The Hague

1400 CET

They were wheels up and on their way back to Virginia before Mick O’Halloran leaned back in the large leather seat that had been custom-made for him and finally let himself breathe. That was it. The last vestiges of his old life and his old world were gone. He wore a designer suit—hell, he didn’t know which one. Linc had picked it out for him so he’d look respectable when he appeared before the International Court of Justice to testify against his former commander for several counts of torture, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity on the territory and people of Afghanistan.

“Only you would ruin a Tom Ford suit with blood,” Linc Garrison said as the plane reached altitude and he turned his large leather chair to face Mick.

“What can I say? Seeing my old CO made me want to let off some steam,” Mick said. He didn’t apologize to anyone and he knew Linc wasn’t looking for anything like that. Both men were part of a private security team for Grimaldi Global. The company they worked for did all kinds of security work, including cyber, covert and counter-intelligence. Mick was the head of Ares Team. They were a group of former military special ops who went into situations where a government couldn’t, and did what needed to be done.

Mick’s smartphone beeped and Linc turned his chair back to face the rest of the team.

“O’Halloran.”

“Director Truehart here. I’ve notified your pilot that I need you to stop in Madrid and pick up one of our cyber analysts. Meet her at the Atocha train station and bring her back to Virginia.”

No. Just no.

Ares Team didn’t babysit.

That wasn’t in his resume. For one thing, he had been born in violence and it was where he thrived. Mick knew that half the time the bruises he wore had been earned after he had thrown the first punch. It had led to many nights in the brig when he’d been a recruit in the Army. And that short fuse had earned him a couple of demotions. The thing was, he couldn’t change. Sometimes the back of his neck started to itch and he knew that if he didn’t let off steam he was going to blow. And he usually did.

Mick wasn’t in the mood to listen to his boss, and he let him know by allowing the silence to build between them. Mick just stopped talking and lit the cigar he always carried in his pocket.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Mick. I need you on this op.”

“It’s not like I’m saying no,” Mick said. But he wasn’t saying yes. He was on edge. The kind of edge he’d only ever been able to dull by spending three days in bed with a few women at the beach or by beating an opponent bloody in an underground fight club. Neither option was available to him, since Sam wanted him and the Ares Team in Madrid.

“What exactly are we supposed to do with this geek?”

“She’s not a geek,” Sam said. “Just protect and transport. I need her and the information she’s carrying back here ASAP.”

“And there’s a chance she won’t make it if she flies commercial?” Mick asked. He was the first to admit that most of the tech he used he didn’t understand. It seemed to him if everyone in the world was carrying around a smartphone, and the tech actually worked as advertised, there wouldn’t be so many dumb messes for him and the Ares Team to clean up.

“Would I be sending your team if I didn’t think there was?” Sam countered.

“Fine.”

He wasn’t ticked at Sam. He knew that Truehart had a job to do and always allocated the resources that were best suited for each op. That meant his team was headed to Spain.

“Always so gracious.”

“If you wanted gracious, you would have put Linc in charge,” Mick said.

Sam laughed.

“Just the girl?”

“And her team. There are two others working this op with her. She’s the only one with the secure intel, but I’m not sure that anyone on the outside will know that. I want them back on US soil so we can keep them safe while we verify the information.”

“Surveillance?”

“Yes. I know you hate that. That’s why I put Aphrodite Team on it. I’ve sent the info on the op to your tablet. Get Cory to show you how to pull it up.”

“Screw you. I can figure out tech. I just don’t like it.”

Sam laughed.

Mick pulled his tablet toward him and accessed the file that Sam had sent. The photo was of a woman with long black hair that hung neatly around a heart-shaped face. She wasn’t smiling, and her clear gray eyes stared earnestly out of the photo. There was a keen intelligence in her eyes but as his gaze drifted down to her lips he almost groaned.

Her mouth made him think of sex.

Damn. He really needed some leave. It had been too long since he got laid if looking at this computer goddess—geek!—got him hot and bothered.

“I told her you’d be there at eighteen hundred.”

“That’s cutting it close,” Mick said. They were already in the air, but by the time they landed at the private airstrip and he headed into Madrid it would be tight.

“You’ll make it work.”

He forwarded the file from the tablet to his encrypted phone. The tough case that he’d been issued for it looked as if it had been run over by a truck…which was pretty close. But it still functioned.

“Mick?”

“Sir?”

“This situation is trickier than I can tell you right now. But the danger is real. And I need her safely back here.”

“I won’t disappoint,” he said.

“You never do,” Sam replied as he disconnected the call.

“We’ve got an assignment, boys.” He ran through what Sam had and hadn’t said. This woman and her team… What the hell had they uncovered that they couldn’t take a commercial flight back to headquarters? He was still running the different scenarios through his head as his team moved to the conference table in the middle of the private jet.

Many thought they were little more than mercenaries. But they were a loyal team who answered not only to Sam and the other directors of Grimaldi Global, but also to their own moral code.

Linc Garrison was the team pretty boy, heir to the Garrison manufacturing fortune, and his second in command. Linc was a former Navy SEAL who was one of the youngest to make the teams, and had been decorated many times for his work. But he was better known for his antics. He was a playboy and the press loved him. His status also provided great cover and distraction for the team when they were in a large city.

Cade Montauk was the team medic and the one they always sent undercover when they needed an inside man. He had gift for blending in and adopting accents, and an attitude that provided the cover he needed to get information and get out. He was a marksman with an impressive kill record, but Mick knew that Cade preferred not to use his weapon.

Cory Wilson was the communications expert. He loved tech as much as Mick hated it, and never hesitated to take Mick to task for his rough treatment of his equipment. Cory kept them all in contact with each other and made sure that no one else could track them.

Lastly, Frank Ross oversaw logistics and functioned as the team’s sniper. Scarily accurate, he was someone who saw the bigger picture, since he was usually positioned high above them and able to see the entire operation as it unfolded.

Mick knew what the others saw when they looked at him. His face, tough and often sporting scabs and bruises, had been labeled a harbinger of death in some areas of the Far East. He did jobs that required him to be up close and personal. He was a quick and clean soldier who meted out justice at the biding of his bosses.

“We’re being diverted to Madrid to pick up a computer analyst and her team,” he said as they all sat down.

“Sounds like a cakewalk,” Linc said. “I’ve been craving cocido madrileño lately.”

“Great. Glad we could accommodate your palate,” Mick said. “We’re moving quick on this. Once we grab the analyst and her team we’re back on the plane and back in the US. Whatever intel she has is dangerous.”

* * *

“Shit. Damn.”

Kaylee Thomas quickly tried to cover her monitor as she realized what she’d uncovered. Sure, they’d spent the last three years trying to find the path that led to cyber-criminal Diavolos, the kingpin of a smuggling ring that used the dark web to control people, arms, drugs, and most dangerous of all—information. But she’d never expected to trace a code back to its source. Unless she was mistaken, she’d found Diavolos’s server farm. She grabbed a micro USB chip and saved the information onto it. Once she verified the information was on the chip she erased all trace of it from her computer and shut the system down.

She ejected the tiny chip and slipped it into the secret slot on her keyring and left her cubicle. Mark Greening, another senior cyber analyst in the Madrid office was still in his office. He glanced up as she walked by and smiled. Kaylee smiled back, going down the hall to the secure, soundproof satellite phone cubicle at the end of the hall. It was the one place in the Madrid office of Grimaldi Global where conversations were not recorded.

She knew this because she’d called one of her friends back in Virginia and then done a system check for the call and hadn’t found it. Then she’d hacked in from the outside and checked again. That line was the only secure one she’d found in the building.

She hesitated to make the call. Once he knew what she’d found…things were going to change. But this was the sort of intel she couldn’t sit on. This was actionable. Finally, they had proof of Diavolos’s activities and a location. That had never happened before.

Diavolos was the most wanted man on the planet. Every civilized government wanted to know his true identity, but he kept it scrubbed, and the closest they’d ever gotten to him was through intercepting a few black web marketplaces. No one knew his real name, but he dealt in the seven deadliest sins and Interpol and the CIA had dubbed him Diavolos. A name he’d delighted in after he’d hacked both of their servers and discovered it—which was when Grimaldi Global had been brought in.

Being privately owned meant that they could operate without borders to capture criminals. And a lot of resources within Grimaldi had been allocated to finding Diavolos.

She dialed the number she’d been given and told to use only in cases of extreme emergency. The phone was answered on this first ring.

“Director Truehart.”

“I have Diavolos’s server farm location.”

“Which office is this?”

“Madrid.”

“Agent?”

“0322. Kaylee Thomas.”

“0322, one moment please,” he said.

She’d met the director when she interviewed for the job. Given her past, she’d been interviewed and questioned many times. The director intimidated her. She knew he’d led Special Forces for a number of years, and though his hair was gray, there was a steeliness in his frame that proclaimed he could still handle himself in the field.

“0322, I’m sending Ares Team to retrieve you. You will meet my agent in front of the Atocha train station at 1800 hours tonight for extraction. Does anyone else in your office know what you’ve found?”

“No. My team and I have been dividing up different avenues of the search. But if it gets out that I’ve found the location, someone might suspect they know too.”

Even as she said it, she realized that she might be putting herself at risk. But she’d grown up on the streets and knew how to handle herself, so she wasn’t too worried.

“Okay. Bring your team with you. Team Ares will meet you and escort you back to Virginia. The code word for pick up is churros.”

“Churros?”

“You are in Madrid.”

The line went dead and she put the phone down. She opened the cubicle door and saw her team waiting for her.

Ramona Captiva and Jeff Burney had been working with her for the last two years. They mainly handled child trafficking, but sometimes their paths overlapped with weapons and drugs. How long had they been there?

“Um…you shut down the servers,” Ramona said. “Is there something we should know?”

“We know you found something,” Jeff said.

Damn. “Come into the cubicle.”

She opened the door and stepped back inside, followed by Ramona and Jeff. The three of them had been working nonstop trying to locate Diavolos, and she wanted to make sure they were safe.

“I did find something. I can’t say what it is. I think headquarters suspects there’s a mole in this office. I received specific instructions to keep my work isolated from the regular servers.”

“Crap. That’s heavy,” Jeff said.

“I think I uncovered Diavolos’s location. I don’t want the information on the server until we have a chance to thoroughly vet it.”

“So where is he?” Jeff asked.

“I already told you, I can’t say, but the director wants us back in Virginia for a debriefing,” she said.

“All of us?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s sending Ares Team to escort us.”

“Aren’t they the guys who are sent into the worst situations? I think they shoot first, ask questions later,” Ramona said.

Honestly, Kaylee wasn’t positive that Ramona was wrong, but she didn’t want her team to be worried. And the director must have a reason for sending them.

Grimaldi Global had taken the lead on tracking down Diavolos after Europol had shut down AlphaBay and Hansa—two of the largest criminal dark web markets. Diavolos had simply moved his operations and within twenty-four hours had a new marketplace open—one the governments were still trying to hack into and shut down.

Grimaldi Global worked closely with all major governments to investigate where they couldn’t. Where issues of diplomacy would hamper various government entities, the private security firm took over. No one knew the nationality of Diavolos. The only thing that was known was he was the mastermind, money and brains behind a dark web marketplace that facilitated the trafficking of people, drugs, antiquities and name brand knock-offs. Diavolos had his dirty hands in everything.

“I think they also do protection and stuff like that. They’re covert ops and anti-terrorism. All of them are former military.”

“Most of them dishonorably discharged,” Jeff said.

“We don’t know their personal stories,” Kaylee said. She was pretty sure it was just the leader O’Halloran who’d been dishonorably discharged, and she had read that he’d just testified against his former commander, implicating the man in some war crimes. So Kaylee figured his discharge status might be changed soon.

“I’m just not sure why we need an armed escort back to DC,” Ramona said. “Enlighten us, Kaylee, we won’t tell.”

“I can’t. I’m under strict orders to keep the information confidential. I need you two to back up what you were working on. I already took the server offline, but encrypt the data on your personal machines.”

“I’m still not sure why we’re doing this,” Jeff said.

“Because our boss wants us to,” she said. “Trust me, we have to leave now.”

“Did you trigger anything when you uncovered the location?” Ramona asked.

Any online system worth its salt had tracking for intruders. Living in the information age meant that secrets were vulnerable, and security had to constantly change to keep up with hackers and other intrusions. While Kaylee knew she was pretty good at getting in and out of most servers, with Diavolos she wasn’t as confident. There was a reason he’d built his empire and operated it on the dark web for more than ten years without being caught.

“I don’t know. As soon as I tracked the server and user and decrypted the location I backed out. But who knows what security protocol Diavolos might be running? I avoided anything obvious or known.”

“Does the director know the location?” Jeff asked.

She hesitated for a moment, something in the way Jeff posed the question made her edgy. “No. But he is sending Ares Team. I guess that tells me that he thinks this is serious.”

“So no one knows what you found?” Jeff asked.

“One person does,” she said, telling her friends what she hadn’t told the director on the phone. And it was the truth. She’d sent the information to the one person who would do anything to make sure she stayed alive, because she knew what she’d found was worth her life.

Ella Cassidy—that was the name she went by now. The two had met as homeless teenagers and watched each other’s backs. Ella was a society blogger now, who had the power to reach millions if anything happened to Kaylee. And Ella had been held by a child sex ring run by Diavolos before escaping to the streets. She wanted him caught and stopped as much, if not more, than Kaylee did.

“Who?” Ramona asked.

“I can’t say. You two should be cautious. Once it gets out that this office is the one that tracked down Diavolos, they’re going to suspect you both know where he is,” Kaylee said.

“Then shouldn’t we know?” Jeff asked.

“No. It’s more dangerous if you have that intel, plus the more people who know, the more likely it will be leaked and we won’t catch him.”

“When do we go to Virginia?” Ramona asked.

She glanced at her watch. And old-fashioned one that she had to wind, since she knew smart watches could be tracked. “In an hour. I think it would be better if we staggered our exits from the building. We’re to meet in front of the Atocha train station at six. The code word is churros.”

Ramona laughed. “Churros?”

“I know.”

They all exited the cubicle and Kaylee went back to her own to make sure she had everything she needed in her large, canvas messenger bag. She had a laptop, her camera, a change of clothes and her wallet. She didn’t need anything else. She knew she needed to move the micro USB from her keychain, but she didn’t want to do it in the building.

She’d learned to travel light as a child living in abandoned buildings and crumbling mansions that hackers used as cyber squats with her father. Constantly moving, crossing borders where they weren’t monitored, and learning the hard way that online bullies can find anyone at any time. She was determined to shut down Diavolos. She had been since the beginning, because Diavolos reminded her of her past.

She left the office thirty minutes before she was to meet Director Truehart’s agent, and used one of the public bathrooms to move the micro USB from her keyring to a small flesh-colored patch that she attached to the underside of her breast.

She zipped up her leather jacket, put the strap of her messenger bag over her body crosswise and left for the meeting.

She got there early and paced around before she settled on a bench. Kaylee knew that she should just sit tight…that was what the director had pretty much said, but she wasn’t the type would could sit still for long without doing something. She opened her personal laptop—one she’d built herself that had the same kind of security that Grimaldi Global used. Something about the code she’d found was bugging her. She logged back onto the black web, watching for anything that would indicate that the information she’d uncovered had been seen by anyone else.

She was good at what she did. She’d been hacking since she was eight, when her dad needed a second set of hands to meet a deadline for a crime boss he was working for. He’d sat Kaylee down next to him, given her precise directions, and let her go. From the first moment she’d seen the black screen and simple green letters she’d loved it. Hacking, to her, had been the best puzzle ever. She loved figuring it out.

Of course, working for a crime boss had felt wrong even when she was eight, and as soon as she was old enough, she’d run away and made her own life away from her dad. There were times when she missed him, but he was, by his own admission, weak, and had told her that it was safer for her to keep her distance from him, so she had. But she checked in on him online sometimes. She knew his coding almost as well as she knew her own.

Hackers and software developers had their own unique way of writing code. Some of it was standard, but there were always little variations that certain programmers did…like a digital fingerprint, and what she hadn’t told the director, and what she was carefully searching for now, was evidence that the path she’d followed to Diavolos had been written by her father.