Grave Mercy. Don Pendleton

a frown crossing his features. The inclusion of Stone was a wild card that few could anticipate. Morrot had made plans that would deal with the intervention of MI-6 or any number of conventional intelligence and counterinsurgency agencies. But a one-man army who had naval aircraft at his beck and call and moved as if his limbs were quicksilver flowing under his tanned flesh was something else entirely.

      “He’ll be tough,” Fortescue muttered. “But he bled. Maybe he won’t be so tough against more concentrated numbers.”

      There was also the “vampire juice” that Morrot had whipped up. It was a chemical cocktail that duplicated the painkilling effects of his zombification drugs, but left a man with his full cognitive abilities. Such a man, immune to pain and exhaustion, would be able to fight harder. Fortescue was fully aware that most people only utilized a fraction of their physical potential, slowed by pain to prevent overexertion. Fortescue had tried the solution, and his faculties had remained clear. With it, he’d been able to bench press twice what he’d originally been able to—a full five hundred pounds. A sparring match against three of his best men had ended with all three floored, Fortescue’s assault far too quick for them to compensate. One had punched him, a blow that had left his cheek raw, as if it had been run across a cheese grater, and subsequent x-rays showed fractures on the cheekbone. The pain had kicked in only after Morrot’s concoction had warn off.

      The broken bones had healed since then, the pain of the face-breaking impact having faded, as well.

      Would that kind of advantage be enough against the “professional soldier” on the beach?

      Fortescue smirked. He, too, was a trained, capable combatant. With the “vampire” blood racing through his veins, he’d be unbeatable.

      And just to be certain, Fortescue would bring along half a dozen of his best men, also powered up by Morrot’s muscular jet fuel.

      It might be enough.

      MIKE CARMODY took another drag on his cigarette as he sat at the café table fifteen feet from Fortescue. The DEA agent was in Jamaica as part of the agency’s effort to curtail the flow of heroin through the island nation, but it might well have been dropping a cork in the ocean for the hopes of stopping its ebb and flow. He’d received a phone call, though, this morning from a high-up Justice Department contact who told him his assistance was needed to get some intel about some specialized illicit chemicals and toxins running through Kingston.

      A North American of African American descent, Carmody was comfortably unnoticeable when out in the bright light of day, and when it came time to reach into the shadows for that hard, grimy information, he would play a role that kept him from being an obvious intruder in the Kingston underworld.

      As such, he wore plenty of bling, chains and rings glimmering around his neck and fingers, a dark blue silk shirt open down to his sternum and sunglasses that would have been a bargain if bought for $1000. It was the look of a man who wanted to emulate the more well-groomed rappers of the east and west coasts. The style also happened to look at home in nightclubs that catered to those who bought entertainment for an evening along with a liquor bill running into the thousands of dollars and a closed-off VIP room where women debased themselves just to have the slightest brush with wealth and power, no matter the origin of the blood money.

      Carmody may have been comfortable in the silk shirt and linen slacks and cream-white Italian leather shoes, but he wasn’t comfortable with the act he had to put on while doing “business” in Jamaica. He knew that the world would look at him as an exemplar of one of the worst stereotypes of black American organized crime. He fought to stifle that revulsion, and ninety-nine percent of the time, he succeeded quite well. His mission was to protect children and teenagers from the kind of slow death and mind rot that heroin addiction inflicted upon countless people.

      He took another sip of chilled beer, watching a familiar face leave Fortescue’s table, pocketing some folded bills. It was Eric Rambeau, one of the men he regularly tapped for information, and he could see that the scrawny little snitch was in a hurry.

      Carmody dropped a few twenties on the table and took off after Rambeau. If there was the chance to figure out what was going on, it lay with the informant. Rambeau’s head would be a good resource to tap. And if money didn’t do the job, Carmody didn’t mind.

      If he had to get rougher to tap that brain, he’d tap it off a brick wall.

      FORTESCUE WATCHED the American black man toss money onto his table and leave, obviously intent on following Rambeau as he left the outdoor café. It didn’t take too much imagination to recognize the man as either a narcotics agent or an East Coast dealer who wanted Rambeau’s take on the local underworld. The concept of narc seemed stronger here, as most of the dealers who wandered down to Jamaica to get their heroin leads weren’t the type to get up and go on their own after a man. They had entourages of bodyguards and yes-men. He caught a quick flash of a pistol in a shoulder holster, something that passed so quick anyone who wasn’t a professional would have missed it.