The Blue Zone
A breathtaking novel of suspense from the co-author of five bestselling James Patterson novels, including ‘Judge and Jury’ and ‘Lifeguard’.THERE ARE NO RULES IN THE BLUE ZONE.They were the perfect family. And he was the perfect family man. One day changed it all.Arrested for racketeering, Ben Raab must take his family into America’s Witness Protection Programme. Only his eldest daughter, Kate, chooses to stay on the outside.But the Programme's perfect success rate is about to come to a shocking end. A case agent is tortured to death and Ben vanishes. The one person who might be able to find him is Kate.Pursued by killers, forced to question everything she knows about her life so far, Kate is plunged into a terrifying existence for which nothing has prepared her.Most people would call it certain death.The FBI calls it the Blue Zone.
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THE BLUE ZONE
Andrew Gross
CONTENTS
The manual of WITSEC, the U.S. Marshals agency that oversees the Witness Protection Program, describes three stages of agency involvement.
The Red Zone—when a subject is held in protective custody, while in prison or on trial.
The Green Zone—when that subject, along with his or her family, has been placed in a new identity and location and is living securely in that identity, known only to his WITSEC case agent.
And the Blue Zone—the state most feared, when there is suspicion that a subject’s new identity has been penetrated or blown. When he or she is unaccounted for, is out of contact with the case agent, or has fled the safety of the program. When there is no official knowledge of whether that person is dead or alive.
It took just minutes for Dr. Emil Varga to reach the old man’s room. He had been in a deep sleep, dreaming of a woman from his days at the university a lifetime ago, but at the sound of the servant’s frantic knocking he quickly threw his wool jacket over his nightshirt and grabbed his bag.
“Please, Doctor,” she said, running upstairs ahead of him, “come quick!”
Varga knew the way. He had been staying in the hacienda for weeks. In fact, the stubborn, unyielding man who had held off death for so long was his only patient these days. Sometimes Varga mused over a brandy at night that his loyal service had hastened his departure from a lengthy and distinguished career.
Was it finally over …?
The doctor paused at the bedroom door. The room was dark, fetid; the arched, shuttered windows held back the onset of dawn. The smell told him all he needed to know. That and the old man’s chest—silent for the first time in weeks. His mouth was open, his head tilted slightly on the pillow. A trickle of yellow drool clotted on his lips.
Slowly Varga stepped up to the large mahogany bed and put his bag on the table. No need for instruments now. In life his patient had been a bull of a man. Varga thought of all the violence he had caused. But now the sharp Indian cheekbones were shrunken and pale. There was something about it that the doctor thought fitting. How could someone who had caused such fear and misery in his life look so frail and withered now?
Varga heard voices from down the hall, shattering the calm of the dawn. Bobi, the old man’s youngest son, ran into the room, still in his bedclothes. He stopped immediately and fixed on the lifeless shape, his eyes wide.
“Is he dead?”
The doctor nodded. “He finally gave up his grip on life. For eighty years he had it by the balls.”
Bobi’s wife, Marguerite, who was carrying the old man’s third grandchild, began to weep in the doorway. The son crept cautiously over to the bed, as if advancing on a slumbering mountain lion that at any moment might spring up in attack. He knelt down and brushed the old man’s face, his tightened, withered cheeks. Then he took his father’s hand, which even now was rough and coarse as a laborer’s hand, and gently kissed it on the knuckles.
“Todas apuestas se terminaron, Papa,” he whispered, gazing into the old man’s deadened eyes.
All bets are off, Father.
Then Bobi rose and nodded. “Thank you, Doctor, for all you’ve done. I’ll make sure word gets to my brothers.”
Varga tried to read what was in the son’s eyes. Grief. Disbelief. His father’s illness had gone on so long, and now the day had finally come.
