Chapter 1

The view was magnificent. From a height of more than 60 stories above the street, one could see for miles up and down the coast, as well as miles out to sea. It was stunning, breathtaking, and all the other usual adjectives you’ll find peppering brochures. The Four Seasons Miami was a glittering palace of glass and granite during the day and a beacon of wealth shining for all to see at night. I personally preferred the view right now, well after midnight, the quarter moon competing with lights from the city, mixed with the lights bobbing on the water, a testament to dozens of boats enjoying the balmy, early summer night. Between the hotel accommodations and the lavish, private condos that made up all 70 floors, hundreds of people might be relishing the same view I took in at the moment.

The difference was that they were inside the building, not suctioned to the outside.

With a free hand, I finished the keto chocolate bar I’d enjoyed while watching a spectacular yacht, one of those 280-foot beauties, motoring to the north. From this distance, I couldn’t hear the churning of its engines, but I assumed it produced the type of low rumble that would act as a sort of brown noise, perfect to sleep by. I wondered what kind of crook was cozied up in the boat’s stateroom and if he’d be amused to know that his ride was being admired by a man dangling outside a skyscraper, munching on a chocolate treat.

The conditions were ideal, with the wind calmer than usual. It whipped my hair a bit, but not enough to concern me. I unzipped a jacket pocket and stuffed the keto bar wrapper inside. Out of habit, I tapped the other side of the jacket and felt the comforting shape of my trusty Glock within. If all went well, I wouldn’t need it.

I glanced upward at the cable connecting me to the roof, my primary means of support and propulsion. The suction pads were merely for convenience. They kept me from swaying while I waited for the target inside to pass out. Hopefully it wouldn’t be much longer. He’d consumed copious amounts of whiskey during dinner and at the casino; how he’d managed to stay conscious this long was beyond me. Probably a case of acclimation. He was known for his love of drink, and a lifetime of excess allowed him to handle the booze longer than usual while simultaneously destroying his liver.

Remarkably dumb behavior from one of the world’s smartest people.

His name was Sung-Ho Gwan, originally from North Korea before being smuggled out by a crack Russian team lusting for his brain power. Gwan outsmarted his kidnappers, however, and slipped away after a year. Since that time, he’d used his brilliant mind to not only stay undercover, but also to sell his services to high bidders.

Those services involved the formulation of chemical weapons able to devastate a population. Gwan’s devices had been used a few times in isolated attacks, generally by shadowy but well-funded, underground groups. The results were hideous. Gwan, in the meantime, made bank, all the while evading capture.

Now he was in Miami, and he was drunk again.

You might think, He’s an international terrorist; why not just bust in and arrest him?

It’s a good question. The answer was complicated.

Sure, we could waltz in and place him under arrest. But, for one thing, he hadn’t contributed to an attack on US soil. Yet.

More importantly—and the reason I was involved—Gwan was currently at the center of a strange coalition of small foreign groups. These five factions hated each other, but they also shared common enemies, one of which was the United States. They’d just as soon cut each other’s throats, but Gwan gave them an opportunity to pool their resources to go after America.

It was my boss, Quanta, the head of the secret group known simply as Q2, who’d come up with a brilliant plan. Well, brilliant on her part because she wasn’t the one dangling 650 feet above the pavement. But still, if we pulled it off, we’d not only eliminate the mass murderer named Gwan, but we’d also pit all five of the evil factions against each other.

It was simple in theory: I break in, take the mad scientist, and leave clues that it was perpetrated by a couple of the factions working with each other and against the other three.

In practice, it wasn’t so simple. Gwan occupied the lavish, rented residence alone, but a rotating team of armed thugs, representing the various groups sponsoring him, were stationed in the hallway outside the condo’s door. Additionally, one protector was assigned to the living area of the suite. So getting inside in a traditional way was out of the question without raising hell and showing up all over the surveillance systems of the Four Seasons. The best we could do was plant a listening device in the bedroom of the suite.

No, not for pervy reasons. Stay with me.

That left but one avenue for an incursion: breaking in from outside. Thus, my Spider-Man routine. The hotel would be generously compensated on the q.t., more than enough to repair the inevitable damages, and the American population could go unsuspectingly—and safely—through their days.

Naturally, after devising the plan, Quanta turned to her most experienced agent to do the dirty work. So now it was Swan versus Gwan.

A voice crackled in my earpiece. “Eric?”

“Yep,” I said, worrying over a remnant of the chocolate bar with my tongue. “What’s up, Agent Brosh?”

“Target is snoring like a freight train.” See? That’s why we had the bug in the room.

Then she added, “No wonder he’s single.”

I grinned. “All right. Let me unstick myself and you can lower me the rest of the way.”

A minute later, I dangled outside Gwan’s bedroom window, which stretched floor to ceiling. I reached into a zippered pocket on my workout pants and pulled out the glass cutter. Carefully tracing a line about three feet by three feet that began parallel to the floor of the bedroom, I sliced through the first layer. After attaching four suction pads to the corners, all connected to a separate guideline, I finished cutting through and slipped the glass cutter back into my pocket. With a gentle tug, the square section separated from the rest of the pane.

“Glass removed,” I murmured into the small microphone beneath my chin. “Let me pack the sides and you can take it away.”

I stuck a substance similar to bubble wrap around the perimeter of the piece so it wouldn’t bang against the building and shatter. Then, giving the okay, I watched as Agent Brosh and her partner cautiously pulled the section up to the roof and out of the way.

I listened at the gaping opening to the room, but all I heard was the drunk snoring Brosh had described. She was right; it was pretty obnoxious. I chuckled as I pulled myself into the room. Standing up, I disconnected the safety harness and quietly laid it on the floor. Tiptoeing to the door, I put my ear against it. There was no sound at all: no music, no TV, no conversation. The hired goon in the living area was either asleep—which I doubted—or, more likely, scrolling through his phone. He shouldn’t be a problem.

Moving back into the room, I glided over to where Gwan was stretched out on the bed. He lay diagonally on top of the comforter, clad only in underwear. Nice underwear, to be sure, but I wished that he’d at least have thrown on a T-shirt or something. I unzipped another pocket to remove the tranquilizer gun. At the sound, which was next to nothing, Gwan stirred. He made a comical grunt which could’ve been an attempt at a word, and I froze. But he was still asleep, his eyes closed.

Taking one more look over my shoulder at the door, I placed a gloved hand over Gwan’s mouth and fired the tranquilizer at his midsection. The faint sound, like a phyfft, was nothing. Gwan’s eyes popped open briefly and seemed to try to make sense of the variety of sensations overtaking him, but he quickly drifted off again. His eyes remained open halfway, which was creepy. I couldn’t work like that, so I pulled them closed.

With a heave, I lifted him off the bed, thankful the man was on the smaller side. With him over my shoulder, I made my way back to the breach in the window and set him down. The next two minutes were spent securing my harness to him, then double-checking each connection.

Couldn’t have 140 pounds of Korean scientist slamming into the street from 63 floors up, now could we?

“Package ready for pickup,” I whispered into the mic, maneuvering his body out the opening.

I stood back and watched through the surviving portion of the window as he gradually rose out of sight. While they hoisted him away, I got to work arranging the bogus clues that would implicate a couple of the faction members. Ideally, they’d look like remnants accidentally left behind by clumsy kidnappers: a ski mask with the appropriate foreign tag on it and a cell phone, chock-full of contacts and messages conveniently created by the smarty-pants on Q2’s second floor. One message, in the appropriate language, even said, “He’s asleep. Easy.”

Okay, so it was a little too obvious and maybe even amateurish. But we weren’t exactly dealing with rational, reasonable people here. They were already a breath away from turning on each other; the “evidence” didn’t need to be top-rate.

I looked out the hole in the window just as the harness, now empty, came back into view.

And that’s when I heard the tapping.

It came from the bedroom door and had to be the bodyguard from the living room. What the hell he could possibly want from his boss’s bedroom at nearly two o’clock in the morning wasn’t important. What was important was that he was standing out there, knocking. Perhaps he was under orders to check in every so often, whether summoned or not.

I instinctively reached for the Glock, but a firefight would only alert the muscle who waited out in the hallway. It would also sound the alarm for a lot of people who would make their way to the rooftop before the FBI could pirate away the valuable treasure.

In a flash, another idea occurred to me. I rushed back to the bed, yanked down the covers, jumped in, then pulled the comforter back up over my head. I’d no sooner finished that move than I heard the door open and a deep voice call out in what sounded like a Greek accent.

I did my best impression of a snore.

Let me just say right now, impressions of snores are lame, have always been lame, and always will be lame. It’s not something most people can fake without sounding more ridiculous than a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

But then again, Gwan was also known to be a lush, so maybe my silly snoring wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Perhaps the guard simply wanted to get something out of a closet and would quietly get in and out. Plus, it was dark enough in the room that, unless he was looking for it, he might not even notice the nine-square-foot hole at the bottom of the far window.

A boy can dream.

I heard the lamp click on beside the bed, Then, with a whoosh, the cover was snatched away and I was looking up into the face of a very confused man. A very large, confused man.

I stared back up at him and said, “Please, Mom, five more minutes.”

It bought me all of two seconds. After that, two meaty paws reached for me. I rolled to my left across the bed. The problem was, the blanket still covered the lower half of my body, making it hard to scramble effectively. Before I could extricate myself, he had a powerful grip on my right arm and dragged me back toward him.

As silly as it sounds, my goal was to have the quietest fight of all time. I had to somehow disable this beast without alerting the other goons out in the hall. Granted, in this massive suite, the bedroom was tucked out of the way and not necessarily close to the hallway door. But I couldn’t take the chance. One guy I might be able to handle; three would be problematic.

Although handling this one dude didn’t seem all that easy. He was not only big and strong, he was fast. Before I knew what had hit me, he—well, he hit me.

Don’t let movies fool you. Getting punched is no picnic. It hurts. A heavyweight boxer once described it in the simplest terms ever. He said, “I can tell you right now, it don’t feel good.” And those guys wear padded gloves.

It also, unlike the Hollywood versions, leaves a mark. And it can easily take you out of the action in a flash. If you’ve ever seen an honest to goodness bar fight, they rarely last more than one or two punches.

At least the guy had me untangled, which gave me a little room to operate. I gave him a decent head butt, which normally would incapacitate an opponent. With him, the appearance of his own blood seemed to energize him.

“Shit,” I muttered as his eyes widened and a cruel smile spread across his face. I jumped backward, landing back on the bed, then tumbled over to the far side. With his speed, he was immediately around the bed. The only thing handy to grab—don’t laugh—was one of the pillows. I snatched it and swung it at him.

Yes, Eric Swan, super spy and all-American hero, was in the midst of a pillow fight. This would definitely not find its way into my report.

But it at least produced one positive result. The beast threw a hand up to ward off the cushy weapon, which took his eyes off me. As soon as he lowered the hand, I fired a solid kick into his chin, which jolted him back a step. I followed that with a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. But he still wouldn’t go down. Instead, his left hand shot out and clutched my throat. Before I could knock it away, he’d lifted me off my feet and, with strength pulled straight out of a Marvel movie, the monster slung me toward the window.

Actually, directly at the gaping hole in the window. The hole I’d made.

If I hadn’t quickly recovered and stretched out an arm to stop myself, it would’ve been a clean shot through the breach, like a perfect roll in Skeeball when it plops through the 50-point hole without touching the sides. The next stop would’ve been the pavement.

But I couldn’t process all that in the moment. Big Boy was back on top of me, knocking my hand away from the glass and shoving my head out the hole in the window. It dawned on me: Holy shit. That wasn’t some lucky shot. The son of a bitch is actually trying to push me through the opening.

He was strong enough to do it, too, especially because I had no leverage on the floor. I slipped a little farther out, to the point I felt cool night air blowing across my face. He wore a truly wicked smile, made all the more grisly when combined with the blood dripping from his forehead onto his lower lip, courtesy of my head butt. He shoved me out another few inches. Just a bit more and gravity would do the rest.

Trying to loosen his grip on me was pointless in my position. With his bulk manhandling me, it was impossible to reach the Glock strapped under my jacket. I still didn’t want to fire a shot anyway, if I could help it. Although, given the choice of taking on two or three more hired killers or plummeting 650 feet to my death, I’d probably choose Option A.

Oh, wait. I did have another choice. Doing my best to drag my heels and slow down my movement, I scrambled with my right hand into the zippered pants pocket. While I did this, he grunted and shoved me another two inches, so now my shoulders hung outside. Finally, after fumbling for a moment, my fingers closed around the glass cutter and I yanked it out.

With one quick stabbing movement, I rammed the blade into the back of his neck.

His mouth shot open with a bizarre, soundless roar, like a scene from a silent movie. His body tensed and his grasp on me slackened. I yanked out the blade and jammed it in again. This time, he let out a gurgle and some blood sprayed from his mouth. Naturally, all over my face.

That’s another way Hollywood deceives you. They never show you just how disgustingly gross a spy’s job can be.

And yet, with all that, the brute still wouldn’t die. He fell off me to the side, but was reaching back, trying to stem the tide of blood, and climbing back to his feet. I pulled myself back into the room and got up just as he tried to do battle one more time.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said to him, trying to wipe his blood off my face but mostly just smearing it.

He lunged. I sidestepped, reached down for the blanket on the bed, and pulled it up and over his head, twisting it as he struggled to rip it off. Even with the two deep wounds in his neck, he actually got in a lucky punch to my side, knocking the wind out of me a bit. But I held on, spinning and twisting a little more. He let out a muffled roar.

“Shh,” I said. “Don’t wake the neighbors.”

And with that, I reached down, grabbed the clock radio off the nightstand, ripped it out of the wall, and smashed it down on top of the blanketed head with every ounce of strength I could muster. This stopped him short, and I saw his knees buckle. A second bash put him down on the floor, still covered from the shoulders up with the blanket. A sizable pool of blood oozed around him.

I sat down on the edge of the bed to catch my breath and put my hand up against the side of my face where I’d been struck. I winced and, just for spite, kicked the dying goon in the stomach.

Childish? Yes.

I tugged the loose bed sheet over to me and tried wiping the gore from my throbbing face.

This was not at all what I’d expected on this job.

“Hey Eric,” came the voice of Brosh in my ear. “What the hell are you doing down there? Getting a drink for the road?”

I had to chuckle. But then I looked toward the bedroom door and raised an eyebrow. These fancy suites did have bars in them.

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