The last man was an American. He had blond hair and a blinding smile. He was grinning out of an American military ID photo and just from his neck and shoulders alone Bolan could tell the man had spent many hours pushing heavy iron in the gym. Roy Blair was 3rd Ranger Battalion. He’d been in Afghanistan then redeployed to Iraq. He then opted not to reenlist but had stayed in Iraq and gone to work for a private security company. Pig was written over his photo. That was Ranger-speak. There were two kinds of Rangers. “Maggots” were riflemen and “Pigs” were in the weapons squad. Roy Blair would know his way around machine guns, recoilless rifles, and antitank and antiaircraft weapons.
Bolan grunted in thin amusement at the last file. It had one word typed in quotes, center-spaced.
Cooper?
There was a hand-drawn smiley face beneath it.
There was another page that had a table with each man’s name and then a number of specialties checked off. Each man could ride a horse. Each man had qualified as expert or his national army’s equivalent with a rifle. Each man had passed courses in mountaineering and orienteering. Some men had specialty footnotes. Waqa, of all people, was a cook. Pieter could fly a helicopter and both Blackpool and Yuli could drive semis. Zoltan had Wrangler checked off by his name so the Hungarian probably knew something about the care and feeding of horses and he had been a Hungarian armed forces fencing champion. Roy Blair had attended the Defense Language Institute between deployments and learned basic Arabic. Yagi had done the Japanese equivalent and spoke Mandarin. Not surprisingly for a combat intelligence man in the Middle East, Giddy spoke Arabic as well as Farsi. Bolan’s line was empty so he checked off a few boxes that applied. He left out a lot. He’d demonstrate those abilities when and if the time came, and he’d give Eckhart his impressions after he’d had face time with each man.
Bolan closed the folder and grunted to himself. Eckhart had his own private little Foreign Legion and Bolan had joined it.
The Executioner checked the loads in his sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. It was a .22 caliber conversion and had twenty-five rounds in the magazine plus one in chamber. He placed it in a shoulder holster under his left arm and four spare magazines rode under his right. Bolan pulled on a black leather jacket and went downstairs to the hotel’s private meeting room.
Sitting around the conference table were a billionaire, his bodyguard, a hot blonde and eight very dangerous men.
Eckhart gave Bolan a friendly wave and gestured at the one empty chair. “Coop! Glad you could join us. Take a seat.”
Bolan handed the file back to Eckhart and took the offered chair. He nodded to the Fijian and Hungarian sitting to either side of him.
Eckhart called the group to attention. “Gentlemen, let’s get started. First off, you will all find a nondisclosure contract in front of you, which I will require you to sign if you want to attend the rest of this meeting. If you don’t wish to sign, I’ll have to ask you to leave immediately.”
This was met by some muttering but Eckhart waved it away dismissively. “However, your rent here at the Stafford is paid ’til the end of the week, you have an open tab at the bar and your return tickets are open-ended. Thank you for coming.”
The soldiers made mollified noises.
Eckhart’s face became serious. “If you sign, stay and afterward do not wish to participate, you may leave. However, if you sign and then break the nondisclosure contract and talk about what is discussed in this room outside of the Endeavor Team here assembled, you will be subject to the kind of lawyers and lawsuits only a billionaire can bring on. And, short of hiring hit men, I will use every legal, political and business contact I have to shit on you for the rest of your lives. I strongly urge you to think about that before you sign.”
No one had to think about it. A couple of the men made a pretense of flipping through the pages of legalese but everyone quickly signed. Rai collected the contracts and put them in a folder.
“Good.” Eckhart rapped his knuckles on the table and on cue two of the hotel staff staggered in carrying buckets of beers from around the world on ice. The arrival was met with cheers. Bolan smiled inwardly. Alcohol had been part of successful soldier recruitment since the Renaissance. Beers were passed around the table and Bolan picked himself out a Guinness.
“Gentlemen, may I introduce Nancy Rhynman,” Eckhart continued. “She’ll be part of our team.”
A chorus of whistles and catcalls greeted the news. Bolan noted Rhynman blushed slightly and smiled at the barrage of lewd suggestions but she didn’t seem intimidated.
“Most of you have probably heard of me,” Eckhart said.
This was met with some pointed comments that Eckhart ignored. “And as you may have heard every once in a while I go off on an endeavor in the name of science. Africa, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, I’ve had a few adventures around the globe and been on a few boondoggles.” Eckhart eyed the assembled soldiers wryly. “As I suspect have most of you.”
The comment was met by grunts of agreement.
Eckhart spread his hands in mock helplessness. “Well, I’m off on another one! And it’s going to require stepped-up security. That’s where you men come in.”
Waqa leaned back and frowned impatiently. The chair creaked ominously beneath his massive frame. “What’s the job, brah?”
Eckhart nodded to Rhynman. “Nancy?”
The soldiers sighed as she rose and they approved of the way her lightweight wool pants clung to her curves. She clicked a remote control and a projector showed a map on the wall that stretched from Spain to Hong Kong. “This is the modern world.” She clicked the remote again and nearly all the cities disappeared. “This is the ancient world.” Nancy clicked her remote again. “And this was the world of Alexander the Great.”
The map lit up in highlight from Mount Olympus in Western Greece to the Himalayas.
“As you may or may not remember from your school days, Alexander and his army conquered all the way across what is today modern Turkey, Iraq and Iran. His conquests spread from—”
“Jesus, here comes the History Channel.” Blair’s boots thudded on top of the table as he rocked back in his chair. “Can’t you make this more entertaining?”
“Take off your clothes!” Waqa suggested.
Eckhart held up his hand. “Guys…”
“Da!” Yuli produced a one-hundred-pound note. “Dance! Dance on table!”
Blair spread his feet on the table. “Lap dance!”
Eckhart might have been a billionaire and a captain of industry but he suddenly found himself in a room full of rowdy soldiers whose respect he hadn’t earned. “Gentlemen, I—” he stammered.
“Show us your tits!” Waqa shouted.
Again Bolan noticed that Nancy wasn’t scared, embarrassed or intimidated. She was quietly and coldly becoming furious. He saw an opportunity to get on her good side. He picked his victim. His voice cut through the cacophony of sexual harassment and hilarity.
“Yo, Waqa.”
Waqa grinned and