Shadow War. Don Pendleton

right to work.

      In short time the frequency for al-Shalaan’s personal cell phone had been ascertained, triangulated and captured. Once his personal communications were cracked, a whole world of intelligence had opened up to U.S. agencies.

      Then al-Shalaan had started transferring funds for men believed to be the bodyguards of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two. Al-Zawahiri was an Egyptian doctor and important figure in the radical Islamic Jihad group founded there, and was tied to many acts of terror designed to weaken and overthrow the secular North African state.

      Suddenly the CIA had a problem. The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency had put in a daily intelligence estimate that al-Shalaan, a prince of an important ally in the war on terror with diplomatic immunity, had suddenly come to the attention of another important ally: the brutal Egyptian GDSSI, or General Directorate for State Security Investigations. If al-Shalaan was going down, then the U.S. wanted him all to themselves.

      Coordinating the intelligence cross-pollination, the DNI had gone to the Oval Office with his take on the situation. Al-Shalaan had to disappear. Taking the matter out of CIA hands, the President had gone to Stony Man.

      Al-Shalaan was going to be pulled out of his Marseilles penthouse suite one step ahead of a black-ops squad of GDSSI agents. The resources available were scant. The time frame was ridiculously tight, the potential operational blowback a PR nightmare. Kidnapping a Saudi prince was unthinkable, even one that was a known facilitator of terror.

      Phoenix Force got the job.

      One number on al-Shalaan’s phone had unfailingly come up in connection to his stay at the five-star Marseilles resort—the number to a very high-priced, very exclusive dominatrix for hire.

      The Langley profilers had been nonplussed by the revelation that al-Shalaan liked to be spanked and humiliated. And submissives like the Saudi were willing to pay large sums of money to secure a professional dominant.

      Monica Bellucci was such a woman.

      Hawkins sat up in his seat, then studiously turned his attention to his paper. Bellucci had walked into the lobby. The Phoenix Force commando nonchalantly reached under his folded newspaper and turned up the volume on the parabolic microphone. The smooth technology fed the passive signals into his earpiece so well he might have been standing at the woman’s shoulder.

      Her voice was a smooth, husky alto, the kind, Hawkins thought, that would cause a man’s heart to race when it whispered into his ear.

      The concierge gave her a sealed envelope and a key card. Turning, she strode across the lobby toward the gilded doors of the elevator with more grace than an Italian runway model.

      The concierge, an effete, overly trim man, stood there looking slightly stunned, then his face regained its normal polite impassivity and he turned to help another guest.

      Hawkins snorted to himself as he clicked the parabolic mike. His finger touched his throat mike. “We’ve got the room number,” he said, standing.

      

      I N THE ROOM , B ELLUCCI went through her ritual. Her overcoat came off, revealing the strapless black rubber dress beneath. The garment fit like a latex glove over a body that could easily pull it off, and there was no doubt that she wore nothing underneath. A black ribbon was tied in a choker around her throat, usually a sign of submissiveness in the bondage and domination world, but just part of her costume in this case. She set down her designer bag and reached inside, removing a coil of soft cord, a riding crop and a prescription pill bottle. Leaving the implements behind her on the entrance table where her customer would notice them immediately upon entering, she took the pill bottle over to the suite’s bar.

      Her eyes already glassy, she washed down three OxyContin tablets with two ounces of Bombay gin.

      Though she spoke French flawlessly, the stunning blonde was German by way of Switzerland. She had always been drawn to older men, established men with influence and financial means. She had learned in her first year at the exclusive Paris university that married men of the jet set treated their mistresses very well.

      She had accepted her first assignation—Bellucci did not turn tricks—at twenty. Her current lover, an assets manager with the World Bank, had come to her frantic. Somehow a South African intelligence agent had gathered evidence of his insider trading involving relief funds going into Liberia.

      Desperate enough to offend his beautiful mistress, he’d pleaded with her to get into the man’s suite and steal the documents, knowing full well what it would require of her. The thrill that had shivered through her body when she felt the weight of the envelope containing the equivalent of ten thousand U.S. dollars—and what that money was buying—had been unforgettable.

      She wore out the overweight, middle-aged South African government agent then rummaged his embassy-provided suite at her leisure and obtained the documents. Making copies for her own, soon-to-be-growing personal files, she’d promptly demanded another ten thousand before turning them over to her lover.

      Realizing the potential of the situation, Bellucci had turned professional for the diplomatic community. Soon after, she quickly learned she liked her sex rough and her little black book, actually a PDA database, was filled with men, occasionally their wives and often their full-time mistresses, as well as a handful of female clients, who craved the release of a mistress with a capital M.

      Almost immediately she had come to the attention of Henri Galli upon the recommendation of a powerful Venezuelan businessman named Marcos Sincanaros. She knew little about the man except that he was tied to the government in some shadowy fashion and that he paid very well. Under his patronage her career had truly blossomed.

      She brought the cut-glass tumbler to her full, surgically enhanced lips and sipped. The gin gave off a scent that reminded her of pine trees as it sparkled tart on her tongue. Setting her drink down, she opened her purse on the bar and pulled out a blunt.

      She licked the end of the marijuana cigar until it was wet, then took a vial out of her handbag and sprinkled a liberal amount of cocaine across the moistened end. Bringing the blunt to her mouth, she used an oversize lighter to fire it up.

      The pungent smoke and aromatized cocaine filled her lungs as she dragged and held it in. The blood from her pounding heart rushed to her head, making her dizzy, followed immediately by a wave of pleasant euphoria. She felt simultaneously mellow and keyed up. The feeling would continue as her body absorbed the primary agents of her OxyContin painkillers.

      She left the smoldering blunt in a fine crystal ashtray and wandered deeper into the suite, looking for the stereo system.

      

      H AWKINS ENTERED THE ROOM on the fifth floor of the resort, some seven floors down from al-Shalaan’s penthouse suite. Inside, the rest of Phoenix Force was going over its last-minute preparations for the operation.

      Calvin James sat on a chair in front of the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table situated in the center of the room. With quick, efficient motions he was securing the glass vials of Versed and succhyil chlorate into the loading chambers of the pneumatic injectors each of the team would carry in addition to a personal backup pistol.

      James, a former medic with the U.S. Navy SEALs, had explained the drug in detail to the team prior to deployment from Stony Man. Erring on the side of safety, for his team, James had calculated doses for a 210-pound male. The pistol-shaped injectors made sharp clicking sounds as he set them down on the glass tabletop.

      He looked up as Hawkins entered the room. “What’s up, T.J.?”

      â€œEverything’s still good. I waited around until al-Shalaan showed up to confirm the numbers on his entourage. We’re still five-by-five for our sitrep.”

      James nodded, then spoke into his throat mike. “T.J. confirms sitrep,” he said to the team leader, David McCarter. The ex-SAS commando was the team member with by far the most driving expertise on the team. He was waiting in a H3 Hummer converted into