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One of them is Travers.

  We are thirty yards apart, but even from here I can tell he’s ID’d me.

  I start to turn to run in the opposite direction, but before I can do so, Travers yells at the top of his lungs. “Gentry! Down!”

  In the world where Chris and I operate, a shout of “Down!” doesn’t mean, Get down so I can cuff you. It means, unequivocally, Get down because somebody’s about to shoot you.

  My body reacts to this with instant muscle memory; I’m barely conscious of the fact that I’m dropping like a stone. I land on my chest on the hard surface of the alley.

  As I hit the deck I hear the crack of a pistol shot behind me, and then another, and then I begin rolling to my right, both to make myself a moving target and to gain access to the gun on my right hip.

  After my second roll I have my weapon in my hand and I continue towards the cover of a cluster of scooters parked together, another dozen feet or so on my left.

  Another shot cracks in the night, the pavement sparks a foot from my head and, as I roll, I aim between my legs and return fire—at what, exactly, I have no idea.

  Simultaneous to me opening up on the shooter to the north, I hear the snapping of two handguns coming from the south by the canal. This will be Chris and the other SAC guy, engaging the asshole who’s shooting at me, and I hope I survive this shit so I can buy them a beer and thank them.

  The three men fire at one another; I can’t tell if anyone is getting hits.

  I chance a look around the scooters and I see a muzzle flash coming from around the corner of the building housing the nightclub. Then, just ahead on my right, the door of the restaurant flies open, and instantly more muzzle flashes crack off. I dive back around just as men begin running into view, crouching down behind scooters on the other side of the alleyway.

  It’s three on three now, I think, and we all have cover, but from the sound of new booming reports echoing around, one of the bad guys has a rifle.

  I look back over my shoulder. Travers and his partner are backed up to the canal, both crouched behind pylons used to tie off boats.

  This feels like a stalemate, but I have a strong suspicion that both sides have more men with guns on the way to this fight.

  * * *

  • • •

  Chris Travers shot his head around the left side of the iron pylon he was crouched behind, and he spotted Court Gentry about seventy-five feet ahead of him, on his knees by a bunch of scooters in the alleyway.

  He touched his push-to-talk button, then said, “Zulu elements, we are two blocks west of the casino, do not know the name of this alley. The Grand Canal is behind us. Three . . . possibly four hostiles one block to our north. Approach with caution.” Then he said, “But get your asses over here!”

  He turned to Hume, a few feet away behind another pylon, and watched his teammate reload his Sig pistol.

  “You good, Pete?”

  “For now, yeah. We might have to jump into this nasty-ass water behind us, though. Not looking forward to that.”

  Hume fired again, then ducked back down.

  Travers heard the tone of his sat phone in the earpiece in his left ear, and he jammed a finger in his right ear to drown out some of the shooting.

  “Go for Zulu.”

  “Status report?” It was Brewer, and to her credit, she wasn’t wasting time with the identity check.

  “We are in sight of Violator, but we have enemy contact at this time.”

  “Negative! You are not to engage with the hostiles.”

  “Well, it’s a little late for that, ma’am.” He leaned out to his right and fired his pistol, and saw a man thirty yards away duck back down behind a row of parked scooters.

  Next to him Hume said, “There’s more of them.”

  “Keep your eye on the canal. If these dudes have a boat, we’re in trouble.”

  Brewer spoke again. “Zulu, your orders are to immediately disengage. I want you out of there, now!”

  “We don’t have Violator. If we leave now, he’ll be running for his life.”

  “And he’s damn good at that. Leave him, get back to your staging area in town, and await instructions.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t be compromised. End of discussion. Brewer out.”

  “Fuck!” Travers shouted, and then he transmitted to his team again. “All Zulu, belay my last. Move to RP Foxtrot for exfil.”

  More gunshots rang out from the north.

  A Zulu officer replied to Travers’s command. “Roger that, but . . . uh, somebody’s still in contact.”

  “No shit, that’s us. We’re moving off the X now.” He turned to Hume. “Bound to my left. I’m right behind you.”

  Hume took off laterally while Travers emptied his Glock up the street and quickly reloaded. Once Hume arrived at the edge of the building that gave him cover from up the alley, Travers said to himself, “Good luck, Court,” then followed his teammate out of the line of fire.

  Both men scampered over crates stacked canalside, and Hume lost his footing on stone polished by centuries of foot traffic and fell into the water on his left. Travers stopped and fished him out, and then the two men took off again to the west through a narrow passage.

  * * *

  • • •

  I pause for a second to pound my last mag into the grip of my Glock 19, and this is when I realize I’m the only guy returning fire on the enemy. Looking back over my shoulder, I see Chris Travers disappear around the side of the building that runs along the canal.

  Well, shit.

  I don’t know what’s up, but I have a strong suspicion that Brewer is involved.

  I’m just about to lean out around the scooters when behind me I hear the wail of a siren. I look back to see a large police speedboat shifting into view; spotlights train on me and up the street at the other shooters.

  My gun is low between my knees as I squat, and I don’t think the cops could possibly see it, so I drop it on the ground and kick it down a drain next to me. Then I turn, raise my hands, and start screaming like a little bitch.

  “Help me! Help me!”

  The gunfire to the north stops. I figure the security dudes for the Consortium are unassing the area, and I decide to do the same. I take a deep breath, pray that the Italian cops are either bad shots or slow on the trigger, and then sprint across the alley, back towards the door to the restaurant. It’s unlocked, nobody shoots me, and once inside I pull my knife and move carefully through the building, concerned that bad guys might still be close.

  But soon enough I’m mixed in with the crowd of clubbers and club employees fleeing the area, and with my leather apron I look like one of the crowd.

  We all run together up to San Leonardo, where I drop my apron but keep running.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Sean Hall raced with his protectee along the bank of the canal, in the opposite direction of the sound of gunfire a hundred yards or so behind them. Only two of the other six guards were shouldered up around the protectee; the rest had been in other parts of the auction site when the shooting began, and they were still catching up.

  He’d been told that Riesling and the two girls at the Mala del Brenta safe house, Maja and Sofia, had been sheltered there by mafia men, and the MdB forces there were on high alert.

  While Hall ran, his left hand on Cage’s shoulder, he shouted into his cuff mic. “I need those boats to pull up on the Grand Canal, two hundred yards from the casino! Principal will be there in forty-five seconds, and we aren’t waiting around!”

  The driver of one of the two mahogany power boats radioed that they would comply, and soon both Spirit Yacht P40s came into view, racing out of a smaller canal.

  Once Cage, Hall, and the others boarded and were speeding over the water, Hall spoke again into his mic. “Lion Actual? You copy?”

&nb
sp; “Lion Actual.”

  “Did you get him?”

  There was a long pause. “Negative. We encountered other hostiles. I have one man dead.”

  Hall put his head in his hands. The organization he worked for had just shot it out with CIA personnel. As bad as things were for him already, he knew they’d just gotten worse.

  While still reacting to the worry that he was in even deeper shit if it ever came out that he worked for the Director of the Consortium, he felt a hand squeeze his knee. He looked up to see Cage leaning over from the other side of the boat. Over the sound of the engine and the pounding of the hull against the water, he said, “Thanks, Sean.”

  The forty-year-old ex-SEAL thought he was going to be sick to his stomach. Distractedly, he said, “You bet.”

  Cage added, “I want Claudia and the two girls coming to the U.S. brought to the jet, and we’ll all go back together.”

  Hall couldn’t believe it. “They are on another flight, tomorrow. You never travel with the merchandise.”

  Cage shook his head. “I want them out of here, now! Make it happen.”

  Hall angrily brought his cuff mic back to his mouth. His last two men would pick up Dr. Claudia, Maja, and Sofia from the Mala del Brenta safe house and take them to Marco Polo Airport. Then Cage, Verdoorn, the two girls, and God knows who else would climb into the Gulfstream for the flight back to the States.

  Hall couldn’t wait to be airborne, to get the danger behind him and his protectee, so he could pound vodka when the coast was clear.

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour and a half after the gunfight by the Grand Canal, I climb out of a taxi in the city of Treviso, Italy, on the mainland twenty-two miles northwest of the island city. During the drive I called Talyssa, twice. The first time she did not answer, but the second time she picked up, and though there was obvious stress in her voice, she assured me that Maarten Meyer was right in front of her and working his magic to break into the banking records Talyssa had targeted. I ask her for regular updates, and then I tell her I’m going to America.

  She is surprised by this, but she shouldn’t be. Roxana said she was being taken to the West Coast, and her captor was American. All roads lead west, and I want to be there when Talyssa gives me someone or something to target.

  I have the cabdriver take me to a bridge overlooking the Sile River, and when he is out of sight I walk through manicured trees until I reach a dry concrete drainage ditch. On the other side of this I drop to my knees, pull out my binoculars, and train them through openings in the large chain-link fence in front of me.

  A hundred meters ahead is a fixed operating base for private jets coming to and leaving from Aeroporto di Treviso. On the far side of the building, I know from experience, will be a hangar and a ramp and, undoubtedly, several high-end corporate aircraft.

  I’m hoping that also among them will be a CIA transport jet.

  The plane that’s been sent to haul me back to the United States.

  The plane I plan on hijacking.

  I can’t see any aircraft from my vantage point here, so I climb the fence, drop to the other side, and begin moving through the parking lot, avoiding any lights.

  Three minutes later I’m prone under a commercial truck on the edge of the ramp. I scan the dozen different aircraft in front of me, all corporate-sized jets. There are Bombardiers, Citations, Learjets, Embraers, and Gulfstreams, but my eyes focus on a Dassault Falcon 50. It looks older than most of the other planes around, but in good condition, and what really draws me to it is that, in contrast to every single other aircraft here at this FBO, the Falcon 50 has its stairs down and its rear luggage hatch open, and the APU, the auxiliary power unit, is sitting next to the jet’s nose.

  Someone either has recently deplaned or is planning on using this aircraft soon.

  The cockpit and cabin lights are off, which means departure isn’t imminent, but I take this as a good sign.

  It will give me time to do what I need to do.

  The moment I told Matt Hanley I was headed to Venice, I knew without a doubt he’d send guys to come grab me and drag me back home. And although it’s been a long time since I’ve been here with the Agency, I do remember we landed here at this FBO. I wasn’t sure the Agency was still using the same facility, but I figured there was a very good chance they would be.

  I needed a lucky break, and I think I just got it.

  There was no way I could fly commercial back to the USA; the Agency would pick me up on facial recognition and I’d be grabbed before I left most any airport in Europe, then hauled off to an Agency safe house till I could be ferried home.

  And I sure as hell don’t have time to get on a freighter and steam all the way to the United States.

  So I use the one thing I have at my disposal. An angry CIA DDO who wants me home and working for him again.

  I’m going to get on that plane, knowing that when Travers and the others are a half hour out or so, the pilots will climb aboard for preflight. Then we’ll take off, leaving the SAC dudes behind. Obviously Travers and the others will notify Langley, and there will be one hell of a welcoming committee wherever this plane is due to land, but I can divert it by having the pilot declare an emergency once we cross over the U.S. border, and I should be able to deplane before Hanley can get any more goons there to take me down.

  Yeah, as plans go, this one is out there. I’ve certainly never hijacked an aircraft before, but I’m a desperate man with few options.

  And this shit is what I do.

  I have a plan B, in case I’m wrong about this not being a trap, but plan B relies on factors that, so far in my experience, I’ve not been able to rely on.

  I sure as shit do not want to rely on plan B, and if I have to pull it out, it’s only because it’s my very last hope.

  I start to crawl out from under the truck to head for the Falcon, but then I stop myself. When has anything I’ve done ever been this easy?

  There is nothing in front of me that makes it seem like I might be stepping into a trap, except my sudden, rare turn of apparent good luck.

  But I don’t have time to do this the slow and careful way; I have to act.

  What the hell, I tell myself, and I begin walking through the night across the ramp.

  A minute later I climb the jet stairs. I’m unarmed, for two reasons. One, I only had the Glock, which I kicked into the drain. And two . . . I’m not going to go lethal with anyone in the CIA, and I doubt they’d go lethal against me.

  Hanley wants me alive, because I’m useful.

  I then look into the darkened cabin. Every last one of the interior lights is off, which is weird, meaning this is a cold aircraft with the hatch open. I start to wonder if the pilots are even on airport grounds, but I know they wouldn’t leave the Falcon compromised like this unless they were nearby in the lounge.

  Unless . . . of course . . . this is a trap.

  And then it happens. A light flicks on over a sofa in the rear of the cabin, and I know, without a doubt, what I’m about to see. I turn to the light.

  A man sits there, leg crossed over a knee, a cowboy boot on full display, and a cold bottle of Corona in his hand. He’s silhouetted by the light behind him, but that doesn’t matter.

  I know who this is before he says a word.

  “Howdy, Six. You looking for a lift?”

  Shit. I can’t see his face well, but I recognize the voice of Zack Hightower, my old team leader from my own Ground Branch days, and currently a denied Agency asset run by Matt Hanley.

  Just like me.

  In the Goon Squad his call sign was Sierra One, and mine was Sierra Six. He’s rarely called me by anything other than Six in the past decade.

  I play it as cool as possible as I respond. “I knew Matt would send a plane for me, and I halfway figured you’d be on it.”


  Zack sips his beer. “You know how it is, bro. He calls me into this shit to serve as your voice of reason. And usually you ignore reason, so I have to do the strong-arm thing.” He adds, “Don’t make me do the strong-arm thing.”

  Zack is good at what he does, and I’m pretty sure he’s also crazy.

  I look around the aircraft a moment to confirm the two of us are, in fact, alone. “How, exactly, are you planning on strong-arming me?”

  “Travers and his boys are on the way back to the jet right now. They made a little noise tonight, apparently, so they’ve been recalled.”

  “But they aren’t here yet.”

  Zack laughs. He loves it when he’s got me where he wants me. “Neither are the pilots, dumbass. You going to fly this yourself all the way back to the States?”

  I just look at the cockpit, then look back at him.

  He laughs, but I can tell he’s suddenly uneasy. “Hell no. You can’t do that.”

  “Then call the pilots. Right now.”

  He cocks his head. “You’re hijacking an Agency aircraft?”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that. I’m just borrowing it.”

  “And you’re planning on flying this jet all the way to the U.S.? By yourself, if I refuse to call the pilots? Seriously? That’s your play?”

  “I was hoping to avoid that play. But if you don’t give me another option, then I’ll have to give it a shot. You feeling lucky?”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “This isn’t some four-seater twin-prop bush plane. This is an elite corporate jet.”

  I look around a little more. “It’s okay. I’ve seen better.”

  “You suck as a pilot, dude. You always did.”

  “Then let the pros come on board and we’ll jet off into the sunset together safely.”

  He drinks down half the beer now, then burps. He’s in his early fifties, but apparently no one told him this. Then he looks back to me. “I’m gonna go ahead and call that bluff, Six. Fly this plane back to America. I’ll take that ride with you.”