U.S. MARSHAL JEN CAPERS GLANCED OUT THE WINDOW OF the small black jet as it touched down on a covert government airstrip near the farming town of Florence, Colorado. It was three A.M., and except for little green landing lights along the runway and a sky full of stars, the night was as dark as a cave. As the jet slowed, she noted the piles of dirty white snow melting off to the sides of the runway, proof that while it was springtime in the Rockies, it had only just arrived.
When the aircraft lurched to a halt, the runway lights winked out. She kept the cabin dark, too—no sense making it easier on a sniper. She and her young hotshot partner, Joe Rosen, were escorting a “high-value” prisoner from New York to ADX Florence, the “Supermax” federal penitentiary known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, and there would be no relaxing until he was officially out of her custody.
ADX Florence housed the worst of the worst, the prisoners deemed the most dangerous to others or those most likely to stage a prison break with the help of outside sources. There were mobsters and gangbangers, terrorists and drug traffickers, bombers, just plain cold-blooded psychopathic killers, and even a former FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, serving life for espionage. Among the other infamous occupants were Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheik” who had organized the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called nineteenth hijacker from the September 11, 2001, attacks; Richard Reid, who had attempted to ignite a shoe bomb on an airliner in flight; Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; and Terry Nichols, who had helped plan the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, who’d also been held there prior to his execution in another penitentiary.
It was no “Club Fed.” Most of the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day in seven-by-twelve-foot concrete rooms with steel doors and a grate. They rarely saw other prisoners, and their only direct human interaction was with the staff. One hour a day, they were taken to another concrete room to exercise by themselves. They ate alone and prayed alone—religious services were broadcast from a chapel—and any visitors from the outside were separated from the prisoners by bulletproof glass.
There had never been an escape or a successful attempt to break anybody out, because any individual prisoner’s exact whereabouts inside the thirty-seven-acre prison complex could not be determined. Prisoners had no way of knowing where they were in the complex; they never went outside, and even their windows opened only to the sky. They were not allowed to make calls to anyone outside the prison, and every last nook and cranny of the facility was monitored by cameras and motion detectors. Surrounding the prison was a twelve-foot-tall fence topped with razor wire, the space between it and the walls crisscrossed by laser beams and patrolled by big, vicious dogs.
Once she had her man behind the walls, Capers thought, there was no way he was getting out unless he was released or escorted by a U.S. marshal, a member of the agency responsible for transporting federal prisoners. And more important, she reasoned, no one was getting in to get to him. This prisoner was unusual; although he was in federal custody and under indictment, he had not yet been convicted and was, in fact, in the process of becoming a federal witness. ADX Florence was for those who had already been convicted.
Or someone they want to talk to real bad and think is a dead man if they can’t get him locked away from the rest of humanity, she thought. I guess it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s also a former congressman and involved in an attempt to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. It didn’t go off as planned, but plenty of people died, so I hope whatever deal he works out is nothing more than a nicer cell at ADX Florence.
A twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service, Capers didn’t spend a lot more time thinking about her prisoner or his past. She had a job to do: take federal prisoners into custody and deliver them safely to wherever she was directed—a courtroom, a prison, or into the hands of the branch of the service that ran the Witness Security Program, WITSEC, better known to the public as the witness-protection program.
She did her job well. She’d never had a prisoner injured or escape, and she’d shot it out with armed men to prevent both, surviving, though hurt, because in the end, she’d proved to be the better marksman. The closest she’d come to losing a prisoner was turning over Sharif Jabbar to her old friend Clay Fulton on Christmas morning, and she’d done that with pleasure.
“We have company off the starboard side,” the pilot said over the intercom.
Starboard, huh? Didn’t know Pete Todd was a Navy pilot, she thought as she remained in her seat near the rear of the jet and across the aisle from where her prisoner sat in handcuffs. She leaned back in her seat and saw two vehicles approaching with screens over their headlights to minimize their visibility from a distance.
The dark SUVs stopped twenty feet from the jet, facing the plane. She didn’t like that they kept their lights, even dimmed, on the aircraft. “I see them, Pete,” she said into her shoulder microphone. “Keep the engines revved.”
Capers watched Rosen go to the door and look out the window. He was tall, with chiseled features as if he’d stepped off a Marine recruiting poster, and indeed was only recently out of the Corps, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He carried a big gun and had a tendency to flirt with any female who came within ten feet, including her. But she had to admit that while he was half her age, she enjoyed the attention; it had been a long time since her husband, Steve, a journalist, had been killed covering the war in Afghanistan. She was lonely, and it was nice to feel appreciated as a woman by a handsome young man, even if it was a harmless flirtation.
One of the vehicles—a black Hummer—flashed its lights in prearranged code. Rosen looked back at Capers, who nodded and spoke to the pilot. “Pete, turn on the audio for the outside, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rosen pressed a button, the door popped open, and the gangway lowered to the tarmac. Eight figures dressed in black exited the Hummers. Six heavily armed men immediately moved out and took up defensive positions facing away from the jet. The remaining two began walking toward the gangway.
Capers was somewhat surprised to see from the silhouettes in the cars’ lights that one of the two was a woman whose shape she didn’t recognize. She didn’t personally know every marshal in the WITSEC program, who would be in charge of her prisoner’s security from this point on, but she thought that any female assigned to this would have been Pam Ayres, who was short and stocky. This woman was tall and moved like a dancer. Someone new, she thought.
Rosen walked down the stairs of the gangway to intercept the two on the ground. “Morning, folks. Identification,” he said, turning on a small flashlight. The two stopped in front of him and flipped open their wallets.
As her partner turned his light on the IDs, Capers glanced over at her prisoner, former congressman Denton Crawford. “When I tell you, stand up and proceed down the aisle ahead of me,” she said.
Crawford smiled. “Whatever you say, officer.”
***
Standing in the dark as the young marshal looked at the identification she’d handed him, Nadya Malovo waited patiently to make her move. She had no fear that the stolen ID would pass a quick inspection; after all, the document was real, even if the photograph had been quickly substituted for one of her own. And there was no danger of the real owner showing up; U.S. Marshal Pam Ayres was lying dead out in the dark along with five other members of her team.
Malovo considered herself the best at what she did, but even she had to acknowledge that she’d been plagued lately by a string of failures. She’d been in charge of training the Al-Aqsa Brigade for the attack on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as taking out a secondary target in Brooklyn. But both plans had been ultimately thwarted. As was the plan to incinerate the Brooklyn Bridge and both sides of the East River within a mile of it by blowing up a liquefied-natural-gas tanker.
Not my fault, she thought. The plans had called for her to escape early from what were little more than suicide missions for the others. She was the catalyst, the field commander, and, when necessary, an assassin. Seducing the head of building security and dispatching him with a letter opener in his brain. Personally guiding the progress of the LNG tanker right up to the moment when it entered U.S. waters, and then, by prior arrangement with a traitor U.S. Coast Guard captain, being “taken into custody” and transferred to his patrol boat. Safely away from the tanker and its rendezvous with fate in the East River, her accomplice had facilitated her escape but then died along with the rest of the small crew, whom she “terminated with prejudice” when her escape was secure.
All her accomplices had to do was complete a few simple tasks, but they had failed, and therefore, so had she. Of course, much of that was because of that bastard Karp and his associates, she thought. And my old lover, Yvgeny Karchovski, who keeps interfering in matters that should not concern him. I wonder what his connection to Karp is. No matter. Someday soon, I will settle with both of them. The thought of both men turned her stomach. Not only had there been a string of failures of late, but she had come increasingly close to losing her life.
Malovo suppressed the urge to shiver at the jolt of . . . a premonition? She needed for this new mission to be a success. She wanted to retire before it all caught up to her. If either the NYSE or the Brooklyn Bridge mission had come to fruition, she would have been out of the business and living her days in ease and comparative safety. But the people she worked for didn’t reward failure, and she had even begun to worry about at what point they might decide she was a liability. Like Denton Crawford.
So this time, she would personally see to it that the missions were brought to a successful conclusion. And when it was over, she would be wealthy. And I will begin to act out my revenge on Karp and Yvgeny.
The mission this time wasn’t as dramatic as attempting to destroy the U.S. economy or blow up a major landmark and portions of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, the leadership of the Sons of Man considered it even more vital that she succeed. For the first time in its two-hundred-year history, the SOM council was in a panic. All those years, they’d kept their existence a secret as they’d evolved from simple smugglers who fled the Isle of Man to evade the British navy to leaders of American politics, business, and military with a goal of eventually controlling the United States and, if all went well, the world. However, mistakes had been made lately. Impatience, perhaps, to see the dream fulfilled had led to overreaching and complicated schemes that had backfired. The existence of the group, if not its membership, was known, and now the authorities had two members in custody, Crawford and Dean Newbury.
Compared with Newbury, Crawford was small potatoes, an empty suit, good for politics and doing what he was told by the council. But he wasn’t privy to all the secrets or plans. If he talked, he could do serious damage, of course; he did know names and the basic structure and purpose of the organization. But SOM’s public relations machine could make him out to be a nutcase, a criminal who’d worked with psychopath Andrew Kane to extort money and was blaming others to get out of trouble.
The real problem was Dean Newbury. He’d been one of the oldest and most powerful members of the council, and there was nothing he did not know about the organization, including access to documentation that would make denials futile.
However, according to sources within several federal agencies, neither man had talked yet. They were, in fact, “lawyered up” as their attorneys negotiated quid pro quos, such as being placed in the witness-protection program in exchange for their information about the Sons of Man and, in Newbury’s case, testifying in the New York case against Sharif Jabbar. But it was only a matter of time before they did start talking. Unless they’re no longer breathing.
Malovo had already probed the edges around Newbury’s security. She knew he was being kept somewhere in upstate New York, but she couldn’t find the exact location. Karp’s man, the big black detective, Fulton, was in charge of security and had the old man stashed away so well that her spies—both on the street and SOM agents within federal law-enforcement agencies—could get no word of his whereabouts beyond a region. So if I can’t get to him, I need him to be brought to me, she thought.
In the meantime, she’d been tipped off that Crawford was being brought to ADX Florence to protect him. If they got her target inside, it would be virtually impossible to get at him, and she would have already failed at half the mission.
She considered simply blowing the jet out of the air with a shoulder-fired missile, but she couldn’t be sure that Crawford was on the aircraft. It would be just like the U.S. Marshal’s Office to spread false information about a prisoner’s movements to throw off anyone tracking them. And if she didn’t get him, she probably would never have another crack at him. Her bosses had also asked her to ascertain, “if possible,” if Crawford had already talked by seeing him face-to-face.
The world was full of men who would betray their duty and comrades for money, or sometimes sex, which was when having a beautiful body and a face like hers was a definite asset. She was wired to take advantage of the weak and corrupt. And so U.S. Marshal Ben Stopes was easy prey. For a cool million dollars, he had led the witness-protection team assigned to take custody of the target into an ambush.
Now, all she had to do was get past this young, handsome, doomed man and the U.S. marshal still onboard the jet. She’d been told that the latter would not be an easy task. Apparently, U.S. Marshall Jen Capers was tough and smart.
The young man handed her identification back. “Thank you, Marshal Ayres.”
Inside the jet, Capers jumped up at her partner’s words and pulled her gun. Dangit! That is definitely not Pam Ayres, she thought as she started to race to the front of the jet. “Marshal Rosen! I need to see you immediately,” she said into her radio, which was set to Rosen’s earpiece.
It was a code that something was wrong, and he was to get back onboard the aircraft. But realizing the vulnerability of Capers and the prisoner, Rosen reached for his gun and had it out before the others could draw.
As had happened before in her long and vicious career, Malovo’s opponent chose the wrong partner, apparently believing that, between the two, the woman was less dangerous. He pointed the gun at Malovo’s male companion, who was slow to react and was only just grabbing his gun when a bullet from Rosen’s .44 Magnum caught him in the stomach and knocked him off his feet.
However, Nadya Malovo was not slow, nor was she less dangerous. Before the young man could turn his gun on her, she shot him in the throat. It didn’t take the fight out of him, but as he tried to bring his gun to bear, her second shot hit him between the eyes.
Capers arrived in the doorway just in time to see her partner fall to the tarmac. “No!” she screamed, and fired at Malovo.
The shot might have been fatal to anyone else. But years of hunting and being hunted had fine-tuned the Russian’s reflexes; she saw the movement at the door and turned her body sideways without hesitation, just as Capers pulled the trigger. She felt the bullet tug at the sleeve of her shirt as it whizzed past. But it was enough to throw off her own aim when she returned fire.
Two bullets crashed into the bulkhead next to Capers, who ducked back inside the cabin. A hail of bullets struck the fuselage as the rest of the ambush team began shooting.
“Pete, get us out of here!” Capers yelled.
“What about Joe?” the pilot replied.
Capers felt a lump in her throat. “He’s gone. We have a prisoner to protect!” She fired a couple more rounds out the still-open door to hold off the attackers.
Suddenly, the jet lurched to the right and then down in front. Capers realized that the attackers were shooting out the aircraft’s tires. Then there was a blaze of automatic rifle fire, which, judging from the surprised and then anguished shout from the pilot, meant that the people outside were determined to keep the jet on the ground.
Capers heard a shout from outside—“What are you waiting for? Attack!”—and took cover behind a row of seats. Her bosses in New York had considered escorting Crawford to ADX Florence under a large and heavily armed guard. But they were hoping to get him safely tucked away without gaining any attention. So it had been decided to smuggle him in quietly with only a small team.
Guess that was a mistake, Capers thought as she trained her gun on the door. A moment later, a man jumped into the cabin, his gun ready, but he didn’t fire.
Capers dropped him with a shot to the head. Didn’t shoot, she thought. They want my prisoner alive. She glanced back but couldn’t see Crawford.
Another man, followed quickly by one more, came through the door. She shot one in the chest but had to duck when the second man opened fire on her. Something punched her hard in the left shoulder, and she was slammed back into a seat. Leaning over into the aisle, she shot the second man in the leg. He fell, and she finished him with a bullet that struck him in the chin.
Capers sat back up. With her free hand, she reached up to touch where it felt as if someone was applying a red-hot poker to her skin. The hand came away covered with blood. She felt light-headed and couldn’t react when someone threw a small canister into the cabin that landed a few feet from where she sat.
M84 stun grenade, she thought. A moment later, there was a blinding flash of light and a deafening roar as the cylinder exploded.
It took five seconds for her vision to return, and when it did, she was looking up into the face of the fake Pam Ayres. Even with a black stocking cap covering most of her blond hair and the black military-style clothing covering her body, the woman was quite beautiful, though the gun she was pointing at Capers was not.
Capers prepared to die. I will not let her see my fear.
However, the other woman leaned over and picked up Capers’s gun where it had fallen. She stood and pointed her own gun at the marshal’s head but then hesitated.
“Shoot—get it over with,” Capers snarled.
The woman smiled and shook her head. “Not today. Today you live. It’s good to meet another woman who knows how to fight. And I want you to take a message back to Butch Karp. Tell him that I will take my revenge against him one life at a time until he is the last one, and then I will take him, too.”
“Fuck you,” Capers said.
Malovo smirked. “Perhaps some other time, if you survive your wound.” She turned to one of her men, who’d joined her on the aircraft. “Watch her.” She then proceeded to the back of the jet, where Crawford was standing with a smile on his face.
“I knew my brothers would not let me down,” he said as she walked up. “Now, get the key from the woman and get me out of the handcuffs.”
“In a moment. First, I need to ask you an important question,” Malovo replied. “What have you told the authorities about the Sons of Man?”
Crawford looked incredulous. “Are you kidding? I know better than that. Our reach is long, as is our memory. I pretended I was going to talk in exchange for a deal, but that was just a stall tactic.”
Malovo looked into the former congressman’s eyes, then said, “I believe you.”
“But of course,” he replied. “I would never betray my family or friends. Myr shegin dy ve, be eh!”
Malovo nodded. “Myr shegin dy ve, be eh. That’s Manx for ‘What must be will be,’ correct?”
“Yes. Now, would you please release me? These things are killing my wrists.”
Instead, Malovo raised her gun and pointed it at his face.
“What are you doing?” he screamed. “I told you I didn’t say anything!”
“And I said I believe you, but unfortunately for you, this must be,” she replied, and pulled the trigger.