Endangered Species: The Sleeping Dogs, #2

By John Wayne Falbey

In this follow-up to the international bestselling thriller, Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening, America is a rudderless ship in a world descending into chaos. Its elected government is gridlocked and ineffective. Its citizens are angry and rebellious. Rogue governments spit on Old Glory and defy a weakened America to stop them. Religious fanatics are dedicated to butchering all the world's citizens who don't convert to their beliefs. And the worst is yet to come. From Russian aggression to worldwide jihadism, from China's designs on Southeast Asia to a morally and financially bankrupt European Union, from violent and expanding drug cartels to Iranian nuclear intentions, AGU—the Alliance for Global Unity is close to achieving its goal: a single world government with its members in charge.

But appearances may be deceiving. A shadow government of old fashioned patriots is working to change the course of events. Armed with deep financial resources and critical positions in the military and intelligence communities, they just might succeed. The key is the Sleeping Dogs—the world's deadliest hunter-killer special ops unit. But they're an endangered species and their very survival is being challenged. An outstanding Presidential Decision Directive has ordered them to be terminated with extreme prejudice. An angry FBI agent, believing his wife had an affair with the unit's leader, Brendan Whelan, is pursuing him with homicide on his mind. A rogue Russian agent seeks revenge for thwarting his mission to assassinate the president of the United States. And, most chillingly, a huge and mysterious brute named Maksym is systematically hunting down the Dogs one-by-one.

The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. There will be blood. And a high body count. Join the 1,000's of readers who love geopolitical thrillers and international intrigue, and who are fans of those remarkable antiheroes, the Sleeping Dogs! If you enjoy mystery/espionage/political thrillers by such best-selling writers as David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, Ben Coes, Brad Taylor, or Alex Berenson, Endangered Species is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Falbey Group, LLC
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780985518752

John Wayne Falbey

John Wayne Falbey writes thrillers involving international espionage and geopolitical intrigue. His debut novel, Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening, has been endorsed by Compulsory Reads and became an internationally bestselling thriller. There now are eight books in the Sleeping Dogs series about a ruthless, patriotic black ops unit hunting and eliminating America's enemies. His latest novel in the Sleeping Dog series is Spare Me, Kill the Rest. He currently is working on the ninth book in the series. He also is the author of The Quixotics, an action-adventure tale of gunrunning, guerrilla warfare, and treachery in the Caribbean, and The Taxman Cometh, a story about a rogue IRS agent who tries to frame a former special ops warrior for murder.The writers currently at the top of his reading list include Brad Thor, Alex Berenson, Lee Child, Ben Coes, Brad Taylor, Robert Crais, John Sandford, and David Baldacci.A native Floridian and former transactional attorney, Falbey lives in Southwest Florida. He invites you to visit him at www.falbeybooks.com.

Book preview

PART ONE—DOG BITES MAN

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

—Niccolo Machiavelli

CHAPTER 1

DINGLE, IRELAND

Some can sleep through an earthquake or hurricane. A few will wake at the sound of a fly landing on the wall—in the next room. Brendan Whelan was one of them.

Something woke him, but it wasn’t an insect. It was something common, yet out of the ordinary for the place and time of night, like a guitar riff in the middle of a trackless desert. He couldn’t place the sound immediately, but he sensed danger. So he kept his eyes closed and listened. His genetic makeup gave him enhanced physical abilities. That, and years of highly specialized military and survival training, made him value caution. It had been reinforced by years of living a lie, constantly glancing over his shoulder for the pursuers he knew would come someday.

Almost imperceptibly, he slid his hand across the sheet and gently touched the warm, still form beside him. He could hear Caitlin breathing gently and steadily. He strained to hear sounds coming from the room their boys, Sean and Declan, shared. There was only silence and darkness. He opened one eye slightly, just a sliver. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he slowly opened both eyes. Nothing seemed amiss. He slid silently from beneath the covers and slipped out of bed.

The original part of the Fianna House Bed and Breakfast, or teach an Fianna in Gaelic, had been built in the late eighteenth century as a small farm bungalow on the outskirts of Dingle, Ireland. By the early part of the twentieth century, it had gradually been expanded into a three-story manor house. Whelan and Caitlin had acquired the property before they were married and developed it into a ten-bedroom, twelve-bathroom inn with kitchen, dining room, library/sitting area, and a small office. Their third-floor bedroom was part of the original structure. The wood floor in that part of the house had been worn smooth over the decades. Now, it felt cool on the bottoms of his bare feet. Whelan had long ago found the old floor’s creaky spots and was careful to avoid them. 

It was April and the temperatures in Dingle ranged from the mid-forties to the mid-fifties Fahrenheit. Whelan, who slept naked regardless of the temperature, grabbed a pair of well-worn denim cutoffs lying across the chest at the foot of the bed. He thought momentarily about reaching for the SIG Sauer P226 MK25 he kept in a special holster attached to the sideboard of the bed but decided against it. It had been converted from the original nine-millimeter to forty-caliber, and the magazine was loaded with full metal jacketed rounds. With three family members and a guest in the house, that weapon would be too dangerous to use. An errant slug could rip through the walls and strike an innocent victim.

The Kel-Tek KSG shotgun would have been his weapon of choice. Its internal dual-tube magazines each held six rounds of three-inch twelve-gauge shells. The firing chamber held a thirteenth. But he’d let his oldest son, Sean, practice fieldstripping it, and it was still in the room Sean shared with his younger brother. Whelan was six feet two inches and two hundred forty pounds, with no measurable body fat. And he had those unique genetic gifts. Unless there were armed intruders in the house, a firearm would be overkill.

The Dingle peninsula, in Southwestern Ireland, jutted out into the wild and stormy Atlantic. As a result, the area experienced a more difficult and unpredictable climate than almost any other location in Ireland. Whelan was grateful this night was one of the rare calm moments. It made it easier for his ears to distinguish aberrant sounds. He paused in front of the closed double doors that opened into the hallway and listened intently. Somewhere in the house he heard what sounded like a muffled cry. It was there for just a moment, and then it was gone.

He flattened himself against the left panel of the door and slowly cracked open the right panel. Nothing moved in the hallway. He heard only silence. Moving quietly, he eased the door open farther and slipped through it, closing it softly behind him. Somehow the gesture made him feel that Caitlin was more secure. Gliding silently along the hall dimly illuminated by nightlights, he reached the door to his sons’ room.

He eased the door open a crack and glanced through it. He neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary. Gently pushing the door open, he slipped into the room. Except for the two boys curled up in their respective beds, there was no one there. As he was about to turn and leave, Sean sat up. Whelan quickly raised a finger to his lips. He pointed at each of the boys, then at their beds, signaling that they were not to get up. Sean nodded.

Whelan stepped back into the hallway and continued noiselessly toward the staircase at its end, checking each empty guest room before moving on. He descended the stairs quietly and carefully, still straining to hear anything besides the night sounds an old dwelling makes. He thought he heard a bedspring squeak followed by what sounded like a shoe scraping against a wood floor.

It was a slow time of year for tourists in Dingle. Only one guest room was occupied that evening, by Elenora Tankersley, a retired schoolteacher from Sheffield, England, who’d been an annual visitor for several years, preferring to come during the off season when rates were at their lowest. Her days were spent strolling the surrounding countryside between the frequent rainstorms, or alone in her room editing her memoirs—a source of amused speculation for Brendan and Caitlin. How could such a solitary, introverted soul have memoirs that would interest anyone? Although she was invited frequently to join the Whelan family for dinner, Miss Tankersley usually preferred to dine alone at one of the pubs she favored in Dingle. Following dinner, she typically retired early. Tonight, had been no exception.

Whelan paused at the bottom of the stairs. Miss Tankersley’s room was two doors down the hall and on the left. Her door was open, as were the other empty guestroom doors. That was an anomaly. A very shy and private person, she always kept the door closed when she was in her room. His adrenaline level began to climb. He moved to the first open door, crouched low against the jamb and peered quickly into the room. Empty. He edged along the hallway to Miss Tankersley’s room and repeated the process.

Two men loomed in the shadows of the room. One was stretched across an inert body on the bed, pinning the elderly woman down. The other man held a pillow over her face. Both men were large, but that wasn’t what stopped Whelan from rushing into the room. It was the Makarov PM 9mm suppressed pistol being brandished by the man pinning Miss Tankersley’s body. Whelan silently cursed himself for deciding not to bring the Sig with him. He needed a plan, and quickly.

As his mind raced to connect the necessary dots, the man who was smothering Miss Tankersley raised the pillow. He placed two fingers against her neck above the common carotid artery. After a moment, he glanced at his colleague and nodded. The second man rose from his victim’s lifeless form and spoke softly. Whelan recognized the language as Eastern European—possibly Ukrainian, a language he had encountered in the recent past.

He edged away from the doorframe and backed along the hall to the room nearest the stairs. Ducking into it, he flattened himself against the wall just inside the door. He could hear the two men as they exited Miss Tankersley’s room and moved down the hall toward him. From the open doors, it was obvious that they’d completed a search of the second floor in order to eliminate anyone there. It was Miss Tankersley’s misfortune to be on holiday at the wrong time. Whelan knew they would take the stairs to the third floor, where his wife and sons were. He harbored no doubts about the men’s intentions.

As they walked past his hiding place, Whelan slipped out behind them. He grabbed each man by the nape of his neck with a grip so tight it all but paralyzed them. He smashed their heads together with bone-crushing force. Only a handful of individuals with similar genetics were capable of such strength, and tonight, rather than hiding his skills, Whelan would use every ounce of power he possessed to defend those he loved.

Instantly rendered unconscious, the men collapsed. Whelan cursed silently as the Makarov fell from one of the men’s hands and hit the floor with a dull thud. He pinned their bodies with a knee to each man’s chest and wrapped a hand around each of their exposed throats. His fingers and thumbs closed around the pharyngeal muscles, aortae, trachea, and esophagus with such force that his fingertips and thumb nearly met in front of the cervical vertebrae. He leaned forward at the waist, then straightened suddenly, yanking his arms upward. The motion ripped most of the anterior portion of each victim’s neck completely free of their bodies—a huge wolf dismembering lesser beings that threatened his mate and their pups.

He wiped his hands on the dead men’s clothing, picked up the Makarov, checked its magazine, and rose to continue the hunt.

CHAPTER 2

FBI FIELD OFFICE, ALBUQUERQUE, NM

Mitch Christie stared out the bulletproof glass window of his office in the bombproof FBI Field Office Building. It was a full-size window, an improvement over the sliver of glass in his old office at the Bureau’s HQ in Washington. The sky above Albuquerque, New Mexico, was cornflower blue and cloudless. But Christie was oblivious to it and the striking beauty of the rugged spine of the Sandia Mountains rising in the distance.

He had been struggling all morning to put together notes for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force meeting that afternoon. OCDETF, a combination of federal, state, and local investigative and prosecutorial agencies, was tasked with expanding and intensifying the U.S. government's anti-drug mission. It conducted collaborative long-term investigations against major drug trafficking organizations.

Christie was co-chair of the Task Force along with Tom Burkhardt, a captain in the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department. He hated the OCDETF part of his job, and knew that was contributing to his difficulty concentrating on prepping for the meeting. He continued to gaze out the window, almost sightlessly. There was more to his problems than having to work with the Task Force.

Barely two months earlier, the higher-ups in the Justice Department and the Bureau had become disappointed in his failure to make progress in solving the Harold Case murder. They’d also noticed the effect his marital problems were having on him. The determination had been made that he’d risen as high in his career as he was capable. He had been transferred to the Albuquerque Field Office as Assistant Special Agent in Charge. It was a demotion. There would be no further upward mobility for him.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever adjust to the dry Southwestern climate. As if on cue, an area on his right calf began to itch. Similar areas covered his body, as his skin struggled to adjust. The lining of his nasal passages was still dry and bleeding.

The climate wasn’t his only problem, either. He had come to realize that he hated his whole job, every aspect of it. Christie had been an FBI agent for almost two decades, since his graduation from law school. For years the job had been the focal point of his life. That’s where the damage had been done. Without realizing what he was doing, he’d allowed the demands of the Bureau to supersede the needs of his family. His wife, Deborah, had left him several months ago. Their two kids, Brett and Samantha, sixteen and fourteen, had chosen to live with their mother in Maryland. Thinking of them, of what he had lost, triggered a knot in his chest.

He raised his coffee mug to his lips, as if swallowing might wash the discomfort away. The coffee was cold. Stone cold. He quickly spit it out and thumped the mug back on his desktop. A few drops sloshed out and added to the stains on his blotter. He continued to hold the mug’s handle in a tight grip. His other hand reached for his abdominal area and began to massage a familiar spot over his stomach, just below and to the left of his solar plexus. He reached involuntarily for the top drawer of his desk, then remembered. There was no liquid antacid. Its manufacturer had recalled the product some time ago. It still had not returned to the market.

He sighed and dug in a pants pocket for his package of Rolaids. It’s a hell of a thing that it’s come to this. Lost my family, developed a disloyal stomach, and hate my job. He remembered when he’d started with the Bureau. He’d been on a fast track to achieving his goal: the rank of at least Assistant Director. Then he’d follow his wife’s urgings and retire with a nice pension by the time he was fifty-five. The next step would have been to find a cushy, non-stressful job as an executive with a private security firm. Now, those dreams were gone.

But it wasn’t just the demands of the Bureau that had ruined his world. That damn Brendan Whelan was the real culprit. Jesus, I hate that Irish bastard. His hand tightened on the flesh of his abdomen as a sharp wave of pain coursed through his stomach. Him and his gang of genetic mutants, the Sleeping Dogs. What was it the geneticist, Nishioki, had suggested—they were Mother Nature’s beta models of a whole new race of humans? Stronger, faster, smarter. How the hell is an older model Homo sapiens, like me, supposed to deal with them?

Another sharp pain sliced through Christie’s stomach and he reflexively tossed another Rolaid into his mouth. He turned away from the window and looked at the framed picture of his family on his desk. It wasn’t humiliating enough that, despite his best efforts and the tremendous pressure he’d been under to find Case’s murderers, Christie had been unable to make much progress. More humiliating was that the old Cold Warrior, Cliff Levell, had perceived a threat to Christie’s family when Christie himself hadn’t. Levell had honored a deathbed pledge he’d made to his wife’s father, a fellow Marine who had saved Levell’s life in a firefight in Vietnam. Levell had sent the Sleeping Dogs, his ruthless hunter-killer black ops team, to kidnap Deborah and the children and hold them in protective custody. It didn’t matter to Christie that Levell had been right—that his family really had been targeted for harm. What mattered to him was his wife’s reaction.

Christie felt his anger began to rise. Deborah had obstinately rejected his suggestion that she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. She’d insisted that Whelan and the other Dogs were kind and wonderful men who had saved her and the children. Worse, she’d seemed smitten with Whelan. Clearly, Christie no longer measured up. Irish bastard!

After eighteen years of him being completely faithful to his wedding vows, how could she have rejected him like that? It had to be Whelan’s fault. The thought sent another agonizing bolt through his stomach. Whelan must have seduced her. Christie grabbed his abdomen with one hand and squeezed as tightly as he could while popping two more Rolaids with the other hand.

There was a light knock on his office door. A moment later his boss opened it and strode in. Annette Wojakowski was short and chunky with a dark brown bob and wire-rim glasses. She was wearing one of her usual business suits. Today it was navy blue wool, a size or two too small, with a short skirt better worn by a woman with more attractive legs. She walked over to one of his side chairs and sat heavily on the edge of the seat, knees primly locked together.

Skipping small talk, she said, What are you working on?

Christie didn’t like the woman and knew the feeling was mutual. Wojakowski, the Albuquerque SAC, had been forced to reshuffle her personnel and procedures to accommodate his transfer. She hadn’t liked it.

I’m putting together some notes for this afternoon’s OCTEDF meeting, he said.

What time is the meeting?

One thirty. Why?

Wojakowski looked at him for a moment. It was a cold, unfriendly look. You have other assignments that need attention too. I wouldn’t expect preparing for that meeting would require much effort.

Christie shrugged. His stomach felt as if it were roiling with molten lava, but he didn’t want to pop a Rolaids in front of Wojakowski. She would interpret it as a sign of weakness.

Don’t you have a cochair, a sheriff’s deputy or something?

Christie nodded. A captain. Tom Burkhardt.

Why don’t you let him make these preparations?

Now it was Christie’s turn to give Wojakowski a hard look. The Bureau has a terrible reputation with local law enforcement agencies. Part of that has been caused by us sloughing off the grunt work on them. I’m trying to improve on that image.

The SAC pointed a thick, stubby index finger at him and began wagging it slowly back and forth. Our work is much more important than anything these local yokels do. I hope you understand that.

Christie gritted his teeth and nodded.

I didn’t ask to have you assigned to my office, Agent Christie. Nevertheless, I’ve tried to accommodate Washington’s wishes by finding things for you to do. But, frankly, I haven’t seen you doing much of anything.

He was silent for a moment, struggling to ignore the insult. As one of the two Assistant SACs in this office, my job description includes supervising the ERT, he said—the Albuquerque Evidence Response Team, which conducted crime scene investigations and collected and analyzed forensic evidence that ultimately needed to stand up under scrutiny in a court of law. That’s an area where I have solid experience, but, frankly, some of these jobs you’ve assigned to me seem far less important and tend to interfere with my ERT duties.

She raised a brow.

In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. Look, Ms. Wojakowski, I can appreciate that you didn’t ask for me to be assigned to this office. But I’m here and I bring many years of valuable experience with the Bureau. With all due respect, the work you’ve assigned to me—the OCDETF; the Safe Streets task force; personnel duties—is practically insulting. I am capable of making a much more significant contribution to this office.

The SAC sat forward, hands folded in her lap, knees still tightly locked. Are you challenging my authority, Agent Christie? You’re not a Supervisory Special Agent in Washington, D.C., anymore. Anger and disapproval smoldered in her small, dark, widely spaced eyes.

No, Ms. Wojakowski, I…

"It’s Agent Wojakowski," she snapped.

Christie stared at her for a couple of seconds. Things weren’t going well. They rarely did where Wojakowski was concerned. He started again. "Excuse me, Agent Wojakowski. I’m not challenging your authority. I’m just suggesting that I have a great deal of valuable experience that could be helpful to the Albuquerque office."

She pushed her wire-rim glasses up the bridge of her short, wide nose. It reminded Christie of a pig’s snout.

Valuable experience? I suppose you’re referring to how badly you handled the case involving that gang of paramilitary psychopathic killers? The ones who killed the ex-CIA agent Harold Case and tried to assassinate POTUS but killed the AG instead. The same ones who butchered that billionaire financier, Chaim Laski, and 20 or so of his household staff? The ones you couldn’t apprehend even though they appear to have been operating right under your nose? Is that the experience you’re referring to, Agent Christie?

For one of the very few times in his life, Christie felt a strong desire to knock a fellow agent senseless, and a female at that. He struggled mightily to maintain self-control. The fire in his stomach blazed to new heights.

Actually, he managed to say through a clenched jaw, the ‘gang’ you referenced was the deadliest Special Ops unit this country, or any other, has ever produced. And they didn’t attempt to assassinate the president. In fact, they were trying to stop an assassination from happening. Laski was behind the plot and, as it turned out, was laundering money for a foreign power whose goal was the destruction of our country from within. His ‘household staff,’ as you call them, were nothing more than Ukrainian thugs in this country illegally to carry out Laski’s dirty work.

Rather than backing down, Wojakowski was warming to the fight. She slid her wide bottom forward in the chair until she was barely balanced on the very edge. The action slid her short skirt up, revealing a large portion of her heavy thighs. Christie, repulsed, kept his eyes locked with hers.

As I recall, you mishandled the matter so badly that you actually sat next to the gang’s leader on a cross-country flight without realizing who he was. She smirked.

Where did you hear that?

The entire Bureau, and most of Washington, has gotten a good laugh out of that one.

Christie gritted his teeth. The man’s name was Whelan, and we had no idea what he looked like or that he was even alive. He and the others were supposed to have died in a plane crash off Puerto Rico twenty years earlier. They would have stayed ‘dead’ if they hadn’t been outed by Harold Case, who was working for a former senator trying to embarrass his own country to gain favor with his left-wing base. That’s what got Case killed. The damn fool’s actions had loosed the Sleeping Dogs—awakened them, so to speak.

Really? Her smirk was bigger now. And while you were bumbling through the investigation, this Whelan person kidnapped your wife. As I understand it, shortly after that, she left you.

Christie was speechless.

His boss stood up, rising to a full five feet three inches, including her two-inch heels. I’m of the opinion that you mishandled every aspect of that investigation. That, together with your inability to deal emotionally with the end of your marriage, got you transferred out here. Now you’re my problem. But let’s be very clear. This office is not a charity. It’s not a refuge for failed agents. She paused for effect, then said, Understand this: You will do whatever I tell you to do, exactly when and how I tell you to do it. Otherwise, I will do everything in my power to have your career with the Bureau terminated.

Her steely gaze held his. We won’t be having this conversation again.

She glanced at her watch. I have a lunch meeting. With that, she turned abruptly and walked out of the room, leaving the door open. Just then, another agent walked by. He stopped and turned to watch Wojakowski’s retreating backside, then looked at Christie, winked and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

The Polish Viper strikes again, he said.

CHAPTER 3

DINGLE, IRELAND

If someone or some organization wanted Whelan dead, they would leave no potential witnesses. That meant Whelan’s family members also were targeted. He was certain that the party responsible not only knew who he was, but what his physical capabilities were. Sending only two thugs to accomplish the task would be like taking the proverbial knife to a gunfight. There had to be more intruders in the house. Any would-be assassins who remained would be on the first floor. Whelan intended to kill all but one. He’d save that poor soul for interrogation, using methods that would shock even the CIA.

He quietly approached the staircase and peered carefully around the corner. A man with a bulky build stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. He must have heard the sound of the Makarov hitting the wood floor and was coming to investigate. With inhuman quickness, Whelan spun around the corner in a crouch, the suppressed Makarov extended in front of him. Before the other man could even raise his own weapon, Whelan double tapped him; the first shot in the thorax, the second in his head. The man’s body bounced off the wall behind him and toppled forward. This portion of the floor was carpeted; there was minimal sound as the dead man and his weapon hit the floor.

Whelan descended the remaining stairs, still in a half crouch, sweeping the Makarov from left to right and back again like a metronome. An acrid smell other than gunpowder burned his nostrils. Someone was smoking in his house. That was almost reason enough to kill the offender.

The bottom of the stairs opened into the foyer. As he paused to pick up the dead man’s pistol, he strained to hear sounds that didn’t belong in the house at night. After several moments, he heard something that sounded like metal being dragged across wood. The sound had come from the kitchen.

The kitchen was located to his left, beyond the dining area. He scanned the foyer. Seeing no one, he moved silently across the dining room to the doorway. A heavyset man sat at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. His left hand rested on another suppressed Makarov. Moving the heavy gun across the top of the wooden table must have made the sound Whelan had heard. There was also a cell phone on the table. Whelan assumed the man was planning to report to someone when the job was finished.

He was close enough to the man to easily place a kill shot with the Makarov. But first, he needed to know if there were others in the house. If this man were the only survivor, Whelan would interrogate him. He needed to know who had sent these men and why. More might be coming in the future.

Whelan got the man’s attention by saying, Pssst.

The smoker slowly turned his head toward Whelan. His eyes came to rest on the baleful opening of the Makarov’s suppressor, pointed at him. He struggled for a moment to suspend disbelief, then his hand twitched involuntarily on his own pistol. Whelan’s finger tightened slightly on the trigger. He smiled coldly and shook his head slowly back and forth. The man moved his hand away from the Makarov. Whelan signaled for him to raise his hands and stand. As he did, Whelan swiftly closed the gap until he was standing close to his captive.

Do you speak English? he said.

The man gave him a blank look. Whelan asked again, this time in Gaelic. The blank stare continued. He switched to Russian.

The man responded in nuanced Russian, as if it was a second language but related to his native tongue. Yes, I can speak Russian.

How many of you are there?

The man paused, then smirked slightly and said, Ten.

Before the man could react, Whelan’s left hand grasped the collar of his windbreaker, while his right hand shoved the tip of the Makarov’s suppressor nearly down the man’s throat. It broke several of his teeth and lacerated his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The man gagged and tried to struggle, but he was a Norm—a normal human being; no match for Whelan.

Whelan leaned in close to the man’s right ear and snarled, Let’s try that again. How many? The tip of the Makarov never withdrew from the man’s mouth.

The man’s eyes opened wide in pain and fear. He held up his left hand with four fingers and the thumb extended. Five assassins.

Whelan shoved him back into the chair and placed the muzzle of the automatic pistol against the center of the man’s forehead. I killed two men upstairs and one in the stairwell. Where’s number five? He ground the tip of the muzzle into the man’s flesh for emphasis. The temperature in the kitchen was cool, but the man was beginning to sweat profusely. His eyes never wavered from Whelan’s face.

Whelan heard a noise behind him. The unmistakable sound of a round being chambered. A voice, also speaking accented Russian, said, You do not have to look for number five. He has found you.

Whelan turned slowly and looked over his left shoulder. The fifth man indeed was there and training a Russian-made PP-19 Bizon submachine gun at his back. It had an AKS-74–type folding butt with pistol grip and cylindrical magazine. Whelan’s memory told him the weapon held somewhere between 45 and 60 rounds. The man was close enough that he couldn’t possibly miss, yet far enough away that Whelan couldn’t spin and deflect the muzzle before the weapon was fired. Smart bastards. Someone warned them about my skillsets.

His stomach suddenly felt queasy as he realized what would happen to Caitlin and their boys. His own fate was of little concern to him. It was his family that mattered. He had let them down; failed to protect them. What bothered him most was the likelihood that there would be no one to track down these bastards and kill them. And kill those who had sent them.

The man with the Bizon said, Put your pistol on the table. Slowly.

Whelan gritted his teeth and obeyed. Maybe there would be a moment, an instant, when these men would get careless and give him an opportunity to kill them.

The man in the chair picked up his own Makarov, stood and spit out pieces of teeth. Careful not to stand in his comrade’s line of fire, he drew back his arm and swung the weapon at Whelan, striking him viciously across the left side of his forehead. Whelan rocked back a bit, but otherwise didn’t move. Puny Norms. Stars briefly flashed through his consciousness. He felt the warm flow of blood beginning to trickle down his face.

The man he had abused spit in his face. It was bloody spittle from his injured mouth and throat. There might have been small bits of teeth in it. Satisfied, the man stuffed the pistol in his waistband and stepped backward a few feet. Now, he said, we kill you, then we kill wife and sons. I am told your wife is beautiful woman. He leered a bloody leer. She will be good fuck. Your sons will watch. Then we kill them all. Slowly. He nodded at the man holding the PP-19 Bizon. The man took a few steps backward to avoid being spattered by Whelan’s blood.

CHAPTER 4

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

It was just after six o’clock in the afternoon when Mitch Christie left the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. The large, T-shaped building on the southwest corner of Roma Avenue and 4 th Street NW occupied the entire block. Like every building in New Mexico—residential or commercial, or so it seemed to Christie—it was a boring buff color. Must be a local fetish. Blends in with the blah colors of the high desert.

Christie paused and buttoned the jacket of his lightweight suit. The sun was dropping quickly toward the western horizon. Along with it, the temperature had slid from the sixties into the forties. Albuquerque was in the grasslands transition area between the northern reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert and the beginning of the pine forests and high plains that stretched north to Santa Fe and into the mountains beyond. The barren countryside didn’t retain heat at night, and a brisk breeze added to the chill factor. He shivered briefly and thought about the warmer clothes in the closet of his small apartment twenty miles away.

Christie glanced at his image reflected in the window of a car parked at the curb. What he saw disturbed him. The face staring back at him was gaunt, skin stretched tight over cheekbones and brow. Bloodshot eyes held a haunted look, framed by dark semi-circles like the charcoal smudges football players used to use to reduce glare of floodlights during night games. The clothes he wore were badly rumpled and hung loosely on his thinning frame. His five o’clock shadow had lost several additional hours in its battle with the clock. He stared at the reflection for several seconds. I used to be a decent looking man. Now I’m starting to look like someone who’s running out of time on this planet.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, startling him, and a voice said, This is not the kind of weather a man stands around in, not when he’s dressed the way you are. Christie turned to see Tom Burkhardt, the sheriff’s captain who co-chaired the OCDETF with him.

You look like a guy who lost his last friend, Mitch. You okay?

Christie hesitated for a couple of beats, searching for the right thing to say. Finally, he said, Yeah, Tom, I’m fine.

Burkhardt looked him up and down and said, You wanna grab a drink and talk?

I appreciate the offer, but I’m not much of a conversationalist these days.

I noticed. Your body was in the meeting this afternoon, but the rest of you was someplace else. He paused for a moment, then took a firm grip on Christie’s arm. C’mon. There’s a nice watering hole in the next block.

Christie offered little resistance and the two men walked down the street to a small bar. It was a narrow space between a bail bondsman’s office and a pawnshop. The windows looked as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time, maybe ever. A fading neon sign identified it as Black Jack’s Tavern. Christie assumed it was named in honor of General John Joseph Black Jack Pershing. The man who’d led the 1916 expedition into Mexico to find and punish Pancho Villa. The bandit and his ragtag followers had crossed the border and raided Columbus, New Mexico, in March of that year. Ultimately, Pershing had been unsuccessful, but he was still a beloved hero in the area a full century later.

Burkhardt pushed the door open and held it for Christie to enter. The place smelled musty and stank of stale beer and accumulated generations of body odors and cooking grease. There was an earthy smell that reminded Christie of mushrooms. Must be dry