LITMIR.BIZ

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until you get set up in someplace far away from North Dakota. Washington, all your medical bills and those banks you so detest? Your debt is erased, officially you become the man who was never born. Think about it. New name. New identity. You could be sitting on a beach in Hawaii, sipping mai tais and playing with the local hula-hoop talent by tomorrow. If I were you…”

      “You ain’t. No deal. I’m walkin’ outta here and goin’ straight to the county sheriff.”

      “Is that your final answer, Mr. Decker?”

      “First and last.”

      “Suit yourself.”

      It was too easy, Decker’s instinct stirring, the old combat senses flaring to life, telling him something was wrong. He saw the glowing tip of the cigarette fall to the floor, eyes up, but the faceless Orion was gone, vanished, as if the light had swallowed him up. No sound of any door opening or closing to betray an exit, he was rising when he heard the electronic whir, looked up, thought he saw the ceiling part. A black hole yawning into view, barely perceptible as Decker squinted into the light, he heard machinery grinding to life, from some point beyond the white halo, deep in the dark void. If he didn’t know better, it sounded like a threshing machine was cranking to life. What the…

      Warning bells clanged in a brain muddied by dope. He cursed whoever’d shot him up, limbs unwilling to respond to a rising sense of fear when the noise shrilled into what he was now certain was a wood chipper, and a damn big one, unless he missed his guess. He ventured a step forward, trying to get his sea legs, when the first gust of wind blasted around him like the gathering onslaught of a twister ready to rip across the prairie. Fear began edging toward terror, thoughts racing, as the wind strengthened, suctioned up and through the tunnel in the ceiling. What was happening became inconceivable, a nightmare he was sure, but here he was—all alone, no one knew he was even still alive, that he was dealing with the almighty hand of Big Brother who could do whatever he wanted and get away.

      The cigarette was sucked up, flying past his eyes, the invisible force of a great vacuum swirling around him now, tugging arms and legs. The chair went next, shooting into the black hole, followed a split second later by a sort of screeching metallic grind.

      And it dawned on him what was about to happen, horror setting in, the unholy racket of machinery torqued up to new decibels, spiking his ears, as he heard his cry being swept away into the white light. He tried to forge ahead, but the wind seemed to root him to the floor, the ground beneath like magnets daring him to walk, and far worse than any mud he’d ever slogged through more than half a century ago. The scream was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew the sound of terror would be lost to all but himself, if even that, as he was sheared naked by the cyclone, the flesh on his face feeling wrenched up, as though it was being blasted off bone, the twister sucking the air out of his lungs.

      Oh, God, no! he heard his mind roar as he was lifted off his feet, levitating for a moment before the invisible strings began jerking with renewed violent force.

      And he burst a silent scream into the wind, arms wrenched above his head, as he rose toward the black hole.

      IT WAS A MOMENT, about as rare as a Nellie sighting in Loch Ness, Hal Brognola considered when he felt himself about to be scourged by depression. Or was it something else, he wondered, and far more insidious as he weighed the few facts as he knew them? Self-doubt? That what he did perhaps, at best, only pounded a small dent toward making the free world a better, safer place? That the only real solution, he morbidly thought, was kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out?

      And dismissed that as soon as the first whisper of fatalistic pessimism filtered into his head. No way could he look himself in the mirror if he lived without principles, he knew, briefly angry with himself for even entertaining such notions. To doubt his duty, first of all, would be tantamount to death. And to undercut the fact there were good people everywhere—who only wished to live in peace and harmony, raise families, do whatever was right, whatever it took, no matter how tempting it was to turn their backs and go through the easy and wide-open gates of hell—was the first step toward becoming what he’d spent his life fighting.

      Troubled, nonetheless, sifting through grim thoughts, the Man from Justice stole another few seconds, staring out the window as the Bell JetRanger swept over the Blue Ridge Mountains. When was the last time, he wondered, he had actually enjoyed the pristine view of those forested slopes, free to observe the rising sun spread the arrival of a new day, free to relax, not burdened by the weight of the nation’s security?

      He couldn’t remember, and maybe it didn’t matter. By nature or destiny—and he wasn’t sure where the line blurred—he drove himself with the task at hand as hard as the day was long, grimly aware the wicked did not rest in his world. Beyond that, he was committed to the duty of defending America against its sworn enemies, from within and beyond its borders. On that score, it was an endless battlefront, he knew, forever expanding, as far as he was concerned, another roster of monsters always rising up to replace the evil dead, and often before the smoke cleared enough to see the next blood horizon. Or to pin down the next threat to God only knew how many innocents.

      And it was a changing world out there, he reflected, evolving darker and more sinister by the day. Weapons of mass destruction. Suicide bombers. Suitcase nukes. Whole nations harboring, training and financing the murder of innocents. Supposed NATO allies, France and Germany, for example, doing business in the billions of dollars in the shadows with a former tyrant who used murder and torture and rape as an entertaining pastime. Forget any goodwill toward all men, there were mornings, like now, he wondered if the whole world was just going straight to hell.

      He stood and went to the scanning console set on the small teakwood table. It was roughly the size of a notebook computer, but with attached fax and what looked like a microscope, Brognola finding his access code had been relayed to the Farm’s Computer Room, confirmed and framed in white on the monitor. Initiate Phase Two flashed, and he took a seat. IPT, he knew, was part of a trial run to upgrade security, establish identity one hundred percent, thus save time and keep the blacksuits from rolling out of the main building, or find the antiaircraft battery painting incoming aircraft.

      The retinal scan was first, Brognola placing his right socket against the scope’s eye, depressing the send button, grateful high-tech refinements didn’t produce any flash that would leave him squinting. Right thumb rolled over the ink pad, then placed on standard-size, white bond paper, he punched in the numbers for the secure line, faxed it to Kurtzman. Tapping in a series of numbers to activate the system’s scrambler—Go illuminated in green on the monitor’s readout—he spoke into the miniature voice box.

      “This is Alpha One to Omega Base Home. Confirm Voice Test Analysis. All tests initiated, awaiting your confirmation. Out.”

      While he waited, Brognola eased back in the bolted-down leather swivel chair. There was a gathering tempest out there, and only direct actionable response, he knew, would hold back the barbarians before they tore down the walls of civilization.

      FORMER DELTA FORCE Colonel Joshua Langdon took the smaller of black ferrite-painted aluminum steamer trunks by the nylon strap handle as soon as the ninety-foot-long inflatable boat scraped sand. Known to his men and the attached three-commando unit calling itself Tiger Ops as Commander X, he allowed the others to jump over the side first, splash down in ankle-deep, blue-green water. Five altogether, two commandos each to a steamer trunk the size of a body bag, the odd man out he knew as Capricorn Alpha Galaxy Leader, hands empty except for an HK MP-5 subgun, and they were on the beach, seconds flat, hauling the high-tech loads—one of his troops likewise burdened with a hundred-pounds-plus of folded camo netting on his back—deeper into the lush tropical greenery. A GPS module in the hands of his one of his commandos, steering them down a path to erect their base predetermined by satellite shoots, he followed Capricorn Alpha Galaxy Leader to shore.

      Home sweet home, at least for the immediate future.

      A quick search of the beach, black wraparound sunglasses shielding eyes from sunlight that beat off the emerald-green waters and white sand like imagined glowing radiation, and the ex-Delta colonel found himself alone with the Tiger Ops leader. Setting the trunk down, shucking the slung HK

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