Andrew Britton - The American

The SAC opened his mouth, but Maginnes was the first to speak. “I’ll run her out there, Brett. I need to talk to Larsen anyway.”

The younger man nodded his consent, and Naomi followed the HRT commander as he snatched up his M4 and opened the rear doors to the van. Plesse didn’t move from his seat.

Outside, she shivered and said, “God, it’s freezing out here.”

Maginnes, still wearing only the T-shirt on top, didn’t seem fazed by the icy wind. “We can probably scrounge something up for you before we head out there. There aren’t any vehicles on the perimeter, so we’re gonna be outside for a while.”

He pulled open the rear doors of one of the Suburbans and dug through a pile of equipment. After a few seconds, he stood up with a pack in his hand and a triumphant look on his face. “This belongs to the smallest guy on my team, which means his stuff is probably only eight sizes too large for you.”

“Where can I change?”

He was already looking around. “Other side of that tree, I guess.” He was pointing to a large oak about 20 feet away.

“There’s nowhere warm?”

“Nowhere that isn’t occupied. That’s fine, if you don’t mind twenty guys watching you strip.”

“I think I’ll pass,” she said with a laugh.

Ten minutes later they were moving slowly down Chamberlayne after passing the two VSP squad cars positioned at the end of the road. Naomi had changed out of her pantsuit into a pair of dark blue Columbia utility pants and a black half-zip pullover, under which she was wearing several long-sleeved shirts. Her feet looked slightly ridiculous in black combat boots two sizes too large. She’d had to put on three pairs of socks to make them fit; her feet were sweating a little bit in the warmth of the vehicle, but it was better than getting out of the truck and freezing to death twenty minutes later.

“I don’t want to take the truck any closer than we have to,” Maginnes said. The Suburban’s lights were doused, and he was navigating through a pair of night vision goggles clipped to a harness on his head. “We’re going to have to hoof it the rest of the way.”

They moved slowly through the darkened fields. Maginnes would stop every 15 feet or so, and then, without explanation, suddenly move off again. He called in his position periodically so they wouldn’t get shot by his own men on their approach. It wasn’t until nearly twenty minutes after leaving the comfort of the Suburban that they arrived on the edge of the perimeter.

Maginnes knelt in the dirt and adjusted his lip mike. Naomi slumped down next to him, already exhausted. “TOC, this is Magpie, radio check, over.”

“Magpie, TOC,” came Harrison’s voice over the earpiece. “Read you Lima Charlie, out.”

He called in several other radio checks. The last one was to his assault team leader, Chris Larsen. “Alpha One, Magpie. Give me a quick sit rep, over.”

“Mags, this is Alpha. All weapons and personnel are accounted for. Sierra team is running through their own list. Still haven’t spotted anything from our position, over.”

“I’m…” Maginnes glanced around quickly, “about 300 yards south of the nest, in the dip next to the third stand out from the road. Do you have eyes on, over?”

“Negative, Magpie, over.”

“Hold on a second, over.” Maginnes peeled off the AN/PVS-7 goggles and handed them back to Naomi, who was basically operating blind. The moon and stars overhead were obscured by leaden clouds heavy with snow, but when she slipped on the harness and turned the knob, the world around her suddenly reappeared in strange, unnatural colors. The house, which she hadn’t seen on the approach, now popped into view, pale against the darker green of the open air. From the stand of trees opposite the barn, she saw white lines streaking out of the woods toward the walls of the house.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

“You see them?”

She steadied the goggles against her face with her left hand and pointed with her right. “Over there.”

Maginnes stopped fiddling with his radio. He turned on the Aimpoint sight attached to his M4 and pointed the weapon toward the woodline. “Got me, Alpha One?”

“That’s a Roger.”

“How soon can you get here?”

A brief pause, and then his earpiece crackled. “Ten minutes, fifteen to be on the safe side.”

“Take your time, Chris. Magpie, out.”

The SAC was sipping coffee and talking with Plesse when Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 suddenly filled the air. He picked up his cell phone and frowned at the number before flipping it open. “Harrison.”

Plesse watched as the younger man’s face turned pale, then red with anger. “You’re shitting me! Does she know what’s at stake here? Well, what do I do now? Okay… okay, fine.”

He hung up a few seconds later and received an inquiring look. “The deputy director managed to wake up the most uncooperative judge in Virginia,” the SAC explained. “We won’t be getting a warrant, at least not fast enough to do us any good.”

“Fuck.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Plesse unconsciously echoed the other man’s words. “So what do we do now?”

Harrison didn’t say anything in response. After thirty seconds of internal debate, he sighed heavily and reached for the headset.

When Larsen arrived thirteen minutes after the commander’s call, he did it so quietly that Naomi almost jumped out of her skin. She was watching the house intently for any sign of life, with Maginnes lying prone at her side, when a low whistle sounded a few feet to her rear. She spun around, and then realized that Maginnes hadn’t reacted at all.

“I heard you coming a mile away, Chris.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Naomi watched in amazement as a figure rose up from the ground before her.

“Still two minutes under time, though.”

Maginnes smiled reluctantly. “Pop a few chem lights, will you? By the way, this is Naomi Kharmai. She’s joining us from the Agency.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Naomi nodded in return and watched as Larsen reached into his pack and retrieved several small plastic tubes. He bent each one until the glass vials broke inside and the chemicals mixed. When he shook them and tossed them onto the ground, an area perhaps 5 feet in diameter was illuminated by a soft blue glow.

Larsen was maybe a few years older than she, with a narrow face and blond hair trimmed close to the scalp. His features were blurred by green-and-brown camo, but she noticed that his dark brown eyes were carefully appraising her. She watched as he called his team members to make sure the chem lights weren’t visible from their position. Then he pulled a topographic map out of his pack.

The HRT commander grabbed a few rocks and placed them on each corner of the large sheet of paper. “Let’s see what you got.”

Larsen’s finger hovered over the myriad of light brown contour lines. “I have one team here,” he said, pointing to an area of heavy vegetation on the north side of the house. “I’m going in with them, if it comes to that. I gave the second team to Aguilar. He’s across the road to the west. That was a problem… I wanted someone on the front door, but there’s no cover and they have to cross about 200 feet of open space before entry.”

“We’ll work around it,” Maginnes said. “What about the open-air option?”

Larsen pulled a grease pencil out of a loop on his flak vest and used it to mark several locations on the map. “Grierson stacked most of the snipers next to my second team of assaulters, because that’s where most of the windows are facing. We’ve been sitting out here for hours, Al. I went over the sectors of fire and moved everyone accordingly. Then we checked it again and came up golden. My people know where they can and can’t shoot. Oh, and one other thing: Jones is a couple hundred yards up the way with his. 50. If, by some miracle, the subject manages to get to his vehicle, Jonesy can easily punch one through the block at that distance.”