Luke didn’t care. He had completed his mission—two missions, in fact—and was going home tomorrow. His body was sore, and his brain was tired. He was wrung out. If the embassy was bombed, or overrun by suicide fighters, he assumed someone would wake him up to let him know.

“Luke! Luke Stone! Wake up!”

He took the nightshade off his face, and light flooded in. It was daytime.

Trudy Wellington stood over him. Her hair was mussed. She wore a light blue T-shirt and cotton athletic shorts. Her clothes had practically sweated through. She looked like she had just woken up herself. She looked like breakfast.

Good thing he had turned down that drink.

Luke took his ear plugs out and blinked. The cots around him were all empty.

“Trudy. Good morning.”

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said. “We need to come up with a better system for where our people are sleeping. It’s ridiculous to walk all over this palace looking for everybody.”

It seemed a bit late for coming up with a system. They were on their way out of here. A system for cot assignments was going to be unnecessary at best. Okay, Trudy was a little annoyed. That’s all it was. She could design a system on the flight home, if she wanted.

“Are we leaving now?” Luke said.

She shook her head. Her hair bounced with it. “No. We have a meeting. You, me, Ed, Mark Swann, Big Daddy, and Don on the phone. As soon as you can claw your way out of bed.”

“A meeting? I thought we were done. We’re going home today.”

Her big eyes blinked at him. She stared at him quizzically.

“You haven’t heard?”

He shook his head. “Heard what? No, I guess I haven’t.”

“We’re not going home.”

“I’m going home,” Luke said. “I have a baby on the way. You guys can stay here if you want.” He looked around at all the wooden fold-up cots in the barren room with bare plywood walls. “I mean, it’s nice here, so I don’t blame you for wanting to stay, but—”

“Luke,” she said, her voice suddenly stern. “No one is leaving. All military and intelligence assets are ordered to stay in place and on call until further notice.”

“Why? Are we at war?” Luke said, realizing instantly how silly the question sounded. Were they at war? Yes, obviously they were at war. What he meant was…

“There’s a problem,” Trudy said. “And we’ve got a meeting right now. As soon as you’re ready.”

* * *

The young girl wore a bright orange jumpsuit.

She kneeled at the front of the jittery video, her hands behind her back—probably bound. Her hair was tied back under a simple black headscarf.