LITMIR.BIZ

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chief pilot for the covert project, that he was needed ASAP to take a helicopter into Wonderland on the Potomac and ferry Brognola to the Farm.

      The second call went to Barbara Price.

      BARBARA PRICE, Stony Man’s mission controller, opened her eyes.

      She awoke clearheaded and alert, knowing exactly where she was and what she needed to do.

      There was a war being fought in the shadows and like the ringmaster of a circus, she was at its epicenter. Her eyes went to the window of her bedroom. It was dark outside. She looked over to her bedroom table and noted the glowing red numerals of her digital clock.

      She had been asleep for a little over four hours. She sat up and pushed a slender hand through her honey-blond hair. She felt revitalized after her power nap and with a single cup of Aaron “Bear” Kurtzman’s coffee she knew she’d be ready to face another day.

      She got out of bed and smoothed her clothes before picking up the copy of the Washington Post she had placed by her bed. The headline jumped out at her as she stepped out into the upstairs hallway of the Stony Man Farm main house.

      Rebel Forces Invade Congo

      Late yesterday afternoon the Congo was rocked by violence as insurgents under command of the infamous Gen. Nkunda took control of a region on the upper river. Human rights groups are worried as communication with the area has been cut off…

      Disgusted, Price stopped reading. She had too much on her mind at the moment to worry about politics as usual in Africa.

      She frowned. The name “General Nkunda” was unfamiliar. If there was a new player trampling through national playgrounds then she needed to be on top of it. She resolved to have her computer wizard Akira Tokaido see if Stony Man had any files on the man.

      As she walked down the hall and took the stairs to the main floor of the farmhouse she began clicking through options and mentally categorizing her tasks. She had men on standby, preparing to go into danger, and like the maestro of a symphony it was her responsibility to coordinate all the disparate parts into a seamless whole.

      She was in the basement and heading for the rail system that connected to the Annex when the cell phone on her belt began to vibrate. She plucked it free and used the red push-talk button to initiate the walkie-talkie mode on the encrypted device.

      “This is Barb,” she said, voice cool.

      “Barb,” Carmen Delahunt began, “Hal called. We have a situation.”

      “Thanks, Carmen,” Price told the ex-FBI agent. “I’m in the tunnel and coming toward the Annex now.”

      “See you in a minute,” Delahunt said, and signed off.

      Price put her phone away and got into the light electric railcar. The little engine began to hum and Price quickly picked up speed as she shot down the one-thousand-foot tunnel sunk fifteen feet below the ground of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

      Things were starting to click, and Price could feel the tingle she had first felt as a mission controller for long-range operations conducted by the National Security Agency. It was there she had made her bones in the intelligence business before being recruited by Hal Brognola to run logistics and support at the more covert Stony Man operation.

      It had been quite a promotion, she reflected as the railcar raced down the subterranean tunnel past conduit pipes and thick power cables toward the Farm’s Annex, which was camouflaged underneath a commercial wood-chipping facility.

      Stony Man had operated as a clandestine antiterrorist operation since long before the infamous attacks of September 11 had put all of America’s military, intelligence and law-enforcement efforts on the same page. As such, Stony Man operated as it always had: under the direct control of the White House and separate from both the Joint Special Operations Command and the Directorate of National Intelligence.

      Stony Man had been given carte blanche to operate at peak efficiency, eliminating oversights and legalities in the name of pragmatic results. It also, perhaps most importantly, offered the U.S. government the ability to disavow any knowledge of operations that went badly. Sometimes the big picture could provide a very cold and unforgiving snapshot.

      This left Stony Man and its operators particularly vulnerable to certain types of exposure. One hint of their existence in a place like MSNBC or the New York Times could lead to horrific outcomes.

      The electric engine beneath her seat began to power down and the railcar slowed to a halt. She pushed the morose reflections from her mind as she prepared to enter the Annex building.

      Things were ready to roll hot; she could not afford to be distracted now. She stood and stepped out of the car. Fluorescent lights gleamed off linoleum floors and a sign on the whitewashed wall read Authorized Personnel Only. Price input the code on the keypad and reached over to open the door to the tunnel.

      After passing through the door, she was met by the wheelchair-bound Aaron Kurtzman. The big man reached out a hand the size of a paw and gave her a steaming mug of coffee. She eyed the ink-colored liquid dubiously.

      “Thanks, Bear. That’s just what I’ve been missing—something that can put hair on my chest.”

      The pair of them had exchanged that same greeting so many times it came to feel like a Groundhog Day moment. Both took comfort from the repetition.

      Kurtzman turned the wheelchair and began to keep pace with the female mission controller as they made for the Communications Room.

      The former Big Ten college wrestler lifted a massive arm across a barrel chest and pushed his glasses up on his nose beneath a high forehead with a deep horizontal crease. Price had once teased him that the worry line was severe enough for him to be awarded a Purple Heart.

      He’d earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He was a Stony Man veteran who had been with the Farm since the beginning, and his wheelchair was a constant testament to his dedication.

      “McCarter just called for Phoenix,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “They’ve set up rendezvous with Encizo and James. Carl did the same for Able. They’re in place and ready to transport if we need them. They’ve been informed of the attack on NSA station Lazy Titan and the possibility of a survivor.”

      “Good,” Price said. She took a drink of the strong coffee and pulled a face. “I’ll alert Hal, then. All we need is the go-ahead from the President.”

      The pair entered the massive Communications Room and into a maelstrom of activity. Price paused at the door like a commander surveying her troops. She liked what she saw.

      Kurtzman glided over to his work area, where it looked as if a bomb had gone off. His desk was covered in faxes, paperwork and the exposed wiring of half a dozen devices. Next to his desk, fingers flying across a laptop while monitoring a sat com link, Akira Tokaido bobbed his head in time to the music coming from a single earphone. The lean, compact hacker was the youngest member of Stony Man’s cybernetics team and the heir apparent to Kurtzman himself. The Japanese-American cyberpunk had at times worked virtual magic when Price had needed him to.

      Across the room from Tokaido sat his polar opposite.

      Professor Huntington Wethers had come to the Stony Man operations from his position on the faculty of UCLA. The tall, distinguished black man sported gray hair at his temples and an unflappable manner.

      He currently worked two laptop screens as a translation program fed him information from monitored radio traffic coming out of France.

      Carmen Delahunt walked through the door of the Communications Room. The ex-FBI agent made a beeline for Barbara Price when she saw her boss. The only female on the Farm’s cyberteam, she served as a pivotal balance between Tokaido’s hotshot hacking magic and Wethers’s more restrained, academic style.

      She finished her conversation and snapped her cell phone shut as she walked up to Price. She pointed toward the newspaper in the mission controller’s hand.

      “Since

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