High Treason Read online

  Praise for John Gilstrap

  DAMAGE CONTROL

  “Powerful and explosive, an unforgettable journey into the dark side of the human soul. Gilstrap is a master of action and drama. If you like Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, you’ll love John Gilstrap.”

  —Gayle Lynds

  “Rousing . . . Readers will anxiously await the next installment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It’s easy to see why John Gilstrap is the go-to guy among thriller writers, when it comes to weapons, ammunition, and explosives. His expertise is uncontested.”

  —John Ramsey Miller

  “If you haven’t treated yourself to one of John Gilstrap’s Jonathan Grave thrillers, you need not deprive yourself any longer. Damage Control is riveting, with enough explosions, death traps, and intrigue to fill three books.”

  —Joe Hartlaub, Book Reporter

  “The best page-turning thriller I’ve grabbed in ages. Gilstrap is one of the very few writers who can position a set of characters in a situation, ramp up the tension, and yes, keep it there, all the way through. There is no place you can put this book down.”

  —Beth Kanell, Kingdom Books, Vermont

  “A page-turning, near-perfect thriller, with engaging and believable characters . . . unputdownable! Warning—if you must be up early the next morning, don’t start the book.”

  —Top Mystery Novels

  “Takes you full force right away and doesn’t let go until the very last page . . . has enough full-bore action to take your breath away, barely giving you time to inhale. The action is nonstop. Gilstrap knows his technology and weaponry. Damage Control will blow you away.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  THREAT WARNING

  “If you are a fan of thriller novels, I hope you’ve been reading John Gilstrap’s Jonathan Grave series. Threat Warning is a character-driven work where the vehicle has four on the floor and horsepower to burn. From beginning to end, it is dripping with excitement.”

  —Joe Hartlaub, Book Reporter

  “If you like Vince Flynn–style action, with a strong, incorruptible hero, this series deserves to be in your reading diet. Threat Warning reconfirms Gilstrap as a master of jaw-dropping action and heart-squeezing suspense.”

  —Austin Camacho, The Big Thrill

  HOSTAGE ZERO

  “Jonathan Grave, my favorite freelance peacemaker, problem-solver, and tough-guy hero, is back—and in particularly fine form. Hostage Zero is classic Gilstrap: the people are utterly real, the action’s foot to the floor, and the writing’s fluid as a well-oiled machine gun. A tour de force!”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  “This addictively readable thriller marries a breakneck pace to a complex, multilayered plot. . . . A roller-coaster ride of adrenaline-inducing plot twists leads to a riveting and highly satisfying conclusion. Exceptional characterization and an intricate, flawlessly crafted storyline make this an absolute must-read for thriller fans.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  NO MERCY

  “No Mercy grabs hold of you on page one and doesn’t let go. Gilstrap’s new series is terrific. It will leave you breathless. I can’t wait to see what Jonathan Grave is up to next.”

  —Harlan Coben

  “The release of a new John Gilstrap novel is always worth celebrating, because he’s one of the finest thriller writers on the planet. No Mercy showcases his work at its finest—taut, action-packed, and impossible to put down!”

  —Tess Gerritsen

  “A great hero, a pulse-pounding story—and the launch of a really exciting series.”

  —Joseph Finder

  “An entertaining, fast-paced tale of violence and revenge.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “No other writer is better able to combine in a single novel both rocket-paced suspense and heartfelt looks at family and the human spirit. And what a pleasure to meet Jonathan Grave, a hero for our time . . . and for all time.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  AT ALL COSTS

  “Riveting . . . combines a great plot and realistic, likable characters with look-over-your-shoulder tension. A page-turner.”

  —The Kansas City Star

  “Gilstrap builds tension . . . until the last page, a hallmark of great thriller writers. I almost called the paramedics before I finished At All Costs.”

  —Tulsa World

  “Gilstrap has ingeniously twisted his simple premise six ways from Sunday.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Not-to-be-missed.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  NATHAN’S RUN

  “Gilstrap pushes every thriller button . . . a nail-biting denouement and strong characters.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Gilstrap has a shot at being the next John Grisham . . . one of the best books of the year.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Emotionally charged . . . one of the year’s best.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Brilliantly calculated . . . With the skill of a veteran pulp master, Gilstrap weaves a yarn that demands to be read in one sitting.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Like a roller coaster, the story races along on well-oiled wheels to an undeniably pulse-pounding conclusion.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  ALSO BY JOHN GILSTRAP

  Fiction

  Damage Control

  Threat Warning

  Hostage Zero

  No Mercy

  Scott Free

  Even Steven

  At All Costs

  Nathan’s Run

  Nonfiction

  Six Minutes to Freedom (with Kurt Muse)

  Collaborations

  Watchlist: A Serial Thriller

  JOHN GILSTRAP

  HIGH TREASON

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for John Gilstrap

  ALSO BY JOHN GILSTRAP

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCIPLINE

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  For my best friend, Joy

  CHAPTER ONE

  In all his seventeen years with the United States Secret Service, Special Agent Jason Knapp had never felt this out of place, this exposed. The January chill combined with his jumpy nerves to creat
e a sense of dread that rendered every noise too loud, every odor too intense.

  Rendered the night far too dark.

  With his SIG Sauer P229 on his hip, and an MP5 submachine gun slung under his arm—not to mention his five teammates on Cowgirl’s protection detail—he couldn’t imagine a scenario that might get away from them, but sometimes you get that niggling voice in the back of your head that tells you that things aren’t right. Years of experience had taught Knapp to listen to that voice when it spoke.

  Oh, that Mrs. Darmond would learn to listen to her protection detail. Oh, that she would listen to anyone.

  While he himself rarely visited the White House residence, stories abounded among his colleagues that Cowgirl and Champion fought like banshees once the doors were closed. She never seemed to get the fact that image mattered to presidents, and that First Ladies had a responsibility to show a certain decorum.

  Clearly, she didn’t care.

  These late-night party jaunts were becoming more and more routine, and Knapp was getting sick of them. He understood that she rejected the traditional role of First Lady, and he got that despite her renown she wanted to have some semblance of a normal life, but the steadily increasing risks she took were flat-out irresponsible.

  Tonight was the worst of the lot.

  It was one thing to dash out to a bar on the spur of the moment with a reduced protection detail—first spouses and first children had done that for decades—but to insist on a place like the Wild Times bar in Southeast DC was a step too far. It was five steps too far.

  Great disguise notwithstanding, Cowgirl was a white lady in very dark part of town. And it was nearly one in the morning. Throw in all those bodies floating in Lake Michigan from the as yet unresolved East-West Airlines explosion last week, and you had a recipe for disaster.

  Knapp stood outside the main entrance to the club, shifting from foot to foot to ward away the cold. Charlie Robinson flanked the other side of the door, and together they looked like the plain-clothed version of the toy soldiers that welcomed children to the FAO Schwarz toy store in Manhattan. He felt at least that conspicuous.

  Twenty feet away, Cowgirl’s chariot, an armored Suburban, idled in the handicapped space at the curb, its tailpipe adding a cloud of condensation to the night. Inside the chariot, Gene Tomkin sat behind the wheel, no doubt reveling in the warmth of the cab. Bill Lansing enjoyed similar bragging rights in the follow car that waited in the alley behind the bar.

  Typical of OTR movements—off the record—the detail had chosen silver Suburbans instead of the black ones that were so ubiquitous to official Washington, in hopes of drawing less attention to themselves. They’d driven here just like any other traffic, obeying stoplights and using turn signals the whole way. On paper that meant that you remained unnoticed.

  But a Suburban was a Suburban, and if you looked hard enough you could see the emergency lights behind the windows and the grille. Throw in the well-dressed white guys standing like toy soldiers, and they might as well have been holding flashing signs.

  In these days of Twitter and Facebook, when rumors traveled at the speed of light, all it would take for this calm night to turn to shit would be for somebody to connect some very obvious dots. While the good citizens of the District of Columbia had more or less unanimously cast their votes to sweep Champion into office, they’d since turned against him. It didn’t stretch Knapp’s imagination even a little to envision a spontaneous protest.

  Then again, Cowgirl was such a media magnet that he could just as easily envision a spontaneous TMZ feeding frenzy. Neither option was more attractive than the other in this neighborhood.

  The Wild Times was doing a hell of a business. The main act on the stage was a rapper of considerable local fame—or maybe he was a hip-hopper (how do you tell the difference?)—and he was drawing hundreds of twentysomething kids. Within the last twenty minutes, the pace of arrivals had picked up—and almost nobody was leaving.

  From a tactical perspective, the two agents inside with Cowgirl—Peter Campbell and Dusty Binks, the detail supervisor—must have been enduring the tortures of the damned. In an alternate world where the First Lady might have given a shit, no one would have been allowed to touch the protectee, but in a nightclub situation, where the headliner’s fans paid good money to press closer to the stage, preventing personal contact became nearly impossible.

  For the most part, the arriving revelers projected a pretty benign aura. It was the nature of young men to swagger in the presence of their girlfriends, and with that came a certain tough-guy gait, but over the years Knapp had learned to trust his ability to read the real thing from the imitation. Over the course of the past hour, his warning bells hadn’t rung even once.

  Until right now.

  A clutch of four guys approached from the north, and everything about them screamed malevolence. It wasn’t just the gangsta gait and the gangsta clothes. In the case of the leader in particular, it was the eyes. Knapp could see the glare from twenty feet away. This guy wanted people to be afraid of him.

  “Do you see this?” he asked Robinson without moving his eyes from the threat.

  Robinson took up a position on Knapp’s right. “Handle it carefully,” he warned. More than a few careers had been wrecked by YouTube videos of white cops challenging black citizens.

  As the kids closed to within a dozen feet, Knapp stepped forward. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “You know, it’s pretty crowded inside.”

  “The hell outta my way,” the leader said. He started to push past, but Knapp body-blocked him. No hands, no violence. He just physically blocked their path.

  “Look at the vehicle,” Knapp said, nodding to the Suburban. “Take a real close look.”

  Their heads turned in unison, and they seemed to get it at the same instant.

  “If any of you are armed, this club is exactly the last place you want to be right now. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “What?” the leader said. “Is it like the president or something?”

  Knapp ignored the question. “Here are your choices, gentlemen. You can go someplace else, or you can submit to a search right here on the street. If I find a firearm on any of you, I’ll arrest you all, and your mamas won’t see their boys for about fifteen years. Which way do you want to go?”

  Simple, respectful, and face-saving.

  “Come on, Antoine,” one of them said. “This place sucks anyway.”

  Antoine held Knapp’s gaze for just long enough to communicate his lack of fear. Then he walked away, taking his friends with him.

  “Nicely done, Agent Knapp,” Robinson said.

  They returned to their posts. “Every time we do one of these late-night OTRs, I’m amazed by the number of people who keep vampire hours. Don’t these kids have jobs to wake up for?”

  Robinson chuckled. “I figure they all drive buses or hazmat trucks.”

  With the Antoine non-confrontation behind them, Knapp told himself to relax, but in the world of gang-bangers, you always had to be on your toes for the retaliatory strike. He couldn’t imagine that Antoine and his crew would be in the mood to take on federal agents, but you never knew.

  He just wanted to get the hell out of here.

  “Look left,” Robinson said.

  Half a block away, a scrawny, filthy little man was doing his best to navigate a shopping cart around the corner to join their little slice of the world. The cart overflowed with blankets and assorted stuff—the totality of his worldly possessions, Knapp imagined. Aged somewhere between thirty and eighty, this guy had the look of a man who’d been homeless for decades. There’s a hunched movement to the chronically homeless that spoke of a departure of all hope. It would be heartbreaking if they didn’t smell so bad.

  “If Cowgirl sees him, you know she’ll offer him a ride,” Robinson quipped.

  Knapp laughed. “And Champion will give him a job. Couldn’t do worse than some of his other appointments.” Knapp didn’t sha
re the first family’s attraction to the downtrodden, but he admired it. It was the one passion of the president’s that seemed to come from an honest place.

  Knapp didn’t want to take action against this wretched guy, but if he got too close, he’d have to do something. Though heroic to socialists and poets, the preponderance of homeless folks were, in Knapp’s experience, nut jobs—harmless at the surface, but inherently unstable. They posed a hazard that needed to be managed.

  He felt genuine relief when the guy parked himself on a sidewalk grate and started to set up camp.

  Knapp’s earpiece popped as somebody broke squelch on the radio. “Lansing, Binks. Bring the follow car to the front. Cowgirl’s moving in about three.”

  “Thank God,” Knapp said aloud but off the air. Finally.

  He and Robinson shifted from their positions flanking the doors of the Wild Times to new positions flanking the doors to Cowgirl’s chariot. He double-checked to make sure that his coat was open and his weapon available. A scan of the sidewalk showed more of what they’d been seeing all night.

  When the follow car appeared from the end of the block and pulled in behind the chariot, Knapp brought his left hand to his mouth and pressed the button on his wrist mike. “Binks, Knapp,” he said. “We’re set outside.”

  “Cowgirl is moving now.”

  This was it, the moment of greatest vulnerability. Ask Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, or John Hinckley. These few seconds when the protectee is exposed are the moments of opportunity for suicidal bad guys to take their best shot.