LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You okay?” Bolan asked his old friend.

      “Yeah. You?”

      The Beretta leveled in front of him in a two-handed grip, Bolan was up on one knee, looking through the window and scanning the rooftops of nearby buildings. A trained sniper himself, his mind was running through a rough series of calculations, trying to determine the angle from which the shots had come so he could best identify the building from which the shooter had attacked. He saw no movement on any of the nearby rooftops, but within a couple of seconds thought he’d identified the sniper’s perch.

      He shot to his feet and moved toward the window. By the time he’d reached it, he heard tires squeal from the street below. He looked down in time to see a forest-green sedan rocket out of a nearby alley, cutting off an oncoming car before disappearing in traffic.

      “There goes our shooter,” Grimaldi said.

      Bolan nodded. He stowed his weapon, ran outside and crossed the street to the alley from where the green sedan had shot into traffic. He searched the building’s perimeter while Grimaldi continued to watch from above.

      Minutes later Bolan keyed his throat mike. “I got nothing,” he said. “But I do hear sirens. I guess it’s time we made our exit.”

       CHAPTER FIVE

      “What about the other two men?” Nawaz Khan asked.

      Daniel Masters shook his head. “Couldn’t get them,” he said. “Never got a clear shot.”

      Seated behind his wide mahogany desk, Khan leaned back in his chair and scowled. He pressed his fingertips together, his hands forming a steeple, and stared over them at Daniel Masters.

      “This is not good,” he said.

      “Thanks for the bloody understatement,” Masters snapped back. “These two men stormed the building, killed some of our best and brightest without breaking a sweat, and interrogated someone familiar with our plans. So, yeah, I’d say this is not good.”

      Khan fixed a hard stare on the Englishman as he pondered the words. If his glowering bothered Masters, he gave no outward sign of it. Instead the Englishman downed a Scotch whiskey on the rocks, wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and rose to make himself another.

      “Who were they?” Khan asked.

      Masters shrugged. “CIA. Delta Force. Who the hell can say? You were in intelligence before you went to the dark side. You know the players as well as I do. They could be private security contractors hired by the newspaper to rescue their guy. I mean, right? What we do know is that they are here, and they just tore a big damn hole in your operation.”

      “It can be dealt with.”

      “Can it? Look, first Lang infiltrates your organization. You kidnap him, hold him for a couple of days and kill him. Now you’ve probably brought the righteous wrath of the U.S. government down on our necks and you think it can be dealt with. You have the operational security of a toy store. My people are getting very nervous, Khan. They were before all this happened, which is why they sent me here in the first place.”

      An angry knot formed in Khan’s gut as he listened to the Englishman vent. When he spoke, an edge had crept into his voice. “Your people need to leave this to me.”

      The corners of Masters’s lips turned up in a mirthless grin. “Because leaving it to you has worked so well so far,” Masters said.

      “No. I have the contacts. I can make things happen. If you want to pull this off without me—” he made a sweeping gesture with his hand “—then be my guest. Otherwise, leave this in my hands.”

      “Which are so capable.”

      Khan leaned forward.

      “I tolerate you because you can supply the things I need. Not because I think you bring anything else to this operation.”

      Undeterred, Masters leaned forward, too, rested his elbows on the top of Khan’s desk and locked eyes with the guy. His face was perhaps a foot or so from Khan’s, well within striking distance should he decide to take a swing at the arrogant prick’s jaw, he thought.

      “Tell you what, Nawaz. Tell me to pound sand, please. I’ll catch a damn flight back to Moscow and tell Mr. Lebed that you’ve decided to cut short our little partnership, that you’ve decided you need your own space. My guess is he’ll send five more guys back here within twenty-four hours that’ll make our little American friends look like cream puffs. And they’ll wipe out your whole gang. As for this arms sale of yours, we’d be happy to bow out, take the product back with us and be done with your silliness once and for all. Maybe you can hop on the internet and buy some radioactive material there. What do you say, lad? That sound like a fine plan to you?”

      By now Khan had let his hand slip off the desk. He reached beneath the desktop and his fingers encircled the pistol grip on a 12-gauge sawed-off Ithaca shotgun that was suspended underneath the desk. Khan knew that one stroke of the trigger and the Ithaca would unleash a blast that would tear through the desk’s modesty panel and spray this limey fuck’s insides all over the walls of his office. He’d have the place scrubbed down, repainted and refurnished in twenty-four hours or less.

      Just enough time for Lebed to realize he’d strayed off the reservation and for him to dispatch a hit team to Dubai, just like the Englishman had suggested. Maybe he and his people would be able to fend off the Russian’s army of mercenaries and spies. Maybe.

      He loosened his grip on the shotgun and forced himself to smile at Masters, who’d hardly stopped to take a damn breath since he’d first launched into his tirade. The former English spy uncoiled from his chair and walked to the bar to make another drink.

      “You have the item then?”

      Masters nodded without bothering to look at him. Instead he focused on his bartending pursuits. “It’s nasty stuff, you know. It’s not like highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Just a little bit of this stuff and—poof—you’ve got a mini Armageddon on your hands. And it’s hard as hell to come by. Most people don’t think it exists, but it does.”

      Khan considered pointing out that Masters talked too damn much for a spy, but thought better of it and instead absorbed what he was being told.

      “I will get it, though?” he asked when Masters stopped to take a breath.

      “You will.”

      “And I will make sure you get your money.”

      Masters raised his glass and toasted Khan. “Even better. In the meantime, you need to deal with our new friends. We need them gone as soon as possible.”

      “Don’t worry,” Khan replied. “I’m already working on that.”

       CHAPTER SIX

      “The Man isn’t going to like this,” Brognola said. “Hell, I don’t like it.”

      “None of us do, Hal,” Bolan said. “It is what it is.”

      “Hell of a time to get philosophical on me, Striker.”

      Bolan allowed himself a smile, his first since he and Grimaldi had returned to a safehouse owned and operated by the U.S. government inside a walled community located in suburban Dubai. The place was three stories high, stuffed with luxurious furniture, surrounded by iron gates and bristling with tall iron fences topped with concertina wire. It was surrounded by other, similarly luxurious homes, most occupied by foreign executives working inside Dubai who made tempting targets for Islamic terrorists.

      “Where’s Jack?” Brognola asked.

      “In the shower,” Bolan replied. “Or maybe one of the pools. I’m not sure.”

      Brognola laughed. “How is it to sit in the lap of luxury?”

      “Not a bad place as far as safehouses go,” Bolan

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