LITMIR.BIZ

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it this time. Well, who the hell gave a damn? She felt betrayed by the man she knew only as Colonel Stone and just rebellious enough that if her producer confronted her she’d likely lose her job for telling him exactly where he could shove his disapproval.

      Fortunately, she managed to get to her desk, retrieve a bag from the bottom drawer where she kept a spare change of clothes and a toiletry bag, and beat feet out of the office before the man saw her. La Costa knew exactly where to find Parmahel as he’d probably gone with a sub—or by himself—to cover a small, red-carpet political fund-raiser. It took only one time circling the block before she spotted the van. To no surprise, she found her friend and colleague slumped with his head against the window and snoring loud enough for it to be audible outside the news van. She found more amusement in the fact he’d been sleeping long enough to fog part of the driver’s window he used as a pillow.

      La Costa rapped her knuckles on the van and startled Parmahel awake. He immediately rolled down the window when he recognized her.

      “Well, where in the hell have you been?” he asked. He looked at his watch as he smacked his lips, his mouth dry from his nap. “You realize we were supposed to be on a segment almost half an hour ago?”

      “Screw the segment,” La Costa said through clenched teeth. “We got a much bigger story.”

      “Says who?”

      “Me,” she said. She tried to look over the window to see the gas gauge, but the angles were wrong. “How’s this thing fixed for gas?”

      “Just topped her off before I left.”

      “Good, we got a long trip ahead of us,” she replied as she dashed around the front of the van.

      When she’d jumped into the passenger seat, Parmahel asked, “Trip to where?”

      “Las Mareas.”

      CODE NAME: AD-DARR. Mission: eliminate the American military officer attached to the Diplomatic Security Service.

      For lesser men it would have been potentially impossible, but for Afif Ad-Darr—an expert in the killing arts—it was simply another job. Not that he underestimated the man calling himself Colonel Stone. Siraj Razzaq’s spies inside the U.S. military hadn’t been able to come up with a thing on Stone. According to their records, there was no Colonel Stone in any of the four major branches of the military or the U.S. Coast Guard. That meant either a covert, military operative or civilian black ops using a military cover.

      As he stared through the open window of the bar at the rain-streaked streets of downtown Las Mareas, Ad-Darr wondered how this Stone’s people could be so sloppy. After all, when providing a cover it seemed only natural that cover would be in place, so if someone did a routine personnel check they would find the person existed. By virtue of the fact this enigmatic Colonel Stone allegedly didn’t exist at all troubled Ad-Darr. Would the American intelligence community be so careless? He didn’t think so.

      Maybe the record had been removed permanently from U.S. military personnel files when Stone went to work for the DSS. Unfortunately, Razzaq’s connections didn’t go wide or deep enough to get that kind of information, and Ad-Darr didn’t consider it important enough to pay the hefty price it would probably require, not to mention he didn’t have the time. Already the Americans were apparently ahead of the game and only Razzaq’s puppet, the man named Veda, had managed to divert this Stone to Las Mareas, where he would be out of the way and Ad-Darr could deal with him neatly.

      Although why Razzaq had agreed to work with that imbecile Veda was anyone’s guess. Ad-Darr had been in the employ of this cell of the New Revolutionary Justice Organization for many years now. Razzaq was legendary for spearheading such operations, and this one had proven to be no exception. A fully equipped base nestled in the swamplands of the East Gulf Coastal Plane of Georgia—the name of which escaped him at the moment—that boasted an army of nearly thirty men. Razzaq had ears all over America, with satellite areas spread throughout the United States that consisted of maybe one or two members, at most. Once firmly ensconced, Razzaq had turned his sites toward his plan for Puerto Rico. The independence of this island territory would prove to be a major coup for Razzaq. Perhaps he would be able even to unite the disaffected among their ranks and restore the former glory of their cause.

      For now, Ad-Darr would draw consolation from performing the duty for which he’d earned his name. “Professional assassination” and “Ad-Darr” were practically synonymous terms. Whenever the NRJO wanted to make sure a mission succeeded, they called on him. It was a compliment to his craft, and one Ad-Darr didn’t mind exploiting to maximum benefit. And benefit, he had. By his twenty-second birthday Ad-Darr had become a millionaire; by his twenty-fifth, a multimillionaire. What was the old saying: he was in the business of killing and business was good? Something to that effect.

      Ad-Darr had also turned out to be the perfect tool because he’d been born in the United States. Technically, he was an American citizen, but in the depths of his soul he knew that was only a birthright of pure circumstance. No, at the very core Ad-Darr was Lebanese, and a Muslim. His brothers in Hezbollah were still in need. The war against the Americans, British and Israel had to survive, and their ability to set up a massive base in Puerto Rico from which to strike would indeed provide them distinct advantages in their war, not to mention the rich natural resources of this sizable island.

      The NRJO was operating in America’s own backyard, and they didn’t even know it.

      Ad-Darr smiled at the thought as he watched the rain consume everything, washing the streets clean of dirt and detritus from the lives of squalor lived here. Somewhere out there he would find this Colonel Stone, then Ad-Darr would conclude his business for the glory of his faith and heritage.

      And the American would die a slow, painful death.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      While Jack Grimaldi would have preferred better weather, he managed to land the helicopter safely with only minutes to spare before the skies overhead released a warm and thunderous tropical downpour.

      “Remind me next time to bring an umbrella,” he told Bolan.

      The Executioner didn’t really have a retort, as his conversation with Brognola, albeit brief, had put him into a deep contemplation.

      “We may have a problem,” Brognola had told him.

      “Lay it out,” Bolan said.

      “One of Bear’s sniffer programs picked up that a computer query was performed on the military jacket we provided for your Colonel Stone cover.” “Bear” was Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man’s resident computer wizard.

      “You flagged it?”

      “Well, we did what we would normally do, and that’s simply to say the jacket is restricted only to eyes with a class six or higher security clearance. The troubling thing here is that this query came from inside a military facility, and what’s worse is that because of the odd way the hacker tried to move around the system to get the information it came up as a null.”

      “In other words, I never existed.”

      “Right.”

      Bolan could hear the grimness and regret in Brognola’s tone, and decided to go easy on the guy. “It’s water under the bridge, Hal. I’d concentrate on finding out who made the query and not worry about my cover. I’d have to guess after my little run-in with some hostiles earlier today my cover doesn’t mean much now anyway.”

      “Sorry, Striker,” Brognola said.

      “Don’t be.”

      “What about you? Everything okay?”

      “Peachy if I can just figure out what’s really going on here.”

      “Anything we can do to help?”

      “I’d like Bear to dig a bit deeper into the staff in Governor Hernandez’s office, particularly Alvaro Fonseca.”

      Bolan then elaborated

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