Arch Enemy

 

“Fine writing and real insider knowledge make this a must.”

 

 

“Smart, savvy, and told with the pace and nuance that only a former spook could bring to the page,
Black Skies
is a tour de force novel of twenty-first-century espionage and a great geopolitical thriller. Maloney is the new master of the modern spy game, and this is first-rate storytelling.”

 

“
Black Skies
is rough, tough, and entertaining. Leo J. Maloney has written a ripping story.”

 

 

 

“Leo Maloney has done it again. Real life often overshadows fiction and
Silent Assassin
is both: a terrifyingly thrilling story of a man on a clandestine mission to save us all from a madman hell bent on murder, written by a man who knows that world all too well.”

 

“From the bloody, ripped-from-the-headlines opening sequence,
Silent Assassin
grabs you and doesn't let go.
Silent Assassin
has everything a thriller reader wants—nasty villains, twists and turns, and a hero—Cobra—who just plain kicks ass.”

—
Ben Coes

 

“Dan Morgan, a former Black Ops agent, is called out of retirement and back into a secretive world of politics and deceit to stop a madman.”

—
The Stoneham Independent

 

 

 

“Leo J. Maloney is the new voice to be reckoned with.
Termination Orders
rings with the authenticity that can only come from an insider. This is one outstanding thriller!”

—
John Gilstrap

 

“Taut, tense, and terrifying! You'll cross your fingers it's fiction—in this high-powered, action-packed thriller, Leo Maloney proves he clearly knows his stuff.”

—
Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

“A new must-read action thriller that features a double-crossing CIA and Congress, vengeful foreign agents, a corporate drug ring, the Taliban, and narco-terrorists . . . a you-are-there account of torture, assassination, and double agents, where ‘nothing is as it seems.' ”

—
Jon Renaud

 

“Leo J. Maloney is a real-life Jason Bourne.”

—
Josh Zwylen
,
Wicked Local Stoneham

 

“A masterly blend of Black Ops intrigue, cleverly interwoven with imaginative sequences of fiction. The reader must guess which accounts are real and which are merely storytelling.”

—
Chris Treece
,
The Chris Treece Show

 

“A deep-ops story presented in an epic style that takes fact mixed with a bit of fiction to create a spy thriller that takes the reader deep into secret spy missions.”

—
Cy Hilterman
,
Best Sellers World

 

“For fans of spy thrillers seeking a bit of realism mixed into their novels,
Termination
Orders
will prove to be an excellent and recommended pick.”

—
Midwest Book Reviews

A
LSO BY
L
EO
J. M
ALONEY

 

 

 

A D
AN
M
ORGAN
T
HRILLER

Leo J. Maloney

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

D
om Watson kept his gaze fixed on the watch face, gold against black, as the second hand ticked toward twelve. His striped button-down was soaked through with sweat, clinging like ice to his lower back. He tapped a pen against the desk, drawing his eyes away just enough to cast them up and down the open-plan office, the row of cubicles holding plants and word-a-day calendars and
Dilbert
comics. All that stupid, workaday normality, dead for the weekend. Watson wasn't going to miss it.

Now, with seconds to go, he was itching to have it over with. Eyes on his watch,
Breitling, five grand, not that anyone is asking
, he fiddled with the plastic and metal gadget in his pocket, tracing its contours with his fingers.

The two longer hands reached twelve in unison. He held himself still for five more ticks out of some unknown scruple, and then he drew the blue plastic parallelepiped from his pocket. He looked over his monitor and the wall of his cubicle at the dim space beyond. A few screens were still glowing, a few desk lights were still on, but anyone here at the office at 6
A.M.
on a Saturday would not be concerned with what he was up to.

He bent forward in his chair, aligning the little device with the USB port on the CPU that whirred away under his desk and pushed, but it wouldn't go. Somehow, having been an IT specialist for almost a decade, he still managed to get the orientation wrong more than half the time. He turned the drive 180 degrees in his fingers and held it against the slot. Throughout this process he kept a wary attention, as if inserting a thumb drive into his computer were in itself suspicious in the slightest.

He was no good at this cloak-and-dagger bullcrap.

Last chance to give up,
he told himself, knowing there was already no going back.

He thrust against the faint resistance until the device settled. It came to life right away, the once dark circle on its body blinking blue. His computer showed no activity at all, but he knew the little device was hard at work burrowing into the hard drive, laying the groundwork to offer up free access to the company servers to—he didn't know exactly who, or even whether they were white hats or black hats. He didn't want to know. They could keep him safe. They were his last hope. That was all that mattered.

Too anxious to keep seated as the worm did its work, he stood and looked out through tinted floor-to-ceiling windows behind his chair. Even from the seventh floor, Acevedo Tower had a gorgeous view of downtown Boston, of the Custom House still illuminated in the predawn light, dividing the skyscrapers to the right and the dark water of the channel to the left. Little flurries of snow drifted against the window, and he laid his hand against the glass to feel the cold. If there was something he'd miss about this place, it was this view. That and—

“Hello, Dominic.” He nearly jumped at the singsongy voice coming from behind him. “Goodness, I didn't mean to startle you!” Violet Zanger, carrying her enormous cat-pattern purse. “Silly me, I forgot my theater tickets for tonight at my desk. I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd swing by. I didn't think there'd be anyone in the office this early on a Saturday.”

“Just finishing up some security updates.”
Stupid. Stop looking guilty.
“You know how it is. Can't leave until that progress bar reaches one hundred percent.”

“Well, don't exhaust yourself. It causes premature aging, you know.”

“Don't worry, Violet. I'll take care. Should be going soon.”

Her painted-on eyebrows screwed up in a frown of put-on concern. “You know, I've noticed that you've been looking very tired. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“Been sleeping just fine, Violet,” he said, jaw set in irritation.

“Maybe you need to go to the doctor. You know, I had this friend in college—now what was her name—”

“Violet,” he interrupted through gritted teeth, “I'm sorry, but I really can't talk right now.”

A puzzled expression came over her face, more, he thought, at his daring to interrupt her than any concern about his strange behavior. “What's going on with you, Dominic? I'm beginning to get very worried.”

“I'm fine, okay? There's nothing here for you to worry about, so just go ahead and go home, have a nice weekend, and don't worry about me.” He was nearly yelling by the end of it, the stress of the day leaking out in spite of him.

“Well okay then,” she said with a phony beam. “You have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you get some rest. It really looks like you could use it.”

“Will do, Violet. All right. Okay. Good-bye!”

He shouldn't have snapped at her. He shouldn't have let it affect him like this. She would know something was wrong when he didn't come in on Monday. He ran his fingers through his short black hair as he watched her waddle to the elevator.

He glanced down at the device. The blinking circle had turned into a steady, penetrating blue, announcing that its inscrutable work was done. Watson braced his trembling hand and pulled it out. He surveyed his desk with the awareness that it would be the last time. It occurred to him that it should feel more poignant than it really did. He wondered whether there was anything he would regret leaving behind and came up empty. Even from his apartment, all he had taken was a little more than an overnight's bag worth of stuff—basic necessities and nothing more. Nothing personal, nothing sentimental. There was nothing that he cared about.

He shut down his computer and stood, pushing in his chair. He straightened the stuff on his desk one last time, wondering whether they would scrutinize his calendar, the contents of his drawer, looking for any clue to his disappearance. By the time they did, he would be far away, never to return.

Duffel bag in hand, he walked toward the elevator, but his eyes were drawn to Andrea's cubicle, across the aisle from his. There was one thing about this place he would miss, after all. He thought about her flowing blond curls streaming down her back, now and then a precious peek at her profile, her delicate upturned nose, and her pouty lips. He remembered how often he would sneak a glance at her during the day as she worked. Now, standing at her empty desk, a whiff of her perfume still lingering, it gave him a pang to remember, and to think that he would not see her again. But maybe he could do something for her. Nothing definite, but maybe something that would allay the creeping guilt of bailing and leaving her behind.

He tore a page from a yellow legal pad from a nearby desk and, hunched over her chair, scrawled in black Sharpie:

 

 

Below that, he wrote a phone number and then slipped the sheet into her top drawer.

That being done, Dom turned on his heels toward the elevator. Standing at his perennial station was the ancient security guard, always a friend, always there.

“Burt,” he said, in terse greeting. Burt tipped his hat and preempted him in pushing the call button.

“Late one today, Mr. Watson?”

“You know it.”

“Only three more weeks till spring. Maybe you should take that vacation when it comes. You're not looking so hot, if you don't mind my saying so.”

“I hear you, Burt.”

“The elevator on the left's been acting up for the last hour or so,” he said. “They've got it shut down.”

“Good thing we have two.”

The elevator car reached the seventh floor with a soft electronic
ding
, and its doors rolled open. It sagged as Dom, thick with muscle and grit, stepped onto it. A monitor on the elevator wall played a commercial for men's deodorant as part of the usual endless loop of ads. He pushed the button for the lobby, and the last thing he saw as the doors closed was the name Acevedo International in metallic letters on the opposite wall, shrinking to
ceved
, then
eve
, and finally closing on that final
v
.

Expecting a momentary weightlessness of downward acceleration, he instead felt a weight on his feet as the elevator went up.

“Goddamn it,” he said out loud. Something about this unnerved him. The elevator never moved up after being called up to a floor, only down—unless someone had pushed the button for the same floor inside, but in which case the call button wouldn't have gone dark when the elevator arrived. Did it? He couldn't remember.

“Get a grip,” he said to himself, shaking his head.

Then something in the monitor caught his eye. The image had gone static. There was no ad, nothing except two words, stark white against a black background.

 

H
ELLO
, D
OMINIC
.

 

“What the hell?” He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The text on the screen changed.

 

Y
OU
T
HOUGHT
Y
OU
W
OULD
E
SCAPE
U
S
?

 

He looked at the floor display.
9.
He pushed 10, 11, and 12. The elevator ran straight through to 13 and kept going. He pushed the button to open the door. Nothing happened. He tried the emergency button. Nothing.

 

B
UT
Y
OU
C
AN
'
T
. N
O
O
NE
C
AN
.

 

He pushed all the buttons, open-palmed, getting as many as fast as he could. The elevator wouldn't stop its constant ascent. If anything—
could the elevator be going faster?
He picked up the emergency phone. Dead.

 

Y
OUR
R
ECKONING
H
AS
C
OME
.

 

He banged on the elevator door. “Hey!” he called out. “Help! Get me out of here!”

 

G
OOD
-B
YE
.

 

The screen turned to a commercial for the new Sentra, making smooth turns on a snaking, picturesque road.

“Hey! Can someone hear me?”

The elevator was coming up on the twenty-first, the final floor. The counter hit 20, then 21. But the elevator kept moving.

And then it crashed, knocking Dominic off his feet. The light fixtures were knocked loose, left hanging by their wires. The cables groaned above him as the elevator jerked without moving.

Then something snapped, and the car went into free fall. Dom was lifted, weightless, off the floor, flailing for a handhold as he hurtled toward the bottom of the shaft.