Instead, they were left to wonder, was he shark bait or was he executing one more escape plan?
The ocean slid beneath them as they returned to Hunter Army Airfield, where blue lights bounced off every building.
“We’ve arrested ten famous people you’ve never heard of,” Bronson said.
“Markham?” Harwood asked.
Bronson shook his head. “Nothing.”
Harwood thought for a moment, looked to the northeast in the direction of Markham’s Tybee Island mansion twenty miles away, and said, “What about the women in the caskets?”
“Well…”
* * *
General Buzz Markham had not made the helicopter ride to Hunter Army Airfield. Knowing the FBI was lying in wait, he instead put his CLEVER associates on the chopper and retreated deep inside the command bunker of his Tybee Island fortress.
Sitting in an executive leather chair, he spun his officer’s Beretta nine-millimeter pistol on the freshly waxed mahogany executive conference table. The room was crowding him. Its low ceiling and windowless walls made him feel claustrophobic. While he was used to the inside of a jet cockpit—where he at least had a windshield to see the world—this underground bunker stuff was never for him, despite the safety it might provide.
Sweating and choking on his anxiety, he considered three possible options: let his lawyers try to weasel him out of this tight spot; stick his pistol in his mouth; or get into the forty-one-foot SD GT3 cigarette boat perched on its lift in the cavern, looking like the Batmobile in the Batcave, and make a James Bond getaway through the tunnel that led into the intracoastal waterway.
He always liked James Bond movies. He wasn’t much for suicide. And his lawyers, well, Shakespeare had been right, after all. They wouldn’t be able to extricate him from this pickle. So why not live to fight another day? He had money stashed away in his offshore accounts. The boat had a full tank of gas. He could make it somewhere.
Markham walked to the stairwell that led to the boat cave, as he called it. He kept the lights off, because he knew that the FBI would soon know that he wasn’t on the helicopter. He pressed the button to lower the boat into the water. Once the Be One Bomber was resting in the brackish water of Tybee Creek, he stepped into the vessel.
General Markham reached for the ignition and cranked the engine.
* * *
In the distance, a bright fireball erupted, boiling upward.
“About right,” Harwood whispered, calculating the distance. A few seconds later the boom rolled across the airfield. Harwood nodded imperceptibly and thought, A little C-4 goes a long way sometimes. Lanny’s kit bag had been full of the explosives.
“What the hell?” Bronson said.
“Not sure,” Harwood said. “Markham may have taken his own life. I think you were telling me about the women.”
Shaken, Bronson looked at Harwood, then back at the fireball, and then back at Harwood. He squinted at Harwood’s deadpan face and continued, “One of the women in the caskets died, but the rest made it. Initial report was the dead one may have killed herself. We’ve got them all, though. And they’re talking.”
“That’s something,” Harwood replied. “Let’s go by the hospital. I’ve got a couple of people I need to check on.”
EPILOGUE
Harwood sat in a beach chair as Monisha built a sand castle, the ocean ebbing and flowing behind her. The beach was scattered with a few sunbathers. The ocean swayed rhythmically, but no waves were breaking. It was a typical Tybee Island September day, with a zephyr—a warm west wind—and flat seas.
It had been a month since a small nuclear weapon had detonated ten miles east in the ocean. The experts all showed both the wind and the sea current taking the radiation north and east, toward the Labrador Sea, where its diminished effect would be insignificant. If Harwood and Samuelson had not been able to get the bomb to sea, the same experts were predicting fifteen thousand dead and twenty thousand more wounded and ill along the eastern seaboard. Thirty-five thousand people. A big town. A small city.
With a month of healing behind Jackie and Monisha—and himself—Harwood wondered what the future held. He loved Jackie, still, despite the knowledge of the role that she had played in the killing of those involved in what the media had labeled the Ghost Girl Scandal.
He had endured countless briefings with Bronson and his own military chain of command. Command Sergeant Major Murdoch had instructed him not to lawyer up and to just lay it out there like a good Ranger, which he did. The one thing he didn’t mention, though, was Jackie’s role, to the extent that he understood what it had been.
They had visited Richard’s grave in Columbus, Georgia, last week and she was contrite, not boastful. Yet Jackie had also been resolute. She had closure. Then she’d hopped on an airplane to the West Coast, and Harwood hadn’t heard from her since.
He wondered if he ever would.
General Bishop, who had facilitated and covered up the opium operation at Fort Benning, was dead by Nina Moreau’s aim and his son was being prosecuted for felony distribution. The FBI cast their net far and wide and were still turning over suspects in the operation. The ghost girls the Reaper had saved were either returned to their families in Afghanistan and Iraq or given permanent visas in the United States.
Seagulls squawked overhead, breaking his reverie. He looked up and saw Monisha staring at him, smiling. Monisha was wearing a knotted-up white T-shirt that suspiciously showed just enough midriff to display her abdominal scar. Her blue shorts stopped just above the deep, healing gash that Xanadu’s minigun had ripped in her leg. He smiled. She was proud and, of course, ever the show-off.
“Just because we’re black doesn’t mean we don’t burn,” Harwood said.
“I’m good,” Monisha said. “SPF fifty.” She held up a tube of Watermans sunscreen.
Harwood smiled. “Okay, kid. Having fun?”
Monisha smiled. “Told you. I love the beach, Reaper.”
“You know they’re calling this Radiation Beach now, right?” Samuelson joked.
“Well, it’s only right that we’re here on the first day it’s open,” Harwood said.
Samuelson looked at Monisha. “And here I thought you were all dead and stuff.”
“Not me, Frankenstein,” Monisha quipped.
They laughed. It felt good and right. Whether Monisha represented Lindsay or his own failures or simply something he’d done right—saving her—Monisha would forever be the catalyst that got the Reaper back on track.
“Good thing you’ve got the Reaper protecting you with that mouth, girl,” Samuelson said.
“Reaper’s my brother,” Monisha said. “All I need.”
At that moment, Harwood knew that what he had done was right. It might have been about Lindsay from the foster home and it might have been about him needing to heal, but he thought it was mostly about helping Monisha.
“That’s right,” Harwood said. “I’ve already started the paperwork.”
There was a moment of silence. The wind scurried along from west to east. Seagulls hung in the breeze without flapping their wings, as if suspended on a child’s mobile.
“What?” Monisha asked.
“You heard me. Making it official. Adopting you. Nobody else can put up with you. Might as well be my burden.”
“Say what?”
“That way I can work on your vocabulary and send you to med school or something. You’re the smartest, bravest kid I know.”
“Med school? Who gonna pay for that?”
Harwood smiled. “Our friend Bronson is letting me keep half the money the Chechen put in my bank account if I set up a college fu
nd for you with it. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, young lady.”
Monisha started shaking, then gave way to a full onset of tears. She hugged Harwood as he sat in his beach chair. Samuelson knelt next to him and opened two beers.
“That’s something to toast to right there,” his spotter said.
With Monisha on one side and Samuelson on the other, Harwood looked out at the ocean, thought briefly of the Chechen and whether he was dead or alive, and realized that all that mattered now was within arm’s reach.
ALSO BY NICHOLAS IRVING
The Reaper
Way of the Reaper
ALSO BY A. J. TATA
THE CAPTAIN JAKE MAHEGAN SERIES
Foreign and Domestic
Three Minutes to Midnight
Besieged
Direct Fire
THE THREAT SERIES
Sudden Threat
Rogue Threat
Hidden Threat
Mortal Threat
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NICHOLAS IRVING is the New York Times bestselling author of The Reaper and Way of the Reaper. He spent six years in the Army’s Special Operations 3rd Ranger Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment, serving as Assault Team Leader to Sniper Team Leader. He was the first African American to deploy in the G.W.O.T. as a sniper in his battalion and is now the owner of HardShoot, where he trains personnel in the art of long-range shooting, from Olympians to members of the Spec Ops community. He appeared as a mentor on the Fox reality show American Grit and has consulted on various movies, films, and TV shows. He lives in San Antonio, Texas. You can sign up for email updates here.
A. J. TATA, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (Ret.), commanded combat units in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the 10th Mountain Division. His last combat tour was in Afghanistan in 2007, where he earned the Combat Action Badge and Bronze Star Medal. He is the author of seven national bestselling novels, including books from the Captain Jake Mahegan and Threat series. He is the National Security Expert for the One America News Network and a frequent foreign policy guest commentator on Fox News and CNN. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Also by Nicholas Irving
About the Authors
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
REAPER: GHOST TARGET. Copyright © 2018 by Nicholas Irving. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover art: texture © Krasovski/Dmitri/Shutterstock.com; bullet holes © Andrey Kuzmin/Shutterstock.com; rifle © Salimgor/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-12734-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-12735-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250127358
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First Edition: May 2018