PROLOGUE

It was mid-August, and the desert air was still and insufferably hot, the kind of weather that brings cicadas to life and humans to their knees. Despite being the midnight hour, Raj Singh’s clothing clung to him like wet rags, soaked with perspiration. On the verge of experiencing a full-blown panic attack, he was having one of those nights, and it couldn’t end fast enough. In spite of that, the one thing he could not do was hurry. There were cameras everywhere, but even those weren’t his greatest concern. What had begun as a careless oversight on his part had turned into an unmitigated disaster, and now he was certain they were watching his every move. But whom? And where? Although they had yet to show themselves, he sensed their eyes upon him. Lurking in the shadows. Waiting for the right moment to strike.

Wiping his brow, he took several deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart. Although the heat was suffocating, it wasn’t the main reason he was drenched in sweat, feeling as if every fiber of his being was on fire. It was fear. But while it was one thing to be paranoid, this was different. It was justified, making it all the more frightening. Having kept his physical activities within the norm of his regular routine, he had realized too late that they were probably also monitoring his computer. That left him with only one hope for getting out alive.

Sitting in his idling car, Raj was waiting for the AC to kick in, on the brink of losing it. Having just come off his shift, it would be his last night in the hole. He couldn’t even bring himself to call it a laboratory anymore, that ominous place where he’d been toiling away for the better part of five years. Funded entirely by private money, one man’s, the project he’d signed up for had seemed like such a virtuous philanthropic endeavor at the time, but recently, he had begun to have more questions than answers about the man behind it all. For starters, his name, that of a Greek god who despised the human race … Ares. No last name, and no way to verify his first name hadn’t been plucked out of thin air. He was a man no one would admit to ever having seen or met, and at this point, it wasn’t even clear whether or not he existed.

Determined to discover Ares’ true identity, he’d done a bit of harmless digging through the company’s database, suspecting a foreign government might be involved. That was his initial mistake. Stumbling upon a number of sensitive files was his second offense, the information they contained rocking him to his core. It wouldn’t matter to them that it was their fault for not securing what were obviously intended to be top-secret classified documents.

Maneuvering his BMW out of the VIP garage and into the main parking lot, he was dialing the number as his peripheral vision picked up a movement among the parked cars. “Sanjay,” he said, the second it was answered, straining to make out who or what had caught his eye, “are you there yet?”

“Ten minutes ago,” he said, weary from having been rousted out of his home at such a late hour. “What’s this all about?”

Aided by the dark of night, Raj was only minutes away from making a clean getaway, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come after him. If they suspected anything, had even the slightest hint of what he’d done, they would want him dead. It just couldn’t be tonight. “I’ll tell you when I get there,” he said, keeping a steady pace and nodding to the guard as he pulled out onto the main street, “but make certain you get us an out-of-the-way booth, where no one can overhear us.”

“I’ve already got it,” he said, a man who always followed instructions to a tee, “but why all the cloak-and-dagger B.S.? Are you in some kind of—”

“Order us some drinks,” he said, cutting him off before he could ask any more questions, “and I’ll be there in five minutes.” Hanging up, he resisted the urge to floor the gas pedal, buoyed by the fact there wasn’t another pair of headlights on the road in either direction. With the bar coming into view, he didn’t want to attract any undue attention. Most of all, he didn’t want to give them a reason to follow him. Checking in the rearview mirror, he could see Dumont Equipment International’s factory lights fading into the distance, having recently learned it was all nothing more than an elaborate scheme of smoke and mirrors.

Being employed by DEI in name only, Raj was one of the few who knew the truth about this isolated, subsidiary plant that served as the assembly line and testing grounds for the company’s monster-sized dump trucks and excavators used for building highways, dams and other over-sized projects. Always a bustling hub of activity, inside and out, crews worked around the clock to fill orders from every corner of the globe. Surrounded by a desolate stretch of desert and mountains, where each piece of equipment was put through a rigorous series of exercises, it was situated some twenty-miles outside of Palm Springs. With it being in the middle of nowhere, the company had even cobbled together a two-block town to service the employees’ basic needs, a place they had aptly named Nowhere. It wasn’t even on any map, so it didn’t really exist other than as a distraction for the men and women who assembled the machinery. That was the illusion, and no one from the outside world would ever know about it, let alone question it.

Even now, he was amazed by the level of genius that had gone into creating this 3-D sleight of hand, placing it in plain sight for everyone to see. With the incessant dust, noise and ever-present action, it served to keep what was buried underneath the plant invisible, unseen by prying eyes. It was a design so effectively executed that even spy satellites and drones couldn’t detect the true purpose of the factory. In reality, it was nothing more than a diversion from the laboratory burrowed one-hundred-feet below the assembly plant’s floor. Finished before DEI opened for business, the employees had no idea what was actually underfoot, having been kept completely isolated from the other entrance. The other staff.

As one of the dozens of scientists and technicians who came and went from the underground research facility, Raj was listed as being a part of management, the Director of International Relations. As such, he worked in the separate office complex, entering and exiting via the VIP parking garage. That’s where they kept the secret door to the elevator that would take them down into the laboratory, and he was certain that death would be the only option for anyone foolish enough to try to gain access without the proper credentials.

As the lead scientist for Project XR-17, he was in charge of formulating what would be the single greatest breakthrough in medical history, a way to remedy nearly every disease. Now that they were almost finished, it would become the perfect cure, but his unauthorized snooping had uncovered its true purpose. In the same way that a coin has two sides, the end result of any scientific endeavor could be manipulated for either benevolent or malevolent outcomes, and XR-17, in its reconfigured state, would be nothing short of pure evil.

Turning onto a cross street, he parked near the side entrance to the bar and quickly made his way inside, easily spotting Sanjay drinking a beer. As usual, he had his nose buried in his phone. Despite the corner booth he’d gotten being adjacent to a window, it was private, and the bar was quiet. Sliding in opposite him, he tried to smile and be nonchalant. “I’m sorry for being so vague about this,” he said, experiencing twinges of guilt about involving him in something so dangerous, “but I appreciate you meeting me out in the middle of nowhere on such short notice.”

“After all you’ve done for me over the years,” he said, his tone hushed, “you know I’ll do anything for you, but it would help if you gave me some details about what you’re up to.”

With no other option available to him tonight, Raj knew he had no choice but to go forward with his plan. “If anything happens to me,” he said, reaching into his pocket and removing the item that could very well cost him his life, “send this for me. It’s already addressed and has the proper postage, and hopefully he’ll be able to figure out what to do with it.”

“What the hell are you in to?” he asked, leaning forward, his voice barely audible.

“The less you know,” he said, keeping one eye on the door, “the better off you’ll be. All you need to do is keep it safe, and only send it if I die by suspicious circumstances.”

“Die,” Sanjay gasped, glancing around to make sure no one had heard him. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

Raj shrugged. “I can’t be certain,” he said, wondering if he was destined to spend the rest of his life forever looking over his shoulder, “other than to say they would likely eliminate anyone or anything in order to keep this a secret.”

“Then what the hell are you doing with it?”

“It’s complicated,” he said, extending his hand with the small carboard box, “but to put it bluntly, it can’t be kept a secret. The world has to know. They have to be made aware of what this man has planned.”

“What man?” he asked, seeing the hole suddenly appear in Raj’s forehead, the sound of the gunshot ringing in his ears as blood spurt out onto the table. With a pair of lifeless eyes spurring him to move, he turned to see the shooter pivoting to take aim at him. Acting entirely off of reflex, he ripped the box out of his deceased-friend’s hand and sprinted toward the back entrance.

CHAPTER ONE

As a Navy SEAL, death was an ever-present danger, and to survive required developing the lethal skills necessary to keep the Grim Reaper at bay. It was a matter of becoming that which others feared even more than the Reaper himself … the Executioner. Now as a civilian, I never sweat the big stuff, instead facing it head-on, but the little things are a different story, often vague and seemingly inconsequential intangibles that can blindside you and end your existence. Like this morning, when I woke up with an ache in my gut, the kind that can’t be fixed by knocking back a half bottle of Pepto-Bismol. It was an omen, a sign of things to come.

As for how I know all of this, call it intuition, instinct or a sixth sense, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve had an uncanny knack for intuiting impending trouble. It’s my edge. It keeps me alert and sharp, and during my stint as a SEAL assassin, it kept me alive. That’s just it. While I never go looking for trouble, it always seems to find me, so forewarned is forearmed. “Whether or not anything comes of it,” I said, following Randy down the stairs into the massive concrete bunker buried ten-feet under his home, “my Reaper Radar is pinging off the charts.”

“I won’t deny that your radar has saved my butt on more than one occasion,” he said, flipping on the lights and leading the way past the computer command center to the munitions lockers, “and we’ve got the gear to take on anything that comes our way, but you’re being uncharacteristically vague about what we’re up against.”

I shrugged. Having been friends since childhood, we knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, inside and out. We also knew how to fight together as a team, even when the enemy was not yet defined. “There’s only one thing I can tell you with any certainty,” I said, having pulled him off my jobsite, a multi-million-dollar remodel of one of Palm Canyon’s premiere estates, to meet at his place. “There’s some serious shit out there, and it’s headed our way.”

Inputting the code into a digital keypad, he opened the vault door, revealing row after row of weaponry. As the owner of Guardian Alarm Company, Randy Todd was a genius when it came to securing anything and everything, whether digital or physical. He was also a mountain of a man, at well over six-feet tall, with bulging muscles and a short fuse, a volatile mixture that had gotten him tossed from Green Berets, but it was his vast arsenal of weaponry that truly made him a force to be reckoned with. “I don’t want to discount your instincts,” he said, a man whose idea of a backyard barbeque involved blowing something up then roasting weenies on the subsequent fire, “but sometimes, shit’s just shit, serious or not.”

“Not this time,” I said, stepping inside the spacious room, snagging several RPGs and stowing them on a metal workbench. “Did you see the lead story on CNN this morning?”

“Dammit, Jake,” he muttered, adding an AK-47, a case of ammo, and a half-dozen magazines to the pile, “I was afraid you were going to bring that up, and we can’t afford to be getting sidetracked by something so ‘out there’.” He paused, contemplating. “With this being Friday, we can go through the weekend putting your theory to the test, but if nothing comes of it, we need to get our butts back to the Peters’ estate. If we don’t get all of the loose ends tied up in the next two weeks, we’ll get saddled with one hundred grand in non-performance penalties.”

I shrugged again. Having started Tinker’s Construction Company after leaving the navy, I build and remodel mansions for an elite assortment of some of the world’s richest-and-most-famous movers and shakers, and they did not tolerate delays. On the other hand, I figured money wouldn’t do me any good if I wasn’t alive to spend it. “It was right there on the TV screen for everyone to see,” I said, deciding to throw in a crate of Semtex, “so you know damn well what I’m talking about.”

He nodded. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though,” he said, adding a box of timers and detonators. “Planes crash all of the time.”

Having caught the story on my way out the door for work, I had instantly known that it was somehow related to the knot in the pit of my stomach. A quick Google search had confirmed it. “Perhaps,” I said, hoisting an armful of armaments and heading upstairs, “but you saw it as well as I did.”

“Assuming you’re talking about the debris field,” he said, getting the rest of the gear and following me up into the house, “there’s no denying it was totally inconsistent with a plane going down from what was described as ‘mechanical difficulties’.”

“Damn straight,” I said, having personally blown up several planes during my naval career. “There were a number of obvious signs of an explosion … from the inside.”

“While I don’t disagree,” he said, opening the front door so that we could both get out into the driveway, “what does a plane crash in Kazakhstan, whether by an accident or an act of terrorism, have to do with us?”

Stopping at my truck, I had a brief moment of doubt, wondering if I was somehow overreacting. “On the surface,” I said, deciding there was no other way to proceed, “nothing, but indirectly, the location is problematic.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said, waiting while I opened the rear door of the cab. “It went down thirty miles outside of Almaty, and that’s a whole lot of nothing.”

I shook my head. “Not necessarily.”

Stowing the gear in the backseat, he straightened up, eyes narrowing. “You seem to be insinuating that the DoD has something going on in that area.”

Standing there, I was flooded with memories of all the deceit and misdirection that was an every-day part of orders from the top brass. “It was beyond top secret, but they supposedly shut it down years ago.”

“What makes you think they didn’t?”

“The crash,” I said, positive I was right, “or actually, the passengers.”

“Was someone we know onboard?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I hesitated, collecting my thoughts. “It was my last year in SEALs,” I said, remembering it like it was yesterday. “I had a hit in that area, and the pre-op briefing contained five names from the passenger manifest that I found about an hour ago in an AP news story, but one in particular stands out.”

Having had his fair share of experience getting sold out by his superiors, Randy’s jaw went rigid, his massive fists clenched into tight balls. “It sounds like you’re describing a rogue DoD operation being run in that area,” he said, having deduced where this was headed, “and you were sent in to tidy up the mess.”

“They were working in conjunction with the CIA,” I said, marveling at the depth and breadth of the lie. “There was evidently some infighting, leading to the mission parameters being changed at the last moment; thus, four of the five targets were allowed to live.”

“And the fifth guy?”

“I put a bullet in his chest, then snapped his neck for good measure.” I cocked my head, looking him square in the eyes. “Only thing is, he was on flight KC-223 out of Almaty this morning.”

“Bastards,” Randy said, slamming his fist against the truck. “They murdered one hundred and eighty-seven people in order to kill five men?”

“It was quick, easy and efficient,” I said, certain that was exactly how the brass viewed it, “but it wasn’t about simply murdering a few guys. It was about sending a message.”

“To whom?”

“It depends on who ordered the hit,” I said, seeing the writing on the wall, “but my guess is they’re in the process of covering their tracks, and eventually … they’re going to get around to me.”

Clamping a hand on my shoulder, his expression said it all. “This is the perfect opportunity to try out my new toy,” he said, having tricked out a sniper’s rifle with a particularly nasty twist. “Does this mean you won’t be going on your weekend getaway to Cabo?”

Nodding, I checked my watch. “The plane leaves in an hour, and I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for air travel.”

“Rachel’s gonna be pissed.”

“That’s the least of my worries,” I said, throwing the last items on the front seat. “Get this place buttoned up, and be ready for whatever.”

“Why not stay here,” he said, having designed his one-of-a-kind compound with this type of situation in mind, “at least until the storm blows over? The bunker has enough supplies to last for three months; we’ve got outer defenses we can deploy from in there, and no one will be able to find us or get to us.”

“It’s not that kind of danger,” I said, sensing we needed to hit the road. Having personally built the masterpiece that was his home, it was a fortress cleverly disguised as a house. Situated in Bellavista, on a hilltop abutting the city of Palm Cayon, it was sequestered behind an eight-foot-high, architectural-concrete wall that ran the entire perimeter of the one-acre property. The main building was a sprawling six-thousand-square-foot rambler with a million-dollar view of the city, the harbor and the Pacific Ocean; however, while the above-ground aspects of the property were impressive, a cleverly concealed door inside the house led down into a secret concrete bunker. Strong enough to withstand a mortar attack, it also housed a sophisticated electronics control system that was second to none in the private sector. And now, when we needed it most, it was utterly useless.

“You’re sure about this?”

“We’ve got no choice,” I said, climbing behind the wheel and keying the ignition. “There’s no telling where this will lead us, so be ready to move out on a moment’s notice.” Heading down the driveway, I placed the call I’d been dreading.

“You better not be cancelling on me,” Rachel said, picking up on the first ring, not yet aware of our new plans. “You’re cutting it awful close, and I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Sorry, babe,” I said, imagining what I would be missing; her taut, trim, tanned body wrapped in nothing more than a string bikini, “but there’s no way around it. I’ll fill you in when I get there.”

“I knew it,” she said, not a happy camper. With a fierce intellect and piercing green eyes that any man would be wise not to betray, her looks were only the wrapper, a decoy from the drive and determination that lie just beneath the surface. “We really need this time alone, away from everything and everyone.”

“Believe me when I say that I wish we could,” I said, meaning every word, “but it’ll have to wait for another day.”

“You sound more resolute than usual,” she said, having picked up the ability to read between the lines of my commentary. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“If you must know,” I said, having no intention of getting into the details over the phone, “there’s a storm brewing, and we have to batten down the hatches.”

“Not again,” she groaned, having been with me long enough to understand what that meant. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

“Is there anything you want me to pick up on my way home?” I asked, glossing over her rhetorical question. “I need to make a quick stop at the hardware store.”

“No,” she said, her voice tentative, “but there’s something you should know about. I was going to save it until you got here, but I can’t wait.”

“I knew it,” I said, dusting off our longstanding joke. “You’re having an affair with the pool boy, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said, although her voice remained serious, “but it’s about the mail.” She paused. “There’s a package for you.”

Caught off guard, my heart skipped a beat, and not in a good way. “What of it?” I asked, debating whether to have her throw it off the deck into the canyon.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of odd?”

“I guess it depends on how you define odd,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Is it a live animal or some such thing?”

“I’m talking odd as in creepy.” She paused again, longer this time. “It’s got dark stains all over it, and I’m no expert, but it looks a heck of a lot like dried blood.”

CHAPTER TWO

Annoyed by the constant crying and pleas for mercy, Brock stepped outside to get some fresh air, swiftly moving into the shade cast by an enormous boulder. Even so, it was still one hundred and ten degrees, making the interior of the dingy shack feel more like a sauna than a remote guard station. Constructed to resemble an overgrown toolshed, upon closer inspection, it was built sturdier than most homes, designed to deter casual intruders from getting inside. Surrounded by nothing but arid desert and the occasional rock outcropping, it was situated on land owned by Dumont Equipment International, about a mile from the assembly plant. It was so isolated that screams would go unheeded, making it the perfect site for an interrogation.

Tracking a plume of dust off in the distance, he could just make out a black Durango. He had been expecting him. Downing a half liter of water, he waited until the SUV came to a stop and the driver got out. “Mr. Peterson,” he said, joining him in front of the hut, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“It’s been three days since you dispatched Mr. Singh,” he said, his tone sharp. “What have you two nitwits been doing for all that time?”

“As I mentioned in my report,” he said, only knowing Peterson as the head of the factory’s security detail but certain that wasn’t the whole story, “his friend scrambled out the rear door of the bar and drove off before we could get him, so we ended up following him into Palm Springs.”

“Yes,” he said, startled by a shrill screech that seemed to go on for a solid ten seconds, “something about downtown.”

He nodded, immune to the primal sounds victims made when subjected to excruciating pain.

“Bobbing your head like a baboon tells me nothing,” he snapped, annoyed by having to pull it out of him. “Exactly where did you find him?”

“After we lost him in the seedier business district up north,” Brock said, keeping it vague to gloss over their most egregious missteps, “we staked out his home, and the next day, the idiot showed up.” He cocked his head toward the shed. “Since then, we’ve been sweating him for information.”

“By sweating,” he said, unamused by the thuggish jargon, “can I take it that you mean torturing?”

“It’s the most effective way to get at the truth,” he said, aware that whether or not the perp was tortured, his life expectancy was limited at best, “so we haven’t spared the rod, and we’ve gotten about as far as we can with him.”

Shaking his head in dismay, Peterson brushed the big man aside. “The legitimacy of your deduction depends on your results,” he said, stepping inside and seeing Sanjay strapped to a chair; cut, bruised, bloody, and missing his front teeth. “What information have you gotten out of him? Does he know anything about what Raj had been doing for us?”

Hating to be interrupted in the middle of working on his patient, Vinnie nonetheless turned to greet their employer. “He claims they were close friends,” he said, setting a pair of pliers and a tooth on the side table, “but apparently Mr. Singh kept tightlipped about whatever it was he was working on.”

“It would help if we knew what type of information you’re looking for,” Brock said, sensing an opening. “Or is it physical objects you’re wanting to recover?”

“I told you before that it’s not your concern,” he said, having questions of his own. “Did he hand off anything to this character at the bar? Anything at all?”

“While we didn’t personally witness anything changing hands,” he said, suspecting they weren’t being told the truth about the true stakes involved, “after a bit of persuasion, we got him to admit that Singh gave him a small box to mail for him if he were to unexpectedly die.”

Taking a moment, Peterson carefully studied the beleaguered man as he faded in and out of consciousness. “Do you believe him?”

He shrugged. “Nothing’s absolute, but no regular person can withstand that much pain, just to keep something hidden.”

Noticing a side table, he spotted a wallet and picked it up, slowly emptying the contents and meticulously examining each item. “What you’ve found out would tend to confirm our suspicions about Mr. Singh,” he said, certain these two clowns weren’t being entirely forthcoming. “Give me the box, and our current business will be concluded.”

“I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding,” Brock said, trying to massage the facts in a way that would save their butts. “We don’t have it.”

“That’s not the answer that’s going to keep you alive,” he said, mindful that his neck was also on the line. “Where is it?”

“He says he mailed it, and no matter what we do to him, he sticks by that story.”

“That’s it?” he asked, growing increasingly irritated at having to grill him for details. “Don’t make me beat it out of you. Where did he mail it? And to whom did he mail it? Time is of the essence here, and you’ve already wasted far too much of it.”

“A postal box that’s within a block of where we initially lost him,” he said, having heard rumors about Peterson’s violent temper. “As for who it was addressed to, he claims he never bothered to look.”

“Whoever it was,” he said, calculating how he was going to relay this bad news to the man who ran the two thousand acres of desert that surrounded and buffered DEI, otherwise known as Sector 7, “they’ve probably got it by now.” Needing to apply a bit more motivation, he decided to share the pain. “I don’t care what you do or how you do it, but find me that name, and then get me an address.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Brock asked, flabbergasted. “If we knew how to accomplish that task, it would already be done.”

“Did it never occur to you to improvise?” he asked, once again shaking his head. “Surely this insignificant creature told you more than what you’ve already shared.”

Glancing at Vinnie, there was an imperceptible nod. “He did mention something about the postal box being in front of a place called Desert Jewelers,” he said, having considered it to be useless information, “something we were able to confirm.”

“Gentlemen,” Peterson said, stunned by their incompetence but deciding to give them one last chance, “we need that address this afternoon.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Wouldn’t a jewelry store have security cameras, including one pointed at the street?”

“Dammit,” Brock said, mentally berating himself for having overlooked that point. “It’s a longshot that it would’ve captured the name and address, but we’ll head over there right now. However … it’s not likely the shop owner is going to willingly give us the video.”

“You’ll figure something out,” he said, making a mental note of the time, “and since that shop is less than an hour from here, I’ll give you exactly two hours to get me the information, or you’ll get the same treatment as him.” Pulling out a gun, he aimed it at Sanjay’s head and squeezed the trigger, splattering his brains all over the far wall. “Do we understand each other?”