Strong Light of Day Read Free

the big man who’d remained at the holding point until the all-clear sign was given. He looked more like a shadow silhouetted against the night, like some sort of holographic figure projected onto the scene instead of standing within it. “Get used to it.”
    â€œWhat, you spooks fucking up? Sending us after ghosts over and over again with lousy intelligence?”
    â€œYou expect to turn over a rock and have Osama pop up with hands in the air? You sign up for this shit, you need to stop figuring the rules are yours to make up. We’re playing by the rules of others, Lieutenant, but we’re getting close. Whoever was here left in a real hurry. We probably missed them, him even, by a couple hours at most. Maybe next time.”
    â€œI don’t give a shit about next time.”
    The night smelled of a combination of soot and ash, a perpetual burned odor that hung in the air as if residue of bomb blasts that had torn these mountains apart had become a permanent fixture on the scene. Every shift of the breeze seemed to intensify the scent that reminded Grasso of driving through a burned-out forest, lingering long after the fire itself was done.
    â€œThat’s the business I’m in, son,” the big man told the SEAL Team 3 leader, his tone abrasive and condescending. “Giving a shit about the next time, since I can’t do anything about the last.”
    â€œYou need to see this, Lieutenant,” a voice called from inside the cave.
    The SEALs had stormed the mountain just before dawn on intelligence that high-asset targets and large stores of munitions had been located in a cluster of caves hollowed out like entrances to a hive. But the SEALs had found no guns, no explosives, and no targets, high asset or otherwise.
    Grasso entered the cave, followed by the big man, who moved, acted, and spoke like someone who hadn’t always used his desk as a staging ground, to the far wall, where a collection of documents had been found inside a hole covered by a nest of rocks. Pages and pages of them; hundreds by the look of things.
    â€œLike I said,” the big man noted. “They must’ve left in a hurry. Arabic,” he continued, scanning some of the pages.
    Grasso handed him a fresh batch. “Not all of them.”
    The next set of documents looked like some kind of field or technical manuals. The pages felt brittle and warped, smelling of musk and mold. At the bottom of that pile lay something else. Drawings, the big man noted; skilled and detailed. No, not drawings at all.
    Schematics, plans. Whoever had been in this cave was apparently planning something in the very minutes before the raid descended on his lair. Bin Laden himself, maybe, or at least somebody high up the al-Qaeda organization food chain.
    Damn! the big man thought. How close they’d been.…
    He peeled back the drawings to find fresh documents, written not in Arabic at all but in English. Fresh with a familiar stamp and logo. And beneath them rested another set, in a third language.
    Russian.
    â€œYou need to get on your sat phone, Lieutenant,” the big man said, studying these documents much more closely than he had the others. “You need to get me Washington on the line five minutes ago.”
    Grasso freed the satellite phone from his vest. “Pentagon, sir?”
    â€œNo, Lieutenant, the White House. Let me give you the number.”

 
    P ART O NE
    Charged with the mission of operating beyond the boundaries of civilization, with minimal support and no communication from higher authority, they lived and often died by the motto “Order first, then law will follow.”
    â€”Thomas W. Knowles, They Rode for the Lone Star: The Saga of the Texas Rangers, Volume 1

 
    1
    Z AVALA C OUNTY, T EXAS
    Caitlin Strong stopped her SUV at the checkpoint on Route 83 heading toward Crystal City. The sheriff’s deputy approaching her vehicle seemed to recognize her as soon as she slid