Critical Intelligence. Don Pendleton

made for the Communications Center.

      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.

      After he’d earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Kurtzman had been a computer programmer in one form or another. 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’re set up with Grimaldi at the secure helipad. Lyons did the same for Able Team. They’re in place and ready to execute.”

      “Good,” Barb said. She took a drink of the extrastrong 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 Center 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 a half dozen devices. Behind his desk a coffeepot, stained as black as the mud that filled it, bubbled like a tar pit.

      Next to Kurtzman’s desk, fingers flying across a laptop while monitoring a sat link, Akira Tokaido bobbed his head in time to the music coming from a single earbud. The lean, compact hacker was the youngest member of Stony Man’s cybernetics team and the heir apparent to Kurtzman himself. The Japanese American cyber wizard 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 operation 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 between the Computer Room and the Communications Center. The redheaded 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 Barb. She pointed toward the newspaper in the mission controller’s hand.

      “You see that about GAO investigations?” she asked. “I started running an analytical of our financial allotments and expenditures, just to double-check none of our money originated in accounts tainted by the investigations.”

      Price smiled. “You read my mind, Carmen,” she said. “Once we have Phoenix and Able taken care of, why don’t you send me a summary in case anything comes of it.”

      “Will do.” Delahunt nodded. “I have to double-check the South American arrangements we made for the team’s extraction with the ‘package’—if it comes to that. It’s nice to be able to tap the resources of larger groups like the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, but coordination is a nightmare.”

      “Let me know if anything goes wrong,” Price said.

      Delahunt nodded, then turned and began walking back across the floor toward the connecting door to the Annex’s Computer Room, her fingers punching out a number on her encrypted cell phone.

      Barbara Price smiled.

      She could feel the energy, the sense of purpose that permeated the room flow into her. Out there in the cold eight men on two teams were about to enter into danger for the sake of their country. If they got into trouble, if they needed anything, they would turn to her and her people.

      She did not intend to let them down.

      She made her way to her desk, where a light flashing on her desktop phone let her know a call was holding. She looked over at Kurtzman and saw the man returning a telephone handset to its cradle. He pointed toward her.

      “It’s Hal on line one,” he said.

      “Thanks, Bear,” she answered.

      She set her coffee down and picked up the handset as she sank into her chair. She put the phone to her ear and tapped a key on her computer, knocking the screen off standby mode.

      “Hal, it’s Barb,” she said.

      “I’m outside the Oval Office right now,” Brognola said. “Are the boys up and rolling?”

      “As we speak,” Price answered. “Tell him operations are prepped to launch at his word.”

      “All right. Let’s hope this one goes by the numbers,” the gruff federal agent said.

      “As always,” she agreed, and hung up.

      “All right, people,” she announced to the room. “Let’s get ready to roll.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Bogotá, Colombia

      Lieutenant Colonel Sim Sin-Bok lit his cigar.

      The North Korean intelligence officer narrowed his eyes in pleasure as he inhaled the thick, strong smoke of the Corona Grande. The rich nicotine entered his bloodstream and he immediately felt the euphoric rush. He relaxed into the plush leather seats of the BMW X3 and released the tobacco smoke through his nose in a sigh.

      “Nothing but the best, eh, my friend?” Jimenez Naranjo purred.

      The FARC commander was seated directly across from the covert representative of North Korea. The two men rode in comfort as the sleek, black BMW SUV flew down a jungle road leading deeper into mountains.

      “I must admit,” Sin-Bok said in accented Spanish, “I have come to enjoy our little liaisons.”

      “Your boss, he enjoys our money, too. No?” Naranjo winked, flashing white teeth.

      “As much as yours enjoys our armaments,” Sin-Bok countered.

      The intelligence officer had been all over the Pacific Rim and Middle East in his years of service with the most glorious leaders. He had come to have a grudging respect for the FARC commander Naranjo in the course of their dealings, but weapons sales to violent groups always left him feeling nonplussed at best.

      The SUV raced along the jungle road, cutting deeper into the mountain stronghold of the last nebulous Communist insurgency left on the planet. More than any ideological revelations, it had been the extortion of Colombian drug barons by the FARC guerrillas that had propelled them down a road toward the sort of capitalism they claimed to despise so much. They claimed their actions were about the rights of the peasant farmers to grow a crop that turned them profits and improved their lives.

      For all Sin-Bok knew, the FARC leaders believed that. But he also knew that the influx of cocaine money had made things like up-armored diplomat-model BMW SUVs available to what had once been a rabble force dressed in rags. They were also able to purchase guidance systems such as the ones he carried on a flash drive in his briefcase. Guidance systems that could turn shoot-and-forget munitions such as old Soviet S-7 grail rocket launchers into weapons of pinpoint accuracy, capable of disabling a tank or knocking even American combat helicopters out of the sky.

      Naranjo moved his hand down and hit a lever button on his seat rest. Behind him the vehicle’s glass partition powered smoothly up, the engine making a subdued whine as it closed.

      Sin-Bok kept his face inscrutable. He had dealt with Chinese Tongs based in Hong Kong, with representatives of Hamas and the Syrian government. He had sold or bought illicit goods from them all. He did not rattle easily and best of all, his ability to eat outside of the famine pit that was North Korea had left him with a bit of a pot belly. Such a belly was an indication of power in his nation.