Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 CIA Applicant Processing Unit Dulles Discovery Building Chantilly, Virginia Present Day "IS YOUR FIRST NAME James?" "Yes," Reece replied. "Have you ever lied to get out of trouble?" Reece paused. "Yes." "Do you intend to answer these questions truthfully?" Another pause. "Yes." "Is today Wednesday?" "Yes." "Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?" "Yes?" "Are we in Virginia?" "Yes." "Have you ever committed murder?" "Ah.
" "Just yes or no, please." "No." Reece saw the polygrapher make a note. "Are you a United States citizen?" "Yes." Through his peripheral vision, Reece saw the polygrapher make another notation and adjust a setting on his laptop. Great. "Have you ever been part of a group that has wanted to overthrow the United States government?" Reece sat in the nondescript room of what would have been a normal office park anywhere else in America. This one was located in Chantilly, Virginia, and was owned by a front company created by the CIA.
Reece was halfway through day one of his three-day CIA processing evaluation. Even with his past experience and relationship with the Agency he still had to pass the medical and psychological screening tests to officially join the ranks of Ground Branch. Bureaucracy was, after all, bureaucracy. "Let''s try this again," "John" said in a tone meant to convey exasperation. "Be sure to answer yes or no honestly. And remain completely still. Keep your eyes focused on one point on the wall in front of you or we will have to start all over." Reece felt his pulse quicken.
He''d been on the receiving end of an interrogation before, and then, just as now, he wanted nothing more than to tear his interrogator''s throat out. He''d completed a form in the waiting area, answering the exact questions he was currently being asked. He''d even gone over them with his "examiner" before being hooked up to the machine. "Have you ever been part of a group that has wanted to overthrow the United States government?" the polygraph examiner asked a second time. "No." "Have you ever been in the employment of a foreign intelligence service?" Reece tried to reframe the question in his mind. Instead, a memory intruded; Ivan Zharkov standing in the snow outside his dacha in Siberia, the flames from the downed Mi8 helicopter smoldering behind him, the dead bodies of his security detail strewn about the ground around him, a security detail Reece had killed. Are you offering to spy for me, Mr.
Reece? "No," Reece responded. The polygraph examiner made another note. A blood pressure cuff squeezed Reece''s left arm, two rubber air-filled tubes called pneumographs encircled his chest and stomach to record his breathing, and galvanometers had been placed on the first and third fingers of his right hand to measure sweat secretions. His chair was fitted with a sensor pad, thanks to Ana Montes, a senior Cuban analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who had been recruited by Cuban intelligence while in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. From 1985 until her arrest on espionage charges in 2001, she routinely passed classified information to Havana that was then transferred to the Soviets. Later, that information was sold to China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. Her Cuban handlers had trained her to manipulate her polygraph by contracting her sphincter muscles, which is why Reece now sat on a sensor. He was also in socks, his feet resting on two individual pads.
All movements would be recorded by the polygraph. The room was small, but not claustrophobically so, about twice the size of a single patient room at a doctor''s office. Reece thought it was possible the off-white walls had faded to their current hue by absorbing the fear that permeated the space on an almost daily basis. There was a camera visible in the upper left-hand corner, but Reece was sure the CIA had concealed a few others so as not to miss a single eye twitch or muscle movement. Though he stared at a blank wall, a mirror had been installed just off-center, two-way of course, for observation. The room was bare of any additional distractions other than the small table to his left where the polygrapher sat with his computer. It was unquestionably designed to make CIA candidates as uncomfortable as possible. "Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?" Visions of his dead wife and daughter caused his heart rate to increase.
Reece swallowed as he remembered watching the silver Mercedes G550 SUV crest the rise on the mountain road outside Jackson through the magnification of his Nightforce NXS 2.5-10x32mm scope, just before pressing the trigger to send a Barnes Triple Shock .300 Winchester Magnum through the brain stem of Marcus Boykin, the first person Reece had eliminated on his quest to avenge his family and SEAL Troop. "Mr. Reece?" his examiner asked. "What?" "We have to get through these questions. Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?" Reece felt the working end of his Winkler/Sayoc Tomahawk catch in the bone and brain matter of Imam Hammadi Izmail Masood''s crushed skull before twisting it out and going to work on the gristle of the terrorist''s neck muscles. Reece had freed the head from the terrorist''s body so he could impale it on the spiked fence of the mosque as a warning to the others that death was coming for them all.
"No," Reece lied. "Have you visited antipolygraph.org to prepare for this examination?" "Yes." This answer visibly perturbed the examiner. "Are you sitting down?" "Yes." "Have you ever committed murder?" "I thought we covered that." "Just yes-or-no answers." Again, Reece''s mind accessed memories he''d never be able to repress.
He remembered hitting send on the cell phone that detonated the suicide vest on political fundraiser Mike Tedesco, turning him and SEAL Admiral Gerald Pilsner into human mist. He remembered shoving the HK pistol into Josh Holder''s mouth, feeling teeth breaking around the long suppressor before the .45-caliber bullet blew the back of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service man''s head off. "No." "Have you ever plotted to overthrow the U.S. government?" Reece thought of the EFP, Explosively Formed Penetrator, he''d built. It was an instrument of terror overseas, but Reece had used the tactics and techniques of the enemy on home soil.
He''d become an insurgent. The IED sent a slug of molten copper through the armored Suburban of Congressman J. D. Hartley in SoHo, eviscerating the conspirator and bringing the reality of war to the home front. Reece saw the look of abject horror in Secretary of Defense Loraine Hartley''s eyes as he shot her twice in the chest and once in the head in her Fishers Island mansion. "No." "Is the wall white?" "Sort of." "Once again, just yes or no.
" "Yes." "Have you ever been involved in the torture of enemy combatants?" The odor of vomit and piss from the floor of Saul Agnon''s hotel room keyed the memory of the attorney''s waterboarding and untimely death via a concoction of illicit drugs Reece had acquired to make the murder seem like a drug overdose, giving Reece the time he needed to eliminate his remaining targets. Reece saw the horror in Captain Howard''s eyes as he eviscerated the JAG officer with the sinister curved blade of the HFB karambit. As his guts slipped through his fingers and spilled onto the soft jungle floor, Howard frantically attempted to shove them back inside. Reece skewered them to a tree and forced the lawyer to walk around the trunk, his entrails escaping from his stomach until he collapsed at its base to be eaten alive by the creatures of the swamp. Reece thought of passing the vodka to General Quism Yedid in Athens, a glass spiked with a Novichok liquid-soluble precursor. And he remembered filling the 60cc syringe with capsaicin to inject into Dimitry Mashkov to elicit information that led to the location of Oliver Grey. "No," Reece said.
"Have you used illegal drugs you have not mentioned previously?" Reece shut his eyes, remembering the drugs his Troop had been given prior to their last deployment. Those PTSD beta-blockers had sinister side effects, side effects that a group of military, political, and private sector conspirators needed to cover up an ambush in Afghanistan and the murder of Reece''s family in their Coronado home. "No." "Did you intentionally falsify information on your application or security paperwork?" "No." "Have you ever stolen anything from your previous place of employment?" Reece remembered rolling the dolly down the hallway to his Troop''s weapons locker in the SEAL Team Seven armory and loading it with rifles, NODs, AT-4s, LAW rockets, a machine gun, claymores, and C-4 to load out for his mission of vengeance. He''d liberated it all before the admiral and his JAG had suspended his security clearance. "No." "Have you ever stolen anything worth over five hundr.