Mars Jack
Oath of Office (A Luke Stone Thriller–Book 2)
Jack Mars is author of the bestselling LUKE STONE thriller series, which include the suspense thrillers ANY MEANS NECESSARY (book #1), OATH OF OFFICE (book #2) and SITUATION ROOM (book #3).
CHAPTER ONE
June 6th
3:47 p. m.
Dewey Beach, Delaware
Luke Stone’s entire body trembled. He looked at his right hand, his gun hand. He watched it shake as it rested on his thigh. He couldn’t get it to stop.
He felt nauseated, sick enough to vomit. The sun was moving west, and the brightness of it made him dizzy.
Go time was in thirteen minutes.
He sat in the driver’s seat of a black Mercedes M Series SUV, staring down the block at the house where his family might be. His wife, Rebecca, and his son, Gunner. His mind wanted to conjure images of them, but he wouldn’t allow it. They could be somewhere else. They could be dead. Their bodies could be chained to cinderblocks with heavy shipping chains, and rotting at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay.
For a split second, he saw Rebecca’s hair moving like seaweed, back and forth with the current, deep underwater.He shook his head to clear it.
Becca and Gunner had been abducted last night by agents working for the men who had taken down the United States government. It was a coup d’état, and its planners had taken Stone’s family as a bargaining chip, hoping to stop him from toppling the new government in turn.
It hadn’t worked.
“That’s the place,” Ed Newsam said.
“Is it?” Stone said. He looked at his partner in the passenger seat. “You know that?”
Ed Newsam was big, black, and rippling muscle. He looked like a linebacker in the NFL. There was no softness to him anywhere. He wore a close-cropped beard and a flat-top haircut. His massive arms were dark with tattoos.