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  He made sure to keep his distance, and he waited until the kid was gone before he tossed his sunglasses into the van. He didn’t even want a cursory description to be given to the police.

  But he needed to make sure that no children were inside the building. That was the most important thing to him. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for a mission, but killing children had always been off-limits. Maybe that was why the squatter camp massacre had damaged him so deeply.

  He saw the faces of those poor children as he cut off their heads. His actions were born of mercy, but they didn’t understand that. The fear in their eyes haunted him like nothing he’d ever done in the past. He’d always been a predator, but never a monster. Now he could no longer stand by that claim.

  His hands twitched, and his whole body felt cold despite the heat. Tears filled his eyes.

  He thought of his own little girl, Kianga. His sunshine. As he watched the family walk away, he thought of times he had spent with her. Taking her into Kruger National Park on safari trips to see the elephants, the lions, and the bevy of other wildlife. He had never told her that the lions had killed her grandmother, but he had made sure that she feared and respected the beasts.

  He saw Kianga in little pink pajamas covered with the faces of kittens as they played hide-and-seek inside their sprawling compound, which was strangely close to the spot where he and Zarina had been rescued as children. Why he would ever want to live so close to that place, he had no idea. But it was home, and all he wanted in that moment was to get back in the van and return to the curly-haired girl in the pink pajamas.

  A strange longing swept over him, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he was a good father. He certainly provided for his family. Kianga wanted for nothing. She attended the best schools, and he had hidden away enough money to protect and care for her for the rest of her life. He loved her and had made sure that she knew it. But was that enough?

  Wiping away the tears, he internally screamed at himself. What was he doing? He had never given thought to Kianga while on a mission. Her father was Idris, the man who tucked her in and kissed her forehead and knew all of her little tickle spots. Her father was not Kruger, and so Kruger didn’t think about her. But with the lines blurred, he had lost his center and was adrift in a sea of uncertainty and doubt.

  Despite any trepidation, he had to keep up his act for a bit longer. Whatever was left of Kruger would have to prop Idris up long enough to do what was necessary.

  He looked to Sparks and the Doc, who were readying themselves on the other side of the van. His assigned code name for the mission was Mr. K. His wife enjoyed assigning the code names, and he enjoyed indulging her.

  Although he had never pulled a job with either of these people, he wasn’t concerned. The Doc had specialized knowledge, and Sparks—a thirty-something American nobody named Lamar Franklin whom he had recruited as extra muscle—would serve his purposes perfectly as well.

  Kruger had mapped out every element of the plan; every foreseeable circumstance had been accounted for. Although, he had been around the block enough times to know that unforeseeable obstacles would arise. When that happened, he would crush them. Not out of anger or insanity or bloodlust. In truth, he was indifferent about hurting people, or at least he used to be. But the mission always came first. That was how he succeeded where other men failed. Because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for money.

  At least, that’s what he had always believed. He had never been haunted by things he had done, until now.

  He gave a nod of approval to Sparks and the Doc. It was time. They had already received confirmation that the manager was on the premises, and the collateral damage and number of probable hostages was at a manageable level, which meant no families.

  They had positioned the van out of range of all the cameras, but once they stepped another five feet toward the doors of the private vault company, they would be leaving a digital record for the police to follow later. They were ready for this. Each of them pulled down a ski mask and moved toward the entrance.

  The business’s name was displayed prominently in five-foot blue letters on the face of the building and again in ten-foot letters on a tall double-sided sign.

  GoBox.

  Over the tagline: Keeping your valuables safe, secure, and close at hand!

  Kruger smiled. He would have his hand on those valuables very soon. But he hadn’t been hired to steal from GoBox—this private vault company—or its patrons. The valuables he sought belonged to the United States government.

  The three of them moved across the parking lot in a tight formation. The blacktop smelled like a tar pit. The heat didn’t bother Kruger. He was used to living out in the bush in worse heat than this. It was the urban smells that bothered him. The scent of mankind’s rape of the natural world and the perversion of Earth’s wonder and beauty. This was what bothered Kruger. He was more at home in a world where predators wore manes of tawny golden hair instead of Italian suits.

  But predators always followed their prey, which meant Kruger needed to go where the money was. Especially under the present circumstances where Kruger needed to quickly steal enough money to retire for good. And if he intended to keep his beautiful wife in pearls for the rest of her life, he would need to hunt down and walk away with a large amount of cash without becoming the hunted.

  And today, on this morning, this GoBox vault company was where a whole hell of a lot of money was hiding.

  Chapter 5

  This was not at all what US Army Corporal Lamar Franklin had expected to return home to. He had signed up for the military to avoid having to do things like this, but here he was, just like ten percent of US veterans, unemployed. After four years of guarding sand, he had returned home to an empty house and a now ex-wife who had run off with a wannabe rapper and all of their savings. Franklin’s gran-mama had always said that he came from the short end of the gene pool. He supposed he had done nothing with his life to prove her wrong.

  He checked his M4A1 assault rifle.

  He knew the plan.

  Mr. K would shoot out all the cameras, and Franklin—or Sparks, as was his code name for this operation—would handle the armed security guard in the corner. Trying to treat this like any other mission, he followed the same routine he always did before entering battle. He held his St. Michael Army pendant and prayed, May I fulfill my duty with courage. If death should overtake me on this field, grant that I die in the state of grace, forgive me all my sins, those I have forgotten and those I recall now: grant me the grace of perfect contrition.

  Then Franklin reached the building’s front doors, which were glass monstrosities accented with dark wood grains. He could already see a portion of the building’s lobby. It looked like most other upscale banks he had been in, but GoBox was far from a normal bank.

  Kruger went in first. The big man raised his tactical shotgun and ventilated the suspended ceiling with several volleys of lead meant to not only get everyone’s attention, but also disable all the lobby’s security cameras.

  The Doc carried a big sawed-off shotgun, but the Doc didn’t shoot. The Doc wasn’t there to shoot, even Franklin knew that much. He just had no idea why someone like the Doc would be involved in this robbery. But if the payday was half as large as Kruger had promised, then he didn’t care if the Doc was there to steal nuclear launch codes. A check with enough zeros could make a poor Catholic kid from Oakland break just about any commandment.

  As soon as Franklin breached the door, he had the M4 up and ready and trained on the security guard in the far right corner. Of course, Franklin didn’t know what he would do if the guard resisted. He wasn’t going to kill some perfectly innocent nobody who was probably making twelve fifty an hour.

  Luckily, Franklin was able to remind the forty-something beer-gutted white dude that he was outgunned and underpaid with only a short three-round burst into the wall beside him. The guard raised his hands, and Franklin took the gun from the man’s holster. />
  Kruger yelled, “Everyone stands up tall and raises their hands up high and does not move! Or everyone dies!”

  Some of them raised their hands, but others were paralyzed by fear and shock. He shouted, “Do it now!”

  Franklin grabbed the fat, old rent-a-cop by the shoulder and shoved him over to the center of the room with the others.

  They had studied the building’s layout extensively. As soon as they walked through the front doors of GoBox, the reception desk sat right in the center. It was white marble and was one part reception desk and one part display counter, which showed off the different types of private boxes and vaults the company offered. They knew there was always one-armed security guard up front, with two more in the back.

  To the left of reception was a small area separated off by a wooden railing, like the audience section of a courtroom. Behind the railing sat four desks. The whole place smelled of cucumbers and citrus, which seemed somehow pretentious to Franklin, like normal air wasn’t good enough for these people. Two of the desks were now empty, and two were occupied by a dark-skinned twenty-something beauty and a plump woman with short white hair. They both wore khaki pants and blue button-down shirts sporting the company’s logo. This was what GoBox called the Concierge Area, where new customers would go to discuss the offerings at GoBox and get signed up.

  Kruger jammed the shotgun in the younger woman’s face and asked, “Have either of you touched the silent alarm?”

  The two terrified women both shook their heads in a forceful negative and then sat there like wide-eyed statues with their hands high in the air. They looked like they were reluctant to breathe or blink for fear of that being their final act.

  “Well, go on and activate the alarm then,” Kruger said. “We wouldn’t want the police to be late for the party.”

  Chapter 6

  Nic Juliano had thought he was done with army green after eight years divided between the military police and the explosive ordnance disposal team. But when he’d come back to the States and was blacklisted by Las Vegas SWAT, he’d settled for army green again. The standard fatigues and tactical gear for Henderson SWAT had been acquired from Department of Defense surplus and were a dark green camouflage, which went well with their army green ballistic helmets. The only part of the uniform that was black was the body armor, which said Police across the front in bold white letters. Even the armored vehicle he was riding in was DOD surplus and army green, but he couldn’t complain. The army had been good to him. Henderson Police Department had been good to him. Still, he yearned to put on the black uniform of the FBI’s SWAT team and then, one day, the uniform of their elite Hostage Rescue Team.

  Nic closed his eyes and focused his mind on the task at hand. His own aspirations were of little concern to him at the moment. Right now, all that was important was rescuing the hostage and keeping his guys safe while doing it.

  The team was normally packed into the transport like sardines, but today they were three men short, which really opened up some leg room. He looked around at his brothers, five of them huddled together knee to knee in the back of the BearCat armored transport, with one more brother and a sister riding in the cab up front.

  He yelled up to the driver, “ETA?”

  “Five minutes.”

  Nic leaned in and said, “Strom, give me a full sitrep.”

  Hank Stromberg, their newest team member, was a big, blond farm boy from Iowa. He looked like he could bench press a Cadillac. Over the roar of the engine and the road, the rookie said, “A 911 call came in that a woman and her husband had got in a fight three days ago, and he locked her in a closet and has been holding her prisoner there ever since. She managed to snag her phone and call 911. She’s still in the closet. The husband is a bit of a survivalist type and has a lot of guns registered to him, but he doesn’t have anything significant on his rap sheet.”

  Nic knew that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It was a bit counterintuitive, but usually the people with the longest criminal records came along with the least amount of necessary force. Because they had already been through the system and had beat it. It was the people with clean records and a strong desire to stay out of prison, no matter the cost—those were the people who worried Nic.

  “What about the house?” Nic said.

  “It’s a ranch style,” one of the other officer’s replied. “One level. No basement. Should be pretty straightforward.”

  “Do we know who built the house? Is it part of a subdivision?”

  “It’s out in one of those crappy little housing developments,” Strom said.

  “We may be able to get a floor plan right from the company’s website or see if they have tours of other available units nearby.”

  “They try to alter them more now than they used to though. Build to fit, you know.”

  “Is the hostage still on the phone?”

  “No, they think the suspect may have figured out that she had the phone. But they’re not sure.”

  “Which means he may be expecting us,” Nic said. “Okay, Strom and I will approach the house alone and on foot, just to do some recon and maybe toss in a robot if we have an open opportunity. The rest of you maintain a perimeter with the uniforms. I want to have a breaching plan in place before the Sergeant arrives on scene. Now, bring it in, boys.”

  Everyone stuck their fists together and hung their heads.

  “Take care of each other out there,” Nic said. “Concentrate, focus. Who’s singing it with me?”

  Strom shook his head. “It’s my turn, but I’m not doing it.”

  “You have to, or you’ll jinx the whole damn thing. Now … If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me …”

  Stromberg rolled his eyes. “Time after time.”

  “You have to sing, rookie. If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting!”

  Strom’s big Nordic features cracked into a smile, unable to maintain his composure another second. In a surprisingly pleasant baritone, Strom sang, “Time after time.”

  Nic said, “Very nice! Remember, you watch the six of the guy next to you, and he’ll watch yours. You do that, and we go home safe and happy. Time after time.”

  He ended with a quick prayer, and a moment later, the BearCat pulled up to the outer perimeter of uniformed police officers already on scene. The team hopped down from the armored transport and immediately went to work.

  Chapter 7

  The 911 call had originated from inside one of a hundred identical rental homes that were elbowing out the Creosote bush and Jimson weed on the outskirts of Henderson. As Nic and Strom approached the rows of tightly packed ranch-style homes, there were plenty of opportunities for cover. The problem wouldn’t be approaching the house without being seen. The problem was going to be sneaking past all of the neighbors without them making a fuss or—what happened most often—warning the person they were trying to reconnoiter.

  They had stripped off some of their gear and helmets and had then covered up their uniforms with tear-away clothing that they used in certain clandestine infiltration missions. The goal was to blend in enough to reach the target residence without being identified as police. That pretty much meant not being seen at all, since some people seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to spotting cops.

  When Nic graduated from the police academy, his Uncle Romeo had told him that he smelled like a cop now, like Nic had been defiled by his choice of profession. Uncle Romeo had always been notorious for sniffing out police officers, an ability that almost seemed ingrained at birth for some people. Especially those who grew up in the world of organized crime.

  Luckily, there were some alleys and back paths they could stick to. The kid took point and led them up and over a block to the rear of the suspect’s home. All they had to do was cross over a fence and they would be staring at the target house’s back door.

  “Drop in the Throwbot,” Nic said. “I’ll set up over by the dumpster.”

  The Throwbot XT was a tactica
l micro robot that looked like a toilet paper roll with a flywheel attached to each end. Nic would be able to steer the robot and see video and audio using a control unit the size of a handheld radio. Weighing just one pound, the Throwbot could be thrown up to 120 feet, and it moved with virtually no sound.

  Stromberg hopped the fence and headed for one of the rear windows of the target residence. Nic followed after the big Viking but squatted down at an opposite corner of the house beside a large dumpster. Nic considered the time: 10:11. The garbage man would have already made his appearance, and it was unlikely for anyone to be taking their trash outside right at that moment, but Nic lived by Murphy’s Law … whatever could happen, would.

  He could barely see Strom as the big, blond operator cut out a small section of glass from one of the bedroom windows and, after checking for hostiles with a snake cam, tossed in the tiny remote-controlled robot.

  The house was built from tan stucco with a brown adobe tile roof. It was long and narrow with a garage jammed onto the front.

  Squatting beside the dumpster, Nic readied the control unit and waited for the robot to be in place. Within a few seconds, he had an audio and video feed coming from inside the house. The bedroom was dark, so he switched to the Throwbot’s thermal camera.

  He steered the tiny machine around the bedroom’s corner and down a hallway where he could see a small kitchen and dining room combination. And there, standing in the dining room to the side of the rear sliding glass door, was their shooter. He held a twelve-gauge shotgun at the ready.

  Nic panned the Throwbot to the right. From there, he could see the sliding glass door, a curtain blocking the view from the outside.

  The only problem was that a nearby streetlight illuminated the backyard in such a way that anyone standing in front of the curtain on the outside would cast an obvious silhouette.

  And apparently Stromberg was walking directly in front of the sliding glass door. Even on the small grainy image displayed on the control unit, Nic could see Strom’s outline clear as day.