Dear Leader during one of his university lectures. A family of dogs.”

The pregnant girl’s head lolled to one side, facing them. A clear oxygen tube ran from her nose. Cracked lips parted, but she did not speak. Her left eye was swollen closed from a pustulent boil on the lower lid. A distended belly was knobby and red as if she’d been branded with a hot poker. One arm was thrown back above her head, exposing a nest of weeping boils that infested her armpit like wasp stings. Straining lungs filled with fluid. Her breath already impeded by the press of the baby against her diaphragm, she took short, shuddering gasps, drowning in the air.

Ranjhani found it difficult to look at but impossible to tear his eyes away.

A smile twitched across Doctor Khong’s face. “I am allowing the virus to run its course in the others. No intervention.” He was obviously pleased with himself. “However, I have sedated this one and put her on supplemental oxygen to ensure that she does not go into shock before the birth. It will be most interesting to see if the virus has passed to the fetus in utero.”

“Quite.” Colonel Pak nodded.

“Tell me, Doctor,” Ranjhani said, taking a breath through his mouth before he spoke, like the up-note of a snore. “Have you identified the disease?”

“That is the issue,” Khong said, his facial tics returning in full force. “We are not certain. We first saw it manifest last winter in a prisoner from the bachelor quarters. They huddle together at night for warmth, leaving their clothes outside in an attempt to freeze the lice. Blood, fecal matter, and other bodily fluids are in great supply in such places. A wonderful environment for such a virus. I’ve done a myriad of tests over the last year—”

The colonel’s lip curled out again, nearly as far as the plate-like brim of his hat. His face screwed into a disgusted sneer. “These prisoners keep company with pigs. They eat all manner of garbage. It is no wonder they catch some disease unknown to civilized man.”

“Quite so, Dear Colonel,” Khong nodded. “Pigs and other animals play a vital role. The exact host from which it sprang is still a mystery. In some ways it resembles smallpox. In other ways, it is closer to respiratory flu. The boils are interesting. Most such sores are full of bacterium from an infected hair follicle or minor cut. These teem with virus. Think of each and every boil as a swollen pocket of extremely potent influenza.” Dark eyes flitted over the lab tables. “No one has ever identified the particular disease that caused the plague of boils in the Judeo-Christian Bible. Perhaps this could be it.”

“What do you know of the Bible, Doctor?” the colonel snapped.

“Nothing more than scientific perusal, Colonel,” Khong said. “I assure you.”

“I am curious, Doctor.” Ranjhani took another long, thinking breath behind the surgical mask. “How much of the virus needs to enter the bloodstream in order to affect the host?”

Khong raised his forefinger, grinning. “That, sir, is the most wonderful thing. I have personally induced it with dirty needles, a small nick with an infected razor, even a dentist’s drill—all with a hundred percent success. Both these women contracted the disease through sexual contact with infected men.”

“Still.” Colonel Pak stared at the prisoners, his lip nearly touching the glass partition. “It proves useless as a biological weapon if it cannot be transmitted more easily. An infestation of boils would even thwart a rutting American’s desire for sex.”

“It may still prove useful,” Ranjhani said, his mind racing with ideas. Envisioning the possible had always been his strong suit.

“Whatever you say,” the colonel grunted. “You know better than I. Rest assured, my country is an ally in whatever you decide . . . as long as it is used against the West.”

“And I can assure you, Colonel,” Ranjhani said, “that will be the endgame.” He turned again to the doctor. “I would require a sample for transport as early as possible.”

“Of course.” Doctor Khong sighed. The look of relief on his face said he knew that this deal would not only bring valuable cash to his country but might also avert the possibility of his getting shot in the back of the head.

The colonel had grown twitchy from loitering so long among the moaning patients. He motioned for everyone to follow him out of the room and back down the hall. Ranjhani stopped at the door, turning before he left the lab.

He cleared his throat to summon Khong’s attention.

“There was a female prisoner sweeping when we first arrived—”

“Why?” Khong’s face pinched in a look of worry and guilt. “What did she tell you? One cannot trust the word of a prisoner. Really . . .”

“She said nothing.” Ranjhani shook his head. “But I wonder if you might know what caused the wound on her hand.”

“Oh, that.” Khong breathed easier. “She came in contact with some mold . . . in one of the storerooms.”

Ranjhani nodded toward Khong’s right hand, which showed similar signs of burning, though not nearly so severe. “Did you also find yourself in that storeroom?”

Khong shot a worried glance at Colonel Pak. “I merely cleaned the prisoner’s wound so she could complete her chores. Some of the mold must have gotten on me.”

Ranjhani narrowed his eyes, studying Khong’s blistered hand. “A potent mycotoxin to cause so much damage in its natural form. Would it be possible to get a sample of this mold? I will add fifty percent to our agreed-upon price.” He looked at the colonel. “Off the books.”

 

 

Ten minutes later, Qasim Ranjhani and his assistant stood in the colonel’s office, sipping weak coffee while they waited for the truck to be brought around. Ever attentive for listening devices, Ranjhani leaned sideways, whispering the basics of his plan in Ali’s ear.

Ali turned up his nose. “If the sickness does not jump from one person to another, how can it do us any good? Would we not do better to focus on attaining a significant bomb to blast away the American swagger?”

“With a little orchestration and the will of Allah, this will prove better than any bomb.” Ranjhani inhaled deeply, a smile slowly infecting his face. He put a hand on Ali’s shoulder. “Surely you have seen how a brood of small chicks will peck and peck at a bit of red fuzz on a fellow chick, thinking it to be blood? Over and over they collectively worry the spot until it soon becomes an open sore. The wounded chick is eventually pecked to death over nothing more than a misunderstanding . . .”

The squeaking military truck rumbled up outside.

Ranjhani walked out a few steps behind Ali.

“Forgive me, my friend, but I must make a call. I will join you shortly.” Ranjhani listened to his cell phone ring, stamping his feet against the cold. He slowed, allowing Ali to get well ahead and out of earshot before he answered.

It was difficult enough to explain the concept for the plague of boils. Ranjhani hadn’t even mentioned the mold. If it was the sort of toxin he believed it to be, it would provide the ultimate weapon. The virus would just be the beginning.

 

 

Pyongyang

Seventy miles southwest of Yodok Prison

 

Governor Lee McKeon sat in his assigned seat in the sprawling grandstands, five vacant chairs away and one row below the North Korean president. Two female aides sat on the other side of McKeon, heads bowed in boredom, crunched close together against the chilly air. A retinue of groveling yes-men surrounded the Dear Leader, each in the full uniform of some high-ranking general. There was no shortage of beautiful, immaculately dressed people, ready to bring coffee or answer any other whim of the boyish North Korean president.

Rank after goose-stepping rank of North Korean soldiers marched by, falling boots vibrating the parade ground below. All were gaunt with frowning faces, as if someone had just eaten their favorite pet and hadn’t given them a bite. The governor couldn’t help wondering what the endless row of youth thought of their supreme leader. The look in their angry young eyes reminded him of the old proverb: When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts.

McKeon had a perfect view of the parade below but had to turn half around in his plastic stadium seat to see if the president happened to be looking at him. Dennis Rodman had warranted a spot next to the Dear Leader on his visit, but the governor of Oregon was an official from the United States—the lowest of pariah in the mind of the North Korean president. A statement had to be made—loud and clear. Even if McKeon wasn’t from the federal government—the Dear Leader’s disgust for all things American earned anyone even remotely connected with Washington, D.C., far less respect than he’d afforded the retired basketball star.

McKeon was a self-proclaimed Chindian—of Chinese and Indian descent—with an Scottish surname. What could be more American than that? He was a lanky man, nearly six and a half feet tall, with narrow, somewhat sloping shoulders that drew many to compare him with Abraham Lincoln. These were traits that didn’t hurt him in the election, considering the fact that he was actually Pakistani—not Indian—and Chinese with mahogany skin and thin, horse-like features.

Below, endless ranks of artillery, tanks, and missiles followed the troops—and then, more soldiers. Always, there were more soldiers. North Korea might not have enough food, but it was important for the world to know that they possessed an endless supply of angry-looking young men and women to throw at any threat.

McKeon leaned sideways to rest his back from so much sitting. He turned to smile and let the Dear Leader see how truly impressed he was by this show of force.

The governor’s reasons for even being in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea set his nerves on edge. He jumped when his cell phone began to buzz in the pocket of his jacket.

It would be bad manners to answer, but the Dear Leader seemed enthralled with the spectacle of his own presentation, so McKeon picked up, half-thankful for the break from watching the never-ending river of grumpy young soldiers.

“Yes?” McKeon cupped his hand over his mouth in an effort to mask the blaring parade music pouring from the loudspeakers above. There was, of course, the remote chance that NSA or some other obscure U.S. intelligence agency would be listening in, but both men spoke on disposable devices that had been purchased in North Korea. Far from the smartphones the governor was accustomed to, the piece of junk he held to his ear didn’t even qualify as a dumb phone. It was, however, theoretically untraceable.

“I have it, my friend.” Qasim Ranjhani’s voice clicked with a Pakistani-infused English, thick with Punjabi influence. Both men shared a Chindian heritage—among other things.

“There was never any doubt.” McKeon snugged his jacket up around his neck as a chill racked his spine. He’d hoped, but not dared to believe, this could actually happen.

“It will take coordination,” Ranjhani said. “And we are so few.”

McKeon glanced up at the Dear Leader, who thankfully was still watching the spectacle of his might and power. “We are few,” he agreed. “But we have help.”

“If that same help does not murder us,” Ranjhani said.

“I will advise him you have it so he can make the necessary acquisitions.” McKeon felt an electric jolt at the possibilities.

“Very well,” Ranjhani said. “There is something else, but I will tell you about it in person.” He ended the call without another word.

McKeon was used to such abrupt behavior from his friend, especially when he was excited. He returned the phone to his pocket, glad to keep the conversation short. The president of North Korea had decided to look up at that very moment and now stared down from the row above with a dyspeptic frown.

If the Dear Leader had known what McKeon had been talking about, or the havoc he was about to unleash on the United States, that frown would have been a smile—and McKeon would have been given a better seat.

 

 

Three months later, Saturday

Bagram Air Base

Afghanistan

 

First Sergeant Rick Bedford hung plastic reading glasses on the collar of a gray ARMY T-shirt and tossed the tattered copy of Sports Illustrated on the seat next to him. He tried to force a pleasant smile as he sat down in the worn barber chair. With high cheekbones and a thick mustache to match his dark hair, he was a known smiler among his men, but the days, weeks, and months in Afghanistan, so far away from his wife, had started to pile up on him. It was easy to see why the Russians always looked so angry during the ’80s.

“Where’s Aina today?” He did his best to grin at the girl who stood wide-eyed behind the barber chair, holding a pair of scissors. She looked so young, from Kyrgyzstan like most of the other barbers. He wondered why she was cutting hair and not in school.

“Aina has taken ill,” the girl said. Her command of English was excellent—probably what got her the job. “My name is Macha. I have not work here for some months, but they call me back because it is so busy. Everyone wants a haircut before they go home to their sweethearts.”

“That is so, Macha.” Rick Bedford sighed, closing his eyes. “Gotta look nice for our sweethearts.”

“You have been in Afghanistan for some time?”

“Long enough.” Bedford knew better than to talk specifics with the hired help. But rather than go secret squirrel, he usually tried to joke his way out of such conversations. “I’ll have to throw a handful of dirt in my sheets when I get home just to be able to go to sleep.”

Macha gave a strained laugh, yammering on about the weather, the dirt, even the horrible Bagram traffic. He could feel her hand tremble as she clipped his hair. She’d probably gap him up something terrible, just in time to go home and see Marta.

“Aina is very pretty, no?” the girl said, adjusting Bedford’s head with both hands. “You know her well over these months, I suppose.”

“She was a good barber, that’s all.” Bedford shrugged. He didn’t have any particular loyalty toward Aina. She just knew how to cut his hair. Some of the soldiers managed to hook up with the Kyrgyz women who worked in many of the service jobs on base. Even absent General Order #1, which prohibited such intimate behavior, Bedford wanted no part of such an affair. He’d lived and worked in this hellhole for nearly a year with his only thought to get back home to his wife. The fact that she was the sheriff’s daughter and a very accurate shot had only a little to do with his fidelity.

“Ah, you work with the Desert Rats,” the girl said, coming to a realization. Her scissors snipped away around his ears. “You all go home tomorrow.”

Bedford groaned. It wasn’t a question. She already knew. He made a mental note to remind his guys about Operational Security. Flagrant disregard for op sec could give the enemy enough intelligence to plant an improvised explosive or set up a sniper. Even so, Bedford found himself in a forgiving mood. The thought of returning home made him feel ten pounds lighter. Images of Marta flooded his mind.

“Tomorrow,” Bedford whispered without thinking. He stifled a yawn. Hell, almost everyone was going home. They shouldn’t talk about it, but by now, it was national news.

“Good for you,” the barber said. “You should be home tomorrow night.”

“Takes a bit longer than that.” Bedford chuckled. Aina had never bothered him with such small talk.

“Still, you are going,” the woman said. In her exuberance, she nicked him with her scissors.

He brought a hand to his ear and came back with a drop of blood.

“Please forgive me,” the girl said, eyes down, glistening with tears. “It is nothing but a tiny scratch, I assure you.”

Sergeant Bedford took a deep breath, biting his tongue. But, if he was anything, he was a nice guy. “Patient to a fault,” his last performance rating had said. He just wanted to get home in one piece and see his wife before some overzealous barber cut his head off.

“It’s all right,” he said. “A little scratch won’t kill me.”

 

 

“It is done,” Ali said, pressing the cell phone to his ear. A fierce wind blew down from the Hindu Kush, whipping the black beard across his face and pressing loose robes against his body.

“Excellent,” Ranjhani said. “I will alert the others.”

 

 

Eight days later

Sunday, 2:10 PM

Kanab, Utah

It took two days from the time they left Bagram for the members of Bedford’s U.S. Army Reserve Civil Affairs 405th Battalion to plant their boots back on U.S. soil in Fort Dix, New Jersey—where they spent the better part of a week filling out paperwork and talking to shrinks. Military brass conducted mandatory training to assist returning war-fighters in their demobilization and reentry into civilian life—even going so far as to give a class on remembering to kiss their wife before trying for any other “end state.”

First Sergeant Bedford and members of his reserve unit made it out at the head of their group and boarded a military hop to. . .