“They might be gone for now,” Shahin whispered. But they will come back to take these people captive. Either way, we must run while we can.”
    He ducked back when Safia looked their way. Then he heard her soft voice say, “Please, help me. They’ve killed my father, and they will kill me and all of us.”
    Shahin motioned to Habigh and they moved through the door toward the downed man, ignoring the girl’s pleas. With one swift motion, Shahin reached the prone body and grabbed a small gun and a knife that showed from beneath the man’s tunic. He handed the gun to Habigh.
    They had the good fortune of a clear path through the compound until they arrived at a door to a rear inner wall and came face to face with a man, who, taken by surprise lifted his rifle to shoot. Shahin put to use the lessons he had learned in the training camp in Iraq. In a flash he blocked aside the rifle barrel with his left forearm, and lunged forward with his right hand, plunging the knife to the hilt into the guard’s left eye and into his brain. He did not like killing one of Bin Laden’s own men, but it had to be done. The fool was about to give them away.
    Shahin withdrew the knife, wiped it on the man’s shirt, and he and Habigh slid out the back side of the compound undetected. There was still a great deal of commotion in the central and far side of the compound; but if there were any guards, either local or enemy, stationed in their vicinity, they were no longer visible.
    A battered rope had tangled in the barbed wire atop the walls, and after jumping several times, Shahin grabbed it and pulled it toward them. He and Habigh wasted no time securing their belongings to their backs. Then they hoisted themselves up and over to safety.
    Together they slunk along in the shadows until Shahin saw a slight movement ahead of them. He flattened himself to the ground, as did Habigh. To their horror, a large dog appeared at the far corner of the compound. He wore what appeared to be a military pack across his back, and he was sniffing along the outer perimeter, intent on his job of finding hidden humans.
    Shahin could feel the hairs on the back of his neck bristle at the thought of being attacked by this large, undoubtedly well-trained military animal.
    They stayed frozen in place hoping the breeze was in their favor. Then a voice further away called, “Come on, Cairo! Come on, boy, let’s get out of here.”
    The two men crawled about twenty feet, then Shahin lifted a large square board revealing a deep jagged hole in the ground.
    “Come, only a few know of this tunnel. It will lead us to a safe place not far from here.”

CHAPTER ONE

Gold Hill, Colorado

    Late Christmas Eve, and alone with his cat, Drexel Rose made a mental note, never dump a girlfriend two weeks before the holidays.
    He poured himself a cup of espresso-strength java from a thermos he kept on his desk, sank into his chair in front of the computer and logged into the Internet Chess Club, ignoring a late breaking newsflash about some bombing in New York City.
    Damned terrorists don’t let up, he thought. They’ve been pounding at us ever since we took out Bin Laden.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a challenge from an advanced player who led Drex into the opening moves of the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense. Two moves later the chessboard image on his screen melted into the snowy hair and pale face of Oliver Hawke, his friend and boss.
    “Merry Christmas, Drex.”
    “What the hell! Ollie, do you know how many points you just cost me?”
    “It’s two in the morning and you’re playing chess?” Oliver chided.
    “Eleven-fifty Mountain Time to me, friend. Santa’s come and gone on the East Coast, I take it?” Drex inquired.
    “You could say that. He did a few flybys and delivered some bombs. You’ll be interested in them, that’s why I’m speaking to you first.” Hawke paused for a moment. “This is serious, Drex.”
    “Tell it to someone who cares,” he replied, as he tapped several keys in an effort to pull his chess game back up on the screen.
    “You’ll care, trust me; but not here. Log into ESD’s system, your password is still good.”
    Drex sighed and realized his chess playing was over for the night; but he still wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved with whatever was yanking Hawke’s chain. He said he didn’t care anymore, and he meant it. Those assholes could go screw themselves.
    But still—I’ve been an agent for so many years.
    He placed his hands on the keyboard, pulled them off, fiddled with his coffee cup, leaned back in his chair, tapped a pencil, and finally came to a decision.
    Well, it’s not like Santa’s gonna be dropping down my chimney anytime soon, he thought. He typed in a string of codes. The system rebooted and crawled behind the nuclear strength firewall of a computer in Langley, Virginia, built by a group of brainiacs deep within the confines of the CIA’s Enemy Surveillance Department (ESD). Ollie benevolently smiled down at him from a holograph at the top of the screen. Visually, he could pass for a saint, but Drex knew better. They went back many years.
    “Okay, Christmas-angel-of-no-mercy, let’s have it.”
    Ollie’s face became grim, as he referred to his notes.
    “At o-one hours, Eastern Time, the Christmas tree in the center of the Quincy Market in Boston exploded, launching an onslaught of small missiles toward Faneuil Hall. A vagrant rocket altered course and unceremoniously plunked into the ocean about fifty feet off the bow of Old Ironsides.”
    “Terrific. You called me because someone’s having one hell of a Tea Party—one that I’m not a part of, I might add. No…instead, I am sitting here wondering why I am wasting perfectly good electrons chatting with you, Ollie.”
    “I’m not done. An hour after the events in Massachusetts, a bomb blew the tip off the Empire State Building. Then a missile, believed to be a SMAW MK153 or equivalent, dove into the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, on target, I might add. Not long after that the Statue of Liberty went PMS, when a passing boat launched a missile sending it up her billowing skirts and out her rear end. It wasn’t pretty.”
    Drex frowned. MK153 shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons were no toys. How do these people come up with this shit? He lifted the coffee cup to his lips. It had settled into a tepid pool of muck. It’s none of my business. It’s none of my damned business!
    He reached behind a book and grabbed a pint bottle. Thinning the coffee with whiskey, he raised the cup and took a sip. He allowed curiosity to get the better of him.
    “All right,” he finally said. “Those places are huge. They are historic icons, for Christ’s sake. So why are they being blown away?”
    Ollie paused deep in thought, while Drex ran his fingers through his crop of hair—a habit he’d acquired since allowing it to grow longer than what he had labeled as his bald-to-the-wall style of last year.
    Six months ago he was still on the ESD payroll until a mission-gone-wrong put him on…how did they put it…on an extended leave-of-absence. It also landed him in the hospital where he’d undergone surgery, which caused him to be stuck at his place in Colorado.
    The silence dragged on. The two agents stared at each other through the secured waves of cyber space. Drex wondered what Miller would have to say. ESD had become the secret weapon of U.S. President Harold Miller, beginning with his first term in office. The POTUS wanted a surveillance department that went beyond the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.
    Miller and one TS (Top Secret) agent from each of the major government agencies; the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security, built within the CIA’s JOC (Joint Operations Center) a sub-JOC. They gave it the title Enemy Surveillance Division. This had covertly survived the various reorganizations that had seen many of the CIA’s counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and nuclear proliferation tasks relegated to other agencies.
    With the skill and assistance of several top ranking intelligence-oriented congressmen, ESD had grown stronger. It had set out to establish an elite cadre of people highly skilled in human intelligence and tactical surveillance. They could seamlessly infiltrate everything from cloaked satellites to cyber firewalls. It was joked that if ESD chose, no one in the world could take a piss without their knowing about it.
    Oliver Hawke, a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney with TS clearance, was assigned to the ESD team early on. He held the power to obtain, without hesitation, needed search warrants and the judicial authority to use the emerging technologies available in any given event. Without Hawke’s authority, the ESD team would be violating federal law if they investigated insurgents within the United States.
    ESD’s activities often cruised beyond the law, under the radar, and without official sanctions.
    The CIA is charged with conducting ‘surveillance’ and information gathering OCONUS (Outside the Continental United States). A year into his second term, Miller and Abe Ruthers, the U.S. Director of the CIA, met in Berlin with German Chancellor Schumacher, and Brazil’s President, Paolo Cruceiro dos Santos, to establish foreign ESD cells. Only the highest ranking echelons within these governments were privy to their existence.
    This was the world that Drexel Rose had been a part of, and now, out of the blue came this call from Oliver, the one man at ESD he most respected and trusted.
    Drex rubbed the back of his neck, “All right, how are the first-responders handling it? Has anyone claimed responsibility for being Ebenezer Scrooge? And what the hell is Homeland doing—if anything?” he asked.
    “No claimants yet, and you know Homeland Security; they say they don’t want to send out false alarms. Never mind that New York had one death—some poor homeless bastard on the bridge—along with thirty-one injuries reported thus far. Both the Boston PD and the NYPD, along with other emergency first responders, got right on it. On other fronts, Federal employees are in their homes enjoying their holiday, the nation is being hammered by severe winter storms, and DHS, the CIA and the FBI, are doing their usual Who’s Supposed To Do What dance. It’s Christmas, and they have their fingers stuck in Figgy Pudding, for God’s sake.”
    Drex stretched and sipped from his mug of fortified coffee. Deep in thought, he gazed out the window at a glittering landscape of ice and snow and watched a distant light thread its way down Boulder Canyon Road.
    “Well, gee Ollie, all this is very interesting, but I gotta’ get back to my game here. Keep in touch.” He reached for the end key, but Ollie held up his hand.
    “Santa delivered one more gift.”
    “I am not interested in your brand of holiday cheer. Go away.”
    Ollie leaned into the cam and gave Drex a sardonic look. “In Boston, about the same time Faneuil Hall got lit up, some of Santa’s elves flattened a certain stadium several miles to the South.”
    A trickle of brown coffee ran from the corner of Drex’s parted lips, down his chin and dripped on the desktop nearly landing on the cat. Diggory opened one eye, his lip curled with feline disgust.
    “Ollie, please say you’re shitting me. I mean, you’re getting desperate, man.”
    “It’s true.”
    “Fuck. Someone messed with the Razor? They hit Gillette Stadium?”
    “Santa knows no bounds in his generosity,” Ollie said.
    Drex grabbed a towel from a nearby chair and wiped the spill. Digg abandoned his warm spot in obvious annoyance.
    “What the hell, Ollie, this is Christmas Eve. Have the terrorists gone mad? Were any of the players hurt? Brady? Anyone?”
    “Drex, it might come as a surprise to you, but terrorists generally are mad, in one way or another, if not plain looney-tunes. A night security guard lost a leg, but of course the team members are in their beds with sugar plums dancing in their heads.”
    “Gillette Stadium is totaled?”
    Ollie solemnly nodded. “Just about. The Foxboro Police, State Police, FBI and the National Guard are arriving, as we speak. They located Bob Kraft at a resort in Vermont, and he’s fueling his private jet. Now, are you ready to come to Washington?”
    Drex sighed. “The damn news media will have a feeding frenzy.”
    “Yup, and just between you and me, this might be homegrown terrorism.”
    Drex was curious. He peered into his friend’s face and could see lines of stress.
    “Belden and his techno geeks assess these as domestic hits, which could translate into anything from weird lost-cause sympathizers, to religious fanatics, to simple garden variety haters of some other stripe.”
    “Like some Jihadist wannabes, or one of our own internal nests of fanatics,” Drex speculated.
    “It’s anyone’s guess at this point, but we really could use you here.”
    Drexel Rose nodded his head in resignation. “Okay, Ollie, I could hardly call myself a patriot if I don’t come in. Send me what you got…damn it.”
    He read the incoming file and absently rubbed his 2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring against his grimy sweatpants.
    “Silent night, holy shit,” he muttered.