The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2020 by James Patterson
Cover design by Anthony Morais
Cover art by Sandra Cunningham/Trevillion Images
Author photograph by David Burnett
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ISBN 978-0-316-53956-2
E3-20200413-DA-NF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Authors’ Note
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 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: Afghanistan
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68: Afghanistan
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71: Afghanistan
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81: Afghanistan
Chapter 82: Afghanistan
Chapter 83: Afghanistan
Chapter 84: Afghanistan
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88: Afghanistan
Chapter 89
Chapter 90: Afghanistan
Chapter 91
Chapter 92: Afghanistan
Chapter 93
Chapter 94: Afghanistan
Chapter 95
Chapter 96: Afghanistan
Chapter 97
Chapter 98: Afghanistan
Chapter 99
Chapter 100: Afghanistan
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103: Afghanistan
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Authors
More from James Patterson
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This is for my family.
—B.D.
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Authors’ Note
There is no Fourth Battalion in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, and Sullivan County and its residents and towns are also fictional.
Chapter 1
INSIDE THIS DUMP of a home in rural Sullivan, Georgia, Lillian Zachary’s rescue mission to save her younger sister and niece isn’t going well. Only because of her parents’ pleadings did she make the three-hour drive this warm evening from the safety of her Atlanta condo to liberate Gina and her daughter, Polly, from this place.
She nervously eyes the guns that are on open display, their promise of violence making her uneasy. A pump-action shotgun is leaning near the sole door leading outside, a hunting rifle is up against the wall on the other side of the old home, and two black semiautomatic pistols are on the cluttered kitchen counter, next to three sets of scales and plastic bags full of marijuana. Antique oak cabinets and porcelain-lined sinks and metal faucets are on the opposite side of the room.
Lillian is in a part of the home laughingly called a “living room,” and there’s nothing in here worth living for, save her sister and her sister’s two-year-old girl. The place is foul, with empty beer cans, two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, crumpled-up McDonald’s bags, and crushed pizza cartons strewn across a wooden floor worn and gouged from a century of wear.
Built in the small plantation-plain style and named The Summer House, the place was once the getaway destination of a rich Savannah family fleeing city smells and sounds generations before the invention of air-conditioning. Now, decades later, the rich family has fallen on hard times, and their grandly named Summer House is a decaying rental property fit only for this group of lowlifes.
Lillian wonders if the ghosts of the old Savannah family are horrified to see how decayed and worn their perfect summer escape home has become.
Lillian is perched on the armrest of a black vinyl couch kept together with scrap lumber and duct tape, and Gina is sitting next to her, shaking a footless rag doll in front of little Polly, who’s on the carpeted floor before her mother, giggling.
Lillian says, “Gina, c’mon, can we get going?”
Her sister shakes her head. “No, not yet,” she says. “Polly’s laughing. I love it when Polly laughs. Don’t you?”
Lillian isn’t married, doesn’t seem to have that maternal urge to bear children, but something about the bright-blue eyes and innocent face of the chubby little girl in a pink corduroy jumper stirs her. Her little niece, trapped here with her single mom, in a crappy ho
use in a crappy part of the state.
At the other end of the room is another couch in front of a large-screen television—no doubt stolen, she thinks—and three other people who live here are playing some stupid shoot-’em-up fantasy video game where fire-breathing dragons and knights do battle armed with machine guns. She’s already forgotten the names of the two lanky, long-haired boys and their woman friend. Shirley? Or Sally. Whatever. And Randy. Yeah. That’s one of the losers’ names.
The two guys gave her serious eye when earlier she knocked on the door, and she feels vulnerable and out of place with them and their guns. Even though they seem to be having fun on their couch, there’s a simmering tension between them that’s growing along with the insults they’ve been tossing at each other.
“Missed it, you fag!” Randy yells.
“Bite me!” the other young man shouts back.
Upstairs in the old home is the other occupant, Gina’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Stuart, who’s lying in bed, not feeling well, bitching and moaning like the community college dropout and drug dealer he is.
Plus the father of little and innocent Polly.
“Gina,” she says, looking away from the video game players. “Please.”
“Just a sec, Lilly, just a sec, okay?”
Lillian rubs her hands across her tan slacks, looking again at the shotgun resting between the television and the door leading outside. All she wants to do is carry the two green plastic trash bags holding the entire possessions of Gina and her daughter through that door. In just a very few minutes she’ll get Gina and Polly out of this shithole and back up to Atlanta and leave this crap off-ramp to a loser life behind.
If those increasingly angry young men let her, Gina, and Polly leave, that is. Randy said a while ago, “Hey, you plan on staying for a while, right? We’re gonna party hard later on.”
Her plump younger sister is wearing black yoga tights and an Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt, but even through her bad complexion, her eyes shine bright with joy and love for her baby girl. That light gives Lillian hope. Gina moved down to this little town with Stuart, promising Mom and Dad she would study dental hygiene at nearby Savannah Technical College, and not telling anyone until a week ago that she dropped out last year.
Tonight it’s going to change, Lillian thinks. She has a great job as a purchasing agent for Delta, and she’s confident she can get her younger sister a job even if the work is physical, like handling baggage. Gina is a stout, strong girl, and Lillian thinks that will be perfect for her, and much better pay than the night shift at the local Walmart.
Her little niece keeps on laughing and laughing.
There’s a sound of a helicopter flying overhead, and Lillian vows to leave in just one minute. Yep, in sixty seconds she’s going to tell Gina to get her ass in gear.
Lillian thinks she sees a shadow pass by one of the far windows.
As he moves through the typical Georgia pine forest to within twenty meters of the target house, he raises a fist, and the others with him halt. He wants to take one more good scan of the target area before the operation begins. A helicopter drones, heading to nearby Hunter Army Airfield. The woods remind him some of forests he operated in back in Kunar province in the ’stan, right up against the border to Pakistan. He likes the smell of trees at night. It reminds him of home, reminds him of previous missions that have gone well. Some meters off is a small lake with a shoreline overgrown with saplings and brush.
He slowly rotates his head from left to right, the night-vision goggles giving him a clear and green ghostly view of the surroundings. He can see that the two-story place used to be a fine small home with two front pillars and classy-looking, black-shuttered windows. Now the siding is peeling away, the pillars are cracked and stained, and one of the windows is covered with plastic.
Only one entry in and out between the two pillars, which will be challenging but not much of a problem.
Four vehicles in the yard. Two Chevy pickup trucks and a battered Sentra with a cracked windshield and trunk held closed with a frayed piece of rope. Previous surveillances of the area showed these same vehicles here, almost every night.
But tonight there’s an additional vehicle. A light-blue Volvo sedan.
It doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong, hasn’t been here before.
Which means there’s at least one additional person—and perhaps up to four—in the target house.
He sighs.
Embrace the suck, move on.
Has he ever been on a mission that went exactly, 100 percent right?
Never.
So why start tonight?
He catches the attention of his squad mates, and they move into position, with him leading the way to the open wooden porch before the solitary door.
He flips up his night-vision goggles, blinks a few times. He can hear music and sound effects from some sort of video game being played inside.
No worries.
He pulls out his pistol, gets ready to go to work.
Lillian puts her hand on Gina’s shoulder, is about to say, I want to get on I-16 before the drunks start leaving the roadhouses, when there’s a sharp bang! and the door leading outside blows wide open into the small, old house.
The woman on the other couch screams, and the guy to her right—Gordy, is that his name?—stands up and says, “Hey, what the hell—”
A man in military-style clothing ducks in with a pistol in his hand, and Lillian stands, putting her arms up in the air, thinking, Oh, damn it, it’s a police raid. These morons have finally been caught dealing their dope.
Funny how all cops nowadays feel like they have to dress up like soldiers, like this one, with fatigues, black boots, belts and harness, a black ski mask over his head.
Gordy says, “Hey, guy, I know my rights—”
He stops talking when the man with the pistol points it at him—and with horror Lillian recognizes there’s a suppressor on the end of the pistol, just like in the movies—and in two muffled reports, Gordy falls back onto the couch, his skull blown open in a blossom of brain and bone.
A spray of blood hits the face of Sally, who is now screaming louder, and the other guy on the couch scrambles over the side, toppling the couch. Lillian pushes Gina, screaming, “Run, run, run!”
Gina ducks down and picks up her girl, who’s still giggling, and Lillian shoves her sister and niece away as she grabs a dirty couch pillow and throws it at the gunman.
“Gina!” she screams at her sister. “Run!”
Polly in her arms, Gina runs up the stairs, Lillian pounding the steps right behind her.
Chapter 2
THE MAIN PART of the old house is cleared within seconds by his squad, and as he goes past the bodies, picking up warm shell casings and carefully digging out spent bullets as he does so, one thought comes to him: how often Hollywood gets this part wrong.
They love showing a squad like his breaking into a residence, screaming Go, go, go! or Down, down, down! Truth is, you move quietly and with deliberation, clearing and securing everything before moving on.
He heads to the wide wooden stairway, the others following him. Stops at the foot of the stairs. Makes the necessary hand signals, and they go up, sticking to the left side to reduce the sounds of creaking steps.
Halfway up the stairs he pauses, hearing frantic movement overhead.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Gina slammed open the door to the left with her free hand, saying, “Stuart, Stuart, oh, God, Stuart…”
Lillian broke right, going to the other bedroom, sobbing, panting, not wanting to think of what just happened, who that man was, not wanting again to see in her mind the spray of blood from Gordy being shot in the head, and above all, not wanting to think of the man coming up the stairs after them.
She nearly stumbles over the piles of clothing, shoes, and more crumpled boxes and beer cans strewn across the floor. Two beds. One bureau. Trash bags with clothing. Open closet door.
Two windows.
One with an air-conditioning unit that’s not running.
The other leading out to safety.
Lillian gets to the window, yanks at the bottom.
It won’t move.
“Please, please, please,” she whispers.
She yanks again.
Nothing.
She senses the man with the gun is nearing the top of the stairs.
Lillian is too scared to turn around, dares not turn around.
Another tug.
A squeak.
It moves, just enough for her to shove her fingers in between the window and the sill.
“Please, please, please,” she prays, whispering louder.
She gives the window a good hard shove, leveraging her weight, her shoulders and arms straining from the attempt.
The window grinds open.
Fresh air flows in.
Lillian bends over, ducks her way through, as she hears the other bedroom door slam shut.
He’s nearly at the top of the stairs when he hears a window slide open, and then he gets to the landing.
Room to the left, room to the right.
The door is open to the right-side room. The other door is closed.
He looks back at his squad, gestures to the nearest two behind him, points to the left door, and they nod in acknowledgment.
He steps into the room on the right.
Empty.
Trashy, of course, but there’s no one he can see.
The window is wide open.
He’s focused on clearing this room, but he can’t help but hear the door to the other room open, a woman scream, and a man call out, “Hey, hey, hey—” followed by the friendly thump of a pistol firing through a sound suppressor.
Then a sentence is uttered, and two more thumps wrap up the job.
He moves through the room, dodging piles of clothes and trash. An overhead light from the top of the stairs gives him good illumination.
The closet is empty.
Fine.
He goes to the window, leans over, peers out.
Lillian is biting her fist, trying hard not to breathe, not to sneeze, not to do a damn thing to get noticed. She’s under one of the two unmade beds in this room, trembling, part of her ashamed that she’s wet herself from fear.