ALSO BY STEVEN KONKOLY

RYAN DECKER SERIES

The Rescue

The Raid

The Mountain

Skystorm

THE FRACTURED STATE SERIES

Fractured State

Rogue State

THE PERSEID COLLAPSE SERIES

The Jakarta Pandemic

The Perseid Collapse

Event Horizon

Point of Crisis

Dispatches

THE BLACK FLAGGED SERIES

Alpha

Redux

Apex

Vektor

Omega

THE ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES

Hot Zone

Kill Box

Fire Storm

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2022 by Steven Konkoly

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542029896

ISBN-10: 1542029899

Cover design by Anna Laytham

DEDICATION

To Kosia, Matthew, and Sophia—

the heart and soul of my writing

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

PART II

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

PART III

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

PART IV

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

PART V

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

PART VI

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

Maya Klein picked up the pace as she passed another tight pack of shirtless university-age boys on the beachside promenade. Men, really. Short-haired, lean, and muscular—carrying beach towels instead of Tavor combat rifles for the first time in months. Recent basic training graduates on leave. A prominent fixture on the beaches just north of Haifa, near her family’s home.

She’d been fascinated by them for as long as she could remember, especially the fierce-looking young women, who projected invincibility and pride as they roamed the promenade. She’d followed them around as a child, watching in awe as they rebuffed one group of men after another before staking their claim at a beachside café or stretch of sand and defending it from those persistent invaders.

Maya would join their ranks soon enough. She would ship off in a few weeks for a base in the Negev Desert to start tironut, the Israeli Defense Forces’ basic training course. Four months from now, as a newly minted IDF combat soldier on leave, she’d walk this same promenade with her squad mates before reporting for duty with the Bardelas Battalion stationed along the Egypt-Israeli border.

Her daily runs along the promenade and through the sand were part of her preparation to meet the challenges of basic training. When she finished the hour-long run, she’d cool off in the Mediterranean before heading home and executing a forty-five-minute calisthenics routine. After lunch, she might head to the gym to lift some weights. She was determined to show up in the best shape of any of the recruits, including the men.

She had nearly reached the end of the beachside promenade, where she would slog the rest of the way through the ankle-deep sand just above the high-tide line, when the city’s air-raid sirens began to wail. Like everyone on the promenade and beach, her first instinct was to stop and scan the hazy blue sky to the northwest, above the midrise apartment buildings that dominated the horizon. Toward Lebanon, where most of the rockets originated. After a few seconds of staring at the sky, everyone sought hard cover, which was less than plentiful on the beach.

Maya hopped the staggered and mostly uneven rock wall that lined the Mediterranean side of the promenade and lay flat against the hot sand behind the one-and-a-half-foot-high barrier. As long as she kept her head down, the rock should protect against any shrapnel—unless the incoming rocket landed in the thin strip of beach directly behind her. Or it struck the promenade in front of her. Nothing she could do about that, but the odds were slim in either of those cases. In fact, the odds were slim that any of the rockets would hit a populated area.

Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense missile system consistently intercepted close to ninety percent of the rockets fired at populated areas in Israel. The few that had gotten through had fortunately caused minimal damage or casualties. Most people still took the sirens seriously, but the overall drop in anxiety was palpable. Taking cover if you got caught out in the open was treated more like a temporary inconvenience than a matter of life or death.

She’d lived the first half of her life in fear of Hezbollah and Hamas rocket attacks. The deployment of an Iron Dome battery on the outskirts of Haifa in 2013 had been life changing for everyone. She peeked over the rock, surprised to see the sky filled with white contrails. Far more than she’d ever seen before. Thirty to forty already in a slow arc, high above the horizon, and more joining them every second—rising skyward from the launchers west of the city. A few moments later, the outgoing barrage ended. Based on the number of contrails, Maya guessed that the battery had fired all its missiles at the incoming threat. An unprecedented event, which didn’t bode well for the city of Haifa and its surrounding suburbs.

She lowered her head and thought about her parents and sister several blocks away. They’d all be in her room right now, waiting for the sirens to stop wailing. Maya’s bedroom had been designed as the apartment’s safe room, featuring reinforced walls and a blast-proof window. Her family would be safe from shrapnel or nearby blast effects, but a direct hit to the building would likely kill or injure all of them. Slim odds, she told herself.

When the usual cacophony of distant, sharp aerial detonations didn’t materialize, she started to worry. Something wasn’t right. The interceptors would have reached their targets, and the sound of the explosions destroying the enemy rockets would have traveled back to the beach by now. She lifted her head a few inches above the rock to check the sky, catching a distant glimpse of an explosion toward the harbor. Something had gone very wrong with the Iron Dome system. There was no other explanation.

The beach shuddered, a searing flash and earsplitting crunch hitting Maya almost instantly. She pressed her body flat against the sand next to the rock wall, as fragments of glass and steel ripped overhead, peppering the sand behind her and splashing the water. She stayed put after the last concussive boom washed over the promenade, remembering the primary purpose for the deployment of an Iron Dome battery to Haifa: to protect the critical oil refineries and prevent a devastating secondary explosion that could vaporize much of the city.

After a few excruciating minutes listening to the screams and cries up and down the promenade, she got up to help with the wounded. Maya didn’t get very far before coming across a young female soldier tying a tourniquet. Maya knelt next to the unresponsive man’s chest and checked his breathing. She didn’t need to confirm a heartbeat. A thick stream of bright-red blood pumped rhythmically from the mangled stump just below his knee.

“He’s not breathing,” said Maya, immediately beginning chest compressions.

“Keep that up,” said the soldier. “I need to find a pen to twist this tighter. I’ll be right back.”

She kept up the rapid compressions long after the soldier returned to tighten the tourniquet—long after it had become obvious that the man had passed away. The soldier checked his vitals one last time before shaking her head.

“We did everything we could,” said the soldier. “Let’s lend a hand closer to the explosion.”

Maya followed her into the dense black smoke washing over the promenade, catching a glimpse of a thick smoke column rising from the direction of her family’s neighborhood. She stopped and backed up until the column appeared again.

“Over here!” said the soldier, barely visible on the promenade.

Maya hesitated before answering, her gaze fixed on the growing black pillar. “I think one of the rockets hit my street!” The soldier got up and quickly made her way to Maya, putting a hand on her shoulder when she arrived.

“You did good here. Go to your family,” she said. “If you see a medical team on or near the promenade, send them this way!”

“I will,” said Maya before taking off.

Maya followed a maze of tight smoke-congested streets out of the beach area to her neighborhood, the smoke intensifying as she approached the intersection just west of her family’s apartment building, reducing visibility drastically. She stepped onto the sidewalk to avoid getting hit by a speeding emergency vehicle and reached the intersection corner a few moments later.

Hal Cohen, a close friend of the family, stepped out of the small market at the corner, blocking her path. He motioned for her to come inside.

“Maya. In here. It’s too dangerous that way,” he said. “A police car backed out of your street a minute ago and told everyone to stay clear until the firefighting teams arrive.”

“I have to check on my family,” said Maya.

“It’s not safe,” he said. “Fires and collapsing buildings everywhere. There’s nothing you can do right now.”

“I have to go,” she said, pushing past him.

“You always have a home with us!” he said as she turned the corner.

Maya considered his words while blindly navigating the sidewalk. She could barely see more than ten feet in front of her at this point, her eyes stinging from the acrid smoke. Maya lifted her sweat-soaked shirt collar over her nose to ease her breathing, but the simple trick had little impact. She started coughing uncontrollably a half block from her family’s apartment, which stood somewhere on the other side of a seemingly impenetrable wall of smoke.

Her lungs rebelling, she stumbled forward until a stiff breeze off the Mediterranean Sea momentarily drove the smoke inland, giving her a quick peek down the street. A tower of flames leaped skyward from the charred, skeletal ruins of her family’s apartment building. Maya dropped to her knees on the sidewalk and screamed until the smoke once again engulfed her.

Maya tried to get up but was unable to rise to her feet—or even take a full breath. She reached for the car parked next to her and tried to pull herself up but found the task impossible. Her lungs were spent. She leaned against the car and gasped for air, realizing she’d made a costly error. A fatal error that would keep her from reporting for duty in a few weeks and avenging her family’s murder.

She slumped a little farther, her sight dimming, until a familiar voice boomed nearby.

“I found her!” said Hal Cohen, his rotund figure appearing in front of her moments later.

Hands lifted her off the sidewalk and whisked her away from the darkness. An oxygen mask pressed against her face once the blue sky reappeared. Two paramedics crowded over her. She’d live to fight another day. And damn, would she fight.

PART I

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Helen Gray gently shut her eyes before taking several deep, protracted breaths. The short meditation exercise was more symbolic than anything. A few pretend moments of calm wouldn’t make a dent in her anxiety. The stakes were too high. Two decades of ruinous self-sacrifice had delivered her here. A single misstep tonight could render that painful journey meaningless.

She would have thrown away her career, destroyed her marriage, and—most painfully—alienated her children. For nothing. Helen had no choice but to see this through, even if redemption on any level remained entirely out of reach. At this point, she’d inflicted far too much misery on those she loved the most to fail or turn back. She opened her eyes, her hands still lightly trembling in her lap.

Helen turned the car off and placed the keyless ignition fob in one of the cup holders. The last thing she needed to worry about on her way out was finding the key to the car. Not that she expected to be flustered when she returned. Her plan to kidnap Donald Wilson was fairly straightforward, and she’d mentally rehearsed it, from start to finish, no fewer than a thousand times over the past year. She’d even created a list of possible obstacles, ranging from simple to elaborate—game-planning them until she was satisfied that she could handle just about anything and accomplish the mission.

Always the same plan, because Wilson’s warm-weather-season routine hadn’t changed since he’d taken up residence at the facility three years ago. The camera she had hidden along the western edge of the sprawling property had confirmed what she had suspected from a decade of off-and-on surveillance. Wilson had a fondness for an alcoholic beverage or three on the back patio at sunset.

In fact, as long as the skies were clear, he’d never missed a sunset here when the temperature equaled or exceeded sixty-seven degrees, and Helen’s car told her it was seventy-five. Sunset was in ten minutes, so he’d be a few bourbons into the evening by the time she arrived. Barring any unforeseen complications, she should be back at the car with Wilson in less than a half hour.

She got out of the car and removed a canvas tote bag from the back seat. Helen had filled it with handmade snacks, fruit, and a small bouquet of flowers, the assortment designed to lend an air of normalcy to anyone who gave her a closer look. Nearly everyone who showed up to visit this place brought something to leave with their loved ones.

A side compartment sewed into the interior of the bag held three syringes marked with blue duct tape, each filled with enough ketamine to sedate and immobilize Wilson within a few minutes; two syringes marked with yellow tape, each filled with a 100-milligram ketamine “booster,” just in case the 300 milligrams in the blue-taped doses didn’t do the job; a short roll of beige-colored duct tape to keep Wilson from screaming; and a half dozen heavy-duty black zip-tie handcuffs to keep him tethered to his wheelchair. A watered-down agency abduction kit.

The walk to the entrance ate close to a minute of her time. She’d parked in the far reaches of the parking lot, near the southern end of the main building, for a strategic reason. Entering and traversing the facility unchallenged was surprisingly simple. She’d conducted four walk-throughs over the past year, carrying the same tote bag, and had never been questioned, either at the front desk or while walking the hallways. Getting out with Wilson was the hard part. She couldn’t wheel him through the facility and past the front desk without drawing the wrong kind of attention. Especially when he appeared semiconscious. The sidewalk directly in front of the parking lot wound around the building, eventually connecting with the rear patio. She planned to use the walkway to discreetly remove him from the premises, away from the prying eyes of the staff.

When she reached the entrance, she paused in front of the automatic sliding doors to give them time to open, and quickly scanned the lobby. Helen recognized the woman at the desk from her last visit. Two gentlemen engaged in conversation sat in high-back chairs near the grand piano. As she started inside, a gray-haired woman in a motorized wheelchair turned the corner behind the reception desk and called out to the attendant. Perfect timing.

Helen made it through the lobby without drawing more than a casual glance from the two men. She navigated a short series of carpeted hallways to a sun-blasted space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the patio. A modest mahogany bar, with a severely limited selection of booze to match its three empty stools and moping bartender, stood against the wall on the opposite side of the cramped room. A faded HAPPY HOUR sign was taped to the wall next to the bar, completing the mortuary vibe. The bartender never looked up as she crossed the room and opened the patio door.

The patio was packed tonight. Four residents and a visitor—a middle-aged woman busy preparing a plate of cheese and crackers for her father. Or grandfather. Helen hoped to be long gone before she reached that golden age of ambiguity, and given the likely response to Wilson’s kidnapping, she stood a good chance of skipping the nursing-home stage altogether. If they caught up to her before she could convince the agency to protect her, she’d end up in a gently heated barrel of lye. Turned into a DNA slurry over the course of several days and unceremoniously poured down a drain. Still sounded marginally better than melting into a bed here over the course of several years.

The other residents were spread out along the spacious patio, having parked themselves in chairs facing west. None of them were particularly well positioned to witness what was about to happen to one of their elderly compatriots.

Wilson sat at the far-left edge of the patio in his wheelchair, drink dangling precariously over the right armrest. She had to squint to see him, the deep-orange sun still glaringly bright as it touched the top of the distant trees. Helen reached into the tote bag and readied one of the blue syringes, keeping it hidden inside until she was directly behind him.

She lightly jabbed Wilson’s upper-left shoulder with the syringe and injected its contents before sidestepping to the right. He muttered an obscenity and turned his head to examine the site of the injection, missing her entirely. She took the drink from his right hand and downed it in one gulp, tossing the plastic cup in his lap. Jack Daniel’s from the bar, if she had to guess, and slightly watered down. Still hit the spot. He glanced at the cup, then her, an entirely bewildered look on his face. For a brief moment, she had second thoughts about the kidnapping. A senile Donald Wilson would be useless.

“What the hell?” he said, his eyes quickly shifting back to the cup.

“You spilled your drink,” she said.

“I think something stung me,” he said, touching his left shoulder.

Wilson appeared to have recovered from his initial confusion.

“I have a bottle in my bag,” she said, reaching into the tote that hung from her shoulder. “Jack Daniel’s. They told me my dad was out here. I thought you were him for a second. Care for a refill?”

“Sure,” he said, lifting the cup a few inches.

She prepared an eight-inch strip of duct tape, gripping it by both ends.

“My dad drinks it straight. Sometimes right out of the bottle,” she said. “I don’t have any mixers.”

“Your dad sounds like my kind of guy,” said Wilson. “What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”

“Beautiful,” she said, nodding toward the blood-orange orb sinking behind the trees.

“Sure is,” he said, shifting his attention to the sunset.

She pressed the tape over his mouth and smoothed the edges firmly over both cheeks. Wilson’s body tensed, his eyes going wide. Helen grabbed his left hand and yanked it across his body, slipping one loop of a zip-tie handcuff over it and cinching the loop tight around his wrist. She forced the other hand through the other loop and pulled it tight. Maybe it was the early effects of ketamine. Maybe it was shock. But Wilson barely protested as she secured the plastic cuffs to the right arm of the chair with a short length of cord.

Helen glanced over her shoulder and confirmed that everyone still appeared laser focused on the sunset—and not the man she’d just prepped for abduction right in front of them. Amazing how the human brain worked. She popped the brake on Wilson’s wheelchair and turned it ninety degrees right, ready to maneuver him toward the walkway in the center of the patio. He stiffened, straightening his torso in an attempt to slide out of the chair. She reached around the back of the chair and grabbed his man parts through the fabric of his trousers.

“I’ll rip these right off,” she hissed in his ear. “Understand?”

No response, so she squeezed tighter. “Understand? Yes or no?”

He nodded, eyes shut tight—and she wheeled him off the patio. Several minutes later, they arrived at her car, nobody the wiser from what she could tell by scanning the parking lot and building windows. Helen positioned the wheelchair a few feet in front of the trunk, ready to tip him inside after injecting him with one of the yellow syringes. She had a long drive ahead of her, which included a lengthy surveillance-detection route, just in case someone had been assigned to watch over Wilson. She popped the trunk and turned to grab him, pausing at the unexpectedly wretched sight. His hands trembled, a confused and slightly unfocused look in his eyes. The drugs had probably started to kick in.

Helen stared at him for a few moments, not sure if she was savoring the moment or regretting it. Probably a bit of both. Finally standing in front of him, face-to-face, embodied a surreal experience. She’d spent the past twenty years contemplating nearly every aspect of the man’s existence but had never met him before today—by design. She couldn’t risk the possibility that he might recognize her. That he’d somehow been warned.

She knew him only through the lens of a surveillance camera, a pair of binoculars, or the comprehensive dossier she’d assembled, which meant she really didn’t know him at all.

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