HAYES CROSSED THE gravel toward the barracks. The door opened, and his wife stepped out. Hayes wrapped his arms around her as his daughter walked onto the stoop.
In the distance, a helicopter flared for a landing and disappeared behind a stand of white pines.
“How are you doing?” he asked Lauren.
“I’m fine. Maggie’s a little overwhelmed, but she’s being good.”
“The routine?”
“Every step.”
Lauren Hayes and the security team at the house had driven a surveillance-detection routine, a planned set of evasions and reversals designed to draw out any tails. They made their way to a small base set in the most remote forests of Camp Peary, the CIA’s classified training facility along the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia.
This part of the facility was used by the Special Activities Division, and most of the CIA clandestine-service trainees who came through Peary could only guess at what went on behind its high fences.
“They said they didn’t pick up anyone behind us.”
“Good,” Hayes said.
A detonation shook the earth, and Maggie flinched back. The clouds to the south flashed red.
“What is this place?”
“A training base. We would practice here to get ready for operations.”
He could hear, in the distance, the rush of helicopter blades and the soft pops of gunshots in controlled bursts.
A few soldiers, standing respectfully in the distance, kept watch.
Down the hill behind her, there was a Pashtun village with mud walls and a two-story minaret. Beyond that was a bunker complex modeled on North Korean facilities, and then ten acres of sandy, leech-infested marsh that could stand in for Indonesian jungles.
Drew used to call it Shithole Disney World, all the worst places on earth in one spot.
They would build a perfect model of the target for a given operation and raid it, time after time, until they knew those walls as well as they knew their own homes, until they could perform the mission without thinking, could succeed with half the team killed or injured. It was known as a rock drill.
It was strange to see Lauren and Maggie here, in this mock-up war zone, with the blasts shaking his wife’s words and the smoke rising behind them.
They had the two of them staying in the dormitory-style housing behind the obstacle courses and parade grounds.
“I’m sorry about this, Lauren. It won’t be for long,” Hayes said. He was going straight at the men behind this to force it to a conclusion.
“You work with these people?”
“I used to.”
“Friends?”
“Closer than that.”
They were special operations and CIA paramilitary officers, a small fraternity who knew Hayes’s true role. Hayes had helped them refine their methods for classified direct-action missions. After his years in exile among the enemy, he had brought back lessons learned. He changed everything about how they infiltrated and took down threats.
“You’re safe here,” he said.
“What’s happening?”
“I thought that the people I’m after might come for me, for the house. It was a precaution.”
“The people who are killing your teammates? They know where we live?”
“I didn’t want to take that chance.”
“You’re going after them?”
“Yes.”
He knew their pattern now. Morgan was giving them what they most wanted, which was to gather everyone in one spot, where they could be killed in one blow.
That was good. Hayes could exploit that. He was finally a step ahead. He could use their plans against them.
A blast shook the trees in the distance. Maggie hugged her mother’s leg. Her eyes narrowed, almost closed, and she began to cry.
Hayes kissed her on her forehead and she stopped crying and sniffled, though her mouth remained in a grimace.
“You’re leaving again,” Lauren said.
He had to. He was going to New York. The killers were raising the stakes, moving into open violence. They had taken innocents before. How many would they take to get all of Cold Harvest?
“Yes. But I always come back.”
Hayes looked in his wife’s eyes. Claire had been right. Hayes had to choose between his home and the fight. He couldn’t have both.
He was comfortable around death, had lived beside it and tasted it. He respected it but didn’t fear it. It was just another factor. The worst thing for him would be to stay here safe knowing he’d let others fall. It would be worse than dying, a kind of damnation.
Maggie started to whimper again. He’d thought he would come home, and all would be fine. He could go fight his wars and then lie down in his bed and rest easy. He was wrong. He had spent too long out there among the threats. They had come for him, come back with him. He remembered the distorted voice of the enemy on the phone. Part of what he’d said was true: he was the violence.
Lauren lifted Maggie up and soothed her, rubbing her hand over her back. A man in canvas work pants and a flannel shirt walked toward them and then stopped. He was clearly waiting for Hayes.
“You better get going,” Lauren said. She’d sent him off on missions dozens of times, but something about this was different. It felt final, like a valediction. They both seemed to understand without a word.
He put his arms around her, then kissed her. A last squeeze of the hand, and then she stepped away toward the bunkhouse, leaving him there alone.
He walked to the gate, then turned and saw his wife at the edge of the gravel, their child on her hip, soldiers on both sides with M4 carbines on slings. This was no place for a family. It was too much to ask of anyone. He was losing her.
As soon as he was in the parking lot, he started calling the men he trusted, the men who still trusted him. He was going to New York. There was one way to stop this. He had to put himself between the killers and their target.