Free The 13: Fall by Robbie Cheuvront, Erik Reed, Shawn Allen Page A

a wife, too?”
    Keene raised an eyebrow.
    “Yeah. And my daughter. Car accident.”
    “I’m sorry.” Keene had a moment of remorse.
    “Thanks.” Boz finally spoke. “It was an accident. Rainy night, wet roads, bad brakes.”
    “Yes, it’s hard,” Keene said.
    “I used to be just like you. A hard, angry man.”
    “You don’t know me.”
    Boz leaned forward, his eyes icy, his face expressionless. He pointed his finger.
    “Let me tell you something,” Boz said in a tone completely changed. “You think you’re a bad man. You think you’re tough. But I’ve got news for you, kid. Your Bosnia mission, I prepped that. That six-month stint you did in Tehran, you were there because I laid the groundwork ten years before. You think that just because you lost four men in Karbala—because you should’ve seen it coming—makes you some kind of special, horrible person? Those men you lost … they knew the risk. And yeah, I know you think you messed up. You could’ve pulled back earlier. But the job wasn’t done. And you don’t leave the job undone! But you’re not the only team leader to ever lose men. We’ve all lost men. So don’t sit there and dishonor their sacrifice by acting like their deaths were meaningless. You think you’ve got the market cornered on vengeance and anger? I traveled that road for a long time, kid. And I can tell you that the only place it’s going to lead you is down a deep, dark hole.”
    Keene’s eyes widened.
    “Yeah, that’s right. I know you. I know all about you, because I was you. I was you before you even knew who
you
were. I wasted a good part of my life trying to fix things that I had no control over. So don’t sit there with that sanctimonious smirk on your face thinking some middle-aged
chapy
is cramping your style by being here. Neither one of us knows for sure what we’re walking into. And if there’s anything we can do to stop it, then I can promise you I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. But if I’m right and we can’t, then we need to find this Prophet and get some serious information out of him.”
    Keene hadn’t been put in his place like that since Basic Underwater Demolition school. And he didn’t much like it, but this chapy was no joke. He’d seen that look before. You don’t mess with that look. That look can get you killed. He knew. ‘Cause he’d given that same look to many unfortunate souls in his time with the unit.
    “So if there’s nothing we can do to stop this coming attack, as you say, then why bother to find him?”
    “I know this will sound like lunacy to you,” Boz said, appearing to return to his normal state of calm, “but I believe that this Prophet may actually be real.”
    Keene didn’t know what to say. Everything in him wanted to call his boss and the president and tell them that this chapy guy was a quack. But then there was the respect he had for the man’s military record. He couldn’t just dismiss it. And as bad as he hated to admit it, there was something niggling at the back of his brain telling him there was more to this than met the eye.
    “And if he’s real,” Boz continued, “then it won’t be an isolated event.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Because. When God allowed something like this to happen to a nation in the Bible, namely, Israel, it wasn’t just a single attack.”
    “How do you mean?” Keene asked.
    “I mean, God would give the entire nation over to another nation. We need to find him, assure him we’re not going to
kill
him, and then find out what he knows. Before we completely lose our country.”

PART 2: CONDEMNATION

   CHAPTER 18   
    T he woman, dressed in a casual, stylish business suit, got out of the car and walked silently into the deserted warehouse. As with any meeting, she was fifteen minutes early—which, in her opinion, was on time. Punctuality was something she held in high regard. To be late to a meeting, she thought, was a slap in the face to your