5

Marcus’s mind raced as he looked for a way out, but he saw none.

The man shouted something in Arabic. Marcus did not speak the language, but it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out what the guy was saying. Marcus dropped the M4. Slowly—very slowly—he removed his sidearm from his shoulder holster and tossed that to the ground as well. Then he raised his hands over his head as he simultaneously calculated the distance between him and the Hezbollah operative.

Two meters.

Six feet, give or take.

Close, but not close enough. There was no way he could make a move on this guy.

Marcus realized he was staring into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer. He had seen such eyes before. Too many times. He knew what men like this were made of. He knew what they were capable of. And no matter how much training he had received in the Marines or the Secret Service, he knew he could not turn the tables on men like this—not from such a distance. To attempt something would be suicide.

A thought flashed across his mind’s eye.

Maybe that was the best thing.

To be taken captive by such a sick predator was a nightmare proposition. The stuff of horror films. Marcus would resolve not to betray his friends or his country. He’d do his best not to talk. And they would torture him without mercy. And he would break. No matter how hard he tried to resist, he would break. Eventually everyone broke. That was why the first rule in this business was simple.

Do not get caught.

That, Marcus told himself, was why he should make a move. If the guy’s reaction time was too slow, there was also the possibility—however slim—that he could disarm him. More likely, this guy was jacked up on adrenaline and trigger-happy. If that were the case, the instant Marcus learned forward, he would be shot between the eyes and be dead before he hit the ground.

Wasn’t that the better way to go?

Just then, however, Marcus’s eyes drifted down from the man’s eyes to his hands. The hooded Hezbollah fighter was not holding a pistol but a military-grade Taser. Before Marcus could process another thought, the man lowered his aim from Marcus’s face to his chest and fired.

The two probes hit Marcus in the chest. Fifty thousand volts of electricity surged through his body. His central nervous system shut down, and Marcus dropped to the ground.

Amin al-Masri stared at the twitching body.

The twenty-eight-year-old Shia Muslim had never seen an American before. Not in person. Nor had he expected to today. His mission had been simple: Capture an Israeli or two—alive and ideally unharmed. Transport them back to Beirut. Interrogate them. Then prepare to move them to the docks to ship them out of the country, far from the ubiquitous eyes of Israeli intelligence.

Now, however, it was beginning to dawn on the deputy commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Unit that he had hit the jackpot. True, he had not captured a single Israeli. But he had seized not just one but three Americans—two men and one woman. Aside from the burns they had suffered from being tased, all three were in mint condition—far better than he could have anticipated, in fact, given the intensity of the firefight they had endured.

The man lying at al-Masri’s feet had blue eyes and sandy-blond hair, cut short with a touch of gray at the temples. There was no question in the young Hezbollah leader’s mind that this man had been born and raised in the United States. He looked military—he clearly fought like someone with significant combat experience, probably Special Forces—yet he was wearing civilian clothes and had a beard. Most likely he was a federal agent of some sort, possibly Secret Service or DSS. He was tall, over six feet, and in excellent physical condition. Al-Masri guessed he was a shade under two hundred pounds, nearly all muscle with very little body fat.

His superiors were going to be ecstatic. They were also about to pay through the nose. Israelis were one thing. Americans were something else entirely. And if they were not about to give him his new asking price, al-Masri did not mind. These three were going to fetch a much higher price on the open market.

The Israelis might be crafty, but they were also stingy. They would not pay cash. They did not believe they had cash to burn. All the Israelis ever offered to get their people back were Palestinian prisoners—hundreds, even thousands of them. Yet al-Masri did not want Palestinian prisoners. They were of no use to him. Not for what he was trying to achieve. Worse, the Israelis would not offer a prisoner trade until they had tried everything else to get their people back. And even if a prisoner exchange did eventually happen, and al-Masri’s superiors could find a way to monetize them, the Israelis would still never let it go. The Zionists would come hunting for al-Masri and his men. They would kill him and anyone and everyone else involved in the operation, even if it took them decades.

The Americans, on the other hand, were rich. And stupid. They did not exchange prisoners. They dropped off pallets of cash. By the planeload. And they did not seem to believe in vengeance. They paid top dollar to get their people returned, and they never looked back. If he could make a deal with the Americans, al-Masri knew he would not have to live the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. He could take his money and simply disappear forever. Yes, he would have to change his identity. Yes, he would have to say goodbye to everyone and everything he had ever known. But it could not be helped. He was running out of time. And this was the only option he could see.