15

SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHERN LEBANON

Marcus Ryker tried to open his eyes.

It took all his concentration. His eyelids were heavy, his thoughts foggy, his hands shaky, his mouth dry. They hadn’t just tased him; they had drugged him with something. Something strong. Now he found himself tied—chained, to be more precise—to a wooden chair. He had been stripped naked, or nearly so. All he wore were his boxers. And there was a filthy rag stuffed in his mouth.

In the distance he heard a dog barking. He could also hear muffled voices in a nearby room. Whether the language was Arabic or Farsi he could not say. None of it was distinct.

A moment later he heard a series of distant explosions. He could feel the ground tremble beneath his feet, though the movement was slight. Every few minutes, a fighter jet streaked overhead. Yet he could not hear any small-arms fire. Nor could he pick up the high-pitched whine of incoming mortars and artillery shells or the rumbling of oncoming battle tanks and APCs.

Why not? How far from the border was he?

Wherever he was, the space was dark, steamy, fetid. As his eyes began to adjust, Marcus realized it was not pitch-black after all. Across the room, he could see specks of light seeping through and under what might be a door of some kind, but there simply was not enough illumination to provide any of the clarity or definition he craved.

Something rancid permeated the room. He could not identify the source of the odor, but the stench was exacerbated by the fact that the rag prevented him from breathing through his mouth, forcing him to breathe through his nose. Then again, Marcus realized, the rag might, in fact, be the source of the repulsive odor.

The room was broiling. It had to be a hundred degrees or more, Marcus concluded. The heat, plus the specks of light that he was now certain was sunlight, not from lamps, convinced him it was daytime. Whether it was the same day he had been captured he had no idea.

His boxers were soaked through with sweat. Rivulets of perspiration streaked down his back and arms and legs. His hair was wet and matted, and salty drips were sliding down his nose and ears and stinging his eyes. With his hands chained behind him, he had no way to wipe any of it away.

As he slowly came to, he began to wonder if he had been taken alone. Had Kailea made it? If so, where was she? What about Yigal? Had he been blown to smithereens? Had he been captured? Had he gotten away? Maybe they both had.

Marcus tried to remember the SERE training he’d undergone back at Camp Lejeune in the lush green fields near the North Carolina coast. For nineteen days, he and his fellow Marines had received a crash course in surviving, evading, resisting, and escaping behind enemy lines. But that had been a lifetime ago—nearly twenty years. In the state he was now in, dusting off those mental files was going to take some doing. Yet it had to be done.

He couldn’t remember the name of his instructor or even his face. He did, however, have a vague recollection of the three-ring binder he and his colleagues had been given. And one thing was crystal clear in his mind—the acronym drilled into the Marines’ heads from the first day of class.

SURVIVAL.

There were, they had been told, eight things they needed to do to make it. Marcus closed his eyes and tried to focus. Soon they came to him, one by one.

• S—he needed to size up his situation, surroundings, physical condition, and gear.
• U—he needed to use all of his senses to watch for danger.
• R—he needed to remember who he was and where he was at all times.
• V—he needed to vanquish his fear and any sense of panic.
• I—he needed to improvise and be willing to adapt to every curve that was coming.
• V—he needed to truly value living—a useful reminder, Marcus told himself.
• A—he needed to do his best to act like the people around him as much as possible.
• L—he needed to live by his wits and be prepared to use all his skills to survive.

There was no playbook for staying alive and getting free, his instructor had told him. Only principles. And he needed to start living by them.

Unable to see much of his current surroundings, Marcus tried to recall what had happened back on that dusty border road. He needed to reconstruct everything that had occurred. Not only would he need to be able to explain it all to his commanders back in Washington if he ever got out of this thing alive, but he also needed to sift for clues, for any detail—small or large—that might help him escape.

Escape.

That was now the name of the game. He had to start working on a plan to break free and run and keep running and never look back. He would head west, to the Mediterranean coast. Like every DSS agent, he had a contingency plan for every conceivable worst-case scenario. He and Kailea had developed theirs together. Since they were doing an advance trip in hostile territory along the Lebanon border, they had war-gamed what they would do if they ever came under fire, were captured by Hezbollah, and were somehow able to escape. It had seemed rather far-fetched the previous week. Now, amid the fog, he was trying to remember every detail.

A marina.

No, a port.

A beat-up old fishing trawler.

A guy named . . .

What was his name?

Marcus strained to remember but could not recall the name of the company or its owner. He and Kailea had used aliases and fake Spanish passports and a Gmail account and a Spanish bank app to contract with a small business in the Lebanese city of Tyre that handled deep-sea fishing charters. They had concocted a cover story about an engaged couple from Barcelona, fishing fanatics visiting Beirut on business. They’d paid in advance to have a boat ready to use with twenty-four hours’ notice. Once they got out to sea, they’d planned to commandeer the vessel, use the satphone to contact the American Navy, and get picked up by a submarine or helicopter or whatever the Navy decided to dispatch.

But what was the name of that company? And their contact?

At the moment, it was still too fuzzy.

Then again, it might not even matter. An awful lot had to go right before he would ever set foot on the chartered yacht in the port of Tyre. First, he had to break free of a cell of Hezbollah jihadists, and that, he knew, was all but impossible.