By Dawn's Early Light Read Online Free

Carter had been allowed to practically come and go as he pleased. Even Chelsea Clinton attended college in California and England without too much of a fuss. She had Secret Service bodyguards, but hell, as Hanson explained to his brother, his team would be his bodyguards.
    In the end it had taken a word from the president himself before Scott was allowed to go to work for the Company. Nobody liked it, least of all the president. But Scott was a strong-willed man.
    From the moment he could remember growing up in northern California, his brother had political ambitions. It was the running joke in the family that someday Gerald would be the president.
    When it became likely, however, Scott and his family had come under the media microscope. Practically every move they made was scrutinized and analyzed to death. The fact that he had served in the navy as a SEAL was great fodder for shows like 60 Minutes and 20/20 . And when he’d joined the CIA three months before the election the media went wild.
    Which lasted until forty-eight hours after the inauguration when the spotlight on Scott and his family was suddenly switched off.
    They had been lucky coming ashore ten klicks east of the Pakistani naval air station at Jiwani five days ago just before dawn. By the time the sun had come up on the first morning, they were already nine kilometers inland, safely across the coastal highway, and well hidden for the day in the scrub.
    It was summer, and conditions in the bush were less than ideal: heat, bugs, snakes, warm drinking water, and the occasional Pakistani security patrol. But at thirty-six, Hanson—who was the old man of the group—was, like the others, in superb physical condition.
    As soon as it was dark they had moved out, putting another twenty kilometers between themselves and the coast by midnight. Each man carried an eighty-pound load. When they put their packs down their muscles burned and they were soaked with sweat. But they could have continued until dawn if that’s what the mission required.
    Working only by starlight they unpacked their inflatable paragliders, making certain that the shrouds were in direct untangled line with their harnesses and control lines.
    Next, they attached the lightweight titanium folding propellers to the six horsepower backpack-mounted motors and filled the tanks with two quarts of gas, which would allow them to run for four hours before they had to land and refuel.
    The glider canopies and shrouds were made of the same RAM7 radar absorbing material as the chutes. The motors were extremely well muffled; the sounds and the exhaust heat were direct skyward. The motors were covered with RAM7 and the propellers were painted with a derivative RAM coating.
    The farther inland they got, the sparser the population was and therefore the less chance they had of being heard or spotted. But this near to the coast there were plenty of ears so they were careful.
    Hanson dropped back to the base of the depression and unslung his 9mm suppressed Sterling submachine gun. He tested the slide. As he suspected, it was fouled by sand.
    Amatozio lowered his binoculars to study what looked to him like a wooden bridge, or maybe even something like a very crude log cabin a long way out on the desert floor. It was possibly twenty-five or thirty klicks away. It had to be huge.
    Hauglar turned around to say something to Hanson and Mike Harvey, who was still having trouble with his leg, when a flash of brilliant light blotted out everything.
    Hanson instantly knew what it was.
    Amatozio screamed at the same moment that Hauglar flung himself down the side of the sand dune.
    â€œIt’s a nuke,” Hanson shouted.
    The back of Hauglar’s camo blouse was smoking, and most of the hair on the back of his head was singed off.
    Hanson scrambled up the side of the dune, grabbed a handful of Amatozio’s pant leg and hauled him down.
    A mind-splitting thunderclap burst overhead, making any rational