Introduction

When terrorists armed with poison gas plan a wave of attacks against the U.S. and its allies, retired CIA agent Jordan Sandor finds himself drawn into the chase, from New York to Florida to the Italian Riviera in this fast-paced thriller.

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Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Jordan Sandor had no reason to expect this quiet autumn morning to erupt with the familiar sounds of his violent past. It was nearly ten, the air crisp and cool, the calm sky bright and clear and blue. The two-lane blacktop in upstate New York was deserted, except for Dan Peters’ old station wagon. Sandor was slouched in the passenger seat, a casual observer of the passing countryside. He and Peters had been riding in silence when a pickup truck came into view, then turned across their path as they continued straight on Route 32. “That’s practically a traffic jam around here.”

Sandor nodded. “Not much doing.”

“Nope, not this time of year. Summer you get the tourists, hiking, camping, all that bullshit. Winter they come up to ski.” Peters eased the wagon along a wide curve. “Fall, some people drive up on the weekends to see the leaves turn color, other than that you get nothing.” They passed a makeshift billboard that boasted authentic home cooking at some nearby restaurant. The poster looked so old Sandor wondered if the restaurant even existed anymore. “You don’t miss the city at all?”

Peters thought it over, surveying the barren road. “Sometimes. The places, you know. Not the people. The food, mostly. When I get a taste for good Chinese or Thai, and especially Japanese, that’s when I really miss New York. No Sushi Yasuda up here.”

Sandor smiled at the road ahead. “Still need your sushi fix.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“You were the one convinced me to try it, remember? Raw fish, for Chrissake. Man, how many years ago was that?”

Peters didn’t answer, and they fell quiet again.

“Well,” Jordan said after another mile or so, “I give you high marks. Looks like you’ve done a good job of making the transition to the quiet life.” “Quiet everywhere, except up here,” Peters said, then pointed to his head. Embarrassed by the confession, he fell silent again. “You’re entitled to some peace,” Jordan told him.

“What I saw over there, pal – it never gets peaceful for me. Sometimes I manage to ignore the noise, that’s all.” The two men had fought together in the Gulf War, the first one, when they drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, leaving behind a mess that needed to be cleaned up a dozen years later. Before that, Peters had seen duty in Vietnam. He had been a career soldier, almost fifteen years older than Sandor, but Jordan outranked him when they served in the Persian Gulf.

“Well,” Sandor said, “maybe peace and quiet are overrated.”

“Yeah, tranquility is a bitch,” Peters said, then uttered a short laugh.

“So what about you, how do you like your new gig? What are you supposed to be, a reporter or what?”

“I’m a journalist, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh yeah, a journalist, beautiful. You talk about transition, man. I suppose you don’t miss the good fight, eh?” Sandor faced forward again, toward the road ahead. He had an uneven nose and a jaw line etched in a strong, firm line. His complexion was tanned and a bit weathered for a man not yet forty. His hair was brown, and cut just long enough to allow him to run his fingers through the waves, front to back, which he habitually did when he took time to consider a question or reflect on something that troubled him. He was doing that now, his dark, intense eyes visualizing something beyond their line of sight. After a few moments, he said, “I gave up the good fight and came home the day they left those men for dead in Bahrain.”

“Yeah,” Peters said as shook his head, then added, “Bastards.”

Jordan nodded without a reply.

After his tour in the Middle East, Peters returned home to finish out his military career and take his pension. Sandor remained abroad, working on special assignments until an undercover team he was assigned to in Manama was exposed. It had been more than a year now, since that incident in Bahrain. The day after they pulled him out and left the others behind to die, Sandor submitted his resignation from government service. “Not everyone comes home.”

Jordan nodded without giving a response.

“Strange, how things never work out the way you figure.”

Jordan let that go too. “So what about this Ryan guy we’re going to see?”

“What about him?”

“What does he think of this quiet life, now that he’s back?”

“You’re the journalist, you ask him.”

“I will,” Sandor said.

Peters rolled down his window, a cold breeze whipping through the car.

Jordan said, “If this guy was really in the mercenary business, he’s got some explaining to do before I’ll believe a thing he tells me.”

Peters turned to his old friend and showed him a crooked grin. “Good old Jordan, Mr. Black and White. The mercenary business is immoral, but if you put on a uniform and shoot someone, that makes it okay.”

Sandor shook his head.

“You sure did wave the flag for a while, buddy.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Jordan said. “I still do, in fact. The flag isn’t the problem.”

Morning sunlight sparkled on the trees, an October spectacle of colors lining the road as they continued on Route 32, towards Jimmy Ryan’s house. “Close your window, will you Dan?”

Peters chuckled as he put it up half way. He was a burly man, with wide shoulders and thick arms. “Blood a little thin these days, Sandor?

Winter’s coming, you know. Time to bulk up.” He patted his ample stomach, evidence that he no longer bothered to maintain his service physique. Sandor, who was still trim and fit, eyed his friend’s gut. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll pass on the donuts and put on my jacket instead.” He grabbed his sport coat from the back seat, pulled in on, then rubbed his hands together. “So how well do you really know him?”

“Jimmy? I told you, I only met him last month, when he first got back from Europe.”

“I thought you said he was in North Africa.”

“He was. Spent some time in France before he came back to the States.”

“Uh huh. And how’d he find his way to you?”

“I met him in a bar.”

“Picking up guys in bars, Danny?”

“Funny.”

“You still a Bud man?”

“Loyal to the end. You still going steady with Jack Daniels?”

“Ever faithful.”

Danny laughed.

“You think he was looking for you, or was it just a coincidence?”

“Jesus, I don’t know, Jordan. Looking for me? I don’t think so. We were watching a ballgame, talking, found out we were both in the service, started gabbing. Save the fucking third degree for him, will you? We’ll be there in ten minutes.” “Just curious. Occupational hazard.”

“New occupation, new hazards. I think I liked you better in Amman.”

They approached an intersection and Peters slowed the station wagon slightly, then swung into a left turn that led them onto another two lane road. It was a narrower stretch than Route 32, but just as quiet - until a piercing noise rang out through the clear morning air.

“What the hell was that?” Even as Dan asked the question, they heard a second brief explosion, the sound unmistakable.

“Gunshots,” Sandor replied flatly.

“There’s no hunting this close to 32,” Dan said. “Someone might be shooting off rounds on their property.”

As they came around the next curve they discovered the answer. Just ahead, off to their left, two cars were stopped on the grass shoulder. One was a police car, the other a sedan parked in front of the cruiser. Beside the driver’s door of the sedan an officer had fallen to the ground in a leaden heap. Dan instinctively jammed on his brakes and brought his station wagon to a screeching halt.

Jordan hollered a warning as a small, dark man jumped from the passenger side of the sedan and leveled an automatic pistol at them. They were less than fifty yards away.

The first shot smashed through the windshield, covering them in a spray of fractured glass. The second round tore into Dan’s right side, piercing him with the awful, numbing sensation of jagged ice slicing through his flesh, giving way almost at once to a searing shock of pain. He lurched backward from the impact, then fell heavily forward onto the steering wheel. His foot slipped from the brake and the car began to roll slowly forward, moving steadily towards the approaching gunman.

As Jordan dove below the level of the dashboard, a third shot exploded through what remained of the windshield, another shower of broken crystals of safety glass covering the two men. Sandor struggled to pull his friend off the steering column and out of the line of fire, keeping himself as low as he could manage, even as another round whistled above him before it went crashing through the side window. The car was still traveling forward, now no more than thirty yards from their assailant.

As another shot was fired, Jordan managed to yank Dan off the steering column and onto the seat. Then he managed to take control of the wheel. He extended his left leg across Dan’s ankles, straining to reach the accelerator pedal. He jerked the steering wheel, pressed down on the gas, and the car surged ahead.

They careened wildly to the right, and Jordan knew that if he ran them off the road into the woods they would be finished. He tugged the wheel slightly to the left, guessing at his position with the help of a quick look above the dash. They were even with the two parked cars now as the wagon veered sharply left, causing the gunman to jump backward as Jordan accelerated past him. The man fired again, through the driver’s side window, sending more glass cascading across the front seat.

Sandor made several reflexive adjustments, turning quickly left and right, back and forth, guiding the station wagon swiftly past the two parked vehicles. He heard yelling in some foreign language, which he tried to make out as he reached up to tilt the rear view mirror for a look behind them. The driver of the sedan had gotten out of the car and was waving his arms, ordering his companion back inside. Sandor saw in the mirror that the driver was tall and blond, as dissimilar in appearance from the short, swarthy gunman as he could have been. Jordan remained low in the seat, peering just above the dash now, doing the best he could to forge ahead, to put some distance between his car and theirs. Several more shots exploded from behind them as he headed down the long, straight stretch of road, but then the firing stopped. Jordan checked the mirror again, surprised to see that the two men were not turning around to pursue him. Instead, they had hurried back into their car and were speeding off in the other direction, towards the main highway.

Jordan realized the driver and gunman might be working a decoy. He watched as they disappeared around the curve from where he and Dan first spotted them. Sandor knew they might spin a turn and come back after him at full speed, but he brought Dan’s wagon to an abrupt stop and threw the gearshift into park. If they were returning, he would have no chance to outrun them unless he got behind the wheel. “Dan, can you hear me?” He tried to raise Peters, to lean him against the driver’s door if necessary. “My side,” Peters muttered. “I’m hit bad.”

“I know,” Jordan told him, relieved to have him say anything at all. “Can you move?” Dan nodded slightly and Jordan checked behind them again, making sure the sedan did not suddenly roar back into view. He helped his friend slide towards the middle of the seat, then scrambled over him to get behind the wheel. He turned to have another look back, but there was no sign of them, not yet.

Sandor checked his friend, a growing stain of blood running onto the seat amidst the shards of glass. Jordan was experienced enough to guess that Dan was not suffering any major arterial bleeding, but he could see the wound was serious. He pulled off his jacket, folded it up and reached out to place it under Peters’ head.

“Don’t worry,” Sandor said, “I’m getting you to a hospital. Here,” he said, grabbing Dan’s parka from the back seat of the car, “hold this against your side.”

When he had made Peters as comfortable as he could, Jordan swung the car into reverse, completed a high speed u-turn, then sped back, braking to a sudden stop beside the fallen cop. There was still no sign of an ambush. Jordan listened intently, but heard nothing except the hum of the station wagon’s engine as it purred through the empty frame where the windshield had been. The quiet was eerie now, unsettling after the explosion of gunfire, the shattering of glass, the wailing of tires that had resounded along this desolate strip of roadway. Sandor became aware of the pounding in his chest, took a deep breath to steady himself, then stepped quickly from the car and knelt beside the wounded officer. “Can you hear me?”

The man gave no response, but Jordan could see he was still alive. Sandor removed the pistol from the trooper’s holster, all the while returning his anxious gaze ahead, searching for what might appear without warning from around the turn. He pulled at the slide and drew a round into the breech of the officer’s automatic, then ran back to the police cruiser, picked up the radio mike and spoke into the open channel.

“We have an emergency. Officer down, just off Route 32, repeat, officer down, emergency.” He released the button on the side of the microphone, waiting only an instant before a voice crackled over the speaker, and Jordan knew that for now, at least, it would be all right. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

How far should the United States go in supporting covert operations in counter-terrorism efforts?

How many terrorist plots are foiled, without any notice to our knowledge by the general public?

Where is the line between fiction and reality in a spy thriller like THE PORTOFINO DECEPTION?

What are the real dangers to our civil liberties, and to the general public, in fighting terrorism?

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