Don Pendleton - Unified Action

Gary Manning raked the milling al Qaeda combatants with his machine gun as Hawkins methodically executed any gunman who came into his crosshairs.

Having used RPGs to disable every vehicle in the convoy, both Calvin James and Rafael Encizo traded out their rocket launchers for Soviet-era submachine guns. Moving quickly under the cover fire, David McCarter prepared to lead the assault element down the cliff face to overwhelm any resistance.

“Move! Move! Move!” McCarter barked.

As one, the three-man fire team surged forward over the lip of the steep incline. The deployed lines were flung out in front of them. They ran face-first in an Australian-style rappel down the steep incline, one hand running the guideline, the other firing their weapons from the hip using a sling over the shoulder of their firing hand to steady the muzzle.

The loose gravel gave way in miniature avalanches under their feet as they sprinted down the incline, ropes whizzing through the gloves on their hands. The light from burning vehicles cast wild shadows and threw pillars of heat up toward them. It felt as if they were running straight into the open mouth of hell.

STONE MAN ®

America‘S Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

www.mirabooks.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Michael Klaus understood how the world worked.

The world was predicated on profit. In the end all that mattered was profit, and Klaus had no patience for weaker men who refused the obvious nature of this truth.

There simply wasn’t enough to go around. In Klaus’s opinion no political system that attempted to address a shortage of equality had worked, and none ever would. The world of haves and have-nots was built on Darwinian fitness where survival was its own justification. Pity, mercy, empathy, justice—these were theoretical concepts that held no place in the jungle lives of humankind.

Michael Klaus would be king of the jungle, by any means necessary.

Klaus stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his master office suite. He shot the cuffs on a tailored suit and ignored the prostitute as he made his own way out of the lavish room. The lisping Adonis had an envelope of cash and bite marks on his back to remember his visit by. If he was wise and didn’t wish to be found floating facedown in the bay, he’d practice discretion.

Outside over the dark waters of the northern Atlantic dark clouds were piling up on the horizon. Klaus could see whitecaps forming from the stiff breeze that was beginning to hit the beach like a company of shock troops. He imagined it was quite cold out there. He didn’t know firsthand, since he was inside, secured from the environment, untouchable. Insulated. He preferred things this way. He picked up an ultraslim wireless and pressed the push-to-talk button with a manicured finger adorned with a heavy gold ring.

“Ms. Applebaum, is Mr. Skell waiting for me?”

“Yes, Mr. Klaus,” his personal assistant answered immediately. “Shall I send him in?”

“Yes, please.”

Klaus believed in impeccable manners. It was part of the charade, part of the mask of civilization he wore the way any ambush predator blended into its background.

He glanced at the Rolex Executive watch on his thin wrist. The heavy walnut door behind him opened and then closed, but Klaus didn’t turn around. The corporate magnate remained facing his windows, taking in the view.

“I trust you are well, Mr. Skell?”

“I am, sir,” the chief legal officer answered.

On the left of the room a massive aquarium served as a divider between the section of the office suite containing Klaus’s desk and a sunken living-room area where more informal negotiations or conversations took place. Skell crossed to this area and helped himself to a tumbler of single-malt Scotch whiskey. He drank it neat, and it went down in a single swallow without a flinch with a practiced flick of his wrist.

“Well?” Klaus asked.

“Have corporate security made an anti-electronic measures sweep?”

“This morning. Would I talk so openly otherwise?” There was a slight undercurrent to Klaus’s voice now.

Skell, long used to his employer’s moods, sensed it immediately. “I apologize,” he said hastily. “We’re close now and perhaps the stress is getting to me.”

“Perhaps some time alone with all that Thai child porn you’ve collected?” Klaus offered quietly. “Would that relax you?”

Skell winced at the unsubtle reminder of who was master and who was servant. Klaus turned away from the window and looked at him for the first time. He saw a pudgy, balding man with soft hands, a weak chin and slumped shoulders in a suit as expensive as his own. He also saw a brilliant legal pirate with the eyes of a serial killer.

“Why don’t you tell me about our progress?” Klaus offered.

“Everything has gone according to schedule. We found a team of Mossad investigators snooping around in the periphery of our operations but we were able to feed them enough disinformation that they were put onto the wrong track.”

“And the Americans?”

“Officially? Quiet. We’re still well below their radar.”

“Unofficially?”

Skell paused. “There is a…complication,” he admitted.

Klaus slowly put his hands behind his back and pursed his lips. Deliberately he walked forward on expensive Italian loafers. He stopped beside his deck and removed a cigarette from a box on the tabletop and lit it. “Go on,” he said. His words came out in a cloud of blue smoke.

“Two contractors,” Skell began, “working separate aspects of the project. It turns out they were brothers.”

“That was an unfortunate oversight on the part of personnel.”

“They were working for different companies on different sites. One in Southwest Asian operations, the other at the Santo Domingo office.”

As Skell talked Klaus began to move again, trailing cigarette smoke behind him like the front stack on a locomotive. Skell’s knuckles were white around the cut-crystal liquor tumbler in his hands as he felt Klaus getting closer. He knew better than to turn around.

“Don’t we have software indigenous to our record-keeping system that catches this sort of thing?”

“There was a delay in linking the information.” Skell paused slightly. “The employee responsible for such activities has been reprimanded.”

Klaus was close enough behind him now that Skell could smell the man’s cologne. Fat beads of sweat broke out on the lawyer’s bald pate. A heavy hand settled on his right shoulder, then a second fell on his left. Klaus was so close behind him now he could feel the heat of the man’s body.