LITMIR.BIZ

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was changing his lifestyle. His recent trip to Iran with Luke Stone had scared him a little bit. He and Stone had nearly died half a dozen times. Ed didn’t want to die – he wanted to live to see his two daughters grow up. But he was thirty-six years old, and not getting any younger. He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, but the truth was there: he had felt old and slow on that mission.

      And yet, he didn’t want to give up being in the field. During his time on the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, they had started using him as a trainer and a supervisor, rather than an agent and an operator. That was a wrong turn.

      This… this was a right turn.

      Right after the holidays, he had cut back on, and then cut out, the bread and pasta and the apples pies and the cookies. He had broken up with his first true love, McDonald’s – they just weren’t seeing eye to eye anymore. And he had committed to getting in here to the gym before work at least three days a week. His workouts had always been brutal. Now they were approaching monstrous.

      He loved it here.

      He loved being back on the Special Response Team, and loved what they had done with the old place under Stone’s leadership. The gym was brand spanking new, and had everything Ed needed, from combat ropes to pull-up racks to a 400-pound squat machine to a heavy bag. If he got in here early enough, he often had the place to himself.

      The energy of the new SRT had Ed feeling an enthusiasm he hadn’t experienced in a while. And Stone seemed as jazzed as Ed. Gone were the beard and the Wildman haircuts. Gone were the haunted eyes and the pained expressions.

      Luke had never let himself go physically – he was always tip-top in that regard, better than a man in his forties had any right to expect. His resistance to physical aging seemed almost superhuman. But Stone’s collapsing marriage, his divorce, and then his ex-wife’s death, had sent him into a psychological wilderness, and for a while it seemed like he might never return.

      But now he was back. And he was on fire. It was a good thing. Stone’s commitment gave Ed the confidence he needed to invest himself in this organization. The SRT would not survive without Stone one hundred percent dialed in, and that’s where Stone was right now. When Ed had agreed to take this job, Stone had promised him he wouldn’t go off grid again, and so far he had been as good as his word.

      “Think of the devil, and he will appear,” Ed said.

      Stone had just walked into the gym. He strode across the new rubber flooring, making a bee line for Ed. Stone was clean shaven and sported a crew cut on his head. His eyes were sharp and alert. He wore tan slacks and a dress shirt, cinched with an actual tie. The tie had a caricature of John Lennon on it – Stone was even developing a signature fashion style. He wore business attire to work, but the ties were often whimsical, and sometimes they were plain ridiculous.

      Stone smiled and said something to Ed.

      Ed took his headphones off. “Sorry? I didn’t hear you.”

      Stone shook his head. “I said, what are you shouting at?”

      Ed smirked. “No you didn’t.”

      Stone laughed. “Come on, man. Buy you a coffee? We have a lot to talk about.”

* * *

      “How’s the girls?” Luke said.

      They were sitting in the SRT’s full-service, two-meal-a-day cafeteria. The cafeteria was Luke’s idea – he felt that having on-site food available would tend to get people in here earlier in the morning, and keep them here at lunch. If people were inside SRT headquarters when they ate, and even when they worked out, things would happen – ideas would spark, connections would be made. That’s what Luke wanted from his people.

      So far, the idea was working exactly as planned. Today was a heavy snow day, and it was only 7:30. Even so, the room was already bustling with a handful of eager beavers, getting their breakfast.

      Ed shrugged. “Good. Growing up too fast.” He was slouched in his chair, still in his workout clothes, stirring organic coconut oil into his coffee instead of creamer.

      “Cassandra’s got me jumping through hoops to see them, but what else is new? It’s nothing I can’t handle. She petitioned the court to have me reveal my whereabouts at all times. I told them my whereabouts were often classified information, and thankfully the judge took my side on that one.

      “Then Cassandra up and moved to the suburbs south of Richmond over the Christmas break. She claims the schools are better down there, safer, and that’s probably true. But it’s not good for the girls to move around like that. Also, it’s not lost on me that the judge told her not to leave Virginia, so she moved as far away as humanly possible, while still remaining in the state. I used to have a twenty-mile roundtrip to see my girls, and now it’s more like two hundred miles.”

      “Cassandra’s a beautiful woman,” Luke said. Truer words were never spoken. Ed’s ex-wife was tall and statuesque. It was if Naomi Campbell hadn’t been discovered, had never become a supermodel, and Ed had married her. And had children with her.

      Then got divorced.

      Now Ed smiled. “That’s how they get you to stick your leg in the trap.”

      “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” Luke said.

      “Been this way since the dawn of time,” Ed said. “But I’m guessing that you didn’t interrupt my workout to discuss the travails of men and women.”

      Luke shook his head. “No. You watch anything about this plane crash in Egypt?”

      “How could I not?” Ed said. “They weren’t saying much about it, though. The casual TV watcher could be forgiven for thinking it was a normal plane crash. Just one of those unfortunate things that happen sometimes.”

      “It wasn’t,” Luke said, sipping his own black coffee.

      Ed smiled. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

      “I was at the White House this morning.”

      Now Ed’s smile was nearly ear to ear. “I said tell me something I don’t know.”

      “There was an emergency meeting,” Luke said. “Kurt Kimball thinks the plane was brought down by a rocket attack, targeting Marshall Dennis specifically. He was about to open a hotel on the Red Sea there.”

      Ed stared at this coffee, thinking about that. His face clouded. He swirled the coconut oil around and around.

      “Okay.”

      “General Loomis was at the meeting,” Luke said.

      “Frank Loomis?” Ed said. “JSOC?”

      “You know him?”

      Ed shrugged. “I was on loan to him from Delta one time. The operation got about as FUBAR as possible. He nearly got a bunch of us killed. I’ll tell you about it one day.”

      Luke nodded. “He was playing coy this morning. Said his intelligence people told him the attack was a decoy, a cover-up for something bigger. When the President pressed him on how he knew that, or what the next attack might be, he said he – ”

      Ed finished the sentence for him. “He wasn’t at liberty to discuss that.”

      “Exactly,” Luke said.

      “So what’s our role in this?” Ed said.

      “There’s a guy up in Baltimore. Trudy and Swann think he’s dirty, and that he’s about to skip town. I’d like to grab him today before he disappears. See what he has to say. We’ll never get an arrest warrant, at least not on short notice, so…”

      Ed smiled. “You want me to go up there and bag him?”

      Luke shrugged. “I’d say a team of six should do it. Ride with a couple of your best people to make sure it gets done. But also bring a couple of your newbies. I’d like to watch them in action, see what we’re looking at.”

      “What’s the situation on the ground?” Ed said.

      “It’s

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