War of Shadows Read online

  Highest Praise for Leo J. Maloney and his thrillers

  For Duty and Honor

  “Leo Maloney has a real winner with For Duty and Honor—Gritty and intense, it draws you immediately into the action and doesn’t let go.”

  —Marc Cameron

  Arch Enemy

  “Utterly compelling! This novel will grab you from the beginning and simply not let go. And Dan Morgan is one of the best heroes to come along in ages.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  Twelve Hours

  “Fine writing and real insider knowledge make this a must.”

  —Lee Child

  Black Skies

  “Smart, savvy, and told with the pace and nuance that only a former spook could bring to the page, Black Skies is a tour de force novel of twenty-first-century espionage and a great geopolitical thriller. Maloney is the new master of the modern spy game, and this is first-rate storytelling.”

  —Mark Sullivan

  “Black Skies is rough, tough, and entertaining. Leo J. Maloney has written a ripping story.”

  —Meg Gardiner

  Silent Assassin

  “Leo Maloney has done it again. Real life often overshadows fiction and Silent Assassin is both: a terrifyingly thrilling story of a man on a clandestine mission to save us all from a madman hell bent on murder, written by a man who knows that world all too well.”

  —Michele McPhee

  “From the bloody, ripped-from-the-headlines opening sequence, Silent Assassin grabs you and doesn’t let go. Silent Assassin has everything a thriller reader wants—nasty villains, twists and turns, and a hero—Cobra—who just plain kicks ass.”

  —Ben Coes

  “Dan Morgan, a former black-ops agent, is called out of retirement and back into a secretive world of politics and deceit to stop a madman.”

  —The Stoneham Independent

  Termination Orders

  “Leo J. Maloney is the new voice to be reckoned with. Termination Orders rings with the authenticity that can only come from an insider. This is one outstanding thriller!”

  —John Gilstrap

  “Taut, tense, and terrifying! You’ll cross your fingers it’s fiction—in this high-powered, action-packed thriller, Leo Maloney proves he clearly knows his stuff.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “A new must-read action thriller that features a double-crossing CIA and Congress, vengeful foreign agents, a corporate drug ring, the Taliban, and narco-terrorists… a you-are-there account of torture, assassination, and double-agents, where ‘nothing is as it seems.’”

  —Jon Renaud

  “Leo J. Maloney is a real-life Jason Bourne.”

  —Josh Zwylen, Wicked Local Stoneham

  “A masterly blend of Black Ops intrigue, cleverly interwoven with imaginative sequences of fiction. The reader must guess which accounts are real and which are merely storytelling.”

  —Chris Treece, The Chris Treece Show

  “A deep-ops story presented in an epic style that takes fact mixed with a bit of fiction to create a spy thriller that takes the reader deep into secret spy missions.”

  —Cy Hilterman, Best Sellers World

  “For fans of spy thrillers seeking a bit of realism mixed into their novels, Termination Orders will prove to be an excellent and recommended pick.”

  —Midwest Book Reviews

  Books by Leo J. Maloney

  The Dan Morgan Thriller Series

  TERMINATION ORDERS

  SILENT ASSASSIN

  BLACK SKIES

  TWELVE HOURS*

  ARCH ENEMY

  FOR DUTY AND HONOR*

  ROGUE COMMANDER

  DARK TERRITORY*

  THREAT LEVEL ALPHA

  WAR OF SHADOWS

  *e-novellas

  WAR OF SHADOWS

  A Dan Morgan Thriller

  Leo J. Maloney

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Copyright

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Leo J. Maloney

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: April 2019

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0333-1

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0333-5

  First Print Edition: April 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0334-8

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0334-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Highest Praise for Leo J. Maloney and his thrillers

  Books by Leo J. Maloney

  WAR OF SHADOWS

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Sneak Peek

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my family, especially my granddaughter Katherine, who inspires me every day. She is smart, kind, gentle, and caring of other people’s feelings. She loves books and is an avid reader, reading way above her age level, and coauthored a children’s book with me called The Dolan Sisters’ Adventure in India. Lastly I want to dedicate this book to all my readers who have stuck with me since the beginning, especially Bill Ross a
nd Andy Taylor.

  Chapter 1

  Dan Morgan’s house exploded.

  It was so sudden and devastating that Morgan’s mind instantly reacted. The husband, father, and classic car dealer part of him went into shock. But the part that was the experienced, knowledgeable, veteran operative of the C.I.A., and now the clandestine organization Zeta Division, went into overdrive.

  He had just turned the corner at the end of the Andover, Massachusetts, street where he lived, feeling the comforting purr of the green 1968 Mustang GT his team had presented him with during their last mission. Ironically, he had reluctantly just admitted to himself that he was the happiest he’d ever been….that is, since his wedding day and the day his daughter Alexandra was born.

  For once, everything appeared to be going great—both professionally and personally. Together with his team and even his family, he had averted a biological apocalypse. The organization he worked for had never been so respected within the intelligence community, his superiors had come to fully appreciate his abilities, and even the skeletons in his closet had been cleared by his coming clean to his family about his previous double life. And now that the extremely capable young lady who was once his baby girl had moved out, he and his wife Jenny were even talking about having another child. Maybe adopting one from Asia or Africa.

  The father and husband in him remembered that he couldn’t wait to get home to her, the love of his life, when the unthinkable had happened. But the seasoned secret agent, to his growing rage, recognized the detonation.

  It was what the experts called a “toothpick explosion,” where fuel and oxygen mix perfectly to render a house into a tearing, shattering, ripping, belching mass of glass, wood, concrete, brick, and metal shards in two blinks of an eye. The husband and father, teetering in shock, stomped on the brake, while the professional military and espionage operative dove to the seat, knowing what came next.

  As the walls and windows of his once comfortable happy home erupted in a million swipes of death’s scythe, more oxygen rushed in to reignite the explosion’s source. Sure enough, less than a second later, a whomp that was both sound and pressure filled his ears, light blinded his eyes, and a fireball engulfed, then spewed the house-shaped debris like a horde of maddened wasps.

  In the milliseconds that it took, Dan Morgan’s eyes snapped back open. The husband and father inside him prayed that it might have been a gas leak accident. The intelligence operative inside him snarled, bullshit.

  Both personas tromped on the accelerator, sending the Mustang screeching down the street, over the curb, across the lawn, and into the flaming hole where his front door had been.

  “Jenny!” he bellowed, certain his voice carried over the detonation’s dying roar. He had just been talking to her. With cellphones, she could’ve been anywhere, but he felt certain she had been talking from home. Even before the car stopped, half on the ruined porch, half in the burning maw where his front door had once been, he was vaulting out of it. “Jenny!”

  The heat hit him like an angry monster’s slap. He felt his eyebrows singe, but he didn’t care. He charged through the conflagration, toward the stairs and the master bedroom. He opened his mouth to call out again, but the heat took that as an invitation and shoved itself down his throat like a hammering fist.

  That stopped him. He stood, staring, at the wreckage of what had once been his beloved home. He couldn’t recognize it. It looked like someone had shredded his life and sprinkled it onto a sizzling volcano crater.

  Dan Morgan had witnessed many an explosion, seen many a dismembered corpse, and smelled many a barbecued victim of fire-bombing. You couldn’t live the life he had lived in the military, the C.I.A., and now the Zeta Division without having such memories permanently branded in your brain.

  But this wasn’t some godforsaken hellhole he was infiltrating. This was his home, and if he stayed here he’d join whoever had been caught there when it happened.

  “Jenny,” he managed in a combination of a croak and a gasp as carbon monoxide stuffed his nostrils. He felt his flesh begin to crawl—not from fear, but from being baked. A combination of anger and remorse drove his spasming muscles.

  Don’t be an idiot, he heard himself bark inside his own head. Hope is not your friend.

  Dan Morgan had gotten angry before. Too many times. But he could honestly admit that this was the first time he had gone blind with helpless rage.

  He staggered blindly until he hit the car with his side. He looked around wildly as his fingers scrabbled for the door handle. He saw that his back-porch door window was melting. The living room fireplace was a mound of flame. He heard his adjoining garage workshop collapsing as if Thor himself had just sledgehammered it.

  The sweat and tears that managed to escape his eyes evaporated in less than a second as he fell back behind the driver’s wheel, jammed it into reverse, and tromped on the accelerator. The now battered and bent classic car tore back onto the lawn as if yanked by a steel cable. He only went back far enough so the gas tank wouldn’t explode and his clothes wouldn’t immolate before jamming on the brakes again.

  As horrifying as the last minute had been, the next few were even more surreal. Reeling from shock and exposure, he saw his horrified neighbors all around him like a small squad of concerned ghosts, as burning shreds of what had once been his sanctuary rained down around them like flaming confetti.

  He sat there, staring down the shock that threatened to paralyze him. Oh no, he found himself thinking. Not now. Don’t have time for you now. Somehow his agent’s systematic brain recognized each onlooker…save one. Dan all but vaulted out of the car as his neighbors neared.

  There was a small, shadowy figure near the bushes on the other side of the house—a figure hidden from him by the night’s darkness, the flames’ distorting heat waves, and some sort of black outfit, complete with visored helmet. Dan took a step toward it, a quiet prayer of “Alex” escaping his lips.

  But as soon as he said it, he knew it wasn’t his daughter. As he was about to take another step, he felt the hands and bodies of his neighbors close in on him. The shadowy figure disappeared behind the remains of the burning house.

  Dan heard nothing the concerned citizens said, and felt nearly nothing they did to comfort and check him. Above their anxious, alarmed din, he heard a louder, commanding voice. It was his.

  “Call 9-1-1,” it demanded. “Now! Use your hoses to keep the fire from your roofs and walls. Steve…Steve Richards!” He had called his most trusted neighbor.

  “Here, Dan,” he heard the man say. “I have your dog, Neika. She staggered over seconds before it happened. I think…I think she’s drugged or something…”

  Dan’s rage was about to engulf him again when he spotted an armored, tinted-glass SUV speeding by at the mouth of the street. He knew every vehicle owned by everyone for a mile around him. This was not one of them. And the dead giveaway was that its license plates were obscured.

  “Take care of her, Steve,” he seethed, already hurling himself back into his car. “See… see if they can find…”

  But his wife and daughter’s names were blotted out by the roar of his Mustang’s engine as he reversed back across the already shredded lawn. The neighbors scattered, mouths agape, as the GT squealed back onto the asphalt, did a smoking tire turn, and shot down the street as if fired from a cannon.

  It was late, so the suburban streets were fairly clear, which made sighting the unknown vehicle easier. His catching the thing, however, was not. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking it—especially for an agent whose cover was that of a classic car dealer. It was a black Grand Cherokee Trackhawk—all seven hundred and seven horsepower of it. From the shark-eye glint of its exterior and windshields, it was most likely bulletproofed as well.

  He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward before shaking his head. As if of its own accord, his left arm rolled down the window,
letting the night air help wake him up. It also let in the sound of sirens approaching from the opposite direction. The father and husband part of him wished he could have stayed to help put out the fire and search the wreckage. The agent in him wanted to drive his Mustang down the Trackhawk’s throat.

  What the hell happened, he thought, and more important, why the hell had it happened? His still addled mind tried to rifle through his personal list of enemies, then narrow it down to those who would be so sadistic to literally bring it home to him, but he soon decided that was a waste of time. Both lists would be one and the same, and too numerous to whittle down. There was a far more pressing issue to attend to.

  He found his smartphone in his right hand, not completely remembering that he had grabbed it. He glanced at the rearview mirror to see fire trucks pulling onto his street and the flickering shadows of his demolished home. When he looked back, his eyes searched the dashboard, remembering how his family had all but begged him to have voice-activated, hands-free communication in his car, but no, he had to be the classic car purist…

  His family. Had they been home when it happened? Blinking furiously, Morgan stabbed the buttons with his thumb, calling his wife’s number again and again.

  No answer. He remembered Lincoln Shepard, Zeta’s resident communications wiz, telling him that no answer was worse than going to message. Going to message meant the phone still existed. No answer could mean the phone was destroyed…

  The Mustang jumped, then shuddered as the cars went from Route Forty Two to I-93. Then it took all the GT’s five-liter V8 engine and nearly five hundred horsepower to keep up with the Trackhawk’s teeth-shaking roar, even on the sparsely trafficked highway. Dan watched the speedometer rise—a hundred miles an hour, a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty…

  The Trackhawk seemed to wiggle its rear at him, doggedly staying a steady four car-lengths ahead. The two vehicles stayed that way, mostly hugging the left lane, except for occasionally weaving around a speed limit idiot so closely that the state police would need a hair to measure how near they got to the slow-pokes.

  A hundred and thirty… a hundred and forty…