CHAPTER ONE
Miami, Florida
It would be inaccurate to say she was dead already. But it was a certainty. He just hadn’t pulled the trigger yet.
She was singing again. Something low. Melancholy. Brent Savage strained to discern the words of the song. He adjusted his earpiece, rooting it in place, but the result was the same. Gibberish. She was making up the lyrics as she went along. Louder now. Off-key. She was wearing her earbuds.
Still no visual on his mark. There was just an empty room, its glass door to the balcony open, curtains fluttering in the breeze. At this distance, his 10x night scope brought the room into sharp focus, its advanced electronics rendering the scene a sickly, eerie green.
Beads of sweat painted his face, their droplets pooling, succumbing to gravity, and forging a path of least resistance to the corner of his eye. The salt stung. But Savage ignored it. Pain was irrelevant. Even now, after remaining motionless for the last two hours, he refused to budge, his back burning in agony. He was a viper, poised to strike, and locked into the moment where nothing else mattered.
He had observed his mark come and go from the seventh-floor apartment for ten days. Learned her schedule. Studied her habits. Made note of her visitors and recorded their conversations. But mostly he watched.
Savage glanced at his watch. Twenty-three twenty-three hours Romeo. She should have been finishing her bath. As if on cue, the woman appeared again, gliding into his field of view like an actress in a Broadway play. Enter stage right.
Her name was Eliana. Eliana Bautista. Her clients knew her as Jade, though for two thousand dollars an hour, she would be whoever they wanted her to be. She was toweling the wet tangles of her hair as she made her way to the open door. She wore a short silken robe, loose and untethered. As she reached to draw the curtains, her robe parted, and Savage glimpsed the dark patch of hair hiding beneath her bare, smooth stomach. He blinked. Slowed his breathing. Discipline was to be maintained at all costs.
He was prepared to make the switch to infrared vision on his Viper/INF-1NS scope, but then she did something that took him by surprise—she hesitated. Instead of closing the curtains, she stared out the window, looking over the urban nightscape of downtown Miami. Even at two hundred and fifty yards, Savage could see the minute details of her heart-shaped face, see the orbs of her eyes blazing in the artificial light. Her eyes were unsettled, drifting without care across the horizon, while her song morphed into whispers, then humming.
My God, she’s beautiful. Savage admonished himself for getting distracted, however briefly, and gave a systematic sweep of the studio apartment with his KS V Bullpup sniper rifle, his eye never leaving the scope. Antique bronze poster bed in the foreground, queen-size. Day-old laundry strewn on the floor. Metal nightstand with a glass top. Vanity. Utilitarian kitchen with white painted cabinets and stainless steel appliances in the background. Yesterday’s dirty dishes piled in the double sink. Hello Kitty clock on the wall, two minutes slow.
He returned to his mark, his movement smooth and measured, instantly reacquiring her in the crosshairs. He froze. She was staring right at him.
Savage maintained his discipline. He was invisible. He had made sure of this. The sniper hide was deep within the room’s shadows, away from the window. He’d hung a dark blanket for a backdrop to break up his silhouette, his clothes nothing less than a perfect match. Black grease paint obscured his face, assuring him of complete invisibility to the naked eye. Distance alone prevented her from seeing him. Still, her fixed gaze was disconcerting.
The woman sighed, brushed the towel across her throat, and daubed it down between her breasts before letting it drop to the floor. She turned and made her way to the bed. The curtains remained open. Perfect.
The sun had set hours ago, yet there had been no relief from the heat. The humidity was relentless, a huntress on the prowl from which there was no escape. He could hear the passing traffic below, the soft swoosh of their tires, interrupted only by the occasional distant blare of sirens. But silence wasn’t necessary, nor a concern. Passersby below droned incessantly about their mundane lives, chattering like insignificant insects on the move, oblivious to their proximity to death’s hand.
In the apartment, silence prevailed. The woman lay on the unmade bed, one arm draped over her head, the other resting on her stomach. Moments passed without movement. Savage wondered if she had fallen asleep but took note when she flipped open her robe, revealing her perfectly taut, athletic body.
Savage felt a slight elevation in his pulse rate but fought to maintain his focus. He wasn’t immune to the sins of the flesh. Far from it. But his task was at hand. Nothing else mattered.
The woman sighed heavily, allowing her left hand to roam freely across her body, the tips of her fingers brushing lightly across her belly in small, circular motions.
This was new. Unexpected.
She stirred, her breathing more rapid, and as she let her hand slip to the recesses of her parted legs, she let out an audible moan.
Savage blinked, a trickle of sweat trailing down his back. His heart rate was on the rise again, and a troublesome tremor had worked its way to his hands. Something was wrong, but he ignored it.
He glanced at his watch. Twenty-three thirty hours. Time was up. Savage relieved the ache in his shoulders by easing into his shooting position. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Tried it again. But the niggling sensation in the pit of his stomach remained.
It wasn’t an easy shot. She lay fully reclined, her head partially obscured by the exterior wall. But it was doable. A broadside shot to the heart, like taking down a deer. Savage had her centered in the scope, but after considering the night’s hot, humid air and slight ocean breeze, he adjusted his aim, holding three clicks over from the target.
Radio chatter crackled in his earpiece, breaking the thick silence.
“Cypher. You have a go.”
Savage inhaled, allowing half of the air out. He increased trigger pressure, like a choreographed dance, muscle memory taking over. He stopped. Shook his head. Something wasn’t adding up. New questions formed deep within the recesses of his mind, born amongst murky shadows, away from the bright lights of military discipline. Simple in logic, quick to form. Why? Why this mark? What threat did a high-end call girl from Miami represent that warranted eliminating her?
“You have a go, Cypher. I repeat: you’re ‘go’ for target removal.” Control knew he hadn’t taken a shot. He was their eyes, their ears.
Savage remained motionless, the crosshairs of his scope steady. They had programmed him to follow orders, to follow protocol. To kill without question. And he was damn good at it. He had eliminated dozens of terrorists, drug lords, mob bosses, and enemy combatants. Yet with this nobody—this simple call girl—he hesitated.
“Cypher, do you read? I say you have a go. Take the target out.”
After every radio break from Control, the audio returned to the studio apartment, where the woman was working her way to a crescendo. She extended her legs, her toes pointed like a ballerina. Her whole body was rigid, locked into the moment.
Savage activated his mic, then cleared his throat. “Control. This hit makes no sense. Why the call girl?”
There was a long pause. Dead air and static was his only reply. Precious seconds passed, devoured by indecision. Savage felt compelled to repeat the question. He didn’t have to. Control severed the silence with an angry reply. Fever-pitched and taut like a rubber band about to snap.
“Cypher. Your target is the whore. The reasons don’t matter. Got that? You will follow orders. Now take the goddamned shot!”
Savage clenched his jaw, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. He recognized the voice. Understood the gravity of his direct order. He said nothing. He wiped the sweat from his palms and opened and closed his right hand to restore circulation. With his rifle secure on the tripod, he reacquired the target in the scope one last time.
The woman was still listening to her earphones; the white cord snaked between her breasts like a sleeping serpent. She was still trying to catch her breath, her arms draped above her head. It was a wonder she could hear the knock at the door. But the rap was loud and fired off in rapid succession. It startled her.
Savage watched her stand, hastily wrap herself in the robe, and pad across the tile floor to answer the door.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “Don’t answer the door,” he warned, somehow unaware he wasn’t in the same room with her. He watched her give a cursory look through the peephole and open the door. She hadn’t opened it halfway before the door imploded in on her.
“Fuck.”
Somewhere near Denver, Colorado
The Control Center was pragmatic in design, from the ergonomics of the furniture to the state-of-the-art HDTV video screen wall that encompassed the room. Every switch, keyboard, and control console provided its operators with maximum efficiency. Despite these practical applications, the multimillion-dollar Control Center was likely to conjure up images of the Starship Enterprise of TV fame, a slick, newly painted Hollywood set that offered more flair than function. But in actuality, Control was the nerve center of Operation Darkwater, and the virtual brain for all its clandestine operations.
The room, though small, was circular and divided into three rings. Manning the inner ring were the handlers, the personnel assigned to keep in contact with the agents in the field. The hackers, code crackers, and cyber-warriors who gathered intel were tucked away in the middle ring. The outermost ring accommodated the think tank, the intel analysts who deciphered all the information and provided solutions.
But it was Deputy Director Theo Spearman who was in command, and upon entering Control at twenty-one thirty hours Tango, the room was all his. Short in stature and short on patience, Spearman knew well that many in the agency felt he suffered from a Napoleon complex. He didn’t care. His authority was absolute.
There were more than a dozen agents on duty that night, the room abuzz with its typical crosstalk and radio chatter, and there was only one handler on station. Spearman wasted no time making a direct line to her console.
The reason the inner ring was sparsely populated that night wasn’t lost on Spearman. He had made that call. He needed compartmentalization, and the only personnel assigned to tonight’s hit were on a need-to-know basis. Or expendable.
“Cypher. You have a go.”
Spearman didn’t know the junior agent’s name, but as he loomed over her, he stole a glance at her plastic ID tag. “What you got, Mendoza?”
“Nothing to note, sir. We have visual on a high-value target and have a go for a hit. But there seems to be a hitch, sir.”
“Hitch? What kind of hitch?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Target acquired, but we’re several minutes past go.”
Spearman tittered. “What’s the problem? We’ve got a closed window? Curtains?”
“No, sir. Window is still open. Asset sabotaged the AC unit, as ordered. He made sure building maintenance was out on another call, sir. He just seems…” Mendoza stopped and cleared her throat. Despite the icy, climate-controlled air in the center, beads of sweat sprouted from her pores like morning dew on a manicured lawn. “Distracted.”
Spearman laughed again, though it was born out of disbelief. “Distracted? By what? A little splinter in his trigger finger? Jesus H. Christ! We can’t afford to have a hitch, Agent.”
Mendoza nodded.
“Who’s the asset?”
“NT-Zero, sir. Cypher.”
Spearman blinked and shifted his weight off the agent’s chair. What the hell? An NT? He rubbed his hand absently across the crown of his thinning hair, paused, and then nodded.
“All right. Tell him again. Tell him to take the shot. He’ll follow orders.”
“You have a go, Cypher. I repeat: you’re ‘go’ for target removal.”
Silence.
“What the hell is going on?” Spearman nudged Mendoza. “I need visual. Hook me into his Viper scope.”
Mendoza hesitated, saw the deputy director’s piercing blue eyes, and then followed his orders. An overly exposed image bathed in green light filled the agent’s widescreen monitor. The scope’s reticles were visible, as was the nude woman lying on the bed, masturbating.
“Oh, ho! What have we got here?” Spearman laughed, shaking his head in mock disgust. “Now I’ve seen everything. A call girl that takes her work home with her.”
Mendoza laughed along, but it rang hollow. She averted her gaze.
Spearman beckoned the duty officer over, amusement twinkling in his eyes. “You’ve got to see this, Blanton.”
“What’s up?” he asked.
Spearman turned to Mendoza. “Put it on screen.”
Mendoza flushed. “Sir?”
“Put it on the big screen!” Spearman felt a burst of heat rush to his face. “On screen! On screen!” Impatient, he nudged the seated controller aside, striking the commands on the keyboard to send the live image to the enormous wall monitor. The dozen or so agents on duty welcomed it with a chorus of whistles and catcalls.
Blanton had just taken a sip of his coffee and it now sprayed from his mouth as if it had been blistering hot. “Holy shit! Is that what I think it is?”
Spearman nodded, then clapped Mendoza on the shoulder, securing her attention. “You were right, Agent. Our asset has been distracted. He’s letting the little head do the thinking for the big head. By God! Can’t say I blame him, either. That’s a nice package. Too bad it’s time to put it on ice.” Spearman stabbed the F12 button on the keyboard, thus removing the overhead image, and returned it to their console; the impending hit would remain dark. “Remind this idiot he has a job to do.”
Mendoza shifted her attention toward the deputy director, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Maybe there’s a problem with the audio, sir.”
Spearman didn’t answer. Instead, he left the junior agent to wilt under the scrutiny of his burning stare.
Mendoza nodded smartly and returned to her monitor, adjusting her Bluetooth headset. “Cypher, do you read? I say you have a go. Take the target out.”
Nothing. Just the faceless silence of white noise hummed through the intercom.
Spearman smashed his fist against the console. “Damn it!” Something had happened…something catastrophic. NTs always followed orders. They had no choice.
Blanton leaned toward the deputy director, scratching his ample belly through the straining buttons of his shirt. “What the hell? He slip a gear?”
“Good goddamned question. An NT, no less. Designation zero.”
Blanton raised an eyebrow. “Prototype?”
Spearman nodded. “Where’s Dr. Shepherd? He should have a line on this.”
“On leave. Left for Cancun on Tuesday, I believe.”
“Shit. Track him down, get him on the horn now. This is turning into a fucking soup sandwich!” Spearman plopped both hands down onto the console, scrutinizing the monitor as if it were a magic eight ball. “I need a fix on the asset and target, Mendoza, and I need it yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.” The junior agent tapped a few keys and maximized a 3D rendering of downtown Miami. Two red dots blinked in unison near the center of the screen. “The mark is in apartment 721, south side of the Idyll Tower. Cypher’s blind is two blocks south, seventh floor of the Imperial Suites Hotel. Room 7013.”
Spearman snapped his attention to Blanton. “I need a fix on our nearest assets in Miami. Check the branch office. I need immediate deployment to Idyll Tower and ETA.”
“Yes, sir.” Blanton tapped his Bluetooth headset and hurried away, disappearing into the jungle of video monitors and station consoles cluttering Control’s inner two rings.
What the hell was going on? Spearman didn’t like this. He had been meticulous in his planning, careful ad nauseam. He didn’t like surprises.
That was, of course, when he got another. The asset broke radio silence, his voice steady, restrained. “Control. This hit makes no sense. Why the call girl?”
Spearman roared. He could feel himself flush with rage, as his face turned a nasty shade of red. He ripped the headset off Mendoza’s ear and pressed it to his as he engaged the mic. “Cypher. Your target is the whore. The reasons don’t matter. Got that? You will follow orders. Now take the goddamned shot!”
Static answered. Cold. Endless.
Spearman couldn’t wait any longer. Too much was at stake. He had Mendoza patch him into the duty officer’s headset. “Blanton. What have you got? Any word on Dr. Shepherd?”
“No, sir. We’re still trying to track him down.”
“Damn. Keep trying. How about our assets in the area?”
“Limited resources, sir. A lot of personnel are on leave for the Labor Day weekend. But we have two agents around the corner from Idyll Tower. ETA two minutes. Tops.”
“Fine. It will have to do. Suits?”
“Plainclothes.”
“This is getting better all the time. Excellent. Make it a drug hit. Hell. Make it a trick gone bad. Rough her up. I don’t care. But they need to eliminate the target.”
“Understood.”
“And Blanton? I want you to get back on the horn to the station chief down there. Tell him we need a ‘specials’ team to carry out a hit on a new target, and we need it now! Tell him if there’s any argument, he’s going to feel my boot so far up his ass, he’ll have to unlace it to eat. Any questions?”
“Just one, sir. Do we have a fix on the new target?”
Spearman laughed, shaking his head as if he were privy to some inside joke. “Room 7013. Imperial Suites Hotel. Tell them to exercise extreme caution.”
Miami, Florida
Brent Savage had sensed it coming. Felt it. But it had still startled him.
The forced entry was sudden. Violent. And it threw the unsuspecting girl back several feet onto the floor, leaving her dazed and powerless. His scope bobbed for a moment, and by the time he recaptured her in his limited field of view, the intruder was on top of her.
He knew Spearman had ordered the hit, most likely as insurance against him not fulfilling his contract. But for a second, he entertained the idea that it was an overly zealous john wanting recompense. Indeed, a random hit by a third party would have gone a long way to solving his problems. But would Control consider his mission a success, his contract fulfilled, if the girl were dead? No. Savage knew it wasn’t that simple. He had hesitated. Failed. And the beefy man with shaggy hair and a burly beard knocking down the door wasn’t a john. He was a deep cover agent. For the call girl, the result would be the same: she would be dead.
“Cypher, we have an agent onsite. You are to stand down.”
The assailant picked up the limp body of the girl, throwing her onto the bed before backhanding her across the face. In his earpiece, it sounded like a two-by-four cracking. The vicious blow should have knocked her out cold, but much to Savage’s surprise, the stinging backhand served as a wake-up call. She groaned, a low guttural response, but as she regained consciousness, her cries turned into screams of terror. He cuffed her again, momentarily stunning her into silence and leaving her crumpled on the bed. Her hair lay draped across her face like a wet mop, her robe unfurled to reveal her bronzed body beneath.
“Cypher, you have orders to stand down. Agent onsite. I repeat…stand down.”
Savage allowed air to trickle from his nose, controlling his breath like a deep-sea diver. He eased the crosshairs off the target, watching, contemplating. It wasn’t too late to make things right. He could still fix this.
The assailant stood over the mark, a ravenous lion about to feast. Savage saw the man hesitate. Even in the emerald green of night vision, he could see his eyes slip across the contours of her body. This lit a fuse in Savage, hot and slow-burning. Still, he restrained himself. He knew the operative couldn’t afford to escalate this beyond a quick hit and run, nor could he chance leaving any DNA. He would have to maintain discipline.
Savage was wrong. He watched in dismay as the assailant climbed on top of her, the bed groaning in complaint as he straddled her. He made a grab for her tangled hair but was stunned when she boxed him in the ears instead. The man roared, his ruddy face pinched in agony.
He lashed out and punched her. He cupped his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming, but the woman bit him, her teeth tearing into his flesh. She kicked. She clawed. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Savage clutched his rifle in a white-knuckled grip, his jaw clenched as he tried to tamp down the irrational anger inside of him. This wasn’t necessary. The agent was reckless. Stupid. His lack of discipline was appalling. But there was something else bothering Savage, something beyond his understanding. This girl mattered.
He couldn’t let it end at this man’s hands. Not this way. Not her. Savage aligned the scope’s reticles, a hair’s breadth off target, aiming for the top of her thrashing head. The shot would be like hitting a moving grapefruit, center mass, from about two hundred and fifty yards. He wouldn’t miss.
She was begging for help now, immense racking sobs overwhelming her as she tried to push the man away. He had given up on assaulting her. Her flailing hands were like a swarm of angry bees, and it was all he could do to swat them away. But he soon overpowered her, holding her at bay with his ape-like grip. As he crushed her throat, her cries turned to gurgles.
Savage pulled the trigger, practiced and smooth. The assailant’s head exploded, his brain atomized into a cloud of pink mist and gray matter. He smiled.
“Agent down! I repeat—agent down!”
Savage ripped the earpiece out of his ear and tossed it into his gun bag. The last audible sounds from the apartment were the raspy coughs of the girl as she sucked in precious air.
He wasted no time breaking down his sniper rifle. He detached the suppressor, removed the barrel, and retrieved the bullet’s spent casing. Then he quickly wiped down the weapon, grabbed the black canopy, and tossed his hood into the rifle bag. Forty seconds, no more. The hotel was free of his prints as he had wiped the place clean when he arrived ten days prior. It wouldn’t be necessary to do so again, as he had worn gloves ever since.
Thunder rolled in the distance, its rumble low and plodding, the storm a reluctant bystander to the night’s events. Savage slid the desk back into place, but as he finished, he received an audible warning from the surveillance device on his wrist. It was receiving signals from the perimeter sensors he had set up in the stairwells. West side: bloop…bloop, bloop. Eastside: bloop, bloop…bloop.
Savage stood erect and rechecked the device. He had heard right. Six bogies. Three from each stairwell. He was certain they weren’t hotel guests returning from an evening of swimming at the hotel pool. Not at this time of night and not taking two different stairwells. But the tip-off was that no random group of hotel guests would take seven flights of stairs to return to their room. They would have taken the elevator. This was tactical. An assault team. And they were coming for him.
Savage felt his blood surge like a thoroughbred crashing through the starting gate. Hard. Jolting. And just like that, his senses came alive, hyperalert, his muscles tense and bristling with anticipation.
He grabbed his pistol from the inner pocket of his gun bag, a modified 9mm SIG P226 with a tactical light. He attached its suppressor, then slipped over to the door to spy through the peephole. Nothing. No movement. No sound. Just the steady thrum of the ice machine down at the end of the hall. As expected. He wouldn’t see or hear anything from here on out. Not until it was too late.
Savage’s mind raced. His only avenue of escape had been the two stairwells at the end of the hall and the elevator around the corner. He knew the elevator wasn’t unguarded despite receiving no warnings from the sensor. It was likely that someone had sabotaged the elevator. Either way, it was a death trap. The only remaining option was the balcony door. Seven stories separated Savage from a safe escape.
Boom. He heard an explosion. Not far, yet muffled. They must have blown a transformer, as the entire building was now thrown under a veil of darkness. Silence.
Turning on the tactical light of his 9mm, he ran out onto the balcony, leaned over the rail, and took stock of the situation. He could see another balcony one floor below, but it was flush with the outer wall and impossible for him to drop to safely. He couldn’t jump to the balcony one room over, either, as a privacy wall was erected between them.
Savage rushed back to the room and rummaged through the gun bag again, but he couldn’t find another clip. He hadn’t anticipated a firefight. Fifteen rounds in the SIG, going up against what was most likely a heavily armed six-man assault group. Not enough.
A couple of sputtering coughs sounded from the hallway, which Savage recognized as suppressed gunfire. They shot out the emergency lighting. He returned to the door, tactical light off, edging along the wall to look out of the peephole again. Nothing but darkness, its black wall impenetrable. But they were there. He could feel them hovering nearby. Waiting. He heard some light scratching near the doorframe, soft and barely discernible. Savage tilted his head toward the door, trying to place the sound.
Then he realized. They were setting C4 explosive charges to blow the door and storm the room. Savage didn’t hesitate and made a break for the open door to the balcony. His fight-or-flight response propelled him like a rocket, but he only made it halfway to the balcony before the explosive charges blasted the door off its hinges, and the assault team breached the room.
Savage never looked back. His powerful legs drove him toward the balcony, his speed leaving him a blur. But as fast as he was, he couldn’t outrun bullets.
They opened fire. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Lightning flashed, and with a monumental last lunge, Savage launched himself headfirst over the balcony’s rail, disappearing into the dark void below.