of policy—both domestic and foreign—and steered the country to their vision. Their unapologetic, unbridled sense of mission was, to a political animal like Drucker, a thing of beauty; their methods and tactics, breathtaking.
Most impressive, he thought, was their use of “framing”—the cunning technique of dumbing down complex, controversial issues and policies by using powerful, evocative, emotive catchphrases and images in order to prejudice and undermine any potential challenge to those policies. Framing had been elevated to a fine art in the new century, with deceptive expressions like “tax relief,” “war on terror,” and “appeaser” now firmly embedded in the public psyche, pushing the right emotional buttons and creating a misguided belief that anyone who argued against such measures had to be, by definition, a villain trying to stop the innocent sufferers’ champion from giving them their medication, a coward shying away from a full-blown war against an aggressor nation, or—even worse—one too spineless to stand up to Hitler.
Framing worked. No one knew that as well as Keenan Drucker. And he was now ready to do some framing of his own.
He checked his watch. A late-morning meeting had been hastily scheduled with the available senior fellows of the Center to discuss the unexplained apparition over the ice shelf. He’d already spoken to several of them by phone, and they were—understandably—as excited as they were unsettled.
After that, he’d monitor the news channels to check on the project’s status. Which seemed well on track, apart from that small complication in Boston. Drucker wasn’t worried. He could trust the Bullet to take care of it.
His BlackBerry pinged. The ring tag told him it was the Bullet.
As he reached for his phone, Drucker smiled. Speak—in this case, think—of the devil rarely had a more appropriate or literal embodiment.
WITH HIS HABITUAL CURT EFFICIENCY, Maddox updated Drucker on Vince Bellinger’s fate, Matt Sherwood’s subsequent escape, and his foray into the now-dead scientist’s apartment.
Drucker had absorbed the information with admirable detachment. Maddox didn’t like much about Drucker. The man was a politician, after all. A Washington insider. But he liked that about him. Drucker didn’t question or second-guess when it came to matters in which he was no expert. He didn’t have any ego issues, nor did he assume the annoying air of superiority Maddox had often seen—and enjoyed deflating—in deskbound executives and, even more so, in politicians. Drucker knew to leave the dirty work to those who were comfortable trudging through the muck, something Maddox had never shied away from, and still didn’t, even though his “security and risk management” firm had grown healthily since he first founded it three years ago, not long after he’d been wounded in Iraq.
Maddox was a hands-on kind of guy. He had a tough, single-minded work ethic, an unwavering discipline forged out of a twenty-year career with the Marines and their Force Recon outfit, where he’d initially earned the sobriquet “The Bullet” because of his shaved, slightly pointed head. It was a name that took on an even more disturbing connotation after his squad was cut to bits in a savage firefight in the apocalyptic town of Fallujah.
The tragedy that had first brought him and Drucker together and united them.
His unit had been doing good work in the mountains of Afghanistan. Hitting the Taliban and their Al Qaeda buddies hard. Weeding them out of the mountains and caves across the border from Pakistan. Closing in on Bin Laden. Then, frustratingly and inexplicably, they’d been pulled out and reassigned. To Iraq. And nine months into that war, Maddox lost fourteen men and an ear that horrific afternoon. Those who’d survived that attack had left arms, legs, or fingers behind. The word wounded rarely conveyed the horror of their injuries—or the permanent, crippling effect on their lives. It was a day Maddox remembered every time he caught a glimpse of his hideous self reflected in a windowpane or a colleague’s sunglasses. It was branded on his face, a star-shaped burn that spread out from the small, mangled flap of ear skin that the surgeons had been able to salvage.
He hated looking in the mirror. He relived that day every time he caught a glimpse of himself. Not just that day, but the aftermath. The inquests. The way his superiors had let him down. The way he’d been mistreated and spat out by the system. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he then found out he’d been lied to. The whole country had. The war was a sham. A catastrophic sham. And then, to