grasp it himself, never mind express it to another person. It was beyond words.
They were his life.
But he also had to go.
CHAPTER FIVE
11:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Headquarters of the Special Response Team
McLean, Virginia
“Why are we here?” Kevin Murphy said.
He was dressed in business casual, as though he had just come from a mixer of young professionals.
Mark Swann, dressed in anything but business attire, smirked. He wore a black Ramones T-shirt and ripped jeans. His hair was in a ponytail.
“In the existential sense?” he said.
Murphy shook his head. “No. In the sense of why are we all in this room together in the middle of the night?”
The conference room, what Don Morris sometimes optimistically referred to as the Command Center, was a long rectangular table with a speakerphone device mounted in the center. There were data ports where people could plug in their laptops, spaced every few feet. There were two large video monitors on the wall.
The room was somewhat small, and Luke had been to meetings in here with as many as twenty people. Twenty people made the room look like a crowded train car in the Tokyo subway at rush hour.
“Okay, people,” Don Morris said. Don wore a tight-fitting dress shirt, sleeves halfway up his forearms. He had a cup of coffee in a thick paper cup in front of him. His white hair was cropped very close to his head—as if he’d just gone to the barber this afternoon. His body language was relaxed, but his eyes were as hard as steel.
“Thanks for coming in, and so quickly. But let’s shut up with the banter now, if you don’t mind.”
Around the room, people murmured their assent. Besides Don Morris, Swann, Murphy, and Luke, Ed Newsam was here, slouched low in his chair, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that hugged his muscular upper body. He wore jeans and yellow Timberland work boots, with the shoelaces untied. He looked like this meeting had awakened him from a deep sleep.
Also here was Trudy Wellington. She was in a blouse and dress pants, as though she had never gone home after work. Her red glasses were pushed up onto her head. She seemed alert, also drinking coffee, and she had already begun tapping information into the laptop in front of her. Whatever was going on, she had been privy to it first.
At the far end of the table, near the video screens, was a tall and thin four-star general, in impeccable dress greens. His gray hair was trimmed to the scalp. His face was devoid of whiskers, as if he had just shaved before he walked in here. Despite the lateness of the hour, the guy looked fresh and ready to go another twenty-four, or forty-eight, or however long it took.
Luke had met him once before, but even if he hadn’t, he already knew the man in his bones. When he woke each morning, he made his bed before doing anything else—that was the first achievement of the day, and set the table for more. Before the sun peeked into the sky, the guy had probably already run ten miles and scarfed down a meal of cold gruel and high octane coffee. He had West Point go-getter written all over him.
Seated at the table near him was a colonel with a laptop in front of him, as well as a stack of paper. The colonel hadn’t looked up from the computer yet.
“Folks,” Don Morris said. “I’d like to introduce you to General Richard Stark of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his aide, Colonel Pat Wiggins.”
Don looked at the general.
“Dick, the brain trust of the Special Response Team is at your disposal.”
“Such as it is,” Mark Swann said.
Don Morris scowled at Swann, a look one might give a teenage son with a big mouth. But he said nothing.
“Gentlemen,” Stark said, then bowed to Trudy. “And lady. I’ll get right to the point. There is an unfolding hostage crisis in the Alaskan Arctic, and the President of the United States has authorized a rescue. He has stipulated that the rescue involve the oversight and participation of a civilian agency. That’s where you come in.
“When talking with the President, it occurred to me that you give us the best of the both worlds—the Special Response Team is a civilian law enforcement agency, but is loaded with former military special operators. The FBI Director has green-lighted your participation, and Don was kind enough to call this meeting at short notice.”
He looked at the group. “With me so far?”
There was a general murmur of agreement.
The colonel was controlling the video screen from his laptop. A map of northern Alaska appeared, along with a sliver of the Arctic Ocean. A small dot out at sea was circled in red.
“This is a rapidly developing situation. What I can tell you is that an hour and a half ago, an oil rig in the Arctic Ocean was attacked and overwhelmed by a group of heavily armed men. There were approximately ninety men stationed on that rig and the artificial island that surrounds it, and an unknown number of those men were killed in the initial attack. A number were also taken hostage, though we do not know how many.”
“Who attacked the rig?” Luke said.
The general shook his head. “We don’t know. They have refused our attempts at contact, though they have sent video of oil workers gathered in a room and held at gunpoint by men in black masks. Audio from monitoring equipment at the rig has been made available to us by the company that owns the rig. The sound is poor quality, but it does pick up some voices. Besides the English spoken by the oil workers, there appear to be men speaking an Eastern European, possibly Slavic language, though we have no real evidence to back that up.”
On the screen, the map changed to aerial imagery of the rig and the camp surrounding it. The oil rig, probably thirty or forty stories high, dominated the first image. Below the rig were numerous Quonset hut–type buildings, as well as walkways between them. Surrounding the tiny compound was a vast, icy sea.
A blown-up image appeared. It showed the compound and the buildings in close detail. There were no people standing upright anywhere. There were at least a dozen bodies lying on the ground, some with halos of blood around them.
Another image appeared. Stretched across the ground was a large white banner with hand-painted black lettering.
AMERICA LIARS + HYPOCRITES.
“That’s quite a message,” Swann said.
“Admittedly, we have very little to go on. The banner you see certainly suggests an attack by foreign nationals. All of our drone footage shows us a compound devoid of personnel. The attackers appear to have taken all of the surviving workers indoors. Whether that is inside these buildings you see, or aboard the rig itself, we don’t know.”
For a moment, the screen went blank.
“We have a plan to take back the facility, neutralize the terrorists, and rescue however many civilian personnel are still alive. The plan involves an infiltration and assault, primarily using active-service Navy SEALs, but also yourselves. To carry out that plan, we need to get you to the Alaskan Arctic. Which means we need to hurry.”
Ed Newsam raised a hand. “When do you intend to carry out this plan?”
The general nodded. “Tonight. Before first light. Every experience we’ve had with terrorists over the years suggests that allowing a situation to become protracted is a recipe for failure, and even disaster. The public becomes involved, as do the politicians. The media puts it on the twenty-four-hour television doom loop. Second-guessing the government response becomes a national pastime. A long standoff excites and inspires terrorist fellow travelers in other places. Images of blindfolded hostages held at gunpoint…”
He shook his head.
“Let’s not explore that path. The group in question attacked without warning, and so will we. Hitting them before sunrise, under cover of darkness just hours