But no one in this group was independently wealthy. They had to do an old infantry soldier’s trick taken a few steps further: raid the land as they marched across it. Patrick himself had threatened Pavel Kazakov, one of the world’s most wealthy but most dangerous individuals, with taking his life in exchange for the tidy sum of half a billion dollars—he still made sure he was tossed into a Turkish prison, but he also threatened to kill him instead if he didn’t pay up. They had stolen guns, computer equipment and data, vehicles, aircraft, ships, and hacked into hundreds of bank accounts of known international criminals to raise money for their operations. The logic was simple: Not only did they arrest the bad guys, but they also substantially reduced their ability to carry on their criminal or terrorist enterprises.

Patrick tried to tell himself that it was all for the common good—but those words kept on ringing hollow.

“Good to see you came through your ‘test flight’ over Libya all right,” Martindale said to Patrick as they made their way out of the test lab. “But may I respectfully suggest you just get Dr. Masters to schedule some range time with the Air Force or Army on their ranges in North America to shoot down some missiles.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t blame that one on him, sir,” Patrick admitted. “The test flight idea was mine. Jon wanted to make a big splash to impress the Pentagon, and I picked the closest country I thought would take a shot at us without starting World War Three. It turned out to be one of the most successful test flights we’ve ever made in a Megafortress, and certainly the most successful one for the Dragon airborne laser.”

“Not too shabby for you either.”

“Sir?”

“I suppose you haven’t heard—I heard it from very back-channel sources,” Martindale said. “You know, of course, that President Thom has never chosen a national security adviser.”

“Yes, sir. He claims that the purpose of the President’s cabinet is to not only administer the government but to advise the President,” Patrick said. “He claims it’s the way our government was set up. He thinks bureaucrats like national security advisers distort and politicize the decisionmaking process.”

“What do you think of that?”

“I think any leader, especially the leader of the free world in the twenty-first century, needs all the advisers he can get,” Patrick replied. His eyes narrowed, and he looked at Martindale carefully. “Why?”

“Because your name was being bandied about as being on the President’s list for national security adviser.” Patrick stopped and looked at Martindale in complete surprise. “He’s putting together his reelection campaign, and the word is that folks would be more comfortable with him in a second term if he had a more identifiable, complete set of advisers—national security adviser being the number-one pick. That, it appears, is you”