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To Oscar,
the Navy SEAL of nine-year-old boys
I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.
—DEUTERONOMY 32:42
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Ben Coes
About the Author
Copyright
Prologue
UPPER PHILLIMORE GARDENS
KENSINGTON
LONDON, UK
ONE WEEK AGO
“I don’t know.”
The three words Amit Bhutta, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, had repeated for the past day and a half, three words that Dewey listened to with a blank look on his face. It was, by his rough count, approximately the thousandth time Bhutta had said them.
He and Tacoma had been taking turns interrogating Bhutta. Two hours on, two off. They had a distinctly different style. Tacoma, the former SEAL, was less patient. Bhutta’s bloody face showed the practical implications of that impatience. Dewey assumed it was Tacoma’s youth that made him slap the Iranian around. Not that he cared. But his style was different. With Bhutta, Dewey felt that screwing with his head had a better shot at getting them the information they needed. That and not feeding or giving Bhutta anything to drink.
The interrogation room was located in the basement of Rolf Borchardt’s mansion in Kensington. The room was soundproof and windowless. At the center of the room, a steel table was bolted to the wooden floor. Behind it was a steel chair, also bolted down. The table had wet blood on it, not for the first time.
A lamp in the corner provided the only light.
Bhutta was stooped over, leaning forward, his cheek pressed against the steel table. His left eye was shut, black and blue.
The heat inside the room was cranked up. Both men were sweating, but Bhutta, with his wrists shackled behind his back—and the muzzle of Dewey’s Colt M1911 aimed at his head—was sweating a little more.
It had been a week since Dewey infiltrated Iran and stole the country’s first nuclear device. Dewey’s disguise, his overgrown beard and moustache, were gone now. His face was clean-shaven, his hair was cut to a medium length.
When Dewey asked to borrow a pair of scissors to cut it himself, Borchardt insisted on taking him to a Belgrave Road stylist. Now Dewey looked like a model, ripped from the advertising pages of Vanity Fair, though the savageness which the professional photographers endeavored to manufacture in their models was, on Dewey, real. His unruly brown hair was combed back; his eyes were bright, cold, and blue; his large nose was sharp and aquiline, despite the fact that it had been busted on two separate occasions. Dewey didn’t think about his looks. Truth be told, he didn’t like the way he looked. He didn’t like attention. Dewey preferred blending in, remaining anonymous. Today, with no stubble on his face, a tan, and a $450 haircut, it was not hard to see why the thirty-nine-year-old American could still turn heads.
Yet, as Bhutta had learned over thirty-six hours of interrogation, there lurked something beneath the attractive veneer of the kid from Castine, Maine. It was a toughness, a coldness, an anger deep inside. Most who knew Dewey Andreas thought that anger had been forged by the long, bitter winters of his youth along the Maine coast, or on the unforgiving football fields of Boston College, or still later, during Ranger school, or in the otherworldly trials that separated warriors from mere men called 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta—along with the Navy SEALs, America’s most fearsome Special Forces soldiers.
Only Dewey knew it was none of the above, that what had hardened him was the morning he’d watched his six-year-old son die of leukemia so long ago. That was what made him, when necessary, ruthless. It was also what kept Dewey, in the innermost part of his being, just, fair, flawed, and vulnerable—human.
Even Bhutta could see the toughness now, as he stared at the American. It was the same meanness and detachment that had probably coursed in the blood of the men who so long ago had kicked the crap out of the British, a determination that, to the Iranian’s mind at least, was as defeating as anything he’d ever experienced.
“What’s his name?” asked Dewey.
“I told you, I don’t know. He’s China’s asset.”
Dewey was seated in a beat-up, torn leather club chair. He had his right leg draped over the right arm.
“What’s his name?”
“Fuck you.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ambassador Bhutta, we can do this all night.”
“I don’t know, asshole.”
Dewey smiled.
“Language,” said Dewey.
“Fuck you.”
“If your mother could hear you swearing, she’d be really fucking pissed.”
Bhutta’s mouth flared slightly, nearly a smile.
“You laughed.”
“Fuck you,” Bhutta whispered. “You’re not funny.”
“Then why’d you laugh?”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
“Okay, I have one for you,” said Dewey. “What do you do if an Iranian throws a pin at you?”
Bhutta paused, then finally relented.
“What?” he asked.
“Run like hell.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s got a grenade between his teeth.”
Bhutta laughed.
“You’re worse than the other guy,” whispered Bhutta, shaking his head. “That’s stupid. Just beat the shit out of me, will you?”
Dewey laughed, then pumped the trigger on his .45. The bullet struck Bhutta’s right kneecap, blowing it to shreds. Blood sprayed onto the wall. Bhutta screamed, lurching against the chair, pulling at the shackles.
“Jesus, I didn’t think it would hurt that much,” said Dewey.
Bhutta turned and looked at Dewey, a horrible grimace on his face. His knee was bleeding profusely.