never been able to figure out, she harbored a mild animosity toward jocks, especially
middle-aged jocks who had never gotten over the fact that they weren’t in college anymore.
Harrison grinned and stuck out his hand, which Naomi reluctantly shook, as did Superintendent
Plesse. “Brett Harrison, good to meet you.” He stuck his thumb over his shoulder. “This is Al
Maginnes, the HRT commander.”
“Maginnes?” Kharmai asked.
The commander smiled. “Ma, like mother, then Guinness, like the beer. Funny thing is, I can’t
stand the stuff.”
Naomi smiled back at him. She didn’t like the heavy Irish brew, either. Maginnes was a lightly
muscled man in his early forties, she guessed, with a bald spot on top, a thick brown mustache
going to gray, and careful brown eyes. He was wearing camouflage GORE-TEX pants and a
black T-shirt. She saw that he had a heavy pistol riding in a leg holster, and there was an M4
carbine propped up next to him. He looked competent enough, and she briefly wondered if
Susskind had worked him in to keep an eye on the younger SAC.
“Where are we at?” Plesse asked, shifting his weight impatiently on the uncomfortable little seat.
Harrison pulled his headset down around his neck. “Your boys have both ends of the road
sealed off, so we’re good there. There’s still no movement inside the house, and we’ve been up
and running since… what, Al? A little after one this morning?” The other man nodded. “So
that’s just over three hours without any movement. But there is something that I think you
should see…”
Harrison placed the headset on top of his radio and swiveled to the center console. They all
crowded around the low table, shoulders touching in the cramped space of the van. “These are
the house plans. We got lucky and scooped them up from the owner, who built the place himself
in ’88 before he decided to rent it out. This is key, right here…”
The area he was pointing at showed two levels on what should have been a one-story ranch. “A
basement?” Naomi asked. “In Virginia?”
“Not only that,” Harrison said. “But the owner says it’s a finished basement, complete with
furnishings. Vanderveen is aware of our technology, which is something we need to keep in
mind. He knows that the infrared can catch him through the windows, so he’s safer
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underground. In other words, he might very well be down there, and—”
“The thermals wouldn’t have picked it up,” Naomi finished.
Another grin from Harrison. “That’s right. So we’re still up in arms over how to make the
approach. We’ll hold off on making a decision and see what trickles in from Norfolk. Until then,
we’re waiting on the deputy director and a search warrant.”
Plesse asked, “Can you access the basement without going through the house?”
Harrison shook his head and the grin faded. “No, there’s only one door leading down from the
interior. No basement-level windows either.”
“I couldn’t see the house from the trees,” Naomi pointed out. “I’d like to take a closer look.”
The SAC opened his mouth, but Maginnes was the first to speak. “I’ll run her out there, Brett. I
need to talk to Larsen anyway.”
The younger man nodded his consent, and Naomi followed the HRT commander as he snatched
up his M4 and opened the rear doors to the van. Plesse didn’t move from his seat.
Outside, she shivered and said, “God, it’s freezing out here.”
Maginnes, still wearing only the T-shirt on top, didn’t seem fazed by the icy wind. “We can
probably scrounge something up for you before we head out there. There aren’t any vehicles on
the perimeter, so we’re gonna be outside for a while.”
He pulled open the rear doors of one of the Suburbans and dug through a pile of equipment.
After a few seconds, he stood up with a pack in his hand and a triumphant look on his face.
“This belongs to the smallest guy on my team, which means his stuff is probably only eight sizes
too large for you.”
“Where can I change?”
He was already looking around. “Other side of that tree, I guess.” He was pointing to a large
oak about 20 feet away.
“There’s nowhere warm?”
“Nowhere that isn’t occupied. That’s fine, if you don’t mind twenty guys watching you strip.”
“I think I’ll pass,” she said with a laugh.
Ten minutes later they were moving slowly down Chamberlayne after passing the two VSP
squad cars positioned at the end of the road. Naomi had changed out of her pantsuit into a pair
of dark blue Columbia utility pants and a black half-zip pullover, under which she was wearing
several long-sleeved shirts. Her feet looked slightly ridiculous in black combat boots two sizes
too large. She’d had to put on three pairs of socks to make them fit; her feet were sweating a
little bit in the warmth of the vehicle, but it was better than getting out of the truck and freezing
to death twenty minutes later.
“I don’t want to take the truck any closer than we have to,” Maginnes said. The Suburban’s lights
were doused, and he was navigating through a pair of night vision goggles clipped to a harness
on his head. “We’re going to have to hoof it the rest of the way.”
They moved slowly through the darkened fields. Maginnes would stop every 15 feet or so, and
then, without explanation, suddenly move off again. He called in his position periodically so they
wouldn’t get shot by his own men on their approach. It wasn’t until nearly twenty minutes after
leaving the comfort of the Suburban that they arrived on the edge of the perimeter.
Maginnes knelt in the dirt and adjusted his lip mike. Naomi slumped down next to him, already
exhausted. “TOC, this is Magpie, radio check, over.”
“Magpie, TOC,” came Harrison’s voice over the earpiece. “Read you Lima Charlie, out.”
He called in several other radio checks. The last one was to his assault team leader, Chris Larsen.
“Alpha One, Magpie. Give me a quick sit rep, over.”
“Mags, this is Alpha. All weapons and personnel are accounted for. Sierra team is running
through their own list. Still haven’t spotted anything from our position, over.”
“I’m…” Maginnes glanced around quickly, “about 300 yards south of the nest, in the dip next to
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the third stand out from the road. Do you have eyes on, over?”
“Negative, Magpie, over.”
“Hold on a second, over.” Maginnes peeled off the AN/PVS-7 goggles and handed them back
to Naomi, who was basically operating blind. The moon and stars overhead were obscured by
leaden clouds heavy with snow, but when she slipped on the harness and turned the knob, the
world around her suddenly reappeared in strange, unnatural colors. The house, which she hadn’t
seen on the approach, now popped into view, pale against the darker green of the open air.
From the stand of trees opposite the barn, she saw white lines streaking out of the woods
toward the walls of the house.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“You see them?”
She steadied the goggles against her face with her left hand and pointed with her right. “Over
there.”
Maginnes stopped fiddling with his radio. He turned on the Aimpoint sight attached to his M4
and pointed the weapon toward the woodline. “Got me, Alpha One?”
“That’s a Roger.”
“How soon can you get here?”
A brief pause, and then his earpiece crackled. “Ten minutes, fifteen to be on the safe side.”
“Take your time, Chris. Magpie, out.”
The SAC was sipping coffee and talking with Plesse when Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 suddenly
filled the air. He picked up his cell phone and frowned at the number before flipping it open.
“Harrison.”
Plesse watched as the younger man’s face turned pale, then red with anger. “You’re shitting me!
Does she know what’s at stake here? Well, what do I do now? Okay… okay, fine.”
He hung up a few seconds later and received an inquiring look. “The deputy director managed
to wake up the most uncooperative judge in Virginia,” the SAC explained. “We won’t be getting
a warrant, at least not fast enough to do us any good.”
“Fuck.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Plesse unconsciously echoed the other man’s
words. “So what do we do now?”
Harrison didn’t say anything in response. After thirty seconds of internal debate, he sighed
heavily and reached for the headset.
When Larsen arrived thirteen minutes after the commander’s call, he did it so quietly that Naomi
almost jumped out of her skin. She was watching the house intently for any sign of life, with
Maginnes lying prone at her side, when a low whistle sounded a few feet to her rear. She spun
around, and then realized that Maginnes hadn’t reacted at all.
“I heard you coming a mile away, Chris.”
“Sorry, boss.”
Naomi watched in amazement as a figure rose up from the ground before her.
“Still two minutes under time, though.”
Maginnes smiled reluctantly. “Pop a few chem lights, will you? By the way, this is Naomi
Kharmai. She’s joining us from the Agency.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Naomi nodded in return and watched as Larsen reached into his pack and retrieved several
small plastic tubes. He bent each one until the glass vials broke inside and the chemicals mixed.
When he shook them and tossed them onto the ground, an area perhaps 5 feet in diameter was
illuminated by a soft blue glow.
Larsen was maybe a few years older than she, with a narrow face and blond hair trimmed close
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to the scalp. His features were blurred by green-and-brown camo, but she noticed that his dark
brown eyes were carefully appraising her. She watched as he called his team members to make
sure the chem lights weren’t visible from their position. Then he pulled a topographic map out
of his pack.
The HRT commander grabbed a few rocks and placed them on each corner of the large sheet of
paper. “Let’s see what you got.”
Larsen’s finger hovered over the myriad of light brown contour lines. “I have one team here,” he
said, pointing to an area of heavy vegetation on the north side of the house. “I’m going in with
them, if it comes to that. I gave the second team to Aguilar. He’s across the road to the west.
That was a problem… I wanted someone on the front door, but there’s no cover and they have
to cross about 200 feet of open space before entry.”
“We’ll work around it,” Maginnes said. “What about the open-air option?”
Larsen pulled a grease pencil out of a loop on his flak vest and used it to mark several locations
on the map. “Grierson stacked most of the snipers next to my second team of assaulters,
because that’s where most of the windows are facing. We’ve been sitting out here for hours, Al. I
went over the sectors of fire and moved everyone accordingly. Then we checked it again and
came up golden. My people know where they can and can’t shoot. Oh, and one other thing:
Jones is a couple hundred yards up the way with his .50. If, by some miracle, the subject manages
to get to his vehicle, Jonesy can easily punch one through the block at that distance.”
Maginnes gave an approving nod. “Good. Who’s up on explosives?”
Larsen hesitated. “Canfield has the most practical experience, but Hudson spent a month
training with Delta, so he’s—”
“When was that?”
“Uh… January.”
“Make it Canfield,” Maginnes said. “Hudson’s still a little green, but he can sit in on it. I want
them to give your people a quick briefing on booby traps. Take these plans back with you, and
have them look for trouble areas.” A brief pause. “I want to take it slow, Chris. We know he’s
not on the ground floor, so that gives us time to maneuver. We’ll use that time to get it right. I
want everyone to walk away from this.”
Larsen bobbed his head in acknowledgment and turned his attention toward Naomi. “We
haven’t gotten any specifics on this guy yet. What can you tell us?”
“He was a Special Forces engineer. He applied to EOD in 1993, then became an instructor in
’94. They had to get a three-star general to sign the waiver; no one in the army has ever made
that transition faster. He did the sniper school at Benning, and then the SERE course at Camp
Mackall. You know about Senator Levy and the Kennedy-Warren…” Both men nodded. Larsen
smirked a little as if to show that he wasn’t impressed by Vanderveen’s record, but she sensed it
was mostly for show. After a brief hesitation, Naomi decided that they deserved to have all the
facts. “One other thing… He killed five of his fellow soldiers in 1997 while on deployment in
Syria. After that, he basically disappeared from the face of the earth, at least until now. I don’t
know what else to tell you.”
Larsen’s arrogant grin faded. He was about to respond when Maginnes held up his hand and
cupped the other around his ear. He listened for a moment, then said, “Roger that, TOC. Give
us a couple minutes, over.”
He dropped his hand and looked up at them with pinched features. “Search warrant didn’t come
through.”
Naomi dropped her head, and Larsen muttered an expletive. No one said anything for almost a
full minute.
Finally: “How bad do you need to get in there?”
She looked up at Maginnes. “Pretty bad.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.”
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He nodded his head slowly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Chris…”
“Yeah?”
“You got your throwaway?”
Larsen slapped the pack that rested at his feet. “Always.”
The commander said, “Is it clean?”
Larsen looked offended. “Of course it’s clean.”
Al Maginnes nodded his head again, then turned his dark eyes onto Naomi’s. When he spoke, his
words were slow and precise. “What happened was, we decided to get a little bit closer, okay?”
“I can buy that,” she said, and felt a little tingle between her shoulder blades.
“Chris, when you looked in the window, you saw a handgun lying on the floor.”
“Right.”
“Right.” Maginnes scratched his head and considered. “Okay, so he’s hardly going to have a
registered pistol. An unlicensed firearm gives us cause to enter the premises.” He looked up at
her. “Are you okay with that?”
“Sounds kind of iffy, but… Yeah, I’m okay with it.”
He looked at Larsen. “How about you?”
The younger man shrugged, tilted his head. “Sure.”
“Then it’s settled.” Maginnes cupped his mike to block out the sound of the wind. “TOC, this is
Magpie… Uh, there appears to be a handgun in the house. Does the subject own a registered
firearm? Over.”
Harrison caught his meaning and came back immediately: “HQ advises that the subject has not
