Table of Contents
ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN
HONOR BOUND
BOOK I: HONOR BOUND
BOOK II: BLOOD AND HONOR
BOOK III: SECRET HONOR
BOOK IV: DEATH AND HONOR
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK V: THE HONOR OF SPIES (and William E. Butter worth IV)
BROTHERHOOD OF WAR
BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS
BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS
BOOK III: THE MAJORS
BOOK IV: THE COLONELS
BOOK V: THE BERETS
BOOK VI: THE GENERALS
BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED
BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS
BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS
THE CORPS
BOOK I: SEMPER FI
BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS
BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK
BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND
BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE
BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT
BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES
BOOK VIII: IN DANGERS PATH
BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE
BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!
BADGE OF HONOR
BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE
BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS
BOOK III: THE VICTIM
BOOK IV: THE WITNESS
BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN
BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS
BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS
BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE
BOOK IX: THE TRAFFICKERS (and William E. Butterworth IV)
MEN AT WAR
BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES
BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS
BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES
BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS
BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS (and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS (and William E. Butterworth IV)
PRESIDENTIAL AGENT
BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT
BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE
BOOK III: THE HUNTERS
BOOK IV: THE SHOOTERS
BOOK V: BLACK OPS
IN FOND MEMORY OF
SERGEANT ZEBULON V. CASEY
Internal Affairs Division
Police Department, the City of Philadelphia, Retired
There came a time when there were assignments that had to be done right, and they would seek Zeb out. These assignments included police shootings, civil-rights violations, and he tracked down fugitives all over the country. He was not your average cop. He was very, very professional.
HOWARD LEBOFSKY
Deputy Solicitor of Philadelphia
I
[ONE]
1834 Callowhill Street Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaSaturday, October 31, 7:30 P.M.
Will Curtis, a frail fifty-four-year-old, was sitting slumped against the drivers door of his rusty Chevrolet Malibu when the thoughts suddenly hit again, causing him to wince and grunt. He quickly pulled his right hand from the .45 GAP Glock Model 37 semiautomatic pistol beside him on the seat, stabbed at the dash to turn off the radio, then smacked at the brim of his grease-smeared red-and-blue FedEx cap, knocking it from his head. With the fingers of both hands, he began rubbing his sweaty temples.
Goddamn these flashbacks! he thought.
The fingertips pressed harder and deeper in a futile attempt to make the mental images vanish.
Damn them all to hell!
Only six months earlier, Curtis had been what hed thought of as bulky, standing at five-eleven and weighing two-ten. But now he had withered to a sickly one-sixty. His jeans, T-shirt, and denim jacket were ill-fitting, hanging on him so loosely they looked as if they belonged to someone far bigger. His close-cropped silver hair was damn near disappearing, and his formerly warm gray eyes were becoming more and more hollowed and distant in his slight if somewhat hard face.
Curtis felt he was fast becoming a miserable shell of the man hed been. He had gone from fearing nothing and no one to being scared shitless to, now, just not giving a good goddamn anymore.
He wasnt sure what was most responsible for thatthe constant stress from the mental anguish that caused the flashbacks, or the aftereffects of the intense chemotherapy treatments to slow the aggressive cancer theyd first found in his prostate.
Probably both.
Easily one or the otherespecially that fucking chemo that makes me shit my shorts like some sorry bedridden invalidbut probably both.
The flashback scenes torturing Will Curtis were of the brutal sexual assault of his only child, Wendy. After leaving a pub late on the night of Saint Patricks Day almost eighteen months ago, his beautiful, bubbly, twenty-four-year-old daughter had been attacked in her apartment.
She was just two years out of college!
Just beginning to enjoy a full life!
Triggered by the slightest of thingsfor example, hearing a song she liked, which had just happened as he sat listening to the radio in the Malibu, or driving past Genos and smelling her favorite cheesesteaksthe flashbacks would suddenly hammer him. They were grotesquely lit and viciously vivid, showing the attack in her bedroom again and again from damn near every possible angle.
And they haunted him all the more because he hadnt actually witnessed the attackrather, his imagination ran with possibilities of what had happened to her.
And what had happened to her was what the legal system termed involuntary deviant sexual intercourse.
Involuntary? he thought, putting his hand back on the pistol.
Fucking-A it was involuntary!
Which of course meant rape. Thered been absolutely no question of that. The exam given by the doctors at Hahnemann University Hospitalnot a dozen blocks from where he now sat parked, waitinghad determined unequivocally that that had happened. And not only vaginally, which was without doubt bad enough to have happened to his baby girl, but also what was termed in the legalese as sexual intercourse per os and per anus.
The pervert drugged her so she passed out, then abused her bodyeven gave her the goddamned clap!
The revelation of all that had driven the normally levelheaded Curtis to a point of desperation hed never believed possible.
Andboom!his mind hammered with the garish image of the bastard on top of Wendy in her bed.
Dammit! Will Curtis said as he sat up in the dark and slammed the pistol against the dashboard.
His left hand rubbed his temples more vigorously. He shook his head.
What kind of miserable fucking animal does that?
Who takes advantage of an innocent girl like that?
He glanced out the window and looked across Callowhill Street at the office with the frosted plate-glass window. More or less centered on the windowwhich had a crack that ran jagged across its upper-right cornerwere faded black vinyl peel-and-stick letters that spelled out LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.
And Ill never understand why that bastard defends perverts.
Just for a lousy dollar?
But that assistant district attorney had said, Only a matter of time before Gartner gets busted himself and goes down just like one of his clients.
So, yeah, some kind of payout, or payoff, thats for sure, because theres no shortage of scumbag lawyers like him.
He squeezed the Glocks grip.
That DA was close to right. Gartner may never have got busted, but he is about to go down....
Before their world went to hell, Will Curtis and his wife, Linda, were more or less comfortably middle class. Will had driven package-delivery trucks all his career, first for the U.S. Postal Service, the last eleven years for FedEx, and Linda was a teller at First National Bank. Their idea of an exciting weekend night usually meant taking a BYOB of cheap California red wine to the $9.99 all-you-can-eat pasta and salad at Luigis Little Italy, around the corner from their row house of twenty years on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Phillys West Mount Airy section.
