Here’s the thing. Normally, if my crew—Rogue Team International, currently based on Omfori Island in Greece—caught wind of something like this, either Mr. Church or our COO, Scott Wilson, would pick up the phone and make a discreet call. Someone in the Sigurnosno-obavještajna agencija—the Security and Intelligence Agency, or SOA—and the SOA would send in a few helicopters crammed with shooters.

But this was a special case for us. The RTI computer team, led by world-class super nerd Bug, peeled back all the layers of the cover stories and shell corporations Mitrović was using to hide who he was really in bed with. The name Kuga floated to the top of that particular cesspool.

Kuga.

Yeah, we wanted him really badly. There aren’t words to describe exactly how badly.

Kuga was an international criminal empire specializing in black market sales of everything from polonium for assassinations to the sale and distribution of the most lethal bioweapons you can imagine. Kuga was also very likely the code name for the chief executive of that group, and there was a good chance the person behind it all was a former CIA superstar and self-made billionaire, Harcourt Bolton. For perspective’s sake, imagine if James Bond and Tony Stark had a love child, and that kid grew up to be Doctor Doom. That’s Harcourt Bolton. Smart, rich, ruthless as fuck, and he holds the number-two spot on my bucket list of people whose lives I want to destroy in very ugly and painful ways.

The number-one spot is held by Kuga’s right-hand man, Rafael Santoro. The most feared and effective manipulator, blackmailer, and extortionist the world has ever known. He has the subtlety and tradecraft to deconstruct the lives of key people and then turn them into weapons for the Kuga empire. Not willing converts—he’s not into changing hearts and minds through motivational speaking. No, his method is to make it very clear what will happen to the target’s loved ones. He shows photos and videos of what has happened to the families of people who defied him. He’s broken Navy SEALs, and that is something that’s supposed to be impossible, and breaks my heart that it, in fact, had happened.

Nothing is impossible, though. Santoro follows the Archimedes philosophy of:

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

But here’s the thing … and this is why Santoro, not Kuga, was in my number-one must fucking eviscerate list: Santoro is also the man who murdered my entire family on Christmas Eve last year.

Yeah.

So there’s that.

Mitrović was in bed with Santoro and Kuga, which meant that he was not going to be very happy at all to wake up and have me bending over him.

CHAPTER 3

TRSTENIK ISLAND

CROATIA