“Yeah. I see ’em.”

“That’s your exfil. Can you CASEVAC to that location?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can do it. She ain’t that heavy.”

“Do so. Break—break—Koko, pull back to Brett. Exfil with the casualty. Give him a hand. Aaron and I are circling on foot. We’ll try to interdict. Be on call for linkup.”

Leaning against a wall, hidden in the shadows, Jennifer started to object, then realized he was right. She was asking to get killed hunting blindly in the dark.

She sprinted back to the pool of light, seeing Brett ripping strips of Christine’s jacket and shoving them into the wound. She saw the blood coming out, Christine’s eyes rolled back into her head, and felt sick.

81

Out of the line of fire, Omar dragged Jacob down yet another alley, thinking of nothing but getting away. He’d made multiple lefts and rights to confuse whoever was after them, but in doing so he had become hopelessly lost. They reached a main thoroughfare and he realized he was still openly carrying his pistol. He shoved it into his waistband, then pushed a struggling Jacob into a stairwell, sitting him down.

“Where are you hit?”

Curling into a ball, his eyes and nose running freely from the pepper spray, Jacob said, “My groin. My groin. Shit, it hurts.”

Omar pulled Jacob’s hands away, looking for the wound. He saw torn clothing and a smattering of blood, but no significant trauma. He unbuttoned Jacob’s pants and pulled them aside.

The hipbone was swollen and red, surrounded by small lacerations and bits of metal, but no hole, and no gout of blood that should have been there. Omar reached into Jacob’s right front pocket and pulled out a mass of broken metal and plastic. Jacob’s cell phone.

He laughed for the first time. “Young lion, you may not believe in Allah, but He believes in you.”

“How bad? How bad is it?”

Omar held the cell phone in the light. “You’ll have a massive bruise, but the bullet ricocheted off of your phone. It didn’t penetrate.”

Jacob wiped his nose and eyes, incredulous. Omar grabbed his arm, saying, “Get up. We’re still being hunted.”

Omar helped him out of the stairwell, then leaned him against the wall of rough brick, saying, “Wait here.” He walked to the mouth of the alley and surveyed the street, his head on a swivel attempting to spot his pursuers. He came back, saying, “There’s a taxi stand fifty meters to the south. Walk as normally as possible. Lean on me, but make it look like you’re drunk instead of injured.”

Forty minutes later, they crossed the Tiber River and exited once again in front of the Mate Bar.

Omar said, “Can you walk from here?”

“Yeah. If the house isn’t too far away.”

“Just a few blocks.”

They set out, once again going through narrow cobblestone alleys, moving in silence. Eventually, Jacob said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, honestly. On the one hand, I’d say the Israelis are still after me, but the attack in the alley makes no sense. How would they know we were going there? I didn’t even know it until you arrived.”

Jacob said, “It’s the girl. They were following the girl. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“But how would the Israelis know her? And if they did, why not interdict her in Venice?”

Jacob shook his head, remaining quiet.

Omar said, “Did you kill her?”

“I think so. I was close, and it was a shotgun, but I was hit right after. I dropped the gun and didn’t get off another shot.”

Omar said, “Doesn’t matter. She’s definitely wounded, and I doubt the Israelis even remained behind to help. I wouldn’t have, given the complication of taking her to a hospital. She’ll spend the rest of the night fighting for her life. If the police get to question her, it will be about the shooting. Not about what she’s doing in Italy.”

Jacob said, “So you think continuing with the attack is smart? Seriously? After that shootout?”

“Yes, I do. Think about it: If they knew the target, why try to interdict us in the street? Why not just wait until tomorrow? The crusaders are famous for sting operations, not random shootouts.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they planned on getting us tomorrow, but we caused them to jump the gun.”

“That doesn’t explain why they were following the girl. If they knew everything about us, they would have just swept in. No, they were following her because they know we exist, but not what we intend to do.”

They reached Via del Moro and Omar held up. Jacob said, “What?”

“The house is right down the street. No reason to walk into a trap.”

“But you just said you thought we were still safe.”

“I believe it, right up until it proves untrue. Wait here.”

Omar left him and went quietly down the street, searching for a hidden enemy. He saw nothing. He circled down the small alley behind the apartment, moving past rubbish bins and stabbing the barrel of his pistol into every shadow. He reached the back of the flat and saw the flicker of a television, then Carlos move in front of it. He hid his pistol and retreated back to Jacob.

“We’re good.”

They walked straight up to the front door, Omar first knocking before using a key. The door swung open and Devon was standing in the foyer, his face white.

Omar immediately withdrew his pistol, whispering, “What is it?”

Devon closed the door and said, “Our pictures are all over the news. Me, Jacob, Hussein, and Carlos. Old mug shots from Florida.”

82

The doctor came out of the bedroom and said, “She’s stable, but sedated. She’ll be out for a while.”

I said, “Doc, I really need to talk to her. She’s the key to a terrorist attack, maybe within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Mr. Logan, I don’t know what to tell you. Get some sleep. It looks like you could use it.”

“Fuck that. I can sleep when I’m dead. She’s getting sent to the US on a medical bird in the next six hours. That’s all the time I’ve got.”

“She’s going nowhere. That’s my call as a doctor. I’ll stay here until she’s able to fly, but I’ll never help your organization again if she leaves before I say.”

I admired his conviction, given that he had no idea who we were. I’d figured he was just in it for the retainer, and he’d do his job but not quibble if he was told to stop.

As soon as we’d loaded Christine into our Fiat, Shoshana driving and Brett providing medical aid, I’d had a choice to make: Either take her to a hospital and lose any chance to learn what she knew, or take her to the safe house. To do the latter, I needed to trigger a deep asset reserved for helping Taskforce members working undercover.

The Taskforce was big, with tendrils all over the world, but most of the activities were benign, with unwitting personnel servicing safe houses or operating cover companies. They were trusted individuals who knew they were doing something for the United States government, but were not read on to Project Prometheus.

Early on, we’d determined that we might need medical help after a fight somewhere, and driving to the local hospital with a gunshot wound wasn’t going to work. Kurt Hale had set out to recruit doctors in select regions of the world.

The idea was simple: Find military MDs on the verge of separating from service and ask if they’d like to get government assistance moving to an overseas retirement location, then a major monthly stipend for simply being on call—a call that may never come. This doctor—Colonel Shepard Linkletter—was an emergency room surgeon who’d seen multiple tours in Iraq during the hell of the surge. He’d already put in his retirement paperwork while serving at Aviano Air Base, Italy, when he was approached. He’d planned to stay in Italy anyway, and had snapped up the chance to have Uncle Sugar pay for it. As far as I know, he’d only been used once, when another Taskforce team had gotten into a scrape across the Adriatic Sea in Croatia.