Death Dealers. Don Pendleton

was more than disgust for the identity he’d slipped into, and more than paranoia that made him keep a Colt Python under his pillow, within easy reach of his right hand.

      It wasn’t paranoia if you were surrounded by representatives from dozens of gangs around the world, all assembled for a global auction by handwritten invitation—one that Able Team had uncovered while cleaning up loose ends from a prior crisis. It had looked handwritten but in truth had been merely printed, the cursive script the product of a font. No one would be able to perform a handwriting analysis on the mechanized scribbling on paper, and there were also no fingerprints except for those of Kevin Reising, the man who’d received the letter.

      Reising was currently still listed among the living, but in hiding. The truth of the matter was that his corpse was nothing but charred ashes, with a .45-caliber slug where the brainpan should have been. The announcement of the man’s death would not be released until after there was no longer a need for the current undercover identities of Karl Long, Herman Shore and Thomas Presley.

      By then the organizers of this event, a sale for everything from handguns to long-range missiles, would be dead and gone. The host organization of this auction went by the name of Abalisah, and this hotel was far from the beaten trail, on a small island of the archipelago. With a title that was Arabic for devils, it was a sure sign that things were not going to be safe and calm. The man who was the face of the auction was a tall man who could have been anything from European to Middle Eastern. His skin was well tanned, but he had no accent, no truly identifiable features. He was called Jinan.

      “Do what you will,” Jinan had said over a loudspeaker, his voice distorted by a modulator. At least it might have been, but it also could have been a simple computer program or just a schmuck hired to read a sheet of paper put before him. “You have been allowed to keep your sidearms, your knives, your poisons. I merely wish your money, so if you cannot outbid your enemy, perhaps you can steal from him or perhaps murder him. The only things that I forbid are attempts to steal my property or attacks upon my personal staff.”

      Anything goes, Lyons thought, sliding his fingers under his pillow and around the handle of Colt Python, feeling the diamond-checkered grips against the palm of his hand. Surrounded by enemies, dozens of whom Lyons recognized from their Interpol profiles accessed at Stony Man Farm, he and his partners were in deep.

      There was a rap at the door and Lyons sat up. He looked over and saw that it was closing in on three in the morning. He hadn’t placed any orders with room service. By the same token, he couldn’t imagine why someone out to blow him away would knock politely at his door. Out in the hall, he heard more knocks on different doors and softly spoken words even as they were opened.

      Lyons got out of bed, not bothering to put on pants or underwear. It was perfect weather for lying in bed, no covers, naked and enjoying the sea breeze wafting through the window. A pair of undershorts wouldn’t make him any less vulnerable to gunfire or a knife. Still, his cop training took hold as he stood behind the doorjamb while he turned the knob to his door. If a bullet were to cut through the door at his moment, it would slice into empty air, not his chest.

      The door swung open, silent on well-oiled hinges, and Lyons caught a hint of jasmine in the air as he looked into the hall. It was lit, but not so bright that it made his eyes hurt as they adjusted. Instead of a killer in the hall, there was a woman standing there. He couldn’t tell her age as she stood in front of him in the doorway.

      Her skin was deeply bronzed, bare shoulders in sharp contrast to the cream-hued cloth that looped around her neck and then came down to cradle her full, soft breasts. The fabric draped to one side and knotted over her hip, exposing the curve of silken flesh beneath. The light caught a glint of gold from a small ring that adorned her navel while that same light cast an undeniable silhouette, leaving no doubt that the filmy fabric was the only thing between her bare skin and the sultry evening air.

      Once more, Lyons hated the skin he was forced to wear, the tattoos of white power with hateful slurs branded, if only for a month, on his flesh. However, as he returned his gaze to her face, he saw that she wasn’t a black woman. He tried to place her, either as Hispanic, or perhaps a Pacific Islander, but her large brown eyes and full sensual mouth were most definitely not Asian or Caucasian.

      “Mr. Long, my name is Sanay,” she said. Her accent was as unidentifiable as her features, and Lyons couldn’t help but think that the branches of her family tree had roots in different parts of the forest. There was a hint of British in it, but her voice was as elusive in its origins as her appearance. “I am your gift for tonight from Master Jinan.”

      “Master Jinan,” Lyons repeated, looking her up and down. Was this some kind of test? After all, Karl Long was an Aryan thug, an outlaw motorcyclist whose racist pedigree had been cemented with a violent assault on a La Sombra prisoner that had left him brain damaged and with an amputated arm. It wasn’t murder, which would have meant that Long could never leave prison, but it was a show of strength and unity among the Arrangement. “What makes your boss think that I’d have interest in a little brown thing like you?”

      Lyons smirked, hating the words that poured from his lips but also knowing full well that Long was spending prison time for the assault and rapes of Filipino, Polynesian and Hispanic women. Even her age, a little north of thirty, and her diminutive five-foot height, matched Long’s taste in victims.

      Abalisah’s researchers were good, uncannily so, to have pulled up those kinds of facts about him. So even as Lyons made his dismissive challenge to the girl, Sanay stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She glanced down to the cocked pistol in Lyons’s hand and then to the growing arousal obstinately making itself known despite his bravado. Her dark, slender fingers gave him a light brush, the tips of her nails tracing lines over his tightly packed abs before she cupped her palm over his pectoral muscle.

      “Abalisah knows all the darkness in this hotel. Yours. Mine. Everyone’s,” Sanay whispered, pressing closer to him. Her other hand glided over Lyons’s hip and she explored his body in the darkness.

      She was barefoot and she rose to the tips of her toes, lips barely able to press against his collarbone, brushing lightly, tongue darting out to taste his skin.

      Lyons hooked his arm under hers, and he flexed, lifting her higher. He was able to hold her up with only one arm, bring her mouth to his, lips so soft and inviting that Lyons could easily forget himself as he carried her toward the bed. Sanay helped Lyons, bracing her thighs against his hips, her slender arms draped around his neck.

      The Able Team commander still couldn’t get rid of a knot of dread in his stomach, even as he joined with Sanay, exploring her wonderful caramel skin, her dark, firm nipples, velvety soft lips and warm, tender tongue in her mouth.

      * * *

      THE LIGHT OF dawn would not pour through Lyons’s westward-facing balcony, but he did notice the graying skies as sunrise approached.

      He lay still, Sanay, the exotic, beautiful woman entangled around him, a trickle of wet drool having dried and crusted on his chest. He couldn’t see her; his eyes were mere slits, only open enough to register the increasing light of day.

      Lyons could feel her moving, stirring from his chest and crawling off him. He continued breathing deeply, as if asleep.

      Maybe the women were sent to these rooms as spies.

      Sanay quietly moved to the nightstand, where he’d placed his pistol the night before, and lifted the revolver. When Lyons heard her check to see if the weapon was loaded, he acted without thinking. He clamped his hand down hard over hers, pinning her finger inside the trigger guard. He heard the ugly pop of her index finger, but even as that happened, he drove the heel of his palm against her jaw in a Shotokan karate stroke.

      The blow knocked her to the hardwood floor with a sharp crack. The revolver was locked now in Lyons’s left fist, and he watched as a trickle of blood seeped from her cheek onto the rug. Even as he looked down at the grisly damage he’d wrought in the space of a few moments, he noticed something else on the rug at his feet.

      Sanay had removed the rounds from the revolver, rendering it useless