Is one man’s life worth more than thousands of people…when that man is the President of the United States? Below is an excerpt from The President’s Assassin: A Political Thriller by Alex Contorno:

1

The Afghan boy came marching down the scorching hot desert road, carrying an old, cracked bucket and a dingy rag and making a direct line for where Dean Page sat in his truck. No one along the side streets and alleys was paying the kid any attention. He was a staple of the area, one of many children always begging for minor jobs in the little desert village of Zarghunay, Afghanistan. Dean had first spotted the kid three weeks ago. He’d watched how the kid walked the streets, how he asked car owners if he could wash their cars or even just clean their windshields.

More importantly, Dean noticed how no one paid any attention to the boy. He was just another beggar. Most people on the streets saw these poor children as nothing more than gnats, swarming and irritating. To those of higher stature, he was pretty much invisible.

He was exactly what Dean needed.

The kid took a quick look over his shoulder and hurried to Dean’s truck. A ruined, burned-out car was parked directly behind him, roughly ten feet away from the dusty street leading out of the thin row of markets along the village entrance.

When the kid came to a stop beside Dean’s truck, a bit of dirty water splashed up out of his bucket. Dean’s window was already down because the AC didn’t work, and it was over one hundred degrees outside. The boy leaned his head through the open window for a moment, but then seemed to decide it might seem too chummy to anyone who passed by. And discretion was part of their agreement.

“Did it,” the boy said.

“You’re sure?”

But Dean could see the pride in the kid’s eyes—the triumphant look of a child knowing he’d done a good job.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Tell me where, exactly.”

“Dirty white van with bullet hole in back glass,” the boy said in his broken English. “I put your metal box under the bumper.”

Dean knew this would be easy enough to test. The metal box the kid was referring to was a state-of-the art recording device with a miniature yet powerful parabolic microphone installed.

“Good job,” Dean said. He palmed the fifty-dollar bill and passed it through the window. The kid took it deftly, nearly dropping his bucket and rag in his excitement.

“You want windows cleaned?” the boy asked.

“No. No more work. You scram now.”

The boy nodded. “I scram. And I tell no one.”

Dean gave a nod and started the truck’s engine. It grumbled to life, and the truck shuddered. He pulled out of his spot and headed down the dusty path that led outside of Zarghunay. He glanced in the rearview and saw the boy already making his way back into the village.

He drove for half an hour, taking a few turns further into the desert. He passed nameless little villages and markets; the truck kicking up clouds of dust the entire time. Dean had been down these winding desert roads over twenty times in the past two months. He’d used a variety of vehicles: vans, a old Humvee, a beat-up Jeep and several trucks. Each one of the three different US intelligence agencies had paid for and planted the vehicles.

Dean Page wasn’t a spy. Not really. His official title was Intelligence Coordinator, but Dean knew what that equated to. It was nothing more than a fancy moniker for spy. And for the last two months, he’d been on assignment in and around the area of Zarghunay, looking into the movements and conversations of three different men, all of whom were affiliated with a terrorist group known as Nightwatch.

They were quite crafty. As a small network comprised of men with military backgrounds, Nightwatch members knew how to go unseen. But Dean was better than them, as was the small counter-intelligence group that had sent Dean out this way.

He was sure no one had spotted him during his time in the area. And he planned to keep it that way. If all went well, he’d be on a plane back to the US sometime tomorrow morning. Paying the kid to plant the device had been a necessary risk; it made much more sense for an ignored local who wandered through the markets to plant the device on the van of a Nightwatch guard as opposed to a Black American man no one in Zarghunay had ever seen before.

And now, with the device planted, the only thing left to do was wait. He pulled off of the road forty-two miles away from Zarghunay and into what looked to be a small auto repair shop in the middle of nowhere. A small hut attached to the back of it also served as a meager bar. When he parked the truck and got out, Dean took no time to look the place over. It was owned by a local, but that local was being paid handsomely for keeping quiet about the fact that high ranking US officials and military operatives often used it to stow supplies.

Dean got out of the truck and selected another vehicle—this one a busted up old Honda hatchback. The keys were beneath the floorboard runners and the engine cranked with a bit of rusty hesitation. He instantly pulled away from the repair shop and bar. He took a quick glance at the building before driving away and didn’t spot a single person, despite the garage bay door being open and a truck being propped up to reveal its undercarriage.

From there, Dean drove another five miles toward absolutely nothing. He came to the edge of a ravine; the scenery revealing nothing more than golden and orange hues of dust and dirt all around.

Bagram Airfield was roughly one hundred and twenty miles to the east. Mazar-i-Sharif was about seventy miles west. But other than a few meager villages here and there, there was nothing else. All he saw in every direction was open desert. It was perfect.

He opened the Honda’s glove box and reached under an old, slightly yellowed stack of maps and napkins. He stowed his smart pad there earlier in the day, not wanting to risk having the microphone and the operating system side by side, just in case he was discovered. It had only wasted about two hours of his time and besides…if everything worked as it should, there was nothing else he could do until the now-bugged Nightwatch van moved.

Dean switched on the pad and opened up the system that was synced to the device currently attached via magnetized strips to the underside of the van’s bumper. The operating system, like the device itself, was so new that certain departments back in the states were still referring to it as “in development.” But based on what Dean had seen of it, he was certain it was ready for full deployment.

A map of the desert popped up, showing an expanse of two hundred miles. A small flashing dot appeared to his north, toward Zarghunay. He tapped the dot and it instantly zoomed in on a satellite image of the village. Dean used his thumb and forefinger to pinch at the screen, zooming in until he could see the small shape of the dirty, white van in question.

Near the bottom of the screen, a toolbar gave him several options, one of which read: Microphone detected. Audio On/Off. He clicked the little slider to On and the results were immediate. Despite the distance, Dean heard crystal clear audio with no lag or disruption.

Because the van was still in place, all Dean could hear were sounds from the markets and streets. A murmur of conversation, the puttering of an old motorcycle passing by, someone coughing, a small child whining about something.

Even though the job was far from over, Dean already felt a stirring of success and accomplishment. The entire point of his mission was to find evidence that Nightwatch was planning an attack on American soil in the near future. The suspicions had come from the journals and notes of an American journalist who had spent some time in the area. He’d seen no real threat in the posturing statements from people closely tied to Nightwatch, but US Intelligence agencies had found it serious enough to send Dean out.

And now, nearly two months later, he’d identified at least five members of the group, as well as two of their vehicles and a primary lair. All he needed was for someone to have a conversation pointing back to some of their alleged plans.

And for now, all Dean could do was wait. He sat in the car, isolated and alone in the desert, sweating even though he was doing nothing more than sitting in a car with the windows rolled down. He sipped from a plastic bottle of water while watching the small dot on the smart pad screen, waiting for it to move and for the voices of Nightwatch members to speak.

Visit our Reading Essentials section to discover the best bookshelves, reading chairs, book lights for reading at night, and more!

Receive top book recommendations directly in your inbox.