Eddie had gone into the CIA immediately after college and spent the majority of the next fifteen years flying into and out of China, cultivating a network of informants who in turn allowed the United States to maintain its uneasy relationship with the mainland. He’d been inserted via a submarine onto Hainan in the spring of 2001 when the Chinese were holding the crew of an EP-3 spy plane and passed on information that kept the crisis from becoming a war. He’d maneuvered around China’s secret police, one of the most efficient in the world, with near impunity because he was so good at what he did. The irony of being caught by a third-rate dictator’s Praetorian guards wasn’t lost on him.

Despite the odds, Eddie still had faith that Juan Cabrillo would find a way to save them. Though the two served in the CIA at the same time, they hadn’t met until after leaving government service. That didn’t mean Eddie hadn’t heard of Cabrillo. Juan had singlehandedly pulled off some of the most difficult assignments in the agency’s history. And because he was fluent in Spanish, Arabic, and Russian, his missions had been in some of the toughest countries on earth. He was a bit of a legend at Langley. His reputation, along with his white-blond hair, had earned him the nickname Mr. Phelps, the lead character from the old Mission: Impossible television show. Whether tracking drug smugglers from Colombia into Panama or infiltrating a terrorist group in Syria planning to blow up the Israeli Knesset with a hijacked airliner, Cabrillo had done it all.

So if anyone was able to spring them from this hellhole with only a couple of hours to go before dawn and limited resources, Eddie was sure Juan was the man.

A flashlight beam stabbed out of the darkness and blinded Cabrillo. Behind the glare he distinctly heard the sound of rifle bolts being cocked back. He held still. The next few seconds would determine if he lived or died. One of the men moved closer, covering Juan with a massive revolver, an old Webley if he wasn’t mistaken. The man was older than Juan, pushing fifty, with white shooting through the tight curls on his head and wrinkles lining his forehead.

“Who are you?” he asked suspiciously.

“My name is Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.” Judging by the man’s age, the fact they were all armed, and that they were headed in the general direction of the Devil’s Oasis, Juan gambled his life by saying, “I want to help you rescue Moses Ndebele.”

The man’s fist tightened around the antique pistol, his dark eyes unreadable in the shifting light.