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Hunter fought back a grin. Watching Stella in action was like watching a prima ballerina; no matter how highly choreographed, her movements flowed so naturally. Although she appeared delicate, she was steel.

Stella was a weapon.

Stella was hot.

He only wished he were watching her in a girl fight.

 

“I take it that you're Camille Black,” Kyle said, rubbing his wrist.

“And I take it that you're the Rubicon exec around here.” She inspected the impounded HK .45, pulling out the magazine to check if it was loaded, then shoved it back into the gun. “I know that Rubicon is racing me to job sites to seize huge weapons caches. And I suspect you're selling them right back to the insurgents.”

“You can't prove anything.”

“I'm not a cop—I don't give a damn about proving anything. I'm a businesswoman—all I care about is making money and eliminating the enemy, preferably both at the same time. And as I see it right now, Rubicon is the enemy.”

She tossed Hunter the .45 and slammed the door behind her as she left.

 

Stella, you tease.
Hunter laughed to himself as he caught the gun with his left hand. He stuck it away and kept his own weapon aimed at Kyle's chest.

“Face down, on the floor, asshole. Make any sound and I'll pop and run.” He reached into his own cargo pockets. He still had zip-ties from earlier in the evening. He fastened Kyle's arms and legs together, then patted him down, but found no other weapons. “Why are you trying to frame me?”

“You know you don't have time to get me to talk. Ashland will be back here any moment.”

“You're lying,” Hunter said.

“Does it matter? You can't afford that risk.”

Hunter opened a drawer, found duct tape and slapped a piece over Kyle's mouth. To make absolutely sure he wouldn't be yelling for help, he wound several layers of tape around Kyle's head.

He turned out the lights and paused for a victory moment in the doorway. “Oh, I almost forgot. Tell the boss I quit.”

Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province

Hunter left the building and stepped into the darkness. Dashing from one shadow to another, he crept along any structure that could conceal his profile. A ditch bag prepared with survival essentials was in his hootch where he had also concealed identity documents behind a picture of a woman who was supposed to be Greg Bolton's mother. He would grab them, then wake his men with the news of an escaped prisoner roaming the compound so that the ensuing chaos would give him the opportunity he needed to slip away. Standing at the side of a building, he waited for a security guard to turn his head before moving to the next structure.

He wanted to sprint directly to his trailer, but instead forced himself to take a darker, more circuitous path. He skirted the edges of a wide swath of light and squatted down behind a Humvee to look around and see if anyone had noticed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. His hand on the sidearm, he froze, staring into the darkness. After a few minutes, he decided he was imagining things and crawled through the Black Management motor pool, behind a half dozen Humvees and Lincoln Navigators. He stopped and jerked around to listen. An alley cat scurried between the cars. His caution was making him lose too much time. Just then he heard something hit against a Humvee behind him. Reaching for his knife, he turned his head just as a hand slammed into his jaw. Pain shot through his mouth like a lightning bolt branching out across the sky and he tasted metal.

He grasped his knife and turned to strike at his opponent, but the figure jumped backwards out of his reach.

“You son of a bitch,” Stella said. Her voice was forceful—and loud.

“Stella?” He felt blood pooling in his mouth and spat.

“So Rubicon is resorting to slashing my tires now. And guess who volunteered for the duty. I should've known.”

“Shhh. Not now. It's not what it seems. And you knocked out my tooth.” Hunter put away his knife as he ran his tongue along his teeth. He stopped when he found a hole.

“I've heard that one too many times. I even believed you once.”

“I'm telling the truth. Want to feel the hole?”

“I believe the tooth part. I'm sorry. I really am. Is the tooth still in your mouth?”

“You have to believe all of it. I love you.” He pressed his tongue hard into the tooth socket to try to stop the bleeding. It distorted his speech. “I spat it out. I'd never do anything to hurt you. Rubicon is trying to kill me.” He bent over to search the ground for his tooth before he lost track of the general area where it must have fallen. As he patted the ground, a burst of bullets ricocheted off the armored Lincoln Navigator behind his head.

 

Camille dropped to the ground. Her left hand hit something moist and hard. She fingered it and recognized the shape. “Oh, gross. Found your tooth.” She pressed it into his hand, then drew her USP Tactical pistol, searched for the shooters and then fired at the same time as Hunter. They crawled behind another vehicle. Her NVGs were back in the Black Management office along with her Kevlar vest. “Rubicon's out of control.”

“They're not after you. They want me.”

“You? You're one of their grunts.”

“I work for the Pentagon.”

“Then I was right the first time. Now I'd say your cover's blown, secret agent man.” Camille laughed as she reached up to the door handle of a Navigator. It was locked. Another burst of gunfire pinged against the trucks. She returned fire.

“I've got to get out of here.”

“I have a platoon of Special Forces types itching to go head to head with Rubicon. We need to get to them.”

“Rubicon's got people on the inside—”

Rounds hit the ground between them, sparking as they skipped on the asphalt. Camille said, “To be clear, I'm only helping you because I feel bad about ruining your beautiful smile. I'm not sure I believe you and I still want to kill you.”

“Will you take a rain check?”

Camille pulled herself along the ground until the SUV was between them and the gunmen's last position. She scraped her forearm on the rough asphalt and it stung. “It's too damn dark.” She tried another door. It was also locked. She whispered to Hunter. “I've got it. Go to the next Navigator and when I signal, bounce it as much as you can and set off the car alarm. Rubicon uses the old PVS-7 NVGs, doesn't it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“They take forever to resample the image and refocus. The flashing headlights will flare them out. They'll be blind. Plus, my men might sleep right through gunfire, but not car alarms coming from our own motor pool.”

 

Hunter scooted on his belly to the next Lincoln, clutching his tooth in his left fist. If there were any chance of saving it, he knew he had to keep it moist. As he fired toward the shooters, he kept his mouth closed and sucked as if he were getting ready to swallow a pill without water. Once a small pool of saliva collected, he popped the tooth into his mouth and tasted blood and dirt. He spat, but he could still feel the grit. His tongue moved the tooth to the side of his mouth and he tried to ignore it.

He emptied Kyle's .45 and tossed it away because he knew he would never find any more ammo that caliber. Ready to rock the vehicle to set off the alarm at Stella's signal, he grasped the SUV's door handle and tried pushing up on it, just in case it wasn't locked. It opened. Relieved that the automatic cabin lights had been disabled, he crawled into the backseat and then climbed to the front. He felt under the dashboard, but it was enclosed. He ran his hands over it until he found the release and pulled it off.

“Now!” Stella yelled and a few seconds later one of the Navigators started honking and flashing its lights.

Hunter couldn't set off the alarm from the driver's seat, so he did what he could to mimic one. He flipped on the lights, switched them to bright and punched the horn, then he returned his focus to the tangle of exposed wires. When the other vehicle's headlights flashed on, he could see the wires, but by the time he focused, it was dark again. After the next cycle, he closed his eyes and tried to recall the snapshot he had just seen. He reached for the two wires he thought were red and touched them together. They arced and the engine turned over.

Placing his knife behind the steering wheel between it and the column, he jammed the blade down and tried to turn the wheel. It didn't move. Careful to keep his body out of the way of the airbag in case it deployed from the force, he shoved the knife down harder until he felt it knock the locking pin away from the wheel. He turned the switch to put the truck into four wheel drive, jerked down the gear shift and stomped the gas, then drove directly toward the white muzzle bursts.

 

“Damn him,” Camille whispered to herself as she watched Hunter plow her Navigator through trash barrels, spare tires and anything else in his path as he tried to run down the shooters. She could never rely on him to cooperate with her. He was a team player with everyone else, but not with her.

Five of her men ran toward her from two different directions, their assault rifles pointing at her while two others remained with their backs to the nearest building, ready to eliminate any threats to their comrades. Stella threw her arms up and stood motionless, waiting until they were close enough to positively identify her.

Brakes screeched and she watched Hunter backing up into gunfire, redirecting the shooters away from her. The son of a bitch was on her side, at least. He just wasn't on her team.

 

Hunter saw motion in the rearview mirror. Stomping the brakes and turning the wheel at high speed, he threw the SUV into a U-turn worthy of the Bat-mobile and backed the armored vehicle into the gunfire. He couldn't see much, but kept steering the vehicle toward the muzzle flashes.

Several armed men ran toward Stella. He made a hard right and gunned it, barreling toward them. They didn't fire on him, so he flashed on the lights for quick identification. At the last second, he recognized them as Stella's troops and veered sharply left, then swerved right, weaving in between them at fifty miles an hour.

Hunter really wanted to take Stella up on the offer to help him, but he knew from his time at Rubicon that they had a man on the inside at Black Management, feeding them information about upcoming jobs. The mole was probably no threat to Stella, but he couldn't trust her outfit to keep him safe.

Her men were protecting her and she didn't need him, not that she ever needed him. And with her holding off Rubicon's men, he was now free to head for the main gate. Any moment they would put the compound in lock-down and he would be trapped.

 

Camille heard the Navigator's engine roar as Hunter peeled off toward the compound's main gate, running away from her as fast as he could. Her chest tightened with each breath, but she was too angry to notice the hurt. He had used her for the last time.

G
ENGHIS
jogged up to her. “Orders, ma'am?”

“Two Rubicon gunners were firing at me. Get them—alive, if you can.”

“What about the SUV?”

Camille shook her head. As much as she wanted to, it wasn't right to send her troops to carry out her personal business. Hunter was her problem, one that she had to resolve herself. “Everyone knows Navigators are Black Management. He'll dump it as fast as he can. Give him two hours, then go search Ramadi for the vehicle. I want it back before the Iraqis find it and decide to detail it.”

Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province

The stench of smoldering garbage and medical waste kept all but the rats and strays away from the burn pit. The dump was the best site for a private nighttime rendezvous on a base where there was very little privacy. Larry Ashland closed his cell phone and lurked in the shadows, wondering whatever had happened to the glamour of his profession. The collapse of the Berlin Wall had not been kind to spies.

Ashland clutched a thick brown flip chart his assistant Kyle had prepared months ago at his request when he had first suspected Force Zulu had a man on the inside at Rubicon. Greg Bolton, whoever he really was, was a risk that Ashland had anticipated. A single spy was not going to be allowed to destroy his progress, even if by accident. For two years Ashland had been working his way into a highly secretive project codenamed S
HANGRI-LA
and thus far knew only peripheral details, none of which added up. CIA funds were being dumped into Rubicon to run it, but he still couldn't tell if the money was because it was a covert Agency project or because another rogue CIA case officer was setting up lucrative retirement plans with corporate America.

As Ashland worked his way deeper into S
HANGRI-LA
, he had studied Rubicon personnel files of its top operators in Iraq, searching for anyone who could blow his cover. He recognized the photo of a man whom he had first encountered in Afghanistan, an operator who had then been working with Force Zulu, the Pentagon's new espionage and counterterrorism unit, the vanguard of the Pentagon's push into the CIA's realm. The man's Rubicon personnel file had told a very different story, one that Ashland had no doubt had been professionally crafted by Force Zulu to cover for one of its spies.

A BMW SUV drove toward him with its lights off. It stopped and Ashland jumped inside.

“Jesus, that stinks. Shut the door fast,” Joe Chronister said as he held his hand over the dome light.

“Sorry to get you up at this hour, but we've got a situation.”

“It better be worth it. Security firm supervisors and oil company execs don't generally meet in the middle of the night even if they do have the same parent company. Covers are wearing thin, even for around here.”

“Rubicon busted a small-time crook tonight. One of our team leaders got greedy and went into business for himself.”

“With the tangos?”

“Yeah and worse. With al-Zahrani's faction.” Ashland handed Chronister a dossier.

“Crap. All it takes is one little guy to fuck up and someone thinks they've got something and they start pulling at threads. I assume you've taken care of him.”

Ashland took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before speaking. He was counting on the pause to add drama. He had to burn the Force Zulu operator so badly that not even his own guys would believe him, let alone help him. Even if Rubicon managed to eliminate the man tonight, Ashland had to make sure that Force Zulu would not come around to investigate the death of their man. They had to believe their own man had gone bad. Joe Chronister had the connections, credibility and creativity to make sure that happened. He'd see to it that every government and private operator on the planet believed the Force Zulu spy was radioactive.

Ashland cleared his throat. “We could use some help. He took out Kyle, my best man. We're after him right now, but he's good.”

“The way I see it, it's a Rubicon personnel problem. Jesus, this smell is too much. The hospital must've tossed a bunch of body parts in there tonight.” Chronister turned up the air conditioner. Gunfire popped in the distance, but they ignored the typical sound of Iraqi nightlife.

“You've got to help us make sure he's neutralized,” Ashland said. “Pull the right thread and you can unravel a whole sweater.”

“The Agency can't be part of a manhunt. Too public. Eliminate him yourself. Jesus, you've got more hunters on the payroll here than we do. Tell the guy's family he died killing terrorists and let them collect the death benefits. No one will think twice about it, let alone call for an investigation. The family will probably be happy not to have to deal with Rambo coming home and fighting the war at the local 7-Eleven. The guys who succeed over here make lousy civilians and families know that.”

Chronister wasn't cooperating and Ashland had worked with him long enough to know that he was losing patience and any moment would cut off the conversation. He didn't like giving away any more secrets than he had to, but he realized it would take the CIA's fear of the Pentagon to get Chronister on board with his plan. He still hadn't figured out the guy. Ashland knew that Chronister was CIA, but the deeper he got into the S
HANGRI-LA
project, the more he suspected that the Agency knew nothing about S
HANGRI-LA
, that Chronister had gone rogue and was using CIA resources to help the secret Rubicon project. The more he thought about it, the more Chronister disgusted him. But at the moment he needed Chronister and his contacts. Ashland took a deep breath and said, “There's a little more to it. Bolton—or whoever he is—works for Force Zulu. They've infiltrated Rubicon.”

“Fuck. We take out their spook, we're painting a bull's-eye on ourselves.” Chronister folded a Kleenex, held it up to his nose and breathed through it. “You know I actually typed up a resignation letter the day I heard the president authorized Cambone and that born-again whack-job Boykin to round up a bunch of soldiers and start playing
I Spy
. I predicted this was going to happen—us tripping all over each other. You know the Pentagon's real goal is to shut us down and corner the market on intel. Those fuckers spying on us is just another goddamn brick in the wall.”

“If they learn that one of their Bushmen has started playing ball with the tangos, they might take care of him for us.”

“Not without asking a lot of questions. And I have a lot I'd like answered—like how deep has Zulu penetrated Rubicon.” Chronister shined a penlight on the file and thumbed through it.

“You have to burn him with Zulu. Make them doubt everything he says.”

“Let me keep this.” Chronister tapped his fingers on the file. “I can fuck him up with Zulu.” A picture fell out of the file and fluttered to the car floor. Chronister picked it up. “Hey, I know this motherfucker. He was engaged to someone I used to work with. You know, I might be able to help you out with a silent solution after all. You ever meet Camille Black? She's a real ball buster, in the best kind of way.”