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PROLOGUE

Jerry left the warmth of the station building and walked out into the parking lot. Packed snow crunched beneath his Nikes as frigid air burned its way down his throat. He blew warm breath onto his hands and looked west, where the light of the setting sun illuminated the curves of the Tigris far below on its rolling plain. Hills and scarps obscured much of the river, leaving scattered loops of gilded water that were laced across the brown and white terrain countryside like fragments of some ancient Syriac alphabet graven on the land.

Rearing up above the Tigris were the spectacular crags of the Hakkari Dalary, all dark stone, white snow, and formidable black shadows. And above Jerry were the domes and antennae of the CIA listening station, perched here at eight thousand feet, with convenient electronic access to Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Middle East’s perpetual stormy petrels.

Jerry had been delighted to learn that the Hakkari Dalary were also known as the High Zap Mountains, because the High Zap was what he and his partner had done four days earlier-reached electronic fingers down into the plain below and performed long-distance surgery on crucial electronics controlled by a clutch of malign foreigners.

The operation had been a brilliant success, at least until the news had come that had left Jerry stranded on the mountain.

Sunlight dazzled Jerry as a frigid wind numbed his cheeks. Tears leaked from his eyes. He wished he had been allowed to bring a camera to take a picture of the scene, but things were so secret here that cameras and cell phones were forbidden, even to station personnel.

This was simply the most beautiful and spectacular place he’d ever seen in his life. He’d been born in the flat Iowa cornfields and now lived outside Annapolis. Giant rearing untamed glacier-capped mountains were a completely new experience to him. He just wished he could leave the station and visit some of the towns he could see on the plain of the Tigris, far below.

On his one and only drive, coming to the station, he had looked out the window as they passed through the square of a small village and he’d seen old Arab women with tribal henna tattoos on their faces. It was like a visitation from another universe.

Being stranded up here at the station sucked. Totally.

Jerry flapped his arms and shuffled his feet for warmth. When he and Denny had flown out to Turkey, they’d had no clear idea where they were headed, and they hadn’t brought clothing suitable for living on a mountaintop in the middle of February.