Primary Valor Jack Mars (miss read books TXT) 📖

certain. Yes, he was getting his salary as an FBI agent,assigned to be out here babysitting a mission that was already going verywrong. And yes, he was getting his per diem payment as a CIA informerinfiltrating and working undercover as an FBI agent.

But he was getting a lot moremoney than that, wasn’t he?

Yes, he was. He was getting paidas a freelancer to destroy the mission. This one job would deliver him, incash, close to what Stone probably got all year in salary.

He shook his head again. Thesepeople, Luke Stone and his rabble, didn’t understand where the real money was,and where the real power lay. They were on the wrong side. Bowles supposed theythought they were working for America. But there was no America, not really,not in the way someone like Luke Stone thought of it.

There were the rulers, and therewere the governed. There were the helpless, hopeless, powerless masses, andthere were the people who ran the show. The trick was to figure out who waswho, and work for the right ones.

That’s what Henry Bowles reallydid for a living.

Buzz Mac was about ten feet out inthe water now, drifting down the beach. Maybe he would drift out to sea. Maybehe would wash up somewhere further down. Maybe a bull shark would come and eathim. Bowles supposed it wouldn’t matter in the end.

He walked up the beach to the Zodiac.He still had his knife out. He plunged it into the boat, driving it through thetough fabric, putting his weight on it to force it through. Then he rippedbackward several inches and pulled the knife out. He went around to the otherside and did the same thing over there. The boat was deflating fast. In alittle while, it would be as flat as a ruptured tire.

Bowles looked up at the mountain. Somewhereup there, Luke Stone was waiting for him, hoping to complete the mission, savethe girl, make America proud. It wasn’t going to happen.

“No way out, Stone,” Bowles said.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

9:25 p.m. Central Standard Time (10:25 p.m. EasternStandard Time)

The skies near St. Simon’s Saw

The Caribbean Sea

 

 

“Stone!”

Ed Newsam punched the wall of theplane one last time. The plane was so old, he almost felt he could punch a holein it.

It had taken him this long to calmdown. For the first several minutes, he had imagined going out the jump dooranyway, finding Stone in the dark sky, grabbing him tight around the middle,and forcing him to pull the cord with the man he rejected attached to him.

Ed shook his head and took anotherdeep breath. That stuff only worked in the movies. All he’d do was kill themboth. If he was lucky. If he was unlucky, he wouldn’t even find Stone outthere, and he would just plummet all by himself at terminal velocity into theturf.

Whew! He’d seen a couple of guysgo like that during his time in the military. One guy, the chute malfunctioned.The other, the guy just didn’t open it for some reason. No one would ever knowwhy. The first guy bounced about four stories into the air. The second guy, theground was soft bottom land, watery, mud. He just went right into it and becameembedded.

Neither option looked good.

Ed got up from the bench, crossedthe plane, and pulled the jump door closed. He wasn’t going out there, and heknew it.

He knew something else, too. Stonewas right. Not about keeping him off the mission. And certainly not abouttampering with his parachute. That was an amateur play, strictly bush league. Edwould let him know that.

But he was right that Ed was offhis feed. This job had gotten to him. It was like being stabbed in the heart,finding that kid in the ice chest. He’d become unhinged. In fact, sitting herereflecting on it, he realized that he barely remembered what had happened sincethen.

Okay. But Stone should have pulledhim aside and talked to him about…

He shook his head again. Who washe kidding? That would never have worked. Ed knew himself better than that. Agood talking to, huh? “You’re putting yourself and others at risk. You need tosnap out of it. You’ve got a child on the way.”

From Stone, of all people?

Luke Stone, who never metimpossible odds he didn’t like? Luke Stone, who had no personal hobbies otherthan being shot, blown up, stabbed, and dropped from the sky? Luke Stone, whospent the night before his own baby was born in a firefight with Islamicextremist militants on a cold mountaintop in northern Iraq?

Yeah, a conversation with LukeStone wouldn’t have done much. If anything, Ed would have dug in deeper.

But this? Being stuck here on theplane after Stone had jumped out with Bowles was a wake-up call of the firstorder.

Stone hadn’t done that lightly. Andnow he was on the ground with a makeshift team that included their FBI minderBowles, whose special ops record he didn’t choose to share except in thevaguest terms possible, and Buzz MacDonald, who was so old that he needed tolubricate his joints with 10W-40 just to move.

Ed didn’t like it. If it wentwrong, it was going to get ugly down there. Those guys would never make it outof there on their own. Stone, maybe. The other two?

Ed got up, went to the cockpitdoor, and knocked on it. He heard it unlock on the other side and open an inch.He pulled it open the rest of the way.

They were sitting side by side inthe small cockpit, the dark night everywhere through the windshield ahead ofthem. On the right was Rachel, the brawny, fiery redhead. She was a mixedmartial artist in her spare time, and Ed reflected that a couple of years ago,he wouldn’t have minded grappling a few rounds with her. On the left was Jacob,the tall, bespectacled glass of water who never seemed to have much to say. Elitesoldier or not, as body types went, Jacob was closer to Mark Swann than to LukeStone. Jacob was like Swann with a sense of discipline, but without the senseof humor.

These two were military pilotsfrom the Night Stalkers, the160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, who hadgraduated to working with the SRT.

“Hi, Ed,”