49

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bill McDermott should have been outside, enjoying a picture-perfect spring day.

Puffy white clouds drifted across a gorgeous azure sky. A warm gentle breeze was rolling in from the east. The South Lawn was a lush and vivid green after weeks of heavy rains. The Rose Garden was in full bloom, and there were still some late cherry blossoms visible, which reminded him of the puffs of pink cotton candy he used to get at carnivals, growing up in Pittsburgh.

The U.S. was finally getting back on her feet following the disaster of the global pandemic. A vaccine had been created and most of the country had been inoculated. The Dow had just hit another new record high the day before, the ninth record closing of the year. Oil prices were back up, breathing much-needed life into the U.S. drilling and fracking industries. Manufacturing was coming back online. The unemployment rate was steadily dropping. The Russians had backed off from their foolhardy threats to the Baltics. The North Koreans were not only quiet but had come back to the negotiating table. The Saudis and Israelis were tantalizingly close to delivering a peace deal for the ages. And if this weren’t enough, the leader of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism was dead.

Yet the forty-seven-year-old U.S. national security advisor was not home with his wife and kids. He was stuck in his West Wing corner office, watching split-screen coverage of a Hezbollah missile barrage on northern Israel on one side and the president of Iran addressing his people on the other. The number of items on his to-do list was already more than he could count and growing by the minute. He knew he ought to be jotting down notes on the speech. And on the phone with Langley demanding an immediate assessment. And setting up a secure call between POTUS and the U.N. secretary-general. And coordinating talking points with Secretary Whitney, who would be wheels up to Riyadh by nightfall.

Yet McDermott found himself all but paralyzed with indecision on what to do next.

In every possible way, he was at the top of his game. He was happily married to a gorgeous and accomplished woman. He held an undergraduate degree in European history from Yale, an MBA from Wharton, and a master’s in national security studies from Georgetown. He’d been a Wall Street whiz kid and made millions in the process. Now he was part of the inner circle of the world’s most powerful man, working in the most prestigious real estate on the planet.

How was it possible he felt so powerless?

So much of his life had been consumed and shaped by war, and now, once again, war had come to rob, kill, and destroy. McDermott had started his military career near the bottom, a sergeant in the Twenty-Second Marine Expeditionary Unit. He’d wound up near the top, a colonel serving at the Pentagon. He’d been highly decorated during combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was in Kabul that he’d first met the men he’d come to dub “the Three Stooges”—Marcus Ryker, Peter Hwang, and Nicholas Vinetti—having been their commander in a unit known as the One-Six: First Battalion, Sixth Marines.

Serving as one of the few, the proud—like his father and brothers before him—had always been a dream of McDermott’s. But somehow he had never imagined it coming at so heavy a price. How many hospitals had he been forced to visit because of combat injuries sustained by his Marine buddies? How many memorial services? How many grave sites? The losses continued to mount. Nick Vinetti was dead. Ryker and Hwang had been seriously wounded. Now Ryker had been taken captive. McDermott knew it was his responsibility, not just as NSA but as a friend, to get Ryker and his colleagues back. Yet he hadn’t the foggiest notion of how.

The phone rang. It took several rings before McDermott snapped to and picked up. It was his executive assistant.

“Sir, I have Senator Dayton on line three. I told him that you could not be disturbed, but he—”

“No, no, that’s fine,” he said. “Put him through.”

Yet McDermott was unprepared for the earful he was about to receive.

“Yes, Senator. I know, sir. . . . Yes, sir—mine, too. . . . Believe me, Senator, we’re doing everything we possibly . . . Yes, of course, and I . . . Absolutely—I will, sir, and . . . Yes, Senator, I promise to call you the moment I hear anything—anything at all—on Marcus’s whereabouts. . . . Yes, sir, and I’ll be sure to let Annie know too.”

HIGHWAY 50, MARYLAND

The silver Saab 9-5 Turbo raced across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The windows were down, the sunroof was open, the Rolling Stones were blasting over the Bose speakers, and Pete Hwang was bound and determined to enjoy his first weekend off in months. With Annapolis in his rearview mirror, he checked his watch and the gas. Both were good. In another two hours and change, he would be parking at the yacht club, boarding the charter, and heading out into the Atlantic. It was just what the doctor had ordered.

Desperate to get away from Washington, Pete had not hesitated to say yes when several cardiologist buddies he had known for years had invited him for a bachelors’ weekend in Ocean City. Like him, they were divorced, middle-aged, paying way too much alimony, and wondering how they had let the best years of their lives slip away. When they had promised him a weekend at a gorgeous beachside villa with a fully stocked bar and deep-sea fishing, he could hardly have said no.

The farther he drove beyond the Washington Beltway, the more the cares of the world seemed to lift off his shoulders. He loved the feel of the wind blowing through his hair. He loved the smell of the salt air and the chance to leave all the demands and pressures of his life at DSS well behind him. Though he was now fully healed from the rather serious wounds he had sustained in an operation in Tanch’ŏn, North Korea, Pete was grateful for a desk job. He did not want to be on the road or assigned to a protective detail.

When his cell phone rang, he glanced at the incoming number and recognized the government prefix immediately. Every muscle in his body tensed. He was tempted not to answer but reminded himself that he had taken an oath, and these days it was the one thing in his life he took seriously. He had disappointed too many people, his wife and children among them. He had no intention of shirking his duty to his country. So he took the call.

It was not, however, the DSS operations center in Arlington, Virginia. It was the seventh floor at Langley. On the line was the executive secretary to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The boss, she said, needed to see him, and no, it could not wait.

Pete hung up the phone. He exited at the next exchange, got back on Highway 50, and hit the accelerator, heading west.