Copyright © 2019 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.

      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)

      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)

      Agent Zero: Though he successfully killed the assassin Rais and rescued his daughters from the hands of human traffickers, he has been disavowed by the CIA and was last seen being escorted by three agents to an unknown fate.

      Maya and Sara Lawson: After their harrowing ordeal in Eastern Europe and the ensuing rescue by their father, Agent Zero’s teenage daughters are physically and mentally traumatized. Though they are awestruck at his determination to find them, they now realize that he is something more than what he claims to be.

      Kate Lawson: During his final fight with Rais, Agent Zero recalled a memory that his wife did not die of natural causes, but was murdered by a deadly poison. Rais’ last words alleged that her killer was CIA.

      Agent Alan Reidigger: In a letter he wrote to Zero before his death, Reidigger divulged the name of the Swiss neurologist who installed the memory suppressor in Zero’s head—who is also his best possibility of ever restoring his full memory.

      Agent Maria Johansson: Maria revealed that she is working two sides—not only the CIA but also the Ukrainian FIS, though she claims to be manipulating both in the hopes of uncovering a conspiracy about an alleged soon-to-be war.

      Agent John Watson: After being discovered for helping Agent Zero recover his daughters, Watson has been detained by the CIA—along with Maria Johansson.

      Agent Todd Strickland: A young CIA agent and former Army Ranger, Strickland was initially sent after Agent Zero but instead ended up helping him and his daughters, forging a strange friendship in the wake of their incident.

      Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright: It is still unclear whose side he is on, if he has a side. Cartwright helped Zero indirectly, but also disavowed him while on the rampage in Eastern Europe. Zero believes he is simply a diplomat, playing along with whatever side will benefit him.

      PROLOGUE

      Reid Lawson was exhausted, aching, and anxious.

      But above all else, he was confused.

      Less than twenty-four hours prior, he had succeeded in rescuing his two teenage daughters from the hands of Slovakian traffickers. In the process he had stopped two freight trains, inadvertently destroyed a very expensive prototype helicopter, killed eighteen men and severely injured more than a dozen others.

      Was it eighteen? He had lost count.

      Now he found himself handcuffed to a steel table in a small, windowless detention room, awaiting the news of what his fate would be.

      The CIA had warned him. The deputy directors told him what would happen if he defied their orders and struck out on his own. They were desperate to avoid another rampage like the one that had happened two years earlier. That’s what they called it—a “rampage.” A violent, bloody tear across Europe and the Middle East. This time it had been Eastern Europe, across Croatia and Slovakia and Poland.

      They had warned him, threatened him with what would happen. But Reid saw no other recourse. They were his daughters, his little girls. Now they were safe, and Reid had resigned himself to accept whatever end might be in store for him.

      In addition to the activity of the past several days and a severe lack of sleep, he’d been given painkillers after having his injuries treated. He had sustained a shallow stab wound in his abdomen from his fight with Rais, as well as thorough bruising, some superficial cuts and scrapes, a gash across one bicep where a bullet grazed him, and a mild concussion. Nothing serious enough to keep him from being detained.

      He wasn’t told his destination. He wasn’t told anything at all as three CIA agents, none of which he recognized, silently escorted him from the hospital in Poland to an airfield and onto a plane. He was, however, somewhat astonished when he arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia instead of the CIA black site Hell-Six in Morocco.

      A police cruiser had carried him from the airport to agency headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in the unincorporated community of Langley, Virginia. From there he was ushered into the steel-walled detention room on a lower level and handcuffed to a table that was bolted to the floor—all without any explanation whatsoever from anyone.

      Reid didn’t like the way the painkillers made him feel; his mind wasn’t fully alert. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. Especially not in the uncomfortable position at the steel table, the handcuff chain threaded through a metal loop and tight around both his wrists.

      He’d been sitting in the room for forty-five minutes, wondering just what the hell was going on and why he hadn’t yet been tossed into a hole in the ground, when the door finally swung open.

      Reid stood immediately, or as much as he could while being handcuffed to the table. “How are my girls?” he asked quickly.

      “They’re fine,” said Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright. “Sit.” Cartwright was Reid’s boss—or rather, he had been Agent Zero’s boss, right up until Reid was disavowed for striking out to find his girls. In his mid-forties, Cartwright was relatively young to be a CIA director, though his thick, dark hair had begun to gray slightly. It was surely coincidence that it started right around the same time that Kent Steele had returned from the dead.

      Reid slowly lowered himself back into the seat as Cartwright took the chair across from him and cleared his throat. “Agent Strickland stayed with your daughters until