The kettle on the gas ring was beginning to steam when he heard the distant whup-whup of helicopter blades. It wasn’t an unusual sound, because of their proximity to the offshore oil and gas fields, so he ignored it and opened the jar of instant coffee. But when the sound grew steadily louder, no longer a background thrum but a fast-approaching beat, he extinguished the burner and crossed to the front windows that looked over a two-lane coastal road, a narrow strip of sea grass, and the wide white beach.
The chopper was a massive Black Hawk painted olive drab so that it looked like a military bird, but MacD knew better. Somehow they’d been tracked. It came in low over the swells, its rotor wash whipping up spume. They were so close now that there was no way for him to get his parents and daughter to their car, parked alongside the cottage. He had a single Beretta 9mm from the Houston safe house stashed under his mattress. He ran for his bedroom, yelling to wake his parents. His father emerged from their room, his hair doing an Albert Einstein impression.
“Dad, it’s them,” MacD said, cocking the matte-black pistol. “Get Mom and Pauline and crawl out the back and run. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”
He didn’t wait to see if his father followed his instructions. He went back to the front window and peered around its edge. The chopper touched down on the beach, kicking up a maelstrom of sand that completely obscured it. He expected a team of commandos to burst out of the dust storm, automatic weapons chattering. Knowing that the glass would deflect his shots, he smashed out one of the windowpanes and took aim, ready to plug the first figure he saw.
What he hadn’t expected was the chopper blades to begin to slow. Any combat pilot knew to keep the turbines wound up for a fast extraction. The blades continued to decelerate until the clouds of sand settled back to earth. The side door rolled open, and a man in uniform and wearing a flight helmet jumped to the ground. He waited a moment, then helped another man step from the helicopter.
He was elderly, with a shock of white hair and a stoop that had nothing to do with the proximity of the rotor blades. He looked like a banker, in a conservative three-piece suit in navy blue, crisp white shirt, and red tie. MacD didn’t know what to make of this dramatic entrance, but he lowered his weapon and moved to the front door as the aged gentleman made his way across the asphalt road. The chopper’s crewman remained behind.
Warily, MacD swung open the front door and stepped out onto the covered front porch, angling his pistol so that the man could see it.
“That’s close enough,” he called when the stranger reached the nearside shoulder.
“I assure you, Mr. Lawless, that with my hearing it is not.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Langston Overholt IV. I was once Juan Cabrillo’s boss at the CIA, and I’m afraid we need his help.”
MacD recalled the Chairman mentioning his former boss and how the Corporation was hired for quite a few black ops by the legendary spymaster. He safetied his pistol and tucked it into the back of his shorts. The two men met midpoint on the lawn, and Overholt insisted they shake hands.
“It is opportune that you’re here with your family,” Langston said, handing over his identification.
The old Cold Warrior was pushing eighty but had lost none of his mental faculties. The Agency kept him on well past retirement age as a sort of spy emeritus who’d forgotten more about espionage than the current crop of wunderkinder would ever know.
“How did you know who I am?” MacD asked.
“Juan mentioned that he’d hired you, and kept me in the loop about what happened to your daughter. The Corporation’s jet’s tail number was noted in Houston. I put two and two together when I checked the Times-Picayune online and read that, on the day you arrived, three unidentified drug dealers burned in a house fire. I flew to New Orleans and paid a visit to your parents’ house, and when they didn’t answer I asked a neighbor about them. I told the delightful, and talkative, Mrs. Kirby that I suspected you had all left on a hasty vacation and inquired where you might go. She told me that your family sometimes borrows a beach house from an old family friend, one David Werner. The land records gave me this address in all of ten seconds.”
MacD was chagrined. In their haste, he’d neglected to tell the neighbors not to mention they had gone to the Werners’ cabin. Overholt had found them without breaking a sweat. It would have been that easy for John Smith too, he thought darkly and cursed his oversight.
“Impressive,” he finally said.
“Son, I learned to be a spy from Allen Dulles himself. Do you know where the Oregon is?”
“Monte Carlo.”
“Excellent. I am afraid that I must ask you to cut short your visit and come with me. Time is of the essence.”
“Where are we going?”
“Pensacola Naval Air Station, where, if a colleague of mine has been successful, a jet is standing by to take you to the Oregon.”
“What’s the rush?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lawless, but I must insist we leave right away. I’ll explain everything once we’re airborne.”
To get an eighty-year-old man to fly halfway across the country, MacD knew that this was something important. “Give me a minute.”
He turned and was surprised to see that his father hadn’t listened after all, and his parents and daughter were crowded in the doorway, gawking at the chopper and its distinguished-looking passenger. All three seemed to know that he was leaving with the man. Pauline and Kay both had tear-welled eyes, and his dad had clenched his jaw to fight from crying too. The good-byes were as painful to experience as they were for Overholt to watch, especially knowing that young Pauline had just been returned to the bosom of her family.
Five minutes later the pair was settled in the utilitarian chopper and wearing helmets with a private voice channel so they could not be overheard by the flight crew. The cargo master, who had helped Overholt step from the big helo, studiously ignored them as the chopper lifted clear of the beach and started pounding eastward in a hundred-mile dash to the Navy base.
“I want to thank you again, Mr. Lawless,” Overholt opened. “I know you wanted to spend more time with your family.”
“You can call me MacD.”
Overholt digested the odd nickname and nodded. “All right, MacD. A couple days ago there was a security breach at the White House involving our nation’s nuclear codes.” He held up a hand when he saw the questions racing through MacD’s mind. “It was a demonstration of what our best and brightest finally figured out is a machine called a quantum computer. Do you know what that is?”
“It’s theoretical now, but someday they’ll make the ones we use today as obsolete as vacuum tubes.”
“Quite right. However, it is no longer theory. One was used to hack into the NSA and ferret out the most secure set of numbers in the world. With that demonstration came a list of demands that we pull troops out of Afghanistan and all of the Middle East, release the Guantánamo detainees, cut off aid to Israel, that sort of thing.”
“Is it al-Qaeda? That sure sounds like their manifesto.”
“Unknown at this time, but considered unlikely for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. The president delayed action, and at the exact same time the following day there was another communication—a fax, actually—stating that the blood was on the president’s hands. Moments later the Acela train crashed into another locomotive. Over two hundred dead.”
“God. Ah heard about that on the radio. They said it was an accident.”