Stewart was sound asleep in his big leather recliner when his German shepherd started to make noise. Her name was Razor the Third. Two and three had lasted ten and eleven years and the Third was going on nine. She was a good dog, perfectly obedient to her master, protective of Kelly, and reasonably tolerant of the grandkids. Stewart was sleeping in the chair because his shoulder was giving him problems. He’d been putting off surgery for years and had finally decided it was time to fix the darn thing. All of his friends were playing golf and hunting and he was in so much pain he could do neither.

He came to hearing the low growl of Razor, and then she let loose two unhappy barks. Stewart was about to shush her when the exterior lights snapped on, and then he could hear the grumble of an engine. Stewart was a motor guy, and he could tell immediately it was not a car. It was something bigger. He pushed forward in the chair, dropping the footrest and springing to his feet. The blanket fell to the floor and he watched as the headlights washed across the opposite wall, above the TV. The first thing he thought of was the meth heads who had been causing all the trouble with local law enforcement over the past few years. There had been a home invasion at the lake just after Christmas. An elderly couple had been beaten, tied up, and robbed at gunpoint.

Stewart had vowed he would never let a couple of hopped-up pieces of white trash get the draw on him. He yanked open the front hall closet and stuck his hand in, shoving the collection of fall, winter, and spring jackets from the right to the left. Without his having to look, his right hand found the back corner and the cold tempered steel of his Remington 870 shotgun. He closed the closet door, threw back the bolt on the main door, and opened it. Stewart stepped into the cool evening air, wearing a pair of maroon Arkansas Razorbacks pajamas his grandkids had given him for his sixty-sixth birthday.

His bare feet hit the white-painted porch. Razor growled at his side, showing her menacing teeth. Stewart saw a man coming at him out of the near-blinding white lights on the front of a big motor home. He racked a shell into the chamber and flipped off the safety with the smooth, practiced motion of a man who had hunted game since he was seven. He kept the muzzle pointed at the intruder’s feet and said, “Who’s there, and what in the hell do you want?”

The next part happened fast. Somewhere to his right, Stewart heard a slapping noise and then he heard Razor’s nails sliding around on the glossy porch floorboards as if she were wearing roller skates, and then she was down. Stewart glanced at her to see what was wrong and right as he noticed the blood pooling against the white backdrop of the porch, something big and heavy smacked him in the upper left chest. There was no time to figure out what it was. He was spinning and falling, his bare feet giving him no traction. He landed hard on his left side, the shotgun clattering away as it bounced down the steps.

Another moment passed and Stewart’s brain still wasn’t processing what had happened, but as he lay there, a warmth began to spread beneath his left side. Stewart realized he’d been shot. He thought of Razor for a second and then his wife. He heard a scraping noise on the gravel and knew it was the shotgun being picked up. Then there were footfalls on the porch steps, slow and deliberate. Stewart tried to crane his neck around to see who it was, but a stabbing pain in his left shoulder stopped him. The intruder used his foot to roll him onto his back. Stewart winced in pain and clutched his shoulder as he took in the shadowy figure standing above him.

“What do you want?” Stewart asked in a pain-laced voice.

“How many people in the house?”

Stewart had never met a meth head, but this man sounded far too calm, and he had an accent he couldn’t place. “It’s just my wife and me. Take whatever you need and leave us alone. We haven’t hurt anyone.” Stewart could see the shotgun in one hand and something else in the other. The man began to point the mystery object at him and Stewart realized a split second before he died that it was a gun.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

RAPP was still wearing his dark suit and white shirt. He didn’t bother unbuttoning the shirt an extra button. He was either a three-button or two-button guy. He’d never really put any thought into it, but he knew he wasn’t a four-button guy, way too much skin and hair. With his scruffy facial hair, Rapp did not scream cop or fed the way Coleman did. The retired SEAL officer was in a blue sport coat, black polo shirt, pleated khaki dress pants and thick-soled lace-up black dress shoes. Anyone with a decent amount of experience would notice the bulges under their jackets and guess that they were carrying.

Rapp, used to blending in, had to consciously tell himself to act more like a cop, make his fluid movements a touch more robotic, and instead of avoiding eye contact, make sure he made it, kept it, and left no doubt who was in charge. He decided to cross the street directly across from the front door rather than at an angle. As he stepped off the curb, he sized up the four bouncers. Three of them were black and one of them was white, big fellas, with big legs, big arms, big chests, and big necks. They were easy to pick out since they were in black jeans and black polo shirts and they were two to three times larger than anyone else in the vicinity.

When Rapp was five steps from the sidewalk, one of the black guys did a sweep of the area and noticed the two men coming for them. His eyes screwed in on them and his face betrayed a split second of surprise that these two were different from all the other partiers they dealt with. Rapp locked eyes with the man and headed straight for him. No one was wearing any indication of rank, so it was impossible to see who was in charge. Instincts told him, though, that the most alert of the four would be the best place to start.

Rapp stopped just his side of the velvet ropes and glanced over the guy’s broad shoulder at the open doorway. Through a crack in the red velvet curtain he could see strobes and silhouettes of bobbing and swaying people. Loud music, with a heavy thrumming bass, rolled out the door and hit them like a strong gusting wind. Rapp put his eyes back on the big man. Rapp was six feet tall and he figured with the pitch of the sidewalk running away from the building to the curb, the guy was probably a few inches shorter than he looked. Rapp guessed he was about six and a half feet tall. The height didn’t concern Rapp. The taller the better when it came to a street fight, and if you wanted proof all you had to do was watch an Ultimate Fighting Championship match. The big guys had the reach but their center of gravity was way too high for no-rules fighting.

Rapp opened his suit coat on the left side and reached into the breast pocket. He watched as the bouncer’s eyes moved down to his waist. The guy noted the gun on Rapp’s left hip and didn’t bat an eye. Rapp pulled out the ID case in a smooth one-handed motion and held it open next to his right ear, so the bouncer wouldn’t have to work too hard.

The guy’s eyes flickered back and forth and then he nodded and said, “What’s up?”

“National Security. Nothing to do with the club directly. I just need to get in there and talk to someone.”

The bouncer started to answer, but was stopped by another bouncer who had been standing next to the door. This guy was even taller. He had to be six-nine and easily tipped the scales at 350-plus pounds. His white head was clean-shaven and tattoos peeked out from under his shirtsleeves and collar. Rapp noted a hammer-and-sickle tattoo with a sword on the man’s forearm. He repeated what he’d already said to the other bouncer and for good measure held up the Homeland Security ID.