Page 1 of Zero Hour

CHAPTER 1

Former SEAL Commander Pat Burke sipped his espresso and studied the terrorist from across the room. A wave of déjà vu hit him, followed by an unwelcome shiver down his spine. This wasn’t the first time he’d had Al-Jabiri under surveillance.

The first had been a lifetime ago, when he and his unit had been holed up in their observation post outside the training camp, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He still remembered the dry, dusty air of the riverbank, the sparse vegetation, and the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Five heart-pounding hours of waiting for the signal.

Then it came.

They’d slipped into the encampment under the cover of darkness, following the map ingrained in their heads.

Their orders were to take Al-Jabiri—Codename: Falcon—alive, then destroy the training camp.

That last part had been easy. Blowing shit up was routine. It was the first part that had been a nightmare. Taking a man alive was a hell of a lot harder than killing him.

Exfiltrating with a live prisoner wasn’t simple, especially when you were dodging gunfire from a bunch ofoverenthusiastic wannabe terrorists in a training camp somewhere in North Africa.

Pat shook his head.

They’d barely made it out in one piece—with their prisoner intact.

Fast forward sixteen years, and here was Amir Al-Jabiri having lunch with a blond beauty in a restaurant in downtown D.C.

“No change,” he murmured into his earpiece, pretending to sip his coffee.

“Copy that,” came the reply. It was Anna’s voice—the team’s logistics manager and the glue that held the office together.

Prison hadn’t aged the Falcon. The terrorist looked fit and healthy for his fifty-three years. His temples were graying—whose weren’t? —but his beard was still dark and neatly trimmed, his body as lean and muscular as Pat remembered.

The Falcon knew he was being watched. A convicted terrorist living freely in the U.S.? Come on. Of course someone would be keeping tabs on him.

Except it wasn’t the FBI. It wasn’t the CIA either, or any other government acronym.

It was Blackthorn Security, Pat’s black ops team. A privately-run, off-the-books security company that handled what the government couldn’t, or weren’t allowed to for political or logistical reasons that Pat didn’t get involved in.

“He’s served his time,” the Secretary of Homeland Security had told Pat over lunch at her country club a few days ago. “We can’t touch him. His lawyer would annihilate us.”

The lawyer was Ingrid Sutton, an ambitious human rights attorney gaining a name for herself from taking on high profile cases, mostly involving really bad guys. Pat had met her once. It hadn’t ended well.

In his book, terrorists like the Falcon forfeited their rights when they blew up and maimed innocent civilians. Before his capture all those years ago, Al-Jabiri had been responsible for a hotel shooting, an embassy terror attack, and two car bombs in major European cities.

You had to be human to qualify for human rights.

The woman sitting across from Al-Jabiri intrigued him, however. He put her around forty, maybe slightly older. She clearly wasn’t of Arab descent—not with that pale blonde hair, fine and straight beneath the folds of her jade-green headscarf. Her eyes were downcast, but she had elegant cheekbones and full lips that demanded a longer, lingering look. No makeup. She didn’t need it, thanks to her natural beauty, but it was strange considering she was out to lunch with someone.

Pat frowned and forced his gaze from her mouth down to her slender hands that were folded on the table, despite the plate of untouched food in front of her. Tapered fingers, unpainted nails. Her knuckles were white, like she was tense or ill at ease. Another anomaly, since there was nothing about her posture that signified she was under duress.

She wore tailored trousers with a silk blouse fastened nearly all the way to the top. Even that couldn’t disguise the slender drape of her shoulders, or the classy tilt of her head as she listened to her companion speak. Was her demure style of dress a sign of respect for her lunch partner? Were they together?

Pat studied their body language.

The Falcon leaned toward her as he spoke, his hands casually holding his knife and fork. His expression was animated—at least as much as Al-Jabiri could be. His thin lips curled into a smile, and his dark eyes gleamed. No doubt he was enjoying her company.

The woman was harder to read.

She smiled and nodded in all the right places, but Pat got the feeling she was holding back. Professional, sharp—but guarded. Still, she was beautiful, and it was easy to see why Al-Jabiri was drawn to her.

Pat took a slow sip of coffee, pretending to read the newspaper in front of him, stealing glances at them every now and then.

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