THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C. —29 SEPTEMBER

“We have confirmation, Mr. President.”

Bill McDermott handed Clarke a printout of a text he’d just received from the Magic Palace. The Gulfstream was safely off the ground. The Raven was on it. The Agency’s people had the thumb drive in their possession, and its contents had been electronically uploaded to the CIA’s mainframe computers. Their analysts were already starting to break down the data.

The president nodded approvingly. It was the first piece of good news he’d seen in days. But he was still furious with his NSC team. “Why hasn’t the hotline call with Luganov been set up?” he demanded.

McDermott said he didn’t know what the delay was. Officials in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon said the problem wasn’t on their end. Their counterparts in Moscow were dragging their feet, and it was not yet clear why.

Marcus unbuckled his seat belt and headed to the cabin.

His first priority was to check on Morris. She’d been hit in the right shoulder, Oleg said, and the wound was quite serious. Oleg was doing his best to patch her up. He’d put her in his own seat, which he had fully reclined. He’d managed to finally stanch the bleeding using every cloth he could find on board, from towels to pillowcases. He’d given her several shots of morphine to manage the pain. Then he’d covered her with a blanket and was now telling her stories of his childhood to distract her from how much trouble she was in.

“Not bad for a government lackey,” Marcus said as he dabbed the perspiration off her face with a washcloth and wiped several strands of hair out of her eyes.

He leaned close to her cheek and whispered, “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make sure of it.”

Morris tried to smile. It was more of a grimace, but it would do.

Marcus excused himself and went into the restroom. He was no longer wearing the disguise he’d put on at the Ramada. He’d taken that off when he’d changed into the copilot’s uniform. Still, as he looked at his unshaven face in the mirror, he wasn’t happy with what he saw. The disguise was gone. The pain was not.

He was suddenly hit with a wave of despair. He desperately missed Elena. Closing his eyes, he could still see her sitting in Mr. Grantham’s English class back in the sixth grade. They’d only been eleven. They’d gotten married when in their early twenties. Now he was approaching his forties alone. His hair was going gray at the temples. He had crow’s-feet around his bloodshot, exhausted eyes. He had scrapes and bruises all over his body —and for all his morning runs and evenings at the gym, he’d been surprised how quickly he’d been winded tonight.

Then again, this little team had made it farther than he’d really thought possible. It was only by the grace of God, he knew, not by any skill of his own. That said, what was next? Was the Lord really going to bring them this far only to let them be blown out of the sky? He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thumb drive Oleg had given him. He stared at it, wondering what treasures it contained. He hoped this had all been worth it. Only time would tell the full value to the American government, and perhaps to NATO, should the Clarke team choose to share any of the fruit of their classified labors. But the mission had cost more than Marcus had wanted to pay. He wasn’t morally opposed to killing bad guys, especially to protect the people and country he loved. But killing anyone took its toll.

Would it stop the war? He prayed it would. Then again, he knew only too well that if his and Jenny’s involvement with Oleg were discovered, that information alone could trigger a war with Russia anyway. And what if they did die tonight, shot down by an air-to-air missile? It was an ugly thought but a real and rapidly growing possibility, even probability. He wasn’t scared. He knew where he was going when he died. He was pretty sure Jenny was a follower of Christ as well. He would have loved time to talk faith and so many other things with her. But what about Oleg? What would happen to him? Marcus suddenly realized that in everything that had transpired, he’d never thought once about Oleg’s soul. Did the man know the Savior? Had he given his life to Christ? Were his sins forgiven? Had he ever even heard the gospel clearly explained to him?

Marcus couldn’t remember thinking about such things in the Marines or the Secret Service. He’d done his job and done it to the best of his ability. He’d never second-guessed the morality of the mission. The Taliban were sheer evil. Al Qaeda was worse. Each person he took out had been a clean kill, casualties of a military conflict. Marcus was more than willing to give up his own life to protect his country and her leaders. But the deaths of his wife and son had changed everything. Studying with Pastor Emerson and the vets on Wednesdays back in Lincoln Park had changed him too. These days he thought a great deal about eternity. Why, then, had he not thought of Oleg’s fate? He felt uncertain and ashamed.

Petrovsky got more bad news the moment he arrived at the Defense Ministry.

The air force had been scrambled, but the plane carrying Oleg Stefanovich still had not been found. There were just too many planes in the sky at the moment, too much clutter and confusion over Moscow and the western skies. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, he was told.

He went ballistic. “Get every plane on the ground —now,” he ordered.

He turned on every TV in his office. Fortunately, news of the assassinations had not yet broken. A quick check of multiple channels confirmed that, but Petrovsky knew the story would not hold for long. He had already called Luganov’s chief of staff and persuaded him to summon the entire cabinet for an emergency meeting at the Kremlin without giving any hint as to the reason. At the same time, he knew Kropatkin —now operating as acting director of the FSB —had made it crystal clear to his men that anyone who leaked this news would be guilty of treason and would be executed without a trial.

The one person he worried about most was Katya Slatsky, who had been taken to the Kremlin after the debacle at the airport. She had to be isolated indefinitely. If there was one person who could leak the whole thing prematurely and not care in the slightest about the implications, it was she. Petrovsky thus ordered Kropatkin to send someone to Luganov’s private chambers at the Kremlin, drug her, and keep her drugged until they could figure out exactly what to do with her. Kropatkin didn’t flinch but vowed to carry out the orders at once.

Meanwhile, Petrovsky issued written orders for all Russian military forces to cease their exercises and begin withdrawing from the borders of the Baltics and Ukraine. To the outside world, such actions would look entirely consistent with what Luganov had been saying publicly. The inner circle of high government officials, he knew, might believe Petrovsky had orchestrated a coup d’état to stop a war they knew he did not support. He did it anyway. The hours ahead would be chaotic enough. There was no guarantee he would wind up at the top of the Kremlin’s greasy pole, but if there was anything he could do while still alive and in power to defuse the prospect of nuclear war with NATO, he was bound and determined to do it.