Drone

Sitting at his tiny metal desk just outside of Sadr’s door, the aide heard a sharp crack, like a firecracker inside of a tin can. He flinched, then leaped to his feet and dashed into the office. A dozen armed guards thundered in close behind him.

Ali’s headless corpse still sat in its chair, slumped slightly to one side.

Sadr lay on his back on top of his desk, his arms extended like a crucifix. A bone shard from Ali’s skull had driven itself through Sadr’s left eye socket into his brain, killing him instantly.

Tamar had been able to time the detonation visually through one of Dr. Rao’s micro cameras attached to Ali’s numbed scalp. Unfortunately, the camera was destroyed in the blast.

Pearce knew that if Sadr was dead, the secretive mullahs wouldn’t confirm it for weeks, but he sensed that the gamble would pay off. Dr. Khan and his surgical team had implanted four ounces of CL-20 in Ali’s sinus cavity while he was knocked out on the jet ride over, enough high explosive to blow up a car. The average human skull was an excellent source of organic shrapnel containing twenty-five separate bones. Pearce savored the irony. He had turned Iran’s most dangerous terrorist into a living IED. It wasn’t as satisfying as killing the bastard Ali with his own hands, but letting Tamar take him out along with the maniac Sadr was at least some small measure of retribution for his murdered friend.

“Thank you, Troy,” Tamar said from her Tel Aviv apartment. Pearce had arranged for her to remotely detonate the charge he’d so carefully arranged.

“It doesn’t bring Udi back,” he said.

“I know. But it was a gift. Udi would be glad that I was the one to push the button.”

Washington, D.C.

The rotors on Marine One cycled up slowly as the engine spun to life. Myers climbed the steps for the last time. As always, she wore smart but sensible shoes. She stood at the top of the steps and waved good-bye to Jeffers and the other loyal members of her cabinet who had gathered to watch her go.

Only Jeffers, Pearce, and Myers knew the real reason she had resigned. Her enemies on the Hill assumed it was because she was afraid that she would have lost the impeachment battle. They were wrong. Politics was the last thing on her mind now. Her soul ached. Everyone she had ever loved had been taken from her. What was there to be afraid of anymore?

Myers’s prayer now was that no one on Titov’s side of the table would leak the details of their deal. Otherwise, everything was back in play and the country she loved so deeply would fall into harm’s way. The Russians had withdrawn from Azerbaijan on schedule, and Myers had resigned as promised—Titov’s proof of her sincere desire to avoid a shooting war—but not before securing blanket amnesty for Pearce and his team, along with Mike Early and all the others who had participated in her scheme. It had been a classic queen sacrifice, a device that more than one chess master had used to win a desperate game.

The press cameras whirred and flashed as the chopper gently lifted off. She hoped that President Greyhill was up to the job.

She, for one, was glad to give it up. It was time to go home to Colorado and grieve for her son properly.

FEBRUARY

EPILOGUE

Moscow, Russian Federation

It was a particularly miserable February in Moscow. Heavy wet flakes of snow swirled in a freezing arctic wind. Thick ice blanketed everything. In this punishing environment, exposed human flesh blistered instantly; moments later, it began to die.

It was the kind of weather that had beaten the invincible German Wehrmacht, Britnev reminded himself as he stared out of the sliding glass door of his penthouse suite. Ironically, his towering high-rise was kept deliciously warm by an HVAC unit manufactured in Frankfurt.

Now retired from the diplomatic service, Britnev was the newest board member of the third-largest oil and gas conglomerate in his country, a newly formed joint Russian-European venture. He was thoroughly enjoying the perks of his largely ceremonial position this evening and reveling in his good fortune after the debacle of the Myers affair. In the old days, he would have been marched down to one of the basement cells in the Kremlin, tortured, and then eventually shot in the base of the neck with a small-caliber pistol.

But the new Russia was full of surprises. Connections, bribes, and useful information greatly enhanced life expectancy these days. He was still of some use to Titov, as it turned out. His connection to Vice President Diele had proven to be the ultimate life-saving grace.

Britnev admired the sparkling skyline as he took another long drag on his beloved Gauloises. He relished the burn of the harsh tobacco. Britnev first learned to love the thick filterless cigarettes as a young diplomat in Paris.