LITMIR.BIZ

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cut loose with another burst from his weapon, simultaneously felt something grab hold of him, stop him cold. Pain seared through his right arm even as the gunshot registered in his mind. His knees buckled, slammed hard against the concrete.

      The soldier, face obscured by night-vision goggles, readjusted his aim. Abdullah willed his arm to rise, realized it no longer responded to his commands. Streams of gunfire ripped through the air overhead, causing him to flinch. A storm of bullets ripped into the Iraqi soldier, pounding him back several steps, burrowing into the man’s body armor, but stopping short of his flesh. Although not mortally injured, Abdullah saw the man whipsawed about by the bullets’ force. Another burst smacked into the man’s face, knocking him backward as though tackled from behind.

      A pair of Abdullah’s comrades, both Egyptian mercenaries, raced from the shadows and helped him to his feet while a third stayed behind the troop carrier and laid down cover fire. Weapons chatter and muzzle-flashes erupted around Abdullah. Bullets sizzled just past his head, chewing through concrete and ricocheting off the armored hide of the vehicle at his back.

      He felt fingers slip into his shirt collar. Someone dragged him to his feet, roughly.

      “Go,” said one of the mercenaries.

      Abdullah nodded, backpedaled toward cover. Even as he did, he used his good hand to snatch the Beretta 92-F from his hip, snapped off three shots at another soldier. The first two rounds flew wild, screaming past the man’s head. The third, fueled by sheer luck, drilled into the man’s mouth, tunneled through his spinal cord before exploding from the back of his head.

      His arm throbbing, his head lightening with blood loss, Abdullah continued moving. God had smiled on him with that last shot, that much he knew. He triggered the pistol again, watched muzzle-flashes pop lighter green in his field of vision. With the Egyptians’ guidance, he made it behind the large troop carrier.

      “You’re okay?” the mercenary asked.

      Abdullah nodded. “I can treat this myself.”

      “You’re lucky,” the man said. “The bullet came out the other side. But you’re losing a great deal of blood.”

      Abdullah waved him away. “Fight. We came here to fight.”

      The mercenary grinned. “Yes, we did. And I came here for a paycheck. Unfortunately we find ourselves at odds.”

      The man jabbed the barrel of his pistol into Abdullah’s forehead. Abdullah raised a hand to swat it away but never connected. Then his world went black.

      Amman, Jordan

      TARIQ RIYADH SAT at a table in the corner of the hotel bar, nursed his third whiskey. The hotel catered mostly to Westerners and a pianist tapped out an old jazz standard, the melody competing with the dull din of collective conversation, broken only by an occasional burst of laughter. Riyadh watched as the cigarette pinched between the first two fingers of his right hand, burned down to the filter. Discarding it, he lit another. What the hell? he thought. I have plenty of time.

      A big man dressed in a summer-weight navy-blue suit, eyes obscured by a pair of mirrored aviator shades, drifting through the crowd. Clutching a glass mug of amber beer, he approached Riyadh’s table, dropped into a chair without invitation. Anger burned in Riyadh’s face, knotted his stomach, as he stared at the man, who was looking past him at a wall. With his eyes hidden and his mouth set in a neutral line, Jon Stone was as inscrutable as ever.

      “They’ve killed more than three hundred,” Riyadh said. “The entire team, except for the mercenaries, are dead. They’ve also been hunting down members of their families, killing the men. I’ve lost four cousins and two nephews within the last week. One of them was twelve”

      “Sorry,” Stone said, not meaning it.

      “Sorry? Sorry gets me nothing.”

      Stone shrugged and swallowed more beer. “It happens, man. You knew the risks going in. You don’t like how it worked out? Tough shit.”

      “You knew the mission had been compromised.”

      “We suspected. There’s a difference.”

      “Without distinction.”

      “Did you know the Egyptian mercenaries had gone rogue?”

      “Maybe.”

      “But you went anyway. Why?”

      “Orders.”

      “Whose?”

      “None of your damn business.”

      Riyadh thought for a moment of the 9 mm Smith & Wesson hidden under his light jacket, discarded the notion. He couldn’t shoot Stone, not here, not now. Even if he could best the man in combat, he knew he’d never make it out of the lobby without being arrested or shot by the armed guards protecting the hotel. Neither was an acceptable option. He had too much to accomplish.

      “I’m making it my business,” Riyadh said.

      Stone had shifted in his seat, sitting sideways so Riyadh faced his profile. He cupped the rim of the mug with his fingertips, swirled it around the table in long, lazy circles.

      “Take it somewhere else, asshole. You made your bed, now lie in it. You don’t like how things worked out, tough. Truth be told, I don’t care what you think.”

      “Perhaps you should start caring,” Riyadh said. Apparently, Stone caught the change of tone in Riyadh’s voice and fixed him with a hollow-eyed gaze.

      “Really?” Stone said. “And why is that?”

      “We both know about my little transgression with Saddam’s weapons. We also know you shook me down for a percentage of the money. I believe your country would consider that treason.”

      “No one would believe you.”

      “I have proof.”

      “What kind.”

      “None of your damn business,” Riyadh said, a smile ghosting his lips.

      His hand still clasped around his drink, Stone unfurled his index finger and pointed it at Riyadh as he spoke. “If you report me,” Stone said, “you go down, too.”

      Riyadh shrugged and ground out his cigarette. Setting both elbows on the table, he stacked his forearms atop each other and leaned in close to Stone.

      “There’s a difference, Stone. I have nothing to live for, nothing to lose. Thanks to your bungling, I have no family, no home, no country. And if you think you can solve this problem by killing me, you’d better reconsider.”

      “And why is that?”

      “I have an audio copy of our previous conversation in Iraq attached to more than four dozen e-mails addressed to everyone from the CIA director to the White House to the managing editor of the New York Times,” Riyadh explained. “If I don’t check in every twenty-four hours, my people send out those e-mails. There are more than a dozen people spread out all over the globe, each with the same information, each with the same orders to distribute the information should something happen to me. You’d never stop them all.”

      Stone drained his glass, shoved it away. His lips curled into a snarl as he spoke. “You little bastard. You could bury me with that stuff.”

      Riyadh knew the admission cost Stone, and he made no attempt to hide his pleasure. “There are few things I’d enjoy more. Who approved the mission?”

      “James Lee, the director.”

      “As I thought.”

      “Okay. So are we even? Are we done?”

      Riyadh shook his head, grinned. “Done? Hardly, my friend. I’m just getting started.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      Islamabad, Pakistan, the present

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