LITMIR.BIZ

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comedy clubs? I mean, I can see you on Letterman, Leno and—”

      Before he could finish, the creak of an old wooden door opening came from the small frame house twenty yards away. As if he had heard the conversation and realized it was time for him to make an appearance, a short man wearing khaki work pants and a woodland-camo battle-dress-uniform shirt appeared and walked toward them. The checkered kaffiyeh on his head was held in place by a red agal that rested just above his eyebrows. The two distinct “looks” appeared to contradict each other.

      “Dude looks like Lawrence of Arabia guest starring on Duck Dynasty,” James whispered.

      None of the men responded, but couldn’t suppress smiles. The comment even seemed to get Hawkins over his bad mood.

      A light breeze was blowing through the area, and it caused the khaki-and-kaffiyeh-clad man’s long, stringy gray beard to dance as he approached. Stopping five feet from where Hawkins stood, he looked down at the Phoenix Force man’s dung-covered boots and grinned. “If that is the worst thing that happens to you during your time in Radestan,” he said, “you will be very lucky.” Then, turning to McCarter as if he somehow sensed that the Briton was in charge, he carefully pronounced each syllable of the first line of the code phrases that had been set up by Stony Man Farm.

      “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” the man said in heavily Arab-accented English.

      “Someone’s in the kitchen I know,” McCarter answered immediately. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”

      “Strummin’ on the old banjo.” The words sounded strange with a Radestani accent.

      Hawkins turned to McCarter and said in a low voice, “Did Hal come up with all that?”

      The Phoenix Force leader knew he was referring to Harold Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s Director of Sensitive Operations. He nodded.

      Hawkins shook his head. “He’ll have these Arabs square-dancing and making moonshine before it’s all over,” he said, again under his breath.

      With their identities established, the old Arab stuck his hand out in greeting. “I am Abdul Ali,” he said. “As you can see, I was told you would come.”

      McCarter nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “I understand you were once in the Radestani army?” he said.

      Abdul Ali’s shoulders straightened slightly. “I was,” he said. “I rose to the rank of major.”

      “So what happened?” McCarter asked. “You don’t look old enough to have retired.”

      “I did not retire,” said Ali. “I simply resigned. Our government has become corrupt, and the armed forces have followed in that corruption.”

      McCarter nodded. The Farm’s cybernetics genius, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, had checked Ali out six ways to Sunday and believed the man was truly on the side of the rebels. So until something pointed him away from that view, McCarter would stick with it. “So you’ve been helping train the rebels?”

      “We are trying to train them, and organize them into one central force to overthrow the present government,” said Ali. “There are also Special Forces Americans—Green Berets, I believe you call them—in Ramesh who are working with them, as well. But, of course, we are not publicizing that fact.”

      “And Russia and China aren’t shouting it to the rooftops, either,” said McCarter, “but they’re supporting the current regime with money, equipment and advisors.”

      “That is correct,” said Ali. “It is the same here as it is in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. There may no longer be any Soviet Union, but Russia is up to its same old tricks, as I believe you Americans say.” He paused and blew air out between his closed lips, making them flutter. “It is like the Cold War all over again. As if Russia and the U.S. are playing chess on a giant chessboard and Radestan is just one of the pieces.”

      The two men had begun shaking hands during the brief discourse and now they dropped their arms to their sides. “How’s the training been going?” McCarter asked.

      Ali rolled his eyes. “Forming the rebels into a cohesive unit has not been easy,” he said. “Most of the time I feel like a junior high school principal or an umpire at one of your American Little League baseball games. They do not take to military discipline very well and one bunch—I call them bunches because they are too disorganized to call them anything else—cannot agree with another bunch on anything past the fact that they all want to overthrow the government.”

      David McCarter nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got,” he said.

      “We’ll be leading the PSOF rebels into battle once we meet up with them. So I hope at least some of the training has rubbed off.”

      Ali stared at the Phoenix Force leader with his dark brown eyes. “I was told to meet with you—not to take orders from you.” He cleared his throat. “I am used to being in charge myself.”

      “Some wires must have been crossed along the chain of command, then,” said McCarter. “But I’m sure we can get things cleared up.” He reached over his shoulder into the backpack he’d worn during the jump. “Hang on,” he said, pulling out a sat phone and tapping the speed-dial number for Stony Man Farm.

      A moment later he said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a small problem defining the chain of command between us and our Radestani contact. Would you mind speaking to Mr. Ali for a moment?” He handed the phone to Ali.

      The former Radestani major looked slightly confused as he accepted the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.

      The expression on the Radestani’s face told McCarter that Abdul Ali was being told in no uncertain terms who was in charge and the penalties he would risk if he continued to question the chain of command. McCarter knew that Brognola could even summon the President’s personal involvement if need be. Clearly, from the look on Ali’s face, no such intervention would be necessary.

      CHAPTER TWO

      It had taken years of hard labor—not just regular hours but often evenings and weekends—for Mani Mussawi to work his way up the ladder at the nuclear storage facility just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though he had been hired years before the al Qaeda strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there had been some reservations on the part of his supervisors to employ him. After all, there had already been other Islamic extremist terrorist operations against the U.S. abroad, and while political correctness forbade them from openly acknowledging it, Mussawi’s name and the dark brown color of his skin had made them uneasy.

      So the former Saudi Arabian subject, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been forced to start at the bottom in spite of his impressive MBA from Yale.

      Mussawi had begun his career working for the United States’ government in the mail room, sorting the envelopes and packages that came and went each day, then pushing a clumsy cloth-and-aluminum cart around the facility to deliver each piece of correspondence to its rightful recipient. The routine had become monotonous very quickly. But Mani Mussawi had soon realized that he could not have been placed in a better position in which to begin his career.

      It afforded him the opportunity to meet each and every one of the workers at the facility and to get to know them on a first-name basis. He had made a point of learning the first names of the lower-echelon employees, and made sure to always address the higher-ups as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or, in the case of the many former military men and women who worked there, by their former titles. Mussawi always had a broad smile on his face as he delivered the mail. The warm facial expression, combined with his frequent inquiries about the workers’ children, parents and other family members had soon endeared him to the staff.

      Oh, Mussawi thought as he lifted the can of disinfectant that he kept by his computer screen, there would always be a few of the hundred or so men and women whom he now worked with who would always view

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