“You aren’t safe on the streets. Whoever you need to meet, we can set it up here with secure comms.”

“Has to be in person.”

Mayes said, “Then send me.”

Carmichael just shook his head.

“Look, Denny, if you’ve got a mistress or some shit like that, you need to put a cork in it until this all blows over.”

Carmichael sighed. “If I had a mistress and you didn’t know about it, you’d be a sorry excuse for an assistant director. I’ll be out of pocket three hours, four tops. I won’t have a phone, so you’ll have to come up with something convincing.”

Mayes held the look of disbelief on his face. “Tell me you understand what’s in the balance here.”

Carmichael rolled his eyes. “Is this where you tell me Gentry is a dangerous man?”

“This is about more than Gentry, and you know it. You want the directorship. You’ve earned it. The one thing that can fuck that up is the Gentry story getting out. You won’t just lose the directorship. You’ll lose everything.”

“It’s not going to get out, because we are going to handle this.”

Mayes pressed one more time. “You keeping me out of the loop is not a good idea.”

“Some burdens are my own, Mayes. And that’s just how it’s going to stay.”

—

The U.S. Army UC-35A jet touched down at Joint Base Andrews and taxied into a hangar on the far end of runway 36 Right. Once the hangar doors were closed and the aircraft’s wheels were chocked, the hatch opened and a set of rolling stairs was positioned by the ground crew. Twelve men, all in their thirties and forties, stepped down the stairs of the U.S. Army’s version of the Cessna Citation V. Each man carried a massive black duffel bag over his shoulder and, as soon as they vacated the stairs, they dropped their heavy bags onto the hangar floor.

Although this was a military base and the UC-35A a military aircraft, the dozen men wore various styles of civilian clothing. Few soldiers would get away with such a transgression while on base and on duty, but this small force was no regular army unit. They were a cell of operators from Joint Special Operations Command; specifically an elite offshoot of JSOC with a mandate to assist the United States on Homeland Security issues.

There were two main direct action ground asset components of JSOC—the navy men of DEVGRU, otherwise known as SEAL Team 6, and the army men of the unit that for decades was commonly known as Delta Force. The unit members even used that name in open sources from time to time, but their classified designation had been changed.