Belgrade, Serbia
One year ago
Finn slipped the lock pick into his pocket and opened the door of the secluded home. The hinges had been deliberately left rusty to alert occupants of an intruder. The oil he had applied dripped over the brass and pooled on the stoop. With seasoned awareness, he stepped into the main room. The muted television produced a slideshow of light on the bare walls in the darkness.
A memory flashed in his mind, a vision of his old SEAL squad breaching a terrorist stronghold—his big best friend, Miller “Tox” Buchanan on his six, ever-calm Jonah “Steady” Lockhart and know-it-all Leo “Ren” Jameson backing them up. Taciturn Andrew “Chat” Dunlop watched the perimeter while their sniper set up on a nearby rooftop, and Nathan Bishop, their naval intelligence liaison, provided real-time updates. They worked like a well-oiled machine, a true team: their objective clear, their commitment absolute.
This situation was the opposite in nearly every conceivable way.
Two men slept, one on the couch, one on the floor. Even with the threat hanging over him, Raul Bilak still hadn’t laid out the cash for good security. Not that it would have made a difference. The minute Raul had challenged cartel chief Gabriel Lorca, his fate was sealed. If Raul had hired a platoon, Gabriel Lorca would have sent an army.
As it was, he sent Finn.
Of course, he wasn’t Finn to these men. Like all CIA non-official cover officers, he had an alias, but he never used it. They all called him Scarface, or whatever version of it their native languages allowed. Three days hanging from a cave ceiling while Syrian insurgents carved at his face like a thanksgiving turkey had left his profile a topographical map of disfigurement.
With the grace and indifference of a housecat, Finn slit the throats of both men. The vicious hunting knife cut through to their spines. The arterial spray decorated the walls and splattered Finn’s face. There were neater ways to kill a man, but Lorca wanted a show.
The blood drops turned to war paint as Finn swiped his cheek and moved to the stairs. A light came on at the back of the house. He froze and checked his watch: 4:30 a.m. Pivoting, he changed direction. Raul was an early riser, but not this early.
In the kitchen, a portly woman was retrieving items from the refrigerator. A guard sat dozing in a chair, his cell phone resting on his belly. Finn stabbed the man in the side of the neck while the woman hummed and gathered eggs and milk. She turned, clutching the items to her chest.
Finn pressed a finger to his lips. The woman stood stone still. Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling, then back to Finn’s. Without a sound, he walked across the clean white kitchen and stood before her. With the tip of the dripping blade, he pointed to the food in her arms and then to the refrigerator. Obediently, she replaced eggs. Then with an agility uncharacteristic of a woman of her age and comportment, she hurled the milk bottle at his head and screamed, “Opasnost! Ulijes!”
Finn batted the projectile away with professional calm and plunged the knife into the woman’s heart. The bottle shattered as she collapsed, milk and blood swirling into a pink pool.
Footsteps issued a drumbeat on the stairs; the housekeeper had successfully sounded the alarm. Now the fun begins.
The switch from silent killer to combat assassin was seamless. Finn left the knife lodged in the woman’s chest and pulled two magnums from their shoulder holsters. He needed to work fast. What Raul lacked in manpower, he made up for in cleverness. The man would have an escape plan.
Finn dispatched the four men on the stairs like mechanical bears at a shooting gallery. According to the information he was given, Raul had seven guards. Including the housekeeper, eight bodies were littering the first floor leaving Raul unprotected. Finn smelled a diversion.
Rather than head upstairs, he exited the way he came and moved around to the side of the house. Finn could just make out a man holding a rope ladder in the darkness while another climbed down. He walked out of the night just as Raul’s feet hit the grass.
With one weapon trained on each man, Finn spoke. “Where’s the money, Raul?”
With steely resignation, Raul kicked the duffle at his feet. “Take it. Don’t kill this man. He’s a priest from the village. He agreed to help me to get money for his orphanage. You don’t want that mark on your soul. You will burn in hell forever!”
Finn shot both men in the head, picked up the duffle, and walked back to the waiting van. Had he needed justification for killing the priest, he could have found it in the weapon discreetly hidden under the man’s jacket or the traces of cocaine circling his nostrils, visible even in the moonlight. Finn didn’t need an excuse. Gabriel Lorca’s orders were concise and explicit: kill everyone.
Dawn broke, turning the sky a fiery red. Raul’s words echoed in Finn’s head. You will burn in hell forever.
Too late.