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  And then the snow came, heavy and hard, curtains of swirling flakes that blinded her. She was instantly coated in a sheet-white shroud, and wiping her glasses did nothing now. She stumbled onward, for no reason, with no direction, her bones growing more brittle by the minute, drained of hope as she fell to her knees, and at last, surrendered.

  Her glasses had fallen in the snow. She heard something, raised her head and blinked at a shape in the raging storm. A horse. No, that couldn’t be. A huge horse, black as onyx. It snorted and came near her, and sitting in its ornate saddle was the figure of a man. No, not just a man. A Mongol warrior. He was huge and heavy with furs, black boots in the stirrups, a peaked Mongol cap, gleaming eyes, and a drooping pirate’s mustache. A long rifle was strapped across his back and some sort of scimitar was gripped in his right glove, while his left hand twisted the reins.

  She placed her frozen hands onto her knees and pushed herself erect. She would stand up, straight and defiant for her own execution. At least that little bit of honor.

  But the Mongol didn’t kill her, or utter a word. He reached down, gripped the front of her uniform tunic in one massive hand, lifted her off the ground like nothing more than a rag doll, and swung her legs behind him onto the horse as she grunted, speechless.

  And they rode off into the blizzard.

  Chapter 8

  Q Street, Washington, D.C.

  Mike Pitts had blown his own brains out because he’d been blackmailed by Millennial Crude, forced to betray the Program and his country, and had therefore been responsible for the deaths of three of his best Alpha operators. When his quartermaster, Penny Amdursky, had heard the terrible news, she’d quit government service and gone back to school.

  Penny had begun her federal career in the army as an infantry S-4, a logistical expert who handled the influx and outflow of war-fighting matériel, such as uniforms, gear, weapons, and ammunition. Working that job for the Ranger regiment, she’d then been selected to do the same task for Delta at Fort Bragg, which meant she had a security clearance higher than God’s. From there, Pitts had recruited her for an ultrasecret special operations outfit based out of the White House, and she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She’d loved working for Mike Pitts, and his death had shaken her faith and crushed her spirit. With the Program dissolved, she’d decided to pursue her second passion, design management and communications, at Georgetown University.

  But three days ago, she’d received a call from the former Program’s top operator, Stalker Seven, aka Eric Steele. Getting a summons to service from an Alpha like Steele was akin to a locker room towel boy getting a call from Tom Brady. She was a hair’s breadth away from finishing her master’s degree. She decided her matriculation could wait.

  Now she was standing in the middle of the once brand-new, then completely trashed, and soon-to-be-new-again Program headquarters space on Q Street NW, wearing a pair of paint-splattered overalls. At five foot three she was petite and infantry lithe, with short black hair like minx fur and a pair of thick spectacles the army called “BCGs”—birth control glasses—which made her look like a female version of Harry Potter. To the right of Penny stood Steele, Dalton Goodhill, and Ted Lansky. To her left stood Mike Pitts’s former adjutant, Betsy Roth, a tall blond woman with fashionable glasses and a pornographic vocabulary, who had also just been rerecruited, and Miles Turner, who still had no idea why he’d agreed to rejoin this frigging circus.

  They were watching a team of security-cleared maintenance workers seconded over from the Pentagon as they rolled the once faux mahogany walls with thick white paint. Simultaneously, another crew was installing seashell-colored carpet, and yet another was dragging in white Herman Miller workstations, matching Lino office chairs, white Alienware Aurora R11 computers and monitors, and ergonomic VariDesks, also in matching cream cheese hues.

  “It’s all kind of white,” Steele said.

  “Extremely white,” said Dalton Goodhill.

  “Virginal white,” said Betsy Roth. “Not that I’d know.”

  “You don’t think this theme’s a little too bright, S?” Ted Lansky growled to Penny. Everyone called her S, for S-4, a play on James Bond’s famous quartermaster, Q.

  “Internal corporate psychometric studies indicate a degree of higher productivity with a lighter shade environment,” Penny said. But then she glanced up at Miles Turner, who’d taken a judgmental posture, arms folded as he examined the transformative decor. “Does this trigger any sort of privilege thing for you, Miles?”

  “Don’t care if it’s purple,” the African American security chief said. “Just tell me you’re not ordering matching firearms.”

  “Only a couple Accuracy International Arctic Warfare sniper rifles,” Penny said. “For winter work. The rest of the pieces are camo or standard black.”

  “Okay,” Miles said. “I’m down with that.”

  “You’re eating a big chunk of my budget for this, Amdursky,” Lansky said to Penny.

  “Sir, creamy and dreamy is the same price as dark and dreary. I checked.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lansky grunted, then turned to Steele and Goodhill. “Seven, Blade, my office. And you too, Turner.”

  He turned and marched to the kitchen/break room. He had no office yet, and the SCIF at the other side of the TOC was being remodeled by Penny’s worker bees. They’d already pulled out the classic old conference table and were replacing it with an Alibaba marble white and silver slab, with pop-up microphone modules and matching chairs. The kitchen was being repainted by a young man and woman. Lansky said, “You two Jackson Pollocks take a break,” and they fled. He leaned back against the stove and looked at Steele, Goodhill, and Turner.

  “Brief me on recruiting status.”

  Goodhill jerked a thumb at Turner and said to Lansky, “Is he cleared for this, sir?”

  “I’m cleared for rumor, sport,” Turner hissed down at Goodhill. He was half a head taller than Steele, who was six foot two and four inches taller than Goodhill.

  “Miles is going to run your assessment and selection,” Lansky said to Steele and Goodhill, “then he’ll turn them over to you two for OTC.” He meant the operator training course. “I want you two flexible for now.”

  “Can you handle that, Miles?” Steele said.

  “Don’t worry,” said Turner. “I’ll have ’em wishing they were back in Pineland.” He meant the North Carolina woods where officer candidates for army Special Forces were weeded out during the infamous Q-Course.

  “We’re thinking we’ll want a completely separate assessment and training track for keepers,” Goodhill said to Lansky, meaning the handlers like him who were attached to each Alpha.

  “And we’d like to bring back Shane Wiley,” Steele said. Wiley was an older yet very experienced keeper. He’d handled Collins Austin, who’d been murdered by Lila Kalidi. Her death had taken a toll on Wiley, and he’d almost quit the Program, just before it died the first time.

  “Think he’s up to it?” Lansky said.

  “None better,” said Goodhill, who rarely complimented anyone. “They’ve got him instructing over at the Farm.”

  “I’ll make a call to CIA.” Lansky stuck his dry pipe in his trouser pocket, pulled a small notebook from inside his blazer, and made a note with a pen.

  “We need a TDA,” Steele said. He meant a Table of Distributions and Allowances denoting personnel, ranks, tasks, and corresponding budgets.

  Lansky looked at him and smirked. “I’m bringing Mrs. Darnstein back in here. She’s already working it.”

  “Oh, joy.” Steele rolled his eyes. Mrs. Darnstein had been the Program comptroller, an elderly, razor-sharp accountant who questioned every receipt, right down to the costs of number two pencils. “She’ll want us offering McDonald’s minimum wage, no holiday bonus.”

  “Embrace the suck,” Lansky said. Then he looked at the kitchen doorway, where Ralphy Persko had appeared, with Frankie hovering behind him. They were wearing matching Southern Breez
e Graphics T-shirts that said glock, paper, scissors. choose wisely. Lansky pulled his pipe back out and jabbed it at them. “Get in here, geeks.”

  “Did you two clear yet?” Steele said to them. He’d sent Ralphy and Frankie to an outside security contractor for revetting, which included the mind-numbing 136-page questionnaire for national security positions, new fingerprinting, and family background checks.

  “Yeah,” Ralphy said. “They did everything but an anal probe.”

  “Too bad,” Turner grunted. “Goodhill likes that.” He and Goodhill exchanged grins. They were warming to each other again.

  “Before you two kids get any deeper into this,” Lansky said to Ralphy and Frankie, “I know you’ve been doing the horizontal tango. You’ve been civilians for a while so I’m not going to go full pope on you, but if I see any PDAs around here, I’ll cut your hands off.” He meant public displays of affection. Ralphy and Frankie just blinked and nodded. “Now give us whatever Steele asked you for.”

  “Um, well, sir . . .” Ralphy began with a stutter, then opened his big brain valve. “We ran high alt and nap surveillance on every major CCP potential target, but we didn’t get anything weird on overheads or signatures, including the usual troop or naval flows in the South China Sea. But we did get one kinky hit on a large thermal plume, just south of the lower Mongolian border. Looks like some sort of facility went up, burned for two days, and spectral analysis picked up coolant and chemical bursts, like maybe from a lab.”

  “How the hell did you get all that before you were cleared?” Lansky said.

  Ralphy said nothing. Frankie looked at the floor and chewed her lip.

  “Okay, never mind. Go tell Penny you two need stations online ASAP, then lock in your firewalls and work it some more.”

  “Yessir,” the geeks echoed and disappeared.

  Something buzzed inside Lansky’s blazer. He took out a cell phone, answered it, said “Right now?” and put it away. He looked at Steele, who was wearing torn jeans, running shoes, and a wrinkled white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. “Is that all you have to wear?”

  “Here?” Steele said. “Yes, sir. Why?”

  “All right, get your ass downstairs. There’s a car waiting for you. And tell them your fucked-up sense of fashion wasn’t cleared by me.”

  Chapter 9

  Washington, D.C.

  The big fat royal blue armored Suburban wasn’t exactly an Uber. Its front fenders were flying the American and presidential flags, its windows were tinted like a pair of Oakley tactical sunglasses, and its fuselage gleamed in the sun like a brand-new bullet. Out front, a pair of Metro D.C. motorcycle cops sat on their gurgling Harleys, boots on the pavement, staring straight ahead. Behind the Suburban a matching armored Expedition follow car hummed like an impatient panther.

  Steele stood there on the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his ratty jeans, figuring the convoy belonged to some White House staffer who’d stopped for a pee or a latte from the nearby Starbucks. Then the Suburban’s passenger window rolled down, a low female voice said, “You expecting an engraved invitation, Mr. Steele?” and he realized this was his ride. He stepped off the curb, the window closed, and a Secret Service agent appeared from the other side of the SUV and looked him over with a judgmental squint.

  “You carrying?” the agent asked.

  “Just a tape measure,” Steele said, “but it’s dull.”

  “Do I need to pat you down?”

  “Only if you miss your gig with the TSA.”

  The agent smirked and pulled the door open.

  Steele had never met National Security Advisor Katie Garland in person, but he’d seen her perfectly put-together persona many times on TV and knew her by reputation. She never shied away from the gotcha journalists on all the major networks, and no matter how hard they pushed her, she always remained calm, quick tongued, and icy. She had a smile that reminded him of those wild African desert dogs he’d seen in Namibia, who always looked so friendly until they ripped some creature’s throat out.

  Garland waved him into the gloomy cool cabin. He slid onto the plush leather seat, the door closed with a whisper, the shotgun rider remounted, and they started to roll.

  “I see we pulled you away from respectable labors,” she said as she looked him over. She was wearing a dark suit, a starched pearl blouse, a presidential seal lapel pin, and a modest crucifix.

  “Sorry about the attire, ma’am,” Steele said.

  “No biggie.” She waved slim fingers with short buffed nails, no color. “The president’s hosting a luncheon at the Four Seasons for the French PM, but don’t fret about the duds. From what I’ve heard, he likes you. Hasn’t told me why.”

  She pressed a button on the console between them and spoke to the driver on the other side of the Plexiglas partition.

  “Julius, inform Hammer’s detail we’re en route,” she said, using the Secret Service code word for Rockford, “but since our guest is maintaining very casual cover, I suggest we rendezvous in the galley.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the driver’s piped-in voice replied.

  “And step on it,” Garland added. “Those frogs hate waiting for food.”

  As far as hotel restaurants go, Bourbon Steak at the Four Seasons is fairly spectacular. The twenty-foot teakwood ceiling features suspended, circular, hatbox-shaped Malaysian lanterns, cream brocade curtains frame the enormous plate glass windows, and the polished bumper-pool-size tables are surrounded by richly upholstered mid-century chairs. It’s a fine spot for a modest presidential VIP luncheon, effected by moving only a few furniture pieces around, and the spectral hues from sunset yellow to beaver fur brown make the atmosphere welcoming and warm.

  The kitchen, on the other hand—much like the engine room of a spectacular cruise ship that guests never see—is steamy, greasy, noisy, and hotter than Hades. Pots bang like cymbals, flames spit and hiss, and the chefs, sous chefs, and waiters curse one another in a stressed-out Babel of tongues, especially when spoiling the meal of some high-flying ambassador can get your ass fired, without references.

  Steele stood there inside the gourmet melee with Katie Garland, who was dabbing her neck with a handkerchief because they’d already started to sweat. They’d come in through the rear entrance past two flinty-eyed Secret Service agents—whenever POTUS was around no access was left unguarded—and as they waited on a linoleum patch in front of a long, stainless steel food pickup divider, behind which were the sauté, fry, and grill station stoves, the galley cooks ignored them because they had no idea what was about to transpire. Then the double entrance doors flew open like an Old West saloon, President Rockford strode in with four agents, and the entire staff went dead silent and stiff as a family of lemurs when a lion bursts from the jungle.

  “Carry on, people!” Rockford boomed with a smile and waved his arms. They all returned to work, but with one eye cocked for potential disaster.

  “Eric,” the president said as he thrust out a meaty hand. He was perfectly pressed, as always, in a dark suit and regimental tie. Steele hesitated for a moment but Rockford said, “Don’t give me that elbow crap. I get tested every day,” and Steele grinned and they shook hands, hard.

  Like his predecessor, Denton Cole, John Rockford had always treated Steele with great respect for his Alpha status, and a degree of paternal affection. The feelings were mutual for Steele, and despite the great difference in status, they’d dealt with each other on an even keel. When Steele had gone off on a rogue mission to Russia, trying to unearth the fate of his long missing father, Hank, Rockford had risked his political fortunes and sent in Delta to rescue Eric. In turn, Steele had risked his life to keep President Rockford from being blown to kingdom come by Lila Kalidi. Essentially they were battle buddies, and there is no stronger bond.

  Rockford stuck his hands in his suit pockets while his agents eyed the cooks and their flashing Ginsu knives.

  “I left that Frenchy mooning over Mrs. Rockford,” he said. “But I can’t take too
long.”

  “The floor is yours, sir,” Steele said.

  Rockford looked over at the cooks, assessed their physical features, and in dead fluent Spanish said, “Amigos, por favor, danos cinco minutos. Cuándo terminemos, si lo desean, firmaré sus delantales.” He asked them for five minutes’ privacy, with a promise to afterward autograph their aprons, and the stunned cooks dropped their knives and disappeared.

  “Had a Guatemalan girlfriend in college.” The president winked at Steele. “So, down to brass tacks. Lansky briefed you on my Chinese walk-in?” He used the pejorative term for a volunteer spy who walks into an embassy uninvited, offering all sorts of raw intelligence. In this case he was referencing the phone call at Camp David.

  “He did, sir.”

  “Well, I never trust walk-ins,” the president said.

  “Ditto, sir,” said Steele.

  “So, this guy, who calls himself Casino, claims the CCP is planning a big move against our assets out there. Might be true, might not be. I called over to Tina Harcourt and had her run it down.” He meant the newly appointed director of CIA. “She tells me they once had an agent inside CCP called Casino, but that gentleman was blown and is currently taking a dirt nap.”

  Steele was surprised to hear the president use street slang for a dead man, then remembered he’d once been a hard-charging armor officer who admired George Patton.

  “Lansky also pinged me just before you got here, Eric,” the president went on. “Says you’ve got something else on China.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s some sort of facility near the southern Mongolian border. Might be a secret laboratory, went up in smoke.”

  “Think it’s a coincidence?”

  “I generally don’t believe in such things, Mr. President.”