Gauntlet (63 page)

“That’s our job, at this point?” asked Lance.

“Yes, that is your assignment. Your mission. And a lady from Canada will be joining you — Corporal Catherine Gray, and also a cop by the name of Indy Singh. They tracked the drug runners in Canada, who own the mine that the Semtex came through. I’m also bringing Richard Lawrence in. After his detox. He’s been in the field. He knows the people. I think they will all be invaluable to this little group. You have to work together to find the men responsible for this.”

The Admiral paused to look around, meeting the eyes of each member of the team. His voice became even more serious. “We’ve been put in a very critical position here, people. Someone out there had the nerve to attack the USA. We need to find out who it was. And then we need to design our counterplay.”

S
ITTING IN HIS JET, Yousseff watched the TV coverage of the Glen Canyon Dam and smiled. It was going exactly as he had hoped it would. One dam was down, and the other, he hoped, was on the verge of failing. He had succeeded. Around him, his friends and accomplices turned away, their faces set in a wide range of disgust, disappointment, and horror.

A
S SOON as the meeting was over, Turbee slipped by Admiral Jackson and darted back to his workstation. He already knew where to start. Rahlson followed him, curious.

“What’re you up to, Turb?” he asked, watching as the young man fell into his chair and began feverishly typing on his computer.

“This man the Admiral thinks is out there. I think I might already know who he is, Rahlson.” He grabbed his mouse and started scrolling through a screen full of data. “And I think I know how to find him.” Then he looked up at the older man standing over him. “We’re going to need a man or two in Afghanistan.”

F
AR ABOVE the dark stone fortress of Inzar Ghar, on a dangerous, ancient smuggler’s trail, two dark blue eyes looked back on the fortress one last time. From his vantage point, Zak had witnessed the commotion of several motor vehicles roaring down the mountain road toward Peshawar, carrying dogs and men. Undoubtedly reinforcements, going after Richard and his partner. But he knew that, at this point, his own absence had also been discovered, and that a massive manhunt would soon be underway to find him. He did not fully understand why the men, vehicles, and dogs had all been directed toward the valley floor, downhill from the fortress. Although it didn’t really matter, as long as it left his way open.

He shivered again, and pulled the ragged blanket he’d brought closer around his shoulders. It was bitterly cold, and wisps of snow drifted lazily down around him. The stumps of his missing toes, and his raw wrist joint, were screaming in pain, but Zak persevered, and continued to crawl toward the summit of the Path of Allah. Now that he was under the open sky again, all he could think of was getting to his people, and telling them what he knew.

I
N NEVADA, the water continued to rush through and around the Hoover Dam. News and military helicopters still numbered in the dozens in the area, and the Marines and Army were both heavily represented. Because of the waves now hitting the dam, and because the President had officially proclaimed the structure safe, all personnel had been pulled out of the structure. No boats or subs patrolled the raging waters on the south side. No cameras were trained on the base, which was invisible in any case, lost in the haze of mist and rainbows.

For this reason, no one saw the cracks that began to form, small at first, but snaking rapidly up and out, as the dam fought to stand against the increasing rush of water.

Many thanks to my editor, Samantha Charleton, for the magnificent job she did in helping me take a dung heap of dangling prepositions, non sequiturs, and grammatical hell and make it a publishable work. I also want to thank the people at Temple International Publications for their faith, their insights, and even their critiques. I am eternally indebted to Lauralee for her flawless copyediting, and her many constructive suggestions.

I have to thank my publicists, Antoinette Kuritz, and Shel Horowitz, the marketing maniac, for guiding my book on its path. To my faithful readers, Peter and Cathie, who supported the book when no one else could see the “diamond in the rough.” Without your help and input, Zak would have met a different fate. Thanks to Brie for the spectacular new title. Thanks to Mike Lee and Chris Decatur and MonkeyCmedia, the geniuses behind the design of the book—they gave
Gauntlet
an identity I would never have imagined on my own. I want to thank the authors who helped me along the way: Jim Rollins, Chris Reich, David Morrell, David Hagberg, John Foxjohn, and Dale Brown. Thanks to Trey and Quay Terry, two brothers of the military persuasion, who were kind enough to offer feedback, criticism, and eventually endorsements. Thanks to James van Doren for educating me about submarines.

I want to thank my wife, Foxy Lady, my four children, and the dogs, cats, and various miscellaneous animals that the kids drag home from time to time, that complete my household, all of whom formed the opinion, many months ago, that the lord of the manor has completely lost it. However, without their faith, support, and love,
Gauntlet
would have remained nothing more than an idea.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank Jared Kuritz for quarterbacking the digitization of the manuscript and creating the electronic version of the book. I also want to thank him for his many suggestions and his hard and diligent work in spearheading the project.

As a final note, many of the refinements in this book were developed as a direct result of the techniques and concepts that I gained at the La Jolla Writers Conference, an amazing yearly retreat organized by Jared, Antoinette, and Richard Kuritz. I’ve learned a trick or two in the five years that I was a student there.

RICHARD AARON lives in a cold, northwestern city with his wife, four children, and various dogs and cats. He has university degrees in mathematics and law, and a Masters in Law from the London School of Economics. He worked in the real world for several decades before realizing that he was a writer of fiction. Twenty-five years bouncing around the court system is actually a grand education for any creator of fiction.

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