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  From Party-crasher’s open door, a man wearing a white smock appeared. Chris aimed and wondered why Sonny hadn’t picked him off first, and then he realized why—the man wasn’t armed. White Smock looked Italian, said something in Italian, and raised his hands. Chris motioned anxiously for him to get down on the deck, but the man froze in shock.

  Max aimed as if he was going to shoot Sonny, but he shot through the doorway and out into the hall their team had come in from earlier. A thud sounded, like a body hitting the floor. Sonny must’ve heard the rounds whip past him because his eyes opened wide.

  “I have the package,” Hannah said. “Coming out.” She radioed the message so the good guys wouldn’t mistake her for a bad guy. She stepped out, her satchel bulging, and turned. A door near her opened, outside of Chris and Max’s direct fields of fire. Hannah didn’t have eyes in the back of her head to see who was behind her. Sonny appeared to have a clear shot, but Hannah’s body blocked part of it. If he fired, he might hit her. If he didn’t fire, whoever opened the door might kill her. Or maybe the person in the doorway was another unarmed civilian—only Sonny could see for sure. Sonny fired: Tick-tick. Tick. Then it sounded as if someone had dropped a sack of potatoes. Another one bites the dust.

  Sonny’s rounds had ripped danger-close to Hannah. She paused and seemed startled for a moment. Then she resumed her shuffle, P90 aimed in front of her. “I’ll take us out.”

  Max gazed at the stove for a moment before he approached it and turned the knobs on high without engaging the flame. Hsssss.

  “What’re you doing?” Chris asked.

  Max took the cap off the bottle of olive oil, dumped it on the paper towels, pulled out a Bic lighter, and lit the paper towels. The fire licked the wood cabinet above. “Exactly what it looks like, padre.” The gleam of a pyromaniac flashed in his eyes.

  Hannah departed the room, and Chris hastened out behind her. He stepped over a corpse in the hall, then another.

  Hannah proceeded through the crooked S-shaped hall.

  Footsteps sounded behind.

  Chapter Two

  Chris turned around to see the source of the footsteps—Sonny and Max. Then Chris returned his eyes to the front, scanning for threats.

  Hannah rounded the corner. Chris followed her. The minty odor returned, but now the hall smelled of olive oil past its smoke point—like burning rubber. An alarm from the building went off. If it was a security alarm, it was oddly late. More likely, it was a fire alarm.

  Max sounded thoroughly amused on the radio: “Lab is on fire—might explode.”

  “Did you...?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah,” Max said proudly.

  Hannah’s voice was ecstatic: “Bad to the bone.” Wind beneath her wings, she picked up the pace and exited the building. Descending the exterior steps down to the alley, she glanced back and smiled. Chris grinned. We have the antidote, the lab is on fire, and none of us were injured. The sunshine and a light breeze tickled his skin.

  Chris glanced at the stairs above to see if Sonny and Max were still with them. They were. Below him, Hannah stepped off the stairs and into the alley.

  “Gray Mercedes van entered the alley,” Tom said over the radio.

  Chris didn’t know whether Minotaur and his FSB buddies were in the van or if this would be some random civilian. He couldn’t see the van, but that was okay, because whoever was in it couldn’t see him, either. The closest place to hide was between a white box truck and a red Audi Q2, a compact SUV. Hannah took cover between the two vehicles, and Chris joined her. Sonny and Max descended the final steps and took refuge with them. The white truck shielded them from the gray van’s view.

  “Tomahawk, we need an extract,” Max said over the radio, using Tom’s call sign.

  “Gray van is between you and me—blocking the alley,” Tom said.

  “Can you see who’s inside?” Sonny asked.

  “Windows are black,” Tom replied. “Van is just sitting there with the engine idling.”

  “What are they waiting for?” Hannah asked.

  “Us,” Sonny said.

  “We don’t know that,” Max said.

  Chris took out his phone and opened his car hacking app. On the menu, it gave a list of car makes; he scrolled through them and selected Audi. The menu prompted him to select the location—he scrolled to Europe and selected it. Then the app prompted him to choose the car brand. He pressed Q2. The screen read: Waiting to communicate.

  “Smoke leaking out of the third floor,” Tom said over the radio.

  The fire alarm blared incessantly.

  “We can’t go back in there,” Sonny said.

  “We can’t sit here, either,” Max said.

  Hannah’s voice became tense: “Cops and others will be here any moment.”

  On Chris’s cell phone, two options showed: Unlock door and Start engine. He tapped the first. The red Audi’s doors clicked.

  “What the...?” Sonny said.

  Chris opened the car’s door and seated himself behind the wheel. “Get in.”

  Sonny rode shotgun, and Max and Hannah hopped in back.

  Chris locked the doors and pressed Start engine on his phone. The engine didn’t start.

  Tom’s voice became anxious: “Three dudes with assault rifles and a fourth with a short shotgun exiting the van. One of the guys with an assault rifle has gray hair and wears a gray suit.”

  “Minotaur and his crew,” Chris guessed aloud. He pressed the ignition button on the car. Nothing.

  Sonny pounded the dash once. “Come on, you goombah piece of crap!”

  Max shook Chris’s seat from behind, throttling him. “Go, go, go!”

  Chris pressed the ignition button on the car again. This time, the engine rumbled. “Yes!”

  “Two more guys with assault rifles exited the van!” Tom exclaimed. “All six are heading your way—you have to get out of there!”

  Chris looked behind and backed out of the parking space, the rear end of the vehicle facing in the direction of the gunmen and their van. He stomped on the accelerator. Adrenaline blasted through his body, and the world seemed to slow. Need more speed. He crushed the accelerator to the deck. The car still didn’t seem to go fast enough. A half dozen armed guys came into view. They split ranks and scattered, but the smallest of them was too slow, and Chris struck him. Shorty separated from his rifle and catapulted backwards before he bounced off the van.

  Chris stomped on the brake, and the wheels screeched to a halt. He shifted into drive and peeled out. His wheels squealed and smoked like a creature escaping Hell.

  Suddenly it sounded as if Fourth of July fireworks had begun. Chris and Sonny ducked. Pshh, pshh went the rear window. Sparkling particles of glass sprayed the inside of the Audi. Rounds cracked past Chris’s ear. Two holes popped through the middle of the front windshield, and another smacked the windshield in front of where Chris’s head had been.

  “There’s a bullet hole in your headrest, Reverend,” Max said, using Chris’s call sign.

  “Are you okay?” Hannah asked.

  “No injuries,” Chris said.

  “Good that you ducked,” Sonny said.

  The Audi’s engine whined, and Chris only stuck his head up high enough to see over the dash as he barreled through the alley.

  The shooting stopped, and Chris sat up straight and glanced in his rearview mirror. “Anyone hit?”

  The rear window was busted. In the distance behind them, the shooters scrambled into their van.

  In front of Chris, a worker unloaded packages from a truck. Chris didn’t want to take an innocent life. He swerved. Miss. The Audi dropped into a dip and Chris felt heavy for a moment until the SUV blew up out of the dip, and he experienced weightlessness. His breathing became rapid, and his heart beat fortissimo.

  Parked cars and the backs of buildings cruised by. A subcompact car started to back out of a space, but Chris laid on the horn without stopping. The car braked, and Chris avoided hitting it by
only a few inches. A pedestrian began to walk across the alley, but jumped back out of the way. A group of pigeons took flight from the pavement, but one didn’t fly fast enough and bounced off the windshield, leaving a spot of feathers and blood on the glass.

  At the end of the alley, Chris turned left. A hubcap popped off and rolled into the street. He passed restaurants and shops. “I’ll head north until our tail is clean. Then I’ll circle around and return to the yacht.”

  “Anywhere is better than here,” Sonny said.

  Chris could see part of the Colosseum up ahead. Elsewhere in the city, sirens squealed. He made a right on Piazza del Colosseo.

  In the rearview mirror, the van turned onto the road behind them.

  Chris wanted to follow the road counterclockwise around the Colosseum, but it was a one-way street going against him, and a sign with a red circle and horizontal bar in the middle warned him to keep out. Even so, traffic wasn’t quite bumper-to-bumper, and Chris said, “I’m turning.”

  “Coola boola,” Sonny cheered.

  Chris steered head-on into traffic. A little blue Fiat Panda honked. It was to the right, so Chris jerked the steering wheel left. More drivers honked. A red Maserati Levante, a midsize luxury SUV, came at him from the left, so Chris swung right. Other vehicles ahead stopped, clogging the lanes.

  “Are you crazy?” Max asked.

  A Roman gestured with the sign of a bull with two horns and hollered, “Cornuto!”

  “Get the hell out of there!” Sonny shouted back at the Roman.

  “Make a hole!” Max hollered at the oncoming drivers.

  One man shouted. “Ti faccio un culo cosi!” Chris recognized the word culo from Spanish, meaning “ass,” and he didn’t need to understand the rest to get the message.

  In a narrow lane to the right, words written on the street seemed to indicate something about buses and taxis, as if the lane was reserved for them, and it was open, so Chris took it. More Romans threw wild gestures, shouted, and honked.

  Chris passed the Colosseum, and the street became two-way again.

  Sonny looked into his side-view mirror. “I think we lost them.”

  “We did it!” Max said.

  “I hate to bear bad news,” Hannah said.

  Chris checked his rearview mirror—the van was there.

  “Damn!” Chris cursed.

  “I thought you guys weren’t supposed to swear,” Max said.

  Chris had left SEAL Team Six to become a full-time pastor. He had only accepted this mission part-time as a favor to Hannah. Chris stepped down harder on the gas. “One of my many ministerial failings.” He sped past basilicas and temples colored in shades of brown and gray.

  Tom’s voice came over the radio, using his brother’s call sign: “Yukon, Tomahawk. What’s your twenty?”

  Hannah pressed her muzzle against the bullet-riddled back window and fired: tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  Max slung lead downrange, too. “We’re on Piazza del Colosseo. Now it’s Fori Imperiali Street.”

  Assault rifles rattled, and the rear window imploded again.

  Chris whipped the wheel so savagely to the right that he almost ran off the road and hit one of the trees on the corner of Via Cavour.

  Max’s voice became frantic. “Hannah!”

  Sonny turned around and Chris glanced in the rearview mirror. Hannah had collapsed.

  “Hannah!” Chris cried out.

  But there was no response.

  Max touched her neck where there should have been a pulse. He shook his head.

  “Hannah wake up!” Chris shouted.

  “She’s dead,” Max said. “Hannah is dead.”

  Chapter Three

  One week earlier...

  In a small two-man police station outside of Istanbul, a captured Russian spy, codename Minotaur, sat naked and unafraid. Some called him Shark, and others called him Devil, but his real name was Kirill Smirnov. He had the tanned skin of his Mongolian mother and the round, gray eyes and big body of his Slavic father. Minotaur’s hair had gone gray in his twenties, making him appear fashionably older. He was born an old soul, and now in his thirties, he seemed wise for his age.

  He knew the likelihood of capture was high, so he’d prepared accordingly. Although his pistol and other possessions had been removed when he was strip-searched, the Turkish police hadn’t discovered the passive GPS transmitter hidden under a fake bloody wound and bandage on his arm. Nor did they detect the button compass, money, lock pick tools, and small improvised weapon concealed inside an aluminum cigar tube in his rectum.

  Minotaur was a Spetsnaz commando who conducted assassinations, sabotage, and other covert actions deep in enemy territory for Vympel, meaning Pennant, the Russian nickname for Special Group “V.” Vympel answered directly to FSB headquarters in Moscow.

  Handcuffed and alone, his room was furnished only with the chair he sat on and one other. Soon the two law enforcement officers would return.

  Quietly he squatted beside the chair and strained to defecate, but instead of human waste, he pushed out the cigar tube. The coating of olive oil he’d applied earlier made the process considerably easier, and now he felt relieved of the inconvenient container. It was challenging to manipulate the oily cigar container with his hands behind his back, but he’d practiced this many times, and he was an expert at it. He removed the cap from the tube and tipped out the lock pick. Then he simply inserted the pick into the lock of one cuff, turned, and it unlocked. He opened the other.

  Next, he assembled his weapon: he removed the nail and pushed it through a predrilled hole in the cap. Then he replaced the cap, sandwiching the head of the nail snugly between the lid and a wooden dowel inside the tube that extended its full length. The cigar tube served as his handle and the nail protruding from the lid as the blade of his mini dagger.

  Footsteps clicked in the hall. Minotaur held his hands behind his back, grasping his weapon. Two police officers, one in his thirties and the other in his twenties, entered the room. The older one looked hard around the gut, and his pistol hung tightly at an angle as if he practiced with it. The younger guy looked stronger, but his awkward posture and loose-fitting holster suggested he was inexperienced with close-quarter combat. Both wore the uniforms of Turkey’s Gendarmerie—dark green trousers and light green shirts. Each gendarme carried a Yavuz 16 pistol, the Turkish version of the Beretta 92F. These country cops had a more militaristic, both-barrels-blazing reputation than their city cousins.

  A cell tone rang from the senior officer’s pocket, but he ignored it. He sat down and asked something in Turkish.

  Minotaur spoke several languages, but he used English as his lingua franca: “I do not speak Turkish.”

  The senior officer’s phone stopped ringing, and he asked condescendingly in English, “The gun we found on you—where did you get it?”

  “From the getting place,” Minotaur said.

  Senior smiled with his mouth, but his eyes didn’t seem happy. “Where is this getting place?”

  “Do you have a need to know?” Minotaur asked.

  “Yes, I am a police officer. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way—it’s up to you.”

  The junior gendarme fidgeted nervously.

  Minotaur leaned toward Senior. “I recognized you before you brought me in here. You arrested a Russian diplomat, and later he died under your questioning.”

  “He was a spy,” Senior said.

  “Spy or diplomat, it matters not—what matters is that you killed him.”

  “Are you a spy, too?”

  Minotaur stared through him. “In a remote corner of the earth, there rose from the dirt a village of warriors who couldn’t be conquered. They were the fiercest warriors in the history of the world. Soon a hurricane came and wiped them out. When the waters receded, and the lands dried, all that was left of the village was dust. In the end, we all become dust.”

  Both Senior and Junior gave Minotaur perplexed looks.

 
“Why are you here?” Senior asked.

  “To deliver a message.”

  Senior’s phone rang again. This time, he pulled it out and looked at the display as if to see who the persistent caller was.

  Now was Minotaur’s chance. Senior appeared to be the more dangerous of the two. Minotaur leaped at him like a top fuel dragster off the starting line. Senior looked up from his phone and lifted his empty hand in self-defense. Minotaur swept Senior’s defensive hand away and violently stabbed his pick into the man’s temple, cracking through bone to brain with a burst of blood. Senior collapsed, and his phone bounced off the linoleum floor.

  Junior reeled back on his heels and looked down at his pistol, grasping at it. “Eeee!”

  Seeing the green gendarme off balance injected adrenaline into Minotaur’s system like nitromethane. It felt as if he’d gone from zero to a hundred in less than a second with several g’s of force pressing against him.

  Junior drew his gun, but Minotaur smashed into him, and they both crashed to the floor. Junior’s pistol fired, and Minotaur pounded his nail into Junior’s heart. The young gendarme stopped moving, and on his shirt where he’d been struck, a dark wet spot spread slowly. Minotaur took the young man’s pistol and stood. On the way to the door, Minotaur stepped over the puddle of blood forming around Senior’s head.

  In the office area, he found his clothes, put them on, and gathered his other belongings. He dumped the Turkish weapon in the trash and holstered his personal pistol, a Glock 19. Finally, he exited the small, two-man police station.

  “Message delivered.”

  Chapter Four

  The noon sun pummeled the color out of Istanbul as Chris sped to the edge of the city in his black Porsche Panamera, courtesy of CIA. Able to go from zero to a hundred kilometers per hour in three and a half seconds, the car was a handful, and Chris had to be careful not to draw unwanted attention from the police. The attention he wanted was from the man he was about to recruit.

  Chris passed a row of multistoried concrete buildings, some faded, some new, and all adorned with signs written in Turkish. Between the buildings sat empty plots of land overgrown with weeds. He pulled up to the Mescid-i Selam Station on the Tram Four Line. His partner, Hannah, stood waiting for the tram, dressed to impress in a dress suit that was business-like, yet curvy enough to capture a man’s interest.