Target one, p.1
Target One, page 1
T A R G E T O N E
(THE SPY GAME—BOOK 1)
J A C K M A R S
Jack Mars
Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising twelve books; of the TROY STARK thriller series, comprising three books; and of the SPY GAME thriller series, comprising three books.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Yurii Romanchuk, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY JACK MARS
THE SPY GAME
TARGET ONE (Book #1)
TARGET TWO (Book #2)
TARGET THREE (Book #3)
TROY STARK THRILLER SERIES
ROGUE FORCE (Book #1)
ROGUE COMMAND (Book #2)
ROGUE TARGET (Book #3)
LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)
OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)
SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)
OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)
PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)
OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)
HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)
FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES
PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)
PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)
PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)
PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)
PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)
PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)
AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES
AGENT ZERO (Book #1)
TARGET ZERO (Book #2)
HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)
TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)
FILE ZERO (Book #5)
RECALL ZERO (Book #6)
ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)
DECOY ZERO (Book #8)
CHASING ZERO (Book #9)
VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)
ZERO ZERO (Book #11)
ABSOLUTE ZERO (Book #12)
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENT NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
PROLOGUE
Boston University Museum
Egyptology Wing
Midnight
He stared at the building in the darkness, looming before him, and rubbed his hand slowly on the cold handle of his gun. Glancing around to make sure no one was in sight, he approached, one foot before the other, creeping up along the back wall, keeping in the deep shadows of the oak trees lining the edge of the lawn. No streetlight penetrated here. Someone could walk by on the sidewalk just ten yards away and not see him.
The time had come.
A lone guard stood fifty feet away, guarding the one entrance he needed. The assassin smiled to himself. The man had no idea he was about to lose his life.
He approached the guard with infinite care, drawing the gun from its holster without a sound.
The guard was facing away, looking at something on the upper floor. He remained oblivious to the assassin and started humming a popular tune to himself.
The assassin got to within five feet of the man and took aim. He would shoot him in the back of the head—that way, he would never know what hit him.
Just then, a twig snapped under his foot.
The guard spun, hand going to his gun, eyes searching the darkness for the intruder.
He never got a chance to spot him. The assassin shot him in the head, the usual crack of the shot deadened by a compact, top-of-the-line silencer. The bullet excavated a trough of flesh and bone, and the guard dropped to the ground, dead.
The assassin rolled the body behind a bush, gave a quick glance around to make sure no one else was in sight, then darted to the entrance and tried the handle. Locked.
He holstered his gun, pulled out a set of lockpicks, and had the door open in less than a minute.
The alarm went off, its electronic blare echoing through the darkened halls of the museum. He knew it would. He also knew that he had 180 seconds to clear the place.
The room beyond felt like a cavern, a cold, humid draft wafting through it, the soaring walls lined with bas-reliefs, statues, and large glass cases filled with ancient relics.
But there was only one relic that interested him.
He hurried up the marble stairs to the second floor, taking them three at a time, counting the remaining seconds in his head, the alarm shrieking. While his expertise lay with targeted killings, in the course of his career he had learned a great deal about breaking and entering. It was often part of his job, and it was that skillset that got him hired for this particular mission. Being a heartless killing machine came as a bonus.
He turned right and sprinted down the hall, not stopping to read the sign. He had memorized the layout by heart and knew he was entering the Egyptian wing.
Upon entering, he stopped in his tracks, staring at what he had come to steal.
The ancient Canopic jar.
It was one of a set of five, all made of gleaming alabaster and in perfect condition, untouched by the millennia. Canopic jars contained the internal organs of an Egyptian mummy, and were buried with it to rejoin the body in the afterlife. The number of jars marked this set as unusual. Every other set numbered only four, each adorned with one of the heads of the four sons of Horus. He hadn’t known this until he got this assignment. It always paid to do your research. One jar had a lid in the shape of a baboon’s head, symbolizing the god Hapi, who guarded the lungs. Duamutef with the jackal’s head guarded the stomach. The human-headed god Imsety guarded the liver. Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed god, guarded the intestines.
Then there was the fifth, with a lion’s head on the lid representing the goddess Sekhmet, guarding … what?
It wasn’t his job to know.
The alarm continued shrieking. He’d have to get out fast.
He aimed at the top of the cabinet, well away from the jar, and fired.
The bullet went straight through the glass and shattered it into a thousand pieces.
He winced as the sound of a second alarm reverberated around him, overlapping the first.
Grabbing the lion-headed jar, he found it heavier than expected. Fifty pounds at least. Whatever lay inside, it sure as hell wasn’t someone’s internal organs.
He set his curiosity aside. It wasn’t his job to know. It was his job to procure it for his bosses. And whatever it was, it was valuable enough to hire someone like him to get it, and then keep him on retainer. Why keep him after he’d done the job? He didn’t know that either.
The assassin turned and sprinted out of the room as fast as he could, slid as he turned the corner, and pelted down the steps.
For a minute he thought he’d gotten away, that he was going to make it.
He was wrong.
A bullet moaned past his head to take out a chunk of marble on the bannister beside him.
He glanced back to see another guard at the top of the stairs, gun raised as he took careful aim.
This was not according to plan. There was only supposed to be one guard. His employers had given him faulty intel.
Forty-five seconds until the cops arrived. He had a quick decision to make.
Run for it and risk a bullet in his head, or fight back and risk the cops.
The second shot, cracking off the stair at his feet, made the decision for him.
He set the jar on a step, steadying it with one hand, and raised his gun.
No fear. That guard was a simple paid employee facing one of the world’s finest assassins, who got paid more than the museum staff would earn in one hundred lifetimes.
A single, perfect shot, square in the guard’s forehead.
The man collapsed.
Twenty seconds.
Out the open door and into the frozen Boston night, onto the waiting motorcycle, and down the back alley.
Ten seconds.
Police sirens wailed behind him, already distant, pulling up to a museum he had left.
He grinned as he merged onto I-95.
The jar was his.
And the world was about to change forever.
That was what his employer had said. Those were the exact words he had used.
“The world is about to change forever.”
CHAPTER ONE
The fist slammed into Jacob Snow’s face, making his head snap hard to the right. The chair he was tied to rocked back and forth, and only Jacob’s widespread legs kept him from toppling over.
He didn’t want to fall to the floor, because then they might start kicking him.
“Tell us who you work for,” the man who had punched him demanded, his words heavy with an Arabic accent.
He spoke in English, because he didn’t know Jacob spoke Arabic.
Jacob said nothing in either language, or any of the several others he spoke.
The fist slammed into his face again. One of Jacob’s eyes had almost swollen shut, at least two of his teeth were loose, and his mouth filled with the coppery tang of fresh blood.
“Tell us what we want to know and the beatings will stop,” another of the Arabs said.
There were three of them, members of The Sword of the Righteous, a splinter group of Al Qaeda targeting foreign aid workers. They had captured him in the suburbs of Damascus, bundled him into the trunk of a car, and dragged him to this cellar.
Now they wanted to know why he had been sneaking around their secret headquarters, the location of which was supposedly a secret even to most members of The Sword of the Righteous.
Another fist, to the stomach this time. Jacob coughed and bent over as much as his bonds would allow. The punch to the stomach was followed by a vicious uppercut that felt like it nearly decapitated him.
The real thing would probably come later. These people liked cutting off the heads of Westerners working for the Red Cross or Save the Children and displaying them around town.
Especially in front of schools. They called it “spiritual education.” That’s how these guys rolled.
The man beating him took a step back, shaking out his hand. Jacob could see all the knuckles were scuffed and bleeding, a small compensation for being turned into a human punching bag. The three terrorists moved away to the far end of the bare cellar and got into a huddle.
“This man doesn’t break,” the one who had been punching him said, speaking in Arabic and presuming Jacob couldn’t understand.
“Let’s cut his balls off. He’ll speak then.”
“No, he won’t,” said the youngest. “He won’t have anything left to lose.”
“A finger, then. Let me cut off a finger.”
“Oh, Ahmed,” the youngest said with a sigh. “You are always in a hurry to cut people. Let’s beat him more.”
“And you have a weak stomach,” Ahmed snapped. “We’ve been beating him for an hour. It’s not working.”
“Maybe electrocute him?”
“That might work.”
“I still say we should cut him.”
While the three terrorists talked, Jacob let out a slow breath, forcing his aching muscles to relax. A feeling of warmth passed through him. Calm.
And then, as he had learned from his parents as a child, he took a deep breath and slowly let it out, forcing his muscles to relax. With a special maneuver, he dislocated one shoulder, suppressing the urge to scream as pain lanced down the entire limb. He pulled his arm out of its bonds, and popped the arm back into place. Relief flooded him as the throbbing pain began to ebb. Then he did the same with the other arm.
Some kids dreamed of running away and joining the circus. Jacob didn’t have to. He grew up in the circus.
Now free, he stood up and grabbed the chair.
The terrorists whirled around, mouths agape.
Too late. Jacob Snow was already charging, the chair upraised like a club.
He brought it down on the first terrorist’s head with a crunch. The man sagged to the floor, unconscious.
The other two backpedaled and drew their guns, but before they could aim, Jacob hurled the chair at them. It struck one of the terrorists in the stomach, sending him staggering backwards to bump into the third. That screwed up his aim and his shot went wide. The next instant, he caught Jacob’s fist in his jaw.
The blow laid him flat, as unconscious as the man he had hit over the head with the chair.
The second terrorist, the one hit in the midriff, got his balance and raised his weapon. Jacob tackled him.
They rolled over and over, the terrorist struggling to keep the gun. Jacob grabbed his wrist and twisted it.
A satisfying snap and the pistol fell out of the terrorist’s hand.
Straddling him, he gave the terrorist three quick punches to the throat, collapsing his windpipe. The man bucked and gasped underneath him. Jacob stood, leaving him to choke to death.
Jacob let out a gust of air and picked up one of the pistols. A Russian-made GSh-18 with a long box magazine carrying 18 9×19mm Parabellum rounds. Standard issue for the Syrian Army and Police Forces.
It could have come from either. Fighters for The Sword of the Righteous killed members of both forces almost as eagerly as they killed foreigners trying to help sick children and injured civilians. Jacob tucked the pistol into the waistline of his jeans and grabbed an AK-47 leaning against the wall.
All three men were down for the count. No, not quite. One groaned and shifted his leg a little. He was waking up. One of the others would wake up soon, too.
Jacob closed his eyes for a moment, but that didn’t hide the ugly reality facing him. He knew what he needed to do.
Jacob didn’t like killing helpless people. He preferred a fair fight, but he was deep in enemy territory and he didn’t know how many more terrorists might be around.
He didn’t have time to tie them up, not when more of them might come downstairs at any moment. And even if he did have time, their friends would release them and they’d go on to kill more innocent people. Or send out his description through the Dark Web for any Islamist out there to hunt him down and kill him. People like this had to be stopped, or they’d up their relentless body count of the innocent.
It became a math problem, a horrible summing up of how to let as few helpless people die as possible. Killing them was the only right answer.
All that was true, but deep down Jacob knew it was all an excuse. It really came down to them or him, and when it came down to that decision, Jacob Snow always chose himself.
But he couldn’t risk a shot. Who knew what kind of neighbors these scumbags had?
He spotted a sheathed knife on the belt of one of the terrorists, the same one who had been so eager to cut off Jacob’s body parts.
Jacob stepped over to him.
The knife came free from the sheath with a soft hiss. Jacob held it in his hand and stared at it in the cold light of the bare bulb hanging from the concrete ceiling. Then he turned back to the men on the ground. He knew what he had to do.
As he knelt by the man closest to him, Jacob whispered, “I’m sorry,” then he leaned in and placed the knife’s keen edge along the man’s neck …
… and then paused, bile rising up in his throat.
The image of a young Pathan warrior, lying helpless on the floor of a cave, flashed through his mind. His throat had opened up so easily, blood spouting out like a burst water balloon.
Never again.
Jacob pulled back, his brow shiny with sweat.
The Arab groaned, shifting a second time.
Jacob turned the knife around and smacked him on the skull with the metal pommel, knocking him out cold.
Then Jacob moved onto the next man, the man whose throat he collapsed. Best to make sure. No, he was dead. Killed in an open fight. Jacob felt nothing for him.
He knelt down beside the third man and leaned in close to him. This one had hung back a bit during the torture, reluctant to take part. He’d been the one who had saved the most important part of Jacob’s anatomy. Too bad. In another world, if this Syrian had grown up differently, he and Jacob could have been friends.
