Grace had already told them, before takeoff, the reason they were going to Ashland. There was a plan—Grace had called it a Hail Mary option. To Dryden, it had sounded like a literal Hail Mary rather than the football version. It sounded like something to try on faith alone.

It was also the only move they had left—so they were doing it.

Now, facing them in the dim interior of the chopper, Grace said, “I’d like you both to run through everything that’s happened, since the first time these people tried to abduct you. Try to include every detail you can. You never know what might end up mattering.”

The agent seated to Grace’s left took out a spiral-bound notebook and a pen, and sat waiting to write.

“When you’re done,” Grace said, “I’ll tell you everything we know. Wish I could say it’ll take me a while, but it won’t.”

Dryden and Danica took turns with the story—everything from her attempted abduction outside the supermarket to the arrival of the FBI agents on the wooded slope. They finished as the chopper slowed to a hover above the airfield: a desolate strip just beyond the northernmost suburbs of Phoenix, surrounded by industrial parks and black desert hills. Dryden could see the plane already waiting—a light business jet parked right at the runway threshold, its strobes flashing and its door open.

They set down thirty yards from the plane, got out and ran for it, and two minutes later they were in the air again, banking and climbing, the enormous sodium-orange sprawl of Phoenix sliding by outside. The plane settled into its northeast heading, out over the desert, and Grace began his story.

It started four years back, with the emergence of a new arms dealer on the global stage. A very smart arms dealer, who was uncannily good at staying invisible. He—assuming it was a he—seemed to know every trick the FBI and other agencies had at their disposal. Like a mouse that knew how to spring traps.

So far, the Bureau had never picked up a single useful fact about him: age, description, nationality, accent—anything. There was nothing on which to base even a nickname, so he never got one—agents just referred to him by his investigation handle, Whiskey Four; he was the fourth manhunt assigned to Task Force Whiskey at Quantico. After a while, the handle itself became a kind of nickname for the guy—everyone just called him Whiskey.