Stick and Ruby had wanted to come, but they could score only the one passport, and there was no more time.

Being an international fugitive wasn’t that difficult, Gannon thought, as he removed his burner phone from the pocket of his new raincoat.

All you needed were extremely heavy-duty criminal smuggling contacts and an unlimited amount of money.

“Yes, hello?” a voice said when the phone picked up. It was a little boy’s voice in an almost whisper.

“Hi. Is Callum there?” Gannon said.

“Yes, but Daddy can’t talk to you. He’s driving.”

“Oh, okay. My name is Mike, and I’m a friend of your dad. Could you tell him I’m outside of the airport?”

“Daddy says don’t worry—we’re on our way. We’ll be five minutes.”

“Thank you,” Gannon said, smiling as he hung up.

It was more like three minutes when the beat-up white Volkswagen Golf pulled out of the busy traffic to a stop in front of him.

“Mickey! Screw me sideways! Mickey! How ya been?” his tall lanky old buddy Callum said, wrapping him in a bear hug as he leaped out.

He’d lost most of his sandy hair, Gannon could see. He was also thinner than he remembered him and was wearing glasses. He almost looked like a professor now.

Gannon remembered where they’d met. Some shithole outside Kirkuk where Callum and his SAS guys got cut to ribbons trying to free some brain-dead Brit tree huggers who got kidnapped by al Qaeda. Callum had been shot five times, and the bad guys were pulling him into the back of a technical when Gannon and his boys had shown up.

“I’m really sorry to bother you, man,” Gannon said, frowning at him. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Sorry? Get stuffed. Here, give me that,” Callum said, grabbing his carry-on and going to the trunk.

There was a strawberry blond–haired kid of four or five in the back seat playing a game on an iPhone.

“Are you an American?” the boy said as Gannon put on his seat belt.

“Yes. Born and raised.”

“Did you know Daddy when he was a soldier?”

“Yes, I did,” Gannon said. “That’s when we met.”

“Were you there when he got his scar?”

“Just after, son,” Gannon said, smiling.

“He’s the one who gave me the ride in the dune buggy,” Callum said, slamming the driver’s door.

“Oh, with the camels! When you saw the camels, Daddy!” the freckle-faced boy said, his eyes as big as saucers.

“Yes. Now play your game with the headphones,” Callum said.

“But—”

“Play!” Callum yelled.

“I wish I had a dune buggy,” the little boy mumbled to himself as he pulled on a pair of headphones.

Gannon laughed as he looked out at the traffic.

“I forgot about those camels,” he said as they pulled out.

“I didn’t,” Callum said, smiling, as he pushed his glasses up his nose with a thumb. “Nor the ride.”

93

The farm was in Wycomb in the Midlands about an hour west of London.