R Patterson - The Shadow Hunter

“You really want to come all this way with me?” Tyson asked.

“I didn’t get out, did I?”

“Nor did you shut up.”

“No SEAL left behind, remember?” Hawk said.

“Well, I can guarantee if you make it out of Russia alive, you won’t be bringing me with you.”

“Please help me understand,” Hawk said. “And I don’t care if it puts me in danger. If there’s someone with that much power, I want to know about it so they can be addressed properly.”

“Hold on,” Tyson said before going silent for the next few minutes. Eventually, he pulled onto the side of the road and told Hawk to get into the passenger seat.

Hawk sat up and furrowed his brow. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“We’re literally in the middle of Siberia, and there aren’t any cameras for hundreds of miles. Not to mention, this drive is going to take us two days. If I’m going to tell you everything, you should at least be up here to keep me company.”

“Fair enough,” Hawk said before he hustled out of the back and into the front.

Once Hawk was buckled in, Tyson returned to the road. He took a deep breath before he began.

“Have you ever heard of The Alliance?” Tyson asked.

Hawk pursed his lips and stared out at the snow-covered landscape. “I can’t say that I have.”

“Neither had I until I was working on a little reconnaissance project for my commander,” Hawk asked.

“Which one?”

Tyson sighed. “I’d rather not say at this point. But I don’t think you know him. Anyway, when I found out some information about The Alliance, I went to him with it. He told me to forget that I ever saw it.”

“And that didn’t fly for you, did it?” Hawk asked.

Tyson resolutely shook his head. “That only fueled my curiosity. Why wouldn’t he want me looking further into The Alliance? And who comprised this organization? That’s where I started.”

“So how’d you end up here?” Hawk asked. “And by here , I mean exiled from your family.”

“Eventually, I discovered there’s a bureaucratic cabal running things. The president is just a figurehead. No matter how much Norris thinks he’s in charge, he’s little more than a puppet, his strings pulled by far more powerful men—and he’s not even aware of it. And that put my entire family in danger.”

“But why hide out here? Why fake your death?”

“Because of what I know,” Tyson explained. “They tried to kill me twice, and I made their assassins disappear. After the second attempt, I realized there wouldn’t be a third and my whole family was at risk. So, I asked for an assignment in Russia deep behind enemy lines, but I had no intention of ever fulfilling it. I just needed to get out of there and die so my family could be safe. Now that I’m dead, they’re safe. There’s no reason to mess with them.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Look, I know this might be frustrating for you right now, but I know you. And you’ll end up in the same place I am in six months if you do what I think you’ll do with all this information. It’s just best that you don’t know, especially since you can’t do anything about it.”

Hawk shrugged. “I’m more than capable of doing something about it. If it’s someone who needs to be eliminated for the sake of the country, I won’t hesitate to do it.”

“I appreciate your patriotism, but this isn’t just about one man. It’d be an endless game of whack-a-mole against well-connected people with deep pockets. It’d be like charging alone into an army of a thousand men like the Vikings of old with nothing but your sword. They’d surround you and gut you before you had a chance to even nick one of them with your blade.”

“This sounds like a challenge,” Hawk said with a grin.

“Don’t even think about it,” Tyson said, his tone measured and direct. “This isn’t a joke.”

For the next hour, they discussed their wives and kids as well as reminisced about their time serving together as Navy SEALs.

Tyson drove his car down into a desolate valley, surrounded by barren rock faces on both sides. As they did, an SUV roared up behind them.

“What the hell?” Tyson asked, his eyes widening.

Hawk turned around to see the vehicle closing fast. Tyson stomped on the accelerator, but the engine couldn’t catch fast enough to avoid a collision. The trailing SUV bumped Tyson’s car, nudging it forward.

“What is this all about?” Tyson asked. “Did you see me cut someone off a ways back?”

Hawk shook his head and glanced again at the vehicle. One of the men looked familiar to him.

“I’ve hardly seen a dozen cars since we started,” Hawk said. “But I think I know what this is about.”

“Hawwwk,” Tyson said, glaring at his passenger, “what are you not telling me?”

Los Angeles

MORGAN MAY TAPPED a pen on her desk as she read Mia’s report on Hawk’s progress with Tyson. He’d sent her a text earlier reporting that he’d connected with Tyson and was joining him on a mission to North Korea for the Russians. Having Hawk team up with Tyson to help out the Russians wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she asked him to lead the operation. Her instinct was to pull the plug and order him back, but she’d been warned by her uncle that Hawk would often go off script—and that she wouldn’t be able to argue with the results. Letting him roam wild in Siberia made her nervous, but she’d learned long ago that her uncle J.D. was a wise voice worth listening to.

She turned her attention to a few news sites she scanned every day, hunting for critical information that’s in plain view, but the public doesn’t understand the implications of it. Sometimes it’d be a CEO abruptly retiring or a company selling off to a competitor. But today it was a suicide, one committed by Victor Edgefield. She hadn’t been deeply involved with the case, only getting briefed when Mallory Kauffman requested Alex’s help and permitted it. But the leak had stirred Morgan’s curiosity, prompting her to dive headlong into the developing situation.

Morgan cursed her breath, realizing what Edgefield’s death meant. In all likelihood, they’d lost their opportunity to find out who he was working for. If someone had broken into his home and murdered him, staging the scene to appear as a suicide, there wouldn’t be a shred of electronics left. Someone that professional would wipe all the electronics and local law enforcement wouldn’t be the wiser. Not that Morgan wanted them digging any deeper into the case. Having to fight jurisdiction battles would only create a mess.

The short article in The Washington Post recounted that Edgefield had been a civil servant his whole life, working with the CIA before spending the latter part of his career with the U.S. State Department. It was short and sweet, sure not to attract any unwarranted attention. But it definitely sent a message to those who knew what was going on. The president’s attempt to use Edgefield to identify who was gleaning all this intel from him had failed miserably. Instead of questioning Edgefield and trying to at least get him to talk, they had nothing to go on.

Morgan dialed Mallory at the NSA to find out anything else regarding Edgefield’s death.

“I just saw,” Morgan said.

“Yeah, it’s a devastating blow to the investigation,” Mallory said. “The president used a cabinet meeting to ensure that the information in the cable that came across Edgefield’s desk would be verified by everyone present. But none of that matters now because it’s quite evident that whoever was running Edgefield figured out he was either a pawn or playing them. Either way, they wanted to put an end to it.”