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Not far away, two brothers named Merle and Earl Carter were standing together inside the vestibule of a bank where they withdrew eighty dollars.

  The two had spent the day looking for a car to steal so that they could turn it in for cash at a chop shop they knew about. Having zero skill at stealing cars, they were reduced to going around and looking into vehicles until they came across one with the keys inside it.

  They had actually found such a vehicle minutes before entering the bank, but the car was too old and rusty to be worth anything.

  Earl frowned at the ATM receipt. The remaining balance listed displayed an amount that was less than five dollars.

  “I thought we had a lot more money than this.”

  Merle nodded.

  “We did, but it went to pay the property tax on the farm, remember?”

  “Oh yeah, and I’m glad that’s automatic, because I swear I’d never remember to pay it.”

  Merle passed his brother half of the money while releasing a sigh.

  “We gotta get our hands on some cash soon, Earl.”

  Earl jutted his chin in the direction of the interior of the bank.

  “That fella sure got some dough.”

  The man Earl was talking about was named Francis Nash. Through the glass wall of the bank, they could see that Nash was depositing several bundles of cash inside a leather laptop bag. Once the money was secured, Nash swung the bag’s strap over his shoulder and shook the hand of a female banker.

  Merle headed for the street while calling over his shoulder to his brother.

  “Keep an eye on that dude.”

  “Where you goin’,” Earl said.

  “I’m goin’ back to get that car we saw.”

  “But you said it was a crapmobile.”

  “It is, but it’s better than nothin’.”

  Francis Nash left the bank moments later and Earl watched him. Nash was a tall and distinguished looking man with a mane of white hair and bright blue eyes. He was on the hefty side, and his stomach was round.

  When Nash walked across the street to enter a parking garage, Earl stayed in front of the bank and paced while keeping an eye out for his brother.

  One of the parking attendants brought Nash his BMW and smiled at the tip Nash handed him. As Earl watched, Nash drove off, and Earl figured that they had lost their chance to follow him.

  That was when he heard a car backfire. When he looked up, he saw Merle coming along in the smoking wreck they had passed on earlier.

  Merle double-parked at the curb and Earl hopped in the car.

  “Where’d that guy go?” Merle asked.

  Earl pointed out the cracked windshield.

  “He’s drivin’ a new silver BMW and he’s just a block away, see it?”

  “I see it, and once we get the chance, that money is ours.”

  Merle put the car in drive again and they went in pursuit of Francis Nash. Had they known who he really was, they would have left him alone.

  CHAPTER 4 – The reluctant terrorist

  In Rockefeller Center, a young man named Sharad Jones was ice-skating with his girlfriend, Jennifer Gates.

  Sharad was good-looking, athletic, and six-feet-tall with light brown skin. He’d been born in Brooklyn, New York to an American father and a Saudi mother, but at the age of fifteen, he had gone to live in the Middle East after his father died. His mother perished from an illness shortly after the move, and Sharad was raised by a grandfather who was involved in terrorism.

  An American at heart, Sharad had never bought into his grandfather’s fanatic beliefs about politics or religion. However, as he had to live under the man’s roof, he found that he had to mirror those beliefs back at the old man or else suffer the painful consequences.

  His grandfather, although wealthy and respected in his homeland, was a wanted man in the West, and so he lived in an armed compound. As a fifteen-year-old American boy, moving into such an environment had been a dramatic and awful change, and it was coupled with the loss of both parents in less than a year. Sharad became introverted and dreamed of the day that he might return home to America.

  For years, that simple dream seemed unlikely to ever happen, as Sharad was a virtual prisoner inside the compound. Although a lifelong Muslim, Sharad had no choice but to abide by his grandfather’s wishes and adopt his strict religious practices.

  Sharad could spout many passages from the Koran from memory and observed the traditions of his fellow countrymen. And yet, he was no devotee of dogma, and the zeal with which his grandfather practiced the faith seemed excessive and unnecessary to Sharad.

  When the chance came to return to America, Sharad took it, despite knowing that it would drag him deeper into his grandfather’s terrorist activities.

  Three months after his nineteenth birthday, Sharad’s grandfather woke him and told him to get dressed.

  It was the middle of the night and Sharad couldn’t imagine anything, other than a fire, which would separate his grandfather from his bed at such an early hour. But the house was fine, and the rest of the family was asleep, as Sharad’s aunt, grandmother, and younger cousins were still in their beds.

  Only the guards were awake, as there were always men patrolling the grounds night and day.

  Once he donned his thawb, which was a long tunic, Sharad slid his feet into his sandals. His grandfather led him outside to the garage, where he took Sharad by the shoulders and stared at him while grinning.

  There was a wild light in the old man’s eyes, the light of fanaticism. Sharad feared that whatever was coming couldn’t be good.

  He had been right.

  His grandfather had volunteered him for a mission, a mission for God. Sharad was to be trained in an unknown location before becoming “God’s instrument of vengeance.”

  The old man began preaching while pacing about and Sharad wondered if his uncles had heard the same speech before they died.

  Sharad’s three uncles were all killed while “Fulfilling God’s will,” and Sharad did not intend to become the fourth martyr in the family.

  He would run away, he told himself. He would sneak out of the compound, travel far away, and make it somewhere that he might find asylum.

  Sharad was thinking of how best to make it across the border when his grandfather uttered a word, America.

  Once again, the old man took him by the shoulders and stared at him.

  “You will strike a blow against our enemies on their own soil and bring great honor to your family.”

  “Yes, Grandfather, I will be an instrument of God’s will.”

  The old man smiled at Sharad and Sharad smiled back at him.

  There was nothing Sharad wouldn’t have done for a chance to return to America, and if it meant playing jihad Joe in the desert for a few months, then so be it.

  Once he stepped foot on American soil he would run, find a place to hide, and begin a new life.

  It hadn’t worked out that way.

  To say that the training camp was intensive would be a huge understatement. It was Marine boot camp squared with a fanatical bent.

  When he wasn’t learning ways to blow things up, Sharad was learning hand-to-hand combat skills or taking target practice.

  Mixed in with the lethal instruction were lessons in history. Sharad had heard his grandfather rant about the injustices of the past and disregarded them, but the men who led the training in the camp weren’t old, nor were the men he trained and lived with.

  They were true believers, yes, some even more fanatical than Sharad’s grandfather, but as the months of training, prayer sessions, and indoctrination continued, Sharad found that his beliefs were changing.

  He’d often heard the phrase that violence solved nothing, but that wasn’t true. Violence often solved a multiplicity of problems; it’s just that it resulted in the victorious and the vanquished.

  The victorious went on to thrive, while the vanquished found life after a violent confrontation difficult. At least, the ones who survived the confli
ct did so.

  Violence worked, violence was a tool, and Sharad came to see that terror was also a tool, and one that could be used to obtain victory.

  By the time he emerged from the desert training camp he was on the verge of becoming the holy warrior that his grandfather believed him to be. Still, he had doubts and couldn’t come to terms with the willful murder of innocents.

  While intellectually, terrorism seemed like a vital tool to elicit change, Sharad knew in his heart that it wasn’t right. He had also had friends of various religious beliefs and races while he had grown up in America. Sharad knew that they were not evil nor abominations as his grandfather always claimed. No, everyone was a human being. Their different appearance and beliefs didn’t negate that.

  Sharad hid his beliefs and feelings from his fellow freedom fighters and hoped that he would never be asked to kill an innocent.

  Were he ever given the choice to murder an innocent or die, he reasoned that he would choose life and kill. That would leave him alive, but fundamentally changed forever. Sharad didn’t think he would like the man he would become after committing such acts.

  After leaving the desert, Sharad and his fellow warriors were placed in a huge house on an estate outside of Paris. There, they received further training, but Sharad found that it was unneeded in his case.

  The training consisted of teaching the men how to blend in among Americans and other Westerners.

  Thanks to his American father, Sharad had grown up playing video games and going to McDonalds after little league practice. He was an American; he didn’t need to learn how to act like one.

  Then, without notice, Sharad and the other men were given information packets, and some received phony ID’s as well. They were then separated into several groups and driven to different airports throughout Western Europe.

  Sharad flew out of Heathrow, and when he first spied the skyline of New York City, tears fell from his eyes.

  He had come home.

  That was six weeks ago.

  But within six hours, Sharad would be a member of a group that would be primed to launch a terrorist attack on New York City.

  He would have to stop the attack or take part in it.

  Either way, it was time for Sharad Jones to choose.

  CHAPTER 5 – The Ghosts of Christmas past

  In Arkansas, a woman who Tanner knew well was driving onto the property of the home she had lived in as a child. Her name was Laurel Ivy.

  Laurel rode along the graveled path that led to the house, and at her first sight of the home, she gasped.

  It looked deserted. There was also evidence that a fire had burnt part of the front porch.

  She had traveled to Arkansas hoping to reconnect with her two older brothers, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a child of twelve.

  Laurel had recently lost her husband, George, to a heart attack. Aside from being her spouse, George had been the one to help Laurel overcome her addiction to cocaine, an ironic fact since George had also been her drug dealer.

  Laurel tried the front door of the home and found that it was locked. She was headed around to the rear to try the back door when an old memory surfaced.

  Her brothers had often used the wooden trellis on the other side of the house to sneak out at night, after their father had gone to sleep. Laurel wondered if she might not use the same method to gain entry.

  After verifying that the back door was also locked, Laurel moved around to the side of her childhood home. The trellis was still there. Although it was weather worn and chipping paint, the dormant vines entangled and intertwined with it were thick.

  With a giggle, Laurel stepped onto a section of the trellis and began to climb.

  ***

  Back in Manhattan, a major bust was going down in the Garment District, as FBI Agent Sara Blake led a raid on offices that occupied the top floor of a 7th Avenue building.

  She was the head of an FBI/New York City Police joint task force looking into counterfeit merchandise. A fellow agent, Jake Garner, had received a tip from an informant about a huge stash of items being distributed out of an office building.

  Garner passed the information along, and now he was at Sara Blake’s side as she entered a large office that looked more like the inside of a warehouse.

  There were cartons of counterfeit handbags and fake designer jeans everywhere. There were also a number of people walking about, and a few of them were carrying guns in hip holsters.

  Sara pointed her weapon at the chest of the man who was in charge. They had been watching the warehouse since before dawn and had identified him hours after he entered the building.

  “If any of your men take their guns out you die first.”

  The man smiled at Sara. He was a Mafioso named Jerry Murcia who went by the nickname Jerry Sacks. He was no stranger to the legal system. Murcia had huge bags under his eyes and they were what gave him his nickname of Sacks.

  Jerry Sacks gazed at Sara with a look of pure innocence.

  “I don’t know what you mean, beautiful. I only stopped in here to ask for directions.”

  “According to our surveillance you entered this building over eight hours ago,” Sara said.

  Sacks nodded.

  “I stopped for a rest.”

  As Garner and the other men disarmed Jerry Sacks’ goons and detained his customers, Sara slapped a pair of cuffs on Jerry and then examined a box of counterfeit Gucci purses.

  “These are good, but fakes nonetheless, and it looks like you’ll be going back inside, Jerry.”

  Jerry shrugged.

  “We’ll see what my lawyer says, honey.”

  ***

  As the customers and the crooks were being handled by their fellow agents and the New York Police, Sara and Garner watched from a corner of the room where they had found paper records in a filing cabinet, as well as a laptop full of incriminating info.

  Sara looked up from the laptop screen and caught Garner staring at her breasts. She was about to make a remark when she saw his eyes shift to a spot behind her and widen with alarm.

  The next thing Sara knew, Garner was pushing her to the floor, as the blast of several guns went off.

  The shots had been fired by one of their fellow agents and two of the cops, and they had taken down a man who had been pointing a handgun at Sara’s back.

  The man wasn’t dead, but was seriously wounded, and Garner reached over with his foot and kicked the man’s weapon out of reach.

  “Where did he come from?” Sara asked Garner, as the two of them moved away from the injured man.

  “I saw him pop up from behind a stack of cartons and all I had time to do was to shove you out of the line of fire.”

  Sara thanked Garner and then called over one of the other agents. The agent was a young woman with short but stylishly cut blond hair. Her pretty face looked pale after having viewed the violence.

  “Agent Zane, I believe that you were tasked with checking out that area, correct?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Zane said. “And I’m so sorry that I didn’t see that man hiding amongst those cartons.”

  “I’m sorry as well, and there will be a mention of it in your record. Now go help Agent Ross.”

  As Agent Zane moved away, Garner shook his head.

  “Are you really going to write that rookie up? I think she’s learned her lesson.”

  “Of course I’m going to write her up. That’s standard protocol after something like this.”

  “Now I see why they call you By-the-Book-Blake, and to celebrate surviving our close call, why not go out to dinner with me, or are you spending time with your family tonight?”

  “I know your reputation, Garner. By dinner, you mean bed, and I do have plans; I’m working. I have to meet a new informant tonight.”

  “Don’t you ever stop, Sara? It is Christmas Eve.”

  “I’ll slow down once I make Director.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Garner said, but he was looki
ng over at Agent Zane as he said it.

  “That girl is barely twenty-three, Garner,” Sara said.

  “She’s not a girl, she’s a fellow agent, and one who is likely in need of some comforting tonight.”

  Sara sighed.

  “Women mean nothing to you, do they? If Agent Zane does sleep with you she’ll be just another notch on your headboard.”

  Garner’s face grew serious.

  “You’re wrong about that. I just don’t want to be alone tonight, or tomorrow, it’s too painful during the holidays... too many memories.”

  “Memories of what... or is it who?”

  Garner shook himself, put on a smile, and went to talk to Agent Zane.

  Sara watched Garner for a few moments, and then she went back to studying the files on the laptop.

  ***

  In Little Italy, Joe Pullo walked up the porch steps of Sam Giacconi’s townhouse and rang the bell.

  As he waited for someone to answer, he looked back with pride at his new vehicle. It was a four-year-old Black Hummer H3, one of the last models of the vehicle that were made, but it was new to Joe and he had wanted to own one for years.

  As the door opened, Joe turned and was surprised to see Johnny Rossetti. He and Rossetti were rivals of a sort. It was rumored that when Sam Giacconi passed away or stepped down, either Joe Pullo or Johnny Rossetti would take the old man’s place.

  Joe thought that the rumors were true, but while he was no one’s fool, he didn’t feel that he was capable of running The Family, but Johnny R was, because the man was as sharp as they come.

  However, Joe was like a son to the old man, and that should count for something.

  Johnny held out his hand and Joe shook it.

  “Mr. Pullo, it’s good to see you.”

  “You too, Johnny, and call me Joe.”

  “All right, Joe it is, and Merry Christmas.”

  “You stopped by to see Sam?”

  “Yeah... and I’m worried about him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Johnny reached back and pulled the front door closed, but didn’t shut it.

  “Sam gets confused a lot lately, have you noticed?”

  Joe had noticed, but had also ignored it. It pained him to think that the man who had been like a father to him could be fading away.