to avoid the disdain associated with the more accurate “mercenary” label—had been put on standby. They’d waited for the go signal for months. The team leader didn’t like getting paid to sit still. It wasn’t his style. Like the others in his squad, he was ex-Force Recon, the U.S. Marines’ equivalent to the Navy’s SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force. Swift, Silent, Deadly, the Force Recon motto, didn’t exactly apply to sitting around watching endless hours of TV in isolated, if comfortable barracks. The world out there—misguided, tyrannized, evil—was waiting.
Something in his pack warbled. He glanced at his watch. The call was expected.
He checked on the chopper’s position again. It was banking away in a wide arc. He pulled out his satellite phone, a tiny Iridium handset. It was no bigger than a regular cell phone, if not for the ten-inch antenna that pivoted out from it and the STU-III voice encryption module clipped onto its base. He pressed the answer key. A sequence of beeps mixed with static told him the call was bouncing its way halfway across the planet. He waited for the red LED to tell him the call was secure, then spoke.
“This is Fox One.”
After the briefest of lags, a computerized male voice responded. “What’s your status?”
It sounded like Stephen Hawking was calling, and he knew his own voice sounded just as robotic at the other end. Although he and the project’s overseer had dodged bullets together on more than one continent, the military-level, 256-bit voice encryption made their voices unrecognizable, in case someone was eavesdropping. Which was unlikely enough, but one could never be too careful, which was also why a second safeguard was built into his phone’s microchip, enabling a hybrid of hopping and sweeping scrambling. Only another phone fitted with the same chip could decode their transmissions. Any other phone would only pick up a burst of ear-piercing static.
“We’re ready to roll,” Fox One replied.
“Any problems I should know about?”
“Negative.”
The synthesized voice came back. “Good. Pull your men out and initiate the next phase.”
The team leader terminated the call and glanced up at the sky. It was back to its monotone, off-white, bleak self again.
Not a trace, he mused. Perfect.
Chapter 23
Cambridge,Massachusetts
Matt slipped the phone back into its cradle and eased the door shut before darting through the hallway and into the main bedroom.
He had to get the hell out of there. They were only seconds away.
He ignored the near window in the bedroom and went straight to the back wall where, in the pale moonlight coming in through the window, he’d earlier spotted a half-glazed door that gave on to a ten-foot-square balcony. With his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, he peered out and saw that, as he’d suspected, it led to a fire escape.
He joggled the door handle, but it was locked. He looked left and right for a key, but there was nothing in plain sight. He pulled and yanked at it again, a hopeless, desperate gesture, the door stubbornly refusing to budge, then was glancing back toward the hallway, his brain tripping wildly, like the ever-accelerating countdown of a time bomb, wondering how much time he still had, visualizing the two men bursting into the apartment, when a heavy knock pounded the front door.
“Open up, police.”
He didn’t want to get caught in there. He was sure Bellinger was dead, and here he was, in his apartment, an apartment he’d broken into, the apartment of a dead man who was last seen running away from him after they’d had a bust-up in a crowded bar.
A slam-dunk with any jury—if it ever got to that.
Somehow, he didn’t think he’d make it that far.
His reflexes took over.
He grabbed a side table by the bed, swung it back, and hurled it through the window of the balcony door. Glass exploded as the heavy wooden console flew out and thudded heavily onto the decked floor. The posse outside the door must have heard it, as a more pointed shout of “Open up, police” echoed from the stairwell, a shout with a distinct finality to it. Matt dashed across the room, only he didn’t go for the balcony. Instead, he scurried in the opposite direction, away from it, and dived behind the door to the bedroom just as the front door erupted inward.
Two men thundered in, quickly got their bearings, and charged into the master bedroom, rocketing up to the shattered balcony door. Matt squeezed himself tightly against the wall and heard one of them yell,