Driver found a vacant room with a lumpy, light-brown sofa under a window. She flopped onto her back and wedged a cushion under her head – a hand on her Glock, down by her side. It wasn’t long before Driver found sleep, too. A twenty-minute catnap, she told herself. The kind she’d perfected during her time on call as a naval aviator. And later, pulling long hours at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley. Driver had become adept at setting her own body clock to wake up on command before taking a nap.
Allowing herself to drift, she found herself in an American bar, across from Tom. Driver had been there before. It was a big, rustic place with good food on the menu and TVs playing sports on the walls. She’d also had the exact same meal and conversation. About Tom’s eating habits. The beers, the extra salt on his fries and the amount of mayo and ketchup on his burger.
‘How are you still alive?’ Driver asked, poking at her salad.
Tom slapped his midriff, hard as a board. ‘Genetics, baby.’
‘It’s your insides I’m worried about.’
Tom picked up his bottle of Bud. ‘Uh-oh, it’s the health police again. Sorry, Officer Killjoy, was I having too much fun?’
Driver put down her fork. ‘I’m just saying, a little bit of green wouldn’t kill you.’
‘And a beer wouldn’t kill you,’ Tom said, turning up his nose at Driver’s tall glass of iced water. ‘Now I know why the guys on the base call you Bugs.’
‘They call me what?’
‘’Cause you eat and drink like a rabbit.’ Tom smiled to himself as he bit into a fry.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being—’ Driver caught herself. ‘You’re yanking my chain.’
‘Sorry, it’s just so easy,’ Tom said, chomping into his burger. ‘Here, have a bite.’
Driver recoiled. ‘Ugh, how many dead things can you fit in one bun?’
‘Come on, live a little,’ he said pushing the burger into her face.
‘I’m watching my figure.’
‘That’s my job,’ Tom winked.
‘God, like there’s not enough cheese on your burger,’ Driver said. She paused and examined Tom’s face. ‘Hey, you’ve got a little something.’
‘What?’ he asked, rubbing his nose. ‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘Where?’ Tom said, confused, his fingers coming away clean.
Driver tutted and rose out of her seat. She reached across the bar table, scooped a dollop of mayo from Tom’s plate and splurged it on the end of his nose. ‘Right there.’
As Driver giggled, Tom grabbed her arm. They wrestled, eyes locked. But his free hand strayed to her throat. He began to squeeze.
‘Tom,’ Driver gasped.
His grip tightened and the smile fell from his face.
‘Tom, stop—’
She fought back, trying to prise herself from his grip. But his eyes narrowed, devoid of love. Driver began to choke. He was killing her.
Through the bar window, she saw a string of intercontinental ballistic missiles taking to the air. White-hot tails burning like suns, spitting out long, clouded columns as they climbed high into a primary-blue sky.
Tom noticed too. ‘You’re too late,’ he said, the veins in his arm popping out from under his skin. ‘It’s begun.’
Driver drew a pistol from a holster on her hip. Held it to Tom’s forehead. ‘Please don’t make me,’ she wheezed, her finger squeezing the trigger.
Driver started awake. Back in the room, lurching upright on the sofa.
‘Whoa!’ Wells yelled, backing off.
She breathed fast and shallow, a sheen of cold sweat on her chest and her pistol in hand. Cocked and locked, pointed straight at Wells.
Driver relaxed her trigger finger and lowered the gun.
‘You okay? I heard you screaming.’
‘I’m fine,’ Driver said. ‘Bad dream is all.’
‘What about?’
‘I, uh… I don’t remember.’
Driver swung her legs off the sofa and planted her feet on the floor. She looked up at Wells, a lingering presence. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah,’ Wells said. ‘They found something.’
Driver was up like a shot. She holstered the Glock and pushed past Wells into the operations room, where the rest of the team stood around the central pod of tables.
Driver checked her watch. She’d been asleep for over an hour; it had felt like seconds.
‘What have we got?’ she asked, standing over Mo’s shoulder.
‘There’s nothing on the phone,’ he replied, tapping on his laptop. ‘Except for a series of phone calls to a number.’
‘Just the one?’ Driver asked. ‘Could it be McNeil?’
‘Whoever it is, I traced the owner to an address,’ Anna said.
‘It’s local,’ Gilmore added.
‘How local?’ Wells asked.
‘Three miles as the crow flies,’ Anna said.
Driver flattened her bed-head hair. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’
‘There’s more,’ Gilmore replied, motioning to a monitor to the left of Mo. On screen was a frozen image of McNeil, taken from the footage from Driver’s button cam at the Hotel Popolo.
‘I ran the image of McNeil as he looked today through Zeus,’ Mo said. ‘All it came back with were a few CCTV images of him around the square at the time of the meet. So I grabbed a series of mugshots from his military days and facial recog picked up a few matches. In fact a whole lot…’
Mo called up a dozen images of McNeil caught on various security cameras. Some were stills, others video footage. The facial recognition patterns confirmed as a ninety-eight percent match.
‘Looks like McNeil’s been a busy boy,’ said Gilmore. ‘He appeared out of nowhere eighteen months ago.’
‘And it wasn’t picked up?’ Pope stood to the right of the group, sipping on a can of Coke.
‘Why would it be?’ Wells said. ‘No one looks for a dead man.’
‘Which means he never bothered to hide,’ Driver added. ‘All he had to do was lay low for long enough… Wait until his records were wiped.’
‘Pretty easy for a ghost to get around,’ Wells continued. ‘New name, new passport.’
‘We don’t know which alias he’s been travelling under,’ Anna said. ‘But we have been able to triangulate his movements, including those of the guys you ran into on the Piazza del Popolo.’
‘Puts him in the US at the time of the Washington attack,’ Gilmore confirmed, ‘and Moscow at the time of the second.’
‘But still nothing concrete,’ said Baptiste.
‘Who’s this McNeil bloke again?’ Pope asked, burping on the fizz of the Coke.
‘His full name is Thomas Bradley McNeil,’ Gilmore explained. ‘Former SEAL team commander and black ops specialist for the CIA.’
‘So what, he went rogue?’ Rios asked. ‘Faked his own death?’
‘And sold Samantha here to Serik,’ Gilmore said. ‘Who then used her in a trade with the Russians.’
‘Man, that’s cold,’ Rios said.
‘Especially considering they were a couple—’ Anna stopped herself and mouthed an apology at Driver.
‘Seriously fucking cold,’ Rios added.
Fresh from her nightmare, Driver couldn’t have cared less if the others knew. She was too busy fighting to keep it together as Gilmore revisited past traumas. A collage of Tom’s face on screen didn’t help.
Wells crossed his arms and frowned. ‘What’s a SEAL team commander doing in league with the leader of a terrorist group?’
Driver stared at the images on Mo’s screen. ‘That’s the billion-dollar question.’
‘You know what the real question is?’ Rios said, pointing to an image on the bottom right of the screen. ‘Who are those guys?’
Mo clicked on the image. It played a CCTV video: McNeil meeting with a young couple in an airport restaurant. The man was an all-American boy, dark-haired, athletic and handsome. The woman was slim, with light-brown skin and curls down to her shoulders. They shared a coffee at the table, appearing to laugh and joke.
Mo typed fast on his keyboard. ‘I traced them as far as their social media…’
‘An ordinary pair of twenty-somethings,’ Gilmore said. ‘College grads. They got married and bought a home together a year ago in the Vegas suburbs.’
‘The husband’s name is Riley Turner,’ Anna said. ‘The wife is Rose Turner.’
A series of images flashed up. Beaming smiles and everything one could expect from a couple their age. There were shots of them drinking, dancing and hiking. Both indulged in gym selfies, with romantic images of them at restaurants, at the beach and moving into their new place.
‘A picket fence, a cat and a goldfish,’ Mo said. ‘Hardly the profile for domestic terrorists.’
Driver shook her head. ‘Too perfect. You sure they check out? What do they do for a living?’
‘That’s the doozy,’ Anna replied. ‘No record of them working anywhere.’
‘What about their social security?’ Driver asked.
‘There isn’t any,’ Mo said.
Baptiste scratched his stubble. ‘You sure it’s not a fault in your algorithm?’
Mo seemed offended. ‘Impossible.’
‘How come?’ Wells asked.
‘Because I wrote it,’ Mo replied.
‘They could work for the Agency,’ Driver said, looking at Gilmore.
Gilmore shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’
Pope necked the end of his Coke. ‘Makes a whole lot of no sense to me.’
‘That’s why I’m putting you on the next flight to Vegas,’ Gilmore said. ‘You and Baptiste.’
Pope crushed the empty can in his hand. ‘What the hell?’
‘Vegas?’ Wells said. ‘Sounds like a sweet deal to me.’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Pope said. ‘I’m all for a trip to Vegas, but the action’s here… You need me.’
Rios chewed on a stick of gum. ‘We’ll survive.’
Pope turned to her in anger. ‘Hey, I’m the bloody glue holding this operation together.’
Lim burst into laughter. She stopped abruptly. Straight-faced.
‘I hate to admit it, but Pope’s right,’ said Baptiste. ‘What if they’re just casual acquaintances?’
‘Friends don’t tend to run into each other at airports,’ Anna said.
‘Actually, they do,’ Wells replied.
‘Twice in six months?’ Anna continued. ‘While connecting at different airports?’
‘I don’t know how you used to operate in Mother Russia,’ Gilmore said to Baptiste, ‘but in the CIA, we followed up every lead. No matter how tenuous.’
Driver was happy to have something to do and relieved the trail on Tom wasn’t dead. She clapped her hands with renewed enthusiasm. ‘So Pope and Baptiste stake out the couple. The rest of us hit that mystery address.’
Gilmore turned to Pope and Baptiste. ‘Your flight leaves in an hour.’
The team split and filed out of the room.
Pope arrowed his Coke can into an office bin. ‘This is gonna be a waste of time, you’ll see.’
With Driver about to leave, Wells approached her and Gilmore. ‘Pope and Baptiste? Shouldn’t you be sending Rios and Lim?’
Gilmore crossed his arms and sighed. ‘What’s the matter, Wells, you prefer the company of men?’
‘No, I prefer the company of people I can trust.’
Gilmore cracked a wry smile. ‘You trust a Russian double agent?’
‘Baptiste is one thing. But you don’t know Lim.’
‘Familiarity is overrated,’ Driver said. ‘The thought of buddying up with a sicario doesn’t exactly fill me with the warm and fuzzies, but she’s still here. And if it wasn’t for Lim and Rios, we’d never have made it out of Libya.’
‘Whatever your concerns, Mr Wells, my priority is the wider team,’ Gilmore continued. ‘Lim and Rios are my biggest flight risks. And I’m not about to put two convicted criminals on a plane to the land of the free.’ He leaned in close and met their eyes. ‘Don’t think I’m not paying attention… And that goes for all of you.’ Gilmore straightened up. ‘Now don’t you have somewhere to be?’
Driver pushed Wells towards the door.
‘Wait,’ Anna said, rising from her chair. ‘I almost forgot… We got you some new toys.’