LITMIR.BIZ

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leaned back in his chair. Lacing his fingers together into a double fist, he stared at his thumbnails, as though lost in thought.

      “You bearing a grudge?”

      “Sir?”

      “I know about the op in ’91. You lost men, good ones. Is that clouding your judgment?”

      Anger colored Simmons face and heated the skin of his shoulders and arms. His hands clenched into fists. Lee’s bluntness took him by surprise. “Of course not. I won’t put my men in harm’s way just to settle a score.”

      Lee came to his full six-foot, four-inch height and stared down at Simmons. “You’re right,” he said. “You won’t.”

      A lurch that had nothing to do with the cancer passed through Simmons’s belly. “Excuse me?”

      “No mission. Not tonight, anyway. My orders from the President were explicit—a surgical strike. Quick and deadly. No hint of American involvement in this, period. The Middle East is a goddamn tinderbox as it is. We don’t need to put a blow torch to it by creating another Bay of Pigs. My gut says to abort the mission. If you were using your damn head, you’d see the same thing.”

      “Sir—”

      “I want those people out of there. Tonight. End of conversation. Don’t get greedy. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls around.”

      “Jim—”

      Lee held up a hand to silence Simmons. “Make the call. I want our people out of Iraq within twelve hours. If you hand me a problem, I’ll hand you back more trouble than you can handle.”

      Squelching an impulse to punch Lee in the solar plexus, Simmons snapped ramrod-straight to attention and fixed his gaze on an invisible spot on the wall. “Yes, sir,” he said.

      “I knew I could count on you, David.”

      From his peripheral vision, Simmons saw Lee smile and more rage bubbled up from within.

      Lee ignored his subordinate. Hooking his jacket with two fingers, he hefted the garment and slung it over a narrow shoulder. A moment later he was gone and Simmons was alone, numb.

      His stomach burning as he exited the meeting room, Simmons reached into his shirt pocket and extracted two painkillers. He’d been warned not to exceed the dose, that it might impair his coordination, his judgment. So what? According to Lee, his judgment was already flawed and Simmons’s body hurt like hell.

      Returning to his own command center, Simmons considered Lee’s words. Lee was a flaming jerk, but he made a good point. A botched coup attempt in Iraq only would solidify support for Saddam Hussein, make him a sympathetic figure on the Arab street. And the coup’s backer, America, would walk away with egg on its face, a superpower unable to topple a two-bit dictator.

      You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls around.

      Smug bastard. Lee had no idea what it was like to face death, to feel your heart slam so fast, so hard, that it felt as though it might explode at any moment. He pushed paper all day, moved agents and paramilitary operatives around like chess pieces on the board, one eye on his strategic plan, the other on the next promotion. Not all CIA directors had been that way, but this guy was and Simmons hated him for it.

      He picked up the satellite phone and set it in his lap. With the diagnosis of cancer, he thought constantly about death, realized he’d leave nothing behind. His career had been heroic, but shrouded in secrecy and bereft of recognition. His ex-wives hated him and had trained his daughters accordingly. He’d lost contact with most of his military buddies, and only occasionally socialized with the other CIA employees outside of work.

      During the last decade or so, the closest thing he had to family had been his Force Recon team. Those men had admired and trusted him, following him into hell time and again. He’d repaid them with death, leading them into a deadly mission and returning home with a handful of survivors.

      “Sir, are you okay?”

      Simmons looked up and saw a young woman, her amber hair pulled into a ponytail, a wireless headset wrapped around her head. She was one of six technicians and intelligence analysts in the room.

      He waved her away. “I’m fine, Dana. Head just feels a little light, is all.”

      “If I may say so, you look tired, a bit pale.”

      “I said, I’m fine. Dammit, leave me alone.”

      The volume of his voice surprised him. The woman stiffened, jerked back a bit as though burned, her pretty features hardening into a cold stare.

      “Yes, sir. Jon Stone called two minutes ago, just before you returned.”

      “I’ll deal with Stone.”

      In his mind, his voice dripped with disdain, like venom trickling the length of a cobra’s fang. Stone was an undisciplined killer, a wild cannon. Maybe he dazzled the brass with his dual master’s degrees and his record of successful missions. Simmons knew better. He knew that every time Stone walked into a mission, he drew innocent blood. Women. Children. Stone cared little as long as he got results. Same went for his buddy, Stephen Archer.

      If Simmons’s voice betrayed his hatred, the woman in front of him showed no signs of it. And what if she did? To hell with her and everyone else. Simmons was dying. And the way he saw it, a dying man ought to be able to say whatever the hell he wants.

      “Sir, did you hear what it I said?”

      The room came back into focus for a moment. “Huh?”

      “They lost contact with Doyle, sir. He was supposed to check in with Stone and they lost contact with him.”

      Simmons sat upright in his chair. Doyle not checking in? Something about that bothered him, though he couldn’t place what. Why was it so damn hard to think?

      “Get out.”

      “Sir?”

      “Get out. All of you. I need to speak with Stone.”

      The analysts and technicians filed from the room, leaving Simmons alone.

      Raising the satellite phone, he began to punch in Stone’s code. Knowing he might need to dial it at a critical moment, he’d burned the code into his memory, doing so until he could recite it in his sleep. Still, he had trouble bringing the numbers on the keypad into focus. They blinked and blurred as he tried to pin them down under his index finger.

      Finishing the number sequence, he leaned back in his chair, waited for Stone to pick up.

      The agent’s voice sounded far away, angry in Simmons’s ear.

      “Where the hell you been, man?”

      “Do it,” Simmons said.

      “What?”

      “You heard me. Lee says it’s a go. So, go”

      IHMAD JUMA STEPPED from the room and wrinkled his nose, a vain attempt to expel the stenches of vomit, blood and human excrement that clung inside his nostrils. He shut the door behind him, hoping to seal behind it the memory of an old friend who still lay inside, mangled and dying.

      Correction: an old friend who had turned traitor. That made the man an enemy, and his impending death a cause for celebration. Perhaps if Juma told himself that long enough, eventually he’d believe it.

      Juma moved with clipped, precise strides that belied his twenty years as an Iraqi military officer. As he continued down the hall, he realized the air felt irritatingly cool against his forehead and armpits. He extracted a handkerchief from his fatigue pants. Wiping the cloth over his forehead, he traced the edge of his severe widow’s peak and scrubbed away the sheen of perspiration that lay below it.

      The screams and pleadings of Brahim Azar echoed in his mind, as unrelenting as the desert

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