Leroux frowned, hating to say what needed saying. “We can’t let this influence the CIA’s reaction.”

  Morrison smiled. “And it won’t, trust me. As heartless as it sounds, two lives are not going to stop us from confronting the Assembly.”

  Kane grunted. “Just give me the nod, and I’ll find them myself.”

  Morrison delivered. “Consider yourself unleashed.”

  Kane’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of his chair, as if containing himself, forcing himself to remain in the room rather than sprint for the door to begin a killing spree until he found the woman he loved. “Do we know what they’re up to?”

  Morrison shook his head. “No, but there is a nationwide incident occurring right now.”

  Leroux leaned forward, his eyes widening. “What?”

  “All 9-1-1 systems across the country are being flooded with fake calls, overwhelming the systems. There isn’t a major city that hasn’t been affected.”

  Leroux’s eyes narrowed. “Why the hell would they do that? How could disrupting the 9-1-1 system possibly help them?”

  Morrison shrugged. “No idea.” He leaned forward in his chair. “That’s what I want you and your team to find out.”

  Leroux caught Tong staring at him. She looked away, her cheeks flushed. “What are our parameters?”

  Morrison leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “We have some intel that we’re not allowed to legally use. Can we use it now?”

  Morrison’s fingers steepled in front of his face, the tips bouncing off his chin as he pursed his lips. “I think it’s time we eliminated this problem once and for all. When we’re done, this won’t see the inside of a courtroom. Find the Assembly, find out what they’re up to, and feed the intel to Dylan.” He turned to Kane. “And you do what you do best.”

  14

  Harlem Hospital Center

  Manhattan, New York

  Larissa Williams groaned as she massaged her feet. “I need to lose weight. The human body was never designed to carry this much fabulousness around for this many hours.”

  Her friend and fellow nurse, Nina, laughed. “I hear you, girl, but today was something special. I’ve never seen anything like it. So many walking wounded!” She waved a hand at the television. “What the hell is going on, anyway? The entire 9-1-1 system goes haywire, and nobody can get through? It’s crazy!”

  Larissa agreed. “Yeah, and it wasn’t just here. Apparently, dozens of cities were affected.”

  “Well, I hope they catch the bastards responsible.”

  Larissa grunted. “They should line them up against a wall and shoot them.”

  “I’ll second that! No judge, no jury, just execute the sonsabitches. Maybe then, these hackers will think twice before messing with people’s lives. How many people died today because of it?”

  Larissa frowned as she slipped her shoe back on. “The news is saying dozens died just here. A lot of people couldn’t call ambulances, and once the criminals realized what was going on, there was some looting and a few people were shot.”

  Nina shook her head. “What is it about situations like this that make people think they need a new TV?”

  Larissa chuckled. “I don’t know, but I know I could sure use one.”

  Nina gave her a look. “You definitely could use one. You do know that they have flat screens now, right?”

  Larissa smiled. “Hey, I know, but I also have mouths to feed, and that no-good loser of an ex-husband of mine hasn’t paid child support in over a year.”

  “Shoot his ass too!”

  “Damn right!” Larissa pushed to her feet. “Okay, I’m outta here. If you need me, you know where not to find me.”

  “You go on home to those boys of yours before they get up to no good.”

  Larissa tossed her head back and growled. “Argh! Don’t get me started on them. You know that yesterday I caught Michael holding a gun outside the apartment? The older kids were showing it to him. What is it with kids today? I pray every day that my boys grow up like their Uncle Leon. Join the Army and keep out of trouble. But you can’t join if you’re dead or in jail!”

  “Well, with everything going on today, you better get home to them. Oh, look!” Nina pointed at the screen, a local news anchor, Aynslee Kai, replaced by the head of Homeland Security.

  “Today’s disruption of the 9-1-1 systems in multiple jurisdictions was caused by hacking the servers of eTALK, the nation’s largest Voice over Internet Protocol provider. This allowed the hackers to send calls from these phones through the E-911 system that links your home’s VoIP system to your local 9-1-1 system. The result was a massive influx of calls that stayed connected long enough to prevent legitimate calls from getting through, thus overwhelming the system. The security breach has been plugged, and Croft Technologies’ SecuraVault Anti-Intrusion System installed to protect from further breaches. At this time, we have no suspects, however the investigation has just begun—”

  Nina batted a hand at the screen. “Blah blah. What else is new? It’ll be the Russians or the Chinese, and we’ll do nothing about it.”

  Larissa frowned, her friend right. “I’m going home. See you tomorrow.” She stepped out of the change room and headed for the elevators, waving goodbye to the night shift. She shivered as she exited the building and headed for the subway. She stopped at the curb, waiting for the light to change, mentally preparing a grocery list. The pedestrian light turned and she stepped onto the street when somebody grabbed her from behind and hauled her back. She cried out, not sure what was going on, when a city bus whipped past her, missing her by inches.

  “Oh my God!” she cried as she turned to see who had saved her life. A man in a business suit stared at her wide-eyed as he eased his grip on her arm. “I could have been killed!”

  “Did he run a red light?” asked a bystander.

  “No, I’m sure…” She turned and stared at the light, definitely indicating it was their turn to cross.

  “Look!”

  She turned to see her savior pointing up at the opposing traffic’s signal. It was green.

  “What the hell?”

  “Something’s wrong with the lights. Look!”

  She stared in the direction of his finger and saw every traffic light, for as far as she could see, was green.

  This can’t be!

  The businessman shook his head. “I don’t think those hackers are done with us.”

  Tires screeched and someone screamed, a heart-wrenching crunch heard to their left.

  Oh no!

  15

  Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Chris Leroux stepped inside Operations Center 2, his team already manning their stations. All rose to their feet, concern written on their faces. He waved them down. “I’m okay, everyone. Thanks for your concern.” He gave a special look to Sonya Tong as she took her seat. “I understand Sonya filled my shoes quite capably. A special thanks to her.”

  Kane patted her on the shoulder and she flushed as clapping and a few cheers erupted.

  Leroux silenced them with a slightly raised hand. “Okay, here’s the situation. The Director has given us carte blanche to deal with the situation. We’re not worried about due process here, we’re worried about results. The Assembly has been on our radar before, and despite our warnings to them, they are back. For those of you in the room who are new, what I’m about to tell you is about as Top Secret as you can get. Repeat it outside of this room, and somebody downstairs will be reprinting your yearbook with your photo not in it. Understood?”

  Heads bobbed around the room, some eyes wide with fear.

  “Okay, here’s what we know. We know they have been around for at least a century, perhaps longer, perhaps much longer. We believe they are a cabal of about one dozen people, very well-connected, mostly industrialists. We were able to trace several of them a little over a year ago due to some sloppy email security by one of their new members. When we reached out to the Assembly, warning them off from their attempts to target myself and Kane, as well as our families, they did back off, but all of the members we had identified were later found dead. We now have no idea who they are, or where they are, beyond a single opening in the dark web.”

  Randy Child raised a hand slightly. “What’s their purpose?”

  “From what we can tell, they try to influence world events to their benefit. Whether that’s influencing foreign and domestic policies, industrial espionage, or whatever, they have been manipulating things for over a century. To be honest, we really don’t know that much about them. All we know is that they are dangerous, powerful, and have their fingers in everything. We know they were involved in trying to trigger a war with China, so we assume they are heavily involved in industries that would benefit from that. Bringing them down will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, but we need to try.”

  Child spun in his chair. “Where do we start?”

  “The only place we can. The dark web. Let’s see what we can find. Also, we know they must be up to something big. This 9-1-1 outage could be a coincidence, but it might not be. Remember, to them the world is a chessboard. Moving a pawn might seem insignificant to us, but tomorrow or next year, it could have significant consequences. We can’t let them succeed in whatever it is they’re up to, because for them to do what they did today, it must be big. And that can’t be good for our country, or the world.”

  16

  Port of Baltimore

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Nadja Katz stared at the laptop screen, a hint of a frown on her lips, something her subconscious told her was the typical human response to what she was watching.

  Yet she felt nothing.

  Almost nothing.

  There were emotions behind the façade she presented the world, but they were muted, subdued. The car accident that had killed her parents and injured her brain when she was younger, had left her…different. The years of abuse in the foster care system in Germany had led her to run away and fend for herself.

  It hadn’t been an emotional reaction, it was a logical one. Why would you stay where you were abused, physically, mentally, and sexually?

  That was when she had met Dietrich, an ex-East German Stasi spy, who despite reunification, was still busy. He had taught her the trade, taught her to kill, and she had excelled. When you don’t have emotions to get in the way, it’s easy to remain calm when about to make the kill—it reduced the mistakes caused by unchecked adrenaline or a cluttered mind.

  When Dietrich had died, she had taken over his business, and eventually found herself employed by the Assembly as he had been, one of their go-to problem solvers. That was until they had betrayed her, deciding she knew too much. She had witnessed the purge triggered by the CIA identifying some of their members, but had survived the Assembly’s attempt on her life.

  And had vowed revenge.

  It was an odd emotion, one she had actually taken some pleasure in—another odd emotion. But it was also a logical reaction. The Assembly wanted her dead, and with the power they had, they would eventually succeed.

  Unless she could eliminate them first—a tall order considering they had been around for generations, their rank of twelve ruling members replenished as needed, none knowing who those who came before them were. They rarely if ever met together, almost always meeting by video conference, the system configured so each could only see the faces of those they helped recruit.

  When she had been privy to these conversations, where she would never see any of the faces as she wasn’t an Assembly Council member, it always made her wonder who Number One was. He was the oldest recruit, though not necessarily the oldest in age. He may have been recruited when he was thirty or forty, others in their sixties. She hadn’t known who they were, except that they were powerful men, all controlling vast amounts of wealth, whether through corporations they owned or inherited, or positions they occupied.

  She did know they felt their role was altruistic. They were there to better humankind over the long term, so they placed little value on the individual. From what she had gathered, the Assembly’s current goal was one of renewal.

  They wanted a war.

  A global war.

  They wanted to shatter a system they considered broken, and from its ashes, create a stronger, more sustainable one. It was evident from overheard conversations that they felt Western governments had become weak, unable to deal with the threats Islam, the Chinese, and a resurgent Russia posed. Their belief was that if they could trigger the next war, the United States and her allies would be forced to make the decisions they refused to make today, and in the end, they would be victorious, triumphing over their enemies, with a form of government that would necessarily be more firm in its dealings with groups that were only concerned with themselves, and not the greater good. A government that would stamp out nuisances before they became problems. A government that would lead the world forward for generations allowing humankind to achieve a new golden age.

  All laudable goals, in her damaged mind, but how many had to die to achieve them? Today, surprisingly, that number had been low, and those that had died, had not been innocent. One of the mistakes the Assembly had made in failing to kill her, was not scrapping their entire communications network and intelligence infrastructure. She had intimate knowledge of everything, and changing passwords and IP addresses wasn’t enough.

  She knew where they kept the bodies.

  Literally.

  She knew where the safe houses were, where the holding cells were, where their secret communication sites were. And the Assembly had kept most of them, only closing down those they thought she knew about. What they hadn’t known was that she had been privy to far more than they realized, her mentor, Dietrich, having kept an extensive file on them, his dealings spanning decades.

  They hadn’t known this.

  This had allowed her to regain access to their communications, and when she had heard what they planned yesterday, she took action. Their ultimate goal wasn’t her concern. If they wiped out half the planet to save the other half, she didn’t care, though she’d prefer to be on the half that wasn’t wiped out. She had a sense she’d excel in a future that relied on the strength of the individual, at least for the short term.

  The goals of the Assembly weren’t her concern, though they would be to the governments they hoped to reshape, and with their help, she’d perhaps achieve her own selfish goal—the elimination of the Assembly, once and for all. It was a goal she couldn’t achieve alone, but with the help of the Americans, she just might succeed.

  Unfortunately, she was a wanted murderer, her work for the Assembly costing far too many lives on American soil to be forgiven, so she needed leverage that could assure her freedom.

  The corners of her mouth hinted at a smile as she watched the video feed on her laptop, her leverage arriving.

  Lee Fang struggled to control her breathing, this the first action she had seen in a while, her training lapsed. They had drugged her once they had reached the rooftop in the chopper, a large H and red cross on the landing pad suggesting it was a hospital. The spray that had hit her face had been pungent, and she recognized it as an aerosolized carfentanil, something she had used herself in her previous life. She had held her breath, avoiding the initial inhalation, but a swift punch to the gut had caused her to gasp in the second spray, and she had been out within seconds.

  She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but judging from the overwhelming bladder pressure and the taste in her mouth, it had been awhile, perhaps even a day.

  They must have kept me drugged.

  She was now in some sort of road vehicle, a hood over her head, her hands and feet bound with what she sensed were zip ties. They’d be easy enough to get out of if given the opportunity, though that was probably unlikely. Kane had put up one hell of a fight, eliminating the entire ground operation, but who could have expected a chopper with a sonic weapon? Without the proper gear, there was no way to defeat it, especially when taken by surprise. The only defense was to leave the area, not an option for the man she loved.

  I hope he’s okay.

  He had still been alive when the chopper took off, and she had no reason to believe there were any more hostiles on the ground to pose a challenge, which was an interesting bit of information she had only now begun to ponder. Why had they taken her, and why had they left him alive?

  The initial group that had kidnapped her had been Chinese. She had at first assumed her government had come to reclaim their asset, and didn’t want to kill any Americans in the process. But they were too Chinese. Chinese decoy, Chinese team members, Chinese weapons. If her government were after her, they wouldn’t have made it so obvious.

  Or so public.

  And those who had arrived in the chopper were white, and everything she had heard since her capture had been in Russian, a language she happened to be fluent in, though she wouldn’t let them know that tidbit yet. It wouldn’t be unheard of for her government to hire an outside team, yet if they had, why was the initial team all Chinese?

  It didn’t make sense. Something else was going on here, and for the moment, she had no clue what it was. For now, it appeared they wanted her alive, either to extract information from her, or to deliver her to someone who would later kill her. Her government would torture her for weeks or months, then either make a public spectacle of her, or more likely, as she had come under American protection, kill her quietly.

  Yet she still wasn’t convinced they were behind this. If they knew where she was, they could have grabbed her at any time. Why would they have done it during one of the rare occasions a trained-CIA operator was with her? Surely, the wiser, safer move would have been to wait until he was back on assignment. She’d have been one against a dozen with no hope of winning. Instead, they had taken her while with Kane, and left him alive. It suggested the team sent to abduct her had been waiting for a go-no go order, and it had arrived at a time not of their choosing.

 

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