He was speaking with an older man and his son, who was around Hakeem’s age, when a sudden hush fell over the house. All eyes turned toward the front door, where a man stood in the entryway. Hakeem thought the man looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t recognize the burn scars that covered the right half of the man’s face and the patch that covered his right eye.

The man scanned the room, and his eye fell on Hakeem. He walked slowly across the floor and stood before the honored guest. Then he spoke. “Hakeem.”

At the sound of the man’s voice, recognition flooded Hakeem, and he dropped to his knees in front of the man. Next to his father and his uncle Ali, this was the man most responsible for the warrior that Hakeem had become. He had taught Hakeem, trained Hakeem, disciplined Hakeem, prepared Hakeem, and sent Hakeem out into the world as a warrior for honor. This was the man who had created his cherished brass medallion so many years ago. If there was one man still alive whose approval Hakeem craved, it was this man. The Scorpion.

Hakeem bowed his head and said with deep reverence, “Al-’Aqran.”

Thursday, January 8

Chièvres Air Base

Belgium

A sixteen-foot-long moving truck with French lettering on its side pulled up next to the plane moments after the C-37A Gulfstream V touched its wheels down at Chièvres Air Base in Belgium. Quickly, the men of the U.S. Air Force’s 309th Airlift Squadron helped Jim Hicks and his team transfer their equipment through the cold, steady rain.

Ten minutes later, the truck was on its way.

Hicks and his number-two man, Jay Kruse, sat up front, while the other six members of the team rode back in the box.

“Predator team, stay sharp,” Hicks radioed to the men in back. As a show of respect and as a nod to Riley Covington’s participation, Hicks had named the two ops teams after the PFL teams affected by the Platte River Stadium bombings. Hicks’s team was designated Predator team, while the team Scott Ross and Covington led was Mustang team.

Hicks had instructed the men in the rear to set up a mobile surveillance suite as they traveled. By the time they had completed the two-and-a-half-hour trek to Paris, they would be ready to go.

On the drive down, Hicks thought through the past week. He had continued to be impressed by Scott Ross’s abilities and even-though he hated to admit-by Riley Covington’s.

What was it about Covington that he didn’t like? Was it simply the fear that his relative inexperience would get people killed? If it were truly that, Hicks knew he wouldn’t have gone along with Scott’s plan from the beginning. He wouldn’t risk American lives for anyone’s feelings. Was it a personality thing? Maybe, but the man seemed like a genuinely decent guy-not the stuck-on-himself football prima donna Hicks had expected.

Am I jealous of the guy? Jim wondered. Do I want what he’s got? But what is it he’s got? I don’t want his lifestyle. I’ve got all the junk I need, and as for the spotlight, I much prefer life in the shadows.

Am I jealous of him and Khadi? I saw the way she was looking at him during our training week-ways I once hoped she’d look at me. But that was a long time ago. She’s much more like a daughter than a love interest now. What about Scott? C’mon, how could I be jealous of Riley Covington’s relationship with Scott?

A feeling in the pit of his stomach told Hicks that this last possibility might be truer than he had hoped. Okay, jealous of one guy’s relationship with another guy-that’s a realm I certainly don’t want to delve into.

But as he drove, he realized that despite their age difference and relatively short acquaintance, he had begun to see Scott as a true friend-something that he had rarely had in his life.

Hicks shook himself out of his introspection as the truck approached the northeastern Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, located a little more than eight miles outside of the city center. The revelation that the explosives used in the Platte River Stadium attack had been French had come as no surprise to Hicks. The Parisian suburbs had been a hotbed for disgruntled Arab youth for a generation, and the region’s influence and importance in the world of terrorism were rapidly increasing. CIA sources within the Islamic youth movement had indicated with a strong certainty that the base for the Cause in France was in the neighboring communities of Aulnay-sous-Bois, Livry-Gargan, and Clichy-sous-Bois.

The truck turned off Boulevard Charles Floquet and parked at the top of Rue du Commandant Brasseur. The team’s target house was on the left side of the street, two from the bottom of the block. Their intelligence indicated that this house was a gathering place for an insurgent group that included two key leaders of the Cause. According to the report, the group was currently meeting in the house along with several soldiers. The strike team’s goal was to neutralize the soldiers and remove the leaders to a safe house where they could be held and interrogated.

A week’s worth of tension filled each man in the truck; this was the beginning of what they had been called together for.

At Hicks’s go-ahead, Jay Kruse slipped in the earbuds of an iPod nano and jumped out of the cab while Hicks joined the rest of the team in back by slipping through a door that had been cut between the back of the driver’s cab and the container box. Hicks watched on a monitor as Kruse waved his hand in front of the mini camera that had been hidden in his left earbud, and he banged the side of the truck once as acknowledgment that they were picking up the signal.

Kruse began walking toward the house. The whole team watched his progress on the monitor.

Suddenly the picture was completely obscured by something that as quickly disappeared. Ted Hummel, the team’s tech guru, burst out laughing.

“What was that?” Hicks demanded.

“That was the nano, sir,” Hummel replied. “Apparently old Kruser just discovered that I loaded the thing with nothing but Jerry Lewis.”

Hicks couldn’t help laughing with the rest of the team. “Okay, guys, keep focused.”

Kruse passed the house without slowing down and came to the end of the block. Everyone in the truck tensed as they watched his next move. If he proceeded straight across Boulevard de l’Hôtel de Ville, it meant everything was clear from his perspective. A left turn meant abort.

Kruse stopped at the corner, looked both ways, and then crossed the street. When he got across, he squatted next to a streetlamp and attempted to stall for time by lighting a cigarette-something that Hicks hoped would take him a while in the misty rain that was falling outside.

Hummel tapped the monitor, and the picture changed from Kruse’s live signal to a tiled view of the shots he had just taken of the house. Hicks leaned in and examined the images closely, then tapped the one on the bottom right. Immediately that picture went full screen.

“Okay, we all know our assignments,” Hicks said. “Kasay and Johnson, you’re with me. Guitiérrez and Musselman, you’ll want to watch out when you go around back. This anomaly here-” Hicks pointed to a small shadow protruding from the rear of the house-“could be a bogey. Once we’re inside, you guys all know the faces of the ones we want alive. The rest… well… try to remember we don’t want more of an international incident than we’re already going to create. But if you see a gun, be sure you shoot first. Check each other out; then let’s roll.”

Even though these men were professionals, it still paid to be careful. Each man paired off with another and checked the other man’s body armor, his weapon, and his communication system. The only one who would be out of communication was Kruse; Hicks didn’t want his number-two man to get caught walking around these parts wearing a wire.

Hicks slid back through the makeshift door and into the cab. He put the truck in gear and drove the half block to the target house.