Whiplash

Recruited to Whiplash from a SEAL team, McGowan is always ready with an irreverent putdown. He’s also the guy you want watching your back when things get nasty.

Clar “Sugar” Keeb

Raised in Detroit, Sugar stands just shy of six feet, but that’s the only thing shy about her. The CIA paramilitary officer could flatten any man in the unit—and will if they get in her way.

March 2012

1

Termini train station

Rome, Italy

NURI ABAAJMED LUPO STEPPED OFF THE TRAIN FROM Naples and turned left, walking up the long platform toward the central terminal area. He was a short, solid man, five-eight, 170 pounds, though his trim waist made him appear lighter. He generally walked with a bit of bounce in his step, though this afternoon he was keeping the bounce very consciously in check. Gray daubed into the close-cropped hair at his temples made him appear two decades older than he really was. Nuri’s jeans and open collar shirt were nondescript enough to make him appear European, if not quite Italian—an irony, since all but one of his grandparents had come from Italy, and he still had relatives in Sicily and the Italian section of Asmara in Eritrea.

His shoes gave him away as an American. It was not so much the manufacturer—Merrell, which, though American, sold its wares all over the world—as the fact that they were hiking boots, rarely worn by native Italians except for the specific purpose they were intended.

Nuri found the shoes particularly comfortable, and today, being identified as an American did not bother him. His features were mutable; depending on the circumstances, he could pass as a European, an Arab, a Persian, a South or Central American. He’d even once been mistaken for Filipino, though in that case he had been aided by some strategic makeup and a prosthetic device. Such variability was a result of his genes and his background, but it was an important asset to Nuri’s profession.

He was, to use the old-fashioned term, a secret agent. A covert officer. A spy.

In general, his job called for much less drama and danger than might be implied from watching James Bond movies or reading an old Le Carré novel. Today, however, it would have given its fictional counterparts a good run for their money. Already he’d survived a bombing, which was all the more disturbing because it didn’t appear to have been aimed at him.

Nuri wrapped his right hand around the strap of his backpack as he came to the large doors at the end of the platform. He glanced downward, avoiding the gaze of the two sub-machinegun-toting carabiniere, and moved to the center of the large hall, turning back as he reached it as if to get his bearings. He stared at the signs, pretending it was all new to him.

Not counting his childhood, Nuri had been in the terminal no more than five dozen times. Most of these visits had been made the night before, in a virtual reality program that had allowed him to familiarize himself with Rome while sitting in a hotel room in Alexandria, Egypt. The program was extremely realistic, right down to the notoriously unscrupulous taxi drivers.

“Subject approaching from platform,” said the Voice in his headset.

“Which door?” muttered Nuri.

“Center door.”

Nuri adjusted his headphones. They looked exactly like a pair of Apple iPod phones, a year or two out of style. He watched the door, waiting for Rafi Luo to come through.

Though he had been following him since Egypt, Nuri hadn’t gotten close enough to him to actually see him in the flesh. He’d seen photos and even spoken to a three-dimensional computer model of him, but he had not come within five hundred meters of Luo since he first began tracking him two days before.

He hadn’t had to. Luo had been tagged with a biomarker that allowed him to be tracked via a satellite network to virtually anywhere on the planet. There were dead spots in large buildings and underground—subways were a particular problem—but since most people came out eventually, there was literally nowhere in the world Luo could hide.

Assuming, of course, that he stayed alive.

So far, he had—though the bomb that had missed Nuri had almost certainly been meant for Luo. A car had blown up on a street in Alexandria right outside the hotel where he was staying, seconds after he’d turned from the front door to return the room key he’d forgotten to hand in. Nuri had been walking down the street at the time. The force of the blast, fu

Luo had noticed, of course. But the way things were in Alexandria these days, he couldn’t be sure that the bomb was meant for him. And in any event, his profession invited all ma

Nuri spotted him striding into the station, head high, looking more like a movie star on vacation than a vital cog in an illegal weapons ring. Luo bounced through the crowd, arms and hips swinging as if he owned not only the terminal, but the continent it was built on. His slicked-back hair glowed black. His chiseled face was a magnet, drawing stares even as his smoked glasses imposed a certain distance from the common rabble.