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Prologue
00:33 Zulu Time—Somewhere in the desert outside of DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

“Finish, khalas,” he heard a man say in Arabic. “It’s after 4 a.m. and it will be light soon.”
There it was again—talking. In Arabic.
His left eye was swollen shut. He tried to focus his right eye as he lay in the warm sand. He couldn’t see past the glare of the lantern which hung on a pole stuck in the sand beside him. His right eye winced shut when the hard boot cracked another of his ribs. Grains of sand burned his skin like a lit cigarette as they hit his open wounds. Only the release of a breath numbed the pain. A bead of sweat dripped onto his dry tongue, stinging his split, purpled lips on the way down. He licked them anyway.
He could hear no sounds from the brightly lit city of Dubai here in the dark desert. No honking horns or colorfully lit buildings typical of the steel and concrete metropolis. There was no refuge here, no friends in the desert. He could only see silhouettes of men reflecting off the sand, and their boots. Even falling in and out of consciousness, he could recognize military-issued special ops boots anywhere. He tried to focus. The talking grew louder, shouting now; he had to think.
Just move, he ordered himself. Now.  
He moved his hands ever so slightly. Nothing. They were stuck together at the wrists, bound tight. He couldn’t feel his legs—or could he? He shifted, as if to shiver. The sharp crystals of sand felt like razors against his raw skin. He was naked. His groin ached, but he couldn’t recall why. Then a moment of hope: His legs were not bound.
He searched for cognition.
Move. Survive …
But it was too late. Strong hands gripped his ankles, pulling his body fast; the sharp sand granules ripped his skin. His teeth jarred together each time his chin hit a rock. The large man hauling him across the desert's merciless landscape stopped, and before he could figure out what was happening, he was flipped onto his back. His hands dug hard into the sand underneath him. Thick fingers smelling of gasoline pried open his mouth. He choked as a mitt-full of sand was shoved into his mouth and down his throat.
“We must end this,” another man said in Arabic.
He understood Arabic and recognized this man’s voice.
Bastard.
He needed to survive. He coughed and spat, trying to breathe, gagging. A bright light swiveled closer and glared into his one open eye, blinding him. For a second, he thought he heard a whisper.
Whoosh! The smell of gasoline sizzled his nostrils. Then the pain began to soften as the light faded into blackness.



Chapter One
11:12 Zulu Time—CATALINA MOUNTAINS, TUCSON, ARIZONA.  One week earlier.

Every successful covert operation has four vital elements. Or so the saying goes in most military organizations.
Shoot. Move. Communicate. Survive.
Jill Oliver sighed. Survive. She could do the other three easily. The last one? Well, that was the game, wasn't it?
The soft rumble of the hemi in the Dodge Charger kept Jill company as she raced along the highway. The clock on the dashboard read 04:12. Blackness stretched across the early morning sky, speckled with stars. Pretty soon, dawn would flow over the east mountains like bright lava. Early mornings were part of her job. Not something she cherished about her duties as a US Marshall—but there it was.
Shoot. Move. Communicate.
Survive.
As a terrorist profiler for the Special Operations Group, a division of the US Marshall Service, Jill normally exuded self-confidence. Her long, jet-black hair hung in a tight ponytail, barely touching her lean, muscular shoulders as she swerved the car down the mountain road. But even with the hot, black coffee in her stomach working to awaken her fully, she wasn't feeling particularly confident. Something felt wrong.
Something about her latest case gnawed at her. It was a critical case. The welfare of what was known as the world’s strongest superpower, the U.S., was at stake—even more so than what had been reported to the public. She knew the truth.
She had been working on the case for some time now. Today, there finally seemed to be a breakthrough. And Jill didn’t mind being summoned to Virginia in the middle of the dark night, because lately her mind would not let her rest. She had seen proof that Matta Al Jazerra, Al Qaeda’s new number one, had purchased uranium at a bargain basement price of $12 million. She’d seen the recent intel report sighting Matta in Brazil. It was all too close to home for her liking, given what else she knew.
It wasn’t yet in the news that a former Soviet official, now leader of the Chechen clan on Manhattan Island, had been arrested after a small stockpile of tactical nuclear devices were found buried in a New York state junkyard he owned. This proved what the Chief of Military Research and Development had stated in a high-security brief—that nuclear devices had been smuggled into the U.S. and buried at several locations on U.S. soil. The fact that Al Qaeda and a group of Chechens were working together was even more worrisome.
The pile of folders stacked on the front seat seethed with papers pushing past its limits. Jill was dressed in her usual blue windbreaker with US MARSHALL branded in large, bright yellow letters on the back. Black fatigues hugged her lean quads as her foot pushed ever so slightly, vibrating the 450 horsepower through her body. Jill loved playing with the fierce power of the bright red car.
Her mobile phone vibrated, then chirped, on the black console. “Oliver here,” she snapped into the phone, navigating toward the streetlights in the distance.
“How far away are you?” Tom Walker, her colleague,  commanded, as if he were her boss.
“’Bout twenty minutes,” Jill replied.
“The suspects have been apprehended—two from Yemen and one from Algeria. They fit the profile you wrote and are now headed to Guantanamo Bay. They need you in Virginia to be part of the satellite link. You need to watch the interrogation and determine if these are the men you wrote about in your profile.”
Tom knew that Jill knew all of this, but clearly he was posturing to appear important to someone who must be listening in. The politics Jill thought she had left behind at the FBI in Virginia were starting to seep into her current agency … and it was beginning to piss her off.
Tom wanted her job and expected to get her job. He thought that Jill being the only successful female applicant in the missile escort program for SOG was simply a political move. Even after she proved herself during the extensive specialized training in physical tactics, hand-to-hand combat, and weaponry, he still anticipated being the lead profiler for the unit. He strutted around like a stunted rooster during training, doubting that she would meet the rigorous standards of physical and mental ability. But she had proved him wrong—and he had been nipping at her heels like an angry little Chihuahua ever since.
Jill ended the conversation. The phone clunked as she dropped it onto the black console, and she allowed herself the luxury of enjoying the beauty of Tucson as she drove.
David loves Tucson.
David.
An uneasy feeling pricked Jill's gut. David Brown, a freelance war correspondent for Time Magazine, and more important, to her at least, her new husband. He was often away for long periods of time. But she had not heard from him in more than five days.
Jill’s mind struggled to choose between thinking about David or about national security, both battled for her attention. David’s lack of communication had begun to fuel an unsettling feeling that something was not quite right. She dismissed her intuition and blamed her crime-oriented work for invading her home life. Still, her intuition had always been exceptional—something her Navajo grandmother said was natural.
Jill had learned to harness the gift early in her career. She called it “being in the tunnels.” It was proven in her first years at the FBI, when the CIA had assisted in setting up an RV—remote viewing—department. Jill was one of the first, and most talented viewers in the program and was a natural. During the Iran hostage crisis, Jill was able to describe the exact location where hostages were being held without ever being physically there.