He sat on the long white sofa in his new living room, holding his four-month-old baby boy, Gunner, in his lap. Gunner was a big, heavy baby. He wore a diaper and a blue T-shirt that said World’s Best Baby.

He had drifted off to sleep in Luke’s arms some time ago. His little tummy rose up and down, and he snored softly as he slept. Were babies supposed to snore? Luke didn’t know, but somehow the sound was comforting. More, it was beautiful.

Now Luke just held Gunner in the semi-darkness and gazed around the room, trying to make sense of the house.

The place was a gift from Becca’s parents, Audrey and Lance. That, all by itself, was hard to swallow. He could never afford this place on his government salary, which was a big upgrade from what he’d been making in the Army. Becca wasn’t working at all. The two of them together, even if Becca had been working, couldn’t afford this house. And that finally brought home to Luke just how much money Becca’s family really had.

He had known they were rich. But Luke had grown up without money. He didn’t know what rich was. He and Becca had been living at her family’s cabin, which fronted Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore. To Luke, that one-hundred-year-old cabin, even though it was an hour-and-a-half commute from his job, had been a spectacular living arrangement. Luke was accustomed to sleeping on the hard ground, or not sleeping at all.

But this place?

He glanced around the house. It was a modern home, with floor to ceiling windows, like something out of an architectural magazine. It was like a glass box. When winter came, when it snowed, he could picture how it might be like one of those old snow globes people used to have when he was a kid. He pictured this coming Christmastime—just sitting in this stunning sunken living room, the tree in the corner, the fireplace lit, the snow coming down all around.

And that was just the living room. Never mind the oversized country kitchen with the island in the middle and the giant double-door refrigerator, freezer on the bottom. Never mind the master bed and master bath. Never mind the rest of the place. And never mind that this house was about a twelve-minute drive from the office.

From Luke’s spot on the sofa, he could see out the big south- and west-facing windows. The house sat up on a little rolling hillock of grass. The height extended his vantage point. The house was in a quiet neighborhood of other large houses, set back from the street. There was no parking on the street. In this neighborhood, people parked in their own driveways or garages.

They hadn’t met many of their neighbors yet, but Luke imagined they were lawyers, maybe doctors, maybe people with high-level jobs at corporations. He had mixed feelings about it. Not the people, but the place.

For one, he didn’t trust Audrey and Lance.

Becca’s parents had never liked him. They had always made this clear. Even after Gunner was born, they were grudging at best about letting him and Becca use the cabin. Audrey especially was a master at the snide comment and the undermining maneuver.

He pictured her in his mind—there was something about her that reminded him of a crow. She had deep-set eyes with irises so dark, they seemed almost black. She had a sharp nose, like a beak. She had tiny bones and a thin frame. And she tended to hover nearby, like a harbinger of bad tidings.

But then the Special Response Team had taken on a couple of high-profile operations, and Audrey and Lance had met the legendary Don Morris, pioneer of special operations and the director of the SRT.

Suddenly, they felt that he and Becca needed a better house, and one closer to his work. And just like that, here they were.

He shook his head at the speed of it. He had been known in his career for his sudden reflexes and his fast response time, but this house purchase had happened so fast it nearly made his head spin off his neck.

Two people who had disliked him intensely for years had now just presented him with the greatest gift anyone had ever given him.

He stopped and listened to the quiet. He took a deep breath, almost in tandem with his young son. No. That was wrong. This little boy was the greatest gift he had ever been given. The house was nothing compared to this.

On the table in front of him, his telephone lit up. He stared at it, the blue light throwing crazy shadows in the semi-darkness. The phone was silent because the ringer was off. He hadn’t wanted to disturb the baby, or the baby’s mama, who was getting some well-deserved and much needed sleep in the bedroom.

He glanced at the time—after ten o’clock. That could only mean a small handful of things. Either an old military buddy was drunk dialing, it was a wrong number, or… He let the phone go until it stopped and went dark.

A moment later, it started up again.

He sighed and glanced at the number. Of course it was work.

He picked up the phone.

“H’lo?”

He said it in the quietest, I’m asleep why are you bothering me voice he could muster.

A female voice spoke. Trudy Wellington. He pictured her—young, beautiful, smart, with brown hair cascading over her shoulders.

“Luke?”

“Yes.”

She was all business. The thing that had almost happened between them, and which they never talked about, seemed to be dwindling in her rearview mirror. That was probably for the best.

“Luke, we have a crisis. Don is rounding up the usual suspects. I’m already here. Swann, Murphy, and Ed Newsam are on their way.”

“Now?” He asked the question even though he knew the answer.

“Yes. Now.”

“Can it wait?” Luke said.

“Not really.”

“Hmmm.”

“And Luke? Bring a bug-out bag.”

He rolled his eyes. The job and family life were having trouble meshing. Not for the first time, he wondered if what he did for a living was not compatible with the happy home he and Becca were trying to build for themselves.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“Classified. You’ll find out at the briefing.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

He hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

He hoisted the baby in his arms, stood, and padded down the hall to the master bedroom. It was dark, but he could see well enough. Becca was dozing in the big king-sized bed. He reached down and placed the baby next to her, just touching her skin. In her half-sleep, she made a little sound of pleasure. She put a hand softly on the baby.

He stared down at the two of them for a bit. Mom and baby. A wave of love so intense he would never be able to describe it washed over him. He could barely grasp it himself, never mind express it to another person. It was beyond words.

They were his life.

But he also had to go.

CHAPTER FIVE

11:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Headquarters of the Special Response Team

McLean, Virginia

“Why are we here?” Kevin Murphy said.

He was dressed in business casual, as though he had just come from a mixer of young professionals.

Mark Swann, dressed in anything but business attire, smirked. He wore a black Ramones T-shirt and ripped jeans. His hair was in a ponytail.

“In the existential sense?” he said.

Murphy shook his head. “No. In the sense of why are we all in this room together in the middle of the night?”

The conference room, what Don Morris sometimes optimistically referred to as the Command Center, was a long rectangular table with a speakerphone device mounted in the center. There were data ports where people could plug in their laptops, spaced every few feet. There were two large video monitors on the wall.

The room was somewhat small, and Luke had been to meetings in here with as many as twenty people. Twenty people made the room look like a crowded train car in the Tokyo subway at rush hour.

“Okay, people,” Don Morris said. Don wore a tight-fitting dress shirt, sleeves halfway up his forearms. He had a cup of coffee in a thick paper cup in front of him. His white hair was cropped very close to his head—as if he’d just gone to the barber this afternoon. His body language was relaxed, but his eyes were as hard as steel.

“Thanks for coming in, and so quickly. But let’s shut up with the banter now, if you don’t mind.”

Around the room, people murmured their assent. Besides Don Morris, Swann, Murphy, and Luke, Ed Newsam was here, slouched low in his chair, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that hugged his muscular upper body. He wore jeans and yellow Timberland work boots, with the shoelaces untied. He looked like this meeting had awakened him from a deep sleep.

Also here was Trudy Wellington. She was in a blouse and dress pants, as though she had never gone home after work. Her red glasses were pushed up onto her head. She seemed alert, also drinking coffee, and she had already begun tapping information into the laptop in front of her. Whatever was going on, she had been privy to it first.

At the far end of the table, near the video screens, was a tall and thin four-star general, in impeccable dress greens. His gray hair was trimmed to the scalp. His face was devoid of whiskers, as if he had just shaved before he walked in here. Despite the lateness of the hour, the guy looked fresh and ready to go another twenty-four, or forty-eight, or however long it took.

Luke had met him once before, but even if he hadn’t, he already knew the man in his bones. When he woke each morning, he made his bed before doing anything else—that was the first achievement of the day, and set the table for more. Before the sun peeked into the sky, the guy had probably already run ten miles and scarfed down a meal of cold gruel and high octane coffee. He had West Point go-getter written all over him.

Seated at the table near him was a colonel with a laptop in front of him, as well as a stack of paper. The colonel hadn’t looked up from the computer yet.

“Folks,” Don Morris said. “I’d like to introduce you to General Richard Stark of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his aide, Colonel Pat Wiggins.”

Don looked at the general.

“Dick, the brain trust of the Special Response Team is at your disposal.”

“Such as it is,” Mark Swann said.

Don Morris scowled at Swann, a look one might give a teenage son with a big mouth. But he said nothing.

“Gentlemen,” Stark said, then bowed to Trudy. “And lady. I’ll get right to the point. There is an unfolding hostage crisis in the Alaskan Arctic, and the President of the United States has authorized a rescue. He has stipulated that the rescue involve the oversight and participation of a civilian agency. That’s where you come in.

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